
ADVENTURE I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

I.

To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard
him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses
and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt
any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that
one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but
admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect
reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a
lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never
spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They
were admirable things for the observer--excellent for drawing the
veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner
to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely
adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which
might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a
sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power
lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a
nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and
that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable
memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us
away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the
home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first
finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to
absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of
society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in
Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from
week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the
drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still,
as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his
immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in
following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which
had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time
to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons
to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up
of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee,
and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so
delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland.
Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely
shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of
my former friend and companion.

One night--it was on the twentieth of March, 1888--I was
returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to
civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I
passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated
in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the
Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes
again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers.
His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw
his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against
the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head
sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who
knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their
own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his
drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new
problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which
had formerly been in part my own.

His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I
think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly
eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars,
and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he
stood before the fire and looked me over in his singular
introspective fashion.

"Wedlock suits you," he remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have
put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you."

"Seven!" I answered.

"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more,
I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not
tell me that you intended to go into harness."

"Then, how do you know?"

"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting
yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and
careless servant girl?"

"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly
have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true
that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful
mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can't imagine how you
deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has
given her notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it
out."

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands
together.

"It is simplicity itself," said he; "my eyes tell me that on the
inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it,
the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they
have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round
the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it.
Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile
weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting
specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a
gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black
mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge
on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted
his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce
him to be an active member of the medical profession."

I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his
process of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I
remarked, "the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously
simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each
successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you
explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good
as yours."

"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing
himself down into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe.
The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen
the steps which lead up from the hall to this room."

"Frequently."

"How often?"

"Well, some hundreds of times."

"Then how many are there?"

"How many? I don't know."

"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is
just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps,
because I have both seen and observed. By-the-way, since you are
interested in these little problems, and since you are good
enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences, you
may be interested in this." He threw over a sheet of thick,
pink-tinted note-paper which had been lying open upon the table.
"It came by the last post," said he. "Read it aloud."

The note was undated, and without either signature or address.

"There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight
o'clock," it said, "a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a
matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of
the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may
safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which
can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all
quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do
not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask."

"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that
it means?"

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before
one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit
theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself.
What do you deduce from it?"

I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was
written.

"The man who wrote it was presumably well to do," I remarked,
endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. "Such paper
could not be bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly
strong and stiff."

"Peculiar--that is the very word," said Holmes. "It is not an
English paper at all. Hold it up to the light."

I did so, and saw a large "E" with a small "g," a "P," and a
large "G" with a small "t" woven into the texture of the paper.

"What do you make of that?" asked Holmes.

"The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather."

"Not at all. The 'G' with the small 't' stands for
'Gesellschaft,' which is the German for 'Company.' It is a
customary contraction like our 'Co.' 'P,' of course, stands for
'Papier.' Now for the 'Eg.' Let us glance at our Continental
Gazetteer." He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves.
"Eglow, Eglonitz--here we are, Egria. It is in a German-speaking
country--in Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad. 'Remarkable as being
the scene of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous
glass-factories and paper-mills.' Ha, ha, my boy, what do you
make of that?" His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue
triumphant cloud from his cigarette.

"The paper was made in Bohemia," I said.

"Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you
note the peculiar construction of the sentence--'This account of
you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian
could not have written that. It is the German who is so
uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover
what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper and
prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And here he comes, if
I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts."

As he spoke there was the sharp sound of horses' hoofs and
grating wheels against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the
bell. Holmes whistled.

"A pair, by the sound," said he. "Yes," he continued, glancing
out of the window. "A nice little brougham and a pair of
beauties. A hundred and fifty guineas apiece. There's money in
this case, Watson, if there is nothing else."

"I think that I had better go, Holmes."

"Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my
Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity
to miss it."

"But your client--"

"Never mind him. I may want your help, and so may he. Here he
comes. Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best
attention."

A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and
in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there
was a loud and authoritative tap.

"Come in!" said Holmes.

A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six
inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His
dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked
upon as akin to bad taste. Heavy bands of astrakhan were slashed
across the sleeves and fronts of his double-breasted coat, while
the deep blue cloak which was thrown over his shoulders was lined
with flame-coloured silk and secured at the neck with a brooch
which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended
halfway up his calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with
rich brown fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence
which was suggested by his whole appearance. He carried a
broad-brimmed hat in his hand, while he wore across the upper
part of his face, extending down past the cheekbones, a black
vizard mask, which he had apparently adjusted that very moment,
for his hand was still raised to it as he entered. From the lower
part of the face he appeared to be a man of strong character,
with a thick, hanging lip, and a long, straight chin suggestive
of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy.

"You had my note?" he asked with a deep harsh voice and a
strongly marked German accent. "I told you that I would call." He
looked from one to the other of us, as if uncertain which to
address.

"Pray take a seat," said Holmes. "This is my friend and
colleague, Dr. Watson, who is occasionally good enough to help me
in my cases. Whom have I the honour to address?"

"You may address me as the Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman.
I understand that this gentleman, your friend, is a man of honour
and discretion, whom I may trust with a matter of the most
extreme importance. If not, I should much prefer to communicate
with you alone."

I rose to go, but Holmes caught me by the wrist and pushed me
back into my chair. "It is both, or none," said he. "You may say
before this gentleman anything which you may say to me."

The Count shrugged his broad shoulders. "Then I must begin," said
he, "by binding you both to absolute secrecy for two years; at
the end of that time the matter will be of no importance. At
present it is not too much to say that it is of such weight it
may have an influence upon European history."

"I promise," said Holmes.

"And I."

"You will excuse this mask," continued our strange visitor. "The
august person who employs me wishes his agent to be unknown to
you, and I may confess at once that the title by which I have
just called myself is not exactly my own."

"I was aware of it," said Holmes dryly.

"The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution
has to be taken to quench what might grow to be an immense
scandal and seriously compromise one of the reigning families of
Europe. To speak plainly, the matter implicates the great House
of Ormstein, hereditary kings of Bohemia."

"I was also aware of that," murmured Holmes, settling himself
down in his armchair and closing his eyes.

Our visitor glanced with some apparent surprise at the languid,
lounging figure of the man who had been no doubt depicted to him
as the most incisive reasoner and most energetic agent in Europe.
Holmes slowly reopened his eyes and looked impatiently at his
gigantic client.

"If your Majesty would condescend to state your case," he
remarked, "I should be better able to advise you."

The man sprang from his chair and paced up and down the room in
uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he
tore the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground. "You
are right," he cried; "I am the King. Why should I attempt to
conceal it?"

"Why, indeed?" murmured Holmes. "Your Majesty had not spoken
before I was aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich
Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and
hereditary King of Bohemia."

"But you can understand," said our strange visitor, sitting down
once more and passing his hand over his high white forehead, "you
can understand that I am not accustomed to doing such business in
my own person. Yet the matter was so delicate that I could not
confide it to an agent without putting myself in his power. I
have come incognito from Prague for the purpose of consulting
you."

"Then, pray consult," said Holmes, shutting his eyes once more.

"The facts are briefly these: Some five years ago, during a
lengthy visit to Warsaw, I made the acquaintance of the well-known
adventuress, Irene Adler. The name is no doubt familiar to you."

"Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor," murmured Holmes without
opening his eyes. For many years he had adopted a system of
docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it
was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could not
at once furnish information. In this case I found her biography
sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a
staff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea
fishes.

"Let me see!" said Holmes. "Hum! Born in New Jersey in the year
1858. Contralto--hum! La Scala, hum! Prima donna Imperial Opera
of Warsaw--yes! Retired from operatic stage--ha! Living in
London--quite so! Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled
with this young person, wrote her some compromising letters, and
is now desirous of getting those letters back."

"Precisely so. But how--"

"Was there a secret marriage?"

"None."

"No legal papers or certificates?"

"None."

"Then I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should
produce her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is
she to prove their authenticity?"

"There is the writing."

"Pooh, pooh! Forgery."

"My private note-paper."

"Stolen."

"My own seal."

"Imitated."

"My photograph."

"Bought."

"We were both in the photograph."

"Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an
indiscretion."

"I was mad--insane."

"You have compromised yourself seriously."

"I was only Crown Prince then. I was young. I am but thirty now."

"It must be recovered."

"We have tried and failed."

"Your Majesty must pay. It must be bought."

"She will not sell."

"Stolen, then."

"Five attempts have been made. Twice burglars in my pay ransacked
her house. Once we diverted her luggage when she travelled. Twice
she has been waylaid. There has been no result."

"No sign of it?"

"Absolutely none."

Holmes laughed. "It is quite a pretty little problem," said he.

"But a very serious one to me," returned the King reproachfully.

"Very, indeed. And what does she propose to do with the
photograph?"

"To ruin me."

"But how?"

"I am about to be married."

"So I have heard."

"To Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen, second daughter of the
King of Scandinavia. You may know the strict principles of her
family. She is herself the very soul of delicacy. A shadow of a
doubt as to my conduct would bring the matter to an end."

"And Irene Adler?"

"Threatens to send them the photograph. And she will do it. I
know that she will do it. You do not know her, but she has a soul
of steel. She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and
the mind of the most resolute of men. Rather than I should marry
another woman, there are no lengths to which she would not
go--none."

"You are sure that she has not sent it yet?"

"I am sure."

"And why?"

"Because she has said that she would send it on the day when the
betrothal was publicly proclaimed. That will be next Monday."

"Oh, then we have three days yet," said Holmes with a yawn. "That
is very fortunate, as I have one or two matters of importance to
look into just at present. Your Majesty will, of course, stay in
London for the present?"

"Certainly. You will find me at the Langham under the name of the
Count Von Kramm."

"Then I shall drop you a line to let you know how we progress."

"Pray do so. I shall be all anxiety."

"Then, as to money?"

"You have carte blanche."

"Absolutely?"

"I tell you that I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom
to have that photograph."

"And for present expenses?"

The King took a heavy chamois leather bag from under his cloak
and laid it on the table.

"There are three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in
notes," he said.

Holmes scribbled a receipt upon a sheet of his note-book and
handed it to him.

"And Mademoiselle's address?" he asked.

"Is Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St. John's Wood."

Holmes took a note of it. "One other question," said he. "Was the
photograph a cabinet?"

"It was."

"Then, good-night, your Majesty, and I trust that we shall soon
have some good news for you. And good-night, Watson," he added,
as the wheels of the royal brougham rolled down the street. "If
you will be good enough to call to-morrow afternoon at three
o'clock I should like to chat this little matter over with you."


II.

At three o'clock precisely I was at Baker Street, but Holmes had
not yet returned. The landlady informed me that he had left the
house shortly after eight o'clock in the morning. I sat down
beside the fire, however, with the intention of awaiting him,
however long he might be. I was already deeply interested in his
inquiry, for, though it was surrounded by none of the grim and
strange features which were associated with the two crimes which
I have already recorded, still, the nature of the case and the
exalted station of his client gave it a character of its own.
Indeed, apart from the nature of the investigation which my
friend had on hand, there was something in his masterly grasp of
a situation, and his keen, incisive reasoning, which made it a
pleasure to me to study his system of work, and to follow the
quick, subtle methods by which he disentangled the most
inextricable mysteries. So accustomed was I to his invariable
success that the very possibility of his failing had ceased to
enter into my head.

It was close upon four before the door opened, and a
drunken-looking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an
inflamed face and disreputable clothes, walked into the room.
Accustomed as I was to my friend's amazing powers in the use of
disguises, I had to look three times before I was certain that it
was indeed he. With a nod he vanished into the bedroom, whence he
emerged in five minutes tweed-suited and respectable, as of old.
Putting his hands into his pockets, he stretched out his legs in
front of the fire and laughed heartily for some minutes.

"Well, really!" he cried, and then he choked and laughed again
until he was obliged to lie back, limp and helpless, in the
chair.

"What is it?"

"It's quite too funny. I am sure you could never guess how I
employed my morning, or what I ended by doing."

"I can't imagine. I suppose that you have been watching the
habits, and perhaps the house, of Miss Irene Adler."

"Quite so; but the sequel was rather unusual. I will tell you,
however. I left the house a little after eight o'clock this
morning in the character of a groom out of work. There is a
wonderful sympathy and freemasonry among horsey men. Be one of
them, and you will know all that there is to know. I soon found
Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but
built out in front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb lock
to the door. Large sitting-room on the right side, well
furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those
preposterous English window fasteners which a child could open.
Behind there was nothing remarkable, save that the passage window
could be reached from the top of the coach-house. I walked round
it and examined it closely from every point of view, but without
noting anything else of interest.

"I then lounged down the street and found, as I expected, that
there was a mews in a lane which runs down by one wall of the
garden. I lent the ostlers a hand in rubbing down their horses,
and received in exchange twopence, a glass of half and half, two
fills of shag tobacco, and as much information as I could desire
about Miss Adler, to say nothing of half a dozen other people in
the neighbourhood in whom I was not in the least interested, but
whose biographies I was compelled to listen to."

"And what of Irene Adler?" I asked.

"Oh, she has turned all the men's heads down in that part. She is
the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet. So say the
Serpentine-mews, to a man. She lives quietly, sings at concerts,
drives out at five every day, and returns at seven sharp for
dinner. Seldom goes out at other times, except when she sings.
Has only one male visitor, but a good deal of him. He is dark,
handsome, and dashing, never calls less than once a day, and
often twice. He is a Mr. Godfrey Norton, of the Inner Temple. See
the advantages of a cabman as a confidant. They had driven him
home a dozen times from Serpentine-mews, and knew all about him.
When I had listened to all they had to tell, I began to walk up
and down near Briony Lodge once more, and to think over my plan
of campaign.

"This Godfrey Norton was evidently an important factor in the
matter. He was a lawyer. That sounded ominous. What was the
relation between them, and what the object of his repeated
visits? Was she his client, his friend, or his mistress? If the
former, she had probably transferred the photograph to his
keeping. If the latter, it was less likely. On the issue of this
question depended whether I should continue my work at Briony
Lodge, or turn my attention to the gentleman's chambers in the
Temple. It was a delicate point, and it widened the field of my
inquiry. I fear that I bore you with these details, but I have to
let you see my little difficulties, if you are to understand the
situation."

"I am following you closely," I answered.

"I was still balancing the matter in my mind when a hansom cab
drove up to Briony Lodge, and a gentleman sprang out. He was a
remarkably handsome man, dark, aquiline, and moustached--evidently
the man of whom I had heard. He appeared to be in a
great hurry, shouted to the cabman to wait, and brushed past the
maid who opened the door with the air of a man who was thoroughly
at home.

"He was in the house about half an hour, and I could catch
glimpses of him in the windows of the sitting-room, pacing up and
down, talking excitedly, and waving his arms. Of her I could see
nothing. Presently he emerged, looking even more flurried than
before. As he stepped up to the cab, he pulled a gold watch from
his pocket and looked at it earnestly, 'Drive like the devil,' he
shouted, 'first to Gross & Hankey's in Regent Street, and then to
the Church of St. Monica in the Edgeware Road. Half a guinea if
you do it in twenty minutes!'

"Away they went, and I was just wondering whether I should not do
well to follow them when up the lane came a neat little landau,
the coachman with his coat only half-buttoned, and his tie under
his ear, while all the tags of his harness were sticking out of
the buckles. It hadn't pulled up before she shot out of the hall
door and into it. I only caught a glimpse of her at the moment,
but she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for.

"'The Church of St. Monica, John,' she cried, 'and half a
sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes.'

"This was quite too good to lose, Watson. I was just balancing
whether I should run for it, or whether I should perch behind her
landau when a cab came through the street. The driver looked
twice at such a shabby fare, but I jumped in before he could
object. 'The Church of St. Monica,' said I, 'and half a sovereign
if you reach it in twenty minutes.' It was twenty-five minutes to
twelve, and of course it was clear enough what was in the wind.

"My cabby drove fast. I don't think I ever drove faster, but the
others were there before us. The cab and the landau with their
steaming horses were in front of the door when I arrived. I paid
the man and hurried into the church. There was not a soul there
save the two whom I had followed and a surpliced clergyman, who
seemed to be expostulating with them. They were all three
standing in a knot in front of the altar. I lounged up the side
aisle like any other idler who has dropped into a church.
Suddenly, to my surprise, the three at the altar faced round to
me, and Godfrey Norton came running as hard as he could towards
me.

"'Thank God,' he cried. 'You'll do. Come! Come!'

"'What then?' I asked.

"'Come, man, come, only three minutes, or it won't be legal.'

"I was half-dragged up to the altar, and before I knew where I was
I found myself mumbling responses which were whispered in my ear,
and vouching for things of which I knew nothing, and generally
assisting in the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to
Godfrey Norton, bachelor. It was all done in an instant, and
there was the gentleman thanking me on the one side and the lady
on the other, while the clergyman beamed on me in front. It was
the most preposterous position in which I ever found myself in my
life, and it was the thought of it that started me laughing just
now. It seems that there had been some informality about their
license, that the clergyman absolutely refused to marry them
without a witness of some sort, and that my lucky appearance
saved the bridegroom from having to sally out into the streets in
search of a best man. The bride gave me a sovereign, and I mean
to wear it on my watch-chain in memory of the occasion."

"This is a very unexpected turn of affairs," said I; "and what
then?"

"Well, I found my plans very seriously menaced. It looked as if
the pair might take an immediate departure, and so necessitate
very prompt and energetic measures on my part. At the church
door, however, they separated, he driving back to the Temple, and
she to her own house. 'I shall drive out in the park at five as
usual,' she said as she left him. I heard no more. They drove
away in different directions, and I went off to make my own
arrangements."

"Which are?"

"Some cold beef and a glass of beer," he answered, ringing the
bell. "I have been too busy to think of food, and I am likely to
be busier still this evening. By the way, Doctor, I shall want
your co-operation."

"I shall be delighted."

"You don't mind breaking the law?"

"Not in the least."

"Nor running a chance of arrest?"

"Not in a good cause."

"Oh, the cause is excellent!"

"Then I am your man."

"I was sure that I might rely on you."

"But what is it you wish?"

"When Mrs. Turner has brought in the tray I will make it clear to
you. Now," he said as he turned hungrily on the simple fare that
our landlady had provided, "I must discuss it while I eat, for I
have not much time. It is nearly five now. In two hours we must
be on the scene of action. Miss Irene, or Madame, rather, returns
from her drive at seven. We must be at Briony Lodge to meet her."

"And what then?"

"You must leave that to me. I have already arranged what is to
occur. There is only one point on which I must insist. You must
not interfere, come what may. You understand?"

"I am to be neutral?"

"To do nothing whatever. There will probably be some small
unpleasantness. Do not join in it. It will end in my being
conveyed into the house. Four or five minutes afterwards the
sitting-room window will open. You are to station yourself close
to that open window."

"Yes."

"You are to watch me, for I will be visible to you."

"Yes."

"And when I raise my hand--so--you will throw into the room what
I give you to throw, and will, at the same time, raise the cry of
fire. You quite follow me?"

"Entirely."

"It is nothing very formidable," he said, taking a long cigar-shaped
roll from his pocket. "It is an ordinary plumber's smoke-rocket,
fitted with a cap at either end to make it self-lighting.
Your task is confined to that. When you raise your cry of fire,
it will be taken up by quite a number of people. You may then
walk to the end of the street, and I will rejoin you in ten
minutes. I hope that I have made myself clear?"

"I am to remain neutral, to get near the window, to watch you,
and at the signal to throw in this object, then to raise the cry
of fire, and to wait you at the corner of the street."

"Precisely."

"Then you may entirely rely on me."

"That is excellent. I think, perhaps, it is almost time that I
prepare for the new role I have to play."

He disappeared into his bedroom and returned in a few minutes in
the character of an amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist
clergyman. His broad black hat, his baggy trousers, his white
tie, his sympathetic smile, and general look of peering and
benevolent curiosity were such as Mr. John Hare alone could have
equalled. It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His
expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every
fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as
science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in
crime.

It was a quarter past six when we left Baker Street, and it still
wanted ten minutes to the hour when we found ourselves in
Serpentine Avenue. It was already dusk, and the lamps were just
being lighted as we paced up and down in front of Briony Lodge,
waiting for the coming of its occupant. The house was just such
as I had pictured it from Sherlock Holmes' succinct description,
but the locality appeared to be less private than I expected. On
the contrary, for a small street in a quiet neighbourhood, it was
remarkably animated. There was a group of shabbily dressed men
smoking and laughing in a corner, a scissors-grinder with his
wheel, two guardsmen who were flirting with a nurse-girl, and
several well-dressed young men who were lounging up and down with
cigars in their mouths.

"You see," remarked Holmes, as we paced to and fro in front of
the house, "this marriage rather simplifies matters. The
photograph becomes a double-edged weapon now. The chances are
that she would be as averse to its being seen by Mr. Godfrey
Norton, as our client is to its coming to the eyes of his
princess. Now the question is, Where are we to find the
photograph?"

"Where, indeed?"

"It is most unlikely that she carries it about with her. It is
cabinet size. Too large for easy concealment about a woman's
dress. She knows that the King is capable of having her waylaid
and searched. Two attempts of the sort have already been made. We
may take it, then, that she does not carry it about with her."

"Where, then?"

"Her banker or her lawyer. There is that double possibility. But
I am inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive,
and they like to do their own secreting. Why should she hand it
over to anyone else? She could trust her own guardianship, but
she could not tell what indirect or political influence might be
brought to bear upon a business man. Besides, remember that she
had resolved to use it within a few days. It must be where she
can lay her hands upon it. It must be in her own house."

"But it has twice been burgled."

"Pshaw! They did not know how to look."

"But how will you look?"

"I will not look."

"What then?"

"I will get her to show me."

"But she will refuse."

"She will not be able to. But I hear the rumble of wheels. It is
her carriage. Now carry out my orders to the letter."

As he spoke the gleam of the side-lights of a carriage came round
the curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which
rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up, one of
the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in
the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another
loafer, who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce
quarrel broke out, which was increased by the two guardsmen, who
took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors-grinder,
who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and
in an instant the lady, who had stepped from her carriage, was
the centre of a little knot of flushed and struggling men, who
struck savagely at each other with their fists and sticks. Holmes
dashed into the crowd to protect the lady; but just as he reached
her he gave a cry and dropped to the ground, with the blood
running freely down his face. At his fall the guardsmen took to
their heels in one direction and the loungers in the other, while
a number of better-dressed people, who had watched the scuffle
without taking part in it, crowded in to help the lady and to
attend to the injured man. Irene Adler, as I will still call her,
had hurried up the steps; but she stood at the top with her
superb figure outlined against the lights of the hall, looking
back into the street.

"Is the poor gentleman much hurt?" she asked.

"He is dead," cried several voices.

"No, no, there's life in him!" shouted another. "But he'll be
gone before you can get him to hospital."

"He's a brave fellow," said a woman. "They would have had the
lady's purse and watch if it hadn't been for him. They were a
gang, and a rough one, too. Ah, he's breathing now."

"He can't lie in the street. May we bring him in, marm?"

"Surely. Bring him into the sitting-room. There is a comfortable
sofa. This way, please!"

Slowly and solemnly he was borne into Briony Lodge and laid out
in the principal room, while I still observed the proceedings
from my post by the window. The lamps had been lit, but the
blinds had not been drawn, so that I could see Holmes as he lay
upon the couch. I do not know whether he was seized with
compunction at that moment for the part he was playing, but I
know that I never felt more heartily ashamed of myself in my life
than when I saw the beautiful creature against whom I was
conspiring, or the grace and kindliness with which she waited
upon the injured man. And yet it would be the blackest treachery
to Holmes to draw back now from the part which he had intrusted
to me. I hardened my heart, and took the smoke-rocket from under
my ulster. After all, I thought, we are not injuring her. We are
but preventing her from injuring another.

Holmes had sat up upon the couch, and I saw him motion like a man
who is in need of air. A maid rushed across and threw open the
window. At the same instant I saw him raise his hand and at the
signal I tossed my rocket into the room with a cry of "Fire!" The
word was no sooner out of my mouth than the whole crowd of
spectators, well dressed and ill--gentlemen, ostlers, and
servant-maids--joined in a general shriek of "Fire!" Thick clouds
of smoke curled through the room and out at the open window. I
caught a glimpse of rushing figures, and a moment later the voice
of Holmes from within assuring them that it was a false alarm.
Slipping through the shouting crowd I made my way to the corner
of the street, and in ten minutes was rejoiced to find my
friend's arm in mine, and to get away from the scene of uproar.
He walked swiftly and in silence for some few minutes until we
had turned down one of the quiet streets which lead towards the
Edgeware Road.

"You did it very nicely, Doctor," he remarked. "Nothing could
have been better. It is all right."

"You have the photograph?"

"I know where it is."

"And how did you find out?"

"She showed me, as I told you she would."

"I am still in the dark."

"I do not wish to make a mystery," said he, laughing. "The matter
was perfectly simple. You, of course, saw that everyone in the
street was an accomplice. They were all engaged for the evening."

"I guessed as much."

"Then, when the row broke out, I had a little moist red paint in
the palm of my hand. I rushed forward, fell down, clapped my hand
to my face, and became a piteous spectacle. It is an old trick."

"That also I could fathom."

"Then they carried me in. She was bound to have me in. What else
could she do? And into her sitting-room, which was the very room
which I suspected. It lay between that and her bedroom, and I was
determined to see which. They laid me on a couch, I motioned for
air, they were compelled to open the window, and you had your
chance."

"How did that help you?"

"It was all-important. When a woman thinks that her house is on
fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she
values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have
more than once taken advantage of it. In the case of the
Darlington substitution scandal it was of use to me, and also in
the Arnsworth Castle business. A married woman grabs at her baby;
an unmarried one reaches for her jewel-box. Now it was clear to
me that our lady of to-day had nothing in the house more precious
to her than what we are in quest of. She would rush to secure it.
The alarm of fire was admirably done. The smoke and shouting were
enough to shake nerves of steel. She responded beautifully. The
photograph is in a recess behind a sliding panel just above the
right bell-pull. She was there in an instant, and I caught a
glimpse of it as she half-drew it out. When I cried out that it
was a false alarm, she replaced it, glanced at the rocket, rushed
from the room, and I have not seen her since. I rose, and, making
my excuses, escaped from the house. I hesitated whether to
attempt to secure the photograph at once; but the coachman had
come in, and as he was watching me narrowly it seemed safer to
wait. A little over-precipitance may ruin all."

"And now?" I asked.

"Our quest is practically finished. I shall call with the King
to-morrow, and with you, if you care to come with us. We will be
shown into the sitting-room to wait for the lady, but it is
probable that when she comes she may find neither us nor the
photograph. It might be a satisfaction to his Majesty to regain
it with his own hands."

"And when will you call?"

"At eight in the morning. She will not be up, so that we shall
have a clear field. Besides, we must be prompt, for this marriage
may mean a complete change in her life and habits. I must wire to
the King without delay."

We had reached Baker Street and had stopped at the door. He was
searching his pockets for the key when someone passing said:

"Good-night, Mister Sherlock Holmes."

There were several people on the pavement at the time, but the
greeting appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had
hurried by.

"I've heard that voice before," said Holmes, staring down the
dimly lit street. "Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have
been."


III.

I slept at Baker Street that night, and we were engaged upon our
toast and coffee in the morning when the King of Bohemia rushed
into the room.

"You have really got it!" he cried, grasping Sherlock Holmes by
either shoulder and looking eagerly into his face.

"Not yet."

"But you have hopes?"

"I have hopes."

"Then, come. I am all impatience to be gone."

"We must have a cab."

"No, my brougham is waiting."

"Then that will simplify matters." We descended and started off
once more for Briony Lodge.

"Irene Adler is married," remarked Holmes.

"Married! When?"

"Yesterday."

"But to whom?"

"To an English lawyer named Norton."

"But she could not love him."

"I am in hopes that she does."

"And why in hopes?"

"Because it would spare your Majesty all fear of future
annoyance. If the lady loves her husband, she does not love your
Majesty. If she does not love your Majesty, there is no reason
why she should interfere with your Majesty's plan."

"It is true. And yet--Well! I wish she had been of my own
station! What a queen she would have made!" He relapsed into a
moody silence, which was not broken until we drew up in
Serpentine Avenue.

The door of Briony Lodge was open, and an elderly woman stood
upon the steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as we stepped
from the brougham.

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I believe?" said she.

"I am Mr. Holmes," answered my companion, looking at her with a
questioning and rather startled gaze.

"Indeed! My mistress told me that you were likely to call. She
left this morning with her husband by the 5:15 train from Charing
Cross for the Continent."

"What!" Sherlock Holmes staggered back, white with chagrin and
surprise. "Do you mean that she has left England?"

"Never to return."

"And the papers?" asked the King hoarsely. "All is lost."

"We shall see." He pushed past the servant and rushed into the
drawing-room, followed by the King and myself. The furniture was
scattered about in every direction, with dismantled shelves and
open drawers, as if the lady had hurriedly ransacked them before
her flight. Holmes rushed at the bell-pull, tore back a small
sliding shutter, and, plunging in his hand, pulled out a
photograph and a letter. The photograph was of Irene Adler
herself in evening dress, the letter was superscribed to
"Sherlock Holmes, Esq. To be left till called for." My friend
tore it open and we all three read it together. It was dated at
midnight of the preceding night and ran in this way:

"MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES,--You really did it very well. You
took me in completely. Until after the alarm of fire, I had not a
suspicion. But then, when I found how I had betrayed myself, I
began to think. I had been warned against you months ago. I had
been told that if the King employed an agent it would certainly
be you. And your address had been given me. Yet, with all this,
you made me reveal what you wanted to know. Even after I became
suspicious, I found it hard to think evil of such a dear, kind
old clergyman. But, you know, I have been trained as an actress
myself. Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage
of the freedom which it gives. I sent John, the coachman, to
watch you, ran up stairs, got into my walking-clothes, as I call
them, and came down just as you departed.

"Well, I followed you to your door, and so made sure that I was
really an object of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sherlock
Holmes. Then I, rather imprudently, wished you good-night, and
started for the Temple to see my husband.

"We both thought the best resource was flight, when pursued by
so formidable an antagonist; so you will find the nest empty when
you call to-morrow. As to the photograph, your client may rest in
peace. I love and am loved by a better man than he. The King may
do what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly
wronged. I keep it only to safeguard myself, and to preserve a
weapon which will always secure me from any steps which he might
take in the future. I leave a photograph which he might care to
possess; and I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes,

                                      "Very truly yours,
                                   "IRENE NORTON, ne ADLER."

"What a woman--oh, what a woman!" cried the King of Bohemia, when
we had all three read this epistle. "Did I not tell you how quick
and resolute she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen?
Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?"

"From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a
very different level to your Majesty," said Holmes coldly. "I am
sorry that I have not been able to bring your Majesty's business
to a more successful conclusion."

"On the contrary, my dear sir," cried the King; "nothing could be
more successful. I know that her word is inviolate. The
photograph is now as safe as if it were in the fire."

"I am glad to hear your Majesty say so."

"I am immensely indebted to you. Pray tell me in what way I can
reward you. This ring--" He slipped an emerald snake ring from
his finger and held it out upon the palm of his hand.

"Your Majesty has something which I should value even more
highly," said Holmes.

"You have but to name it."

"This photograph!"

The King stared at him in amazement.

"Irene's photograph!" he cried. "Certainly, if you wish it."

"I thank your Majesty. Then there is no more to be done in the
matter. I have the honour to wish you a very good-morning." He
bowed, and, turning away without observing the hand which the
King had stretched out to him, he set off in my company for his
chambers.

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom
of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were
beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the
cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And
when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her
photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.



ADVENTURE II. THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE

I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the
autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a
very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair.
With an apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw when
Holmes pulled me abruptly into the room and closed the door
behind me.

"You could not possibly have come at a better time, my dear
Watson," he said cordially.

"I was afraid that you were engaged."

"So I am. Very much so."

"Then I can wait in the next room."

"Not at all. This gentleman, Mr. Wilson, has been my partner and
helper in many of my most successful cases, and I have no
doubt that he will be of the utmost use to me in yours also."

The stout gentleman half rose from his chair and gave a bob of
greeting, with a quick little questioning glance from his small
fat-encircled eyes.

"Try the settee," said Holmes, relapsing into his armchair and
putting his fingertips together, as was his custom when in
judicial moods. "I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love
of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum
routine of everyday life. You have shown your relish for it by
the enthusiasm which has prompted you to chronicle, and, if you
will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish so many of my own
little adventures."

"Your cases have indeed been of the greatest interest to me," I
observed.

"You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we
went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary
Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary
combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more
daring than any effort of the imagination."

"A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting."

"You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my
view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you
until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to
be right. Now, Mr. Jabez Wilson here has been good enough to call
upon me this morning, and to begin a narrative which promises to
be one of the most singular which I have listened to for some
time. You have heard me remark that the strangest and most unique
things are very often connected not with the larger but with the
smaller crimes, and occasionally, indeed, where there is room for
doubt whether any positive crime has been committed. As far as I
have heard it is impossible for me to say whether the present
case is an instance of crime or not, but the course of events is
certainly among the most singular that I have ever listened to.
Perhaps, Mr. Wilson, you would have the great kindness to
recommence your narrative. I ask you not merely because my friend
Dr. Watson has not heard the opening part but also because the
peculiar nature of the story makes me anxious to have every
possible detail from your lips. As a rule, when I have heard some
slight indication of the course of events, I am able to guide
myself by the thousands of other similar cases which occur to my
memory. In the present instance I am forced to admit that the
facts are, to the best of my belief, unique."

The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of some
little pride and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the
inside pocket of his greatcoat. As he glanced down the
advertisement column, with his head thrust forward and the paper
flattened out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man and
endeavoured, after the fashion of my companion, to read the
indications which might be presented by his dress or appearance.

I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor
bore every mark of being an average commonplace British
tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy grey
shepherd's check trousers, a not over-clean black frock-coat,
unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy
Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as
an ornament. A frayed top-hat and a faded brown overcoat with a
wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside him. Altogether,
look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man save
his blazing red head, and the expression of extreme chagrin and
discontent upon his features.

Sherlock Holmes' quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook
his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances.
"Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual
labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has
been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of
writing lately, I can deduce nothing else."

Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger
upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.

"How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr.
Holmes?" he asked. "How did you know, for example, that I did
manual labour. It's as true as gospel, for I began as a ship's
carpenter."

"Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger
than your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more
developed."

"Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?"

"I won't insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that,
especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you
use an arc-and-compass breastpin."

"Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?"

"What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for
five inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the
elbow where you rest it upon the desk?"

"Well, but China?"

"The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right
wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small
study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature
of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes' scales of a
delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I
see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the matter
becomes even more simple."

Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. "Well, I never!" said he. "I
thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see
that there was nothing in it, after all."

"I begin to think, Watson," said Holmes, "that I make a mistake
in explaining. 'Omne ignotum pro magnifico,' you know, and my
poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I
am so candid. Can you not find the advertisement, Mr. Wilson?"

"Yes, I have got it now," he answered with his thick red finger
planted halfway down the column. "Here it is. This is what began
it all. You just read it for yourself, sir."

I took the paper from him and read as follows:

"TO THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE: On account of the bequest of the late
Ezekiah Hopkins, of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, U. S. A., there is now
another vacancy open which entitles a member of the League to a
salary of 4 pounds a week for purely nominal services. All
red-headed men who are sound in body and mind and above the age
of twenty-one years, are eligible. Apply in person on Monday, at
eleven o'clock, to Duncan Ross, at the offices of the League, 7
Pope's Court, Fleet Street."

"What on earth does this mean?" I ejaculated after I had twice
read over the extraordinary announcement.

Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit when
in high spirits. "It is a little off the beaten track, isn't it?"
said he. "And now, Mr. Wilson, off you go at scratch and tell us
all about yourself, your household, and the effect which this
advertisement had upon your fortunes. You will first make a note,
Doctor, of the paper and the date."

"It is The Morning Chronicle of April 27, 1890. Just two months
ago."

"Very good. Now, Mr. Wilson?"

"Well, it is just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock
Holmes," said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead; "I have a small
pawnbroker's business at Coburg Square, near the City. It's not a
very large affair, and of late years it has not done more than
just give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants,
but now I only keep one; and I would have a job to pay him but
that he is willing to come for half wages so as to learn the
business."

"What is the name of this obliging youth?" asked Sherlock Holmes.

"His name is Vincent Spaulding, and he's not such a youth,
either. It's hard to say his age. I should not wish a smarter
assistant, Mr. Holmes; and I know very well that he could better
himself and earn twice what I am able to give him. But, after
all, if he is satisfied, why should I put ideas in his head?"

"Why, indeed? You seem most fortunate in having an employ who
comes under the full market price. It is not a common experience
among employers in this age. I don't know that your assistant is
not as remarkable as your advertisement."

"Oh, he has his faults, too," said Mr. Wilson. "Never was such a
fellow for photography. Snapping away with a camera when he ought
to be improving his mind, and then diving down into the cellar
like a rabbit into its hole to develop his pictures. That is his
main fault, but on the whole he's a good worker. There's no vice
in him."

"He is still with you, I presume?"

"Yes, sir. He and a girl of fourteen, who does a bit of simple
cooking and keeps the place clean--that's all I have in the
house, for I am a widower and never had any family. We live very
quietly, sir, the three of us; and we keep a roof over our heads
and pay our debts, if we do nothing more.

"The first thing that put us out was that advertisement.
Spaulding, he came down into the office just this day eight
weeks, with this very paper in his hand, and he says:

"'I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a red-headed man.'

"'Why that?' I asks.

"'Why,' says he, 'here's another vacancy on the League of the
Red-headed Men. It's worth quite a little fortune to any man who
gets it, and I understand that there are more vacancies than
there are men, so that the trustees are at their wits' end what
to do with the money. If my hair would only change colour, here's
a nice little crib all ready for me to step into.'

"'Why, what is it, then?' I asked. You see, Mr. Holmes, I am a
very stay-at-home man, and as my business came to me instead of
my having to go to it, I was often weeks on end without putting
my foot over the door-mat. In that way I didn't know much of what
was going on outside, and I was always glad of a bit of news.

"'Have you never heard of the League of the Red-headed Men?' he
asked with his eyes open.

"'Never.'

"'Why, I wonder at that, for you are eligible yourself for one
of the vacancies.'

"'And what are they worth?' I asked.

"'Oh, merely a couple of hundred a year, but the work is slight,
and it need not interfere very much with one's other
occupations.'

"Well, you can easily think that that made me prick up my ears,
for the business has not been over-good for some years, and an
extra couple of hundred would have been very handy.

"'Tell me all about it,' said I.

"'Well,' said he, showing me the advertisement, 'you can see for
yourself that the League has a vacancy, and there is the address
where you should apply for particulars. As far as I can make out,
the League was founded by an American millionaire, Ezekiah
Hopkins, who was very peculiar in his ways. He was himself
red-headed, and he had a great sympathy for all red-headed men;
so when he died it was found that he had left his enormous
fortune in the hands of trustees, with instructions to apply the
interest to the providing of easy berths to men whose hair is of
that colour. From all I hear it is splendid pay and very little to
do.'

"'But,' said I, 'there would be millions of red-headed men who
would apply.'

"'Not so many as you might think,' he answered. 'You see it is
really confined to Londoners, and to grown men. This American had
started from London when he was young, and he wanted to do the
old town a good turn. Then, again, I have heard it is no use your
applying if your hair is light red, or dark red, or anything but
real bright, blazing, fiery red. Now, if you cared to apply, Mr.
Wilson, you would just walk in; but perhaps it would hardly be
worth your while to put yourself out of the way for the sake of a
few hundred pounds.'

"Now, it is a fact, gentlemen, as you may see for yourselves,
that my hair is of a very full and rich tint, so that it seemed
to me that if there was to be any competition in the matter I
stood as good a chance as any man that I had ever met. Vincent
Spaulding seemed to know so much about it that I thought he might
prove useful, so I just ordered him to put up the shutters for
the day and to come right away with me. He was very willing to
have a holiday, so we shut the business up and started off for
the address that was given us in the advertisement.

"I never hope to see such a sight as that again, Mr. Holmes. From
north, south, east, and west every man who had a shade of red in
his hair had tramped into the city to answer the advertisement.
Fleet Street was choked with red-headed folk, and Pope's Court
looked like a coster's orange barrow. I should not have thought
there were so many in the whole country as were brought together
by that single advertisement. Every shade of colour they
were--straw, lemon, orange, brick, Irish-setter, liver, clay;
but, as Spaulding said, there were not many who had the real
vivid flame-coloured tint. When I saw how many were waiting, I
would have given it up in despair; but Spaulding would not hear
of it. How he did it I could not imagine, but he pushed and
pulled and butted until he got me through the crowd, and right up
to the steps which led to the office. There was a double stream
upon the stair, some going up in hope, and some coming back
dejected; but we wedged in as well as we could and soon found
ourselves in the office."

"Your experience has been a most entertaining one," remarked
Holmes as his client paused and refreshed his memory with a huge
pinch of snuff. "Pray continue your very interesting statement."

"There was nothing in the office but a couple of wooden chairs
and a deal table, behind which sat a small man with a head that
was even redder than mine. He said a few words to each candidate
as he came up, and then he always managed to find some fault in
them which would disqualify them. Getting a vacancy did not seem
to be such a very easy matter, after all. However, when our turn
came the little man was much more favourable to me than to any of
the others, and he closed the door as we entered, so that he
might have a private word with us.

"'This is Mr. Jabez Wilson,' said my assistant, 'and he is
willing to fill a vacancy in the League.'

"'And he is admirably suited for it,' the other answered. 'He has
every requirement. I cannot recall when I have seen anything so
fine.' He took a step backward, cocked his head on one side, and
gazed at my hair until I felt quite bashful. Then suddenly he
plunged forward, wrung my hand, and congratulated me warmly on my
success.

"'It would be injustice to hesitate,' said he. 'You will,
however, I am sure, excuse me for taking an obvious precaution.'
With that he seized my hair in both his hands, and tugged until I
yelled with the pain. 'There is water in your eyes,' said he as
he released me. 'I perceive that all is as it should be. But we
have to be careful, for we have twice been deceived by wigs and
once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler's wax which
would disgust you with human nature.' He stepped over to the
window and shouted through it at the top of his voice that the
vacancy was filled. A groan of disappointment came up from below,
and the folk all trooped away in different directions until there
was not a red-head to be seen except my own and that of the
manager.

"'My name,' said he, 'is Mr. Duncan Ross, and I am myself one of
the pensioners upon the fund left by our noble benefactor. Are
you a married man, Mr. Wilson? Have you a family?'

"I answered that I had not.

"His face fell immediately.

"'Dear me!' he said gravely, 'that is very serious indeed! I am
sorry to hear you say that. The fund was, of course, for the
propagation and spread of the red-heads as well as for their
maintenance. It is exceedingly unfortunate that you should be a
bachelor.'

"My face lengthened at this, Mr. Holmes, for I thought that I was
not to have the vacancy after all; but after thinking it over for
a few minutes he said that it would be all right.

"'In the case of another,' said he, 'the objection might be
fatal, but we must stretch a point in favour of a man with such a
head of hair as yours. When shall you be able to enter upon your
new duties?'

"'Well, it is a little awkward, for I have a business already,'
said I.

"'Oh, never mind about that, Mr. Wilson!' said Vincent Spaulding.
'I should be able to look after that for you.'

"'What would be the hours?' I asked.

"'Ten to two.'

"Now a pawnbroker's business is mostly done of an evening, Mr.
Holmes, especially Thursday and Friday evening, which is just
before pay-day; so it would suit me very well to earn a little in
the mornings. Besides, I knew that my assistant was a good man,
and that he would see to anything that turned up.

"'That would suit me very well,' said I. 'And the pay?'

"'Is 4 pounds a week.'

"'And the work?'

"'Is purely nominal.'

"'What do you call purely nominal?'

"'Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in the
building, the whole time. If you leave, you forfeit your whole
position forever. The will is very clear upon that point. You
don't comply with the conditions if you budge from the office
during that time.'

"'It's only four hours a day, and I should not think of leaving,'
said I.

"'No excuse will avail,' said Mr. Duncan Ross; 'neither sickness
nor business nor anything else. There you must stay, or you lose
your billet.'

"'And the work?'

"'Is to copy out the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." There is the first
volume of it in that press. You must find your own ink, pens, and
blotting-paper, but we provide this table and chair. Will you be
ready to-morrow?'

"'Certainly,' I answered.

"'Then, good-bye, Mr. Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate you
once more on the important position which you have been fortunate
enough to gain.' He bowed me out of the room and I went home with
my assistant, hardly knowing what to say or do, I was so pleased
at my own good fortune.

"Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by evening I was in
low spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the
whole affair must be some great hoax or fraud, though what its
object might be I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past
belief that anyone could make such a will, or that they would pay
such a sum for doing anything so simple as copying out the
'Encyclopaedia Britannica.' Vincent Spaulding did what he could to
cheer me up, but by bedtime I had reasoned myself out of the
whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look
at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a
quill-pen, and seven sheets of foolscap paper, I started off for
Pope's Court.

"Well, to my surprise and delight, everything was as right as
possible. The table was set out ready for me, and Mr. Duncan Ross
was there to see that I got fairly to work. He started me off
upon the letter A, and then he left me; but he would drop in from
time to time to see that all was right with me. At two o'clock he
bade me good-day, complimented me upon the amount that I had
written, and locked the door of the office after me.

"This went on day after day, Mr. Holmes, and on Saturday the
manager came in and planked down four golden sovereigns for my
week's work. It was the same next week, and the same the week
after. Every morning I was there at ten, and every afternoon I
left at two. By degrees Mr. Duncan Ross took to coming in only
once of a morning, and then, after a time, he did not come in at
all. Still, of course, I never dared to leave the room for an
instant, for I was not sure when he might come, and the billet
was such a good one, and suited me so well, that I would not risk
the loss of it.

"Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about
Abbots and Archery and Armour and Architecture and Attica, and
hoped with diligence that I might get on to the B's before very
long. It cost me something in foolscap, and I had pretty nearly
filled a shelf with my writings. And then suddenly the whole
business came to an end."

"To an end?"

"Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I went to my work as
usual at ten o'clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a
little square of cardboard hammered on to the middle of the
panel with a tack. Here it is, and you can read for yourself."

He held up a piece of white cardboard about the size of a sheet
of note-paper. It read in this fashion:

                  THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE

                           IS

                        DISSOLVED.

                     October 9, 1890.

Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the
rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so
completely overtopped every other consideration that we both
burst out into a roar of laughter.

"I cannot see that there is anything very funny," cried our
client, flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. "If you can
do nothing better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere."

"No, no," cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from
which he had half risen. "I really wouldn't miss your case for
the world. It is most refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you
will excuse my saying so, something just a little funny about it.
Pray what steps did you take when you found the card upon the
door?"

"I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called
at the offices round, but none of them seemed to know anything
about it. Finally, I went to the landlord, who is an accountant
living on the ground-floor, and I asked him if he could tell me
what had become of the Red-headed League. He said that he had
never heard of any such body. Then I asked him who Mr. Duncan
Ross was. He answered that the name was new to him.

"'Well,' said I, 'the gentleman at No. 4.'

"'What, the red-headed man?'

"'Yes.'

"'Oh,' said he, 'his name was William Morris. He was a solicitor
and was using my room as a temporary convenience until his new
premises were ready. He moved out yesterday.'

"'Where could I find him?'

"'Oh, at his new offices. He did tell me the address. Yes, 17
King Edward Street, near St. Paul's.'

"I started off, Mr. Holmes, but when I got to that address it was
a manufactory of artificial knee-caps, and no one in it had ever
heard of either Mr. William Morris or Mr. Duncan Ross."

"And what did you do then?" asked Holmes.

"I went home to Saxe-Coburg Square, and I took the advice of my
assistant. But he could not help me in any way. He could only say
that if I waited I should hear by post. But that was not quite
good enough, Mr. Holmes. I did not wish to lose such a place
without a struggle, so, as I had heard that you were good enough
to give advice to poor folk who were in need of it, I came right
away to you."

"And you did very wisely," said Holmes. "Your case is an
exceedingly remarkable one, and I shall be happy to look into it.
From what you have told me I think that it is possible that
graver issues hang from it than might at first sight appear."

"Grave enough!" said Mr. Jabez Wilson. "Why, I have lost four
pound a week."

"As far as you are personally concerned," remarked Holmes, "I do
not see that you have any grievance against this extraordinary
league. On the contrary, you are, as I understand, richer by some
30 pounds, to say nothing of the minute knowledge which you have
gained on every subject which comes under the letter A. You have
lost nothing by them."

"No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are,
and what their object was in playing this prank--if it was a
prank--upon me. It was a pretty expensive joke for them, for it
cost them two and thirty pounds."

"We shall endeavour to clear up these points for you. And, first,
one or two questions, Mr. Wilson. This assistant of yours who
first called your attention to the advertisement--how long had he
been with you?"

"About a month then."

"How did he come?"

"In answer to an advertisement."

"Was he the only applicant?"

"No, I had a dozen."

"Why did you pick him?"

"Because he was handy and would come cheap."

"At half-wages, in fact."

"Yes."

"What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?"

"Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face,
though he's not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon
his forehead."

Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. "I thought
as much," said he. "Have you ever observed that his ears are
pierced for earrings?"

"Yes, sir. He told me that a gipsy had done it for him when he
was a lad."

"Hum!" said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought. "He is still
with you?"

"Oh, yes, sir; I have only just left him."

"And has your business been attended to in your absence?"

"Nothing to complain of, sir. There's never very much to do of a
morning."

"That will do, Mr. Wilson. I shall be happy to give you an
opinion upon the subject in the course of a day or two. To-day is
Saturday, and I hope that by Monday we may come to a conclusion."

"Well, Watson," said Holmes when our visitor had left us, "what
do you make of it all?"

"I make nothing of it," I answered frankly. "It is a most
mysterious business."

"As a rule," said Holmes, "the more bizarre a thing is the less
mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless
crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is
the most difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this
matter."

"What are you going to do, then?" I asked.

"To smoke," he answered. "It is quite a three pipe problem, and I
beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes." He curled
himself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his
hawk-like nose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his
black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird.
I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and
indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his
chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his mind and put
his pipe down upon the mantelpiece.

"Sarasate plays at the St. James's Hall this afternoon," he
remarked. "What do you think, Watson? Could your patients spare
you for a few hours?"

"I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never very
absorbing."

"Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the City
first, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that
there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is
rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is
introspective, and I want to introspect. Come along!"

We travelled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short
walk took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular
story which we had listened to in the morning. It was a poky,
little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy
two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in
enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded
laurel-bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and
uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with
"JABEZ WILSON" in white letters, upon a corner house, announced
the place where our red-headed client carried on his business.
Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side
and looked it all over, with his eyes shining brightly between
puckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the street, and then down
again to the corner, still looking keenly at the houses. Finally
he returned to the pawnbroker's, and, having thumped vigorously
upon the pavement with his stick two or three times, he went up
to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a
bright-looking, clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to step
in.

"Thank you," said Holmes, "I only wished to ask you how you would
go from here to the Strand."

"Third right, fourth left," answered the assistant promptly,
closing the door.

"Smart fellow, that," observed Holmes as we walked away. "He is,
in my judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring
I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have known
something of him before."

"Evidently," said I, "Mr. Wilson's assistant counts for a good
deal in this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you
inquired your way merely in order that you might see him."

"Not him."

"What then?"

"The knees of his trousers."

"And what did you see?"

"What I expected to see."

"Why did you beat the pavement?"

"My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We
are spies in an enemy's country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg
Square. Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it."

The road in which we found ourselves as we turned round the
corner from the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as great a
contrast to it as the front of a picture does to the back. It was
one of the main arteries which conveyed the traffic of the City
to the north and west. The roadway was blocked with the immense
stream of commerce flowing in a double tide inward and outward,
while the footpaths were black with the hurrying swarm of
pedestrians. It was difficult to realise as we looked at the line
of fine shops and stately business premises that they really
abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square
which we had just quitted.

"Let me see," said Holmes, standing at the corner and glancing
along the line, "I should like just to remember the order of the
houses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of
London. There is Mortimer's, the tobacconist, the little
newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank,
the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane's carriage-building
depot. That carries us right on to the other block. And now,
Doctor, we've done our work, so it's time we had some play. A
sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where
all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no
red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums."

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a
very capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All
the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect
happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the
music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes
were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the
relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was
possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature
alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and
astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction
against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally
predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from
extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was
never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been
lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his
black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase
would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning
power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were
unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a
man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him
that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James's Hall I
felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set
himself to hunt down.

"You want to go home, no doubt, Doctor," he remarked as we
emerged.

"Yes, it would be as well."

"And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This
business at Coburg Square is serious."

"Why serious?"

"A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to
believe that we shall be in time to stop it. But to-day being
Saturday rather complicates matters. I shall want your help
to-night."

"At what time?"

"Ten will be early enough."

"I shall be at Baker Street at ten."

"Very well. And, I say, Doctor, there may be some little danger,
so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket." He waved his
hand, turned on his heel, and disappeared in an instant among the
crowd.

I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was
always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings
with Sherlock Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had
seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that
he saw clearly not only what had happened but what was about to
happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and
grotesque. As I drove home to my house in Kensington I thought
over it all, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed
copier of the "Encyclopaedia" down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg
Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me.
What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed?
Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from
Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a
formidable man--a man who might play a deep game. I tried to
puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair and set the matter aside
until night should bring an explanation.

It was a quarter-past nine when I started from home and made my
way across the Park, and so through Oxford Street to Baker
Street. Two hansoms were standing at the door, and as I entered
the passage I heard the sound of voices from above. On entering
his room I found Holmes in animated conversation with two men,
one of whom I recognised as Peter Jones, the official police
agent, while the other was a long, thin, sad-faced man, with a
very shiny hat and oppressively respectable frock-coat.

"Ha! Our party is complete," said Holmes, buttoning up his
pea-jacket and taking his heavy hunting crop from the rack.
"Watson, I think you know Mr. Jones, of Scotland Yard? Let me
introduce you to Mr. Merryweather, who is to be our companion in
to-night's adventure."

"We're hunting in couples again, Doctor, you see," said Jones in
his consequential way. "Our friend here is a wonderful man for
starting a chase. All he wants is an old dog to help him to do
the running down."

"I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of our chase,"
observed Mr. Merryweather gloomily.

"You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir," said
the police agent loftily. "He has his own little methods, which
are, if he won't mind my saying so, just a little too theoretical
and fantastic, but he has the makings of a detective in him. It
is not too much to say that once or twice, as in that business of
the Sholto murder and the Agra treasure, he has been more nearly
correct than the official force."

"Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right," said the
stranger with deference. "Still, I confess that I miss my rubber.
It is the first Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I
have not had my rubber."

"I think you will find," said Sherlock Holmes, "that you will
play for a higher stake to-night than you have ever done yet, and
that the play will be more exciting. For you, Mr. Merryweather,
the stake will be some 30,000 pounds; and for you, Jones, it will
be the man upon whom you wish to lay your hands."

"John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He's a
young man, Mr. Merryweather, but he is at the head of his
profession, and I would rather have my bracelets on him than on
any criminal in London. He's a remarkable man, is young John
Clay. His grandfather was a royal duke, and he himself has been
to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as his fingers, and
though we meet signs of him at every turn, we never know where to
find the man himself. He'll crack a crib in Scotland one week,
and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next.
I've been on his track for years and have never set eyes on him
yet."

"I hope that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to-night.
I've had one or two little turns also with Mr. John Clay, and I
agree with you that he is at the head of his profession. It is
past ten, however, and quite time that we started. If you two
will take the first hansom, Watson and I will follow in the
second."

Sherlock Holmes was not very communicative during the long drive
and lay back in the cab humming the tunes which he had heard in
the afternoon. We rattled through an endless labyrinth of gas-lit
streets until we emerged into Farrington Street.

"We are close there now," my friend remarked. "This fellow
Merryweather is a bank director, and personally interested in the
matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is
not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession.
He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as
tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone. Here we
are, and they are waiting for us."

We had reached the same crowded thoroughfare in which we had
found ourselves in the morning. Our cabs were dismissed, and,
following the guidance of Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a
narrow passage and through a side door, which he opened for us.
Within there was a small corridor, which ended in a very massive
iron gate. This also was opened, and led down a flight of winding
stone steps, which terminated at another formidable gate. Mr.
Merryweather stopped to light a lantern, and then conducted us
down a dark, earth-smelling passage, and so, after opening a
third door, into a huge vault or cellar, which was piled all
round with crates and massive boxes.

"You are not very vulnerable from above," Holmes remarked as he
held up the lantern and gazed about him.

"Nor from below," said Mr. Merryweather, striking his stick upon
the flags which lined the floor. "Why, dear me, it sounds quite
hollow!" he remarked, looking up in surprise.

"I must really ask you to be a little more quiet!" said Holmes
severely. "You have already imperilled the whole success of our
expedition. Might I beg that you would have the goodness to sit
down upon one of those boxes, and not to interfere?"

The solemn Mr. Merryweather perched himself upon a crate, with a
very injured expression upon his face, while Holmes fell upon his
knees upon the floor and, with the lantern and a magnifying lens,
began to examine minutely the cracks between the stones. A few
seconds sufficed to satisfy him, for he sprang to his feet again
and put his glass in his pocket.

"We have at least an hour before us," he remarked, "for they can
hardly take any steps until the good pawnbroker is safely in bed.
Then they will not lose a minute, for the sooner they do their
work the longer time they will have for their escape. We are at
present, Doctor--as no doubt you have divined--in the cellar of
the City branch of one of the principal London banks. Mr.
Merryweather is the chairman of directors, and he will explain to
you that there are reasons why the more daring criminals of
London should take a considerable interest in this cellar at
present."

"It is our French gold," whispered the director. "We have had
several warnings that an attempt might be made upon it."

"Your French gold?"

"Yes. We had occasion some months ago to strengthen our resources
and borrowed for that purpose 30,000 napoleons from the Bank of
France. It has become known that we have never had occasion to
unpack the money, and that it is still lying in our cellar. The
crate upon which I sit contains 2,000 napoleons packed between
layers of lead foil. Our reserve of bullion is much larger at
present than is usually kept in a single branch office, and the
directors have had misgivings upon the subject."

"Which were very well justified," observed Holmes. "And now it is
time that we arranged our little plans. I expect that within an
hour matters will come to a head. In the meantime Mr.
Merryweather, we must put the screen over that dark lantern."

"And sit in the dark?"

"I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and
I thought that, as we were a partie carre, you might have your
rubber after all. But I see that the enemy's preparations have
gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And,
first of all, we must choose our positions. These are daring men,
and though we shall take them at a disadvantage, they may do us
some harm unless we are careful. I shall stand behind this crate,
and do you conceal yourselves behind those. Then, when I flash a
light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson, have no
compunction about shooting them down."

I placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case
behind which I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front
of his lantern and left us in pitch darkness--such an absolute
darkness as I have never before experienced. The smell of hot
metal remained to assure us that the light was still there, ready
to flash out at a moment's notice. To me, with my nerves worked
up to a pitch of expectancy, there was something depressing and
subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold dank air of the
vault.

"They have but one retreat," whispered Holmes. "That is back
through the house into Saxe-Coburg Square. I hope that you have
done what I asked you, Jones?"

"I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door."

"Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we must be silent
and wait."

What a time it seemed! From comparing notes afterwards it was but
an hour and a quarter, yet it appeared to me that the night must
have almost gone and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs
were weary and stiff, for I feared to change my position; yet my
nerves were worked up to the highest pitch of tension, and my
hearing was so acute that I could not only hear the gentle
breathing of my companions, but I could distinguish the deeper,
heavier in-breath of the bulky Jones from the thin, sighing note
of the bank director. From my position I could look over the case
in the direction of the floor. Suddenly my eyes caught the glint
of a light.

At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then
it lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then,
without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand
appeared, a white, almost womanly hand, which felt about in the
centre of the little area of light. For a minute or more the
hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then
it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark
again save the single lurid spark which marked a chink between
the stones.

Its disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending,
tearing sound, one of the broad, white stones turned over upon
its side and left a square, gaping hole, through which streamed
the light of a lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut,
boyish face, which looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand
on either side of the aperture, drew itself shoulder-high and
waist-high, until one knee rested upon the edge. In another
instant he stood at the side of the hole and was hauling after
him a companion, lithe and small like himself, with a pale face
and a shock of very red hair.

"It's all clear," he whispered. "Have you the chisel and the
bags? Great Scott! Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it!"

Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the
collar. The other dived down the hole, and I heard the sound of
rending cloth as Jones clutched at his skirts. The light flashed
upon the barrel of a revolver, but Holmes' hunting crop came
down on the man's wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone
floor.

"It's no use, John Clay," said Holmes blandly. "You have no
chance at all."

"So I see," the other answered with the utmost coolness. "I fancy
that my pal is all right, though I see you have got his
coat-tails."

"There are three men waiting for him at the door," said Holmes.

"Oh, indeed! You seem to have done the thing very completely. I
must compliment you."

"And I you," Holmes answered. "Your red-headed idea was very new
and effective."

"You'll see your pal again presently," said Jones. "He's quicker
at climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the
derbies."

"I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands,"
remarked our prisoner as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists.
"You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have
the goodness, also, when you address me always to say 'sir' and
'please.'"

"All right," said Jones with a stare and a snigger. "Well, would
you please, sir, march upstairs, where we can get a cab to carry
your Highness to the police-station?"

"That is better," said John Clay serenely. He made a sweeping bow
to the three of us and walked quietly off in the custody of the
detective.

"Really, Mr. Holmes," said Mr. Merryweather as we followed them
from the cellar, "I do not know how the bank can thank you or
repay you. There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated
in the most complete manner one of the most determined attempts
at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience."

"I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr.
John Clay," said Holmes. "I have been at some small expense over
this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond
that I am amply repaid by having had an experience which is in
many ways unique, and by hearing the very remarkable narrative of
the Red-headed League."


"You see, Watson," he explained in the early hours of the morning
as we sat over a glass of whisky and soda in Baker Street, "it
was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible
object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of
the League, and the copying of the 'Encyclopaedia,' must be to get
this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of
hours every day. It was a curious way of managing it, but,
really, it would be difficult to suggest a better. The method was
no doubt suggested to Clay's ingenious mind by the colour of his
accomplice's hair. The 4 pounds a week was a lure which must draw
him, and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands?
They put in the advertisement, one rogue has the temporary
office, the other rogue incites the man to apply for it, and
together they manage to secure his absence every morning in the
week. From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for
half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive
for securing the situation."

"But how could you guess what the motive was?"

"Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a
mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The
man's business was a small one, and there was nothing in his
house which could account for such elaborate preparations, and
such an expenditure as they were at. It must, then, be something
out of the house. What could it be? I thought of the assistant's
fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the
cellar. The cellar! There was the end of this tangled clue. Then
I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant and found that I
had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in
London. He was doing something in the cellar--something which
took many hours a day for months on end. What could it be, once
more? I could think of nothing save that he was running a tunnel
to some other building.

"So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action. I
surprised you by beating upon the pavement with my stick. I was
ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind.
It was not in front. Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the
assistant answered it. We have had some skirmishes, but we had
never set eyes upon each other before. I hardly looked at his
face. His knees were what I wished to see. You must yourself have
remarked how worn, wrinkled, and stained they were. They spoke of
those hours of burrowing. The only remaining point was what they
were burrowing for. I walked round the corner, saw the City and
Suburban Bank abutted on our friend's premises, and felt that I
had solved my problem. When you drove home after the concert I
called upon Scotland Yard and upon the chairman of the bank
directors, with the result that you have seen."

"And how could you tell that they would make their attempt
to-night?" I asked.

"Well, when they closed their League offices that was a sign that
they cared no longer about Mr. Jabez Wilson's presence--in other
words, that they had completed their tunnel. But it was essential
that they should use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the
bullion might be removed. Saturday would suit them better than
any other day, as it would give them two days for their escape.
For all these reasons I expected them to come to-night."

"You reasoned it out beautifully," I exclaimed in unfeigned
admiration. "It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings
true."

"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already
feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort
to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little
problems help me to do so."

"And you are a benefactor of the race," said I.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, perhaps, after all, it is of
some little use," he remarked. "'L'homme c'est rien--l'oeuvre
c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand."



ADVENTURE III. A CASE OF IDENTITY

"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side
of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely
stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We
would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere
commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window
hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the
roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the
strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the
wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and
leading to the most outr results, it would make all fiction with
its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and
unprofitable."

"And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered. "The cases which
come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and
vulgar enough. We have in our police reports realism pushed to
its extreme limits, and yet the result is, it must be confessed,
neither fascinating nor artistic."

"A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a
realistic effect," remarked Holmes. "This is wanting in the
police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the
platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an
observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend
upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace."

I smiled and shook my head. "I can quite understand your thinking
so," I said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser
and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout
three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is
strange and bizarre. But here"--I picked up the morning paper
from the ground--"let us put it to a practical test. Here is the
first heading upon which I come. 'A husband's cruelty to his
wife.' There is half a column of print, but I know without
reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of
course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the
bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of
writers could invent nothing more crude."

"Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,"
said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. "This
is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged
in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The
husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the
conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of
winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling
them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely
to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a
pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over
you in your example."

He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in
the centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his
homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon
it.

"Ah," said he, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks.
It is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return for my
assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers."

"And the ring?" I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which
sparkled upon his finger.

"It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in
which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it
even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of
my little problems."

"And have you any on hand just now?" I asked with interest.

"Some ten or twelve, but none which present any feature of
interest. They are important, you understand, without being
interesting. Indeed, I have found that it is usually in
unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation,
and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the
charm to an investigation. The larger crimes are apt to be the
simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a rule, is
the motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate matter
which has been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing
which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however,
that I may have something better before very many minutes are
over, for this is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken."

He had risen from his chair and was standing between the parted
blinds gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London street.
Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite
there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck,
and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was
tilted in a coquettish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over her
ear. From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous,
hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated
backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove
buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves
the bank, she hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp
clang of the bell.

"I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his
cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always
means an affaire de coeur. She would like advice, but is not sure
that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet
even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously
wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom
is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love
matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed, or
grieved. But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts."

As he spoke there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons
entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself
loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed
merchant-man behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed
her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and,
having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair, he looked
her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was
peculiar to him.

"Do you not find," he said, "that with your short sight it is a
little trying to do so much typewriting?"

"I did at first," she answered, "but now I know where the letters
are without looking." Then, suddenly realising the full purport
of his words, she gave a violent start and looked up, with fear
and astonishment upon her broad, good-humoured face. "You've
heard about me, Mr. Holmes," she cried, "else how could you know
all that?"

"Never mind," said Holmes, laughing; "it is my business to know
things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others
overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?"

"I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etherege,
whose husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had
given him up for dead. Oh, Mr. Holmes, I wish you would do as
much for me. I'm not rich, but still I have a hundred a year in
my own right, besides the little that I make by the machine, and
I would give it all to know what has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel."

"Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?" asked
Sherlock Holmes, with his finger-tips together and his eyes to
the ceiling.

Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss
Mary Sutherland. "Yes, I did bang out of the house," she said,
"for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr.
Windibank--that is, my father--took it all. He would not go to
the police, and he would not go to you, and so at last, as he
would do nothing and kept on saying that there was no harm done,
it made me mad, and I just on with my things and came right away
to you."

"Your father," said Holmes, "your stepfather, surely, since the
name is different."

"Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny,
too, for he is only five years and two months older than myself."

"And your mother is alive?"

"Oh, yes, mother is alive and well. I wasn't best pleased, Mr.
Holmes, when she married again so soon after father's death, and
a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself. Father
was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy
business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy, the
foreman; but when Mr. Windibank came he made her sell the
business, for he was very superior, being a traveller in wines.
They got 4700 pounds for the goodwill and interest, which wasn't
near as much as father could have got if he had been alive."

I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this
rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he
had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.

"Your own little income," he asked, "does it come out of the
business?"

"Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate and was left me by my uncle
Ned in Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying 4 1/2 per
cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can
only touch the interest."

"You interest me extremely," said Holmes. "And since you draw so
large a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the
bargain, you no doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in
every way. I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely
upon an income of about 60 pounds."

"I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes, but you
understand that as long as I live at home I don't wish to be a
burden to them, and so they have the use of the money just while
I am staying with them. Of course, that is only just for the
time. Mr. Windibank draws my interest every quarter and pays it
over to mother, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I
earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can
often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day."

"You have made your position very clear to me," said Holmes.
"This is my friend, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as
freely as before myself. Kindly tell us now all about your
connection with Mr. Hosmer Angel."

A flush stole over Miss Sutherland's face, and she picked
nervously at the fringe of her jacket. "I met him first at the
gasfitters' ball," she said. "They used to send father tickets
when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us, and
sent them to mother. Mr. Windibank did not wish us to go. He
never did wish us to go anywhere. He would get quite mad if I
wanted so much as to join a Sunday-school treat. But this time I
was set on going, and I would go; for what right had he to
prevent? He said the folk were not fit for us to know, when all
father's friends were to be there. And he said that I had nothing
fit to wear, when I had my purple plush that I had never so much
as taken out of the drawer. At last, when nothing else would do,
he went off to France upon the business of the firm, but we went,
mother and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it
was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel."

"I suppose," said Holmes, "that when Mr. Windibank came back from
France he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball."

"Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember, and
shrugged his shoulders, and said there was no use denying
anything to a woman, for she would have her way."

"I see. Then at the gasfitters' ball you met, as I understand, a
gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel."

"Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to ask if
we had got home all safe, and after that we met him--that is to
say, Mr. Holmes, I met him twice for walks, but after that father
came back again, and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the house
any more."

"No?"

"Well, you know father didn't like anything of the sort. He
wouldn't have any visitors if he could help it, and he used to
say that a woman should be happy in her own family circle. But
then, as I used to say to mother, a woman wants her own circle to
begin with, and I had not got mine yet."

"But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to see
you?"

"Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and Hosmer
wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see each
other until he had gone. We could write in the meantime, and he
used to write every day. I took the letters in in the morning, so
there was no need for father to know."

"Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that
we took. Hosmer--Mr. Angel--was a cashier in an office in
Leadenhall Street--and--"

"What office?"

"That's the worst of it, Mr. Holmes, I don't know."

"Where did he live, then?"

"He slept on the premises."

"And you don't know his address?"

"No--except that it was Leadenhall Street."

"Where did you address your letters, then?"

"To the Leadenhall Street Post Office, to be left till called
for. He said that if they were sent to the office he would be
chaffed by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady,
so I offered to typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn't
have that, for he said that when I wrote them they seemed to come
from me, but when they were typewritten he always felt that the
machine had come between us. That will just show you how fond he
was of me, Mr. Holmes, and the little things that he would think
of."

"It was most suggestive," said Holmes. "It has long been an axiom
of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?"

"He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me
in the evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated to
be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his
voice was gentle. He'd had the quinsy and swollen glands when he
was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat,
and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech. He was always
well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just
as mine are, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare."

"Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather,
returned to France?"

"Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again and proposed that we
should marry before father came back. He was in dreadful earnest
and made me swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever
happened I would always be true to him. Mother said he was quite
right to make me swear, and that it was a sign of his passion.
Mother was all in his favour from the first and was even fonder
of him than I was. Then, when they talked of marrying within the
week, I began to ask about father; but they both said never to
mind about father, but just to tell him afterwards, and mother
said she would make it all right with him. I didn't quite like
that, Mr. Holmes. It seemed funny that I should ask his leave, as
he was only a few years older than me; but I didn't want to do
anything on the sly, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux, where the
company has its French offices, but the letter came back to me on
the very morning of the wedding."

"It missed him, then?"

"Yes, sir; for he had started to England just before it arrived."

"Ha! that was unfortunate. Your wedding was arranged, then, for
the Friday. Was it to be in church?"

"Yes, sir, but very quietly. It was to be at St. Saviour's, near
King's Cross, and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St.
Pancras Hotel. Hosmer came for us in a hansom, but as there were
two of us he put us both into it and stepped himself into a
four-wheeler, which happened to be the only other cab in the
street. We got to the church first, and when the four-wheeler
drove up we waited for him to step out, but he never did, and
when the cabman got down from the box and looked there was no one
there! The cabman said that he could not imagine what had become
of him, for he had seen him get in with his own eyes. That was
last Friday, Mr. Holmes, and I have never seen or heard anything
since then to throw any light upon what became of him."

"It seems to me that you have been very shamefully treated," said
Holmes.

"Oh, no, sir! He was too good and kind to leave me so. Why, all
the morning he was saying to me that, whatever happened, I was to
be true; and that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to
separate us, I was always to remember that I was pledged to him,
and that he would claim his pledge sooner or later. It seemed
strange talk for a wedding-morning, but what has happened since
gives a meaning to it."

"Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is, then, that some
unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him?"

"Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he
would not have talked so. And then I think that what he foresaw
happened."

"But you have no notion as to what it could have been?"

"None."

"One more question. How did your mother take the matter?"

"She was angry, and said that I was never to speak of the matter
again."

"And your father? Did you tell him?"

"Yes; and he seemed to think, with me, that something had
happened, and that I should hear of Hosmer again. As he said,
what interest could anyone have in bringing me to the doors of
the church, and then leaving me? Now, if he had borrowed my
money, or if he had married me and got my money settled on him,
there might be some reason, but Hosmer was very independent about
money and never would look at a shilling of mine. And yet, what
could have happened? And why could he not write? Oh, it drives me
half-mad to think of it, and I can't sleep a wink at night." She
pulled a little handkerchief out of her muff and began to sob
heavily into it.

"I shall glance into the case for you," said Holmes, rising, "and
I have no doubt that we shall reach some definite result. Let the
weight of the matter rest upon me now, and do not let your mind
dwell upon it further. Above all, try to let Mr. Hosmer Angel
vanish from your memory, as he has done from your life."

"Then you don't think I'll see him again?"

"I fear not."

"Then what has happened to him?"

"You will leave that question in my hands. I should like an
accurate description of him and any letters of his which you can
spare."

"I advertised for him in last Saturday's Chronicle," said she.
"Here is the slip and here are four letters from him."

"Thank you. And your address?"

"No. 31 Lyon Place, Camberwell."

"Mr. Angel's address you never had, I understand. Where is your
father's place of business?"

"He travels for Westhouse & Marbank, the great claret importers
of Fenchurch Street."

"Thank you. You have made your statement very clearly. You will
leave the papers here, and remember the advice which I have given
you. Let the whole incident be a sealed book, and do not allow it
to affect your life."

"You are very kind, Mr. Holmes, but I cannot do that. I shall be
true to Hosmer. He shall find me ready when he comes back."

For all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face, there was
something noble in the simple faith of our visitor which
compelled our respect. She laid her little bundle of papers upon
the table and went her way, with a promise to come again whenever
she might be summoned.

Sherlock Holmes sat silent for a few minutes with his fingertips
still pressed together, his legs stretched out in front of him,
and his gaze directed upward to the ceiling. Then he took down
from the rack the old and oily clay pipe, which was to him as a
counsellor, and, having lit it, he leaned back in his chair, with
the thick blue cloud-wreaths spinning up from him, and a look of
infinite languor in his face.

"Quite an interesting study, that maiden," he observed. "I found
her more interesting than her little problem, which, by the way,
is rather a trite one. You will find parallel cases, if you
consult my index, in Andover in '77, and there was something of
the sort at The Hague last year. Old as is the idea, however,
there were one or two details which were new to me. But the
maiden herself was most instructive."

"You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite
invisible to me," I remarked.

"Not invisible but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to
look, and so you missed all that was important. I can never bring
you to realise the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of
thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.
Now, what did you gather from that woman's appearance? Describe
it."

"Well, she had a slate-coloured, broad-brimmed straw hat, with a
feather of a brickish red. Her jacket was black, with black beads
sewn upon it, and a fringe of little black jet ornaments. Her
dress was brown, rather darker than coffee colour, with a little
purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her gloves were greyish and
were worn through at the right forefinger. Her boots I didn't
observe. She had small round, hanging gold earrings, and a
general air of being fairly well-to-do in a vulgar, comfortable,
easy-going way."

Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled.

"'Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have
really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed
everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and
you have a quick eye for colour. Never trust to general
impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. My
first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man it is
perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser. As you
observe, this woman had plush upon her sleeves, which is a most
useful material for showing traces. The double line a little
above the wrist, where the typewritist presses against the table,
was beautifully defined. The sewing-machine, of the hand type,
leaves a similar mark, but only on the left arm, and on the side
of it farthest from the thumb, instead of being right across the
broadest part, as this was. I then glanced at her face, and,
observing the dint of a pince-nez at either side of her nose, I
ventured a remark upon short sight and typewriting, which seemed
to surprise her."

"It surprised me."

"But, surely, it was obvious. I was then much surprised and
interested on glancing down to observe that, though the boots
which she was wearing were not unlike each other, they were
really odd ones; the one having a slightly decorated toe-cap, and
the other a plain one. One was buttoned only in the two lower
buttons out of five, and the other at the first, third, and
fifth. Now, when you see that a young lady, otherwise neatly
dressed, has come away from home with odd boots, half-buttoned,
it is no great deduction to say that she came away in a hurry."

"And what else?" I asked, keenly interested, as I always was, by
my friend's incisive reasoning.

"I noted, in passing, that she had written a note before leaving
home but after being fully dressed. You observed that her right
glove was torn at the forefinger, but you did not apparently see
that both glove and finger were stained with violet ink. She had
written in a hurry and dipped her pen too deep. It must have been
this morning, or the mark would not remain clear upon the finger.
All this is amusing, though rather elementary, but I must go back
to business, Watson. Would you mind reading me the advertised
description of Mr. Hosmer Angel?"

I held the little printed slip to the light.

"Missing," it said, "on the morning of the fourteenth, a gentleman
named Hosmer Angel. About five ft. seven in. in height;
strongly built, sallow complexion, black hair, a little bald in
the centre, bushy, black side-whiskers and moustache; tinted
glasses, slight infirmity of speech. Was dressed, when last seen,
in black frock-coat faced with silk, black waistcoat, gold Albert
chain, and grey Harris tweed trousers, with brown gaiters over
elastic-sided boots. Known to have been employed in an office in
Leadenhall Street. Anybody bringing--"

"That will do," said Holmes. "As to the letters," he continued,
glancing over them, "they are very commonplace. Absolutely no
clue in them to Mr. Angel, save that he quotes Balzac once. There
is one remarkable point, however, which will no doubt strike
you."

"They are typewritten," I remarked.

"Not only that, but the signature is typewritten. Look at the
neat little 'Hosmer Angel' at the bottom. There is a date, you
see, but no superscription except Leadenhall Street, which is
rather vague. The point about the signature is very suggestive--in
fact, we may call it conclusive."

"Of what?"

"My dear fellow, is it possible you do not see how strongly it
bears upon the case?"

"I cannot say that I do unless it were that he wished to be able
to deny his signature if an action for breach of promise were
instituted."

"No, that was not the point. However, I shall write two letters,
which should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the
other is to the young lady's stepfather, Mr. Windibank, asking
him whether he could meet us here at six o'clock tomorrow
evening. It is just as well that we should do business with the
male relatives. And now, Doctor, we can do nothing until the
answers to those letters come, so we may put our little problem
upon the shelf for the interim."

I had had so many reasons to believe in my friend's subtle powers
of reasoning and extraordinary energy in action that I felt that
he must have some solid grounds for the assured and easy
demeanour with which he treated the singular mystery which he had
been called upon to fathom. Once only had I known him to fail, in
the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler
photograph; but when I looked back to the weird business of the
Sign of Four, and the extraordinary circumstances connected with
the Study in Scarlet, I felt that it would be a strange tangle
indeed which he could not unravel.

I left him then, still puffing at his black clay pipe, with the
conviction that when I came again on the next evening I would
find that he held in his hands all the clues which would lead up
to the identity of the disappearing bridegroom of Miss Mary
Sutherland.

A professional case of great gravity was engaging my own
attention at the time, and the whole of next day I was busy at
the bedside of the sufferer. It was not until close upon six
o'clock that I found myself free and was able to spring into a
hansom and drive to Baker Street, half afraid that I might be too
late to assist at the dnouement of the little mystery. I found
Sherlock Holmes alone, however, half asleep, with his long, thin
form curled up in the recesses of his armchair. A formidable
array of bottles and test-tubes, with the pungent cleanly smell
of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent his day in the
chemical work which was so dear to him.

"Well, have you solved it?" I asked as I entered.

"Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta."

"No, no, the mystery!" I cried.

"Oh, that! I thought of the salt that I have been working upon.
There was never any mystery in the matter, though, as I said
yesterday, some of the details are of interest. The only drawback
is that there is no law, I fear, that can touch the scoundrel."

"Who was he, then, and what was his object in deserting Miss
Sutherland?"

The question was hardly out of my mouth, and Holmes had not yet
opened his lips to reply, when we heard a heavy footfall in the
passage and a tap at the door.

"This is the girl's stepfather, Mr. James Windibank," said
Holmes. "He has written to me to say that he would be here at
six. Come in!"

The man who entered was a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some
thirty years of age, clean-shaven, and sallow-skinned, with a
bland, insinuating manner, and a pair of wonderfully sharp and
penetrating grey eyes. He shot a questioning glance at each of
us, placed his shiny top-hat upon the sideboard, and with a
slight bow sidled down into the nearest chair.

"Good-evening, Mr. James Windibank," said Holmes. "I think that
this typewritten letter is from you, in which you made an
appointment with me for six o'clock?"

"Yes, sir. I am afraid that I am a little late, but I am not
quite my own master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland
has troubled you about this little matter, for I think it is far
better not to wash linen of the sort in public. It was quite
against my wishes that she came, but she is a very excitable,
impulsive girl, as you may have noticed, and she is not easily
controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I
did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the
official police, but it is not pleasant to have a family
misfortune like this noised abroad. Besides, it is a useless
expense, for how could you possibly find this Hosmer Angel?"

"On the contrary," said Holmes quietly; "I have every reason to
believe that I will succeed in discovering Mr. Hosmer Angel."

Mr. Windibank gave a violent start and dropped his gloves. "I am
delighted to hear it," he said.

"It is a curious thing," remarked Holmes, "that a typewriter has
really quite as much individuality as a man's handwriting. Unless
they are quite new, no two of them write exactly alike. Some
letters get more worn than others, and some wear only on one
side. Now, you remark in this note of yours, Mr. Windibank, that
in every case there is some little slurring over of the 'e,' and
a slight defect in the tail of the 'r.' There are fourteen other
characteristics, but those are the more obvious."

"We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office,
and no doubt it is a little worn," our visitor answered, glancing
keenly at Holmes with his bright little eyes.

"And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study,
Mr. Windibank," Holmes continued. "I think of writing another
little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its
relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some
little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come
from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not
only are the 'e's' slurred and the 'r's' tailless, but you will
observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen
other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well."

Mr. Windibank sprang out of his chair and picked up his hat. "I
cannot waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr. Holmes,"
he said. "If you can catch the man, catch him, and let me know
when you have done it."

"Certainly," said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in
the door. "I let you know, then, that I have caught him!"

"What! where?" shouted Mr. Windibank, turning white to his lips
and glancing about him like a rat in a trap.

"Oh, it won't do--really it won't," said Holmes suavely. "There
is no possible getting out of it, Mr. Windibank. It is quite too
transparent, and it was a very bad compliment when you said that
it was impossible for me to solve so simple a question. That's
right! Sit down and let us talk it over."

Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face and a
glitter of moisture on his brow. "It--it's not actionable," he
stammered.

"I am very much afraid that it is not. But between ourselves,
Windibank, it was as cruel and selfish and heartless a trick in a
petty way as ever came before me. Now, let me just run over the
course of events, and you will contradict me if I go wrong."

The man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon his
breast, like one who is utterly crushed. Holmes stuck his feet up
on the corner of the mantelpiece and, leaning back with his hands
in his pockets, began talking, rather to himself, as it seemed,
than to us.

"The man married a woman very much older than himself for her
money," said he, "and he enjoyed the use of the money of the
daughter as long as she lived with them. It was a considerable
sum, for people in their position, and the loss of it would have
made a serious difference. It was worth an effort to preserve it.
The daughter was of a good, amiable disposition, but affectionate
and warm-hearted in her ways, so that it was evident that with
her fair personal advantages, and her little income, she would
not be allowed to remain single long. Now her marriage would
mean, of course, the loss of a hundred a year, so what does her
stepfather do to prevent it? He takes the obvious course of
keeping her at home and forbidding her to seek the company of
people of her own age. But soon he found that that would not
answer forever. She became restive, insisted upon her rights, and
finally announced her positive intention of going to a certain
ball. What does her clever stepfather do then? He conceives an
idea more creditable to his head than to his heart. With the
connivance and assistance of his wife he disguised himself,
covered those keen eyes with tinted glasses, masked the face with
a moustache and a pair of bushy whiskers, sunk that clear voice
into an insinuating whisper, and doubly secure on account of the
girl's short sight, he appears as Mr. Hosmer Angel, and keeps off
other lovers by making love himself."

"It was only a joke at first," groaned our visitor. "We never
thought that she would have been so carried away."

"Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was very
decidedly carried away, and, having quite made up her mind that
her stepfather was in France, the suspicion of treachery never
for an instant entered her mind. She was flattered by the
gentleman's attentions, and the effect was increased by the
loudly expressed admiration of her mother. Then Mr. Angel began
to call, for it was obvious that the matter should be pushed as
far as it would go if a real effect were to be produced. There
were meetings, and an engagement, which would finally secure the
girl's affections from turning towards anyone else. But the
deception could not be kept up forever. These pretended journeys
to France were rather cumbrous. The thing to do was clearly to
bring the business to an end in such a dramatic manner that it
would leave a permanent impression upon the young lady's mind and
prevent her from looking upon any other suitor for some time to
come. Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a Testament, and
hence also the allusions to a possibility of something happening
on the very morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished Miss
Sutherland to be so bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to
his fate, that for ten years to come, at any rate, she would not
listen to another man. As far as the church door he brought her,
and then, as he could go no farther, he conveniently vanished
away by the old trick of stepping in at one door of a
four-wheeler and out at the other. I think that was the chain of
events, Mr. Windibank!"

Our visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes
had been talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold
sneer upon his pale face.

"It may be so, or it may not, Mr. Holmes," said he, "but if you
are so very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is
you who are breaking the law now, and not me. I have done nothing
actionable from the first, but as long as you keep that door
locked you lay yourself open to an action for assault and illegal
constraint."

"The law cannot, as you say, touch you," said Holmes, unlocking
and throwing open the door, "yet there never was a man who
deserved punishment more. If the young lady has a brother or a
friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders. By Jove!"
he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon
the man's face, "it is not part of my duties to my client, but
here's a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat
myself to--" He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he
could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs,
the heavy hall door banged, and from the window we could see Mr.
James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the road.

"There's a cold-blooded scoundrel!" said Holmes, laughing, as he
threw himself down into his chair once more. "That fellow will
rise from crime to crime until he does something very bad, and
ends on a gallows. The case has, in some respects, been not
entirely devoid of interest."

"I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning," I
remarked.

"Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr.
Hosmer Angel must have some strong object for his curious
conduct, and it was equally clear that the only man who really
profited by the incident, as far as we could see, was the
stepfather. Then the fact that the two men were never together,
but that the one always appeared when the other was away, was
suggestive. So were the tinted spectacles and the curious voice,
which both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers. My
suspicions were all confirmed by his peculiar action in
typewriting his signature, which, of course, inferred that his
handwriting was so familiar to her that she would recognise even
the smallest sample of it. You see all these isolated facts,
together with many minor ones, all pointed in the same
direction."

"And how did you verify them?"

"Having once spotted my man, it was easy to get corroboration. I
knew the firm for which this man worked. Having taken the printed
description. I eliminated everything from it which could be the
result of a disguise--the whiskers, the glasses, the voice, and I
sent it to the firm, with a request that they would inform me
whether it answered to the description of any of their
travellers. I had already noticed the peculiarities of the
typewriter, and I wrote to the man himself at his business
address asking him if he would come here. As I expected, his
reply was typewritten and revealed the same trivial but
characteristic defects. The same post brought me a letter from
Westhouse & Marbank, of Fenchurch Street, to say that the
description tallied in every respect with that of their employ,
James Windibank. Voil tout!"

"And Miss Sutherland?"

"If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old
Persian saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger
cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.'
There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much
knowledge of the world."



ADVENTURE IV. THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY

We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the
maid brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes and ran
in this way:

"Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from
the west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy.
Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect.
Leave Paddington by the 11:15."

"What do you say, dear?" said my wife, looking across at me.
"Will you go?"

"I really don't know what to say. I have a fairly long list at
present."

"Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking
a little pale lately. I think that the change would do you good,
and you are always so interested in Mr. Sherlock Holmes' cases."

"I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained
through one of them," I answered. "But if I am to go, I must pack
at once, for I have only half an hour."

My experience of camp life in Afghanistan had at least had the
effect of making me a prompt and ready traveller. My wants were
few and simple, so that in less than the time stated I was in a
cab with my valise, rattling away to Paddington Station. Sherlock
Holmes was pacing up and down the platform, his tall, gaunt
figure made even gaunter and taller by his long grey
travelling-cloak and close-fitting cloth cap.

"It is really very good of you to come, Watson," said he. "It
makes a considerable difference to me, having someone with me on
whom I can thoroughly rely. Local aid is always either worthless
or else biassed. If you will keep the two corner seats I shall
get the tickets."

We had the carriage to ourselves save for an immense litter of
papers which Holmes had brought with him. Among these he rummaged
and read, with intervals of note-taking and of meditation, until
we were past Reading. Then he suddenly rolled them all into a
gigantic ball and tossed them up onto the rack.

"Have you heard anything of the case?" he asked.

"Not a word. I have not seen a paper for some days."

"The London press has not had very full accounts. I have just
been looking through all the recent papers in order to master the
particulars. It seems, from what I gather, to be one of those
simple cases which are so extremely difficult."

"That sounds a little paradoxical."

"But it is profoundly true. Singularity is almost invariably a
clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more
difficult it is to bring it home. In this case, however, they
have established a very serious case against the son of the
murdered man."

"It is a murder, then?"

"Well, it is conjectured to be so. I shall take nothing for
granted until I have the opportunity of looking personally into
it. I will explain the state of things to you, as far as I have
been able to understand it, in a very few words.

"Boscombe Valley is a country district not very far from Ross, in
Herefordshire. The largest landed proprietor in that part is a
Mr. John Turner, who made his money in Australia and returned
some years ago to the old country. One of the farms which he
held, that of Hatherley, was let to Mr. Charles McCarthy, who was
also an ex-Australian. The men had known each other in the
colonies, so that it was not unnatural that when they came to
settle down they should do so as near each other as possible.
Turner was apparently the richer man, so McCarthy became his
tenant but still remained, it seems, upon terms of perfect
equality, as they were frequently together. McCarthy had one son,
a lad of eighteen, and Turner had an only daughter of the same
age, but neither of them had wives living. They appear to have
avoided the society of the neighbouring English families and to
have led retired lives, though both the McCarthys were fond of
sport and were frequently seen at the race-meetings of the
neighbourhood. McCarthy kept two servants--a man and a girl.
Turner had a considerable household, some half-dozen at the
least. That is as much as I have been able to gather about the
families. Now for the facts.

"On June 3rd, that is, on Monday last, McCarthy left his house at
Hatherley about three in the afternoon and walked down to the
Boscombe Pool, which is a small lake formed by the spreading out
of the stream which runs down the Boscombe Valley. He had been
out with his serving-man in the morning at Ross, and he had told
the man that he must hurry, as he had an appointment of
importance to keep at three. From that appointment he never came
back alive.

"From Hatherley Farm-house to the Boscombe Pool is a quarter of a
mile, and two people saw him as he passed over this ground. One
was an old woman, whose name is not mentioned, and the other was
William Crowder, a game-keeper in the employ of Mr. Turner. Both
these witnesses depose that Mr. McCarthy was walking alone. The
game-keeper adds that within a few minutes of his seeing Mr.
McCarthy pass he had seen his son, Mr. James McCarthy, going the
same way with a gun under his arm. To the best of his belief, the
father was actually in sight at the time, and the son was
following him. He thought no more of the matter until he heard in
the evening of the tragedy that had occurred.

"The two McCarthys were seen after the time when William Crowder,
the game-keeper, lost sight of them. The Boscombe Pool is thickly
wooded round, with just a fringe of grass and of reeds round the
edge. A girl of fourteen, Patience Moran, who is the daughter of
the lodge-keeper of the Boscombe Valley estate, was in one of the
woods picking flowers. She states that while she was there she
saw, at the border of the wood and close by the lake, Mr.
McCarthy and his son, and that they appeared to be having a
violent quarrel. She heard Mr. McCarthy the elder using very
strong language to his son, and she saw the latter raise up his
hand as if to strike his father. She was so frightened by their
violence that she ran away and told her mother when she reached
home that she had left the two McCarthys quarrelling near
Boscombe Pool, and that she was afraid that they were going to
fight. She had hardly said the words when young Mr. McCarthy came
running up to the lodge to say that he had found his father dead
in the wood, and to ask for the help of the lodge-keeper. He was
much excited, without either his gun or his hat, and his right
hand and sleeve were observed to be stained with fresh blood. On
following him they found the dead body stretched out upon the
grass beside the pool. The head had been beaten in by repeated
blows of some heavy and blunt weapon. The injuries were such as
might very well have been inflicted by the butt-end of his son's
gun, which was found lying on the grass within a few paces of the
body. Under these circumstances the young man was instantly
arrested, and a verdict of 'wilful murder' having been returned
at the inquest on Tuesday, he was on Wednesday brought before the
magistrates at Ross, who have referred the case to the next
Assizes. Those are the main facts of the case as they came out
before the coroner and the police-court."

"I could hardly imagine a more damning case," I remarked. "If
ever circumstantial evidence pointed to a criminal it does so
here."

"Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing," answered Holmes
thoughtfully. "It may seem to point very straight to one thing,
but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it
pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something
entirely different. It must be confessed, however, that the case
looks exceedingly grave against the young man, and it is very
possible that he is indeed the culprit. There are several people
in the neighbourhood, however, and among them Miss Turner, the
daughter of the neighbouring landowner, who believe in his
innocence, and who have retained Lestrade, whom you may recollect
in connection with the Study in Scarlet, to work out the case in
his interest. Lestrade, being rather puzzled, has referred the
case to me, and hence it is that two middle-aged gentlemen are
flying westward at fifty miles an hour instead of quietly
digesting their breakfasts at home."

"I am afraid," said I, "that the facts are so obvious that you
will find little credit to be gained out of this case."

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact," he
answered, laughing. "Besides, we may chance to hit upon some
other obvious facts which may have been by no means obvious to
Mr. Lestrade. You know me too well to think that I am boasting
when I say that I shall either confirm or destroy his theory by
means which he is quite incapable of employing, or even of
understanding. To take the first example to hand, I very clearly
perceive that in your bedroom the window is upon the right-hand
side, and yet I question whether Mr. Lestrade would have noted
even so self-evident a thing as that."

"How on earth--"

"My dear fellow, I know you well. I know the military neatness
which characterises you. You shave every morning, and in this
season you shave by the sunlight; but since your shaving is less
and less complete as we get farther back on the left side, until
it becomes positively slovenly as we get round the angle of the
jaw, it is surely very clear that that side is less illuminated
than the other. I could not imagine a man of your habits looking
at himself in an equal light and being satisfied with such a
result. I only quote this as a trivial example of observation and
inference. Therein lies my mtier, and it is just possible that
it may be of some service in the investigation which lies before
us. There are one or two minor points which were brought out in
the inquest, and which are worth considering."

"What are they?"

"It appears that his arrest did not take place at once, but after
the return to Hatherley Farm. On the inspector of constabulary
informing him that he was a prisoner, he remarked that he was not
surprised to hear it, and that it was no more than his deserts.
This observation of his had the natural effect of removing any
traces of doubt which might have remained in the minds of the
coroner's jury."

"It was a confession," I ejaculated.

"No, for it was followed by a protestation of innocence."

"Coming on the top of such a damning series of events, it was at
least a most suspicious remark."

"On the contrary," said Holmes, "it is the brightest rift which I
can at present see in the clouds. However innocent he might be,
he could not be such an absolute imbecile as not to see that the
circumstances were very black against him. Had he appeared
surprised at his own arrest, or feigned indignation at it, I
should have looked upon it as highly suspicious, because such
surprise or anger would not be natural under the circumstances,
and yet might appear to be the best policy to a scheming man. His
frank acceptance of the situation marks him as either an innocent
man, or else as a man of considerable self-restraint and
firmness. As to his remark about his deserts, it was also not
unnatural if you consider that he stood beside the dead body of
his father, and that there is no doubt that he had that very day
so far forgotten his filial duty as to bandy words with him, and
even, according to the little girl whose evidence is so
important, to raise his hand as if to strike him. The
self-reproach and contrition which are displayed in his remark
appear to me to be the signs of a healthy mind rather than of a
guilty one."

I shook my head. "Many men have been hanged on far slighter
evidence," I remarked.

"So they have. And many men have been wrongfully hanged."

"What is the young man's own account of the matter?"

"It is, I am afraid, not very encouraging to his supporters,
though there are one or two points in it which are suggestive.
You will find it here, and may read it for yourself."

He picked out from his bundle a copy of the local Herefordshire
paper, and having turned down the sheet he pointed out the
paragraph in which the unfortunate young man had given his own
statement of what had occurred. I settled myself down in the
corner of the carriage and read it very carefully. It ran in this
way:

"Mr. James McCarthy, the only son of the deceased, was then called
and gave evidence as follows: 'I had been away from home for
three days at Bristol, and had only just returned upon the
morning of last Monday, the 3rd. My father was absent from home at
the time of my arrival, and I was informed by the maid that he
had driven over to Ross with John Cobb, the groom. Shortly after
my return I heard the wheels of his trap in the yard, and,
looking out of my window, I saw him get out and walk rapidly out
of the yard, though I was not aware in which direction he was
going. I then took my gun and strolled out in the direction of
the Boscombe Pool, with the intention of visiting the rabbit
warren which is upon the other side. On my way I saw William
Crowder, the game-keeper, as he had stated in his evidence; but
he is mistaken in thinking that I was following my father. I had
no idea that he was in front of me. When about a hundred yards
from the pool I heard a cry of "Cooee!" which was a usual signal
between my father and myself. I then hurried forward, and found
him standing by the pool. He appeared to be much surprised at
seeing me and asked me rather roughly what I was doing there. A
conversation ensued which led to high words and almost to blows,
for my father was a man of a very violent temper. Seeing that his
passion was becoming ungovernable, I left him and returned
towards Hatherley Farm. I had not gone more than 150 yards,
however, when I heard a hideous outcry behind me, which caused me
to run back again. I found my father expiring upon the ground,
with his head terribly injured. I dropped my gun and held him in
my arms, but he almost instantly expired. I knelt beside him for
some minutes, and then made my way to Mr. Turner's lodge-keeper,
his house being the nearest, to ask for assistance. I saw no one
near my father when I returned, and I have no idea how he came by
his injuries. He was not a popular man, being somewhat cold and
forbidding in his manners, but he had, as far as I know, no
active enemies. I know nothing further of the matter.'

"The Coroner: Did your father make any statement to you before
he died?

"Witness: He mumbled a few words, but I could only catch some
allusion to a rat.

"The Coroner: What did you understand by that?

"Witness: It conveyed no meaning to me. I thought that he was
delirious.

"The Coroner: What was the point upon which you and your father
had this final quarrel?

"Witness: I should prefer not to answer.

"The Coroner: I am afraid that I must press it.

"Witness: It is really impossible for me to tell you. I can
assure you that it has nothing to do with the sad tragedy which
followed.

"The Coroner: That is for the court to decide. I need not point
out to you that your refusal to answer will prejudice your case
considerably in any future proceedings which may arise.

"Witness: I must still refuse.

"The Coroner: I understand that the cry of 'Cooee' was a common
signal between you and your father?

"Witness: It was.

"The Coroner: How was it, then, that he uttered it before he saw
you, and before he even knew that you had returned from Bristol?

"Witness (with considerable confusion): I do not know.

"A Juryman: Did you see nothing which aroused your suspicions
when you returned on hearing the cry and found your father
fatally injured?

"Witness: Nothing definite.

"The Coroner: What do you mean?

"Witness: I was so disturbed and excited as I rushed out into
the open, that I could think of nothing except of my father. Yet
I have a vague impression that as I ran forward something lay
upon the ground to the left of me. It seemed to me to be
something grey in colour, a coat of some sort, or a plaid perhaps.
When I rose from my father I looked round for it, but it was
gone.

"'Do you mean that it disappeared before you went for help?'

"'Yes, it was gone.'

"'You cannot say what it was?'

"'No, I had a feeling something was there.'

"'How far from the body?'

"'A dozen yards or so.'

"'And how far from the edge of the wood?'

"'About the same.'

"'Then if it was removed it was while you were within a dozen
yards of it?'

"'Yes, but with my back towards it.'

"This concluded the examination of the witness."

"I see," said I as I glanced down the column, "that the coroner
in his concluding remarks was rather severe upon young McCarthy.
He calls attention, and with reason, to the discrepancy about his
father having signalled to him before seeing him, also to his
refusal to give details of his conversation with his father, and
his singular account of his father's dying words. They are all,
as he remarks, very much against the son."

Holmes laughed softly to himself and stretched himself out upon
the cushioned seat. "Both you and the coroner have been at some
pains," said he, "to single out the very strongest points in the
young man's favour. Don't you see that you alternately give him
credit for having too much imagination and too little? Too
little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would
give him the sympathy of the jury; too much, if he evolved from
his own inner consciousness anything so outr as a dying
reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth. No,
sir, I shall approach this case from the point of view that what
this young man says is true, and we shall see whither that
hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and
not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the
scene of action. We lunch at Swindon, and I see that we shall be
there in twenty minutes."

It was nearly four o'clock when we at last, after passing through
the beautiful Stroud Valley, and over the broad gleaming Severn,
found ourselves at the pretty little country-town of Ross. A
lean, ferret-like man, furtive and sly-looking, was waiting for
us upon the platform. In spite of the light brown dustcoat and
leather-leggings which he wore in deference to his rustic
surroundings, I had no difficulty in recognising Lestrade, of
Scotland Yard. With him we drove to the Hereford Arms where a
room had already been engaged for us.

"I have ordered a carriage," said Lestrade as we sat over a cup
of tea. "I knew your energetic nature, and that you would not be
happy until you had been on the scene of the crime."

"It was very nice and complimentary of you," Holmes answered. "It
is entirely a question of barometric pressure."

Lestrade looked startled. "I do not quite follow," he said.

"How is the glass? Twenty-nine, I see. No wind, and not a cloud
in the sky. I have a caseful of cigarettes here which need
smoking, and the sofa is very much superior to the usual country
hotel abomination. I do not think that it is probable that I
shall use the carriage to-night."

Lestrade laughed indulgently. "You have, no doubt, already formed
your conclusions from the newspapers," he said. "The case is as
plain as a pikestaff, and the more one goes into it the plainer
it becomes. Still, of course, one can't refuse a lady, and such a
very positive one, too. She has heard of you, and would have your
opinion, though I repeatedly told her that there was nothing
which you could do which I had not already done. Why, bless my
soul! here is her carriage at the door."

He had hardly spoken before there rushed into the room one of the
most lovely young women that I have ever seen in my life. Her
violet eyes shining, her lips parted, a pink flush upon her
cheeks, all thought of her natural reserve lost in her
overpowering excitement and concern.

"Oh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!" she cried, glancing from one to the
other of us, and finally, with a woman's quick intuition,
fastening upon my companion, "I am so glad that you have come. I
have driven down to tell you so. I know that James didn't do it.
I know it, and I want you to start upon your work knowing it,
too. Never let yourself doubt upon that point. We have known each
other since we were little children, and I know his faults as no
one else does; but he is too tender-hearted to hurt a fly. Such a
charge is absurd to anyone who really knows him."

"I hope we may clear him, Miss Turner," said Sherlock Holmes.
"You may rely upon my doing all that I can."

"But you have read the evidence. You have formed some conclusion?
Do you not see some loophole, some flaw? Do you not yourself
think that he is innocent?"

"I think that it is very probable."

"There, now!" she cried, throwing back her head and looking
defiantly at Lestrade. "You hear! He gives me hopes."

Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. "I am afraid that my colleague
has been a little quick in forming his conclusions," he said.

"But he is right. Oh! I know that he is right. James never did
it. And about his quarrel with his father, I am sure that the
reason why he would not speak about it to the coroner was because
I was concerned in it."

"In what way?" asked Holmes.

"It is no time for me to hide anything. James and his father had
many disagreements about me. Mr. McCarthy was very anxious that
there should be a marriage between us. James and I have always
loved each other as brother and sister; but of course he is young
and has seen very little of life yet, and--and--well, he
naturally did not wish to do anything like that yet. So there
were quarrels, and this, I am sure, was one of them."

"And your father?" asked Holmes. "Was he in favour of such a
union?"

"No, he was averse to it also. No one but Mr. McCarthy was in
favour of it." A quick blush passed over her fresh young face as
Holmes shot one of his keen, questioning glances at her.

"Thank you for this information," said he. "May I see your father
if I call to-morrow?"

"I am afraid the doctor won't allow it."

"The doctor?"

"Yes, have you not heard? Poor father has never been strong for
years back, but this has broken him down completely. He has taken
to his bed, and Dr. Willows says that he is a wreck and that his
nervous system is shattered. Mr. McCarthy was the only man alive
who had known dad in the old days in Victoria."

"Ha! In Victoria! That is important."

"Yes, at the mines."

"Quite so; at the gold-mines, where, as I understand, Mr. Turner
made his money."

"Yes, certainly."

"Thank you, Miss Turner. You have been of material assistance to
me."

"You will tell me if you have any news to-morrow. No doubt you
will go to the prison to see James. Oh, if you do, Mr. Holmes, do
tell him that I know him to be innocent."

"I will, Miss Turner."

"I must go home now, for dad is very ill, and he misses me so if
I leave him. Good-bye, and God help you in your undertaking." She
hurried from the room as impulsively as she had entered, and we
heard the wheels of her carriage rattle off down the street.

"I am ashamed of you, Holmes," said Lestrade with dignity after a
few minutes' silence. "Why should you raise up hopes which you
are bound to disappoint? I am not over-tender of heart, but I
call it cruel."

"I think that I see my way to clearing James McCarthy," said
Holmes. "Have you an order to see him in prison?"

"Yes, but only for you and me."

"Then I shall reconsider my resolution about going out. We have
still time to take a train to Hereford and see him to-night?"

"Ample."

"Then let us do so. Watson, I fear that you will find it very
slow, but I shall only be away a couple of hours."

I walked down to the station with them, and then wandered through
the streets of the little town, finally returning to the hotel,
where I lay upon the sofa and tried to interest myself in a
yellow-backed novel. The puny plot of the story was so thin,
however, when compared to the deep mystery through which we were
groping, and I found my attention wander so continually from the
action to the fact, that I at last flung it across the room and
gave myself up entirely to a consideration of the events of the
day. Supposing that this unhappy young man's story were
absolutely true, then what hellish thing, what absolutely
unforeseen and extraordinary calamity could have occurred between
the time when he parted from his father, and the moment when,
drawn back by his screams, he rushed into the glade? It was
something terrible and deadly. What could it be? Might not the
nature of the injuries reveal something to my medical instincts?
I rang the bell and called for the weekly county paper, which
contained a verbatim account of the inquest. In the surgeon's
deposition it was stated that the posterior third of the left
parietal bone and the left half of the occipital bone had been
shattered by a heavy blow from a blunt weapon. I marked the spot
upon my own head. Clearly such a blow must have been struck from
behind. That was to some extent in favour of the accused, as when
seen quarrelling he was face to face with his father. Still, it
did not go for very much, for the older man might have turned his
back before the blow fell. Still, it might be worth while to call
Holmes' attention to it. Then there was the peculiar dying
reference to a rat. What could that mean? It could not be
delirium. A man dying from a sudden blow does not commonly become
delirious. No, it was more likely to be an attempt to explain how
he met his fate. But what could it indicate? I cudgelled my
brains to find some possible explanation. And then the incident
of the grey cloth seen by young McCarthy. If that were true the
murderer must have dropped some part of his dress, presumably his
overcoat, in his flight, and must have had the hardihood to
return and to carry it away at the instant when the son was
kneeling with his back turned not a dozen paces off. What a
tissue of mysteries and improbabilities the whole thing was! I
did not wonder at Lestrade's opinion, and yet I had so much faith
in Sherlock Holmes' insight that I could not lose hope as long
as every fresh fact seemed to strengthen his conviction of young
McCarthy's innocence.

It was late before Sherlock Holmes returned. He came back alone,
for Lestrade was staying in lodgings in the town.

"The glass still keeps very high," he remarked as he sat down.
"It is of importance that it should not rain before we are able
to go over the ground. On the other hand, a man should be at his
very best and keenest for such nice work as that, and I did not
wish to do it when fagged by a long journey. I have seen young
McCarthy."

"And what did you learn from him?"

"Nothing."

"Could he throw no light?"

"None at all. I was inclined to think at one time that he knew
who had done it and was screening him or her, but I am convinced
now that he is as puzzled as everyone else. He is not a very
quick-witted youth, though comely to look at and, I should think,
sound at heart."

"I cannot admire his taste," I remarked, "if it is indeed a fact
that he was averse to a marriage with so charming a young lady as
this Miss Turner."

"Ah, thereby hangs a rather painful tale. This fellow is madly,
insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was
only a lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away
five years at a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get
into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a
registry office? No one knows a word of the matter, but you can
imagine how maddening it must be to him to be upbraided for not
doing what he would give his very eyes to do, but what he knows
to be absolutely impossible. It was sheer frenzy of this sort
which made him throw his hands up into the air when his father,
at their last interview, was goading him on to propose to Miss
Turner. On the other hand, he had no means of supporting himself,
and his father, who was by all accounts a very hard man, would
have thrown him over utterly had he known the truth. It was with
his barmaid wife that he had spent the last three days in
Bristol, and his father did not know where he was. Mark that
point. It is of importance. Good has come out of evil, however,
for the barmaid, finding from the papers that he is in serious
trouble and likely to be hanged, has thrown him over utterly and
has written to him to say that she has a husband already in the
Bermuda Dockyard, so that there is really no tie between them. I
think that that bit of news has consoled young McCarthy for all
that he has suffered."

"But if he is innocent, who has done it?"

"Ah! who? I would call your attention very particularly to two
points. One is that the murdered man had an appointment with
someone at the pool, and that the someone could not have been his
son, for his son was away, and he did not know when he would
return. The second is that the murdered man was heard to cry
'Cooee!' before he knew that his son had returned. Those are the
crucial points upon which the case depends. And now let us talk
about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall leave all
minor matters until to-morrow."

There was no rain, as Holmes had foretold, and the morning broke
bright and cloudless. At nine o'clock Lestrade called for us with
the carriage, and we set off for Hatherley Farm and the Boscombe
Pool.

"There is serious news this morning," Lestrade observed. "It is
said that Mr. Turner, of the Hall, is so ill that his life is
despaired of."

"An elderly man, I presume?" said Holmes.

"About sixty; but his constitution has been shattered by his life
abroad, and he has been in failing health for some time. This
business has had a very bad effect upon him. He was an old friend
of McCarthy's, and, I may add, a great benefactor to him, for I
have learned that he gave him Hatherley Farm rent free."

"Indeed! That is interesting," said Holmes.

"Oh, yes! In a hundred other ways he has helped him. Everybody
about here speaks of his kindness to him."

"Really! Does it not strike you as a little singular that this
McCarthy, who appears to have had little of his own, and to have
been under such obligations to Turner, should still talk of
marrying his son to Turner's daughter, who is, presumably,
heiress to the estate, and that in such a very cocksure manner,
as if it were merely a case of a proposal and all else would
follow? It is the more strange, since we know that Turner himself
was averse to the idea. The daughter told us as much. Do you not
deduce something from that?"

"We have got to the deductions and the inferences," said
Lestrade, winking at me. "I find it hard enough to tackle facts,
Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies."

"You are right," said Holmes demurely; "you do find it very hard
to tackle the facts."

"Anyhow, I have grasped one fact which you seem to find it
difficult to get hold of," replied Lestrade with some warmth.

"And that is--"

"That McCarthy senior met his death from McCarthy junior and that
all theories to the contrary are the merest moonshine."

"Well, moonshine is a brighter thing than fog," said Holmes,
laughing. "But I am very much mistaken if this is not Hatherley
Farm upon the left."

"Yes, that is it." It was a widespread, comfortable-looking
building, two-storied, slate-roofed, with great yellow blotches
of lichen upon the grey walls. The drawn blinds and the smokeless
chimneys, however, gave it a stricken look, as though the weight
of this horror still lay heavy upon it. We called at the door,
when the maid, at Holmes' request, showed us the boots which her
master wore at the time of his death, and also a pair of the
son's, though not the pair which he had then had. Having measured
these very carefully from seven or eight different points, Holmes
desired to be led to the court-yard, from which we all followed
the winding track which led to Boscombe Pool.

Sherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent
as this. Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of
Baker Street would have failed to recognise him. His face flushed
and darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard black lines,
while his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter.
His face was bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips
compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long,
sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal
lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated
upon the matter before him that a question or remark fell
unheeded upon his ears, or, at the most, only provoked a quick,
impatient snarl in reply. Swiftly and silently he made his way
along the track which ran through the meadows, and so by way of
the woods to the Boscombe Pool. It was damp, marshy ground, as is
all that district, and there were marks of many feet, both upon
the path and amid the short grass which bounded it on either
side. Sometimes Holmes would hurry on, sometimes stop dead, and
once he made quite a little detour into the meadow. Lestrade and
I walked behind him, the detective indifferent and contemptuous,
while I watched my friend with the interest which sprang from the
conviction that every one of his actions was directed towards a
definite end.

The Boscombe Pool, which is a little reed-girt sheet of water
some fifty yards across, is situated at the boundary between the
Hatherley Farm and the private park of the wealthy Mr. Turner.
Above the woods which lined it upon the farther side we could see
the red, jutting pinnacles which marked the site of the rich
landowner's dwelling. On the Hatherley side of the pool the woods
grew very thick, and there was a narrow belt of sodden grass
twenty paces across between the edge of the trees and the reeds
which lined the lake. Lestrade showed us the exact spot at which
the body had been found, and, indeed, so moist was the ground,
that I could plainly see the traces which had been left by the
fall of the stricken man. To Holmes, as I could see by his eager
face and peering eyes, very many other things were to be read
upon the trampled grass. He ran round, like a dog who is picking
up a scent, and then turned upon my companion.

"What did you go into the pool for?" he asked.

"I fished about with a rake. I thought there might be some weapon
or other trace. But how on earth--"

"Oh, tut, tut! I have no time! That left foot of yours with its
inward twist is all over the place. A mole could trace it, and
there it vanishes among the reeds. Oh, how simple it would all
have been had I been here before they came like a herd of buffalo
and wallowed all over it. Here is where the party with the
lodge-keeper came, and they have covered all tracks for six or
eight feet round the body. But here are three separate tracks of
the same feet." He drew out a lens and lay down upon his
waterproof to have a better view, talking all the time rather to
himself than to us. "These are young McCarthy's feet. Twice he
was walking, and once he ran swiftly, so that the soles are
deeply marked and the heels hardly visible. That bears out his
story. He ran when he saw his father on the ground. Then here are
the father's feet as he paced up and down. What is this, then? It
is the butt-end of the gun as the son stood listening. And this?
Ha, ha! What have we here? Tiptoes! tiptoes! Square, too, quite
unusual boots! They come, they go, they come again--of course
that was for the cloak. Now where did they come from?" He ran up
and down, sometimes losing, sometimes finding the track until we
were well within the edge of the wood and under the shadow of a
great beech, the largest tree in the neighbourhood. Holmes traced
his way to the farther side of this and lay down once more upon
his face with a little cry of satisfaction. For a long time he
remained there, turning over the leaves and dried sticks,
gathering up what seemed to me to be dust into an envelope and
examining with his lens not only the ground but even the bark of
the tree as far as he could reach. A jagged stone was lying among
the moss, and this also he carefully examined and retained. Then
he followed a pathway through the wood until he came to the
highroad, where all traces were lost.

"It has been a case of considerable interest," he remarked,
returning to his natural manner. "I fancy that this grey house on
the right must be the lodge. I think that I will go in and have a
word with Moran, and perhaps write a little note. Having done
that, we may drive back to our luncheon. You may walk to the cab,
and I shall be with you presently."

It was about ten minutes before we regained our cab and drove
back into Ross, Holmes still carrying with him the stone which he
had picked up in the wood.

"This may interest you, Lestrade," he remarked, holding it out.
"The murder was done with it."

"I see no marks."

"There are none."

"How do you know, then?"

"The grass was growing under it. It had only lain there a few
days. There was no sign of a place whence it had been taken. It
corresponds with the injuries. There is no sign of any other
weapon."

"And the murderer?"

"Is a tall man, left-handed, limps with the right leg, wears
thick-soled shooting-boots and a grey cloak, smokes Indian
cigars, uses a cigar-holder, and carries a blunt pen-knife in his
pocket. There are several other indications, but these may be
enough to aid us in our search."

Lestrade laughed. "I am afraid that I am still a sceptic," he
said. "Theories are all very well, but we have to deal with a
hard-headed British jury."

"Nous verrons," answered Holmes calmly. "You work your own
method, and I shall work mine. I shall be busy this afternoon,
and shall probably return to London by the evening train."

"And leave your case unfinished?"

"No, finished."

"But the mystery?"

"It is solved."

"Who was the criminal, then?"

"The gentleman I describe."

"But who is he?"

"Surely it would not be difficult to find out. This is not such a
populous neighbourhood."

Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. "I am a practical man," he said,
"and I really cannot undertake to go about the country looking
for a left-handed gentleman with a game leg. I should become the
laughing-stock of Scotland Yard."

"All right," said Holmes quietly. "I have given you the chance.
Here are your lodgings. Good-bye. I shall drop you a line before
I leave."

Having left Lestrade at his rooms, we drove to our hotel, where
we found lunch upon the table. Holmes was silent and buried in
thought with a pained expression upon his face, as one who finds
himself in a perplexing position.

"Look here, Watson," he said when the cloth was cleared "just sit
down in this chair and let me preach to you for a little. I don't
know quite what to do, and I should value your advice. Light a
cigar and let me expound."

 "Pray do so."

"Well, now, in considering this case there are two points about
young McCarthy's narrative which struck us both instantly,
although they impressed me in his favour and you against him. One
was the fact that his father should, according to his account,
cry 'Cooee!' before seeing him. The other was his singular dying
reference to a rat. He mumbled several words, you understand, but
that was all that caught the son's ear. Now from this double
point our research must commence, and we will begin it by
presuming that what the lad says is absolutely true."

"What of this 'Cooee!' then?"

"Well, obviously it could not have been meant for the son. The
son, as far as he knew, was in Bristol. It was mere chance that
he was within earshot. The 'Cooee!' was meant to attract the
attention of whoever it was that he had the appointment with. But
'Cooee' is a distinctly Australian cry, and one which is used
between Australians. There is a strong presumption that the
person whom McCarthy expected to meet him at Boscombe Pool was
someone who had been in Australia."

"What of the rat, then?"

Sherlock Holmes took a folded paper from his pocket and flattened
it out on the table. "This is a map of the Colony of Victoria,"
he said. "I wired to Bristol for it last night." He put his hand
over part of the map. "What do you read?"

"ARAT," I read.

"And now?" He raised his hand.

"BALLARAT."

"Quite so. That was the word the man uttered, and of which his
son only caught the last two syllables. He was trying to utter
the name of his murderer. So and so, of Ballarat."

"It is wonderful!" I exclaimed.

"It is obvious. And now, you see, I had narrowed the field down
considerably. The possession of a grey garment was a third point
which, granting the son's statement to be correct, was a
certainty. We have come now out of mere vagueness to the definite
conception of an Australian from Ballarat with a grey cloak."

"Certainly."

"And one who was at home in the district, for the pool can only
be approached by the farm or by the estate, where strangers could
hardly wander."

"Quite so."

"Then comes our expedition of to-day. By an examination of the
ground I gained the trifling details which I gave to that
imbecile Lestrade, as to the personality of the criminal."

"But how did you gain them?"

"You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of
trifles."

"His height I know that you might roughly judge from the length
of his stride. His boots, too, might be told from their traces."

"Yes, they were peculiar boots."

"But his lameness?"

"The impression of his right foot was always less distinct than
his left. He put less weight upon it. Why? Because he limped--he
was lame."

"But his left-handedness."

"You were yourself struck by the nature of the injury as recorded
by the surgeon at the inquest. The blow was struck from
immediately behind, and yet was upon the left side. Now, how can
that be unless it were by a left-handed man? He had stood behind
that tree during the interview between the father and son. He had
even smoked there. I found the ash of a cigar, which my special
knowledge of tobacco ashes enables me to pronounce as an Indian
cigar. I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and
written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different
varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco. Having found the
ash, I then looked round and discovered the stump among the moss
where he had tossed it. It was an Indian cigar, of the variety
which are rolled in Rotterdam."

"And the cigar-holder?"

"I could see that the end had not been in his mouth. Therefore he
used a holder. The tip had been cut off, not bitten off, but the
cut was not a clean one, so I deduced a blunt pen-knife."

"Holmes," I said, "you have drawn a net round this man from which
he cannot escape, and you have saved an innocent human life as
truly as if you had cut the cord which was hanging him. I see the
direction in which all this points. The culprit is--"

"Mr. John Turner," cried the hotel waiter, opening the door of
our sitting-room, and ushering in a visitor.

The man who entered was a strange and impressive figure. His
slow, limping step and bowed shoulders gave the appearance of
decrepitude, and yet his hard, deep-lined, craggy features, and
his enormous limbs showed that he was possessed of unusual
strength of body and of character. His tangled beard, grizzled
hair, and outstanding, drooping eyebrows combined to give an air
of dignity and power to his appearance, but his face was of an
ashen white, while his lips and the corners of his nostrils were
tinged with a shade of blue. It was clear to me at a glance that
he was in the grip of some deadly and chronic disease.

"Pray sit down on the sofa," said Holmes gently. "You had my
note?"

"Yes, the lodge-keeper brought it up. You said that you wished to
see me here to avoid scandal."

"I thought people would talk if I went to the Hall."

"And why did you wish to see me?" He looked across at my
companion with despair in his weary eyes, as though his question
was already answered.

"Yes," said Holmes, answering the look rather than the words. "It
is so. I know all about McCarthy."

The old man sank his face in his hands. "God help me!" he cried.
"But I would not have let the young man come to harm. I give you
my word that I would have spoken out if it went against him at
the Assizes."

"I am glad to hear you say so," said Holmes gravely.

"I would have spoken now had it not been for my dear girl. It
would break her heart--it will break her heart when she hears
that I am arrested."

"It may not come to that," said Holmes.

"What?"

"I am no official agent. I understand that it was your daughter
who required my presence here, and I am acting in her interests.
Young McCarthy must be got off, however."

"I am a dying man," said old Turner. "I have had diabetes for
years. My doctor says it is a question whether I shall live a
month. Yet I would rather die under my own roof than in a gaol."

Holmes rose and sat down at the table with his pen in his hand
and a bundle of paper before him. "Just tell us the truth," he
said. "I shall jot down the facts. You will sign it, and Watson
here can witness it. Then I could produce your confession at the
last extremity to save young McCarthy. I promise you that I shall
not use it unless it is absolutely needed."

"It's as well," said the old man; "it's a question whether I
shall live to the Assizes, so it matters little to me, but I
should wish to spare Alice the shock. And now I will make the
thing clear to you; it has been a long time in the acting, but
will not take me long to tell.

"You didn't know this dead man, McCarthy. He was a devil
incarnate. I tell you that. God keep you out of the clutches of
such a man as he. His grip has been upon me these twenty years,
and he has blasted my life. I'll tell you first how I came to be
in his power.

"It was in the early '60's at the diggings. I was a young chap
then, hot-blooded and reckless, ready to turn my hand at
anything; I got among bad companions, took to drink, had no luck
with my claim, took to the bush, and in a word became what you
would call over here a highway robber. There were six of us, and
we had a wild, free life of it, sticking up a station from time
to time, or stopping the wagons on the road to the diggings.
Black Jack of Ballarat was the name I went under, and our party
is still remembered in the colony as the Ballarat Gang.

"One day a gold convoy came down from Ballarat to Melbourne, and
we lay in wait for it and attacked it. There were six troopers
and six of us, so it was a close thing, but we emptied four of
their saddles at the first volley. Three of our boys were killed,
however, before we got the swag. I put my pistol to the head of
the wagon-driver, who was this very man McCarthy. I wish to the
Lord that I had shot him then, but I spared him, though I saw his
wicked little eyes fixed on my face, as though to remember every
feature. We got away with the gold, became wealthy men, and made
our way over to England without being suspected. There I parted
from my old pals and determined to settle down to a quiet and
respectable life. I bought this estate, which chanced to be in
the market, and I set myself to do a little good with my money,
to make up for the way in which I had earned it. I married, too,
and though my wife died young she left me my dear little Alice.
Even when she was just a baby her wee hand seemed to lead me down
the right path as nothing else had ever done. In a word, I turned
over a new leaf and did my best to make up for the past. All was
going well when McCarthy laid his grip upon me.

"I had gone up to town about an investment, and I met him in
Regent Street with hardly a coat to his back or a boot to his
foot.

"'Here we are, Jack,' says he, touching me on the arm; 'we'll be
as good as a family to you. There's two of us, me and my son, and
you can have the keeping of us. If you don't--it's a fine,
law-abiding country is England, and there's always a policeman
within hail.'

"Well, down they came to the west country, there was no shaking
them off, and there they have lived rent free on my best land
ever since. There was no rest for me, no peace, no forgetfulness;
turn where I would, there was his cunning, grinning face at my
elbow. It grew worse as Alice grew up, for he soon saw I was more
afraid of her knowing my past than of the police. Whatever he
wanted he must have, and whatever it was I gave him without
question, land, money, houses, until at last he asked a thing
which I could not give. He asked for Alice.

"His son, you see, had grown up, and so had my girl, and as I was
known to be in weak health, it seemed a fine stroke to him that
his lad should step into the whole property. But there I was
firm. I would not have his cursed stock mixed with mine; not that
I had any dislike to the lad, but his blood was in him, and that
was enough. I stood firm. McCarthy threatened. I braved him to do
his worst. We were to meet at the pool midway between our houses
to talk it over.

"When I went down there I found him talking with his son, so I
smoked a cigar and waited behind a tree until he should be alone.
But as I listened to his talk all that was black and bitter in
me seemed to come uppermost. He was urging his son to marry my
daughter with as little regard for what she might think as if she
were a slut from off the streets. It drove me mad to think that I
and all that I held most dear should be in the power of such a
man as this. Could I not snap the bond? I was already a dying and
a desperate man. Though clear of mind and fairly strong of limb,
I knew that my own fate was sealed. But my memory and my girl!
Both could be saved if I could but silence that foul tongue. I
did it, Mr. Holmes. I would do it again. Deeply as I have sinned,
I have led a life of martyrdom to atone for it. But that my girl
should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was more
than I could suffer. I struck him down with no more compunction
than if he had been some foul and venomous beast. His cry brought
back his son; but I had gained the cover of the wood, though I
was forced to go back to fetch the cloak which I had dropped in
my flight. That is the true story, gentlemen, of all that
occurred."

"Well, it is not for me to judge you," said Holmes as the old man
signed the statement which had been drawn out. "I pray that we
may never be exposed to such a temptation."

"I pray not, sir. And what do you intend to do?"

"In view of your health, nothing. You are yourself aware that you
will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the
Assizes. I will keep your confession, and if McCarthy is
condemned I shall be forced to use it. If not, it shall never be
seen by mortal eye; and your secret, whether you be alive or
dead, shall be safe with us."

"Farewell, then," said the old man solemnly. "Your own deathbeds,
when they come, will be the easier for the thought of the peace
which you have given to mine." Tottering and shaking in all his
giant frame, he stumbled slowly from the room.

"God help us!" said Holmes after a long silence. "Why does fate
play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such
a case as this that I do not think of Baxter's words, and say,
'There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.'"

James McCarthy was acquitted at the Assizes on the strength of a
number of objections which had been drawn out by Holmes and
submitted to the defending counsel. Old Turner lived for seven
months after our interview, but he is now dead; and there is
every prospect that the son and daughter may come to live happily
together in ignorance of the black cloud which rests upon their
past.



ADVENTURE V. THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS

When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes
cases between the years '82 and '90, I am faced by so many which
present strange and interesting features that it is no easy
matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however,
have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have
not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which my friend
possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the object of
these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his
analytical skill, and would be, as narratives, beginnings without
an ending, while others have been but partially cleared up, and
have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture and
surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to
him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable
in its details and so startling in its results that I am tempted
to give some account of it in spite of the fact that there are
points in connection with it which never have been, and probably
never will be, entirely cleared up.

The year '87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater
or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my
headings under this one twelve months I find an account of the
adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant
Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a
furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the
British barque "Sophy Anderson", of the singular adventures of the
Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the
Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered,
Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man's watch, to
prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that
therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time--a
deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the
case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of
them present such singular features as the strange train of
circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.

It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales
had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had
screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that
even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced
to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and
to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which
shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, like
untamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in, the storm grew
higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in
the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the
fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I at the
other was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea-stories until
the howl of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text,
and the splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of
the sea waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother's, and for a
few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker
Street.

"Why," said I, glancing up at my companion, "that was surely the
bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?"

"Except yourself I have none," he answered. "I do not encourage
visitors."

"A client, then?"

"If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out
on such a day and at such an hour. But I take it that it is more
likely to be some crony of the landlady's."

Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there
came a step in the passage and a tapping at the door. He
stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and
towards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit.

"Come in!" said he.

The man who entered was young, some two-and-twenty at the
outside, well-groomed and trimly clad, with something of
refinement and delicacy in his bearing. The streaming umbrella
which he held in his hand, and his long shining waterproof told
of the fierce weather through which he had come. He looked about
him anxiously in the glare of the lamp, and I could see that his
face was pale and his eyes heavy, like those of a man who is
weighed down with some great anxiety.

"I owe you an apology," he said, raising his golden pince-nez to
his eyes. "I trust that I am not intruding. I fear that I have
brought some traces of the storm and rain into your snug
chamber."

"Give me your coat and umbrella," said Holmes. "They may rest
here on the hook and will be dry presently. You have come up from
the south-west, I see."

"Yes, from Horsham."

"That clay and chalk mixture which I see upon your toe caps is
quite distinctive."

"I have come for advice."

"That is easily got."

"And help."

"That is not always so easy."

"I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I heard from Major Prendergast
how you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal."

"Ah, of course. He was wrongfully accused of cheating at cards."

"He said that you could solve anything."

"He said too much."

"That you are never beaten."

"I have been beaten four times--three times by men, and once by a
woman."

"But what is that compared with the number of your successes?"

"It is true that I have been generally successful."

"Then you may be so with me."

"I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me
with some details as to your case."

"It is no ordinary one."

"None of those which come to me are. I am the last court of
appeal."

"And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you
have ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of
events than those which have happened in my own family."

"You fill me with interest," said Holmes. "Pray give us the
essential facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards
question you as to those details which seem to me to be most
important."

The young man pulled his chair up and pushed his wet feet out
towards the blaze.

"My name," said he, "is John Openshaw, but my own affairs have,
as far as I can understand, little to do with this awful
business. It is a hereditary matter; so in order to give you an
idea of the facts, I must go back to the commencement of the
affair.

"You must know that my grandfather had two sons--my uncle Elias
and my father Joseph. My father had a small factory at Coventry,
which he enlarged at the time of the invention of bicycling. He
was a patentee of the Openshaw unbreakable tire, and his business
met with such success that he was able to sell it and to retire
upon a handsome competence.

"My uncle Elias emigrated to America when he was a young man and
became a planter in Florida, where he was reported to have done
very well. At the time of the war he fought in Jackson's army,
and afterwards under Hood, where he rose to be a colonel. When
Lee laid down his arms my uncle returned to his plantation, where
he remained for three or four years. About 1869 or 1870 he came
back to Europe and took a small estate in Sussex, near Horsham.
He had made a very considerable fortune in the States, and his
reason for leaving them was his aversion to the negroes, and his
dislike of the Republican policy in extending the franchise to
them. He was a singular man, fierce and quick-tempered, very
foul-mouthed when he was angry, and of a most retiring
disposition. During all the years that he lived at Horsham, I
doubt if ever he set foot in the town. He had a garden and two or
three fields round his house, and there he would take his
exercise, though very often for weeks on end he would never leave
his room. He drank a great deal of brandy and smoked very
heavily, but he would see no society and did not want any
friends, not even his own brother.

"He didn't mind me; in fact, he took a fancy to me, for at the
time when he saw me first I was a youngster of twelve or so. This
would be in the year 1878, after he had been eight or nine years
in England. He begged my father to let me live with him and he
was very kind to me in his way. When he was sober he used to be
fond of playing backgammon and draughts with me, and he would
make me his representative both with the servants and with the
tradespeople, so that by the time that I was sixteen I was quite
master of the house. I kept all the keys and could go where I
liked and do what I liked, so long as I did not disturb him in
his privacy. There was one singular exception, however, for he
had a single room, a lumber-room up among the attics, which was
invariably locked, and which he would never permit either me or
anyone else to enter. With a boy's curiosity I have peeped
through the keyhole, but I was never able to see more than such a
collection of old trunks and bundles as would be expected in such
a room.

"One day--it was in March, 1883--a letter with a foreign stamp
lay upon the table in front of the colonel's plate. It was not a
common thing for him to receive letters, for his bills were all
paid in ready money, and he had no friends of any sort. 'From
India!' said he as he took it up, 'Pondicherry postmark! What can
this be?' Opening it hurriedly, out there jumped five little
dried orange pips, which pattered down upon his plate. I began to
laugh at this, but the laugh was struck from my lips at the sight
of his face. His lip had fallen, his eyes were protruding, his
skin the colour of putty, and he glared at the envelope which he
still held in his trembling hand, 'K. K. K.!' he shrieked, and
then, 'My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me!'

"'What is it, uncle?' I cried.

"'Death,' said he, and rising from the table he retired to his
room, leaving me palpitating with horror. I took up the envelope
and saw scrawled in red ink upon the inner flap, just above the
gum, the letter K three times repeated. There was nothing else
save the five dried pips. What could be the reason of his
overpowering terror? I left the breakfast-table, and as I
ascended the stair I met him coming down with an old rusty key,
which must have belonged to the attic, in one hand, and a small
brass box, like a cashbox, in the other.

"'They may do what they like, but I'll checkmate them still,'
said he with an oath. 'Tell Mary that I shall want a fire in my
room to-day, and send down to Fordham, the Horsham lawyer.'

"I did as he ordered, and when the lawyer arrived I was asked to
step up to the room. The fire was burning brightly, and in the
grate there was a mass of black, fluffy ashes, as of burned
paper, while the brass box stood open and empty beside it. As I
glanced at the box I noticed, with a start, that upon the lid was
printed the treble K which I had read in the morning upon the
envelope.

"'I wish you, John,' said my uncle, 'to witness my will. I leave
my estate, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages, to
my brother, your father, whence it will, no doubt, descend to
you. If you can enjoy it in peace, well and good! If you find you
cannot, take my advice, my boy, and leave it to your deadliest
enemy. I am sorry to give you such a two-edged thing, but I can't
say what turn things are going to take. Kindly sign the paper
where Mr. Fordham shows you.'

"I signed the paper as directed, and the lawyer took it away with
him. The singular incident made, as you may think, the deepest
impression upon me, and I pondered over it and turned it every
way in my mind without being able to make anything of it. Yet I
could not shake off the vague feeling of dread which it left
behind, though the sensation grew less keen as the weeks passed
and nothing happened to disturb the usual routine of our lives. I
could see a change in my uncle, however. He drank more than ever,
and he was less inclined for any sort of society. Most of his
time he would spend in his room, with the door locked upon the
inside, but sometimes he would emerge in a sort of drunken frenzy
and would burst out of the house and tear about the garden with a
revolver in his hand, screaming out that he was afraid of no man,
and that he was not to be cooped up, like a sheep in a pen, by
man or devil. When these hot fits were over, however, he would
rush tumultuously in at the door and lock and bar it behind him,
like a man who can brazen it out no longer against the terror
which lies at the roots of his soul. At such times I have seen
his face, even on a cold day, glisten with moisture, as though it
were new raised from a basin.

"Well, to come to an end of the matter, Mr. Holmes, and not to
abuse your patience, there came a night when he made one of those
drunken sallies from which he never came back. We found him, when
we went to search for him, face downward in a little
green-scummed pool, which lay at the foot of the garden. There
was no sign of any violence, and the water was but two feet deep,
so that the jury, having regard to his known eccentricity,
brought in a verdict of 'suicide.' But I, who knew how he winced
from the very thought of death, had much ado to persuade myself
that he had gone out of his way to meet it. The matter passed,
however, and my father entered into possession of the estate, and
of some 14,000 pounds, which lay to his credit at the bank."

"One moment," Holmes interposed, "your statement is, I foresee,
one of the most remarkable to which I have ever listened. Let me
have the date of the reception by your uncle of the letter, and
the date of his supposed suicide."

"The letter arrived on March 10, 1883. His death was seven weeks
later, upon the night of May 2nd."

"Thank you. Pray proceed."

"When my father took over the Horsham property, he, at my
request, made a careful examination of the attic, which had been
always locked up. We found the brass box there, although its
contents had been destroyed. On the inside of the cover was a
paper label, with the initials of K. K. K. repeated upon it, and
'Letters, memoranda, receipts, and a register' written beneath.
These, we presume, indicated the nature of the papers which had
been destroyed by Colonel Openshaw. For the rest, there was
nothing of much importance in the attic save a great many
scattered papers and note-books bearing upon my uncle's life in
America. Some of them were of the war time and showed that he had
done his duty well and had borne the repute of a brave soldier.
Others were of a date during the reconstruction of the Southern
states, and were mostly concerned with politics, for he had
evidently taken a strong part in opposing the carpet-bag
politicians who had been sent down from the North.

"Well, it was the beginning of '84 when my father came to live at
Horsham, and all went as well as possible with us until the
January of '85. On the fourth day after the new year I heard my
father give a sharp cry of surprise as we sat together at the
breakfast-table. There he was, sitting with a newly opened
envelope in one hand and five dried orange pips in the
outstretched palm of the other one. He had always laughed at what
he called my cock-and-bull story about the colonel, but he looked
very scared and puzzled now that the same thing had come upon
himself.

"'Why, what on earth does this mean, John?' he stammered.

"My heart had turned to lead. 'It is K. K. K.,' said I.

"He looked inside the envelope. 'So it is,' he cried. 'Here are
the very letters. But what is this written above them?'

"'Put the papers on the sundial,' I read, peeping over his
shoulder.

"'What papers? What sundial?' he asked.

"'The sundial in the garden. There is no other,' said I; 'but the
papers must be those that are destroyed.'

"'Pooh!' said he, gripping hard at his courage. 'We are in a
civilised land here, and we can't have tomfoolery of this kind.
Where does the thing come from?'

"'From Dundee,' I answered, glancing at the postmark.

"'Some preposterous practical joke,' said he. 'What have I to do
with sundials and papers? I shall take no notice of such
nonsense.'

"'I should certainly speak to the police,' I said.

"'And be laughed at for my pains. Nothing of the sort.'

"'Then let me do so?'

"'No, I forbid you. I won't have a fuss made about such
nonsense.'

"It was in vain to argue with him, for he was a very obstinate
man. I went about, however, with a heart which was full of
forebodings.

"On the third day after the coming of the letter my father went
from home to visit an old friend of his, Major Freebody, who is
in command of one of the forts upon Portsdown Hill. I was glad
that he should go, for it seemed to me that he was farther from
danger when he was away from home. In that, however, I was in
error. Upon the second day of his absence I received a telegram
from the major, imploring me to come at once. My father had
fallen over one of the deep chalk-pits which abound in the
neighbourhood, and was lying senseless, with a shattered skull. I
hurried to him, but he passed away without having ever recovered
his consciousness. He had, as it appears, been returning from
Fareham in the twilight, and as the country was unknown to him,
and the chalk-pit unfenced, the jury had no hesitation in
bringing in a verdict of 'death from accidental causes.'
Carefully as I examined every fact connected with his death, I
was unable to find anything which could suggest the idea of
murder. There were no signs of violence, no footmarks, no
robbery, no record of strangers having been seen upon the roads.
And yet I need not tell you that my mind was far from at ease,
and that I was well-nigh certain that some foul plot had been
woven round him.

"In this sinister way I came into my inheritance. You will ask me
why I did not dispose of it? I answer, because I was well
convinced that our troubles were in some way dependent upon an
incident in my uncle's life, and that the danger would be as
pressing in one house as in another.

"It was in January, '85, that my poor father met his end, and two
years and eight months have elapsed since then. During that time
I have lived happily at Horsham, and I had begun to hope that
this curse had passed away from the family, and that it had ended
with the last generation. I had begun to take comfort too soon,
however; yesterday morning the blow fell in the very shape in
which it had come upon my father."

The young man took from his waistcoat a crumpled envelope, and
turning to the table he shook out upon it five little dried
orange pips.

"This is the envelope," he continued. "The postmark is
London--eastern division. Within are the very words which were
upon my father's last message: 'K. K. K.'; and then 'Put the
papers on the sundial.'"

"What have you done?" asked Holmes.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"To tell the truth"--he sank his face into his thin, white
hands--"I have felt helpless. I have felt like one of those poor
rabbits when the snake is writhing towards it. I seem to be in
the grasp of some resistless, inexorable evil, which no foresight
and no precautions can guard against."

"Tut! tut!" cried Sherlock Holmes. "You must act, man, or you are
lost. Nothing but energy can save you. This is no time for
despair."

"I have seen the police."

"Ah!"

"But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that
the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all
practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really
accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with
the warnings."

Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. "Incredible
imbecility!" he cried.

"They have, however, allowed me a policeman, who may remain in
the house with me."

"Has he come with you to-night?"

"No. His orders were to stay in the house."

Again Holmes raved in the air.

"Why did you come to me," he cried, "and, above all, why did you
not come at once?"

"I did not know. It was only to-day that I spoke to Major
Prendergast about my troubles and was advised by him to come to
you."

"It is really two days since you had the letter. We should have
acted before this. You have no further evidence, I suppose, than
that which you have placed before us--no suggestive detail which
might help us?"

"There is one thing," said John Openshaw. He rummaged in his coat
pocket, and, drawing out a piece of discoloured, blue-tinted
paper, he laid it out upon the table. "I have some remembrance,"
said he, "that on the day when my uncle burned the papers I
observed that the small, unburned margins which lay amid the
ashes were of this particular colour. I found this single sheet
upon the floor of his room, and I am inclined to think that it
may be one of the papers which has, perhaps, fluttered out from
among the others, and in that way has escaped destruction. Beyond
the mention of pips, I do not see that it helps us much. I think
myself that it is a page from some private diary. The writing is
undoubtedly my uncle's."

Holmes moved the lamp, and we both bent over the sheet of paper,
which showed by its ragged edge that it had indeed been torn from
a book. It was headed, "March, 1869," and beneath were the
following enigmatical notices:

"4th. Hudson came. Same old platform.

"7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and
      John Swain, of St. Augustine.

"9th. McCauley cleared.

"10th. John Swain cleared.

"12th. Visited Paramore. All well."

"Thank you!" said Holmes, folding up the paper and returning it
to our visitor. "And now you must on no account lose another
instant. We cannot spare time even to discuss what you have told
me. You must get home instantly and act."

"What shall I do?"

"There is but one thing to do. It must be done at once. You must
put this piece of paper which you have shown us into the brass
box which you have described. You must also put in a note to say
that all the other papers were burned by your uncle, and that
this is the only one which remains. You must assert that in such
words as will carry conviction with them. Having done this, you
must at once put the box out upon the sundial, as directed. Do
you understand?"

"Entirely."

"Do not think of revenge, or anything of the sort, at present. I
think that we may gain that by means of the law; but we have our
web to weave, while theirs is already woven. The first
consideration is to remove the pressing danger which threatens
you. The second is to clear up the mystery and to punish the
guilty parties."

"I thank you," said the young man, rising and pulling on his
overcoat. "You have given me fresh life and hope. I shall
certainly do as you advise."

"Do not lose an instant. And, above all, take care of yourself in
the meanwhile, for I do not think that there can be a doubt that
you are threatened by a very real and imminent danger. How do you
go back?"

"By train from Waterloo."

"It is not yet nine. The streets will be crowded, so I trust that
you may be in safety. And yet you cannot guard yourself too
closely."

"I am armed."

"That is well. To-morrow I shall set to work upon your case."

"I shall see you at Horsham, then?"

"No, your secret lies in London. It is there that I shall seek
it."

"Then I shall call upon you in a day, or in two days, with news
as to the box and the papers. I shall take your advice in every
particular." He shook hands with us and took his leave. Outside
the wind still screamed and the rain splashed and pattered
against the windows. This strange, wild story seemed to have come
to us from amid the mad elements--blown in upon us like a sheet
of sea-weed in a gale--and now to have been reabsorbed by them
once more.

Sherlock Holmes sat for some time in silence, with his head sunk
forward and his eyes bent upon the red glow of the fire. Then he
lit his pipe, and leaning back in his chair he watched the blue
smoke-rings as they chased each other up to the ceiling.

"I think, Watson," he remarked at last, "that of all our cases we
have had none more fantastic than this."

"Save, perhaps, the Sign of Four."

"Well, yes. Save, perhaps, that. And yet this John Openshaw seems
to me to be walking amid even greater perils than did the
Sholtos."

"But have you," I asked, "formed any definite conception as to
what these perils are?"

"There can be no question as to their nature," he answered.

"Then what are they? Who is this K. K. K., and why does he pursue
this unhappy family?"

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the
arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. "The ideal
reasoner," he remarked, "would, when he had once been shown a
single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the
chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which
would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole
animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who
has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents
should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both
before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the
reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study
which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the
aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest
pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to
utilise all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this
in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all
knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and
encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so
impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge
which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have
endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly, you on one
occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my limits
in a very precise fashion."

"Yes," I answered, laughing. "It was a singular document.
Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I
remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the
mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry
eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime
records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and
self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the
main points of my analysis."

Holmes grinned at the last item. "Well," he said, "I say now, as
I said then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic
stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the
rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he
can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a case as the one which
has been submitted to us to-night, we need certainly to muster
all our resources. Kindly hand me down the letter K of the
'American Encyclopaedia' which stands upon the shelf beside you.
Thank you. Now let us consider the situation and see what may be
deduced from it. In the first place, we may start with a strong
presumption that Colonel Openshaw had some very strong reason for
leaving America. Men at his time of life do not change all their
habits and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for
the lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love
of solitude in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of
someone or something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis
that it was fear of someone or something which drove him from
America. As to what it was he feared, we can only deduce that by
considering the formidable letters which were received by himself
and his successors. Did you remark the postmarks of those
letters?"

"The first was from Pondicherry, the second from Dundee, and the
third from London."

"From East London. What do you deduce from that?"

"They are all seaports. That the writer was on board of a ship."

"Excellent. We have already a clue. There can be no doubt that
the probability--the strong probability--is that the writer was
on board of a ship. And now let us consider another point. In the
case of Pondicherry, seven weeks elapsed between the threat and
its fulfilment, in Dundee it was only some three or four days.
Does that suggest anything?"

"A greater distance to travel."

"But the letter had also a greater distance to come."

"Then I do not see the point."

"There is at least a presumption that the vessel in which the man
or men are is a sailing-ship. It looks as if they always send
their singular warning or token before them when starting upon
their mission. You see how quickly the deed followed the sign
when it came from Dundee. If they had come from Pondicherry in a
steamer they would have arrived almost as soon as their letter.
But, as a matter of fact, seven weeks elapsed. I think that those
seven weeks represented the difference between the mail-boat which
brought the letter and the sailing vessel which brought the
writer."

"It is possible."

"More than that. It is probable. And now you see the deadly
urgency of this new case, and why I urged young Openshaw to
caution. The blow has always fallen at the end of the time which
it would take the senders to travel the distance. But this one
comes from London, and therefore we cannot count upon delay."

"Good God!" I cried. "What can it mean, this relentless
persecution?"

"The papers which Openshaw carried are obviously of vital
importance to the person or persons in the sailing-ship. I think
that it is quite clear that there must be more than one of them.
A single man could not have carried out two deaths in such a way
as to deceive a coroner's jury. There must have been several in
it, and they must have been men of resource and determination.
Their papers they mean to have, be the holder of them who it may.
In this way you see K. K. K. ceases to be the initials of an
individual and becomes the badge of a society."

"But of what society?"

"Have you never--" said Sherlock Holmes, bending forward and
sinking his voice--"have you never heard of the Ku Klux Klan?"

"I never have."

Holmes turned over the leaves of the book upon his knee. "Here it
is," said he presently:

"'Ku Klux Klan. A name derived from the fanciful resemblance to
the sound produced by cocking a rifle. This terrible secret
society was formed by some ex-Confederate soldiers in the
Southern states after the Civil War, and it rapidly formed local
branches in different parts of the country, notably in Tennessee,
Louisiana, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Its power was
used for political purposes, principally for the terrorising of
the negro voters and the murdering and driving from the country
of those who were opposed to its views. Its outrages were usually
preceded by a warning sent to the marked man in some fantastic
but generally recognised shape--a sprig of oak-leaves in some
parts, melon seeds or orange pips in others. On receiving this
the victim might either openly abjure his former ways, or might
fly from the country. If he braved the matter out, death would
unfailingly come upon him, and usually in some strange and
unforeseen manner. So perfect was the organisation of the
society, and so systematic its methods, that there is hardly a
case upon record where any man succeeded in braving it with
impunity, or in which any of its outrages were traced home to the
perpetrators. For some years the organisation flourished in spite
of the efforts of the United States government and of the better
classes of the community in the South. Eventually, in the year
1869, the movement rather suddenly collapsed, although there have
been sporadic outbreaks of the same sort since that date.'

"You will observe," said Holmes, laying down the volume, "that
the sudden breaking up of the society was coincident with the
disappearance of Openshaw from America with their papers. It may
well have been cause and effect. It is no wonder that he and his
family have some of the more implacable spirits upon their track.
You can understand that this register and diary may implicate
some of the first men in the South, and that there may be many
who will not sleep easy at night until it is recovered."

"Then the page we have seen--"

"Is such as we might expect. It ran, if I remember right, 'sent
the pips to A, B, and C'--that is, sent the society's warning to
them. Then there are successive entries that A and B cleared, or
left the country, and finally that C was visited, with, I fear, a
sinister result for C. Well, I think, Doctor, that we may let
some light into this dark place, and I believe that the only
chance young Openshaw has in the meantime is to do what I have
told him. There is nothing more to be said or to be done
to-night, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for
half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable
ways of our fellow-men."


It had cleared in the morning, and the sun was shining with a
subdued brightness through the dim veil which hangs over the
great city. Sherlock Holmes was already at breakfast when I came
down.

"You will excuse me for not waiting for you," said he; "I have, I
foresee, a very busy day before me in looking into this case of
young Openshaw's."

"What steps will you take?" I asked.

"It will very much depend upon the results of my first inquiries.
I may have to go down to Horsham, after all."

"You will not go there first?"

"No, I shall commence with the City. Just ring the bell and the
maid will bring up your coffee."

As I waited, I lifted the unopened newspaper from the table and
glanced my eye over it. It rested upon a heading which sent a
chill to my heart.

"Holmes," I cried, "you are too late."

"Ah!" said he, laying down his cup, "I feared as much. How was it
done?" He spoke calmly, but I could see that he was deeply moved.

"My eye caught the name of Openshaw, and the heading 'Tragedy
Near Waterloo Bridge.' Here is the account:

"Between nine and ten last night Police-Constable Cook, of the H
Division, on duty near Waterloo Bridge, heard a cry for help and
a splash in the water. The night, however, was extremely dark and
stormy, so that, in spite of the help of several passers-by, it
was quite impossible to effect a rescue. The alarm, however, was
given, and, by the aid of the water-police, the body was
eventually recovered. It proved to be that of a young gentleman
whose name, as it appears from an envelope which was found in his
pocket, was John Openshaw, and whose residence is near Horsham.
It is conjectured that he may have been hurrying down to catch
the last train from Waterloo Station, and that in his haste and
the extreme darkness he missed his path and walked over the edge
of one of the small landing-places for river steamboats. The body
exhibited no traces of violence, and there can be no doubt that
the deceased had been the victim of an unfortunate accident,
which should have the effect of calling the attention of the
authorities to the condition of the riverside landing-stages."

We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and
shaken than I had ever seen him.

"That hurts my pride, Watson," he said at last. "It is a petty
feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal
matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my
hand upon this gang. That he should come to me for help, and that
I should send him away to his death--!" He sprang from his chair
and paced about the room in uncontrollable agitation, with a
flush upon his sallow cheeks and a nervous clasping and
unclasping of his long thin hands.

"They must be cunning devils," he exclaimed at last. "How could
they have decoyed him down there? The Embankment is not on the
direct line to the station. The bridge, no doubt, was too
crowded, even on such a night, for their purpose. Well, Watson,
we shall see who will win in the long run. I am going out now!"

"To the police?"

"No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may
take the flies, but not before."

All day I was engaged in my professional work, and it was late in
the evening before I returned to Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes
had not come back yet. It was nearly ten o'clock before he
entered, looking pale and worn. He walked up to the sideboard,
and tearing a piece from the loaf he devoured it voraciously,
washing it down with a long draught of water.

"You are hungry," I remarked.

"Starving. It had escaped my memory. I have had nothing since
breakfast."

"Nothing?"

"Not a bite. I had no time to think of it."

"And how have you succeeded?"

"Well."

"You have a clue?"

"I have them in the hollow of my hand. Young Openshaw shall not
long remain unavenged. Why, Watson, let us put their own devilish
trade-mark upon them. It is well thought of!"

"What do you mean?"

He took an orange from the cupboard, and tearing it to pieces he
squeezed out the pips upon the table. Of these he took five and
thrust them into an envelope. On the inside of the flap he wrote
"S. H. for J. O." Then he sealed it and addressed it to "Captain
James Calhoun, Barque 'Lone Star,' Savannah, Georgia."

"That will await him when he enters port," said he, chuckling.
"It may give him a sleepless night. He will find it as sure a
precursor of his fate as Openshaw did before him."

"And who is this Captain Calhoun?"

"The leader of the gang. I shall have the others, but he first."

"How did you trace it, then?"

He took a large sheet of paper from his pocket, all covered with
dates and names.

"I have spent the whole day," said he, "over Lloyd's registers
and files of the old papers, following the future career of every
vessel which touched at Pondicherry in January and February in
'83. There were thirty-six ships of fair tonnage which were
reported there during those months. Of these, one, the 'Lone Star,'
instantly attracted my attention, since, although it was reported
as having cleared from London, the name is that which is given to
one of the states of the Union."

"Texas, I think."

"I was not and am not sure which; but I knew that the ship must
have an American origin."

"What then?"

"I searched the Dundee records, and when I found that the barque
'Lone Star' was there in January, '85, my suspicion became a
certainty. I then inquired as to the vessels which lay at present
in the port of London."

"Yes?"

"The 'Lone Star' had arrived here last week. I went down to the
Albert Dock and found that she had been taken down the river by
the early tide this morning, homeward bound to Savannah. I wired
to Gravesend and learned that she had passed some time ago, and
as the wind is easterly I have no doubt that she is now past the
Goodwins and not very far from the Isle of Wight."

"What will you do, then?"

"Oh, I have my hand upon him. He and the two mates, are as I
learn, the only native-born Americans in the ship. The others are
Finns and Germans. I know, also, that they were all three away
from the ship last night. I had it from the stevedore who has
been loading their cargo. By the time that their sailing-ship
reaches Savannah the mail-boat will have carried this letter, and
the cable will have informed the police of Savannah that these
three gentlemen are badly wanted here upon a charge of murder."

There is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans,
and the murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the
orange pips which would show them that another, as cunning and as
resolute as themselves, was upon their track. Very long and very
severe were the equinoctial gales that year. We waited long for
news of the "Lone Star" of Savannah, but none ever reached us. We
did at last hear that somewhere far out in the Atlantic a
shattered stern-post of a boat was seen swinging in the trough
of a wave, with the letters "L. S." carved upon it, and that is
all which we shall ever know of the fate of the "Lone Star."



ADVENTURE VI. THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP

Isa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal
of the Theological College of St. George's, was much addicted to
opium. The habit grew upon him, as I understand, from some
foolish freak when he was at college; for having read De
Quincey's description of his dreams and sensations, he had
drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the
same effects. He found, as so many more have done, that the
practice is easier to attain than to get rid of, and for many
years he continued to be a slave to the drug, an object of
mingled horror and pity to his friends and relatives. I can see
him now, with yellow, pasty face, drooping lids, and pin-point
pupils, all huddled in a chair, the wreck and ruin of a noble
man.

One night--it was in June, '89--there came a ring to my bell,
about the hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the
clock. I sat up in my chair, and my wife laid her needle-work
down in her lap and made a little face of disappointment.

"A patient!" said she. "You'll have to go out."

I groaned, for I was newly come back from a weary day.

We heard the door open, a few hurried words, and then quick steps
upon the linoleum. Our own door flew open, and a lady, clad in
some dark-coloured stuff, with a black veil, entered the room.

"You will excuse my calling so late," she began, and then,
suddenly losing her self-control, she ran forward, threw her arms
about my wife's neck, and sobbed upon her shoulder. "Oh, I'm in
such trouble!" she cried; "I do so want a little help."

"Why," said my wife, pulling up her veil, "it is Kate Whitney.
How you startled me, Kate! I had not an idea who you were when
you came in."

"I didn't know what to do, so I came straight to you." That was
always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds
to a light-house.

"It was very sweet of you to come. Now, you must have some wine
and water, and sit here comfortably and tell us all about it. Or
should you rather that I sent James off to bed?"

"Oh, no, no! I want the doctor's advice and help, too. It's about
Isa. He has not been home for two days. I am so frightened about
him!"

It was not the first time that she had spoken to us of her
husband's trouble, to me as a doctor, to my wife as an old friend
and school companion. We soothed and comforted her by such words
as we could find. Did she know where her husband was? Was it
possible that we could bring him back to her?

It seems that it was. She had the surest information that of late
he had, when the fit was on him, made use of an opium den in the
farthest east of the City. Hitherto his orgies had always been
confined to one day, and he had come back, twitching and
shattered, in the evening. But now the spell had been upon him
eight-and-forty hours, and he lay there, doubtless among the
dregs of the docks, breathing in the poison or sleeping off the
effects. There he was to be found, she was sure of it, at the Bar
of Gold, in Upper Swandam Lane. But what was she to do? How could
she, a young and timid woman, make her way into such a place and
pluck her husband out from among the ruffians who surrounded him?

There was the case, and of course there was but one way out of
it. Might I not escort her to this place? And then, as a second
thought, why should she come at all? I was Isa Whitney's medical
adviser, and as such I had influence over him. I could manage it
better if I were alone. I promised her on my word that I would
send him home in a cab within two hours if he were indeed at the
address which she had given me. And so in ten minutes I had left
my armchair and cheery sitting-room behind me, and was speeding
eastward in a hansom on a strange errand, as it seemed to me at
the time, though the future only could show how strange it was to
be.

But there was no great difficulty in the first stage of my
adventure. Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the
high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east
of London Bridge. Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached
by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the
mouth of a cave, I found the den of which I was in search.
Ordering my cab to wait, I passed down the steps, worn hollow in
the centre by the ceaseless tread of drunken feet; and by the
light of a flickering oil-lamp above the door I found the latch
and made my way into a long, low room, thick and heavy with the
brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the
forecastle of an emigrant ship.

Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying
in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads
thrown back, and chins pointing upward, with here and there a
dark, lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the black
shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright,
now faint, as the burning poison waxed or waned in the bowls of
the metal pipes. The most lay silent, but some muttered to
themselves, and others talked together in a strange, low,
monotonous voice, their conversation coming in gushes, and then
suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his own
thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbour. At
the farther end was a small brazier of burning charcoal, beside
which on a three-legged wooden stool there sat a tall, thin old
man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and his elbows upon
his knees, staring into the fire.

As I entered, a sallow Malay attendant had hurried up with a pipe
for me and a supply of the drug, beckoning me to an empty berth.

"Thank you. I have not come to stay," said I. "There is a friend
of mine here, Mr. Isa Whitney, and I wish to speak with him."

There was a movement and an exclamation from my right, and
peering through the gloom, I saw Whitney, pale, haggard, and
unkempt, staring out at me.

"My God! It's Watson," said he. He was in a pitiable state of
reaction, with every nerve in a twitter. "I say, Watson, what
o'clock is it?"

"Nearly eleven."

"Of what day?"

"Of Friday, June 19th."

"Good heavens! I thought it was Wednesday. It is Wednesday. What
d'you want to frighten a chap for?" He sank his face onto his
arms and began to sob in a high treble key.

"I tell you that it is Friday, man. Your wife has been waiting
this two days for you. You should be ashamed of yourself!"

"So I am. But you've got mixed, Watson, for I have only been here
a few hours, three pipes, four pipes--I forget how many. But I'll
go home with you. I wouldn't frighten Kate--poor little Kate.
Give me your hand! Have you a cab?"

"Yes, I have one waiting."

"Then I shall go in it. But I must owe something. Find what I
owe, Watson. I am all off colour. I can do nothing for myself."

I walked down the narrow passage between the double row of
sleepers, holding my breath to keep out the vile, stupefying
fumes of the drug, and looking about for the manager. As I passed
the tall man who sat by the brazier I felt a sudden pluck at my
skirt, and a low voice whispered, "Walk past me, and then look
back at me." The words fell quite distinctly upon my ear. I
glanced down. They could only have come from the old man at my
side, and yet he sat now as absorbed as ever, very thin, very
wrinkled, bent with age, an opium pipe dangling down from between
his knees, as though it had dropped in sheer lassitude from his
fingers. I took two steps forward and looked back. It took all my
self-control to prevent me from breaking out into a cry of
astonishment. He had turned his back so that none could see him
but I. His form had filled out, his wrinkles were gone, the dull
eyes had regained their fire, and there, sitting by the fire and
grinning at my surprise, was none other than Sherlock Holmes. He
made a slight motion to me to approach him, and instantly, as he
turned his face half round to the company once more, subsided
into a doddering, loose-lipped senility.

"Holmes!" I whispered, "what on earth are you doing in this den?"

"As low as you can," he answered; "I have excellent ears. If you
would have the great kindness to get rid of that sottish friend
of yours I should be exceedingly glad to have a little talk with
you."

"I have a cab outside."

"Then pray send him home in it. You may safely trust him, for he
appears to be too limp to get into any mischief. I should
recommend you also to send a note by the cabman to your wife to
say that you have thrown in your lot with me. If you will wait
outside, I shall be with you in five minutes."

It was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes' requests, for
they were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with
such a quiet air of mastery. I felt, however, that when Whitney
was once confined in the cab my mission was practically
accomplished; and for the rest, I could not wish anything better
than to be associated with my friend in one of those singular
adventures which were the normal condition of his existence. In a
few minutes I had written my note, paid Whitney's bill, led him
out to the cab, and seen him driven through the darkness. In a
very short time a decrepit figure had emerged from the opium den,
and I was walking down the street with Sherlock Holmes. For two
streets he shuffled along with a bent back and an uncertain foot.
Then, glancing quickly round, he straightened himself out and
burst into a hearty fit of laughter.

"I suppose, Watson," said he, "that you imagine that I have added
opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little
weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical
views."

"I was certainly surprised to find you there."

"But not more so than I to find you."

"I came to find a friend."

"And I to find an enemy."

"An enemy?"

"Yes; one of my natural enemies, or, shall I say, my natural
prey. Briefly, Watson, I am in the midst of a very remarkable
inquiry, and I have hoped to find a clue in the incoherent
ramblings of these sots, as I have done before now. Had I been
recognised in that den my life would not have been worth an
hour's purchase; for I have used it before now for my own
purposes, and the rascally Lascar who runs it has sworn to have
vengeance upon me. There is a trap-door at the back of that
building, near the corner of Paul's Wharf, which could tell some
strange tales of what has passed through it upon the moonless
nights."

"What! You do not mean bodies?"

"Ay, bodies, Watson. We should be rich men if we had 1000 pounds
for every poor devil who has been done to death in that den. It
is the vilest murder-trap on the whole riverside, and I fear that
Neville St. Clair has entered it never to leave it more. But our
trap should be here." He put his two forefingers between his
teeth and whistled shrilly--a signal which was answered by a
similar whistle from the distance, followed shortly by the rattle
of wheels and the clink of horses' hoofs.

"Now, Watson," said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through
the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from
its side lanterns. "You'll come with me, won't you?"

"If I can be of use."

"Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still
more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one."

"The Cedars?"

"Yes; that is Mr. St. Clair's house. I am staying there while I
conduct the inquiry."

"Where is it, then?"

"Near Lee, in Kent. We have a seven-mile drive before us."

"But I am all in the dark."

"Of course you are. You'll know all about it presently. Jump up
here. All right, John; we shall not need you. Here's half a
crown. Look out for me to-morrow, about eleven. Give her her
head. So long, then!"

He flicked the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through
the endless succession of sombre and deserted streets, which
widened gradually, until we were flying across a broad
balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly
beneath us. Beyond lay another dull wilderness of bricks and
mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy, regular footfall of
the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some belated party of
revellers. A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the sky, and a
star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts of
the clouds. Holmes drove in silence, with his head sunk upon his
breast, and the air of a man who is lost in thought, while I sat
beside him, curious to learn what this new quest might be which
seemed to tax his powers so sorely, and yet afraid to break in
upon the current of his thoughts. We had driven several miles,
and were beginning to get to the fringe of the belt of suburban
villas, when he shook himself, shrugged his shoulders, and lit up
his pipe with the air of a man who has satisfied himself that he
is acting for the best.

"You have a grand gift of silence, Watson," said he. "It makes
you quite invaluable as a companion. 'Pon my word, it is a great
thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are
not over-pleasant. I was wondering what I should say to this dear
little woman to-night when she meets me at the door."

"You forget that I know nothing about it."

"I shall just have time to tell you the facts of the case before
we get to Lee. It seems absurdly simple, and yet, somehow I can
get nothing to go upon. There's plenty of thread, no doubt, but I
can't get the end of it into my hand. Now, I'll state the case
clearly and concisely to you, Watson, and maybe you can see a
spark where all is dark to me."

"Proceed, then."

"Some years ago--to be definite, in May, 1884--there came to Lee
a gentleman, Neville St. Clair by name, who appeared to have
plenty of money. He took a large villa, laid out the grounds very
nicely, and lived generally in good style. By degrees he made
friends in the neighbourhood, and in 1887 he married the daughter
of a local brewer, by whom he now has two children. He had no
occupation, but was interested in several companies and went into
town as a rule in the morning, returning by the 5:14 from Cannon
Street every night. Mr. St. Clair is now thirty-seven years of
age, is a man of temperate habits, a good husband, a very
affectionate father, and a man who is popular with all who know
him. I may add that his whole debts at the present moment, as far
as we have been able to ascertain, amount to 88 pounds 10s., while
he has 220 pounds standing to his credit in the Capital and
Counties Bank. There is no reason, therefore, to think that money
troubles have been weighing upon his mind.

"Last Monday Mr. Neville St. Clair went into town rather earlier
than usual, remarking before he started that he had two important
commissions to perform, and that he would bring his little boy
home a box of bricks. Now, by the merest chance, his wife
received a telegram upon this same Monday, very shortly after his
departure, to the effect that a small parcel of considerable
value which she had been expecting was waiting for her at the
offices of the Aberdeen Shipping Company. Now, if you are well up
in your London, you will know that the office of the company is
in Fresno Street, which branches out of Upper Swandam Lane, where
you found me to-night. Mrs. St. Clair had her lunch, started for
the City, did some shopping, proceeded to the company's office,
got her packet, and found herself at exactly 4:35 walking through
Swandam Lane on her way back to the station. Have you followed me
so far?"

"It is very clear."

"If you remember, Monday was an exceedingly hot day, and Mrs. St.
Clair walked slowly, glancing about in the hope of seeing a cab,
as she did not like the neighbourhood in which she found herself.
While she was walking in this way down Swandam Lane, she suddenly
heard an ejaculation or cry, and was struck cold to see her
husband looking down at her and, as it seemed to her, beckoning
to her from a second-floor window. The window was open, and she
distinctly saw his face, which she describes as being terribly
agitated. He waved his hands frantically to her, and then
vanished from the window so suddenly that it seemed to her that
he had been plucked back by some irresistible force from behind.
One singular point which struck her quick feminine eye was that
although he wore some dark coat, such as he had started to town
in, he had on neither collar nor necktie.

"Convinced that something was amiss with him, she rushed down the
steps--for the house was none other than the opium den in which
you found me to-night--and running through the front room she
attempted to ascend the stairs which led to the first floor. At
the foot of the stairs, however, she met this Lascar scoundrel of
whom I have spoken, who thrust her back and, aided by a Dane, who
acts as assistant there, pushed her out into the street. Filled
with the most maddening doubts and fears, she rushed down the
lane and, by rare good-fortune, met in Fresno Street a number of
constables with an inspector, all on their way to their beat. The
inspector and two men accompanied her back, and in spite of the
continued resistance of the proprietor, they made their way to
the room in which Mr. St. Clair had last been seen. There was no
sign of him there. In fact, in the whole of that floor there was
no one to be found save a crippled wretch of hideous aspect, who,
it seems, made his home there. Both he and the Lascar stoutly
swore that no one else had been in the front room during the
afternoon. So determined was their denial that the inspector was
staggered, and had almost come to believe that Mrs. St. Clair had
been deluded when, with a cry, she sprang at a small deal box
which lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. Out there fell
a cascade of children's bricks. It was the toy which he had
promised to bring home.

"This discovery, and the evident confusion which the cripple
showed, made the inspector realise that the matter was serious.
The rooms were carefully examined, and results all pointed to an
abominable crime. The front room was plainly furnished as a
sitting-room and led into a small bedroom, which looked out upon
the back of one of the wharves. Between the wharf and the bedroom
window is a narrow strip, which is dry at low tide but is covered
at high tide with at least four and a half feet of water. The
bedroom window was a broad one and opened from below. On
examination traces of blood were to be seen upon the windowsill,
and several scattered drops were visible upon the wooden floor of
the bedroom. Thrust away behind a curtain in the front room were
all the clothes of Mr. Neville St. Clair, with the exception of
his coat. His boots, his socks, his hat, and his watch--all were
there. There were no signs of violence upon any of these
garments, and there were no other traces of Mr. Neville St.
Clair. Out of the window he must apparently have gone for no
other exit could be discovered, and the ominous bloodstains upon
the sill gave little promise that he could save himself by
swimming, for the tide was at its very highest at the moment of
the tragedy.

"And now as to the villains who seemed to be immediately
implicated in the matter. The Lascar was known to be a man of the
vilest antecedents, but as, by Mrs. St. Clair's story, he was
known to have been at the foot of the stair within a very few
seconds of her husband's appearance at the window, he could
hardly have been more than an accessory to the crime. His defence
was one of absolute ignorance, and he protested that he had no
knowledge as to the doings of Hugh Boone, his lodger, and that he
could not account in any way for the presence of the missing
gentleman's clothes.

"So much for the Lascar manager. Now for the sinister cripple who
lives upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was
certainly the last human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St.
Clair. His name is Hugh Boone, and his hideous face is one which
is familiar to every man who goes much to the City. He is a
professional beggar, though in order to avoid the police
regulations he pretends to a small trade in wax vestas. Some
little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the left-hand
side, there is, as you may have remarked, a small angle in the
wall. Here it is that this creature takes his daily seat,
cross-legged with his tiny stock of matches on his lap, and as he
is a piteous spectacle a small rain of charity descends into the
greasy leather cap which lies upon the pavement beside him. I
have watched the fellow more than once before ever I thought of
making his professional acquaintance, and I have been surprised
at the harvest which he has reaped in a short time. His
appearance, you see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him
without observing him. A shock of orange hair, a pale face
disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has
turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a
pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular
contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid
the common crowd of mendicants and so, too, does his wit, for he
is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be
thrown at him by the passers-by. This is the man whom we now
learn to have been the lodger at the opium den, and to have been
the last man to see the gentleman of whom we are in quest."

"But a cripple!" said I. "What could he have done single-handed
against a man in the prime of life?"

"He is a cripple in the sense that he walks with a limp; but in
other respects he appears to be a powerful and well-nurtured man.
Surely your medical experience would tell you, Watson, that
weakness in one limb is often compensated for by exceptional
strength in the others."

"Pray continue your narrative."

"Mrs. St. Clair had fainted at the sight of the blood upon the
window, and she was escorted home in a cab by the police, as her
presence could be of no help to them in their investigations.
Inspector Barton, who had charge of the case, made a very careful
examination of the premises, but without finding anything which
threw any light upon the matter. One mistake had been made in not
arresting Boone instantly, as he was allowed some few minutes
during which he might have communicated with his friend the
Lascar, but this fault was soon remedied, and he was seized and
searched, without anything being found which could incriminate
him. There were, it is true, some blood-stains upon his right
shirt-sleeve, but he pointed to his ring-finger, which had been
cut near the nail, and explained that the bleeding came from
there, adding that he had been to the window not long before, and
that the stains which had been observed there came doubtless from
the same source. He denied strenuously having ever seen Mr.
Neville St. Clair and swore that the presence of the clothes in
his room was as much a mystery to him as to the police. As to
Mrs. St. Clair's assertion that she had actually seen her husband
at the window, he declared that she must have been either mad or
dreaming. He was removed, loudly protesting, to the
police-station, while the inspector remained upon the premises in
the hope that the ebbing tide might afford some fresh clue.

"And it did, though they hardly found upon the mud-bank what they
had feared to find. It was Neville St. Clair's coat, and not
Neville St. Clair, which lay uncovered as the tide receded. And
what do you think they found in the pockets?"

"I cannot imagine."

"No, I don't think you would guess. Every pocket stuffed with
pennies and half-pennies--421 pennies and 270 half-pennies. It
was no wonder that it had not been swept away by the tide. But a
human body is a different matter. There is a fierce eddy between
the wharf and the house. It seemed likely enough that the
weighted coat had remained when the stripped body had been sucked
away into the river."

"But I understand that all the other clothes were found in the
room. Would the body be dressed in a coat alone?"

"No, sir, but the facts might be met speciously enough. Suppose
that this man Boone had thrust Neville St. Clair through the
window, there is no human eye which could have seen the deed.
What would he do then? It would of course instantly strike him
that he must get rid of the tell-tale garments. He would seize
the coat, then, and be in the act of throwing it out, when it
would occur to him that it would swim and not sink. He has little
time, for he has heard the scuffle downstairs when the wife tried
to force her way up, and perhaps he has already heard from his
Lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up the street.
There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret
hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he
stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the
pockets to make sure of the coat's sinking. He throws it out, and
would have done the same with the other garments had not he heard
the rush of steps below, and only just had time to close the
window when the police appeared."

"It certainly sounds feasible."

"Well, we will take it as a working hypothesis for want of a
better. Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the
station, but it could not be shown that there had ever before
been anything against him. He had for years been known as a
professional beggar, but his life appeared to have been a very
quiet and innocent one. There the matter stands at present, and
the questions which have to be solved--what Neville St. Clair was
doing in the opium den, what happened to him when there, where is
he now, and what Hugh Boone had to do with his disappearance--are
all as far from a solution as ever. I confess that I cannot
recall any case within my experience which looked at the first
glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties."

While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of
events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great
town until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and
we rattled along with a country hedge upon either side of us.
Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered
villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows.

"We are on the outskirts of Lee," said my companion. "We have
touched on three English counties in our short drive, starting in
Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent.
See that light among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside
that lamp sits a woman whose anxious ears have already, I have
little doubt, caught the clink of our horse's feet."

"But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?" I
asked.

"Because there are many inquiries which must be made out here.
Mrs. St. Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal, and
you may rest assured that she will have nothing but a welcome for
my friend and colleague. I hate to meet her, Watson, when I have
no news of her husband. Here we are. Whoa, there, whoa!"

We had pulled up in front of a large villa which stood within its
own grounds. A stable-boy had run out to the horse's head, and
springing down, I followed Holmes up the small, winding
gravel-drive which led to the house. As we approached, the door
flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad
in some sort of light mousseline de soie, with a touch of fluffy
pink chiffon at her neck and wrists. She stood with her figure
outlined against the flood of light, one hand upon the door, one
half-raised in her eagerness, her body slightly bent, her head
and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a standing
question.

"Well?" she cried, "well?" And then, seeing that there were two
of us, she gave a cry of hope which sank into a groan as she saw
that my companion shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

"No good news?"

"None."

"No bad?"

"No."

"Thank God for that. But come in. You must be weary, for you have
had a long day."

"This is my friend, Dr. Watson. He has been of most vital use to
me in several of my cases, and a lucky chance has made it
possible for me to bring him out and associate him with this
investigation."

"I am delighted to see you," said she, pressing my hand warmly.
"You will, I am sure, forgive anything that may be wanting in our
arrangements, when you consider the blow which has come so
suddenly upon us."

"My dear madam," said I, "I am an old campaigner, and if I were
not I can very well see that no apology is needed. If I can be of
any assistance, either to you or to my friend here, I shall be
indeed happy."

"Now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said the lady as we entered a
well-lit dining-room, upon the table of which a cold supper had
been laid out, "I should very much like to ask you one or two
plain questions, to which I beg that you will give a plain
answer."

"Certainly, madam."

"Do not trouble about my feelings. I am not hysterical, nor given
to fainting. I simply wish to hear your real, real opinion."

"Upon what point?"

"In your heart of hearts, do you think that Neville is alive?"

Sherlock Holmes seemed to be embarrassed by the question.
"Frankly, now!" she repeated, standing upon the rug and looking
keenly down at him as he leaned back in a basket-chair.

"Frankly, then, madam, I do not."

"You think that he is dead?"

"I do."

"Murdered?"

"I don't say that. Perhaps."

"And on what day did he meet his death?"

"On Monday."

"Then perhaps, Mr. Holmes, you will be good enough to explain how
it is that I have received a letter from him to-day."

Sherlock Holmes sprang out of his chair as if he had been
galvanised.

"What!" he roared.

"Yes, to-day." She stood smiling, holding up a little slip of
paper in the air.

"May I see it?"

"Certainly."

He snatched it from her in his eagerness, and smoothing it out
upon the table he drew over the lamp and examined it intently. I
had left my chair and was gazing at it over his shoulder. The
envelope was a very coarse one and was stamped with the Gravesend
postmark and with the date of that very day, or rather of the day
before, for it was considerably after midnight.

"Coarse writing," murmured Holmes. "Surely this is not your
husband's writing, madam."

"No, but the enclosure is."

"I perceive also that whoever addressed the envelope had to go
and inquire as to the address."

"How can you tell that?"

"The name, you see, is in perfectly black ink, which has dried
itself. The rest is of the greyish colour, which shows that
blotting-paper has been used. If it had been written straight
off, and then blotted, none would be of a deep black shade. This
man has written the name, and there has then been a pause before
he wrote the address, which can only mean that he was not
familiar with it. It is, of course, a trifle, but there is
nothing so important as trifles. Let us now see the letter. Ha!
there has been an enclosure here!"

"Yes, there was a ring. His signet-ring."

"And you are sure that this is your husband's hand?"

"One of his hands."

"One?"

"His hand when he wrote hurriedly. It is very unlike his usual
writing, and yet I know it well."

"'Dearest do not be frightened. All will come well. There is a
huge error which it may take some little time to rectify.
Wait in patience.--NEVILLE.' Written in pencil upon the fly-leaf
of a book, octavo size, no water-mark. Hum! Posted to-day in
Gravesend by a man with a dirty thumb. Ha! And the flap has been
gummed, if I am not very much in error, by a person who had been
chewing tobacco. And you have no doubt that it is your husband's
hand, madam?"

"None. Neville wrote those words."

"And they were posted to-day at Gravesend. Well, Mrs. St. Clair,
the clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the
danger is over."

"But he must be alive, Mr. Holmes."

"Unless this is a clever forgery to put us on the wrong scent.
The ring, after all, proves nothing. It may have been taken from
him."

"No, no; it is, it is his very own writing!"

"Very well. It may, however, have been written on Monday and only
posted to-day."

"That is possible."

"If so, much may have happened between."

"Oh, you must not discourage me, Mr. Holmes. I know that all is
well with him. There is so keen a sympathy between us that I
should know if evil came upon him. On the very day that I saw him
last he cut himself in the bedroom, and yet I in the dining-room
rushed upstairs instantly with the utmost certainty that
something had happened. Do you think that I would respond to such
a trifle and yet be ignorant of his death?"

"I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman
may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical
reasoner. And in this letter you certainly have a very strong
piece of evidence to corroborate your view. But if your husband
is alive and able to write letters, why should he remain away
from you?"

"I cannot imagine. It is unthinkable."

"And on Monday he made no remarks before leaving you?"

"No."

"And you were surprised to see him in Swandam Lane?"

"Very much so."

"Was the window open?"

"Yes."

"Then he might have called to you?"

"He might."

"He only, as I understand, gave an inarticulate cry?"

"Yes."

"A call for help, you thought?"

"Yes. He waved his hands."

"But it might have been a cry of surprise. Astonishment at the
unexpected sight of you might cause him to throw up his hands?"

"It is possible."

"And you thought he was pulled back?"

"He disappeared so suddenly."

"He might have leaped back. You did not see anyone else in the
room?"

"No, but this horrible man confessed to having been there, and
the Lascar was at the foot of the stairs."

"Quite so. Your husband, as far as you could see, had his
ordinary clothes on?"

"But without his collar or tie. I distinctly saw his bare
throat."

"Had he ever spoken of Swandam Lane?"

"Never."

"Had he ever showed any signs of having taken opium?"

"Never."

"Thank you, Mrs. St. Clair. Those are the principal points about
which I wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little
supper and then retire, for we may have a very busy day
to-morrow."

A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our
disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary
after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however,
who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for
days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over,
rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view
until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his
data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now
preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and
waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered
about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from
the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of
Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with
an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front
of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an
old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the
corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him,
silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set
aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he
sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found
the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still
between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was
full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of
shag which I had seen upon the previous night.

"Awake, Watson?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Game for a morning drive?"

"Certainly."

"Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the
stable-boy sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out." He
chuckled to himself as he spoke, his eyes twinkled, and he seemed
a different man to the sombre thinker of the previous night.

As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one
was stirring. It was twenty-five minutes past four. I had hardly
finished when Holmes returned with the news that the boy was
putting in the horse.

"I want to test a little theory of mine," said he, pulling on his
boots. "I think, Watson, that you are now standing in the
presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe. I deserve
to be kicked from here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the
key of the affair now."

"And where is it?" I asked, smiling.

"In the bathroom," he answered. "Oh, yes, I am not joking," he
continued, seeing my look of incredulity. "I have just been
there, and I have taken it out, and I have got it in this
Gladstone bag. Come on, my boy, and we shall see whether it will
not fit the lock."

We made our way downstairs as quietly as possible, and out into
the bright morning sunshine. In the road stood our horse and
trap, with the half-clad stable-boy waiting at the head. We both
sprang in, and away we dashed down the London Road. A few country
carts were stirring, bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, but
the lines of villas on either side were as silent and lifeless as
some city in a dream.

"It has been in some points a singular case," said Holmes,
flicking the horse on into a gallop. "I confess that I have been
as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than
never to learn it at all."

In town the earliest risers were just beginning to look sleepily
from their windows as we drove through the streets of the Surrey
side. Passing down the Waterloo Bridge Road we crossed over the
river, and dashing up Wellington Street wheeled sharply to the
right and found ourselves in Bow Street. Sherlock Holmes was well
known to the force, and the two constables at the door saluted
him. One of them held the horse's head while the other led us in.

"Who is on duty?" asked Holmes.

"Inspector Bradstreet, sir."

"Ah, Bradstreet, how are you?" A tall, stout official had come
down the stone-flagged passage, in a peaked cap and frogged
jacket. "I wish to have a quiet word with you, Bradstreet."
"Certainly, Mr. Holmes. Step into my room here." It was a small,
office-like room, with a huge ledger upon the table, and a
telephone projecting from the wall. The inspector sat down at his
desk.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?"

"I called about that beggarman, Boone--the one who was charged
with being concerned in the disappearance of Mr. Neville St.
Clair, of Lee."

"Yes. He was brought up and remanded for further inquiries."

"So I heard. You have him here?"

"In the cells."

"Is he quiet?"

"Oh, he gives no trouble. But he is a dirty scoundrel."

"Dirty?"

"Yes, it is all we can do to make him wash his hands, and his
face is as black as a tinker's. Well, when once his case has been
settled, he will have a regular prison bath; and I think, if you
saw him, you would agree with me that he needed it."

"I should like to see him very much."

"Would you? That is easily done. Come this way. You can leave
your bag."

"No, I think that I'll take it."

"Very good. Come this way, if you please." He led us down a
passage, opened a barred door, passed down a winding stair, and
brought us to a whitewashed corridor with a line of doors on each
side.

"The third on the right is his," said the inspector. "Here it
is!" He quietly shot back a panel in the upper part of the door
and glanced through.

"He is asleep," said he. "You can see him very well."

We both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his
face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and
heavily. He was a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his
calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his
tattered coat. He was, as the inspector had said, extremely
dirty, but the grime which covered his face could not conceal its
repulsive ugliness. A broad wheal from an old scar ran right
across it from eye to chin, and by its contraction had turned up
one side of the upper lip, so that three teeth were exposed in a
perpetual snarl. A shock of very bright red hair grew low over
his eyes and forehead.

"He's a beauty, isn't he?" said the inspector.

"He certainly needs a wash," remarked Holmes. "I had an idea that
he might, and I took the liberty of bringing the tools with me."
He opened the Gladstone bag as he spoke, and took out, to my
astonishment, a very large bath-sponge.

"He! he! You are a funny one," chuckled the inspector.

"Now, if you will have the great goodness to open that door very
quietly, we will soon make him cut a much more respectable
figure."

"Well, I don't know why not," said the inspector. "He doesn't
look a credit to the Bow Street cells, does he?" He slipped his
key into the lock, and we all very quietly entered the cell. The
sleeper half turned, and then settled down once more into a deep
slumber. Holmes stooped to the water-jug, moistened his sponge,
and then rubbed it twice vigorously across and down the
prisoner's face.

"Let me introduce you," he shouted, "to Mr. Neville St. Clair, of
Lee, in the county of Kent."

Never in my life have I seen such a sight. The man's face peeled
off under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the
coarse brown tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had
seamed it across, and the twisted lip which had given the
repulsive sneer to the face! A twitch brought away the tangled
red hair, and there, sitting up in his bed, was a pale,
sad-faced, refined-looking man, black-haired and smooth-skinned,
rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy bewilderment.
Then suddenly realising the exposure, he broke into a scream and
threw himself down with his face to the pillow.

"Great heavens!" cried the inspector, "it is, indeed, the missing
man. I know him from the photograph."

The prisoner turned with the reckless air of a man who abandons
himself to his destiny. "Be it so," said he. "And pray what am I
charged with?"

"With making away with Mr. Neville St.-- Oh, come, you can't be
charged with that unless they make a case of attempted suicide of
it," said the inspector with a grin. "Well, I have been
twenty-seven years in the force, but this really takes the cake."

"If I am Mr. Neville St. Clair, then it is obvious that no crime
has been committed, and that, therefore, I am illegally
detained."

"No crime, but a very great error has been committed," said
Holmes. "You would have done better to have trusted your wife."

"It was not the wife; it was the children," groaned the prisoner.
"God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My
God! What an exposure! What can I do?"

Sherlock Holmes sat down beside him on the couch and patted him
kindly on the shoulder.

"If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up," said
he, "of course you can hardly avoid publicity. On the other hand,
if you convince the police authorities that there is no possible
case against you, I do not know that there is any reason that the
details should find their way into the papers. Inspector
Bradstreet would, I am sure, make notes upon anything which you
might tell us and submit it to the proper authorities. The case
would then never go into court at all."

"God bless you!" cried the prisoner passionately. "I would have
endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left
my miserable secret as a family blot to my children.

"You are the first who have ever heard my story. My father was a
schoolmaster in Chesterfield, where I received an excellent
education. I travelled in my youth, took to the stage, and
finally became a reporter on an evening paper in London. One day
my editor wished to have a series of articles upon begging in the
metropolis, and I volunteered to supply them. There was the point
from which all my adventures started. It was only by trying
begging as an amateur that I could get the facts upon which to
base my articles. When an actor I had, of course, learned all the
secrets of making up, and had been famous in the green-room for
my skill. I took advantage now of my attainments. I painted my
face, and to make myself as pitiable as possible I made a good
scar and fixed one side of my lip in a twist by the aid of a
small slip of flesh-coloured plaster. Then with a red head of
hair, and an appropriate dress, I took my station in the business
part of the city, ostensibly as a match-seller but really as a
beggar. For seven hours I plied my trade, and when I returned
home in the evening I found to my surprise that I had received no
less than 26s. 4d.

"I wrote my articles and thought little more of the matter until,
some time later, I backed a bill for a friend and had a writ
served upon me for 25 pounds. I was at my wit's end where to get
the money, but a sudden idea came to me. I begged a fortnight's
grace from the creditor, asked for a holiday from my employers,
and spent the time in begging in the City under my disguise. In
ten days I had the money and had paid the debt.

"Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous
work at 2 pounds a week when I knew that I could earn as much in
a day by smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on
the ground, and sitting still. It was a long fight between my
pride and the money, but the dollars won at last, and I threw up
reporting and sat day after day in the corner which I had first
chosen, inspiring pity by my ghastly face and filling my pockets
with coppers. Only one man knew my secret. He was the keeper of a
low den in which I used to lodge in Swandam Lane, where I could
every morning emerge as a squalid beggar and in the evenings
transform myself into a well-dressed man about town. This fellow,
a Lascar, was well paid by me for his rooms, so that I knew that
my secret was safe in his possession.

"Well, very soon I found that I was saving considerable sums of
money. I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London
could earn 700 pounds a year--which is less than my average
takings--but I had exceptional advantages in my power of making
up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by
practice and made me quite a recognised character in the City.
All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me,
and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take 2 pounds.

"As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the
country, and eventually married, without anyone having a
suspicion as to my real occupation. My dear wife knew that I had
business in the City. She little knew what.

"Last Monday I had finished for the day and was dressing in my
room above the opium den when I looked out of my window and saw,
to my horror and astonishment, that my wife was standing in the
street, with her eyes fixed full upon me. I gave a cry of
surprise, threw up my arms to cover my face, and, rushing to my
confidant, the Lascar, entreated him to prevent anyone from
coming up to me. I heard her voice downstairs, but I knew that
she could not ascend. Swiftly I threw off my clothes, pulled on
those of a beggar, and put on my pigments and wig. Even a wife's
eyes could not pierce so complete a disguise. But then it
occurred to me that there might be a search in the room, and that
the clothes might betray me. I threw open the window, reopening
by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in
the bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which was
weighted by the coppers which I had just transferred to it from
the leather bag in which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of
the window, and it disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes
would have followed, but at that moment there was a rush of
constables up the stair, and a few minutes after I found, rather,
I confess, to my relief, that instead of being identified as Mr.
Neville St. Clair, I was arrested as his murderer.

"I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I
was determined to preserve my disguise as long as possible, and
hence my preference for a dirty face. Knowing that my wife would
be terribly anxious, I slipped off my ring and confided it to the
Lascar at a moment when no constable was watching me, together
with a hurried scrawl, telling her that she had no cause to
fear."

"That note only reached her yesterday," said Holmes.

"Good God! What a week she must have spent!"

"The police have watched this Lascar," said Inspector Bradstreet,
"and I can quite understand that he might find it difficult to
post a letter unobserved. Probably he handed it to some sailor
customer of his, who forgot all about it for some days."

"That was it," said Holmes, nodding approvingly; "I have no doubt
of it. But have you never been prosecuted for begging?"

"Many times; but what was a fine to me?"

"It must stop here, however," said Bradstreet. "If the police are
to hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone."

"I have sworn it by the most solemn oaths which a man can take."

"In that case I think that it is probable that no further steps
may be taken. But if you are found again, then all must come out.
I am sure, Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for
having cleared the matter up. I wish I knew how you reach your
results."

"I reached this one," said my friend, "by sitting upon five
pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if
we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast."



VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE

I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second
morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the
compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a
purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the
right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly
studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and
on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable
hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several
places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair
suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner for the
purpose of examination.

"You are engaged," said I; "perhaps I interrupt you."

"Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss
my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one"--he jerked his
thumb in the direction of the old hat--"but there are points in
connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and
even of instruction."

I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his
crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows
were thick with the ice crystals. "I suppose," I remarked, "that,
homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to
it--that it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of
some mystery and the punishment of some crime."

"No, no. No crime," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. "Only one of
those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have
four million human beings all jostling each other within the
space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so
dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events
may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be
presented which may be striking and bizarre without being
criminal. We have already had experience of such."

"So much so," I remarked, "that of the last six cases which I
have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any
legal crime."

"Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler
papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the
adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt
that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category.
You know Peterson, the commissionaire?"

"Yes."

"It is to him that this trophy belongs."

"It is his hat."

"No, no, he found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will
look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual
problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon
Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I
have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson's
fire. The facts are these: about four o'clock on Christmas
morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was
returning from some small jollification and was making his way
homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in
the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and
carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder. As he reached the
corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger
and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the
man's hat, on which he raised his stick to defend himself and,
swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window behind him.
Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his
assailants; but the man, shocked at having broken the window, and
seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing towards him,
dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the
labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham
Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the appearance of
Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of
battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this
battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose."

"Which surely he restored to their owner?"

"My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that 'For
Mrs. Henry Baker' was printed upon a small card which was tied to
the bird's left leg, and it is also true that the initials 'H.
B.' are legible upon the lining of this hat, but as there are
some thousands of Bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in
this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to any
one of them."

"What, then, did Peterson do?"

"He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning,
knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me.
The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs
that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it
should be eaten without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried
it off, therefore, to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose,
while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown gentleman who
lost his Christmas dinner."

"Did he not advertise?"

"No."

"Then, what clue could you have as to his identity?"

"Only as much as we can deduce."

"From his hat?"

"Precisely."

"But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered
felt?"

"Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather
yourself as to the individuality of the man who has worn this
article?"

I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather
ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round
shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of
red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker's
name; but, as Holmes had remarked, the initials "H. B." were
scrawled upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a
hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was
cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places,
although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the
discoloured patches by smearing them with ink.

"I can see nothing," said I, handing it back to my friend.

"On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail,
however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in
drawing your inferences."

"Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?"

He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective
fashion which was characteristic of him. "It is perhaps less
suggestive than it might have been," he remarked, "and yet there
are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others
which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That
the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the
face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the
last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He
had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a
moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his
fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink,
at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that
his wife has ceased to love him."

"My dear Holmes!"

"He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect," he
continued, disregarding my remonstrance. "He is a man who leads a
sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is
middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the
last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are
the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also,
by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid
on in his house."

"You are certainly joking, Holmes."

"Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you
these results, you are unable to see how they are attained?"

"I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I
am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that
this man was intellectual?"

For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right
over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. "It is
a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a
brain must have something in it."

"The decline of his fortunes, then?"

"This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge
came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the
band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could
afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no
hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world."

"Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the
foresight and the moral retrogression?"

Sherlock Holmes laughed. "Here is the foresight," said he putting
his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer.
"They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a
sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his
way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see
that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace
it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly,
which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other
hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the
felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not
entirely lost his self-respect."

"Your reasoning is certainly plausible."

"The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is
grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses
lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the
lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of
hair-ends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all
appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of
lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey
dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house,
showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while
the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the
wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in
the best of training."

"But his wife--you said that she had ceased to love him."

"This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear
Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and
when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear
that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's
affection."

"But he might be a bachelor."

"Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his
wife. Remember the card upon the bird's leg."

"You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce
that the gas is not laid on in his house?"

"One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I
see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt
that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with
burning tallow--walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in
one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never
got tallow-stains from a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?"

"Well, it is very ingenious," said I, laughing; "but since, as
you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm
done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a
waste of energy."

Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when the door flew
open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment
with flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with
astonishment.

"The goose, Mr. Holmes! The goose, sir!" he gasped.

"Eh? What of it, then? Has it returned to life and flapped off
through the kitchen window?" Holmes twisted himself round upon
the sofa to get a fairer view of the man's excited face.

"See here, sir! See what my wife found in its crop!" He held out
his hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a brilliantly
scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size, but
of such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric
point in the dark hollow of his hand.

Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. "By Jove, Peterson!" said
he, "this is treasure trove indeed. I suppose you know what you
have got?"

"A diamond, sir? A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though
it were putty."

"It's more than a precious stone. It is the precious stone."

"Not the Countess of Morcar's blue carbuncle!" I ejaculated.

"Precisely so. I ought to know its size and shape, seeing that I
have read the advertisement about it in The Times every day
lately. It is absolutely unique, and its value can only be
conjectured, but the reward offered of 1000 pounds is certainly
not within a twentieth part of the market price."

"A thousand pounds! Great Lord of mercy!" The commissionaire
plumped down into a chair and stared from one to the other of us.

"That is the reward, and I have reason to know that there are
sentimental considerations in the background which would induce
the Countess to part with half her fortune if she could but
recover the gem."

"It was lost, if I remember aright, at the Hotel Cosmopolitan," I
remarked.

"Precisely so, on December 22nd, just five days ago. John Horner,
a plumber, was accused of having abstracted it from the lady's
jewel-case. The evidence against him was so strong that the case
has been referred to the Assizes. I have some account of the
matter here, I believe." He rummaged amid his newspapers,
glancing over the dates, until at last he smoothed one out,
doubled it over, and read the following paragraph:

"Hotel Cosmopolitan Jewel Robbery. John Horner, 26, plumber, was
brought up upon the charge of having upon the 22nd inst.,
abstracted from the jewel-case of the Countess of Morcar the
valuable gem known as the blue carbuncle. James Ryder,
upper-attendant at the hotel, gave his evidence to the effect
that he had shown Horner up to the dressing-room of the Countess
of Morcar upon the day of the robbery in order that he might
solder the second bar of the grate, which was loose. He had
remained with Horner some little time, but had finally been
called away. On returning, he found that Horner had disappeared,
that the bureau had been forced open, and that the small morocco
casket in which, as it afterwards transpired, the Countess was
accustomed to keep her jewel, was lying empty upon the
dressing-table. Ryder instantly gave the alarm, and Horner was
arrested the same evening; but the stone could not be found
either upon his person or in his rooms. Catherine Cusack, maid to
the Countess, deposed to having heard Ryder's cry of dismay on
discovering the robbery, and to having rushed into the room,
where she found matters as described by the last witness.
Inspector Bradstreet, B division, gave evidence as to the arrest
of Horner, who struggled frantically, and protested his innocence
in the strongest terms. Evidence of a previous conviction for
robbery having been given against the prisoner, the magistrate
refused to deal summarily with the offence, but referred it to
the Assizes. Horner, who had shown signs of intense emotion
during the proceedings, fainted away at the conclusion and was
carried out of court."

"Hum! So much for the police-court," said Holmes thoughtfully,
tossing aside the paper. "The question for us now to solve is the
sequence of events leading from a rifled jewel-case at one end to
the crop of a goose in Tottenham Court Road at the other. You
see, Watson, our little deductions have suddenly assumed a much
more important and less innocent aspect. Here is the stone; the
stone came from the goose, and the goose came from Mr. Henry
Baker, the gentleman with the bad hat and all the other
characteristics with which I have bored you. So now we must set
ourselves very seriously to finding this gentleman and
ascertaining what part he has played in this little mystery. To
do this, we must try the simplest means first, and these lie
undoubtedly in an advertisement in all the evening papers. If
this fail, I shall have recourse to other methods."

"What will you say?"

"Give me a pencil and that slip of paper. Now, then: 'Found at
the corner of Goodge Street, a goose and a black felt hat. Mr.
Henry Baker can have the same by applying at 6:30 this evening at
221B, Baker Street.' That is clear and concise."

"Very. But will he see it?"

"Well, he is sure to keep an eye on the papers, since, to a poor
man, the loss was a heavy one. He was clearly so scared by his
mischance in breaking the window and by the approach of Peterson
that he thought of nothing but flight, but since then he must
have bitterly regretted the impulse which caused him to drop his
bird. Then, again, the introduction of his name will cause him to
see it, for everyone who knows him will direct his attention to
it. Here you are, Peterson, run down to the advertising agency
and have this put in the evening papers."

"In which, sir?"

"Oh, in the Globe, Star, Pall Mall, St. James's, Evening News,
Standard, Echo, and any others that occur to you."

"Very well, sir. And this stone?"

"Ah, yes, I shall keep the stone. Thank you. And, I say,
Peterson, just buy a goose on your way back and leave it here
with me, for we must have one to give to this gentleman in place
of the one which your family is now devouring."

When the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and
held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just
see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and
focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet
baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a
bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found
in the banks of the Amoy River in southern China and is remarkable
in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is
blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has
already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a
vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about
for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal.
Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the
gallows and the prison? I'll lock it up in my strong box now and
drop a line to the Countess to say that we have it."

"Do you think that this man Horner is innocent?"

"I cannot tell."

"Well, then, do you imagine that this other one, Henry Baker, had
anything to do with the matter?"

"It is, I think, much more likely that Henry Baker is an
absolutely innocent man, who had no idea that the bird which he
was carrying was of considerably more value than if it were made
of solid gold. That, however, I shall determine by a very simple
test if we have an answer to our advertisement."

"And you can do nothing until then?"

"Nothing."

"In that case I shall continue my professional round. But I shall
come back in the evening at the hour you have mentioned, for I
should like to see the solution of so tangled a business."

"Very glad to see you. I dine at seven. There is a woodcock, I
believe. By the way, in view of recent occurrences, perhaps I
ought to ask Mrs. Hudson to examine its crop."

I had been delayed at a case, and it was a little after half-past
six when I found myself in Baker Street once more. As I
approached the house I saw a tall man in a Scotch bonnet with a
coat which was buttoned up to his chin waiting outside in the
bright semicircle which was thrown from the fanlight. Just as I
arrived the door was opened, and we were shown up together to
Holmes' room.

"Mr. Henry Baker, I believe," said he, rising from his armchair
and greeting his visitor with the easy air of geniality which he
could so readily assume. "Pray take this chair by the fire, Mr.
Baker. It is a cold night, and I observe that your circulation is
more adapted for summer than for winter. Ah, Watson, you have
just come at the right time. Is that your hat, Mr. Baker?"

"Yes, sir, that is undoubtedly my hat."

He was a large man with rounded shoulders, a massive head, and a
broad, intelligent face, sloping down to a pointed beard of
grizzled brown. A touch of red in nose and cheeks, with a slight
tremor of his extended hand, recalled Holmes' surmise as to his
habits. His rusty black frock-coat was buttoned right up in
front, with the collar turned up, and his lank wrists protruded
from his sleeves without a sign of cuff or shirt. He spoke in a
slow staccato fashion, choosing his words with care, and gave the
impression generally of a man of learning and letters who had had
ill-usage at the hands of fortune.

"We have retained these things for some days," said Holmes,
"because we expected to see an advertisement from you giving your
address. I am at a loss to know now why you did not advertise."

Our visitor gave a rather shamefaced laugh. "Shillings have not
been so plentiful with me as they once were," he remarked. "I had
no doubt that the gang of roughs who assaulted me had carried off
both my hat and the bird. I did not care to spend more money in a
hopeless attempt at recovering them."

"Very naturally. By the way, about the bird, we were compelled to
eat it."

"To eat it!" Our visitor half rose from his chair in his
excitement.

"Yes, it would have been of no use to anyone had we not done so.
But I presume that this other goose upon the sideboard, which is
about the same weight and perfectly fresh, will answer your
purpose equally well?"

"Oh, certainly, certainly," answered Mr. Baker with a sigh of
relief.

"Of course, we still have the feathers, legs, crop, and so on of
your own bird, so if you wish--"

The man burst into a hearty laugh. "They might be useful to me as
relics of my adventure," said he, "but beyond that I can hardly
see what use the disjecta membra of my late acquaintance are
going to be to me. No, sir, I think that, with your permission, I
will confine my attentions to the excellent bird which I perceive
upon the sideboard."

Sherlock Holmes glanced sharply across at me with a slight shrug
of his shoulders.

"There is your hat, then, and there your bird," said he. "By the
way, would it bore you to tell me where you got the other one
from? I am somewhat of a fowl fancier, and I have seldom seen a
better grown goose."

"Certainly, sir," said Baker, who had risen and tucked his newly
gained property under his arm. "There are a few of us who
frequent the Alpha Inn, near the Museum--we are to be found in
the Museum itself during the day, you understand. This year our
good host, Windigate by name, instituted a goose club, by which,
on consideration of some few pence every week, we were each to
receive a bird at Christmas. My pence were duly paid, and the
rest is familiar to you. I am much indebted to you, sir, for a
Scotch bonnet is fitted neither to my years nor my gravity." With
a comical pomposity of manner he bowed solemnly to both of us and
strode off upon his way.

"So much for Mr. Henry Baker," said Holmes when he had closed the
door behind him. "It is quite certain that he knows nothing
whatever about the matter. Are you hungry, Watson?"

"Not particularly."

"Then I suggest that we turn our dinner into a supper and follow
up this clue while it is still hot."

"By all means."

It was a bitter night, so we drew on our ulsters and wrapped
cravats about our throats. Outside, the stars were shining coldly
in a cloudless sky, and the breath of the passers-by blew out
into smoke like so many pistol shots. Our footfalls rang out
crisply and loudly as we swung through the doctors' quarter,
Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and so through Wigmore Street into
Oxford Street. In a quarter of an hour we were in Bloomsbury at
the Alpha Inn, which is a small public-house at the corner of one
of the streets which runs down into Holborn. Holmes pushed open
the door of the private bar and ordered two glasses of beer from
the ruddy-faced, white-aproned landlord.

"Your beer should be excellent if it is as good as your geese,"
said he.

"My geese!" The man seemed surprised.

"Yes. I was speaking only half an hour ago to Mr. Henry Baker,
who was a member of your goose club."

"Ah! yes, I see. But you see, sir, them's not our geese."

"Indeed! Whose, then?"

"Well, I got the two dozen from a salesman in Covent Garden."

"Indeed? I know some of them. Which was it?"

"Breckinridge is his name."

"Ah! I don't know him. Well, here's your good health landlord,
and prosperity to your house. Good-night."

"Now for Mr. Breckinridge," he continued, buttoning up his coat
as we came out into the frosty air. "Remember, Watson that though
we have so homely a thing as a goose at one end of this chain, we
have at the other a man who will certainly get seven years' penal
servitude unless we can establish his innocence. It is possible
that our inquiry may but confirm his guilt; but, in any case, we
have a line of investigation which has been missed by the police,
and which a singular chance has placed in our hands. Let us
follow it out to the bitter end. Faces to the south, then, and
quick march!"

We passed across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a
zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest
stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor
a horsey-looking man, with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers was
helping a boy to put up the shutters.

"Good-evening. It's a cold night," said Holmes.

The salesman nodded and shot a questioning glance at my
companion.

"Sold out of geese, I see," continued Holmes, pointing at the
bare slabs of marble.

"Let you have five hundred to-morrow morning."

"That's no good."

"Well, there are some on the stall with the gas-flare."

"Ah, but I was recommended to you."

"Who by?"

"The landlord of the Alpha."

"Oh, yes; I sent him a couple of dozen."

"Fine birds they were, too. Now where did you get them from?"

To my surprise the question provoked a burst of anger from the
salesman.

"Now, then, mister," said he, with his head cocked and his arms
akimbo, "what are you driving at? Let's have it straight, now."

"It is straight enough. I should like to know who sold you the
geese which you supplied to the Alpha."

"Well then, I shan't tell you. So now!"

"Oh, it is a matter of no importance; but I don't know why you
should be so warm over such a trifle."

"Warm! You'd be as warm, maybe, if you were as pestered as I am.
When I pay good money for a good article there should be an end
of the business; but it's 'Where are the geese?' and 'Who did you
sell the geese to?' and 'What will you take for the geese?' One
would think they were the only geese in the world, to hear the
fuss that is made over them."

"Well, I have no connection with any other people who have been
making inquiries," said Holmes carelessly. "If you won't tell us
the bet is off, that is all. But I'm always ready to back my
opinion on a matter of fowls, and I have a fiver on it that the
bird I ate is country bred."

"Well, then, you've lost your fiver, for it's town bred," snapped
the salesman.

"It's nothing of the kind."

"I say it is."

"I don't believe it."

"D'you think you know more about fowls than I, who have handled
them ever since I was a nipper? I tell you, all those birds that
went to the Alpha were town bred."

"You'll never persuade me to believe that."

"Will you bet, then?"

"It's merely taking your money, for I know that I am right. But
I'll have a sovereign on with you, just to teach you not to be
obstinate."

The salesman chuckled grimly. "Bring me the books, Bill," said
he.

The small boy brought round a small thin volume and a great
greasy-backed one, laying them out together beneath the hanging
lamp.

"Now then, Mr. Cocksure," said the salesman, "I thought that I
was out of geese, but before I finish you'll find that there is
still one left in my shop. You see this little book?"

"Well?"

"That's the list of the folk from whom I buy. D'you see? Well,
then, here on this page are the country folk, and the numbers
after their names are where their accounts are in the big ledger.
Now, then! You see this other page in red ink? Well, that is a
list of my town suppliers. Now, look at that third name. Just
read it out to me."

"Mrs. Oakshott, 117, Brixton Road--249," read Holmes.

"Quite so. Now turn that up in the ledger."

Holmes turned to the page indicated. "Here you are, 'Mrs.
Oakshott, 117, Brixton Road, egg and poultry supplier.'"

"Now, then, what's the last entry?"

"'December 22nd. Twenty-four geese at 7s. 6d.'"

"Quite so. There you are. And underneath?"

"'Sold to Mr. Windigate of the Alpha, at 12s.'"

"What have you to say now?"

Sherlock Holmes looked deeply chagrined. He drew a sovereign from
his pocket and threw it down upon the slab, turning away with the
air of a man whose disgust is too deep for words. A few yards off
he stopped under a lamp-post and laughed in the hearty, noiseless
fashion which was peculiar to him.

"When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the 'Pink 'un'
protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet,"
said he. "I daresay that if I had put 100 pounds down in front of
him, that man would not have given me such complete information
as was drawn from him by the idea that he was doing me on a
wager. Well, Watson, we are, I fancy, nearing the end of our
quest, and the only point which remains to be determined is
whether we should go on to this Mrs. Oakshott to-night, or
whether we should reserve it for to-morrow. It is clear from what
that surly fellow said that there are others besides ourselves
who are anxious about the matter, and I should--"

His remarks were suddenly cut short by a loud hubbub which broke
out from the stall which we had just left. Turning round we saw a
little rat-faced fellow standing in the centre of the circle of
yellow light which was thrown by the swinging lamp, while
Breckinridge, the salesman, framed in the door of his stall, was
shaking his fists fiercely at the cringing figure.

"I've had enough of you and your geese," he shouted. "I wish you
were all at the devil together. If you come pestering me any more
with your silly talk I'll set the dog at you. You bring Mrs.
Oakshott here and I'll answer her, but what have you to do with
it? Did I buy the geese off you?"

"No; but one of them was mine all the same," whined the little
man.

"Well, then, ask Mrs. Oakshott for it."

"She told me to ask you."

"Well, you can ask the King of Proosia, for all I care. I've had
enough of it. Get out of this!" He rushed fiercely forward, and
the inquirer flitted away into the darkness.

"Ha! this may save us a visit to Brixton Road," whispered Holmes.
"Come with me, and we will see what is to be made of this
fellow." Striding through the scattered knots of people who
lounged round the flaring stalls, my companion speedily overtook
the little man and touched him upon the shoulder. He sprang
round, and I could see in the gas-light that every vestige of
colour had been driven from his face.

"Who are you, then? What do you want?" he asked in a quavering
voice.

"You will excuse me," said Holmes blandly, "but I could not help
overhearing the questions which you put to the salesman just now.
I think that I could be of assistance to you."

"You? Who are you? How could you know anything of the matter?"

"My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other
people don't know."

"But you can know nothing of this?"

"Excuse me, I know everything of it. You are endeavouring to
trace some geese which were sold by Mrs. Oakshott, of Brixton
Road, to a salesman named Breckinridge, by him in turn to Mr.
Windigate, of the Alpha, and by him to his club, of which Mr.
Henry Baker is a member."

"Oh, sir, you are the very man whom I have longed to meet," cried
the little fellow with outstretched hands and quivering fingers.
"I can hardly explain to you how interested I am in this matter."

Sherlock Holmes hailed a four-wheeler which was passing. "In that
case we had better discuss it in a cosy room rather than in this
wind-swept market-place," said he. "But pray tell me, before we
go farther, who it is that I have the pleasure of assisting."

The man hesitated for an instant. "My name is John Robinson," he
answered with a sidelong glance.

"No, no; the real name," said Holmes sweetly. "It is always
awkward doing business with an alias."

A flush sprang to the white cheeks of the stranger. "Well then,"
said he, "my real name is James Ryder."

"Precisely so. Head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. Pray
step into the cab, and I shall soon be able to tell you
everything which you would wish to know."

The little man stood glancing from one to the other of us with
half-frightened, half-hopeful eyes, as one who is not sure
whether he is on the verge of a windfall or of a catastrophe.
Then he stepped into the cab, and in half an hour we were back in
the sitting-room at Baker Street. Nothing had been said during
our drive, but the high, thin breathing of our new companion, and
the claspings and unclaspings of his hands, spoke of the nervous
tension within him.

"Here we are!" said Holmes cheerily as we filed into the room.
"The fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You look cold,
Mr. Ryder. Pray take the basket-chair. I will just put on my
slippers before we settle this little matter of yours. Now, then!
You want to know what became of those geese?"

"Yes, sir."

"Or rather, I fancy, of that goose. It was one bird, I imagine in
which you were interested--white, with a black bar across the
tail."

Ryder quivered with emotion. "Oh, sir," he cried, "can you tell
me where it went to?"

"It came here."

"Here?"

"Yes, and a most remarkable bird it proved. I don't wonder that
you should take an interest in it. It laid an egg after it was
dead--the bonniest, brightest little blue egg that ever was seen.
I have it here in my museum."

Our visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the mantelpiece
with his right hand. Holmes unlocked his strong-box and held up
the blue carbuncle, which shone out like a star, with a cold,
brilliant, many-pointed radiance. Ryder stood glaring with a
drawn face, uncertain whether to claim or to disown it.

"The game's up, Ryder," said Holmes quietly. "Hold up, man, or
you'll be into the fire! Give him an arm back into his chair,
Watson. He's not got blood enough to go in for felony with
impunity. Give him a dash of brandy. So! Now he looks a little
more human. What a shrimp it is, to be sure!"

For a moment he had staggered and nearly fallen, but the brandy
brought a tinge of colour into his cheeks, and he sat staring
with frightened eyes at his accuser.

"I have almost every link in my hands, and all the proofs which I
could possibly need, so there is little which you need tell me.
Still, that little may as well be cleared up to make the case
complete. You had heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the
Countess of Morcar's?"

"It was Catherine Cusack who told me of it," said he in a
crackling voice.

"I see--her ladyship's waiting-maid. Well, the temptation of
sudden wealth so easily acquired was too much for you, as it has
been for better men before you; but you were not very scrupulous
in the means you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the
making of a very pretty villain in you. You knew that this man
Horner, the plumber, had been concerned in some such matter
before, and that suspicion would rest the more readily upon him.
What did you do, then? You made some small job in my lady's
room--you and your confederate Cusack--and you managed that he
should be the man sent for. Then, when he had left, you rifled
the jewel-case, raised the alarm, and had this unfortunate man
arrested. You then--"

Ryder threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my
companion's knees. "For God's sake, have mercy!" he shrieked.
"Think of my father! Of my mother! It would break their hearts. I
never went wrong before! I never will again. I swear it. I'll
swear it on a Bible. Oh, don't bring it into court! For Christ's
sake, don't!"

"Get back into your chair!" said Holmes sternly. "It is very well
to cringe and crawl now, but you thought little enough of this
poor Horner in the dock for a crime of which he knew nothing."

"I will fly, Mr. Holmes. I will leave the country, sir. Then the
charge against him will break down."

"Hum! We will talk about that. And now let us hear a true account
of the next act. How came the stone into the goose, and how came
the goose into the open market? Tell us the truth, for there lies
your only hope of safety."

Ryder passed his tongue over his parched lips. "I will tell you
it just as it happened, sir," said he. "When Horner had been
arrested, it seemed to me that it would be best for me to get
away with the stone at once, for I did not know at what moment
the police might not take it into their heads to search me and my
room. There was no place about the hotel where it would be safe.
I went out, as if on some commission, and I made for my sister's
house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and lived in Brixton
Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there
every man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a detective;
and, for all that it was a cold night, the sweat was pouring down
my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister asked me
what was the matter, and why I was so pale; but I told her that I
had been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I went
into the back yard and smoked a pipe and wondered what it would
be best to do.

"I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and
has just been serving his time in Pentonville. One day he had met
me, and fell into talk about the ways of thieves, and how they
could get rid of what they stole. I knew that he would be true to
me, for I knew one or two things about him; so I made up my mind
to go right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my
confidence. He would show me how to turn the stone into money.
But how to get to him in safety? I thought of the agonies I had
gone through in coming from the hotel. I might at any moment be
seized and searched, and there would be the stone in my waistcoat
pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time and looking at
the geese which were waddling about round my feet, and suddenly
an idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the
best detective that ever lived.

"My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the
pick of her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she
was always as good as her word. I would take my goose now, and in
it I would carry my stone to Kilburn. There was a little shed in
the yard, and behind this I drove one of the birds--a fine big
one, white, with a barred tail. I caught it, and prying its bill
open, I thrust the stone down its throat as far as my finger
could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the stone pass
along its gullet and down into its crop. But the creature flapped
and struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the
matter. As I turned to speak to her the brute broke loose and
fluttered off among the others.

"'Whatever were you doing with that bird, Jem?' says she.

"'Well,' said I, 'you said you'd give me one for Christmas, and I
was feeling which was the fattest.'

"'Oh,' says she, 'we've set yours aside for you--Jem's bird, we
call it. It's the big white one over yonder. There's twenty-six
of them, which makes one for you, and one for us, and two dozen
for the market.'

"'Thank you, Maggie,' says I; 'but if it is all the same to you,
I'd rather have that one I was handling just now.'

"'The other is a good three pound heavier,' said she, 'and we
fattened it expressly for you.'

"'Never mind. I'll have the other, and I'll take it now,' said I.

"'Oh, just as you like,' said she, a little huffed. 'Which is it
you want, then?'

"'That white one with the barred tail, right in the middle of the
flock.'

"'Oh, very well. Kill it and take it with you.'

"Well, I did what she said, Mr. Holmes, and I carried the bird
all the way to Kilburn. I told my pal what I had done, for he was
a man that it was easy to tell a thing like that to. He laughed
until he choked, and we got a knife and opened the goose. My
heart turned to water, for there was no sign of the stone, and I
knew that some terrible mistake had occurred. I left the bird,
rushed back to my sister's, and hurried into the back yard. There
was not a bird to be seen there.

"'Where are they all, Maggie?' I cried.

"'Gone to the dealer's, Jem.'

"'Which dealer's?'

"'Breckinridge, of Covent Garden.'

"'But was there another with a barred tail?' I asked, 'the same
as the one I chose?'

"'Yes, Jem; there were two barred-tailed ones, and I could never
tell them apart.'

"Well, then, of course I saw it all, and I ran off as hard as my
feet would carry me to this man Breckinridge; but he had sold the
lot at once, and not one word would he tell me as to where they
had gone. You heard him yourselves to-night. Well, he has always
answered me like that. My sister thinks that I am going mad.
Sometimes I think that I am myself. And now--and now I am myself
a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth for which
I sold my character. God help me! God help me!" He burst into
convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands.

There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing and
by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes' finger-tips upon the
edge of the table. Then my friend rose and threw open the door.

"Get out!" said he.

"What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!"

"No more words. Get out!"

And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon
the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running
footfalls from the street.

"After all, Watson," said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his
clay pipe, "I am not retained by the police to supply their
deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing;
but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must
collapse. I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just
possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong
again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to gaol now, and
you make him a gaol-bird for life. Besides, it is the season of
forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and
whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you
will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin
another investigation, in which, also a bird will be the chief
feature."



VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I
have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend
Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number
merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did
rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of
wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation
which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.
Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which
presented more singular features than that which was associated
with the well-known Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran.
The events in question occurred in the early days of my
association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors
in Baker Street. It is possible that I might have placed them
upon record before, but a promise of secrecy was made at the
time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by
the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given. It
is perhaps as well that the facts should now come to light, for I
have reasons to know that there are widespread rumours as to the
death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott which tend to make the matter even
more terrible than the truth.

It was early in April in the year '83 that I woke one morning to
find Sherlock Holmes standing, fully dressed, by the side of my
bed. He was a late riser, as a rule, and as the clock on the
mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarter-past seven, I
blinked up at him in some surprise, and perhaps just a little
resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits.

"Very sorry to knock you up, Watson," said he, "but it's the
common lot this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she
retorted upon me, and I on you."

"What is it, then--a fire?"

"No; a client. It seems that a young lady has arrived in a
considerable state of excitement, who insists upon seeing me. She
is waiting now in the sitting-room. Now, when young ladies wander
about the metropolis at this hour of the morning, and knock
sleepy people up out of their beds, I presume that it is
something very pressing which they have to communicate. Should it
prove to be an interesting case, you would, I am sure, wish to
follow it from the outset. I thought, at any rate, that I should
call you and give you the chance."

"My dear fellow, I would not miss it for anything."

I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his
professional investigations, and in admiring the rapid
deductions, as swift as intuitions, and yet always founded on a
logical basis with which he unravelled the problems which were
submitted to him. I rapidly threw on my clothes and was ready in
a few minutes to accompany my friend down to the sitting-room. A
lady dressed in black and heavily veiled, who had been sitting in
the window, rose as we entered.

"Good-morning, madam," said Holmes cheerily. "My name is Sherlock
Holmes. This is my intimate friend and associate, Dr. Watson,
before whom you can speak as freely as before myself. Ha! I am
glad to see that Mrs. Hudson has had the good sense to light the
fire. Pray draw up to it, and I shall order you a cup of hot
coffee, for I observe that you are shivering."

"It is not cold which makes me shiver," said the woman in a low
voice, changing her seat as requested.

"What, then?"

"It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror." She raised her veil as
she spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a pitiable
state of agitation, her face all drawn and grey, with restless
frightened eyes, like those of some hunted animal. Her features
and figure were those of a woman of thirty, but her hair was shot
with premature grey, and her expression was weary and haggard.
Sherlock Holmes ran her over with one of his quick,
all-comprehensive glances.

"You must not fear," said he soothingly, bending forward and
patting her forearm. "We shall soon set matters right, I have no
doubt. You have come in by train this morning, I see."

"You know me, then?"

"No, but I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm
of your left glove. You must have started early, and yet you had
a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before you reached
the station."

The lady gave a violent start and stared in bewilderment at my
companion.

"There is no mystery, my dear madam," said he, smiling. "The left
arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less than seven
places. The marks are perfectly fresh. There is no vehicle save a
dog-cart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you
sit on the left-hand side of the driver."

"Whatever your reasons may be, you are perfectly correct," said
she. "I started from home before six, reached Leatherhead at
twenty past, and came in by the first train to Waterloo. Sir, I
can stand this strain no longer; I shall go mad if it continues.
I have no one to turn to--none, save only one, who cares for me,
and he, poor fellow, can be of little aid. I have heard of you,
Mr. Holmes; I have heard of you from Mrs. Farintosh, whom you
helped in the hour of her sore need. It was from her that I had
your address. Oh, sir, do you not think that you could help me,
too, and at least throw a little light through the dense darkness
which surrounds me? At present it is out of my power to reward
you for your services, but in a month or six weeks I shall be
married, with the control of my own income, and then at least you
shall not find me ungrateful."

Holmes turned to his desk and, unlocking it, drew out a small
case-book, which he consulted.

"Farintosh," said he. "Ah yes, I recall the case; it was
concerned with an opal tiara. I think it was before your time,
Watson. I can only say, madam, that I shall be happy to devote
the same care to your case as I did to that of your friend. As to
reward, my profession is its own reward; but you are at liberty
to defray whatever expenses I may be put to, at the time which
suits you best. And now I beg that you will lay before us
everything that may help us in forming an opinion upon the
matter."

"Alas!" replied our visitor, "the very horror of my situation
lies in the fact that my fears are so vague, and my suspicions
depend so entirely upon small points, which might seem trivial to
another, that even he to whom of all others I have a right to
look for help and advice looks upon all that I tell him about it
as the fancies of a nervous woman. He does not say so, but I can
read it from his soothing answers and averted eyes. But I have
heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold
wickedness of the human heart. You may advise me how to walk amid
the dangers which encompass me."

"I am all attention, madam."

"My name is Helen Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who
is the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in
England, the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of
Surrey."

Holmes nodded his head. "The name is familiar to me," said he.

"The family was at one time among the richest in England, and the
estates extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north,
and Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however, four
successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition,
and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the
days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground,
and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under
a heavy mortgage. The last squire dragged out his existence
there, living the horrible life of an aristocratic pauper; but
his only son, my stepfather, seeing that he must adapt himself to
the new conditions, obtained an advance from a relative, which
enabled him to take a medical degree and went out to Calcutta,
where, by his professional skill and his force of character, he
established a large practice. In a fit of anger, however, caused
by some robberies which had been perpetrated in the house, he
beat his native butler to death and narrowly escaped a capital
sentence. As it was, he suffered a long term of imprisonment and
afterwards returned to England a morose and disappointed man.

"When Dr. Roylott was in India he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner,
the young widow of Major-General Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery.
My sister Julia and I were twins, and we were only two years old
at the time of my mother's re-marriage. She had a considerable
sum of money--not less than 1000 pounds a year--and this she
bequeathed to Dr. Roylott entirely while we resided with him,
with a provision that a certain annual sum should be allowed to
each of us in the event of our marriage. Shortly after our return
to England my mother died--she was killed eight years ago in a
railway accident near Crewe. Dr. Roylott then abandoned his
attempts to establish himself in practice in London and took us
to live with him in the old ancestral house at Stoke Moran. The
money which my mother had left was enough for all our wants, and
there seemed to be no obstacle to our happiness.

"But a terrible change came over our stepfather about this time.
Instead of making friends and exchanging visits with our
neighbours, who had at first been overjoyed to see a Roylott of
Stoke Moran back in the old family seat, he shut himself up in
his house and seldom came out save to indulge in ferocious
quarrels with whoever might cross his path. Violence of temper
approaching to mania has been hereditary in the men of the
family, and in my stepfather's case it had, I believe, been
intensified by his long residence in the tropics. A series of
disgraceful brawls took place, two of which ended in the
police-court, until at last he became the terror of the village,
and the folks would fly at his approach, for he is a man of
immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in his anger.

"Last week he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet into a
stream, and it was only by paying over all the money which I
could gather together that I was able to avert another public
exposure. He had no friends at all save the wandering gipsies,
and he would give these vagabonds leave to encamp upon the few
acres of bramble-covered land which represent the family estate,
and would accept in return the hospitality of their tents,
wandering away with them sometimes for weeks on end. He has a
passion also for Indian animals, which are sent over to him by a
correspondent, and he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon,
which wander freely over his grounds and are feared by the
villagers almost as much as their master.

"You can imagine from what I say that my poor sister Julia and I
had no great pleasure in our lives. No servant would stay with
us, and for a long time we did all the work of the house. She was
but thirty at the time of her death, and yet her hair had already
begun to whiten, even as mine has."

"Your sister is dead, then?"

"She died just two years ago, and it is of her death that I wish
to speak to you. You can understand that, living the life which I
have described, we were little likely to see anyone of our own
age and position. We had, however, an aunt, my mother's maiden
sister, Miss Honoria Westphail, who lives near Harrow, and we
were occasionally allowed to pay short visits at this lady's
house. Julia went there at Christmas two years ago, and met there
a half-pay major of marines, to whom she became engaged. My
stepfather learned of the engagement when my sister returned and
offered no objection to the marriage; but within a fortnight of
the day which had been fixed for the wedding, the terrible event
occurred which has deprived me of my only companion."

Sherlock Holmes had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes
closed and his head sunk in a cushion, but he half opened his
lids now and glanced across at his visitor.

"Pray be precise as to details," said he.

"It is easy for me to be so, for every event of that dreadful
time is seared into my memory. The manor-house is, as I have
already said, very old, and only one wing is now inhabited. The
bedrooms in this wing are on the ground floor, the sitting-rooms
being in the central block of the buildings. Of these bedrooms
the first is Dr. Roylott's, the second my sister's, and the third
my own. There is no communication between them, but they all open
out into the same corridor. Do I make myself plain?"

"Perfectly so."

"The windows of the three rooms open out upon the lawn. That
fatal night Dr. Roylott had gone to his room early, though we
knew that he had not retired to rest, for my sister was troubled
by the smell of the strong Indian cigars which it was his custom
to smoke. She left her room, therefore, and came into mine, where
she sat for some time, chatting about her approaching wedding. At
eleven o'clock she rose to leave me, but she paused at the door
and looked back.

"'Tell me, Helen,' said she, 'have you ever heard anyone whistle
in the dead of the night?'

"'Never,' said I.

"'I suppose that you could not possibly whistle, yourself, in
your sleep?'

"'Certainly not. But why?'

"'Because during the last few nights I have always, about three
in the morning, heard a low, clear whistle. I am a light sleeper,
and it has awakened me. I cannot tell where it came from--perhaps
from the next room, perhaps from the lawn. I thought that I would
just ask you whether you had heard it.'

"'No, I have not. It must be those wretched gipsies in the
plantation.'

"'Very likely. And yet if it were on the lawn, I wonder that you
did not hear it also.'

"'Ah, but I sleep more heavily than you.'

"'Well, it is of no great consequence, at any rate.' She smiled
back at me, closed my door, and a few moments later I heard her
key turn in the lock."

"Indeed," said Holmes. "Was it your custom always to lock
yourselves in at night?"

"Always."

"And why?"

"I think that I mentioned to you that the doctor kept a cheetah
and a baboon. We had no feeling of security unless our doors were
locked."

"Quite so. Pray proceed with your statement."

"I could not sleep that night. A vague feeling of impending
misfortune impressed me. My sister and I, you will recollect,
were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two
souls which are so closely allied. It was a wild night. The wind
was howling outside, and the rain was beating and splashing
against the windows. Suddenly, amid all the hubbub of the gale,
there burst forth the wild scream of a terrified woman. I knew
that it was my sister's voice. I sprang from my bed, wrapped a
shawl round me, and rushed into the corridor. As I opened my door
I seemed to hear a low whistle, such as my sister described, and
a few moments later a clanging sound, as if a mass of metal had
fallen. As I ran down the passage, my sister's door was unlocked,
and revolved slowly upon its hinges. I stared at it
horror-stricken, not knowing what was about to issue from it. By
the light of the corridor-lamp I saw my sister appear at the
opening, her face blanched with terror, her hands groping for
help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that of a
drunkard. I ran to her and threw my arms round her, but at that
moment her knees seemed to give way and she fell to the ground.
She writhed as one who is in terrible pain, and her limbs were
dreadfully convulsed. At first I thought that she had not
recognised me, but as I bent over her she suddenly shrieked out
in a voice which I shall never forget, 'Oh, my God! Helen! It was
the band! The speckled band!' There was something else which she
would fain have said, and she stabbed with her finger into the
air in the direction of the doctor's room, but a fresh convulsion
seized her and choked her words. I rushed out, calling loudly for
my stepfather, and I met him hastening from his room in his
dressing-gown. When he reached my sister's side she was
unconscious, and though he poured brandy down her throat and sent
for medical aid from the village, all efforts were in vain, for
she slowly sank and died without having recovered her
consciousness. Such was the dreadful end of my beloved sister."

"One moment," said Holmes, "are you sure about this whistle and
metallic sound? Could you swear to it?"

"That was what the county coroner asked me at the inquiry. It is
my strong impression that I heard it, and yet, among the crash of
the gale and the creaking of an old house, I may possibly have
been deceived."

"Was your sister dressed?"

"No, she was in her night-dress. In her right hand was found the
charred stump of a match, and in her left a match-box."

"Showing that she had struck a light and looked about her when
the alarm took place. That is important. And what conclusions did
the coroner come to?"

"He investigated the case with great care, for Dr. Roylott's
conduct had long been notorious in the county, but he was unable
to find any satisfactory cause of death. My evidence showed that
the door had been fastened upon the inner side, and the windows
were blocked by old-fashioned shutters with broad iron bars,
which were secured every night. The walls were carefully sounded,
and were shown to be quite solid all round, and the flooring was
also thoroughly examined, with the same result. The chimney is
wide, but is barred up by four large staples. It is certain,
therefore, that my sister was quite alone when she met her end.
Besides, there were no marks of any violence upon her."

"How about poison?"

"The doctors examined her for it, but without success."

"What do you think that this unfortunate lady died of, then?"

"It is my belief that she died of pure fear and nervous shock,
though what it was that frightened her I cannot imagine."

"Were there gipsies in the plantation at the time?"

"Yes, there are nearly always some there."

"Ah, and what did you gather from this allusion to a band--a
speckled band?"

"Sometimes I have thought that it was merely the wild talk of
delirium, sometimes that it may have referred to some band of
people, perhaps to these very gipsies in the plantation. I do not
know whether the spotted handkerchiefs which so many of them wear
over their heads might have suggested the strange adjective which
she used."

Holmes shook his head like a man who is far from being satisfied.

"These are very deep waters," said he; "pray go on with your
narrative."

"Two years have passed since then, and my life has been until
lately lonelier than ever. A month ago, however, a dear friend,
whom I have known for many years, has done me the honour to ask
my hand in marriage. His name is Armitage--Percy Armitage--the
second son of Mr. Armitage, of Crane Water, near Reading. My
stepfather has offered no opposition to the match, and we are to
be married in the course of the spring. Two days ago some repairs
were started in the west wing of the building, and my bedroom
wall has been pierced, so that I have had to move into the
chamber in which my sister died, and to sleep in the very bed in
which she slept. Imagine, then, my thrill of terror when last
night, as I lay awake, thinking over her terrible fate, I
suddenly heard in the silence of the night the low whistle which
had been the herald of her own death. I sprang up and lit the
lamp, but nothing was to be seen in the room. I was too shaken to
go to bed again, however, so I dressed, and as soon as it was
daylight I slipped down, got a dog-cart at the Crown Inn, which
is opposite, and drove to Leatherhead, from whence I have come on
this morning with the one object of seeing you and asking your
advice."

"You have done wisely," said my friend. "But have you told me
all?"

"Yes, all."

"Miss Roylott, you have not. You are screening your stepfather."

"Why, what do you mean?"

For answer Holmes pushed back the frill of black lace which
fringed the hand that lay upon our visitor's knee. Five little
livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed
upon the white wrist.

"You have been cruelly used," said Holmes.

The lady coloured deeply and covered over her injured wrist. "He
is a hard man," she said, "and perhaps he hardly knows his own
strength."

There was a long silence, during which Holmes leaned his chin
upon his hands and stared into the crackling fire.

"This is a very deep business," he said at last. "There are a
thousand details which I should desire to know before I decide
upon our course of action. Yet we have not a moment to lose. If
we were to come to Stoke Moran to-day, would it be possible for
us to see over these rooms without the knowledge of your
stepfather?"

"As it happens, he spoke of coming into town to-day upon some
most important business. It is probable that he will be away all
day, and that there would be nothing to disturb you. We have a
housekeeper now, but she is old and foolish, and I could easily
get her out of the way."

"Excellent. You are not averse to this trip, Watson?"

"By no means."

"Then we shall both come. What are you going to do yourself?"

"I have one or two things which I would wish to do now that I am
in town. But I shall return by the twelve o'clock train, so as to
be there in time for your coming."

"And you may expect us early in the afternoon. I have myself some
small business matters to attend to. Will you not wait and
breakfast?"

"No, I must go. My heart is lightened already since I have
confided my trouble to you. I shall look forward to seeing you
again this afternoon." She dropped her thick black veil over her
face and glided from the room.

"And what do you think of it all, Watson?" asked Sherlock Holmes,
leaning back in his chair.

"It seems to me to be a most dark and sinister business."

"Dark enough and sinister enough."

"Yet if the lady is correct in saying that the flooring and walls
are sound, and that the door, window, and chimney are impassable,
then her sister must have been undoubtedly alone when she met her
mysterious end."

"What becomes, then, of these nocturnal whistles, and what of the
very peculiar words of the dying woman?"

"I cannot think."

"When you combine the ideas of whistles at night, the presence of
a band of gipsies who are on intimate terms with this old doctor,
the fact that we have every reason to believe that the doctor has
an interest in preventing his stepdaughter's marriage, the dying
allusion to a band, and, finally, the fact that Miss Helen Stoner
heard a metallic clang, which might have been caused by one of
those metal bars that secured the shutters falling back into its
place, I think that there is good ground to think that the
mystery may be cleared along those lines."

"But what, then, did the gipsies do?"

"I cannot imagine."

"I see many objections to any such theory."

"And so do I. It is precisely for that reason that we are going
to Stoke Moran this day. I want to see whether the objections are
fatal, or if they may be explained away. But what in the name of
the devil!"

The ejaculation had been drawn from my companion by the fact that
our door had been suddenly dashed open, and that a huge man had
framed himself in the aperture. His costume was a peculiar
mixture of the professional and of the agricultural, having a
black top-hat, a long frock-coat, and a pair of high gaiters,
with a hunting-crop swinging in his hand. So tall was he that his
hat actually brushed the cross bar of the doorway, and his
breadth seemed to span it across from side to side. A large face,
seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and
marked with every evil passion, was turned from one to the other
of us, while his deep-set, bile-shot eyes, and his high, thin,
fleshless nose, gave him somewhat the resemblance to a fierce old
bird of prey.

"Which of you is Holmes?" asked this apparition.

"My name, sir; but you have the advantage of me," said my
companion quietly.

"I am Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran."

"Indeed, Doctor," said Holmes blandly. "Pray take a seat."

"I will do nothing of the kind. My stepdaughter has been here. I
have traced her. What has she been saying to you?"

"It is a little cold for the time of the year," said Holmes.

"What has she been saying to you?" screamed the old man
furiously.

"But I have heard that the crocuses promise well," continued my
companion imperturbably.

"Ha! You put me off, do you?" said our new visitor, taking a step
forward and shaking his hunting-crop. "I know you, you scoundrel!
I have heard of you before. You are Holmes, the meddler."

My friend smiled.

"Holmes, the busybody!"

His smile broadened.

"Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!"

Holmes chuckled heartily. "Your conversation is most
entertaining," said he. "When you go out close the door, for
there is a decided draught."

"I will go when I have said my say. Don't you dare to meddle with
my affairs. I know that Miss Stoner has been here. I traced her!
I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See here." He stepped
swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with
his huge brown hands.

"See that you keep yourself out of my grip," he snarled, and
hurling the twisted poker into the fireplace he strode out of the
room.

"He seems a very amiable person," said Holmes, laughing. "I am
not quite so bulky, but if he had remained I might have shown him
that my grip was not much more feeble than his own." As he spoke
he picked up the steel poker and, with a sudden effort,
straightened it out again.

"Fancy his having the insolence to confound me with the official
detective force! This incident gives zest to our investigation,
however, and I only trust that our little friend will not suffer
from her imprudence in allowing this brute to trace her. And now,
Watson, we shall order breakfast, and afterwards I shall walk
down to Doctors' Commons, where I hope to get some data which may
help us in this matter."


It was nearly one o'clock when Sherlock Holmes returned from his
excursion. He held in his hand a sheet of blue paper, scrawled
over with notes and figures.

"I have seen the will of the deceased wife," said he. "To
determine its exact meaning I have been obliged to work out the
present prices of the investments with which it is concerned. The
total income, which at the time of the wife's death was little
short of 1100 pounds, is now, through the fall in agricultural
prices, not more than 750 pounds. Each daughter can claim an
income of 250 pounds, in case of marriage. It is evident,
therefore, that if both girls had married, this beauty would have
had a mere pittance, while even one of them would cripple him to
a very serious extent. My morning's work has not been wasted,
since it has proved that he has the very strongest motives for
standing in the way of anything of the sort. And now, Watson,
this is too serious for dawdling, especially as the old man is
aware that we are interesting ourselves in his affairs; so if you
are ready, we shall call a cab and drive to Waterloo. I should be
very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your
pocket. An Eley's No. 2 is an excellent argument with gentlemen
who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a tooth-brush
are, I think, all that we need."

At Waterloo we were fortunate in catching a train for
Leatherhead, where we hired a trap at the station inn and drove
for four or five miles through the lovely Surrey lanes. It was a
perfect day, with a bright sun and a few fleecy clouds in the
heavens. The trees and wayside hedges were just throwing out
their first green shoots, and the air was full of the pleasant
smell of the moist earth. To me at least there was a strange
contrast between the sweet promise of the spring and this
sinister quest upon which we were engaged. My companion sat in
the front of the trap, his arms folded, his hat pulled down over
his eyes, and his chin sunk upon his breast, buried in the
deepest thought. Suddenly, however, he started, tapped me on the
shoulder, and pointed over the meadows.

"Look there!" said he.

A heavily timbered park stretched up in a gentle slope,
thickening into a grove at the highest point. From amid the
branches there jutted out the grey gables and high roof-tree of a
very old mansion.

"Stoke Moran?" said he.

"Yes, sir, that be the house of Dr. Grimesby Roylott," remarked
the driver.

"There is some building going on there," said Holmes; "that is
where we are going."

"There's the village," said the driver, pointing to a cluster of
roofs some distance to the left; "but if you want to get to the
house, you'll find it shorter to get over this stile, and so by
the foot-path over the fields. There it is, where the lady is
walking."

"And the lady, I fancy, is Miss Stoner," observed Holmes, shading
his eyes. "Yes, I think we had better do as you suggest."

We got off, paid our fare, and the trap rattled back on its way
to Leatherhead.

"I thought it as well," said Holmes as we climbed the stile,
"that this fellow should think we had come here as architects, or
on some definite business. It may stop his gossip.
Good-afternoon, Miss Stoner. You see that we have been as good as
our word."

Our client of the morning had hurried forward to meet us with a
face which spoke her joy. "I have been waiting so eagerly for
you," she cried, shaking hands with us warmly. "All has turned
out splendidly. Dr. Roylott has gone to town, and it is unlikely
that he will be back before evening."

"We have had the pleasure of making the doctor's acquaintance,"
said Holmes, and in a few words he sketched out what had
occurred. Miss Stoner turned white to the lips as she listened.

"Good heavens!" she cried, "he has followed me, then."

"So it appears."

"He is so cunning that I never know when I am safe from him. What
will he say when he returns?"

"He must guard himself, for he may find that there is someone
more cunning than himself upon his track. You must lock yourself
up from him to-night. If he is violent, we shall take you away to
your aunt's at Harrow. Now, we must make the best use of our
time, so kindly take us at once to the rooms which we are to
examine."

The building was of grey, lichen-blotched stone, with a high
central portion and two curving wings, like the claws of a crab,
thrown out on each side. In one of these wings the windows were
broken and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partly
caved in, a picture of ruin. The central portion was in little
better repair, but the right-hand block was comparatively modern,
and the blinds in the windows, with the blue smoke curling up
from the chimneys, showed that this was where the family resided.
Some scaffolding had been erected against the end wall, and the
stone-work had been broken into, but there were no signs of any
workmen at the moment of our visit. Holmes walked slowly up and
down the ill-trimmed lawn and examined with deep attention the
outsides of the windows.

"This, I take it, belongs to the room in which you used to sleep,
the centre one to your sister's, and the one next to the main
building to Dr. Roylott's chamber?"

"Exactly so. But I am now sleeping in the middle one."

"Pending the alterations, as I understand. By the way, there does
not seem to be any very pressing need for repairs at that end
wall."

"There were none. I believe that it was an excuse to move me from
my room."

"Ah! that is suggestive. Now, on the other side of this narrow
wing runs the corridor from which these three rooms open. There
are windows in it, of course?"

"Yes, but very small ones. Too narrow for anyone to pass
through."

"As you both locked your doors at night, your rooms were
unapproachable from that side. Now, would you have the kindness
to go into your room and bar your shutters?"

Miss Stoner did so, and Holmes, after a careful examination
through the open window, endeavoured in every way to force the
shutter open, but without success. There was no slit through
which a knife could be passed to raise the bar. Then with his
lens he tested the hinges, but they were of solid iron, built
firmly into the massive masonry. "Hum!" said he, scratching his
chin in some perplexity, "my theory certainly presents some
difficulties. No one could pass these shutters if they were
bolted. Well, we shall see if the inside throws any light upon
the matter."

A small side door led into the whitewashed corridor from which
the three bedrooms opened. Holmes refused to examine the third
chamber, so we passed at once to the second, that in which Miss
Stoner was now sleeping, and in which her sister had met with her
fate. It was a homely little room, with a low ceiling and a
gaping fireplace, after the fashion of old country-houses. A
brown chest of drawers stood in one corner, a narrow
white-counterpaned bed in another, and a dressing-table on the
left-hand side of the window. These articles, with two small
wicker-work chairs, made up all the furniture in the room save
for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The boards round and
the panelling of the walls were of brown, worm-eaten oak, so old
and discoloured that it may have dated from the original building
of the house. Holmes drew one of the chairs into a corner and sat
silent, while his eyes travelled round and round and up and down,
taking in every detail of the apartment.

"Where does that bell communicate with?" he asked at last
pointing to a thick bell-rope which hung down beside the bed, the
tassel actually lying upon the pillow.

"It goes to the housekeeper's room."

"It looks newer than the other things?"

"Yes, it was only put there a couple of years ago."

"Your sister asked for it, I suppose?"

"No, I never heard of her using it. We used always to get what we
wanted for ourselves."

"Indeed, it seemed unnecessary to put so nice a bell-pull there.
You will excuse me for a few minutes while I satisfy myself as to
this floor." He threw himself down upon his face with his lens in
his hand and crawled swiftly backward and forward, examining
minutely the cracks between the boards. Then he did the same with
the wood-work with which the chamber was panelled. Finally he
walked over to the bed and spent some time in staring at it and
in running his eye up and down the wall. Finally he took the
bell-rope in his hand and gave it a brisk tug.

"Why, it's a dummy," said he.

"Won't it ring?"

"No, it is not even attached to a wire. This is very interesting.
You can see now that it is fastened to a hook just above where
the little opening for the ventilator is."

"How very absurd! I never noticed that before."

"Very strange!" muttered Holmes, pulling at the rope. "There are
one or two very singular points about this room. For example,
what a fool a builder must be to open a ventilator into another
room, when, with the same trouble, he might have communicated
with the outside air!"

"That is also quite modern," said the lady.

"Done about the same time as the bell-rope?" remarked Holmes.

"Yes, there were several little changes carried out about that
time."

"They seem to have been of a most interesting character--dummy
bell-ropes, and ventilators which do not ventilate. With your
permission, Miss Stoner, we shall now carry our researches into
the inner apartment."

Dr. Grimesby Roylott's chamber was larger than that of his
step-daughter, but was as plainly furnished. A camp-bed, a small
wooden shelf full of books, mostly of a technical character, an
armchair beside the bed, a plain wooden chair against the wall, a
round table, and a large iron safe were the principal things
which met the eye. Holmes walked slowly round and examined each
and all of them with the keenest interest.

"What's in here?" he asked, tapping the safe.

"My stepfather's business papers."

"Oh! you have seen inside, then?"

"Only once, some years ago. I remember that it was full of
papers."

"There isn't a cat in it, for example?"

"No. What a strange idea!"

"Well, look at this!" He took up a small saucer of milk which
stood on the top of it.

"No; we don't keep a cat. But there is a cheetah and a baboon."

"Ah, yes, of course! Well, a cheetah is just a big cat, and yet a
saucer of milk does not go very far in satisfying its wants, I
daresay. There is one point which I should wish to determine." He
squatted down in front of the wooden chair and examined the seat
of it with the greatest attention.

"Thank you. That is quite settled," said he, rising and putting
his lens in his pocket. "Hullo! Here is something interesting!"

The object which had caught his eye was a small dog lash hung on
one corner of the bed. The lash, however, was curled upon itself
and tied so as to make a loop of whipcord.

"What do you make of that, Watson?"

"It's a common enough lash. But I don't know why it should be
tied."

"That is not quite so common, is it? Ah, me! it's a wicked world,
and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst
of all. I think that I have seen enough now, Miss Stoner, and
with your permission we shall walk out upon the lawn."

I had never seen my friend's face so grim or his brow so dark as
it was when we turned from the scene of this investigation. We
had walked several times up and down the lawn, neither Miss
Stoner nor myself liking to break in upon his thoughts before he
roused himself from his reverie.

"It is very essential, Miss Stoner," said he, "that you should
absolutely follow my advice in every respect."

"I shall most certainly do so."

"The matter is too serious for any hesitation. Your life may
depend upon your compliance."

"I assure you that I am in your hands."

"In the first place, both my friend and I must spend the night in
your room."

Both Miss Stoner and I gazed at him in astonishment.

"Yes, it must be so. Let me explain. I believe that that is the
village inn over there?"

"Yes, that is the Crown."

"Very good. Your windows would be visible from there?"

"Certainly."

"You must confine yourself to your room, on pretence of a
headache, when your stepfather comes back. Then when you hear him
retire for the night, you must open the shutters of your window,
undo the hasp, put your lamp there as a signal to us, and then
withdraw quietly with everything which you are likely to want
into the room which you used to occupy. I have no doubt that, in
spite of the repairs, you could manage there for one night."

"Oh, yes, easily."

"The rest you will leave in our hands."

"But what will you do?"

"We shall spend the night in your room, and we shall investigate
the cause of this noise which has disturbed you."

"I believe, Mr. Holmes, that you have already made up your mind,"
said Miss Stoner, laying her hand upon my companion's sleeve.

"Perhaps I have."

"Then, for pity's sake, tell me what was the cause of my sister's
death."

"I should prefer to have clearer proofs before I speak."

"You can at least tell me whether my own thought is correct, and
if she died from some sudden fright."

"No, I do not think so. I think that there was probably some more
tangible cause. And now, Miss Stoner, we must leave you for if
Dr. Roylott returned and saw us our journey would be in vain.
Good-bye, and be brave, for if you will do what I have told you,
you may rest assured that we shall soon drive away the dangers
that threaten you."

Sherlock Holmes and I had no difficulty in engaging a bedroom and
sitting-room at the Crown Inn. They were on the upper floor, and
from our window we could command a view of the avenue gate, and
of the inhabited wing of Stoke Moran Manor House. At dusk we saw
Dr. Grimesby Roylott drive past, his huge form looming up beside
the little figure of the lad who drove him. The boy had some
slight difficulty in undoing the heavy iron gates, and we heard
the hoarse roar of the doctor's voice and saw the fury with which
he shook his clinched fists at him. The trap drove on, and a few
minutes later we saw a sudden light spring up among the trees as
the lamp was lit in one of the sitting-rooms.

"Do you know, Watson," said Holmes as we sat together in the
gathering darkness, "I have really some scruples as to taking you
to-night. There is a distinct element of danger."

"Can I be of assistance?"

"Your presence might be invaluable."

"Then I shall certainly come."

"It is very kind of you."

"You speak of danger. You have evidently seen more in these rooms
than was visible to me."

"No, but I fancy that I may have deduced a little more. I imagine
that you saw all that I did."

"I saw nothing remarkable save the bell-rope, and what purpose
that could answer I confess is more than I can imagine."

"You saw the ventilator, too?"

"Yes, but I do not think that it is such a very unusual thing to
have a small opening between two rooms. It was so small that a
rat could hardly pass through."

"I knew that we should find a ventilator before ever we came to
Stoke Moran."

"My dear Holmes!"

"Oh, yes, I did. You remember in her statement she said that her
sister could smell Dr. Roylott's cigar. Now, of course that
suggested at once that there must be a communication between the
two rooms. It could only be a small one, or it would have been
remarked upon at the coroner's inquiry. I deduced a ventilator."

"But what harm can there be in that?"

"Well, there is at least a curious coincidence of dates. A
ventilator is made, a cord is hung, and a lady who sleeps in the
bed dies. Does not that strike you?"

"I cannot as yet see any connection."

"Did you observe anything very peculiar about that bed?"

"No."

"It was clamped to the floor. Did you ever see a bed fastened
like that before?"

"I cannot say that I have."

"The lady could not move her bed. It must always be in the same
relative position to the ventilator and to the rope--or so we may
call it, since it was clearly never meant for a bell-pull."

"Holmes," I cried, "I seem to see dimly what you are hinting at.
We are only just in time to prevent some subtle and horrible
crime."

"Subtle enough and horrible enough. When a doctor does go wrong
he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.
Palmer and Pritchard were among the heads of their profession.
This man strikes even deeper, but I think, Watson, that we shall
be able to strike deeper still. But we shall have horrors enough
before the night is over; for goodness' sake let us have a quiet
pipe and turn our minds for a few hours to something more
cheerful."


About nine o'clock the light among the trees was extinguished,
and all was dark in the direction of the Manor House. Two hours
passed slowly away, and then, suddenly, just at the stroke of
eleven, a single bright light shone out right in front of us.

"That is our signal," said Holmes, springing to his feet; "it
comes from the middle window."

As we passed out he exchanged a few words with the landlord,
explaining that we were going on a late visit to an acquaintance,
and that it was possible that we might spend the night there. A
moment later we were out on the dark road, a chill wind blowing
in our faces, and one yellow light twinkling in front of us
through the gloom to guide us on our sombre errand.

There was little difficulty in entering the grounds, for
unrepaired breaches gaped in the old park wall. Making our way
among the trees, we reached the lawn, crossed it, and were about
to enter through the window when out from a clump of laurel
bushes there darted what seemed to be a hideous and distorted
child, who threw itself upon the grass with writhing limbs and
then ran swiftly across the lawn into the darkness.

"My God!" I whispered; "did you see it?"

Holmes was for the moment as startled as I. His hand closed like
a vice upon my wrist in his agitation. Then he broke into a low
laugh and put his lips to my ear.

"It is a nice household," he murmured. "That is the baboon."

I had forgotten the strange pets which the doctor affected. There
was a cheetah, too; perhaps we might find it upon our shoulders
at any moment. I confess that I felt easier in my mind when,
after following Holmes' example and slipping off my shoes, I
found myself inside the bedroom. My companion noiselessly closed
the shutters, moved the lamp onto the table, and cast his eyes
round the room. All was as we had seen it in the daytime. Then
creeping up to me and making a trumpet of his hand, he whispered
into my ear again so gently that it was all that I could do to
distinguish the words:

"The least sound would be fatal to our plans."

I nodded to show that I had heard.

"We must sit without light. He would see it through the
ventilator."

I nodded again.

"Do not go asleep; your very life may depend upon it. Have your
pistol ready in case we should need it. I will sit on the side of
the bed, and you in that chair."

I took out my revolver and laid it on the corner of the table.

Holmes had brought up a long thin cane, and this he placed upon
the bed beside him. By it he laid the box of matches and the
stump of a candle. Then he turned down the lamp, and we were left
in darkness.

How shall I ever forget that dreadful vigil? I could not hear a
sound, not even the drawing of a breath, and yet I knew that my
companion sat open-eyed, within a few feet of me, in the same
state of nervous tension in which I was myself. The shutters cut
off the least ray of light, and we waited in absolute darkness.

From outside came the occasional cry of a night-bird, and once at
our very window a long drawn catlike whine, which told us that
the cheetah was indeed at liberty. Far away we could hear the
deep tones of the parish clock, which boomed out every quarter of
an hour. How long they seemed, those quarters! Twelve struck, and
one and two and three, and still we sat waiting silently for
whatever might befall.

Suddenly there was the momentary gleam of a light up in the
direction of the ventilator, which vanished immediately, but was
succeeded by a strong smell of burning oil and heated metal.
Someone in the next room had lit a dark-lantern. I heard a gentle
sound of movement, and then all was silent once more, though the
smell grew stronger. For half an hour I sat with straining ears.
Then suddenly another sound became audible--a very gentle,
soothing sound, like that of a small jet of steam escaping
continually from a kettle. The instant that we heard it, Holmes
sprang from the bed, struck a match, and lashed furiously with
his cane at the bell-pull.

"You see it, Watson?" he yelled. "You see it?"

But I saw nothing. At the moment when Holmes struck the light I
heard a low, clear whistle, but the sudden glare flashing into my
weary eyes made it impossible for me to tell what it was at which
my friend lashed so savagely. I could, however, see that his face
was deadly pale and filled with horror and loathing. He had
ceased to strike and was gazing up at the ventilator when
suddenly there broke from the silence of the night the most
horrible cry to which I have ever listened. It swelled up louder
and louder, a hoarse yell of pain and fear and anger all mingled
in the one dreadful shriek. They say that away down in the
village, and even in the distant parsonage, that cry raised the
sleepers from their beds. It struck cold to our hearts, and I
stood gazing at Holmes, and he at me, until the last echoes of it
had died away into the silence from which it rose.

"What can it mean?" I gasped.

"It means that it is all over," Holmes answered. "And perhaps,
after all, it is for the best. Take your pistol, and we will
enter Dr. Roylott's room."

With a grave face he lit the lamp and led the way down the
corridor. Twice he struck at the chamber door without any reply
from within. Then he turned the handle and entered, I at his
heels, with the cocked pistol in my hand.

It was a singular sight which met our eyes. On the table stood a
dark-lantern with the shutter half open, throwing a brilliant
beam of light upon the iron safe, the door of which was ajar.
Beside this table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott
clad in a long grey dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding
beneath, and his feet thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers.
Across his lap lay the short stock with the long lash which we
had noticed during the day. His chin was cocked upward and his
eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the
ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow band, with
brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly round his
head. As we entered he made neither sound nor motion.

"The band! the speckled band!" whispered Holmes.

I took a step forward. In an instant his strange headgear began
to move, and there reared itself from among his hair the squat
diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent.

"It is a swamp adder!" cried Holmes; "the deadliest snake in
India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten. Violence
does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls
into the pit which he digs for another. Let us thrust this
creature back into its den, and we can then remove Miss Stoner to
some place of shelter and let the county police know what has
happened."

As he spoke he drew the dog-whip swiftly from the dead man's lap,
and throwing the noose round the reptile's neck he drew it from
its horrid perch and, carrying it at arm's length, threw it into
the iron safe, which he closed upon it.

Such are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of
Stoke Moran. It is not necessary that I should prolong a
narrative which has already run to too great a length by telling
how we broke the sad news to the terrified girl, how we conveyed
her by the morning train to the care of her good aunt at Harrow,
of how the slow process of official inquiry came to the
conclusion that the doctor met his fate while indiscreetly
playing with a dangerous pet. The little which I had yet to learn
of the case was told me by Sherlock Holmes as we travelled back
next day.

"I had," said he, "come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which
shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from
insufficient data. The presence of the gipsies, and the use of
the word 'band,' which was used by the poor girl, no doubt, to
explain the appearance which she had caught a hurried glimpse of
by the light of her match, were sufficient to put me upon an
entirely wrong scent. I can only claim the merit that I instantly
reconsidered my position when, however, it became clear to me
that whatever danger threatened an occupant of the room could not
come either from the window or the door. My attention was
speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to this
ventilator, and to the bell-rope which hung down to the bed. The
discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to
the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was
there as a bridge for something passing through the hole and
coming to the bed. The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me,
and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the doctor was
furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I
was probably on the right track. The idea of using a form of
poison which could not possibly be discovered by any chemical
test was just such a one as would occur to a clever and ruthless
man who had had an Eastern training. The rapidity with which such
a poison would take effect would also, from his point of view, be
an advantage. It would be a sharp-eyed coroner, indeed, who could
distinguish the two little dark punctures which would show where
the poison fangs had done their work. Then I thought of the
whistle. Of course he must recall the snake before the morning
light revealed it to the victim. He had trained it, probably by
the use of the milk which we saw, to return to him when summoned.
He would put it through this ventilator at the hour that he
thought best, with the certainty that it would crawl down the
rope and land on the bed. It might or might not bite the
occupant, perhaps she might escape every night for a week, but
sooner or later she must fall a victim.

"I had come to these conclusions before ever I had entered his
room. An inspection of his chair showed me that he had been in
the habit of standing on it, which of course would be necessary
in order that he should reach the ventilator. The sight of the
safe, the saucer of milk, and the loop of whipcord were enough to
finally dispel any doubts which may have remained. The metallic
clang heard by Miss Stoner was obviously caused by her stepfather
hastily closing the door of his safe upon its terrible occupant.
Having once made up my mind, you know the steps which I took in
order to put the matter to the proof. I heard the creature hiss
as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit the
light and attacked it."

"With the result of driving it through the ventilator."

"And also with the result of causing it to turn upon its master
at the other side. Some of the blows of my cane came home and
roused its snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person
it saw. In this way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr.
Grimesby Roylott's death, and I cannot say that it is likely to
weigh very heavily upon my conscience."



IX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER'S THUMB

Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr.
Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy,
there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his
notice--that of Mr. Hatherley's thumb, and that of Colonel
Warburton's madness. Of these the latter may have afforded a
finer field for an acute and original observer, but the other was
so strange in its inception and so dramatic in its details that
it may be the more worthy of being placed upon record, even if it
gave my friend fewer openings for those deductive methods of
reasoning by which he achieved such remarkable results. The story
has, I believe, been told more than once in the newspapers, but,
like all such narratives, its effect is much less striking when
set forth en bloc in a single half-column of print than when the
facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery clears
gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which leads
on to the complete truth. At the time the circumstances made a
deep impression upon me, and the lapse of two years has hardly
served to weaken the effect.

It was in the summer of '89, not long after my marriage, that the
events occurred which I am now about to summarise. I had returned
to civil practice and had finally abandoned Holmes in his Baker
Street rooms, although I continually visited him and occasionally
even persuaded him to forgo his Bohemian habits so far as to come
and visit us. My practice had steadily increased, and as I
happened to live at no very great distance from Paddington
Station, I got a few patients from among the officials. One of
these, whom I had cured of a painful and lingering disease, was
never weary of advertising my virtues and of endeavouring to send
me on every sufferer over whom he might have any influence.

One morning, at a little before seven o'clock, I was awakened by
the maid tapping at the door to announce that two men had come
from Paddington and were waiting in the consulting-room. I
dressed hurriedly, for I knew by experience that railway cases
were seldom trivial, and hastened downstairs. As I descended, my
old ally, the guard, came out of the room and closed the door
tightly behind him.

"I've got him here," he whispered, jerking his thumb over his
shoulder; "he's all right."

"What is it, then?" I asked, for his manner suggested that it was
some strange creature which he had caged up in my room.

"It's a new patient," he whispered. "I thought I'd bring him
round myself; then he couldn't slip away. There he is, all safe
and sound. I must go now, Doctor; I have my dooties, just the
same as you." And off he went, this trusty tout, without even
giving me time to thank him.

I entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the
table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed with a
soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of
his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all
over with bloodstains. He was young, not more than
five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong, masculine face; but
he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who
was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his
strength of mind to control.

"I am sorry to knock you up so early, Doctor," said he, "but I
have had a very serious accident during the night. I came in by
train this morning, and on inquiring at Paddington as to where I
might find a doctor, a worthy fellow very kindly escorted me
here. I gave the maid a card, but I see that she has left it upon
the side-table."

I took it up and glanced at it. "Mr. Victor Hatherley, hydraulic
engineer, 16A, Victoria Street (3rd floor)." That was the name,
style, and abode of my morning visitor. "I regret that I have
kept you waiting," said I, sitting down in my library-chair. "You
are fresh from a night journey, I understand, which is in itself
a monotonous occupation."

"Oh, my night could not be called monotonous," said he, and
laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note,
leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical
instincts rose up against that laugh.

"Stop it!" I cried; "pull yourself together!" and I poured out
some water from a caraffe.

It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical
outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis
is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very
weary and pale-looking.

"I have been making a fool of myself," he gasped.

"Not at all. Drink this." I dashed some brandy into the water,
and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks.

"That's better!" said he. "And now, Doctor, perhaps you would
kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb
used to be."

He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even
my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four
protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the
thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from
the roots.

"Good heavens!" I cried, "this is a terrible injury. It must have
bled considerably."

"Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must
have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that
it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very
tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig."

"Excellent! You should have been a surgeon."

"It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own
province."

"This has been done," said I, examining the wound, "by a very
heavy and sharp instrument."

"A thing like a cleaver," said he.

"An accident, I presume?"

"By no means."

"What! a murderous attack?"

"Very murderous indeed."

"You horrify me."

I sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered
it over with cotton wadding and carbolised bandages. He lay back
without wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time.

"How is that?" I asked when I had finished.

"Capital! Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man.
I was very weak, but I have had a good deal to go through."

"Perhaps you had better not speak of the matter. It is evidently
trying to your nerves."

"Oh, no, not now. I shall have to tell my tale to the police;
but, between ourselves, if it were not for the convincing
evidence of this wound of mine, I should be surprised if they
believed my statement, for it is a very extraordinary one, and I
have not much in the way of proof with which to back it up; and,
even if they believe me, the clues which I can give them are so
vague that it is a question whether justice will be done."

"Ha!" cried I, "if it is anything in the nature of a problem
which you desire to see solved, I should strongly recommend you
to come to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, before you go to the
official police."

"Oh, I have heard of that fellow," answered my visitor, "and I
should be very glad if he would take the matter up, though of
course I must use the official police as well. Would you give me
an introduction to him?"

"I'll do better. I'll take you round to him myself."

"I should be immensely obliged to you."

"We'll call a cab and go together. We shall just be in time to
have a little breakfast with him. Do you feel equal to it?"

"Yes; I shall not feel easy until I have told my story."

"Then my servant will call a cab, and I shall be with you in an
instant." I rushed upstairs, explained the matter shortly to my
wife, and in five minutes was inside a hansom, driving with my
new acquaintance to Baker Street.

Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his
sitting-room in his dressing-gown, reading the agony column of The
Times and smoking his before-breakfast pipe, which was composed
of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day
before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the
mantelpiece. He received us in his quietly genial fashion,
ordered fresh rashers and eggs, and joined us in a hearty meal.
When it was concluded he settled our new acquaintance upon the
sofa, placed a pillow beneath his head, and laid a glass of
brandy and water within his reach.

"It is easy to see that your experience has been no common one,
Mr. Hatherley," said he. "Pray, lie down there and make yourself
absolutely at home. Tell us what you can, but stop when you are
tired and keep up your strength with a little stimulant."

"Thank you," said my patient, "but I have felt another man since
the doctor bandaged me, and I think that your breakfast has
completed the cure. I shall take up as little of your valuable
time as possible, so I shall start at once upon my peculiar
experiences."

Holmes sat in his big armchair with the weary, heavy-lidded
expression which veiled his keen and eager nature, while I sat
opposite to him, and we listened in silence to the strange story
which our visitor detailed to us.

"You must know," said he, "that I am an orphan and a bachelor,
residing alone in lodgings in London. By profession I am a
hydraulic engineer, and I have had considerable experience of my
work during the seven years that I was apprenticed to Venner &
Matheson, the well-known firm, of Greenwich. Two years ago,
having served my time, and having also come into a fair sum of
money through my poor father's death, I determined to start in
business for myself and took professional chambers in Victoria
Street.

"I suppose that everyone finds his first independent start in
business a dreary experience. To me it has been exceptionally so.
During two years I have had three consultations and one small
job, and that is absolutely all that my profession has brought
me. My gross takings amount to 27 pounds 10s. Every day, from
nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, I waited in my
little den, until at last my heart began to sink, and I came to
believe that I should never have any practice at all.

"Yesterday, however, just as I was thinking of leaving the
office, my clerk entered to say there was a gentleman waiting who
wished to see me upon business. He brought up a card, too, with
the name of 'Colonel Lysander Stark' engraved upon it. Close at
his heels came the colonel himself, a man rather over the middle
size, but of an exceeding thinness. I do not think that I have
ever seen so thin a man. His whole face sharpened away into nose
and chin, and the skin of his cheeks was drawn quite tense over
his outstanding bones. Yet this emaciation seemed to be his
natural habit, and due to no disease, for his eye was bright, his
step brisk, and his bearing assured. He was plainly but neatly
dressed, and his age, I should judge, would be nearer forty than
thirty.

"'Mr. Hatherley?' said he, with something of a German accent.
'You have been recommended to me, Mr. Hatherley, as being a man
who is not only proficient in his profession but is also discreet
and capable of preserving a secret.'

"I bowed, feeling as flattered as any young man would at such an
address. 'May I ask who it was who gave me so good a character?'

"'Well, perhaps it is better that I should not tell you that just
at this moment. I have it from the same source that you are both
an orphan and a bachelor and are residing alone in London.'

"'That is quite correct,' I answered; 'but you will excuse me if
I say that I cannot see how all this bears upon my professional
qualifications. I understand that it was on a professional matter
that you wished to speak to me?'

"'Undoubtedly so. But you will find that all I say is really to
the point. I have a professional commission for you, but absolute
secrecy is quite essential--absolute secrecy, you understand, and
of course we may expect that more from a man who is alone than
from one who lives in the bosom of his family.'

"'If I promise to keep a secret,' said I, 'you may absolutely
depend upon my doing so.'

"He looked very hard at me as I spoke, and it seemed to me that I
had never seen so suspicious and questioning an eye.

"'Do you promise, then?' said he at last.

"'Yes, I promise.'

"'Absolute and complete silence before, during, and after? No
reference to the matter at all, either in word or writing?'

"'I have already given you my word.'

"'Very good.' He suddenly sprang up, and darting like lightning
across the room he flung open the door. The passage outside was
empty.

"'That's all right,' said he, coming back. 'I know that clerks are
sometimes curious as to their master's affairs. Now we can talk
in safety.' He drew up his chair very close to mine and began to
stare at me again with the same questioning and thoughtful look.

"A feeling of repulsion, and of something akin to fear had begun
to rise within me at the strange antics of this fleshless man.
Even my dread of losing a client could not restrain me from
showing my impatience.

"'I beg that you will state your business, sir,' said I; 'my time
is of value.' Heaven forgive me for that last sentence, but the
words came to my lips.

"'How would fifty guineas for a night's work suit you?' he asked.

"'Most admirably.'

"'I say a night's work, but an hour's would be nearer the mark. I
simply want your opinion about a hydraulic stamping machine which
has got out of gear. If you show us what is wrong we shall soon
set it right ourselves. What do you think of such a commission as
that?'

"'The work appears to be light and the pay munificent.'

"'Precisely so. We shall want you to come to-night by the last
train.'

"'Where to?'

"'To Eyford, in Berkshire. It is a little place near the borders
of Oxfordshire, and within seven miles of Reading. There is a
train from Paddington which would bring you there at about
11:15.'

"'Very good.'

"'I shall come down in a carriage to meet you.'

"'There is a drive, then?'

"'Yes, our little place is quite out in the country. It is a good
seven miles from Eyford Station.'

"'Then we can hardly get there before midnight. I suppose there
would be no chance of a train back. I should be compelled to stop
the night.'

"'Yes, we could easily give you a shake-down.'

"'That is very awkward. Could I not come at some more convenient
hour?'

"'We have judged it best that you should come late. It is to
recompense you for any inconvenience that we are paying to you, a
young and unknown man, a fee which would buy an opinion from the
very heads of your profession. Still, of course, if you would
like to draw out of the business, there is plenty of time to do
so.'

"I thought of the fifty guineas, and of how very useful they
would be to me. 'Not at all,' said I, 'I shall be very happy to
accommodate myself to your wishes. I should like, however, to
understand a little more clearly what it is that you wish me to
do.'

"'Quite so. It is very natural that the pledge of secrecy which
we have exacted from you should have aroused your curiosity. I
have no wish to commit you to anything without your having it all
laid before you. I suppose that we are absolutely safe from
eavesdroppers?'

"'Entirely.'

"'Then the matter stands thus. You are probably aware that
fuller's-earth is a valuable product, and that it is only found
in one or two places in England?'

"'I have heard so.'

"'Some little time ago I bought a small place--a very small
place--within ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to
discover that there was a deposit of fuller's-earth in one of my
fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a
comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two
very much larger ones upon the right and left--both of them,
however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were
absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was
quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my
interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value,
but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I
took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they
suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little
deposit and that in this way we should earn the money which would
enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been
doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we
erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already
explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the
subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it
once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our
little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts
came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these
fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you
promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are
going to Eyford to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?'

"'I quite follow you,' said I. 'The only point which I could not
quite understand was what use you could make of a hydraulic press
in excavating fuller's-earth, which, as I understand, is dug out
like gravel from a pit.'

"'Ah!' said he carelessly, 'we have our own process. We compress
the earth into bricks, so as to remove them without revealing
what they are. But that is a mere detail. I have taken you fully
into my confidence now, Mr. Hatherley, and I have shown you how I
trust you.' He rose as he spoke. 'I shall expect you, then, at
Eyford at 11:15.'

"'I shall certainly be there.'

"'And not a word to a soul.' He looked at me with a last long,
questioning gaze, and then, pressing my hand in a cold, dank
grasp, he hurried from the room.

"Well, when I came to think it all over in cool blood I was very
much astonished, as you may both think, at this sudden commission
which had been intrusted to me. On the one hand, of course, I was
glad, for the fee was at least tenfold what I should have asked
had I set a price upon my own services, and it was possible that
this order might lead to other ones. On the other hand, the face
and manner of my patron had made an unpleasant impression upon
me, and I could not think that his explanation of the
fuller's-earth was sufficient to explain the necessity for my
coming at midnight, and his extreme anxiety lest I should tell
anyone of my errand. However, I threw all fears to the winds, ate
a hearty supper, drove to Paddington, and started off, having
obeyed to the letter the injunction as to holding my tongue.

"At Reading I had to change not only my carriage but my station.
However, I was in time for the last train to Eyford, and I
reached the little dim-lit station after eleven o'clock. I was the
only passenger who got out there, and there was no one upon the
platform save a single sleepy porter with a lantern. As I passed
out through the wicket gate, however, I found my acquaintance of
the morning waiting in the shadow upon the other side. Without a
word he grasped my arm and hurried me into a carriage, the door
of which was standing open. He drew up the windows on either
side, tapped on the wood-work, and away we went as fast as the
horse could go."

"One horse?" interjected Holmes.

"Yes, only one."

"Did you observe the colour?"

"Yes, I saw it by the side-lights when I was stepping into the
carriage. It was a chestnut."

"Tired-looking or fresh?"

"Oh, fresh and glossy."

"Thank you. I am sorry to have interrupted you. Pray continue
your most interesting statement."

"Away we went then, and we drove for at least an hour. Colonel
Lysander Stark had said that it was only seven miles, but I
should think, from the rate that we seemed to go, and from the
time that we took, that it must have been nearer twelve. He sat
at my side in silence all the time, and I was aware, more than
once when I glanced in his direction, that he was looking at me
with great intensity. The country roads seem to be not very good
in that part of the world, for we lurched and jolted terribly. I
tried to look out of the windows to see something of where we
were, but they were made of frosted glass, and I could make out
nothing save the occasional bright blur of a passing light. Now
and then I hazarded some remark to break the monotony of the
journey, but the colonel answered only in monosyllables, and the
conversation soon flagged. At last, however, the bumping of the
road was exchanged for the crisp smoothness of a gravel-drive,
and the carriage came to a stand. Colonel Lysander Stark sprang
out, and, as I followed after him, pulled me swiftly into a porch
which gaped in front of us. We stepped, as it were, right out of
the carriage and into the hall, so that I failed to catch the
most fleeting glance of the front of the house. The instant that
I had crossed the threshold the door slammed heavily behind us,
and I heard faintly the rattle of the wheels as the carriage
drove away.

"It was pitch dark inside the house, and the colonel fumbled
about looking for matches and muttering under his breath.
Suddenly a door opened at the other end of the passage, and a
long, golden bar of light shot out in our direction. It grew
broader, and a woman appeared with a lamp in her hand, which she
held above her head, pushing her face forward and peering at us.
I could see that she was pretty, and from the gloss with which
the light shone upon her dark dress I knew that it was a rich
material. She spoke a few words in a foreign tongue in a tone as
though asking a question, and when my companion answered in a
gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly
fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered
something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room
from whence she had come, he walked towards me again with the
lamp in his hand.

"'Perhaps you will have the kindness to wait in this room for a
few minutes,' said he, throwing open another door. It was a
quiet, little, plainly furnished room, with a round table in the
centre, on which several German books were scattered. Colonel
Stark laid down the lamp on the top of a harmonium beside the
door. 'I shall not keep you waiting an instant,' said he, and
vanished into the darkness.

"I glanced at the books upon the table, and in spite of my
ignorance of German I could see that two of them were treatises
on science, the others being volumes of poetry. Then I walked
across to the window, hoping that I might catch some glimpse of
the country-side, but an oak shutter, heavily barred, was folded
across it. It was a wonderfully silent house. There was an old
clock ticking loudly somewhere in the passage, but otherwise
everything was deadly still. A vague feeling of uneasiness began
to steal over me. Who were these German people, and what were
they doing living in this strange, out-of-the-way place? And
where was the place? I was ten miles or so from Eyford, that was
all I knew, but whether north, south, east, or west I had no
idea. For that matter, Reading, and possibly other large towns,
were within that radius, so the place might not be so secluded,
after all. Yet it was quite certain, from the absolute stillness,
that we were in the country. I paced up and down the room,
humming a tune under my breath to keep up my spirits and feeling
that I was thoroughly earning my fifty-guinea fee.

"Suddenly, without any preliminary sound in the midst of the
utter stillness, the door of my room swung slowly open. The woman
was standing in the aperture, the darkness of the hall behind
her, the yellow light from my lamp beating upon her eager and
beautiful face. I could see at a glance that she was sick with
fear, and the sight sent a chill to my own heart. She held up one
shaking finger to warn me to be silent, and she shot a few
whispered words of broken English at me, her eyes glancing back,
like those of a frightened horse, into the gloom behind her.

"'I would go,' said she, trying hard, as it seemed to me, to
speak calmly; 'I would go. I should not stay here. There is no
good for you to do.'

"'But, madam,' said I, 'I have not yet done what I came for. I
cannot possibly leave until I have seen the machine.'

"'It is not worth your while to wait,' she went on. 'You can pass
through the door; no one hinders.' And then, seeing that I smiled
and shook my head, she suddenly threw aside her constraint and
made a step forward, with her hands wrung together. 'For the love
of Heaven!' she whispered, 'get away from here before it is too
late!'

"But I am somewhat headstrong by nature, and the more ready to
engage in an affair when there is some obstacle in the way. I
thought of my fifty-guinea fee, of my wearisome journey, and of
the unpleasant night which seemed to be before me. Was it all to
go for nothing? Why should I slink away without having carried
out my commission, and without the payment which was my due? This
woman might, for all I knew, be a monomaniac. With a stout
bearing, therefore, though her manner had shaken me more than I
cared to confess, I still shook my head and declared my intention
of remaining where I was. She was about to renew her entreaties
when a door slammed overhead, and the sound of several footsteps
was heard upon the stairs. She listened for an instant, threw up
her hands with a despairing gesture, and vanished as suddenly and
as noiselessly as she had come.

"The newcomers were Colonel Lysander Stark and a short thick man
with a chinchilla beard growing out of the creases of his double
chin, who was introduced to me as Mr. Ferguson.

"'This is my secretary and manager,' said the colonel. 'By the
way, I was under the impression that I left this door shut just
now. I fear that you have felt the draught.'

"'On the contrary,' said I, 'I opened the door myself because I
felt the room to be a little close.'

"He shot one of his suspicious looks at me. 'Perhaps we had
better proceed to business, then,' said he. 'Mr. Ferguson and I
will take you up to see the machine.'

"'I had better put my hat on, I suppose.'

"'Oh, no, it is in the house.'

"'What, you dig fuller's-earth in the house?'

"'No, no. This is only where we compress it. But never mind that.
All we wish you to do is to examine the machine and to let us
know what is wrong with it.'

"We went upstairs together, the colonel first with the lamp, the
fat manager and I behind him. It was a labyrinth of an old house,
with corridors, passages, narrow winding staircases, and little
low doors, the thresholds of which were hollowed out by the
generations who had crossed them. There were no carpets and no
signs of any furniture above the ground floor, while the plaster
was peeling off the walls, and the damp was breaking through in
green, unhealthy blotches. I tried to put on as unconcerned an
air as possible, but I had not forgotten the warnings of the
lady, even though I disregarded them, and I kept a keen eye upon
my two companions. Ferguson appeared to be a morose and silent
man, but I could see from the little that he said that he was at
least a fellow-countryman.

"Colonel Lysander Stark stopped at last before a low door, which
he unlocked. Within was a small, square room, in which the three
of us could hardly get at one time. Ferguson remained outside,
and the colonel ushered me in.

"'We are now,' said he, 'actually within the hydraulic press, and
it would be a particularly unpleasant thing for us if anyone were
to turn it on. The ceiling of this small chamber is really the
end of the descending piston, and it comes down with the force of
many tons upon this metal floor. There are small lateral columns
of water outside which receive the force, and which transmit and
multiply it in the manner which is familiar to you. The machine
goes readily enough, but there is some stiffness in the working
of it, and it has lost a little of its force. Perhaps you will
have the goodness to look it over and to show us how we can set
it right.'

"I took the lamp from him, and I examined the machine very
thoroughly. It was indeed a gigantic one, and capable of
exercising enormous pressure. When I passed outside, however, and
pressed down the levers which controlled it, I knew at once by
the whishing sound that there was a slight leakage, which allowed
a regurgitation of water through one of the side cylinders. An
examination showed that one of the india-rubber bands which was
round the head of a driving-rod had shrunk so as not quite to
fill the socket along which it worked. This was clearly the cause
of the loss of power, and I pointed it out to my companions, who
followed my remarks very carefully and asked several practical
questions as to how they should proceed to set it right. When I
had made it clear to them, I returned to the main chamber of the
machine and took a good look at it to satisfy my own curiosity.
It was obvious at a glance that the story of the fuller's-earth
was the merest fabrication, for it would be absurd to suppose
that so powerful an engine could be designed for so inadequate a
purpose. The walls were of wood, but the floor consisted of a
large iron trough, and when I came to examine it I could see a
crust of metallic deposit all over it. I had stooped and was
scraping at this to see exactly what it was when I heard a
muttered exclamation in German and saw the cadaverous face of the
colonel looking down at me.

"'What are you doing there?' he asked.

"I felt angry at having been tricked by so elaborate a story as
that which he had told me. 'I was admiring your fuller's-earth,'
said I; 'I think that I should be better able to advise you as to
your machine if I knew what the exact purpose was for which it
was used.'

"The instant that I uttered the words I regretted the rashness of
my speech. His face set hard, and a baleful light sprang up in
his grey eyes.

"'Very well,' said he, 'you shall know all about the machine.' He
took a step backward, slammed the little door, and turned the key
in the lock. I rushed towards it and pulled at the handle, but it
was quite secure, and did not give in the least to my kicks and
shoves. 'Hullo!' I yelled. 'Hullo! Colonel! Let me out!'

"And then suddenly in the silence I heard a sound which sent my
heart into my mouth. It was the clank of the levers and the swish
of the leaking cylinder. He had set the engine at work. The lamp
still stood upon the floor where I had placed it when examining
the trough. By its light I saw that the black ceiling was coming
down upon me, slowly, jerkily, but, as none knew better than
myself, with a force which must within a minute grind me to a
shapeless pulp. I threw myself, screaming, against the door, and
dragged with my nails at the lock. I implored the colonel to let
me out, but the remorseless clanking of the levers drowned my
cries. The ceiling was only a foot or two above my head, and with
my hand upraised I could feel its hard, rough surface. Then it
flashed through my mind that the pain of my death would depend
very much upon the position in which I met it. If I lay on my
face the weight would come upon my spine, and I shuddered to
think of that dreadful snap. Easier the other way, perhaps; and
yet, had I the nerve to lie and look up at that deadly black
shadow wavering down upon me? Already I was unable to stand
erect, when my eye caught something which brought a gush of hope
back to my heart.

"I have said that though the floor and ceiling were of iron, the
walls were of wood. As I gave a last hurried glance around, I saw
a thin line of yellow light between two of the boards, which
broadened and broadened as a small panel was pushed backward. For
an instant I could hardly believe that here was indeed a door
which led away from death. The next instant I threw myself
through, and lay half-fainting upon the other side. The panel had
closed again behind me, but the crash of the lamp, and a few
moments afterwards the clang of the two slabs of metal, told me
how narrow had been my escape.

"I was recalled to myself by a frantic plucking at my wrist, and
I found myself lying upon the stone floor of a narrow corridor,
while a woman bent over me and tugged at me with her left hand,
while she held a candle in her right. It was the same good friend
whose warning I had so foolishly rejected.

"'Come! come!' she cried breathlessly. 'They will be here in a
moment. They will see that you are not there. Oh, do not waste
the so-precious time, but come!'

"This time, at least, I did not scorn her advice. I staggered to
my feet and ran with her along the corridor and down a winding
stair. The latter led to another broad passage, and just as we
reached it we heard the sound of running feet and the shouting of
two voices, one answering the other from the floor on which  we
were and from the one beneath. My guide stopped and looked about
her like one  who is at her wit's end. Then she threw open a door
which led into a bedroom, through the window of which the moon
was shining brightly.

"'It is your only chance,' said she. 'It is high, but it may be
that you can jump it.'

"As she spoke a light sprang into view at the further end of the
passage, and I saw the lean figure of Colonel Lysander Stark
rushing forward with a lantern in one hand and a weapon like a
butcher's cleaver in the other. I rushed across the bedroom,
flung open the window, and looked out. How quiet and sweet and
wholesome the garden looked in the moonlight, and it could not be
more than thirty feet down. I clambered out upon the sill, but I
hesitated to jump until I should have heard what passed between
my saviour and the ruffian who pursued me. If she were ill-used,
then at any risks I was determined to go back to her assistance.
The thought had hardly flashed through my mind before he was at
the door, pushing his way past her; but she threw her arms round
him and tried to hold him back.

"'Fritz! Fritz!' she cried in English, 'remember your promise
after the last time. You said it should not be again. He will be
silent! Oh, he will be silent!'

"'You are mad, Elise!' he shouted, struggling to break away from
her. 'You will be the ruin of us. He has seen too much. Let me
pass, I say!' He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the
window, cut at me with his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and
was hanging by the hands to the sill, when his blow fell. I was
conscious of a dull pain, my grip loosened, and I fell into the
garden below.

"I was shaken but not hurt by the fall; so I picked myself up and
rushed off among the bushes as hard as I could run, for I
understood that I was far from being out of danger yet. Suddenly,
however, as I ran, a deadly dizziness and sickness came over me.
I glanced down at my hand, which was throbbing painfully, and
then, for the first time, saw that my thumb had been cut off and
that the blood was pouring from my wound. I endeavoured to tie my
handkerchief round it, but there came a sudden buzzing in my
ears, and next moment I fell in a dead faint among the
rose-bushes.

"How long I remained unconscious I cannot tell. It must have been
a very long time, for the moon had sunk, and a bright morning was
breaking when I came to myself. My clothes were all sodden with
dew, and my coat-sleeve was drenched with blood from my wounded
thumb. The smarting of it recalled in an instant all the
particulars of my night's adventure, and I sprang to my feet with
the feeling that I might hardly yet be safe from my pursuers. But
to my astonishment, when I came to look round me, neither house
nor garden were to be seen. I had been lying in an angle of the
hedge close by the highroad, and just a little lower down was a
long building, which proved, upon my approaching it, to be the
very station at which I had arrived upon the previous night. Were
it not for the ugly wound upon my hand, all that had passed
during those dreadful hours might have been an evil dream.

"Half dazed, I went into the station and asked about the morning
train. There would be one to Reading in less than an hour. The
same porter was on duty, I found, as had been there when I
arrived. I inquired of him whether he had ever heard of Colonel
Lysander Stark. The name was strange to him. Had he observed a
carriage the night before waiting for me? No, he had not. Was
there a police-station anywhere near? There was one about three
miles off.

"It was too far for me to go, weak and ill as I was. I determined
to wait until I got back to town before telling my story to the
police. It was a little past six when I arrived, so I went first
to have my wound dressed, and then the doctor was kind enough to
bring me along here. I put the case into your hands and shall do
exactly what you advise."

We both sat in silence for some little time after listening to
this extraordinary narrative. Then Sherlock Holmes pulled down
from the shelf one of the ponderous commonplace books in which he
placed his cuttings.

"Here is an advertisement which will interest you," said he. "It
appeared in all the papers about a year ago. Listen to this:
'Lost, on the 9th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged
twenty-six, a hydraulic engineer. Left his lodgings at ten
o'clock at night, and has not been heard of since. Was
dressed in,' etc., etc. Ha! That represents the last time that
the colonel needed to have his machine overhauled, I fancy."

"Good heavens!" cried my patient. "Then that explains what the
girl said."

"Undoubtedly. It is quite clear that the colonel was a cool and
desperate man, who was absolutely determined that nothing should
stand in the way of his little game, like those out-and-out
pirates who will leave no survivor from a captured ship. Well,
every moment now is precious, so if you feel equal to it we shall
go down to Scotland Yard at once as a preliminary to starting for
Eyford."

Some three hours or so afterwards we were all in the train
together, bound from Reading to the little Berkshire village.
There were Sherlock Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector
Bradstreet, of Scotland Yard, a plain-clothes man, and myself.
Bradstreet had spread an ordnance map of the county out upon the
seat and was busy with his compasses drawing a circle with Eyford
for its centre.

"There you are," said he. "That circle is drawn at a radius of
ten miles from the village. The place we want must be somewhere
near that line. You said ten miles, I think, sir."

"It was an hour's good drive."

"And you think that they brought you back all that way when you
were unconscious?"

"They must have done so. I have a confused memory, too, of having
been lifted and conveyed somewhere."

"What I cannot understand," said I, "is why they should have
spared you when they found you lying fainting in the garden.
Perhaps the villain was softened by the woman's entreaties."

"I hardly think that likely. I never saw a more inexorable face
in my life."

"Oh, we shall soon clear up all that," said Bradstreet. "Well, I
have drawn my circle, and I only wish I knew at what point upon
it the folk that we are in search of are to be found."

"I think I could lay my finger on it," said Holmes quietly.

"Really, now!" cried the inspector, "you have formed your
opinion! Come, now, we shall see who agrees with you. I say it is
south, for the country is more deserted there."

"And I say east," said my patient.

"I am for west," remarked the plain-clothes man. "There are
several quiet little villages up there."

"And I am for north," said I, "because there are no hills there,
and our friend says that he did not notice the carriage go up
any."

"Come," cried the inspector, laughing; "it's a very pretty
diversity of opinion. We have boxed the compass among us. Who do
you give your casting vote to?"

"You are all wrong."

"But we can't all be."

"Oh, yes, you can. This is my point." He placed his finger in the
centre of the circle. "This is where we shall find them."

"But the twelve-mile drive?" gasped Hatherley.

"Six out and six back. Nothing simpler. You say yourself that the
horse was fresh and glossy when you got in. How could it be that
if it had gone twelve miles over heavy roads?"

"Indeed, it is a likely ruse enough," observed Bradstreet
thoughtfully. "Of course there can be no doubt as to the nature
of this gang."

"None at all," said Holmes. "They are coiners on a large scale,
and have used the machine to form the amalgam which has taken the
place of silver."

"We have known for some time that a clever gang was at work,"
said the inspector. "They have been turning out half-crowns by
the thousand. We even traced them as far as Reading, but could
get no farther, for they had covered their traces in a way that
showed that they were very old hands. But now, thanks to this
lucky chance, I think that we have got them right enough."

But the inspector was mistaken, for those criminals were not
destined to fall into the hands of justice. As we rolled into
Eyford Station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed
up from behind a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood and
hung like an immense ostrich feather over the landscape.

"A house on fire?" asked Bradstreet as the train steamed off
again on its way.

"Yes, sir!" said the station-master.

"When did it break out?"

"I hear that it was during the night, sir, but it has got worse,
and the whole place is in a blaze."

"Whose house is it?"

"Dr. Becher's."

"Tell me," broke in the engineer, "is Dr. Becher a German, very
thin, with a long, sharp nose?"

The station-master laughed heartily. "No, sir, Dr. Becher is an
Englishman, and there isn't a man in the parish who has a
better-lined waistcoat. But he has a gentleman staying with him,
a patient, as I understand, who is a foreigner, and he looks as
if a little good Berkshire beef would do him no harm."

The station-master had not finished his speech before we were all
hastening in the direction of the fire. The road topped a low
hill, and there was a great widespread whitewashed building in
front of us, spouting fire at every chink and window, while in
the garden in front three fire-engines were vainly striving to
keep the flames under.

"That's it!" cried Hatherley, in intense excitement. "There is
the gravel-drive, and there are the rose-bushes where I lay. That
second window is the one that I jumped from."

"Well, at least," said Holmes, "you have had your revenge upon
them. There can be no question that it was your oil-lamp which,
when it was crushed in the press, set fire to the wooden walls,
though no doubt they were too excited in the chase after you to
observe it at the time. Now keep your eyes open in this crowd for
your friends of last night, though I very much fear that they are
a good hundred miles off by now."

And Holmes' fears came to be realised, for from that day to this
no word has ever been heard either of the beautiful woman, the
sinister German, or the morose Englishman. Early that morning a
peasant had met a cart containing several people and some very
bulky boxes driving rapidly in the direction of Reading, but
there all traces of the fugitives disappeared, and even Holmes'
ingenuity failed ever to discover the least clue as to their
whereabouts.

The firemen had been much perturbed at the strange arrangements
which they had found within, and still more so by discovering a
newly severed human thumb upon a window-sill of the second floor.
About sunset, however, their efforts were at last successful, and
they subdued the flames, but not before the roof had fallen in,
and the whole place been reduced to such absolute ruin that, save
some twisted cylinders and iron piping, not a trace remained of
the machinery which had cost our unfortunate acquaintance so
dearly. Large masses of nickel and of tin were discovered stored
in an out-house, but no coins were to be found, which may have
explained the presence of those bulky boxes which have been
already referred to.

How our hydraulic engineer had been conveyed from the garden to
the spot where he recovered his senses might have remained
forever a mystery were it not for the soft mould, which told us a
very plain tale. He had evidently been carried down by two
persons, one of whom had remarkably small feet and the other
unusually large ones. On the whole, it was most probable that the
silent Englishman, being less bold or less murderous than his
companion, had assisted the woman to bear the unconscious man out
of the way of danger.

"Well," said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return
once more to London, "it has been a pretty business for me! I
have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what
have I gained?"

"Experience," said Holmes, laughing. "Indirectly it may be of
value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the
reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your
existence."



X. THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR

The Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have
long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles
in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have
eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the
gossips away from this four-year-old drama. As I have reason to
believe, however, that the full facts have never been revealed to
the general public, and as my friend Sherlock Holmes had a
considerable share in clearing the matter up, I feel that no
memoir of him would be complete without some little sketch of
this remarkable episode.

It was a few weeks before my own marriage, during the days when I
was still sharing rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, that he came
home from an afternoon stroll to find a letter on the table
waiting for him. I had remained indoors all day, for the weather
had taken a sudden turn to rain, with high autumnal winds, and
the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as
a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence.
With my body in one easy-chair and my legs upon another, I had
surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers until at last,
saturated with the news of the day, I tossed them all aside and
lay listless, watching the huge crest and monogram upon the
envelope upon the table and wondering lazily who my friend's
noble correspondent could be.

"Here is a very fashionable epistle," I remarked as he entered.
"Your morning letters, if I remember right, were from a
fish-monger and a tide-waiter."

"Yes, my correspondence has certainly the charm of variety," he
answered, smiling, "and the humbler are usually the more
interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social
summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie."

He broke the seal and glanced over the contents.

"Oh, come, it may prove to be something of interest, after all."

"Not social, then?"

"No, distinctly professional."

"And from a noble client?"

"One of the highest in England."

"My dear fellow, I congratulate you."

"I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my
client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his
case. It is just possible, however, that that also may not be
wanting in this new investigation. You have been reading the
papers diligently of late, have you not?"

"It looks like it," said I ruefully, pointing to a huge bundle in
the corner. "I have had nothing else to do."

"It is fortunate, for you will perhaps be able to post me up. I
read nothing except the criminal news and the agony column. The
latter is always instructive. But if you have followed recent
events so closely you must have read about Lord St. Simon and his
wedding?"

"Oh, yes, with the deepest interest."

"That is well. The letter which I hold in my hand is from Lord
St. Simon. I will read it to you, and in return you must turn
over these papers and let me have whatever bears upon the matter.
This is what he says:

"'MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES:--Lord Backwater tells me that I
may place implicit reliance upon your judgment and discretion. I
have determined, therefore, to call upon you and to consult you
in reference to the very painful event which has occurred in
connection with my wedding. Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, is
acting already in the matter, but he assures me that he sees no
objection to your co-operation, and that he even thinks that
it might be of some assistance. I will call at four o'clock in
the afternoon, and, should you have any other engagement at that
time, I hope that you will postpone it, as this matter is of
paramount importance. Yours faithfully, ST. SIMON.'

"It is dated from Grosvenor Mansions, written with a quill pen,
and the noble lord has had the misfortune to get a smear of ink
upon the outer side of his right little finger," remarked Holmes
as he folded up the epistle.

"He says four o'clock. It is three now. He will be here in an
hour."

"Then I have just time, with your assistance, to get clear upon
the subject. Turn over those papers and arrange the extracts in
their order of time, while I take a glance as to who our client
is." He picked a red-covered volume from a line of books of
reference beside the mantelpiece. "Here he is," said he, sitting
down and flattening it out upon his knee. "'Lord Robert Walsingham
de Vere St. Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral.' Hum! 'Arms:
Azure, three caltrops in chief over a fess sable. Born in 1846.'
He's forty-one years of age, which is mature for marriage. Was
Under-Secretary for the colonies in a late administration. The
Duke, his father, was at one time Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
They inherit Plantagenet blood by direct descent, and Tudor on
the distaff side. Ha! Well, there is nothing very instructive in
all this. I think that I must turn to you Watson, for something
more solid."

"I have very little difficulty in finding what I want," said I,
"for the facts are quite recent, and the matter struck me as
remarkable. I feared to refer them to you, however, as I knew
that you had an inquiry on hand and that you disliked the
intrusion of other matters."

"Oh, you mean the little problem of the Grosvenor Square
furniture van. That is quite cleared up now--though, indeed, it
was obvious from the first. Pray give me the results of your
newspaper selections."

"Here is the first notice which I can find. It is in the personal
column of the Morning Post, and dates, as you see, some weeks
back: 'A marriage has been arranged,' it says, 'and will, if
rumour is correct, very shortly take place, between Lord Robert
St. Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral, and Miss Hatty
Doran, the only daughter of Aloysius Doran. Esq., of San
Francisco, Cal., U.S.A.' That is all."

"Terse and to the point," remarked Holmes, stretching his long,
thin legs towards the fire.

"There was a paragraph amplifying this in one of the society
papers of the same week. Ah, here it is: 'There will soon be a
call for protection in the marriage market, for the present
free-trade principle appears to tell heavily against our home
product. One by one the management of the noble houses of Great
Britain is passing into the hands of our fair cousins from across
the Atlantic. An important addition has been made during the last
week to the list of the prizes which have been borne away by
these charming invaders. Lord St. Simon, who has shown himself
for over twenty years proof against the little god's arrows, has
now definitely announced his approaching marriage with Miss Hatty
Doran, the fascinating daughter of a California millionaire. Miss
Doran, whose graceful figure and striking face attracted much
attention at the Westbury House festivities, is an only child,
and it is currently reported that her dowry will run to
considerably over the six figures, with expectancies for the
future. As it is an open secret that the Duke of Balmoral has
been compelled to sell his pictures within the last few years,
and as Lord St. Simon has no property of his own save the small
estate of Birchmoor, it is obvious that the Californian heiress
is not the only gainer by an alliance which will enable her to
make the easy and common transition from a Republican lady to a
British peeress.'"

"Anything else?" asked Holmes, yawning.

"Oh, yes; plenty. Then there is another note in the Morning Post
to say that the marriage would be an absolutely quiet one, that it
would be at St. George's, Hanover Square, that only half a dozen
intimate friends would be invited, and that the party would
return to the furnished house at Lancaster Gate which has been
taken by Mr. Aloysius Doran. Two days later--that is, on
Wednesday last--there is a curt announcement that the wedding had
taken place, and that the honeymoon would be passed at Lord
Backwater's place, near Petersfield. Those are all the notices
which appeared before the disappearance of the bride."

"Before the what?" asked Holmes with a start.

"The vanishing of the lady."

"When did she vanish, then?"

"At the wedding breakfast."

"Indeed. This is more interesting than it promised to be; quite
dramatic, in fact."

"Yes; it struck me as being a little out of the common."

"They often vanish before the ceremony, and occasionally during
the honeymoon; but I cannot call to mind anything quite so prompt
as this. Pray let me have the details."

"I warn you that they are very incomplete."

"Perhaps we may make them less so."

"Such as they are, they are set forth in a single article of a
morning paper of yesterday, which I will read to you. It is
headed, 'Singular Occurrence at a Fashionable Wedding':

"'The family of Lord Robert St. Simon has been thrown into the
greatest consternation by the strange and painful episodes which
have taken place in connection with his wedding. The ceremony, as
shortly announced in the papers of yesterday, occurred on the
previous morning; but it is only now that it has been possible to
confirm the strange rumours which have been so persistently
floating about. In spite of the attempts of the friends to hush
the matter up, so much public attention has now been drawn to it
that no good purpose can be served by affecting to disregard what
is a common subject for conversation.

"'The ceremony, which was performed at St. George's, Hanover
Square, was a very quiet one, no one being present save the
father of the bride, Mr. Aloysius Doran, the Duchess of Balmoral,
Lord Backwater, Lord Eustace and Lady Clara St. Simon (the
younger brother and sister of the bridegroom), and Lady Alicia
Whittington. The whole party proceeded afterwards to the house of
Mr. Aloysius Doran, at Lancaster Gate, where breakfast had been
prepared. It appears that some little trouble was caused by a
woman, whose name has not been ascertained, who endeavoured to
force her way into the house after the bridal party, alleging
that she had some claim upon Lord St. Simon. It was only after a
painful and prolonged scene that she was ejected by the butler
and the footman. The bride, who had fortunately entered the house
before this unpleasant interruption, had sat down to breakfast
with the rest, when she complained of a sudden indisposition and
retired to her room. Her prolonged absence having caused some
comment, her father followed her, but learned from her maid that
she had only come up to her chamber for an instant, caught up an
ulster and bonnet, and hurried down to the passage. One of the
footmen declared that he had seen a lady leave the house thus
apparelled, but had refused to credit that it was his mistress,
believing her to be with the company. On ascertaining that his
daughter had disappeared, Mr. Aloysius Doran, in conjunction with
the bridegroom, instantly put themselves in communication with
the police, and very energetic inquiries are being made, which
will probably result in a speedy clearing up of this very
singular business. Up to a late hour last night, however, nothing
had transpired as to the whereabouts of the missing lady. There
are rumours of foul play in the matter, and it is said that the
police have caused the arrest of the woman who had caused the
original disturbance, in the belief that, from jealousy or some
other motive, she may have been concerned in the strange
disappearance of the bride.'"

"And is that all?"

"Only one little item in another of the morning papers, but it is
a suggestive one."

"And it is--"

"That Miss Flora Millar, the lady who had caused the disturbance,
has actually been arrested. It appears that she was formerly a
danseuse at the Allegro, and that she has known the bridegroom
for some years. There are no further particulars, and the whole
case is in your hands now--so far as it has been set forth in the
public press."

"And an exceedingly interesting case it appears to be. I would
not have missed it for worlds. But there is a ring at the bell,
Watson, and as the clock makes it a few minutes after four, I
have no doubt that this will prove to be our noble client. Do not
dream of going, Watson, for I very much prefer having a witness,
if only as a check to my own memory."

"Lord Robert St. Simon," announced our page-boy, throwing open
the door. A gentleman entered, with a pleasant, cultured face,
high-nosed and pale, with something perhaps of petulance about
the mouth, and with the steady, well-opened eye of a man whose
pleasant lot it had ever been to command and to be obeyed. His
manner was brisk, and yet his general appearance gave an undue
impression of age, for he had a slight forward stoop and a little
bend of the knees as he walked. His hair, too, as he swept off
his very curly-brimmed hat, was grizzled round the edges and thin
upon the top. As to his dress, it was careful to the verge of
foppishness, with high collar, black frock-coat, white waistcoat,
yellow gloves, patent-leather shoes, and light-coloured gaiters.
He advanced slowly into the room, turning his head from left to
right, and swinging in his right hand the cord which held his
golden eyeglasses.

"Good-day, Lord St. Simon," said Holmes, rising and bowing. "Pray
take the basket-chair. This is my friend and colleague, Dr.
Watson. Draw up a little to the fire, and we will talk this
matter over."

"A most painful matter to me, as you can most readily imagine,
Mr. Holmes. I have been cut to the quick. I understand that you
have already managed several delicate cases of this sort, sir,
though I presume that they were hardly from the same class of
society."

"No, I am descending."

"I beg pardon."

"My last client of the sort was a king."

"Oh, really! I had no idea. And which king?"

"The King of Scandinavia."

"What! Had he lost his wife?"

"You can understand," said Holmes suavely, "that I extend to the
affairs of my other clients the same secrecy which I promise to
you in yours."

"Of course! Very right! very right! I'm sure I beg pardon. As to
my own case, I am ready to give you any information which may
assist you in forming an opinion."

"Thank you. I have already learned all that is in the public
prints, nothing more. I presume that I may take it as correct--this
article, for example, as to the disappearance of the bride."

Lord St. Simon glanced over it. "Yes, it is correct, as far as it
goes."

"But it needs a great deal of supplementing before anyone could
offer an opinion. I think that I may arrive at my facts most
directly by questioning you."

"Pray do so."

"When did you first meet Miss Hatty Doran?"

"In San Francisco, a year ago."

"You were travelling in the States?"

"Yes."

"Did you become engaged then?"

"No."

"But you were on a friendly footing?"

"I was amused by her society, and she could see that I was
amused."

"Her father is very rich?"

"He is said to be the richest man on the Pacific slope."

"And how did he make his money?"

"In mining. He had nothing a few years ago. Then he struck gold,
invested it, and came up by leaps and bounds."

"Now, what is your own impression as to the young lady's--your
wife's character?"

The nobleman swung his glasses a little faster and stared down
into the fire. "You see, Mr. Holmes," said he, "my wife was
twenty before her father became a rich man. During that time she
ran free in a mining camp and wandered through woods or
mountains, so that her education has come from Nature rather than
from the schoolmaster. She is what we call in England a tomboy,
with a strong nature, wild and free, unfettered by any sort of
traditions. She is impetuous--volcanic, I was about to say. She
is swift in making up her mind and fearless in carrying out her
resolutions. On the other hand, I would not have given her the
name which I have the honour to bear"--he gave a little stately
cough--"had not I thought her to be at bottom a noble woman. I
believe that she is capable of heroic self-sacrifice and that
anything dishonourable would be repugnant to her."

"Have you her photograph?"

"I brought this with me." He opened a locket and showed us the
full face of a very lovely woman. It was not a photograph but an
ivory miniature, and the artist had brought out the full effect
of the lustrous black hair, the large dark eyes, and the
exquisite mouth. Holmes gazed long and earnestly at it. Then he
closed the locket and handed it back to Lord St. Simon.

"The young lady came to London, then, and you renewed your
acquaintance?"

"Yes, her father brought her over for this last London season. I
met her several times, became engaged to her, and have now
married her."

"She brought, I understand, a considerable dowry?"

"A fair dowry. Not more than is usual in my family."

"And this, of course, remains to you, since the marriage is a
fait accompli?"

"I really have made no inquiries on the subject."

"Very naturally not. Did you see Miss Doran on the day before the
wedding?"

"Yes."

"Was she in good spirits?"

"Never better. She kept talking of what we should do in our
future lives."

"Indeed! That is very interesting. And on the morning of the
wedding?"

"She was as bright as possible--at least until after the
ceremony."

"And did you observe any change in her then?"

"Well, to tell the truth, I saw then the first signs that I had
ever seen that her temper was just a little sharp. The incident
however, was too trivial to relate and can have no possible
bearing upon the case."

"Pray let us have it, for all that."

"Oh, it is childish. She dropped her bouquet as we went towards
the vestry. She was passing the front pew at the time, and it
fell over into the pew. There was a moment's delay, but the
gentleman in the pew handed it up to her again, and it did not
appear to be the worse for the fall. Yet when I spoke to her of
the matter, she answered me abruptly; and in the carriage, on our
way home, she seemed absurdly agitated over this trifling cause."

"Indeed! You say that there was a gentleman in the pew. Some of
the general public were present, then?"

"Oh, yes. It is impossible to exclude them when the church is
open."

"This gentleman was not one of your wife's friends?"

"No, no; I call him a gentleman by courtesy, but he was quite a
common-looking person. I hardly noticed his appearance. But
really I think that we are wandering rather far from the point."

"Lady St. Simon, then, returned from the wedding in a less
cheerful frame of mind than she had gone to it. What did she do
on re-entering her father's house?"

"I saw her in conversation with her maid."

"And who is her maid?"

"Alice is her name. She is an American and came from California
with her."

"A confidential servant?"

"A little too much so. It seemed to me that her mistress allowed
her to take great liberties. Still, of course, in America they
look upon these things in a different way."

"How long did she speak to this Alice?"

"Oh, a few minutes. I had something else to think of."

"You did not overhear what they said?"

"Lady St. Simon said something about 'jumping a claim.' She was
accustomed to use slang of the kind. I have no idea what she
meant."

"American slang is very expressive sometimes. And what did your
wife do when she finished speaking to her maid?"

"She walked into the breakfast-room."

"On your arm?"

"No, alone. She was very independent in little matters like that.
Then, after we had sat down for ten minutes or so, she rose
hurriedly, muttered some words of apology, and left the room. She
never came back."

"But this maid, Alice, as I understand, deposes that she went to
her room, covered her bride's dress with a long ulster, put on a
bonnet, and went out."

"Quite so. And she was afterwards seen walking into Hyde Park in
company with Flora Millar, a woman who is now in custody, and who
had already made a disturbance at Mr. Doran's house that
morning."

"Ah, yes. I should like a few particulars as to this young lady,
and your relations to her."

Lord St. Simon shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows.
"We have been on a friendly footing for some years--I may say on
a very friendly footing. She used to be at the Allegro. I have
not treated her ungenerously, and she had no just cause of
complaint against me, but you know what women are, Mr. Holmes.
Flora was a dear little thing, but exceedingly hot-headed and
devotedly attached to me. She wrote me dreadful letters when she
heard that I was about to be married, and, to tell the truth, the
reason why I had the marriage celebrated so quietly was that I
feared lest there might be a scandal in the church. She came to
Mr. Doran's door just after we returned, and she endeavoured to
push her way in, uttering very abusive expressions towards my
wife, and even threatening her, but I had foreseen the
possibility of something of the sort, and I had two police
fellows there in private clothes, who soon pushed her out again.
She was quiet when she saw that there was no good in making a
row."

"Did your wife hear all this?"

"No, thank goodness, she did not."

"And she was seen walking with this very woman afterwards?"

"Yes. That is what Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, looks upon as
so serious. It is thought that Flora decoyed my wife out and laid
some terrible trap for her."

"Well, it is a possible supposition."

"You think so, too?"

"I did not say a probable one. But you do not yourself look upon
this as likely?"

"I do not think Flora would hurt a fly."

"Still, jealousy is a strange transformer of characters. Pray
what is your own theory as to what took place?"

"Well, really, I came to seek a theory, not to propound one. I
have given you all the facts. Since you ask me, however, I may
say that it has occurred to me as possible that the excitement of
this affair, the consciousness that she had made so immense a
social stride, had the effect of causing some little nervous
disturbance in my wife."

"In short, that she had become suddenly deranged?"

"Well, really, when I consider that she has turned her back--I
will not say upon me, but upon so much that many have aspired to
without success--I can hardly explain it in any other fashion."

"Well, certainly that is also a conceivable hypothesis," said
Holmes, smiling. "And now, Lord St. Simon, I think that I have
nearly all my data. May I ask whether you were seated at the
breakfast-table so that you could see out of the window?"

"We could see the other side of the road and the Park."

"Quite so. Then I do not think that I need to detain you longer.
I shall communicate with you."

"Should you be fortunate enough to solve this problem," said our
client, rising.

"I have solved it."

"Eh? What was that?"

"I say that I have solved it."

"Where, then, is my wife?"

"That is a detail which I shall speedily supply."

Lord St. Simon shook his head. "I am afraid that it will take
wiser heads than yours or mine," he remarked, and bowing in a
stately, old-fashioned manner he departed.

"It is very good of Lord St. Simon to honour my head by putting
it on a level with his own," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. "I
think that I shall have a whisky and soda and a cigar after all
this cross-questioning. I had formed my conclusions as to the
case before our client came into the room."

"My dear Holmes!"

"I have notes of several similar cases, though none, as I
remarked before, which were quite as prompt. My whole examination
served to turn my conjecture into a certainty. Circumstantial
evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a
trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example."

"But I have heard all that you have heard."

"Without, however, the knowledge of pre-existing cases which
serves me so well. There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some
years back, and something on very much the same lines at Munich
the year after the Franco-Prussian War. It is one of these
cases--but, hullo, here is Lestrade! Good-afternoon, Lestrade!
You will find an extra tumbler upon the sideboard, and there are
cigars in the box."

The official detective was attired in a pea-jacket and cravat,
which gave him a decidedly nautical appearance, and he carried a
black canvas bag in his hand. With a short greeting he seated
himself and lit the cigar which had been offered to him.

"What's up, then?" asked Holmes with a twinkle in his eye. "You
look dissatisfied."

"And I feel dissatisfied. It is this infernal St. Simon marriage
case. I can make neither head nor tail of the business."

"Really! You surprise me."

"Who ever heard of such a mixed affair? Every clue seems to slip
through my fingers. I have been at work upon it all day."

"And very wet it seems to have made you," said Holmes laying his
hand upon the arm of the pea-jacket.

"Yes, I have been dragging the Serpentine."

"In heaven's name, what for?"

"In search of the body of Lady St. Simon."

Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily.

"Have you dragged the basin of Trafalgar Square fountain?" he
asked.

"Why? What do you mean?"

"Because you have just as good a chance of finding this lady in
the one as in the other."

Lestrade shot an angry glance at my companion. "I suppose you
know all about it," he snarled.

"Well, I have only just heard the facts, but my mind is made up."

"Oh, indeed! Then you think that the Serpentine plays no part in
the matter?"

"I think it very unlikely."

"Then perhaps you will kindly explain how it is that we found
this in it?" He opened his bag as he spoke, and tumbled onto the
floor a wedding-dress of watered silk, a pair of white satin
shoes and a bride's wreath and veil, all discoloured and soaked
in water. "There," said he, putting a new wedding-ring upon the
top of the pile. "There is a little nut for you to crack, Master
Holmes."

"Oh, indeed!" said my friend, blowing blue rings into the air.
"You dragged them from the Serpentine?"

"No. They were found floating near the margin by a park-keeper.
They have been identified as her clothes, and it seemed to me
that if the clothes were there the body would not be far off."

"By the same brilliant reasoning, every man's body is to be found
in the neighbourhood of his wardrobe. And pray what did you hope
to arrive at through this?"

"At some evidence implicating Flora Millar in the disappearance."

"I am afraid that you will find it difficult."

"Are you, indeed, now?" cried Lestrade with some bitterness. "I
am afraid, Holmes, that you are not very practical with your
deductions and your inferences. You have made two blunders in as
many minutes. This dress does implicate Miss Flora Millar."

"And how?"

"In the dress is a pocket. In the pocket is a card-case. In the
card-case is a note. And here is the very note." He slapped it
down upon the table in front of him. "Listen to this: 'You will
see me when all is ready. Come at once. F.H.M.' Now my theory all
along has been that Lady St. Simon was decoyed away by Flora
Millar, and that she, with confederates, no doubt, was
responsible for her disappearance. Here, signed with her
initials, is the very note which was no doubt quietly slipped
into her hand at the door and which lured her within their
reach."

"Very good, Lestrade," said Holmes, laughing. "You really are
very fine indeed. Let me see it." He took up the paper in a
listless way, but his attention instantly became riveted, and he
gave a little cry of satisfaction. "This is indeed important,"
said he.

"Ha! you find it so?"

"Extremely so. I congratulate you warmly."

Lestrade rose in his triumph and bent his head to look. "Why," he
shrieked, "you're looking at the wrong side!"

"On the contrary, this is the right side."

"The right side? You're mad! Here is the note written in pencil
over here."

"And over here is what appears to be the fragment of a hotel
bill, which interests me deeply."

"There's nothing in it. I looked at it before," said Lestrade.
"'Oct. 4th, rooms 8s., breakfast 2s. 6d., cocktail 1s., lunch 2s.
6d., glass sherry, 8d.' I see nothing in that."

"Very likely not. It is most important, all the same. As to the
note, it is important also, or at least the initials are, so I
congratulate you again."

"I've wasted time enough," said Lestrade, rising. "I believe in
hard work and not in sitting by the fire spinning fine theories.
Good-day, Mr. Holmes, and we shall see which gets to the bottom
of the matter first." He gathered up the garments, thrust them
into the bag, and made for the door.

"Just one hint to you, Lestrade," drawled Holmes before his rival
vanished; "I will tell you the true solution of the matter. Lady
St. Simon is a myth. There is not, and there never has been, any
such person."

Lestrade looked sadly at my companion. Then he turned to me,
tapped his forehead three times, shook his head solemnly, and
hurried away.

He had hardly shut the door behind him when Holmes rose to put on
his overcoat. "There is something in what the fellow says about
outdoor work," he remarked, "so I think, Watson, that I must
leave you to your papers for a little."

It was after five o'clock when Sherlock Holmes left me, but I had
no time to be lonely, for within an hour there arrived a
confectioner's man with a very large flat box. This he unpacked
with the help of a youth whom he had brought with him, and
presently, to my very great astonishment, a quite epicurean
little cold supper began to be laid out upon our humble
lodging-house mahogany. There were a couple of brace of cold
woodcock, a pheasant, a pt de foie gras pie with a group of
ancient and cobwebby bottles. Having laid out all these luxuries,
my two visitors vanished away, like the genii of the Arabian
Nights, with no explanation save that the things had been paid
for and were ordered to this address.

Just before nine o'clock Sherlock Holmes stepped briskly into the
room. His features were gravely set, but there was a light in his
eye which made me think that he had not been disappointed in his
conclusions.

"They have laid the supper, then," he said, rubbing his hands.

"You seem to expect company. They have laid for five."

"Yes, I fancy we may have some company dropping in," said he. "I
am surprised that Lord St. Simon has not already arrived. Ha! I
fancy that I hear his step now upon the stairs."

It was indeed our visitor of the afternoon who came bustling in,
dangling his glasses more vigorously than ever, and with a very
perturbed expression upon his aristocratic features.

"My messenger reached you, then?" asked Holmes.

"Yes, and I confess that the contents startled me beyond measure.
Have you good authority for what you say?"

"The best possible."

Lord St. Simon sank into a chair and passed his hand over his
forehead.

"What will the Duke say," he murmured, "when he hears that one of
the family has been subjected to such humiliation?"

"It is the purest accident. I cannot allow that there is any
humiliation."

"Ah, you look on these things from another standpoint."

"I fail to see that anyone is to blame. I can hardly see how the
lady could have acted otherwise, though her abrupt method of
doing it was undoubtedly to be regretted. Having no mother, she
had no one to advise her at such a crisis."

"It was a slight, sir, a public slight," said Lord St. Simon,
tapping his fingers upon the table.

"You must make allowance for this poor girl, placed in so
unprecedented a position."

"I will make no allowance. I am very angry indeed, and I have
been shamefully used."

"I think that I heard a ring," said Holmes. "Yes, there are steps
on the landing. If I cannot persuade you to take a lenient view
of the matter, Lord St. Simon, I have brought an advocate here
who may be more successful." He opened the door and ushered in a
lady and gentleman. "Lord St. Simon," said he "allow me to
introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hay Moulton. The lady, I
think, you have already met."

At the sight of these newcomers our client had sprung from his
seat and stood very erect, with his eyes cast down and his hand
thrust into the breast of his frock-coat, a picture of offended
dignity. The lady had taken a quick step forward and had held out
her hand to him, but he still refused to raise his eyes. It was
as well for his resolution, perhaps, for her pleading face was
one which it was hard to resist.

"You're angry, Robert," said she. "Well, I guess you have every
cause to be."

"Pray make no apology to me," said Lord St. Simon bitterly.

"Oh, yes, I know that I have treated you real bad and that I
should have spoken to you before I went; but I was kind of
rattled, and from the time when I saw Frank here again I just
didn't know what I was doing or saying. I only wonder I didn't
fall down and do a faint right there before the altar."

"Perhaps, Mrs. Moulton, you would like my friend and me to leave
the room while you explain this matter?"

"If I may give an opinion," remarked the strange gentleman,
"we've had just a little too much secrecy over this business
already. For my part, I should like all Europe and America to
hear the rights of it." He was a small, wiry, sunburnt man,
clean-shaven, with a sharp face and alert manner.

"Then I'll tell our story right away," said the lady. "Frank here
and I met in '84, in McQuire's camp, near the Rockies, where pa
was working a claim. We were engaged to each other, Frank and I;
but then one day father struck a rich pocket and made a pile,
while poor Frank here had a claim that petered out and came to
nothing. The richer pa grew the poorer was Frank; so at last pa
wouldn't hear of our engagement lasting any longer, and he took
me away to 'Frisco. Frank wouldn't throw up his hand, though; so
he followed me there, and he saw me without pa knowing anything
about it. It would only have made him mad to know, so we just
fixed it all up for ourselves. Frank said that he would go and
make his pile, too, and never come back to claim me until he had
as much as pa. So then I promised to wait for him to the end of
time and pledged myself not to marry anyone else while he lived.
'Why shouldn't we be married right away, then,' said he, 'and
then I will feel sure of you; and I won't claim to be your
husband until I come back?' Well, we talked it over, and he had
fixed it all up so nicely, with a clergyman all ready in waiting,
that we just did it right there; and then Frank went off to seek
his fortune, and I went back to pa.

"The next I heard of Frank was that he was in Montana, and then
he went prospecting in Arizona, and then I heard of him from New
Mexico. After that came a long newspaper story about how a
miners' camp had been attacked by Apache Indians, and there was
my Frank's name among the killed. I fainted dead away, and I was
very sick for months after. Pa thought I had a decline and took
me to half the doctors in 'Frisco. Not a word of news came for a
year and more, so that I never doubted that Frank was really
dead. Then Lord St. Simon came to 'Frisco, and we came to London,
and a marriage was arranged, and pa was very pleased, but I felt
all the time that no man on this earth would ever take the place
in my heart that had been given to my poor Frank.

"Still, if I had married Lord St. Simon, of course I'd have done
my duty by him. We can't command our love, but we can our
actions. I went to the altar with him with the intention to make
him just as good a wife as it was in me to be. But you may
imagine what I felt when, just as I came to the altar rails, I
glanced back and saw Frank standing and looking at me out of the
first pew. I thought it was his ghost at first; but when I looked
again there he was still, with a kind of question in his eyes, as
if to ask me whether I were glad or sorry to see him. I wonder I
didn't drop. I know that everything was turning round, and the
words of the clergyman were just like the buzz of a bee in my
ear. I didn't know what to do. Should I stop the service and make
a scene in the church? I glanced at him again, and he seemed to
know what I was thinking, for he raised his finger to his lips to
tell me to be still. Then I saw him scribble on a piece of paper,
and I knew that he was writing me a note. As I passed his pew on
the way out I dropped my bouquet over to him, and he slipped the
note into my hand when he returned me the flowers. It was only a
line asking me to join him when he made the sign to me to do so.
Of course I never doubted for a moment that my first duty was now
to him, and I determined to do just whatever he might direct.

"When I got back I told my maid, who had known him in California,
and had always been his friend. I ordered her to say nothing, but
to get a few things packed and my ulster ready. I know I ought to
have spoken to Lord St. Simon, but it was dreadful hard before
his mother and all those great people. I just made up my mind to
run away and explain afterwards. I hadn't been at the table ten
minutes before I saw Frank out of the window at the other side of
the road. He beckoned to me and then began walking into the Park.
I slipped out, put on my things, and followed him. Some woman
came talking something or other about Lord St. Simon to
me--seemed to me from the little I heard as if he had a little
secret of his own before marriage also--but I managed to get away
from her and soon overtook Frank. We got into a cab together, and
away we drove to some lodgings he had taken in Gordon Square, and
that was my true wedding after all those years of waiting. Frank
had been a prisoner among the Apaches, had escaped, came on to
'Frisco, found that I had given him up for dead and had gone to
England, followed me there, and had come upon me at last on the
very morning of my second wedding."

"I saw it in a paper," explained the American. "It gave the name
and the church but not where the lady lived."

"Then we had a talk as to what we should do, and Frank was all
for openness, but I was so ashamed of it all that I felt as if I
should like to vanish away and never see any of them again--just
sending a line to pa, perhaps, to show him that I was alive. It
was awful to me to think of all those lords and ladies sitting
round that breakfast-table and waiting for me to come back. So
Frank took my wedding-clothes and things and made a bundle of
them, so that I should not be traced, and dropped them away
somewhere where no one could find them. It is likely that we
should have gone on to Paris to-morrow, only that this good
gentleman, Mr. Holmes, came round to us this evening, though how
he found us is more than I can think, and he showed us very
clearly and kindly that I was wrong and that Frank was right, and
that we should be putting ourselves in the wrong if we were so
secret. Then he offered to give us a chance of talking to Lord
St. Simon alone, and so we came right away round to his rooms at
once. Now, Robert, you have heard it all, and I am very sorry if
I have given you pain, and I hope that you do not think very
meanly of me."

Lord St. Simon had by no means relaxed his rigid attitude, but
had listened with a frowning brow and a compressed lip to this
long narrative.

"Excuse me," he said, "but it is not my custom to discuss my most
intimate personal affairs in this public manner."

"Then you won't forgive me? You won't shake hands before I go?"

"Oh, certainly, if it would give you any pleasure." He put out
his hand and coldly grasped that which she extended to him.

"I had hoped," suggested Holmes, "that you would have joined us
in a friendly supper."

"I think that there you ask a little too much," responded his
Lordship. "I may be forced to acquiesce in these recent
developments, but I can hardly be expected to make merry over
them. I think that with your permission I will now wish you all a
very good-night." He included us all in a sweeping bow and
stalked out of the room.

"Then I trust that you at least will honour me with your
company," said Sherlock Holmes. "It is always a joy to meet an
American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the
folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone
years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens
of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a
quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes."

"The case has been an interesting one," remarked Holmes when our
visitors had left us, "because it serves to show very clearly how
simple the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight
seems to be almost inexplicable. Nothing could be more natural
than the sequence of events as narrated by this lady, and nothing
stranger than the result when viewed, for instance, by Mr.
Lestrade of Scotland Yard."

"You were not yourself at fault at all, then?"

"From the first, two facts were very obvious to me, the one that
the lady had been quite willing to undergo the wedding ceremony,
the other that she had repented of it within a few minutes of
returning home. Obviously something had occurred during the
morning, then, to cause her to change her mind. What could that
something be? She could not have spoken to anyone when she was
out, for she had been in the company of the bridegroom. Had she
seen someone, then? If she had, it must be someone from America
because she had spent so short a time in this country that she
could hardly have allowed anyone to acquire so deep an influence
over her that the mere sight of him would induce her to change
her plans so completely. You see we have already arrived, by a
process of exclusion, at the idea that she might have seen an
American. Then who could this American be, and why should he
possess so much influence over her? It might be a lover; it might
be a husband. Her young womanhood had, I knew, been spent in
rough scenes and under strange conditions. So far I had got
before I ever heard Lord St. Simon's narrative. When he told us
of a man in a pew, of the change in the bride's manner, of so
transparent a device for obtaining a note as the dropping of a
bouquet, of her resort to her confidential maid, and of her very
significant allusion to claim-jumping--which in miners' parlance
means taking possession of that which another person has a prior
claim to--the whole situation became absolutely clear. She had
gone off with a man, and the man was either a lover or was a
previous husband--the chances being in favour of the latter."

"And how in the world did you find them?"

"It might have been difficult, but friend Lestrade held
information in his hands the value of which he did not himself
know. The initials were, of course, of the highest importance,
but more valuable still was it to know that within a week he had
settled his bill at one of the most select London hotels."

"How did you deduce the select?"

"By the select prices. Eight shillings for a bed and eightpence
for a glass of sherry pointed to one of the most expensive
hotels. There are not many in London which charge at that rate.
In the second one which I visited in Northumberland Avenue, I
learned by an inspection of the book that Francis H. Moulton, an
American gentleman, had left only the day before, and on looking
over the entries against him, I came upon the very items which I
had seen in the duplicate bill. His letters were to be forwarded
to 226 Gordon Square; so thither I travelled, and being fortunate
enough to find the loving couple at home, I ventured to give them
some paternal advice and to point out to them that it would be
better in every way that they should make their position a little
clearer both to the general public and to Lord St. Simon in
particular. I invited them to meet him here, and, as you see, I
made him keep the appointment."

"But with no very good result," I remarked. "His conduct was
certainly not very gracious."

"Ah, Watson," said Holmes, smiling, "perhaps you would not be
very gracious either, if, after all the trouble of wooing and
wedding, you found yourself deprived in an instant of wife and of
fortune. I think that we may judge Lord St. Simon very mercifully
and thank our stars that we are never likely to find ourselves in
the same position. Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for
the only problem we have still to solve is how to while away
these bleak autumnal evenings."



XI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET

"Holmes," said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window looking
down the street, "here is a madman coming along. It seems rather
sad that his relatives should allow him to come out alone."

My friend rose lazily from his armchair and stood with his hands
in the pockets of his dressing-gown, looking over my shoulder. It
was a bright, crisp February morning, and the snow of the day
before still lay deep upon the ground, shimmering brightly in the
wintry sun. Down the centre of Baker Street it had been ploughed
into a brown crumbly band by the traffic, but at either side and
on the heaped-up edges of the foot-paths it still lay as white as
when it fell. The grey pavement had been cleaned and scraped, but
was still dangerously slippery, so that there were fewer
passengers than usual. Indeed, from the direction of the
Metropolitan Station no one was coming save the single gentleman
whose eccentric conduct had drawn my attention.

He was a man of about fifty, tall, portly, and imposing, with a
massive, strongly marked face and a commanding figure. He was
dressed in a sombre yet rich style, in black frock-coat, shining
hat, neat brown gaiters, and well-cut pearl-grey trousers. Yet
his actions were in absurd contrast to the dignity of his dress
and features, for he was running hard, with occasional little
springs, such as a weary man gives who is little accustomed to
set any tax upon his legs. As he ran he jerked his hands up and
down, waggled his head, and writhed his face into the most
extraordinary contortions.

"What on earth can be the matter with him?" I asked. "He is
looking up at the numbers of the houses."

"I believe that he is coming here," said Holmes, rubbing his
hands.

"Here?"

"Yes; I rather think he is coming to consult me professionally. I
think that I recognise the symptoms. Ha! did I not tell you?" As
he spoke, the man, puffing and blowing, rushed at our door and
pulled at our bell until the whole house resounded with the
clanging.

A few moments later he was in our room, still puffing, still
gesticulating, but with so fixed a look of grief and despair in
his eyes that our smiles were turned in an instant to horror and
pity. For a while he could not get his words out, but swayed his
body and plucked at his hair like one who has been driven to the
extreme limits of his reason. Then, suddenly springing to his
feet, he beat his head against the wall with such force that we
both rushed upon him and tore him away to the centre of the room.
Sherlock Holmes pushed him down into the easy-chair and, sitting
beside him, patted his hand and chatted with him in the easy,
soothing tones which he knew so well how to employ.

"You have come to me to tell your story, have you not?" said he.
"You are fatigued with your haste. Pray wait until you have
recovered yourself, and then I shall be most happy to look into
any little problem which you may submit to me."

The man sat for a minute or more with a heaving chest, fighting
against his emotion. Then he passed his handkerchief over his
brow, set his lips tight, and turned his face towards us.

"No doubt you think me mad?" said he.

"I see that you have had some great trouble," responded Holmes.

"God knows I have!--a trouble which is enough to unseat my
reason, so sudden and so terrible is it. Public disgrace I might
have faced, although I am a man whose character has never yet
borne a stain. Private affliction also is the lot of every man;
but the two coming together, and in so frightful a form, have
been enough to shake my very soul. Besides, it is not I alone.
The very noblest in the land may suffer unless some way be found
out of this horrible affair."

"Pray compose yourself, sir," said Holmes, "and let me have a
clear account of who you are and what it is that has befallen
you."

"My name," answered our visitor, "is probably familiar to your
ears. I am Alexander Holder, of the banking firm of Holder &
Stevenson, of Threadneedle Street."

The name was indeed well known to us as belonging to the senior
partner in the second largest private banking concern in the City
of London. What could have happened, then, to bring one of the
foremost citizens of London to this most pitiable pass? We
waited, all curiosity, until with another effort he braced
himself to tell his story.

"I feel that time is of value," said he; "that is why I hastened
here when the police inspector suggested that I should secure
your co-operation. I came to Baker Street by the Underground and
hurried from there on foot, for the cabs go slowly through this
snow. That is why I was so out of breath, for I am a man who
takes very little exercise. I feel better now, and I will put the
facts before you as shortly and yet as clearly as I can.

"It is, of course, well known to you that in a successful banking
business as much depends upon our being able to find remunerative
investments for our funds as upon our increasing our connection
and the number of our depositors. One of our most lucrative means
of laying out money is in the shape of loans, where the security
is unimpeachable. We have done a good deal in this direction
during the last few years, and there are many noble families to
whom we have advanced large sums upon the security of their
pictures, libraries, or plate.

"Yesterday morning I was seated in my office at the bank when a
card was brought in to me by one of the clerks. I started when I
saw the name, for it was that of none other than--well, perhaps
even to you I had better say no more than that it was a name
which is a household word all over the earth--one of the highest,
noblest, most exalted names in England. I was overwhelmed by the
honour and attempted, when he entered, to say so, but he plunged
at once into business with the air of a man who wishes to hurry
quickly through a disagreeable task.

"'Mr. Holder,' said he, 'I have been informed that you are in the
habit of advancing money.'

"'The firm does so when the security is good.' I answered.

"'It is absolutely essential to me,' said he, 'that I should have
50,000 pounds at once. I could, of course, borrow so trifling a
sum ten times over from my friends, but I much prefer to make it
a matter of business and to carry out that business myself. In my
position you can readily understand that it is unwise to place
one's self under obligations.'

"'For how long, may I ask, do you want this sum?' I asked.

"'Next Monday I have a large sum due to me, and I shall then most
certainly repay what you advance, with whatever interest you
think it right to charge. But it is very essential to me that the
money should be paid at once.'

"'I should be happy to advance it without further parley from my
own private purse,' said I, 'were it not that the strain would be
rather more than it could bear. If, on the other hand, I am to do
it in the name of the firm, then in justice to my partner I must
insist that, even in your case, every businesslike precaution
should be taken.'

"'I should much prefer to have it so,' said he, raising up a
square, black morocco case which he had laid beside his chair.
'You have doubtless heard of the Beryl Coronet?'

"'One of the most precious public possessions of the empire,'
said I.

"'Precisely.' He opened the case, and there, imbedded in soft,
flesh-coloured velvet, lay the magnificent piece of jewellery
which he had named. 'There are thirty-nine enormous beryls,' said
he, 'and the price of the gold chasing is incalculable. The
lowest estimate would put the worth of the coronet at double the
sum which I have asked. I am prepared to leave it with you as my
security.'

"I took the precious case into my hands and looked in some
perplexity from it to my illustrious client.

"'You doubt its value?' he asked.

"'Not at all. I only doubt--'

"'The propriety of my leaving it. You may set your mind at rest
about that. I should not dream of doing so were it not absolutely
certain that I should be able in four days to reclaim it. It is a
pure matter of form. Is the security sufficient?'

"'Ample.'

"'You understand, Mr. Holder, that I am giving you a strong proof
of the confidence which I have in you, founded upon all that I
have heard of you. I rely upon you not only to be discreet and to
refrain from all gossip upon the matter but, above all, to
preserve this coronet with every possible precaution because I
need not say that a great public scandal would be caused if any
harm were to befall it. Any injury to it would be almost as
serious as its complete loss, for there are no beryls in the
world to match these, and it would be impossible to replace them.
I leave it with you, however, with every confidence, and I shall
call for it in person on Monday morning.'

"Seeing that my client was anxious to leave, I said no more but,
calling for my cashier, I ordered him to pay over fifty 1000
pound notes. When I was alone once more, however, with the
precious case lying upon the table in front of me, I could not
but think with some misgivings of the immense responsibility
which it entailed upon me. There could be no doubt that, as it
was a national possession, a horrible scandal would ensue if any
misfortune should occur to it. I already regretted having ever
consented to take charge of it. However, it was too late to alter
the matter now, so I locked it up in my private safe and turned
once more to my work.

"When evening came I felt that it would be an imprudence to leave
so precious a thing in the office behind me. Bankers' safes had
been forced before now, and why should not mine be? If so, how
terrible would be the position in which I should find myself! I
determined, therefore, that for the next few days I would always
carry the case backward and forward with me, so that it might
never be really out of my reach. With this intention, I called a
cab and drove out to my house at Streatham, carrying the jewel
with me. I did not breathe freely until I had taken it upstairs
and locked it in the bureau of my dressing-room.

"And now a word as to my household, Mr. Holmes, for I wish you to
thoroughly understand the situation. My groom and my page sleep
out of the house, and may be set aside altogether. I have three
maid-servants who have been with me a number of years and whose
absolute reliability is quite above suspicion. Another, Lucy
Parr, the second waiting-maid, has only been in my service a few
months. She came with an excellent character, however, and has
always given me satisfaction. She is a very pretty girl and has
attracted admirers who have occasionally hung about the place.
That is the only drawback which we have found to her, but we
believe her to be a thoroughly good girl in every way.

"So much for the servants. My family itself is so small that it
will not take me long to describe it. I am a widower and have an
only son, Arthur. He has been a disappointment to me, Mr.
Holmes--a grievous disappointment. I have no doubt that I am
myself to blame. People tell me that I have spoiled him. Very
likely I have. When my dear wife died I felt that he was all I
had to love. I could not bear to see the smile fade even for a
moment from his face. I have never denied him a wish. Perhaps it
would have been better for both of us had I been sterner, but I
meant it for the best.

"It was naturally my intention that he should succeed me in my
business, but he was not of a business turn. He was wild,
wayward, and, to speak the truth, I could not trust him in the
handling of large sums of money. When he was young he became a
member of an aristocratic club, and there, having charming
manners, he was soon the intimate of a number of men with long
purses and expensive habits. He learned to play heavily at cards
and to squander money on the turf, until he had again and again
to come to me and implore me to give him an advance upon his
allowance, that he might settle his debts of honour. He tried
more than once to break away from the dangerous company which he
was keeping, but each time the influence of his friend, Sir
George Burnwell, was enough to draw him back again.

"And, indeed, I could not wonder that such a man as Sir George
Burnwell should gain an influence over him, for he has frequently
brought him to my house, and I have found myself that I could
hardly resist the fascination of his manner. He is older than
Arthur, a man of the world to his finger-tips, one who had been
everywhere, seen everything, a brilliant talker, and a man of
great personal beauty. Yet when I think of him in cold blood, far
away from the glamour of his presence, I am convinced from his
cynical speech and the look which I have caught in his eyes that
he is one who should be deeply distrusted. So I think, and so,
too, thinks my little Mary, who has a woman's quick insight into
character.

"And now there is only she to be described. She is my niece; but
when my brother died five years ago and left her alone in the
world I adopted her, and have looked upon her ever since as my
daughter. She is a sunbeam in my house--sweet, loving, beautiful,
a wonderful manager and housekeeper, yet as tender and quiet and
gentle as a woman could be. She is my right hand. I do not know
what I could do without her. In only one matter has she ever gone
against my wishes. Twice my boy has asked her to marry him, for
he loves her devotedly, but each time she has refused him. I
think that if anyone could have drawn him into the right path it
would have been she, and that his marriage might have changed his
whole life; but now, alas! it is too late--forever too late!

"Now, Mr. Holmes, you know the people who live under my roof, and
I shall continue with my miserable story.

"When we were taking coffee in the drawing-room that night after
dinner, I told Arthur and Mary my experience, and of the precious
treasure which we had under our roof, suppressing only the name
of my client. Lucy Parr, who had brought in the coffee, had, I am
sure, left the room; but I cannot swear that the door was closed.
Mary and Arthur were much interested and wished to see the famous
coronet, but I thought it better not to disturb it.

"'Where have you put it?' asked Arthur.

"'In my own bureau.'

"'Well, I hope to goodness the house won't be burgled during the
night.' said he.

"'It is locked up,' I answered.

"'Oh, any old key will fit that bureau. When I was a youngster I
have opened it myself with the key of the box-room cupboard.'

"He often had a wild way of talking, so that I thought little of
what he said. He followed me to my room, however, that night with
a very grave face.

"'Look here, dad,' said he with his eyes cast down, 'can you let
me have 200 pounds?'

"'No, I cannot!' I answered sharply. 'I have been far too
generous with you in money matters.'

"'You have been very kind,' said he, 'but I must have this money,
or else I can never show my face inside the club again.'

"'And a very good thing, too!' I cried.

"'Yes, but you would not have me leave it a dishonoured man,'
said he. 'I could not bear the disgrace. I must raise the money
in some way, and if you will not let me have it, then I must try
other means.'

"I was very angry, for this was the third demand during the
month. 'You shall not have a farthing from me,' I cried, on which
he bowed and left the room without another word.

"When he was gone I unlocked my bureau, made sure that my
treasure was safe, and locked it again. Then I started to go
round the house to see that all was secure--a duty which I
usually leave to Mary but which I thought it well to perform
myself that night. As I came down the stairs I saw Mary herself
at the side window of the hall, which she closed and fastened as
I approached.

"'Tell me, dad,' said she, looking, I thought, a little
disturbed, 'did you give Lucy, the maid, leave to go out
to-night?'

"'Certainly not.'

"'She came in just now by the back door. I have no doubt that she
has only been to the side gate to see someone, but I think that
it is hardly safe and should be stopped.'

"'You must speak to her in the morning, or I will if you prefer
it. Are you sure that everything is fastened?'

"'Quite sure, dad.'

"'Then, good-night.' I kissed her and went up to my bedroom
again, where I was soon asleep.

"I am endeavouring to tell you everything, Mr. Holmes, which may
have any bearing upon the case, but I beg that you will question
me upon any point which I do not make clear."

"On the contrary, your statement is singularly lucid."

"I come to a part of my story now in which I should wish to be
particularly so. I am not a very heavy sleeper, and the anxiety
in my mind tended, no doubt, to make me even less so than usual.
About two in the morning, then, I was awakened by some sound in
the house. It had ceased ere I was wide awake, but it had left an
impression behind it as though a window had gently closed
somewhere. I lay listening with all my ears. Suddenly, to my
horror, there was a distinct sound of footsteps moving softly in
the next room. I slipped out of bed, all palpitating with fear,
and peeped round the corner of my dressing-room door.

"'Arthur!' I screamed, 'you villain! you thief! How dare you
touch that coronet?'

"The gas was half up, as I had left it, and my unhappy boy,
dressed only in his shirt and trousers, was standing beside the
light, holding the coronet in his hands. He appeared to be
wrenching at it, or bending it with all his strength. At my cry
he dropped it from his grasp and turned as pale as death. I
snatched it up and examined it. One of the gold corners, with
three of the beryls in it, was missing.

"'You blackguard!' I shouted, beside myself with rage. 'You have
destroyed it! You have dishonoured me forever! Where are the
jewels which you have stolen?'

"'Stolen!' he cried.

"'Yes, thief!' I roared, shaking him by the shoulder.

"'There are none missing. There cannot be any missing,' said he.

"'There are three missing. And you know where they are. Must I
call you a liar as well as a thief? Did I not see you trying to
tear off another piece?'

"'You have called me names enough,' said he, 'I will not stand it
any longer. I shall not say another word about this business,
since you have chosen to insult me. I will leave your house in
the morning and make my own way in the world.'

"'You shall leave it in the hands of the police!' I cried
half-mad with grief and rage. 'I shall have this matter probed to
the bottom.'

"'You shall learn nothing from me,' said he with a passion such
as I should not have thought was in his nature. 'If you choose to
call the police, let the police find what they can.'

"By this time the whole house was astir, for I had raised my
voice in my anger. Mary was the first to rush into my room, and,
at the sight of the coronet and of Arthur's face, she read the
whole story and, with a scream, fell down senseless on the
ground. I sent the house-maid for the police and put the
investigation into their hands at once. When the inspector and a
constable entered the house, Arthur, who had stood sullenly with
his arms folded, asked me whether it was my intention to charge
him with theft. I answered that it had ceased to be a private
matter, but had become a public one, since the ruined coronet was
national property. I was determined that the law should have its
way in everything.

"'At least,' said he, 'you will not have me arrested at once. It
would be to your advantage as well as mine if I might leave the
house for five minutes.'

"'That you may get away, or perhaps that you may conceal what you
have stolen,' said I. And then, realising the dreadful position
in which I was placed, I implored him to remember that not only
my honour but that of one who was far greater than I was at
stake; and that he threatened to raise a scandal which would
convulse the nation. He might avert it all if he would but tell
me what he had done with the three missing stones.

"'You may as well face the matter,' said I; 'you have been caught
in the act, and no confession could make your guilt more heinous.
If you but make such reparation as is in your power, by telling
us where the beryls are, all shall be forgiven and forgotten.'

"'Keep your forgiveness for those who ask for it,' he answered,
turning away from me with a sneer. I saw that he was too hardened
for any words of mine to influence him. There was but one way for
it. I called in the inspector and gave him into custody. A search
was made at once not only of his person but of his room and of
every portion of the house where he could possibly have concealed
the gems; but no trace of them could be found, nor would the
wretched boy open his mouth for all our persuasions and our
threats. This morning he was removed to a cell, and I, after
going through all the police formalities, have hurried round to
you to implore you to use your skill in unravelling the matter.
The police have openly confessed that they can at present make
nothing of it. You may go to any expense which you think
necessary. I have already offered a reward of 1000 pounds. My
God, what shall I do! I have lost my honour, my gems, and my son
in one night. Oh, what shall I do!"

He put a hand on either side of his head and rocked himself to
and fro, droning to himself like a child whose grief has got
beyond words.

Sherlock Holmes sat silent for some few minutes, with his brows
knitted and his eyes fixed upon the fire.

"Do you receive much company?" he asked.

"None save my partner with his family and an occasional friend of
Arthur's. Sir George Burnwell has been several times lately. No
one else, I think."

"Do you go out much in society?"

"Arthur does. Mary and I stay at home. We neither of us care for
it."

"That is unusual in a young girl."

"She is of a quiet nature. Besides, she is not so very young. She
is four-and-twenty."

"This matter, from what you say, seems to have been a shock to
her also."

"Terrible! She is even more affected than I."

"You have neither of you any doubt as to your son's guilt?"

"How can we have when I saw him with my own eyes with the coronet
in his hands."

"I hardly consider that a conclusive proof. Was the remainder of
the coronet at all injured?"

"Yes, it was twisted."

"Do you not think, then, that he might have been trying to
straighten it?"

"God bless you! You are doing what you can for him and for me.
But it is too heavy a task. What was he doing there at all? If
his purpose were innocent, why did he not say so?"

"Precisely. And if it were guilty, why did he not invent a lie?
His silence appears to me to cut both ways. There are several
singular points about the case. What did the police think of the
noise which awoke you from your sleep?"

"They considered that it might be caused by Arthur's closing his
bedroom door."

"A likely story! As if a man bent on felony would slam his door
so as to wake a household. What did they say, then, of the
disappearance of these gems?"

"They are still sounding the planking and probing the furniture
in the hope of finding them."

"Have they thought of looking outside the house?"

"Yes, they have shown extraordinary energy. The whole garden has
already been minutely examined."

"Now, my dear sir," said Holmes, "is it not obvious to you now
that this matter really strikes very much deeper than either you
or the police were at first inclined to think? It appeared to you
to be a simple case; to me it seems exceedingly complex. Consider
what is involved by your theory. You suppose that your son came
down from his bed, went, at great risk, to your dressing-room,
opened your bureau, took out your coronet, broke off by main
force a small portion of it, went off to some other place,
concealed three gems out of the thirty-nine, with such skill that
nobody can find them, and then returned with the other thirty-six
into the room in which he exposed himself to the greatest danger
of being discovered. I ask you now, is such a theory tenable?"

"But what other is there?" cried the banker with a gesture of
despair. "If his motives were innocent, why does he not explain
them?"

"It is our task to find that out," replied Holmes; "so now, if
you please, Mr. Holder, we will set off for Streatham together,
and devote an hour to glancing a little more closely into
details."

My friend insisted upon my accompanying them in their expedition,
which I was eager enough to do, for my curiosity and sympathy
were deeply stirred by the story to which we had listened. I
confess that the guilt of the banker's son appeared to me to be
as obvious as it did to his unhappy father, but still I had such
faith in Holmes' judgment that I felt that there must be some
grounds for hope as long as he was dissatisfied with the accepted
explanation. He hardly spoke a word the whole way out to the
southern suburb, but sat with his chin upon his breast and his
hat drawn over his eyes, sunk in the deepest thought. Our client
appeared to have taken fresh heart at the little glimpse of hope
which had been presented to him, and he even broke into a
desultory chat with me over his business affairs. A short railway
journey and a shorter walk brought us to Fairbank, the modest
residence of the great financier.

Fairbank was a good-sized square house of white stone, standing
back a little from the road. A double carriage-sweep, with a
snow-clad lawn, stretched down in front to two large iron gates
which closed the entrance. On the right side was a small wooden
thicket, which led into a narrow path between two neat hedges
stretching from the road to the kitchen door, and forming the
tradesmen's entrance. On the left ran a lane which led to the
stables, and was not itself within the grounds at all, being a
public, though little used, thoroughfare. Holmes left us standing
at the door and walked slowly all round the house, across the
front, down the tradesmen's path, and so round by the garden
behind into the stable lane. So long was he that Mr. Holder and I
went into the dining-room and waited by the fire until he should
return. We were sitting there in silence when the door opened and
a young lady came in. She was rather above the middle height,
slim, with dark hair and eyes, which seemed the darker against
the absolute pallor of her skin. I do not think that I have ever
seen such deadly paleness in a woman's face. Her lips, too, were
bloodless, but her eyes were flushed with crying. As she swept
silently into the room she impressed me with a greater sense of
grief than the banker had done in the morning, and it was the
more striking in her as she was evidently a woman of strong
character, with immense capacity for self-restraint. Disregarding
my presence, she went straight to her uncle and passed her hand
over his head with a sweet womanly caress.

"You have given orders that Arthur should be liberated, have you
not, dad?" she asked.

"No, no, my girl, the matter must be probed to the bottom."

"But I am so sure that he is innocent. You know what woman's
instincts are. I know that he has done no harm and that you will
be sorry for having acted so harshly."

"Why is he silent, then, if he is innocent?"

"Who knows? Perhaps because he was so angry that you should
suspect him."

"How could I help suspecting him, when I actually saw him with
the coronet in his hand?"

"Oh, but he had only picked it up to look at it. Oh, do, do take
my word for it that he is innocent. Let the matter drop and say
no more. It is so dreadful to think of our dear Arthur in
prison!"

"I shall never let it drop until the gems are found--never, Mary!
Your affection for Arthur blinds you as to the awful consequences
to me. Far from hushing the thing up, I have brought a gentleman
down from London to inquire more deeply into it."

"This gentleman?" she asked, facing round to me.

"No, his friend. He wished us to leave him alone. He is round in
the stable lane now."

"The stable lane?" She raised her dark eyebrows. "What can he
hope to find there? Ah! this, I suppose, is he. I trust, sir,
that you will succeed in proving, what I feel sure is the truth,
that my cousin Arthur is innocent of this crime."

"I fully share your opinion, and I trust, with you, that we may
prove it," returned Holmes, going back to the mat to knock the
snow from his shoes. "I believe I have the honour of addressing
Miss Mary Holder. Might I ask you a question or two?"

"Pray do, sir, if it may help to clear this horrible affair up."

"You heard nothing yourself last night?"

"Nothing, until my uncle here began to speak loudly. I heard
that, and I came down."

"You shut up the windows and doors the night before. Did you
fasten all the windows?"

"Yes."

"Were they all fastened this morning?"

"Yes."

"You have a maid who has a sweetheart? I think that you remarked
to your uncle last night that she had been out to see him?"

"Yes, and she was the girl who waited in the drawing-room, and
who may have heard uncle's remarks about the coronet."

"I see. You infer that she may have gone out to tell her
sweetheart, and that the two may have planned the robbery."

"But what is the good of all these vague theories," cried the
banker impatiently, "when I have told you that I saw Arthur with
the coronet in his hands?"

"Wait a little, Mr. Holder. We must come back to that. About this
girl, Miss Holder. You saw her return by the kitchen door, I
presume?"

"Yes; when I went to see if the door was fastened for the night I
met her slipping in. I saw the man, too, in the gloom."

"Do you know him?"

"Oh, yes! he is the green-grocer who brings our vegetables round.
His name is Francis Prosper."

"He stood," said Holmes, "to the left of the door--that is to
say, farther up the path than is necessary to reach the door?"

"Yes, he did."

"And he is a man with a wooden leg?"

Something like fear sprang up in the young lady's expressive
black eyes. "Why, you are like a magician," said she. "How do you
know that?" She smiled, but there was no answering smile in
Holmes' thin, eager face.

"I should be very glad now to go upstairs," said he. "I shall
probably wish to go over the outside of the house again. Perhaps
I had better take a look at the lower windows before I go up."

He walked swiftly round from one to the other, pausing only at
the large one which looked from the hall onto the stable lane.
This he opened and made a very careful examination of the sill
with his powerful magnifying lens. "Now we shall go upstairs,"
said he at last.

The banker's dressing-room was a plainly furnished little
chamber, with a grey carpet, a large bureau, and a long mirror.
Holmes went to the bureau first and looked hard at the lock.

"Which key was used to open it?" he asked.

"That which my son himself indicated--that of the cupboard of the
lumber-room."

"Have you it here?"

"That is it on the dressing-table."

Sherlock Holmes took it up and opened the bureau.

"It is a noiseless lock," said he. "It is no wonder that it did
not wake you. This case, I presume, contains the coronet. We must
have a look at it." He opened the case, and taking out the diadem
he laid it upon the table. It was a magnificent specimen of the
jeweller's art, and the thirty-six stones were the finest that I
have ever seen. At one side of the coronet was a cracked edge,
where a corner holding three gems had been torn away.

"Now, Mr. Holder," said Holmes, "here is the corner which
corresponds to that which has been so unfortunately lost. Might I
beg that you will break it off."

The banker recoiled in horror. "I should not dream of trying,"
said he.

"Then I will." Holmes suddenly bent his strength upon it, but
without result. "I feel it give a little," said he; "but, though
I am exceptionally strong in the fingers, it would take me all my
time to break it. An ordinary man could not do it. Now, what do
you think would happen if I did break it, Mr. Holder? There would
be a noise like a pistol shot. Do you tell me that all this
happened within a few yards of your bed and that you heard
nothing of it?"

"I do not know what to think. It is all dark to me."

"But perhaps it may grow lighter as we go. What do you think,
Miss Holder?"

"I confess that I still share my uncle's perplexity."

"Your son had no shoes or slippers on when you saw him?"

"He had nothing on save only his trousers and shirt."

"Thank you. We have certainly been favoured with extraordinary
luck during this inquiry, and it will be entirely our own fault
if we do not succeed in clearing the matter up. With your
permission, Mr. Holder, I shall now continue my investigations
outside."

He went alone, at his own request, for he explained that any
unnecessary footmarks might make his task more difficult. For an
hour or more he was at work, returning at last with his feet
heavy with snow and his features as inscrutable as ever.

"I think that I have seen now all that there is to see, Mr.
Holder," said he; "I can serve you best by returning to my
rooms."

"But the gems, Mr. Holmes. Where are they?"

"I cannot tell."

The banker wrung his hands. "I shall never see them again!" he
cried. "And my son? You give me hopes?"

"My opinion is in no way altered."

"Then, for God's sake, what was this dark business which was
acted in my house last night?"

"If you can call upon me at my Baker Street rooms to-morrow
morning between nine and ten I shall be happy to do what I can to
make it clearer. I understand that you give me carte blanche to
act for you, provided only that I get back the gems, and that you
place no limit on the sum I may draw."

"I would give my fortune to have them back."

"Very good. I shall look into the matter between this and then.
Good-bye; it is just possible that I may have to come over here
again before evening."

It was obvious to me that my companion's mind was now made up
about the case, although what his conclusions were was more than
I could even dimly imagine. Several times during our homeward
journey I endeavoured to sound him upon the point, but he always
glided away to some other topic, until at last I gave it over in
despair. It was not yet three when we found ourselves in our
rooms once more. He hurried to his chamber and was down again in
a few minutes dressed as a common loafer. With his collar turned
up, his shiny, seedy coat, his red cravat, and his worn boots, he
was a perfect sample of the class.

"I think that this should do," said he, glancing into the glass
above the fireplace. "I only wish that you could come with me,
Watson, but I fear that it won't do. I may be on the trail in
this matter, or I may be following a will-o'-the-wisp, but I
shall soon know which it is. I hope that I may be back in a few
hours." He cut a slice of beef from the joint upon the sideboard,
sandwiched it between two rounds of bread, and thrusting this
rude meal into his pocket he started off upon his expedition.

I had just finished my tea when he returned, evidently in
excellent spirits, swinging an old elastic-sided boot in his
hand. He chucked it down into a corner and helped himself to a
cup of tea.

"I only looked in as I passed," said he. "I am going right on."

"Where to?"

"Oh, to the other side of the West End. It may be some time
before I get back. Don't wait up for me in case I should be
late."

"How are you getting on?"

"Oh, so so. Nothing to complain of. I have been out to Streatham
since I saw you last, but I did not call at the house. It is a
very sweet little problem, and I would not have missed it for a
good deal. However, I must not sit gossiping here, but must get
these disreputable clothes off and return to my highly
respectable self."

I could see by his manner that he had stronger reasons for
satisfaction than his words alone would imply. His eyes twinkled,
and there was even a touch of colour upon his sallow cheeks. He
hastened upstairs, and a few minutes later I heard the slam of
the hall door, which told me that he was off once more upon his
congenial hunt.

I waited until midnight, but there was no sign of his return, so
I retired to my room. It was no uncommon thing for him to be away
for days and nights on end when he was hot upon a scent, so that
his lateness caused me no surprise. I do not know at what hour he
came in, but when I came down to breakfast in the morning there
he was with a cup of coffee in one hand and the paper in the
other, as fresh and trim as possible.

"You will excuse my beginning without you, Watson," said he, "but
you remember that our client has rather an early appointment this
morning."

"Why, it is after nine now," I answered. "I should not be
surprised if that were he. I thought I heard a ring."

It was, indeed, our friend the financier. I was shocked by the
change which had come over him, for his face which was naturally
of a broad and massive mould, was now pinched and fallen in,
while his hair seemed to me at least a shade whiter. He entered
with a weariness and lethargy which was even more painful than
his violence of the morning before, and he dropped heavily into
the armchair which I pushed forward for him.

"I do not know what I have done to be so severely tried," said
he. "Only two days ago I was a happy and prosperous man, without
a care in the world. Now I am left to a lonely and dishonoured
age. One sorrow comes close upon the heels of another. My niece,
Mary, has deserted me."

"Deserted you?"

"Yes. Her bed this morning had not been slept in, her room was
empty, and a note for me lay upon the hall table. I had said to
her last night, in sorrow and not in anger, that if she had
married my boy all might have been well with him. Perhaps it was
thoughtless of me to say so. It is to that remark that she refers
in this note:

"'MY DEAREST UNCLE:--I feel that I have brought trouble upon you,
and that if I had acted differently this terrible misfortune
might never have occurred. I cannot, with this thought in my
mind, ever again be happy under your roof, and I feel that I must
leave you forever. Do not worry about my future, for that is
provided for; and, above all, do not search for me, for it will
be fruitless labour and an ill-service to me. In life or in
death, I am ever your loving,--MARY.'

"What could she mean by that note, Mr. Holmes? Do you think it
points to suicide?"

"No, no, nothing of the kind. It is perhaps the best possible
solution. I trust, Mr. Holder, that you are nearing the end of
your troubles."

"Ha! You say so! You have heard something, Mr. Holmes; you have
learned something! Where are the gems?"

"You would not think 1000 pounds apiece an excessive sum for
them?"

"I would pay ten."

"That would be unnecessary. Three thousand will cover the matter.
And there is a little reward, I fancy. Have you your check-book?
Here is a pen. Better make it out for 4000 pounds."

With a dazed face the banker made out the required check. Holmes
walked over to his desk, took out a little triangular piece of
gold with three gems in it, and threw it down upon the table.

With a shriek of joy our client clutched it up.

"You have it!" he gasped. "I am saved! I am saved!"

The reaction of joy was as passionate as his grief had been, and
he hugged his recovered gems to his bosom.

"There is one other thing you owe, Mr. Holder," said Sherlock
Holmes rather sternly.

"Owe!" He caught up a pen. "Name the sum, and I will pay it."

"No, the debt is not to me. You owe a very humble apology to that
noble lad, your son, who has carried himself in this matter as I
should be proud to see my own son do, should I ever chance to
have one."

"Then it was not Arthur who took them?"

"I told you yesterday, and I repeat to-day, that it was not."

"You are sure of it! Then let us hurry to him at once to let him
know that the truth is known."

"He knows it already. When I had cleared it all up I had an
interview with him, and finding that he would not tell me the
story, I told it to him, on which he had to confess that I was
right and to add the very few details which were not yet quite
clear to me. Your news of this morning, however, may open his
lips."

"For heaven's sake, tell me, then, what is this extraordinary
mystery!"

"I will do so, and I will show you the steps by which I reached
it. And let me say to you, first, that which it is hardest for me
to say and for you to hear: there has been an understanding
between Sir George Burnwell and your niece Mary. They have now
fled together."

"My Mary? Impossible!"

"It is unfortunately more than possible; it is certain. Neither
you nor your son knew the true character of this man when you
admitted him into your family circle. He is one of the most
dangerous men in England--a ruined gambler, an absolutely
desperate villain, a man without heart or conscience. Your niece
knew nothing of such men. When he breathed his vows to her, as he
had done to a hundred before her, she flattered herself that she
alone had touched his heart. The devil knows best what he said,
but at least she became his tool and was in the habit of seeing
him nearly every evening."

"I cannot, and I will not, believe it!" cried the banker with an
ashen face.

"I will tell you, then, what occurred in your house last night.
Your niece, when you had, as she thought, gone to your room,
slipped down and talked to her lover through the window which
leads into the stable lane. His footmarks had pressed right
through the snow, so long had he stood there. She told him of the
coronet. His wicked lust for gold kindled at the news, and he
bent her to his will. I have no doubt that she loved you, but
there are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all
other loves, and I think that she must have been one. She had
hardly listened to his instructions when she saw you coming
downstairs, on which she closed the window rapidly and told you
about one of the servants' escapade with her wooden-legged lover,
which was all perfectly true.

"Your boy, Arthur, went to bed after his interview with you but
he slept badly on account of his uneasiness about his club debts.
In the middle of the night he heard a soft tread pass his door,
so he rose and, looking out, was surprised to see his cousin
walking very stealthily along the passage until she disappeared
into your dressing-room. Petrified with astonishment, the lad
slipped on some clothes and waited there in the dark to see what
would come of this strange affair. Presently she emerged from the
room again, and in the light of the passage-lamp your son saw
that she carried the precious coronet in her hands. She passed
down the stairs, and he, thrilling with horror, ran along and
slipped behind the curtain near your door, whence he could see
what passed in the hall beneath. He saw her stealthily open the
window, hand out the coronet to someone in the gloom, and then
closing it once more hurry back to her room, passing quite close
to where he stood hid behind the curtain.

"As long as she was on the scene he could not take any action
without a horrible exposure of the woman whom he loved. But the
instant that she was gone he realised how crushing a misfortune
this would be for you, and how all-important it was to set it
right. He rushed down, just as he was, in his bare feet, opened
the window, sprang out into the snow, and ran down the lane,
where he could see a dark figure in the moonlight. Sir George
Burnwell tried to get away, but Arthur caught him, and there was
a struggle between them, your lad tugging at one side of the
coronet, and his opponent at the other. In the scuffle, your son
struck Sir George and cut him over the eye. Then something
suddenly snapped, and your son, finding that he had the coronet
in his hands, rushed back, closed the window, ascended to your
room, and had just observed that the coronet had been twisted in
the struggle and was endeavouring to straighten it when you
appeared upon the scene."

"Is it possible?" gasped the banker.

"You then roused his anger by calling him names at a moment when
he felt that he had deserved your warmest thanks. He could not
explain the true state of affairs without betraying one who
certainly deserved little enough consideration at his hands. He
took the more chivalrous view, however, and preserved her
secret."

"And that was why she shrieked and fainted when she saw the
coronet," cried Mr. Holder. "Oh, my God! what a blind fool I have
been! And his asking to be allowed to go out for five minutes!
The dear fellow wanted to see if the missing piece were at the
scene of the struggle. How cruelly I have misjudged him!"

"When I arrived at the house," continued Holmes, "I at once went
very carefully round it to observe if there were any traces in
the snow which might help me. I knew that none had fallen since
the evening before, and also that there had been a strong frost
to preserve impressions. I passed along the tradesmen's path, but
found it all trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it,
however, at the far side of the kitchen door, a woman had stood
and talked with a man, whose round impressions on one side showed
that he had a wooden leg. I could even tell that they had been
disturbed, for the woman had run back swiftly to the door, as was
shown by the deep toe and light heel marks, while Wooden-leg had
waited a little, and then had gone away. I thought at the time
that this might be the maid and her sweetheart, of whom you had
already spoken to me, and inquiry showed it was so. I passed
round the garden without seeing anything more than random tracks,
which I took to be the police; but when I got into the stable
lane a very long and complex story was written in the snow in
front of me.

"There was a double line of tracks of a booted man, and a second
double line which I saw with delight belonged to a man with naked
feet. I was at once convinced from what you had told me that the
latter was your son. The first had walked both ways, but the
other had run swiftly, and as his tread was marked in places over
the depression of the boot, it was obvious that he had passed
after the other. I followed them up and found they led to the
hall window, where Boots had worn all the snow away while
waiting. Then I walked to the other end, which was a hundred
yards or more down the lane. I saw where Boots had faced round,
where the snow was cut up as though there had been a struggle,
and, finally, where a few drops of blood had fallen, to show me
that I was not mistaken. Boots had then run down the lane, and
another little smudge of blood showed that it was he who had been
hurt. When he came to the highroad at the other end, I found that
the pavement had been cleared, so there was an end to that clue.

"On entering the house, however, I examined, as you remember, the
sill and framework of the hall window with my lens, and I could
at once see that someone had passed out. I could distinguish the
outline of an instep where the wet foot had been placed in coming
in. I was then beginning to be able to form an opinion as to what
had occurred. A man had waited outside the window; someone had
brought the gems; the deed had been overseen by your son; he had
pursued the thief; had struggled with him; they had each tugged
at the coronet, their united strength causing injuries which
neither alone could have effected. He had returned with the
prize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of his opponent. So
far I was clear. The question now was, who was the man and who
was it brought him the coronet?

"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the
truth. Now, I knew that it was not you who had brought it down,
so there only remained your niece and the maids. But if it were
the maids, why should your son allow himself to be accused in
their place? There could be no possible reason. As he loved his
cousin, however, there was an excellent explanation why he should
retain her secret--the more so as the secret was a disgraceful
one. When I remembered that you had seen her at that window, and
how she had fainted on seeing the coronet again, my conjecture
became a certainty.

"And who could it be who was her confederate? A lover evidently,
for who else could outweigh the love and gratitude which she must
feel to you? I knew that you went out little, and that your
circle of friends was a very limited one. But among them was Sir
George Burnwell. I had heard of him before as being a man of evil
reputation among women. It must have been he who wore those boots
and retained the missing gems. Even though he knew that Arthur
had discovered him, he might still flatter himself that he was
safe, for the lad could not say a word without compromising his
own family.

"Well, your own good sense will suggest what measures I took
next. I went in the shape of a loafer to Sir George's house,
managed to pick up an acquaintance with his valet, learned that
his master had cut his head the night before, and, finally, at
the expense of six shillings, made all sure by buying a pair of
his cast-off shoes. With these I journeyed down to Streatham and
saw that they exactly fitted the tracks."

"I saw an ill-dressed vagabond in the lane yesterday evening,"
said Mr. Holder.

"Precisely. It was I. I found that I had my man, so I came home
and changed my clothes. It was a delicate part which I had to
play then, for I saw that a prosecution must be avoided to avert
scandal, and I knew that so astute a villain would see that our
hands were tied in the matter. I went and saw him. At first, of
course, he denied everything. But when I gave him every
particular that had occurred, he tried to bluster and took down a
life-preserver from the wall. I knew my man, however, and I
clapped a pistol to his head before he could strike. Then he
became a little more reasonable. I told him that we would give
him a price for the stones he held--1000 pounds apiece. That
brought out the first signs of grief that he had shown. 'Why,
dash it all!' said he, 'I've let them go at six hundred for the
three!' I soon managed to get the address of the receiver who had
them, on promising him that there would be no prosecution. Off I
set to him, and after much chaffering I got our stones at 1000
pounds apiece. Then I looked in upon your son, told him that all
was right, and eventually got to my bed about two o'clock, after
what I may call a really hard day's work."

"A day which has saved England from a great public scandal," said
the banker, rising. "Sir, I cannot find words to thank you, but
you shall not find me ungrateful for what you have done. Your
skill has indeed exceeded all that I have heard of it. And now I
must fly to my dear boy to apologise to him for the wrong which I
have done him. As to what you tell me of poor Mary, it goes to my
very heart. Not even your skill can inform me where she is now."

"I think that we may safely say," returned Holmes, "that she is
wherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that
whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than
sufficient punishment."



XII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES

"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock
Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily
Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest
manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is
pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped
this truth that in these little records of our cases which you
have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say,
occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much
to the many causes clbres and sensational trials in which I
have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been
trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those
faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made
my special province."

"And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved
from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my
records."

"You have erred, perhaps," he observed, taking up a glowing
cinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood
pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a
disputatious rather than a meditative mood--"you have erred
perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your
statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing
upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is
really the only notable feature about the thing."

"It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,"
I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism
which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my
friend's singular character.

"No, it is not selfishness or conceit," said he, answering, as
was his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. "If I claim full
justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing--a
thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it
is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should
dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of
lectures into a series of tales."

It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after
breakfast on either side of a cheery fire in the old room at
Baker Street. A thick fog rolled down between the lines of
dun-coloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark,
shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit
and shone on the white cloth and glimmer of china and metal, for
the table had not been cleared yet. Sherlock Holmes had been
silent all the morning, dipping continuously into the
advertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last,
having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no very
sweet temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.

"At the same time," he remarked after a pause, during which he
had sat puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire,
"you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of
these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself
in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense,
at all. The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the King
of Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, the
problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the
incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are
outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I
fear that you may have bordered on the trivial."

"The end may have been so," I answered, "but the methods I hold
to have been novel and of interest."

"Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant
public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a
compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of
analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot
blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at
least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As
to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an
agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to
young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched
bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my
zero-point, I fancy. Read it!" He tossed a crumpled letter across
to me.

It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and
ran thus:

"DEAR MR. HOLMES:--I am very anxious to consult you as to whether
I should or should not accept a situation which has been offered
to me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten to-morrow if I
do not inconvenience you. Yours faithfully,
                                               "VIOLET HUNTER."

"Do you know the young lady?" I asked.

"Not I."

"It is half-past ten now."

"Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring."

"It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You
remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to
be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation.
It may be so in this case, also."

"Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved,
for here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question."

As he spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room.
She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face,
freckled like a plover's egg, and with the brisk manner of a
woman who has had her own way to make in the world.

"You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure," said she, as my
companion rose to greet her, "but I have had a very strange
experience, and as I have no parents or relations of any sort
from whom I could ask advice, I thought that perhaps you would be
kind enough to tell me what I should do."

"Pray take a seat, Miss Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything
that I can to serve you."

I could see that Holmes was favourably impressed by the manner
and speech of his new client. He looked her over in his searching
fashion, and then composed himself, with his lids drooping and
his finger-tips together, to listen to her story.

"I have been a governess for five years," said she, "in the
family of Colonel Spence Munro, but two months ago the colonel
received an appointment at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and took his
children over to America with him, so that I found myself without
a situation. I advertised, and I answered advertisements, but
without success. At last the little money which I had saved began
to run short, and I was at my wit's end as to what I should do.

"There is a well-known agency for governesses in the West End
called Westaway's, and there I used to call about once a week in
order to see whether anything had turned up which might suit me.
Westaway was the name of the founder of the business, but it is
really managed by Miss Stoper. She sits in her own little office,
and the ladies who are seeking employment wait in an anteroom,
and are then shown in one by one, when she consults her ledgers
and sees whether she has anything which would suit them.

"Well, when I called last week I was shown into the little office
as usual, but I found that Miss Stoper was not alone. A
prodigiously stout man with a very smiling face and a great heavy
chin which rolled down in fold upon fold over his throat sat at
her elbow with a pair of glasses on his nose, looking very
earnestly at the ladies who entered. As I came in he gave quite a
jump in his chair and turned quickly to Miss Stoper.

"'That will do,' said he; 'I could not ask for anything better.
Capital! capital!' He seemed quite enthusiastic and rubbed his
hands together in the most genial fashion. He was such a
comfortable-looking man that it was quite a pleasure to look at
him.

"'You are looking for a situation, miss?' he asked.

"'Yes, sir.'

"'As governess?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'And what salary do you ask?'

"'I had 4 pounds a month in my last place with Colonel Spence
Munro.'

"'Oh, tut, tut! sweating--rank sweating!' he cried, throwing his
fat hands out into the air like a man who is in a boiling
passion. 'How could anyone offer so pitiful a sum to a lady with
such attractions and accomplishments?'

"'My accomplishments, sir, may be less than you imagine,' said I.
'A little French, a little German, music, and drawing--'

"'Tut, tut!' he cried. 'This is all quite beside the question.
The point is, have you or have you not the bearing and deportment
of a lady? There it is in a nutshell. If you have not, you are
not fitted for the rearing of a child who may some day play a
considerable part in the history of the country. But if you have
why, then, how could any gentleman ask you to condescend to
accept anything under the three figures? Your salary with me,
madam, would commence at 100 pounds a year.'

"You may imagine, Mr. Holmes, that to me, destitute as I was,
such an offer seemed almost too good to be true. The gentleman,
however, seeing perhaps the look of incredulity upon my face,
opened a pocket-book and took out a note.

"'It is also my custom,' said he, smiling in the most pleasant
fashion until his eyes were just two little shining slits amid
the white creases of his face, 'to advance to my young ladies
half their salary beforehand, so that they may meet any little
expenses of their journey and their wardrobe.'

"It seemed to me that I had never met so fascinating and so
thoughtful a man. As I was already in debt to my tradesmen, the
advance was a great convenience, and yet there was something
unnatural about the whole transaction which made me wish to know
a little more before I quite committed myself.

"'May I ask where you live, sir?' said I.

"'Hampshire. Charming rural place. The Copper Beeches, five miles
on the far side of Winchester. It is the most lovely country, my
dear young lady, and the dearest old country-house.'

"'And my duties, sir? I should be glad to know what they would
be.'

"'One child--one dear little romper just six years old. Oh, if
you could see him killing cockroaches with a slipper! Smack!
smack! smack! Three gone before you could wink!' He leaned back
in his chair and laughed his eyes into his head again.

"I was a little startled at the nature of the child's amusement,
but the father's laughter made me think that perhaps he was
joking.

"'My sole duties, then,' I asked, 'are to take charge of a single
child?'

"'No, no, not the sole, not the sole, my dear young lady,' he
cried. 'Your duty would be, as I am sure your good sense would
suggest, to obey any little commands my wife might give, provided
always that they were such commands as a lady might with
propriety obey. You see no difficulty, heh?'

"'I should be happy to make myself useful.'

"'Quite so. In dress now, for example. We are faddy people, you
know--faddy but kind-hearted. If you were asked to wear any dress
which we might give you, you would not object to our little whim.
Heh?'

"'No,' said I, considerably astonished at his words.

"'Or to sit here, or sit there, that would not be offensive to
you?'

"'Oh, no.'

"'Or to cut your hair quite short before you come to us?'

"I could hardly believe my ears. As you may observe, Mr. Holmes,
my hair is somewhat luxuriant, and of a rather peculiar tint of
chestnut. It has been considered artistic. I could not dream of
sacrificing it in this offhand fashion.

"'I am afraid that that is quite impossible,' said I. He had been
watching me eagerly out of his small eyes, and I could see a
shadow pass over his face as I spoke.

"'I am afraid that it is quite essential,' said he. 'It is a
little fancy of my wife's, and ladies' fancies, you know, madam,
ladies' fancies must be consulted. And so you won't cut your
hair?'

"'No, sir, I really could not,' I answered firmly.

"'Ah, very well; then that quite settles the matter. It is a
pity, because in other respects you would really have done very
nicely. In that case, Miss Stoper, I had best inspect a few more
of your young ladies.'

"The manageress had sat all this while busy with her papers
without a word to either of us, but she glanced at me now with so
much annoyance upon her face that I could not help suspecting
that she had lost a handsome commission through my refusal.

"'Do you desire your name to be kept upon the books?' she asked.

"'If you please, Miss Stoper.'

"'Well, really, it seems rather useless, since you refuse the
most excellent offers in this fashion,' said she sharply. 'You
can hardly expect us to exert ourselves to find another such
opening for you. Good-day to you, Miss Hunter.' She struck a gong
upon the table, and I was shown out by the page.

"Well, Mr. Holmes, when I got back to my lodgings and found
little enough in the cupboard, and two or three bills upon the
table, I began to ask myself whether I had not done a very
foolish thing. After all, if these people had strange fads and
expected obedience on the most extraordinary matters, they were
at least ready to pay for their eccentricity. Very few
governesses in England are getting 100 pounds a year. Besides,
what use was my hair to me? Many people are improved by wearing
it short and perhaps I should be among the number. Next day I was
inclined to think that I had made a mistake, and by the day after
I was sure of it. I had almost overcome my pride so far as to go
back to the agency and inquire whether the place was still open
when I received this letter from the gentleman himself. I have it
here and I will read it to you:

                       "'The Copper Beeches, near Winchester.
"'DEAR MISS HUNTER:--Miss Stoper has very kindly given me your
address, and I write from here to ask you whether you have
reconsidered your decision. My wife is very anxious that you
should come, for she has been much attracted by my description of
you. We are willing to give 30 pounds a quarter, or 120 pounds a
year, so as to recompense you for any little inconvenience which
our fads may cause you. They are not very exacting, after all. My
wife is fond of a particular shade of electric blue and would
like you to wear such a dress indoors in the morning. You need
not, however, go to the expense of purchasing one, as we have one
belonging to my dear daughter Alice (now in Philadelphia), which
would, I should think, fit you very well. Then, as to sitting
here or there, or amusing yourself in any manner indicated, that
need cause you no inconvenience. As regards your hair, it is no
doubt a pity, especially as I could not help remarking its beauty
during our short interview, but I am afraid that I must remain
firm upon this point, and I only hope that the increased salary
may recompense you for the loss. Your duties, as far as the child
is concerned, are very light. Now do try to come, and I shall
meet you with the dog-cart at Winchester. Let me know your train.
Yours faithfully, JEPHRO RUCASTLE.'

"That is the letter which I have just received, Mr. Holmes, and
my mind is made up that I will accept it. I thought, however,
that before taking the final step I should like to submit the
whole matter to your consideration."

"Well, Miss Hunter, if your mind is made up, that settles the
question," said Holmes, smiling.

"But you would not advise me to refuse?"

"I confess that it is not the situation which I should like to
see a sister of mine apply for."

"What is the meaning of it all, Mr. Holmes?"

"Ah, I have no data. I cannot tell. Perhaps you have yourself
formed some opinion?"

"Well, there seems to me to be only one possible solution. Mr.
Rucastle seemed to be a very kind, good-natured man. Is it not
possible that his wife is a lunatic, that he desires to keep the
matter quiet for fear she should be taken to an asylum, and that
he humours her fancies in every way in order to prevent an
outbreak?"

"That is a possible solution--in fact, as matters stand, it is
the most probable one. But in any case it does not seem to be a
nice household for a young lady."

"But the money, Mr. Holmes, the money!"

"Well, yes, of course the pay is good--too good. That is what
makes me uneasy. Why should they give you 120 pounds a year, when
they could have their pick for 40 pounds? There must be some
strong reason behind."

"I thought that if I told you the circumstances you would
understand afterwards if I wanted your help. I should feel so
much stronger if I felt that you were at the back of me."

"Oh, you may carry that feeling away with you. I assure you that
your little problem promises to be the most interesting which has
come my way for some months. There is something distinctly novel
about some of the features. If you should find yourself in doubt
or in danger--"

"Danger! What danger do you foresee?"

Holmes shook his head gravely. "It would cease to be a danger if
we could define it," said he. "But at any time, day or night, a
telegram would bring me down to your help."

"That is enough." She rose briskly from her chair with the
anxiety all swept from her face. "I shall go down to Hampshire
quite easy in my mind now. I shall write to Mr. Rucastle at once,
sacrifice my poor hair to-night, and start for Winchester
to-morrow." With a few grateful words to Holmes she bade us both
good-night and bustled off upon her way.

"At least," said I as we heard her quick, firm steps descending
the stairs, "she seems to be a young lady who is very well able
to take care of herself."

"And she would need to be," said Holmes gravely. "I am much
mistaken if we do not hear from her before many days are past."

It was not very long before my friend's prediction was fulfilled.
A fortnight went by, during which I frequently found my thoughts
turning in her direction and wondering what strange side-alley of
human experience this lonely woman had strayed into. The unusual
salary, the curious conditions, the light duties, all pointed to
something abnormal, though whether a fad or a plot, or whether
the man were a philanthropist or a villain, it was quite beyond
my powers to determine. As to Holmes, I observed that he sat
frequently for half an hour on end, with knitted brows and an
abstracted air, but he swept the matter away with a wave of his
hand when I mentioned it. "Data! data! data!" he cried
impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay." And yet he would
always wind up by muttering that no sister of his should ever
have accepted such a situation.

The telegram which we eventually received came late one night
just as I was thinking of turning in and Holmes was settling down
to one of those all-night chemical researches which he frequently
indulged in, when I would leave him stooping over a retort and a
test-tube at night and find him in the same position when I came
down to breakfast in the morning. He opened the yellow envelope,
and then, glancing at the message, threw it across to me.

"Just look up the trains in Bradshaw," said he, and turned back
to his chemical studies.

The summons was a brief and urgent one.

"Please be at the Black Swan Hotel at Winchester at midday
to-morrow," it said. "Do come! I am at my wit's end.  HUNTER."

"Will you come with me?" asked Holmes, glancing up.

"I should wish to."

"Just look it up, then."

"There is a train at half-past nine," said I, glancing over my
Bradshaw. "It is due at Winchester at 11:30."

"That will do very nicely. Then perhaps I had better postpone my
analysis of the acetones, as we may need to be at our best in the
morning."

By eleven o'clock the next day we were well upon our way to the
old English capital. Holmes had been buried in the morning papers
all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he
threw them down and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal
spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white
clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining
very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air,
which set an edge to a man's energy. All over the countryside,
away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and
grey roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light
green of the new foliage.

"Are they not fresh and beautiful?" I cried with all the
enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.

But Holmes shook his head gravely.

"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of
a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with
reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered
houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them,
and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their
isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed
there."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these
dear old homesteads?"

"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief,
Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest
alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin
than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

"You horrify me!"

"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion
can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no
lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of
a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among
the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever
so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is
but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these
lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part
with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the
deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on,
year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this
lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I
should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of
country which makes the danger. Still, it is clear that she is
not personally threatened."

"No. If she can come to Winchester to meet us she can get away."

"Quite so. She has her freedom."

"What CAN be the matter, then? Can you suggest no explanation?"

"I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would
cover the facts as far as we know them. But which of these is
correct can only be determined by the fresh information which we
shall no doubt find waiting for us. Well, there is the tower of
the cathedral, and we shall soon learn all that Miss Hunter has
to tell."

The Black Swan is an inn of repute in the High Street, at no
distance from the station, and there we found the young lady
waiting for us. She had engaged a sitting-room, and our lunch
awaited us upon the table.

"I am so delighted that you have come," she said earnestly. "It
is so very kind of you both; but indeed I do not know what I
should do. Your advice will be altogether invaluable to me."

"Pray tell us what has happened to you."

"I will do so, and I must be quick, for I have promised Mr.
Rucastle to be back before three. I got his leave to come into
town this morning, though he little knew for what purpose."

"Let us have everything in its due order." Holmes thrust his long
thin legs out towards the fire and composed himself to listen.

"In the first place, I may say that I have met, on the whole,
with no actual ill-treatment from Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle. It is
only fair to them to say that. But I cannot understand them, and
I am not easy in my mind about them."

"What can you not understand?"

"Their reasons for their conduct. But you shall have it all just
as it occurred. When I came down, Mr. Rucastle met me here and
drove me in his dog-cart to the Copper Beeches. It is, as he
said, beautifully situated, but it is not beautiful in itself,
for it is a large square block of a house, whitewashed, but all
stained and streaked with damp and bad weather. There are grounds
round it, woods on three sides, and on the fourth a field which
slopes down to the Southampton highroad, which curves past about
a hundred yards from the front door. This ground in front belongs
to the house, but the woods all round are part of Lord
Southerton's preserves. A clump of copper beeches immediately in
front of the hall door has given its name to the place.

"I was driven over by my employer, who was as amiable as ever,
and was introduced by him that evening to his wife and the child.
There was no truth, Mr. Holmes, in the conjecture which seemed to
us to be probable in your rooms at Baker Street. Mrs. Rucastle is
not mad. I found her to be a silent, pale-faced woman, much
younger than her husband, not more than thirty, I should think,
while he can hardly be less than forty-five. From their
conversation I have gathered that they have been married about
seven years, that he was a widower, and that his only child by
the first wife was the daughter who has gone to Philadelphia. Mr.
Rucastle told me in private that the reason why she had left them
was that she had an unreasoning aversion to her stepmother. As
the daughter could not have been less than twenty, I can quite
imagine that her position must have been uncomfortable with her
father's young wife.

"Mrs. Rucastle seemed to me to be colourless in mind as well as
in feature. She impressed me neither favourably nor the reverse.
She was a nonentity. It was easy to see that she was passionately
devoted both to her husband and to her little son. Her light grey
eyes wandered continually from one to the other, noting every
little want and forestalling it if possible. He was kind to her
also in his bluff, boisterous fashion, and on the whole they
seemed to be a happy couple. And yet she had some secret sorrow,
this woman. She would often be lost in deep thought, with the
saddest look upon her face. More than once I have surprised her
in tears. I have thought sometimes that it was the disposition of
her child which weighed upon her mind, for I have never met so
utterly spoiled and so ill-natured a little creature. He is small
for his age, with a head which is quite disproportionately large.
His whole life appears to be spent in an alternation between
savage fits of passion and gloomy intervals of sulking. Giving
pain to any creature weaker than himself seems to be his one idea
of amusement, and he shows quite remarkable talent in planning
the capture of mice, little birds, and insects. But I would
rather not talk about the creature, Mr. Holmes, and, indeed, he
has little to do with my story."

"I am glad of all details," remarked my friend, "whether they
seem to you to be relevant or not."

"I shall try not to miss anything of importance. The one
unpleasant thing about the house, which struck me at once, was
the appearance and conduct of the servants. There are only two, a
man and his wife. Toller, for that is his name, is a rough,
uncouth man, with grizzled hair and whiskers, and a perpetual
smell of drink. Twice since I have been with them he has been
quite drunk, and yet Mr. Rucastle seemed to take no notice of it.
His wife is a very tall and strong woman with a sour face, as
silent as Mrs. Rucastle and much less amiable. They are a most
unpleasant couple, but fortunately I spend most of my time in the
nursery and my own room, which are next to each other in one
corner of the building.

"For two days after my arrival at the Copper Beeches my life was
very quiet; on the third, Mrs. Rucastle came down just after
breakfast and whispered something to her husband.

"'Oh, yes,' said he, turning to me, 'we are very much obliged to
you, Miss Hunter, for falling in with our whims so far as to cut
your hair. I assure you that it has not detracted in the tiniest
iota from your appearance. We shall now see how the electric-blue
dress will become you. You will find it laid out upon the bed in
your room, and if you would be so good as to put it on we should
both be extremely obliged.'

"The dress which I found waiting for me was of a peculiar shade
of blue. It was of excellent material, a sort of beige, but it
bore unmistakable signs of having been worn before. It could not
have been a better fit if I had been measured for it. Both Mr.
and Mrs. Rucastle expressed a delight at the look of it, which
seemed quite exaggerated in its vehemence. They were waiting for
me in the drawing-room, which is a very large room, stretching
along the entire front of the house, with three long windows
reaching down to the floor. A chair had been placed close to the
central window, with its back turned towards it. In this I was
asked to sit, and then Mr. Rucastle, walking up and down on the
other side of the room, began to tell me a series of the funniest
stories that I have ever listened to. You cannot imagine how
comical he was, and I laughed until I was quite weary. Mrs.
Rucastle, however, who has evidently no sense of humour, never so
much as smiled, but sat with her hands in her lap, and a sad,
anxious look upon her face. After an hour or so, Mr. Rucastle
suddenly remarked that it was time to commence the duties of the
day, and that I might change my dress and go to little Edward in
the nursery.

"Two days later this same performance was gone through under
exactly similar circumstances. Again I changed my dress, again I
sat in the window, and again I laughed very heartily at the funny
stories of which my employer had an immense rpertoire, and which
he told inimitably. Then he handed me a yellow-backed novel, and
moving my chair a little sideways, that my own shadow might not
fall upon the page, he begged me to read aloud to him. I read for
about ten minutes, beginning in the heart of a chapter, and then
suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he ordered me to cease and
to change my dress.

"You can easily imagine, Mr. Holmes, how curious I became as to
what the meaning of this extraordinary performance could possibly
be. They were always very careful, I observed, to turn my face
away from the window, so that I became consumed with the desire
to see what was going on behind my back. At first it seemed to be
impossible, but I soon devised a means. My hand-mirror had been
broken, so a happy thought seized me, and I concealed a piece of
the glass in my handkerchief. On the next occasion, in the midst
of my laughter, I put my handkerchief up to my eyes, and was able
with a little management to see all that there was behind me. I
confess that I was disappointed. There was nothing. At least that
was my first impression. At the second glance, however, I
perceived that there was a man standing in the Southampton Road,
a small bearded man in a grey suit, who seemed to be looking in
my direction. The road is an important highway, and there are
usually people there. This man, however, was leaning against the
railings which bordered our field and was looking earnestly up. I
lowered my handkerchief and glanced at Mrs. Rucastle to find her
eyes fixed upon me with a most searching gaze. She said nothing,
but I am convinced that she had divined that I had a mirror in my
hand and had seen what was behind me. She rose at once.

"'Jephro,' said she, 'there is an impertinent fellow upon the
road there who stares up at Miss Hunter.'

"'No friend of yours, Miss Hunter?' he asked.

"'No, I know no one in these parts.'

"'Dear me! How very impertinent! Kindly turn round and motion to
him to go away.'

"'Surely it would be better to take no notice.'

"'No, no, we should have him loitering here always. Kindly turn
round and wave him away like that.'

"I did as I was told, and at the same instant Mrs. Rucastle drew
down the blind. That was a week ago, and from that time I have
not sat again in the window, nor have I worn the blue dress, nor
seen the man in the road."

"Pray continue," said Holmes. "Your narrative promises to be a
most interesting one."

"You will find it rather disconnected, I fear, and there may
prove to be little relation between the different incidents of
which I speak. On the very first day that I was at the Copper
Beeches, Mr. Rucastle took me to a small outhouse which stands
near the kitchen door. As we approached it I heard the sharp
rattling of a chain, and the sound as of a large animal moving
about.

"'Look in here!' said Mr. Rucastle, showing me a slit between two
planks. 'Is he not a beauty?'

"I looked through and was conscious of two glowing eyes, and of a
vague figure huddled up in the darkness.

"'Don't be frightened,' said my employer, laughing at the start
which I had given. 'It's only Carlo, my mastiff. I call him mine,
but really old Toller, my groom, is the only man who can do
anything with him. We feed him once a day, and not too much then,
so that he is always as keen as mustard. Toller lets him loose
every night, and God help the trespasser whom he lays his fangs
upon. For goodness' sake don't you ever on any pretext set your
foot over the threshold at night, for it's as much as your life
is worth.'

"The warning was no idle one, for two nights later I happened to
look out of my bedroom window about two o'clock in the morning.
It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the lawn in front of the
house was silvered over and almost as bright as day. I was
standing, rapt in the peaceful beauty of the scene, when I was
aware that something was moving under the shadow of the copper
beeches. As it emerged into the moonshine I saw what it was. It
was a giant dog, as large as a calf, tawny tinted, with hanging
jowl, black muzzle, and huge projecting bones. It walked slowly
across the lawn and vanished into the shadow upon the other side.
That dreadful sentinel sent a chill to my heart which I do not
think that any burglar could have done.

"And now I have a very strange experience to tell you. I had, as
you know, cut off my hair in London, and I had placed it in a
great coil at the bottom of my trunk. One evening, after the
child was in bed, I began to amuse myself by examining the
furniture of my room and by rearranging my own little things.
There was an old chest of drawers in the room, the two upper ones
empty and open, the lower one locked. I had filled the first two
with my linen, and as I had still much to pack away I was
naturally annoyed at not having the use of the third drawer. It
struck me that it might have been fastened by a mere oversight,
so I took out my bunch of keys and tried to open it. The very
first key fitted to perfection, and I drew the drawer open. There
was only one thing in it, but I am sure that you would never
guess what it was. It was my coil of hair.

"I took it up and examined it. It was of the same peculiar tint,
and the same thickness. But then the impossibility of the thing
obtruded itself upon me. How could my hair have been locked in
the drawer? With trembling hands I undid my trunk, turned out the
contents, and drew from the bottom my own hair. I laid the two
tresses together, and I assure you that they were identical. Was
it not extraordinary? Puzzle as I would, I could make nothing at
all of what it meant. I returned the strange hair to the drawer,
and I said nothing of the matter to the Rucastles as I felt that
I had put myself in the wrong by opening a drawer which they had
locked.

"I am naturally observant, as you may have remarked, Mr. Holmes,
and I soon had a pretty good plan of the whole house in my head.
There was one wing, however, which appeared not to be inhabited
at all. A door which faced that which led into the quarters of
the Tollers opened into this suite, but it was invariably locked.
One day, however, as I ascended the stair, I met Mr. Rucastle
coming out through this door, his keys in his hand, and a look on
his face which made him a very different person to the round,
jovial man to whom I was accustomed. His cheeks were red, his
brow was all crinkled with anger, and the veins stood out at his
temples with passion. He locked the door and hurried past me
without a word or a look.

"This aroused my curiosity, so when I went out for a walk in the
grounds with my charge, I strolled round to the side from which I
could see the windows of this part of the house. There were four
of them in a row, three of which were simply dirty, while the
fourth was shuttered up. They were evidently all deserted. As I
strolled up and down, glancing at them occasionally, Mr. Rucastle
came out to me, looking as merry and jovial as ever.

"'Ah!' said he, 'you must not think me rude if I passed you
without a word, my dear young lady. I was preoccupied with
business matters.'

"I assured him that I was not offended. 'By the way,' said I,
'you seem to have quite a suite of spare rooms up there, and one
of them has the shutters up.'

"He looked surprised and, as it seemed to me, a little startled
at my remark.

"'Photography is one of my hobbies,' said he. 'I have made my
dark room up there. But, dear me! what an observant young lady we
have come upon. Who would have believed it? Who would have ever
believed it?' He spoke in a jesting tone, but there was no jest
in his eyes as he looked at me. I read suspicion there and
annoyance, but no jest.

"Well, Mr. Holmes, from the moment that I understood that there
was something about that suite of rooms which I was not to know,
I was all on fire to go over them. It was not mere curiosity,
though I have my share of that. It was more a feeling of duty--a
feeling that some good might come from my penetrating to this
place. They talk of woman's instinct; perhaps it was woman's
instinct which gave me that feeling. At any rate, it was there,
and I was keenly on the lookout for any chance to pass the
forbidden door.

"It was only yesterday that the chance came. I may tell you that,
besides Mr. Rucastle, both Toller and his wife find something to
do in these deserted rooms, and I once saw him carrying a large
black linen bag with him through the door. Recently he has been
drinking hard, and yesterday evening he was very drunk; and when
I came upstairs there was the key in the door. I have no doubt at
all that he had left it there. Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle were both
downstairs, and the child was with them, so that I had an
admirable opportunity. I turned the key gently in the lock,
opened the door, and slipped through.

"There was a little passage in front of me, unpapered and
uncarpeted, which turned at a right angle at the farther end.
Round this corner were three doors in a line, the first and third
of which were open. They each led into an empty room, dusty and
cheerless, with two windows in the one and one in the other, so
thick with dirt that the evening light glimmered dimly through
them. The centre door was closed, and across the outside of it
had been fastened one of the broad bars of an iron bed, padlocked
at one end to a ring in the wall, and fastened at the other with
stout cord. The door itself was locked as well, and the key was
not there. This barricaded door corresponded clearly with the
shuttered window outside, and yet I could see by the glimmer from
beneath it that the room was not in darkness. Evidently there was
a skylight which let in light from above. As I stood in the
passage gazing at the sinister door and wondering what secret it
might veil, I suddenly heard the sound of steps within the room
and saw a shadow pass backward and forward against the little
slit of dim light which shone out from under the door. A mad,
unreasoning terror rose up in me at the sight, Mr. Holmes. My
overstrung nerves failed me suddenly, and I turned and ran--ran
as though some dreadful hand were behind me clutching at the
skirt of my dress. I rushed down the passage, through the door,
and straight into the arms of Mr. Rucastle, who was waiting
outside.

"'So,' said he, smiling, 'it was you, then. I thought that it
must be when I saw the door open.'

"'Oh, I am so frightened!' I panted.

"'My dear young lady! my dear young lady!'--you cannot think how
caressing and soothing his manner was--'and what has frightened
you, my dear young lady?'

"But his voice was just a little too coaxing. He overdid it. I
was keenly on my guard against him.

"'I was foolish enough to go into the empty wing,' I answered.
'But it is so lonely and eerie in this dim light that I was
frightened and ran out again. Oh, it is so dreadfully still in
there!'

"'Only that?' said he, looking at me keenly.

"'Why, what did you think?' I asked.

"'Why do you think that I lock this door?'

"'I am sure that I do not know.'

"'It is to keep people out who have no business there. Do you
see?' He was still smiling in the most amiable manner.

"'I am sure if I had known--'

"'Well, then, you know now. And if you ever put your foot over
that threshold again'--here in an instant the smile hardened into
a grin of rage, and he glared down at me with the face of a
demon--'I'll throw you to the mastiff.'

"I was so terrified that I do not know what I did. I suppose that
I must have rushed past him into my room. I remember nothing
until I found myself lying on my bed trembling all over. Then I
thought of you, Mr. Holmes. I could not live there longer without
some advice. I was frightened of the house, of the man, of the
woman, of the servants, even of the child. They were all horrible
to me. If I could only bring you down all would be well. Of
course I might have fled from the house, but my curiosity was
almost as strong as my fears. My mind was soon made up. I would
send you a wire. I put on my hat and cloak, went down to the
office, which is about half a mile from the house, and then
returned, feeling very much easier. A horrible doubt came into my
mind as I approached the door lest the dog might be loose, but I
remembered that Toller had drunk himself into a state of
insensibility that evening, and I knew that he was the only one
in the household who had any influence with the savage creature,
or who would venture to set him free. I slipped in in safety and
lay awake half the night in my joy at the thought of seeing you.
I had no difficulty in getting leave to come into Winchester this
morning, but I must be back before three o'clock, for Mr. and
Mrs. Rucastle are going on a visit, and will be away all the
evening, so that I must look after the child. Now I have told you
all my adventures, Mr. Holmes, and I should be very glad if you
could tell me what it all means, and, above all, what I should
do."

Holmes and I had listened spellbound to this extraordinary story.
My friend rose now and paced up and down the room, his hands in
his pockets, and an expression of the most profound gravity upon
his face.

"Is Toller still drunk?" he asked.

"Yes. I heard his wife tell Mrs. Rucastle that she could do
nothing with him."

"That is well. And the Rucastles go out to-night?"

"Yes."

"Is there a cellar with a good strong lock?"

"Yes, the wine-cellar."

"You seem to me to have acted all through this matter like a very
brave and sensible girl, Miss Hunter. Do you think that you could
perform one more feat? I should not ask it of you if I did not
think you a quite exceptional woman."

"I will try. What is it?"

"We shall be at the Copper Beeches by seven o'clock, my friend
and I. The Rucastles will be gone by that time, and Toller will,
we hope, be incapable. There only remains Mrs. Toller, who might
give the alarm. If you could send her into the cellar on some
errand, and then turn the key upon her, you would facilitate
matters immensely."

"I will do it."

"Excellent! We shall then look thoroughly into the affair. Of
course there is only one feasible explanation. You have been
brought there to personate someone, and the real person is
imprisoned in this chamber. That is obvious. As to who this
prisoner is, I have no doubt that it is the daughter, Miss Alice
Rucastle, if I remember right, who was said to have gone to
America. You were chosen, doubtless, as resembling her in height,
figure, and the colour of your hair. Hers had been cut off, very
possibly in some illness through which she has passed, and so, of
course, yours had to be sacrificed also. By a curious chance you
came upon her tresses. The man in the road was undoubtedly some
friend of hers--possibly her fianc--and no doubt, as you wore
the girl's dress and were so like her, he was convinced from your
laughter, whenever he saw you, and afterwards from your gesture,
that Miss Rucastle was perfectly happy, and that she no longer
desired his attentions. The dog is let loose at night to prevent
him from endeavouring to communicate with her. So much is fairly
clear. The most serious point in the case is the disposition of
the child."

"What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated.

"My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining
light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the
parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have
frequently gained my first real insight into the character of
parents by studying their children. This child's disposition is
abnormally cruel, merely for cruelty's sake, and whether he
derives this from his smiling father, as I should suspect, or
from his mother, it bodes evil for the poor girl who is in their
power."

"I am sure that you are right, Mr. Holmes," cried our client. "A
thousand things come back to me which make me certain that you
have hit it. Oh, let us lose not an instant in bringing help to
this poor creature."

"We must be circumspect, for we are dealing with a very cunning
man. We can do nothing until seven o'clock. At that hour we shall
be with you, and it will not be long before we solve the
mystery."

We were as good as our word, for it was just seven when we
reached the Copper Beeches, having put up our trap at a wayside
public-house. The group of trees, with their dark leaves shining
like burnished metal in the light of the setting sun, were
sufficient to mark the house even had Miss Hunter not been
standing smiling on the door-step.

"Have you managed it?" asked Holmes.

A loud thudding noise came from somewhere downstairs. "That is
Mrs. Toller in the cellar," said she. "Her husband lies snoring
on the kitchen rug. Here are his keys, which are the duplicates
of Mr. Rucastle's."

"You have done well indeed!" cried Holmes with enthusiasm. "Now
lead the way, and we shall soon see the end of this black
business."

We passed up the stair, unlocked the door, followed on down a
passage, and found ourselves in front of the barricade which Miss
Hunter had described. Holmes cut the cord and removed the
transverse bar. Then he tried the various keys in the lock, but
without success. No sound came from within, and at the silence
Holmes' face clouded over.

"I trust that we are not too late," said he. "I think, Miss
Hunter, that we had better go in without you. Now, Watson, put
your shoulder to it, and we shall see whether we cannot make our
way in."

It was an old rickety door and gave at once before our united
strength. Together we rushed into the room. It was empty. There
was no furniture save a little pallet bed, a small table, and a
basketful of linen. The skylight above was open, and the prisoner
gone.

"There has been some villainy here," said Holmes; "this beauty
has guessed Miss Hunter's intentions and has carried his victim
off."

"But how?"

"Through the skylight. We shall soon see how he managed it." He
swung himself up onto the roof. "Ah, yes," he cried, "here's the
end of a long light ladder against the eaves. That is how he did
it."

"But it is impossible," said Miss Hunter; "the ladder was not
there when the Rucastles went away."

"He has come back and done it. I tell you that he is a clever and
dangerous man. I should not be very much surprised if this were
he whose step I hear now upon the stair. I think, Watson, that it
would be as well for you to have your pistol ready."

The words were hardly out of his mouth before a man appeared at
the door of the room, a very fat and burly man, with a heavy
stick in his hand. Miss Hunter screamed and shrunk against the
wall at the sight of him, but Sherlock Holmes sprang forward and
confronted him.

"You villain!" said he, "where's your daughter?"

The fat man cast his eyes round, and then up at the open
skylight.

"It is for me to ask you that," he shrieked, "you thieves! Spies
and thieves! I have caught you, have I? You are in my power. I'll
serve you!" He turned and clattered down the stairs as hard as he
could go.

"He's gone for the dog!" cried Miss Hunter.

"I have my revolver," said I.

"Better close the front door," cried Holmes, and we all rushed
down the stairs together. We had hardly reached the hall when we
heard the baying of a hound, and then a scream of agony, with a
horrible worrying sound which it was dreadful to listen to. An
elderly man with a red face and shaking limbs came staggering out
at a side door.

"My God!" he cried. "Someone has loosed the dog. It's not been
fed for two days. Quick, quick, or it'll be too late!"

Holmes and I rushed out and round the angle of the house, with
Toller hurrying behind us. There was the huge famished brute, its
black muzzle buried in Rucastle's throat, while he writhed and
screamed upon the ground. Running up, I blew its brains out, and
it fell over with its keen white teeth still meeting in the great
creases of his neck. With much labour we separated them and
carried him, living but horribly mangled, into the house. We laid
him upon the drawing-room sofa, and having dispatched the sobered
Toller to bear the news to his wife, I did what I could to
relieve his pain. We were all assembled round him when the door
opened, and a tall, gaunt woman entered the room.

"Mrs. Toller!" cried Miss Hunter.

"Yes, miss. Mr. Rucastle let me out when he came back before he
went up to you. Ah, miss, it is a pity you didn't let me know
what you were planning, for I would have told you that your pains
were wasted."

"Ha!" said Holmes, looking keenly at her. "It is clear that Mrs.
Toller knows more about this matter than anyone else."

"Yes, sir, I do, and I am ready enough to tell what I know."

"Then, pray, sit down, and let us hear it for there are several
points on which I must confess that I am still in the dark."

"I will soon make it clear to you," said she; "and I'd have done
so before now if I could ha' got out from the cellar. If there's
police-court business over this, you'll remember that I was the
one that stood your friend, and that I was Miss Alice's friend
too.

"She was never happy at home, Miss Alice wasn't, from the time
that her father married again. She was slighted like and had no
say in anything, but it never really became bad for her until
after she met Mr. Fowler at a friend's house. As well as I could
learn, Miss Alice had rights of her own by will, but she was so
quiet and patient, she was, that she never said a word about them
but just left everything in Mr. Rucastle's hands. He knew he was
safe with her; but when there was a chance of a husband coming
forward, who would ask for all that the law would give him, then
her father thought it time to put a stop on it. He wanted her to
sign a paper, so that whether she married or not, he could use
her money. When she wouldn't do it, he kept on worrying her until
she got brain-fever, and for six weeks was at death's door. Then
she got better at last, all worn to a shadow, and with her
beautiful hair cut off; but that didn't make no change in her
young man, and he stuck to her as true as man could be."

"Ah," said Holmes, "I think that what you have been good enough
to tell us makes the matter fairly clear, and that I can deduce
all that remains. Mr. Rucastle then, I presume, took to this
system of imprisonment?"

"Yes, sir."

"And brought Miss Hunter down from London in order to get rid of
the disagreeable persistence of Mr. Fowler."

"That was it, sir."

"But Mr. Fowler being a persevering man, as a good seaman should
be, blockaded the house, and having met you succeeded by certain
arguments, metallic or otherwise, in convincing you that your
interests were the same as his."

"Mr. Fowler was a very kind-spoken, free-handed gentleman," said
Mrs. Toller serenely.

"And in this way he managed that your good man should have no
want of drink, and that a ladder should be ready at the moment
when your master had gone out."

"You have it, sir, just as it happened."

"I am sure we owe you an apology, Mrs. Toller," said Holmes, "for
you have certainly cleared up everything which puzzled us. And
here comes the country surgeon and Mrs. Rucastle, so I think,
Watson, that we had best escort Miss Hunter back to Winchester,
as it seems to me that our locus standi now is rather a
questionable one."

And thus was solved the mystery of the sinister house with the
copper beeches in front of the door. Mr. Rucastle survived, but
was always a broken man, kept alive solely through the care of
his devoted wife. They still live with their old servants, who
probably know so much of Rucastle's past life that he finds it
difficult to part from them. Mr. Fowler and Miss Rucastle were
married, by special license, in Southampton the day after their
flight, and he is now the holder of a government appointment in
the island of Mauritius. As to Miss Violet Hunter, my friend
Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further
interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one
of his problems, and she is now the head of a private school at
Walsall, where I believe that she has met with considerable success.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moby Dick; or The Whale, by Herman Melville

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Title: Moby Dick; or The Whale

Author: Herman Melville

Last Updated: January 3, 2009
Posting Date: December 25, 2008 [EBook #2701]
Release Date: June, 2001

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE ***




Produced by Daniel Lazarus and Jonesey





MOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE

By Herman Melville




Original Transcriber's Notes:

This text is a combination of etexts, one from the now-defunct ERIS
project at Virginia Tech and one from Project Gutenberg's archives. The
proofreaders of this version are indebted to The University of Adelaide
Library for preserving the Virginia Tech version. The resulting etext
was compared with a public domain hard copy version of the text.

In chapters 24, 89, and 90, we substituted a capital L for the symbol
for the British pound, a unit of currency.




ETYMOLOGY.

(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)

The pale Usher--threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him
now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer
handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all
the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it
somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

"While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what
name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, through
ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification of
the word, you deliver that which is not true." --HACKLUYT

"WHALE.... Sw. and Dan. HVAL. This animal is named from roundness or
rolling; for in Dan. HVALT is arched or vaulted." --WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY

"WHALE.... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. WALLEN; A.S.
WALW-IAN, to roll, to wallow." --RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY

     KETOS,               GREEK.
     CETUS,               LATIN.
     WHOEL,               ANGLO-SAXON.
     HVALT,               DANISH.
     WAL,                 DUTCH.
     HWAL,                SWEDISH.
     WHALE,               ICELANDIC.
     WHALE,               ENGLISH.
     BALEINE,             FRENCH.
     BALLENA,             SPANISH.
     PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE,     FEGEE.
     PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE,     ERROMANGOAN.




EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).

It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a
poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans
and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to
whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or
profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the
higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these
extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the
ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these
extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing
bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied,
and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our
own.

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou
belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world
will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong;
but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too;
and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes
and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness--Give it up,
Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world,
by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless! Would that I could
clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your
tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends
who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and
making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against
your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together--there, ye
shall strike unsplinterable glasses!


EXTRACTS.

"And God created great whales." --GENESIS.

"Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to
be hoary." --JOB.

"Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah." --JONAH.

"There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play
therein." --PSALMS.

"In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked
serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." --ISAIAH

"And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster's
mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that
foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his
paunch." --HOLLAND'S PLUTARCH'S MORALS.

"The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among
which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much in
length as four acres or arpens of land." --HOLLAND'S PLINY.

"Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a
great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the
former, one was of a most monstrous size.... This came towards us,
open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before
him into a foam." --TOOKE'S LUCIAN. "THE TRUE HISTORY."

"He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,
which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought
some to the king.... The best whales were catched in his own country, of
which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was
one of six who had killed sixty in two days." --OTHER OR OTHER'S VERBAL
NARRATIVE TAKEN DOWN FROM HIS MOUTH BY KING ALFRED, A.D. 890.

"And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that
enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's) mouth, are
immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in
great security, and there sleeps." --MONTAIGNE. --APOLOGY FOR RAIMOND
SEBOND.

"Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if is not Leviathan described
by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job." --RABELAIS.

"This whale's liver was two cartloads." --STOWE'S ANNALS.

"The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan."
--LORD BACON'S VERSION OF THE PSALMS.

"Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible
quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale." --IBID. "HISTORY OF
LIFE AND DEATH."

"The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise."
--KING HENRY.

"Very like a whale." --HAMLET.

     "Which to secure, no skill of leach's art
     Mote him availle, but to returne againe
     To his wound's worker, that with lowly dart,
     Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
     Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro' the maine."
     --THE FAERIE QUEEN.

"Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful
calm trouble the ocean til it boil." --SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. PREFACE TO
GONDIBERT.

"What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit."
--SIR T. BROWNE. OF SPERMA CETI AND THE SPERMA CETI WHALE. VIDE HIS V.
E.

     "Like Spencer's Talus with his modern flail
     He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
   ...
     Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears,
     And on his back a grove of pikes appears."
     --WALLER'S BATTLE OF THE SUMMER ISLANDS.

"By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or
State--(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man." --OPENING
SENTENCE OF HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN.

"Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat
in the mouth of a whale." --PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

     "That sea beast
     Leviathan, which God of all his works
     Created hugest that swim the ocean stream." --PARADISE LOST.

     ---"There Leviathan,
     Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
     Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
     And seems a moving land; and at his gills
     Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea." --IBID.

"The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil
swimming in them." --FULLLER'S PROFANE AND HOLY STATE.

     "So close behind some promontory lie
     The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
     And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
     Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way."
     --DRYDEN'S ANNUS MIRABILIS.

"While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his
head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it
will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water." --THOMAS EDGE'S TEN
VOYAGES TO SPITZBERGEN, IN PURCHAS.

"In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which
nature has placed on their shoulders." --SIR T. HERBERT'S VOYAGES INTO
ASIA AND AFRICA. HARRIS COLL.

"Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to
proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship
upon them." --SCHOUTEN'S SIXTH CIRCUMNAVIGATION.

"We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale.... Some say the whale can't open his mouth, but that
is a fable.... They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they
can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains....
I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of
herrings in his belly.... One of our harpooneers told me that he caught
once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over." --A VOYAGE TO
GREENLAND, A.D. 1671 HARRIS COLL.

"Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one
eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was
informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of
baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren."
--SIBBALD'S FIFE AND KINROSS.

"Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was
killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness." --RICHARD
STRAFFORD'S LETTER FROM THE BERMUDAS. PHIL. TRANS. A.D. 1668.

"Whales in the sea God's voice obey." --N. E. PRIMER.

"We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those
southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the
northward of us." --CAPTAIN COWLEY'S VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, A.D. 1729.

"... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an
insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain." --ULLOA'S
SOUTH AMERICA.

     "To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
     We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
     Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
     Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale."
     --RAPE OF THE LOCK.

"If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those
that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear
contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest
animal in creation." --GOLDSMITH, NAT. HIST.

"If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
speak like great wales." --GOLDSMITH TO JOHNSON.

"In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was
found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then
towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the
whale, in order to avoid being seen by us." --COOK'S VOYAGES.

"The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so
great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to
mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,
and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to
terrify and prevent their too near approach." --UNO VON TROIL'S LETTERS
ON BANKS'S AND SOLANDER'S VOYAGE TO ICELAND IN 1772.

"The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce
animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen."
--THOMAS JEFFERSON'S WHALE MEMORIAL TO THE FRENCH MINISTER IN 1778.

"And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?" --EDMUND BURKE'S
REFERENCE IN PARLIAMENT TO THE NANTUCKET WHALE-FISHERY.

"Spain--a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe." --EDMUND BURKE.
(SOMEWHERE.)

"A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on
the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates
and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon.
And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the
property of the king." --BLACKSTONE.

     "Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
     Rodmond unerring o'er his head suspends
     The barbed steel, and every turn attends."
     --FALCONER'S SHIPWRECK.

     "Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,
     And rockets blew self driven,
     To hang their momentary fire
     Around the vault of heaven.

     "So fire with water to compare,
     The ocean serves on high,
     Up-spouted by a whale in air,
     To express unwieldy joy." --COWPER, ON THE QUEEN'S
     VISIT TO LONDON.

"Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at
a stroke, with immense velocity." --JOHN HUNTER'S ACCOUNT OF THE
DISSECTION OF A WHALE. (A SMALL SIZED ONE.)

"The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage
through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood
gushing from the whale's heart." --PALEY'S THEOLOGY.

"The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet." --BARON CUVIER.

"In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take
any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them."
--COLNETT'S VOYAGE FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXTENDING THE SPERMACETI WHALE
FISHERY.

     "In the free element beneath me swam,
     Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
     Fishes of every colour, form, and kind;
     Which language cannot paint, and mariner
     Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
     To insect millions peopling every wave:
     Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
     Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
     And trackless region, though on every side
     Assaulted by voracious enemies,
     Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw,
     With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs."
     --MONTGOMERY'S WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.

     "Io!  Paean!  Io! sing.
     To the finny people's king.
     Not a mightier whale than this
     In the vast Atlantic is;
     Not a fatter fish than he,
     Flounders round the Polar Sea."
     --CHARLES LAMB'S TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE.

"In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the
whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:
there--pointing to the sea--is a green pasture where our children's
grand-children will go for bread." --OBED MACY'S HISTORY OF NANTUCKET.

"I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form
of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw bones." --HAWTHORNE'S
TWICE TOLD TALES.

"She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed
by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago." --IBID.

"No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom; "I saw his sprout; he threw
up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at.
He's a raal oil-butt, that fellow!" --COOPER'S PILOT.

"The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette
that whales had been introduced on the stage there." --ECKERMANN'S
CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE.

"My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?" I answered, "we have been stove
by a whale." --"NARRATIVE OF THE SHIPWRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX OF
NANTUCKET, WHICH WAS ATTACKED AND FINALLY DESTROYED BY A LARGE SPERM
WHALE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN." BY OWEN CHACE OF NANTUCKET, FIRST MATE OF
SAID VESSEL. NEW YORK, 1821.

     "A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
     The wind was piping free;
     Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
     And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
     As it floundered in the sea."
     --ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.

"The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture
of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six
English miles....

"Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,
cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles."
--SCORESBY.

"Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the
infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head,
and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes
at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him with vast
swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.... It is a matter of great
astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so interesting,
and, in a commercial point of view, so important an animal (as the Sperm
Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited
so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent
observers, that of late years, must have possessed the most abundant
and the most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes."
--THOMAS BEALE'S HISTORY OF THE SPERM WHALE, 1839.

"The Cachalot" (Sperm Whale) "is not only better armed than the True
Whale" (Greenland or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weapon
at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a
disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once so
artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the
most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe."
--FREDERICK DEBELL BENNETT'S WHALING VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, 1840.

     October 13.  "There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head.
     "Where away?" demanded the captain.
     "Three points off the lee bow, sir."
     "Raise up your wheel.  Steady!"  "Steady, sir."
     "Mast-head ahoy!  Do you see that whale now?"
     "Ay ay, sir!  A shoal of Sperm Whales!  There she blows!  There she
     breaches!"
     "Sing out! sing out every time!"
     "Ay Ay, sir!  There she blows! there--there--THAR she
     blows--bowes--bo-o-os!"
     "How far off?"
     "Two miles and a half."
     "Thunder and lightning! so near!  Call all hands."
     --J. ROSS BROWNE'S ETCHINGS OF A WHALING CRUIZE.  1846.

"The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid
transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of
Nantucket." --"NARRATIVE OF THE GLOBE," BY LAY AND HUSSEY SURVIVORS.
A.D. 1828.

Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the
assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length
rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping
into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable." --MISSIONARY
JOURNAL OF TYERMAN AND BENNETT.

"Nantucket itself," said Mr. Webster, "is a very striking and peculiar
portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or nine
thousand persons living here in the sea, adding largely every year
to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry."
--REPORT OF DANIEL WEBSTER'S SPEECH IN THE U. S. SENATE, ON THE
APPLICATION FOR THE ERECTION OF A BREAKWATER AT NANTUCKET. 1828.

"The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment."
--"THE WHALE AND HIS CAPTORS, OR THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES AND THE
WHALE'S BIOGRAPHY, GATHERED ON THE HOMEWARD CRUISE OF THE COMMODORE
PREBLE." BY REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER.

"If you make the least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel, "I will send
you to hell." --LIFE OF SAMUEL COMSTOCK (THE MUTINEER), BY HIS BROTHER,
WILLIAM COMSTOCK. ANOTHER VERSION OF THE WHALE-SHIP GLOBE NARRATIVE.

"The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order,
if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they
failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale."
--MCCULLOCH'S COMMERCIAL DICTIONARY.

"These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward
again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen seem
to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North-West
Passage." --FROM "SOMETHING" UNPUBLISHED.

"It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being struck
by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look-outs at
the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them, has a
totally different air from those engaged in regular voyage." --CURRENTS
AND WHALING. U.S. EX. EX.

"Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect
having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form
arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps
have been told that these were the ribs of whales." --TALES OF A WHALE
VOYAGER TO THE ARCTIC OCEAN.

"It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,
that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages
enrolled among the crew." --NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT OF THE TAKING AND RETAKING
OF THE WHALE-SHIP HOBOMACK.

"It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels
(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they
departed." --CRUISE IN A WHALE BOAT.

"Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up
perpendicularly into the air. It was the while." --MIRIAM COFFIN OR THE
WHALE FISHERMAN.

"The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would
manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied
to the root of his tail." --A CHAPTER ON WHALING IN RIBS AND TRUCKS.

"On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and
female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone's
throw of the shore" (Terra Del Fuego), "over which the beech tree
extended its branches." --DARWIN'S VOYAGE OF A NATURALIST.

"'Stern all!' exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the
distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat,
threatening it with instant destruction;--'Stern all, for your lives!'"
--WHARTON THE WHALE KILLER.

"So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold
harpooneer is striking the whale!" --NANTUCKET SONG.

     "Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
     In his ocean home will be
     A giant in might, where might is right,
     And King of the boundless sea."
     --WHALE SONG.




CHAPTER 1. Loomings.


Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on
shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of
the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating
the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find
myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up
the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get
such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to
prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically
knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea
as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a
philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly
take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew
it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very
nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with
her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.
Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What
do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some
looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the
rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these
are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to
counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are
the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water
as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of
them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets
and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.
Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all
those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take
almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a
dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic
in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.
Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this
experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical
professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for
ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of
the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees,
each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and
here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder
cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a
mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their
hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though
this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's
head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the
magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores
on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the
one charm wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there! Were
Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to
see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two
handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly
needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why
is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at
some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a
passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first
told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the
old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate
deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.
And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because
he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain,
plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see
in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of
life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin
to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs,
I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger.
For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is
but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get
sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of nights--do not enjoy
themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I never go as a passenger;
nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a
Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction
of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all
honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind
whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself,
without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
And as for going as cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory
in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet, somehow,
I never fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously
buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled
fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old
Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the
mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort
of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour,
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all,
if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand
in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in
time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't
a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
order me about--however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical
or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and
be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying
and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING
PAID,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account
can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves
to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is,
if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not
so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it.
But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me
in some unaccountable way--he can better answer than any one else. And,
doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as
a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances.
I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:


"GRAND CONTESTED ELECTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES.

"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.

"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."


Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the
Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others
were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and
easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces--though
I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives
which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the
delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all
the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped
to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not
have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting
itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on
barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a
horror, and could still be social with it--would they let me--since it
is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place
one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.



CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.


I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm,
and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of
old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in
December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet
for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place
would offer, till the following Monday.

As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at
this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well
be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was
made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a
fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous
old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has
of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though
in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket
was her great original--the Tyre of this Carthage;--the place where the
first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket
did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to
give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that
first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
cobblestones--so goes the story--to throw at the whales, in order to
discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?

Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me
in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a
matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a
very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold
and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had
sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,--So,
wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of
a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the
north with the darkness towards the south--wherever in your wisdom you
may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire
the price, and don't be too particular.

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of "The
Crossed Harpoons"--but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further
on, from the bright red windows of the "Sword-Fish Inn," there came such
fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from
before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches
thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,--rather weary for me, when I struck
my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless
service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too
expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the
broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses
within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear? get away
from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I
went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for
there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand,
and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At
this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of
the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light
proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly
open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the
public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over an
ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost
choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But "The
Crossed Harpoons," and "The Sword-Fish?"--this, then must needs be the
sign of "The Trap." However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice
within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door.

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black
faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel
of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the
preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and
wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out,
Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks,
and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging
sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing
a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath--"The
Spouter Inn:--Peter Coffin."

Coffin?--Spouter?--Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought
I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this
Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and
the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little
wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from
the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a
poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very
spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.

It was a queer sort of place--a gable-ended old house, one side palsied
as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner,
where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever
it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a
mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob
quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that tempestuous wind called
Euroclydon," says an old writer--of whose works I possess the only copy
extant--"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at
it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether
thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both
sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough,
thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind--old black-letter, thou
reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is
the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies
though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late
to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone
is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus
there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and
shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears
with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not
keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his
red silken wrapper--(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What
a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them
talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give
me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up
to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra
than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the
line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in
order to keep out this frost?

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the
door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be
moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a
Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a
temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is
plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet,
and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.



CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.


Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,
low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large
oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the
unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent
study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of
the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first
you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New
England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint
of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the
entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however
wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous,
black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three
blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy,
soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted.
Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable
sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily
took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting
meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you
through.--It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.--It's the unnatural
combat of the four primal elements.--It's a blasted heath.--It's a
Hyperborean winter scene.--It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream
of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous
something in the picture's midst. THAT once found out, and all the rest
were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic
fish? even the great leviathan himself?

In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom
I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a
great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three
dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to
spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself
upon the three mast-heads.

The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with
glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of
human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round
like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You
shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage
could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying
implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons
all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long
lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen
whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon--so like a
corkscrew now--was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale,
years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered
nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a
man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the
hump.

Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way--cut
through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
fireplaces all round--you enter the public room. A still duskier place
is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled
planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft's
cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored
old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like
table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities
gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks. Projecting from the
further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den--the bar--a rude
attempt at a right whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the
vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive
beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters,
bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another
cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little
withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors
deliriums and death.

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though
true cylinders without--within, the villanous green goggling glasses
deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians
rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to
THIS mark, and your charge is but a penny; to THIS a penny more; and so
on to the full glass--the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for
a shilling.

Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about
a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of SKRIMSHANDER. I
sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a
room, received for answer that his house was full--not a bed unoccupied.
"But avast," he added, tapping his forehead, "you haint no objections
to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin'
a-whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing."

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should
ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and
that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the
harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander
further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with
the half of any decent man's blanket.

"I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?--you want supper?
Supper'll be ready directly."

I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the
Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with
his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space
between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but
he didn't make much headway, I thought.

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an
adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland--no fire at all--the landlord
said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each
in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and
hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But
the fare was of the most substantial kind--not only meat and potatoes,
but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in
a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful
manner.

"My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare to a dead
sartainty."

"Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?"

"Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneer
is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't--he eats
nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare."

"The devil he does," says I. "Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?"

"He'll be here afore long," was the answer.

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this "dark
complexioned" harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so
turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into
bed before I did.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not
what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening
as a looker on.

Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord
cried, "That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing
this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now
we'll have the latest news from the Feegees."

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open,
and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy
watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all
bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an
eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat,
and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they
made a straight wake for the whale's mouth--the bar--when the wrinkled
little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all
round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah
mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a
sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how
long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the
weather side of an ice-island.

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even
with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering
about most obstreperously.

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though
he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own
sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise
as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods
had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a
sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will
here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet
in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have
seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt,
making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep
shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give
him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner,
and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall
mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry
of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away
unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the
sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and
being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised
a cry of "Bulkington! Bulkington! where's Bulkington?" and darted out of
the house in pursuit of him.

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost
supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself
upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance
of the seamen.

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal
rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but
people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to
sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange
town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely
multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should
sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep
two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they
all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and
cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.

The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the
thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a
harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of
the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.
Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be
home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at
midnight--how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?

"Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.--I shan't sleep
with him. I'll try the bench here."

"Just as you please; I'm sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a
mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"--feeling of the knots and
notches. "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane
there in the bar--wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying
he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting
the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning
like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the
plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was
near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit--the
bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing
in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the
shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in
the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a
brown study.

I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too
short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too
narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher
than the planed one--so there was no yoking them. I then placed the
first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall,
leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I
soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under
the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all, especially
as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window,
and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate
vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night.

The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal
a march on him--bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be
wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon
second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next
morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be
standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down!

Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending
a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I began to think
that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against
this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be dropping
in before long. I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may
become jolly good bedfellows after all--there's no telling.

But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes,
and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.

"Landlord!" said I, "what sort of a chap is he--does he always keep such
late hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to
be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he
answered, "generally he's an early bird--airley to bed and airley to
rise--yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out
a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late,
unless, may be, he can't sell his head."

"Can't sell his head?--What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you
are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to say,
landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday
night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?"

"That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't
sell it here, the market's overstocked."

"With what?" shouted I.

"With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?"

"I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better
stop spinning that yarn to me--I'm not green."

"May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, "but I
rayther guess you'll be done BROWN if that ere harpooneer hears you a
slanderin' his head."

"I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at this
unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.

"It's broke a'ready," said he.

"Broke," said I--"BROKE, do you mean?"

"Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess."

"Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a
snow-storm--"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one
another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a
bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half
belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I
have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow--a sort of connexion,
landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest
degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this
harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the
night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay
that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good
evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping
with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean, landlord, YOU, sir, by trying
to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to
a criminal prosecution."

"Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty long
sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy,
this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from
the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads
(great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one
he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not
do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to
churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was
goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the
airth like a string of inions."

This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed
that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me--but at
the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a
Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal
business as selling the heads of dead idolators?

"Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man."

"He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder. "But come, it's getting dreadful
late, you had better be turning flukes--it's a nice bed; Sal and me
slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There's plenty of room
for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big bed that. Why,
afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the
foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and
somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm.
Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I'll give ye a
glim in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards
me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a
clock in the corner, he exclaimed "I vum it's Sunday--you won't see that
harpooneer to-night; he's come to anchor somewhere--come along then; DO
come; WON'T ye come?"

I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was
ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough,
with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers
to sleep abreast.

"There," said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest
that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; "there, make
yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye." I turned round from
eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.

Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the
most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced
round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see
no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four
walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of
things not properly belonging to the room, there was a hammock lashed
up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a large seaman's bag,
containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk.
Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf
over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.

But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the
light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive
at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to
nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little
tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an
Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat,
as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible
that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the
streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try
it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and
thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer
had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass
stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore
myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck.

I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on
the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in
the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought
a little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now,
half undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about
the harpooneer's not coming home at all that night, it being so very
late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and
then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the
care of heaven.

Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,
there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep
for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty
nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy
footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room
from under the door.

Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal
head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word
till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New
Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without
looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the
floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords
of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was all
eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while
employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished, however, he
turned round--when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of
a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large
blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible
bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is,
just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face
so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be
sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were
stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this;
but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of
a white man--a whaleman too--who, falling among the cannibals, had been
tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his
distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it,
thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any
sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that
part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the
squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of
tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man
into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas;
and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the
skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning,
this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty
having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled
out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing
these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New
Zealand head--a ghastly thing enough--and crammed it down into the bag.
He now took off his hat--a new beaver hat--when I came nigh singing out
with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head--none to speak of at
least--nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His
bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull.
Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted
out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but
it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of
this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.
Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and
confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him
as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at
the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not
game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer
concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed
his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered
with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same
dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just
escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very
legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up
the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some
abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South
Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it.
A peddler of heads too--perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might
take a fancy to mine--heavens! look at that tomahawk!

But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about
something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that
he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or
dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the
pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with
a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days' old Congo
baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that
this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But
seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal
like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden
idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the
empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this
little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The
chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I
thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel
for his Congo idol.

I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but
ill at ease meantime--to see what was next to follow. First he takes
about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places
them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on
top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into
a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire,
and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be
scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit;
then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of
it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such
dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange
antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the
devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some
pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the
most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol
up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as
carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and
seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time,
now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which
I had so long been bound.

But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.
Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an
instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle,
he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light
was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth,
sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving
a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.

Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him
against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might
be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his
guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my
meaning.

"Who-e debel you?"--he at last said--"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e."
And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the
dark.

"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch!
Coffin! Angels! save me!"

"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the
cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the
hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire.
But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light
in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn't
harm a hair of your head."

"Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that that
infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"

"I thought ye know'd it;--didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads
around town?--but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look
here--you sabbee me, I sabbee--you this man sleepe you--you sabbee?"

"Me sabbee plenty"--grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and
sitting up in bed.

"You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and
throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil
but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment.
For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking
cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to
myself--the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason
to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober
cannibal than a drunken Christian.

"Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or
whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will
turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me.
It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured."

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely
motioned me to get into bed--rolling over to one side as much as to
say--"I won't touch a leg of ye."

"Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."

I turned in, and never slept better in my life.



CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.


Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown
over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost
thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of
odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his
tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure,
no two parts of which were of one precise shade--owing I suppose to
his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt
sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times--this same arm of his, I
say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt.
Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could
hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and
it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that
Queequeg was hugging me.

My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a
child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me;
whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle.
The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other--I
think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little
sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other,
was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,--my
mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to
bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June,
the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But
there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the
third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time,
and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.

I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse
before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the
small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the
sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the
streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse
and worse--at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my
stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself
at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good
slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to lie
abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most
conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For
several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I
have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At
last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly
waking from it--half steeped in dreams--I opened my eyes, and the before
sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock
running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was
to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung
over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form
or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my
bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with
the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking
that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be
broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me;
but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for
days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding
attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle
myself with it.

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the
supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to
those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan
arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night's events soberly
recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to
the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm--unlock his
bridegroom clasp--yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly,
as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse
him--"Queequeg!"--but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over,
my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a
slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk
sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A
pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the
broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! "Queequeg!--in the name of
goodness, Queequeg, wake!" At length, by dint of much wriggling, and
loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his
hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in
extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself
all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed,
stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he
did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim
consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over
him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings
now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at
last, his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow,
and he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon
the floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that,
if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to dress
afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg,
under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the
truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what
you will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this
particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much
civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness;
staring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for
the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless,
a man like Queequeg you don't see every day, he and his ways were well
worth unusual regarding.

He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one,
by the by, and then--still minus his trowsers--he hunted up his boots.
What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next
movement was to crush himself--boots in hand, and hat on--under the bed;
when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was
hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever
heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his
boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition
stage--neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized
to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His
education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not
been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled
himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage,
he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At
last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his
eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not
being much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide
ones--probably not made to order either--rather pinched and tormented
him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.

Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the
street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view
into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that
Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;
I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat,
and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He
complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the
morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to
my amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his
chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a
piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water
and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept
his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner,
slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little
on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall,
begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks
I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance.
Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know of
what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp
the long straight edges are always kept.

The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of
the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his
harpoon like a marshal's baton.



CHAPTER 5. Breakfast.


I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the
grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him,
though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my
bedfellow.

However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a
good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own
proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be
backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in
that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him,
be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the
night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were
nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and
sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers,
and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an
unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.

You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This
young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and
would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days
landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades
lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the
complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached
withal; HE doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show
a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the
Andes' western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates,
zone by zone.

"Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went
to breakfast.

They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease
in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard,
the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all
men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the
mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or
the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart
of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances--this kind of
travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social
polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had
anywhere.

These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that
after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some
good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every
man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked
embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the
slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas--entire
strangers to them--and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here
they sat at a social breakfast table--all of the same calling, all of
kindred tastes--looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they
had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains.
A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!

But as for Queequeg--why, Queequeg sat there among them--at the head of
the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot
say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially
justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it
there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent
jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But
THAT was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in
most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.

We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he eschewed
coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks,
done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the
rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting
there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I
sallied out for a stroll.



CHAPTER 6. The Street.


If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish
an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a
civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first
daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.

In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will
frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign
parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners
will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not
unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live
Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water
Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors;
but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners;
savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It
makes a stranger stare.

But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians,
and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft
which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still
more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town
scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain
and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames;
fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch
the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they
came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old. Look
there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and
swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here
comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak.

No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one--I mean a
downright bumpkin dandy--a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his
two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a
country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished
reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the
comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his
sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his
canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps
in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and
all, down the throat of the tempest.

But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and
bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer
place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this
day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador.
As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they
look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live
in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but not like
Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with
milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in
spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like
houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came
they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country?

Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty
mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses
and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom
of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?

In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece.
You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say,
they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly
burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.

In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples--long
avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and
bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their
tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art;
which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces
of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation's final
day.

And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But
roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks
is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that
bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young
girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off
shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of
the Puritanic sands.



CHAPTER 7. The Chapel.


In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are
the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who
fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving
sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called
bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I
found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and
widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks
of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from
the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The
chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and
women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders,
masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran
something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:--

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was
lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November
1st, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN,
WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats'
crews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the
Off-shore Ground in the PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is
here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows
of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, AUGUST
3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.

Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself
near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near
me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze
of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only
person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only
one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid
inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen
whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not;
but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly
did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings
of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were
assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak
tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among
flowers can say--here, HERE lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation
that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those
black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those
immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in
the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to
the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might
those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;
why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no
tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is
that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix
so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if
he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the
Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what
eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies
antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we
still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are
dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all
the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a
whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these
dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky
light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen
who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But
somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine
chance for promotion, it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an
immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling--a
speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what
then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.
Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true
substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too
much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that
thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my
better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not
me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and
stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.



CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.


I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon
admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation,
sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it
was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he
was a very great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his
youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry.
At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a
healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second
flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone
certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom--the spring verdure
peeping forth even beneath February's snow. No one having previously
heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without
the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical
peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life
he had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and
certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down
with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to
drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed.
However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung up
in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a decent suit,
he quietly approached the pulpit.

Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a
regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor,
seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect,
it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the
pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like
those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling
captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted
man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and
stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering what
manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for
an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the
ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards,
and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand
over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.

The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with
swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood,
so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the
pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship,
these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not
prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn
round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder
step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him
impregnable in his little Quebec.

I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.
Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity,
that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks
of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this
thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be,
then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual
withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions?
Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful
man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold--a lofty
Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within the walls.

But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
borrowed from the chaplain's former sea-farings. Between the marble
cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back
was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating
against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy
breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there
floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel's
face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the
ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into
the Victory's plank where Nelson fell. "Ah, noble ship," the angel
seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy
helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling
off--serenest azure is at hand."

Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that
had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in
the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a
projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed
beak.

What could be more full of meaning?--for the pulpit is ever this earth's
foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the
world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first
descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is
the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds.
Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete;
and the pulpit is its prow.



CHAPTER 9. The Sermon.


Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered
the scattered people to condense. "Starboard gangway, there! side away
to larboard--larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!"

There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a
still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and
every eye on the preacher.

He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large
brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered
a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the
bottom of the sea.

This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of
a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog--in such tones he
commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards
the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy--

     "The ribs and terrors in the whale,
     Arched over me a dismal gloom,
     While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by,
     And lift me deepening down to doom.

     "I saw the opening maw of hell,
     With endless pains and sorrows there;
     Which none but they that feel can tell--
     Oh, I was plunging to despair.

     "In black distress, I called my God,
     When I could scarce believe him mine,
     He bowed his ear to my complaints--
     No more the whale did me confine.

     "With speed he flew to my relief,
     As on a radiant dolphin borne;
     Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
     The face of my Deliverer God.

     "My song for ever shall record
     That terrible, that joyful hour;
     I give the glory to my God,
     His all the mercy and the power."


Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the
howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned
over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon
the proper page, said: "Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the
first chapter of Jonah--'And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up
Jonah.'"

"Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters--four yarns--is one
of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what
depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a pregnant
lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the
fish's belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods
surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters;
sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But WHAT is this
lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded
lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot
of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because it
is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the
swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and
joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of
Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God--never
mind now what that command was, or how conveyed--which he found a hard
command. But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to
do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to
persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in
this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.

"With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at
God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men will
carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains
of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship
that's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded
meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no other city
than the modern Cadiz. That's the opinion of learned men. And where is
Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa,
as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the
Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa,
shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the
Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the
westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye
not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God?
Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with
slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the
shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered,
self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those
days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested
ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a
hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,--no friends accompany him to the wharf
with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the
Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on
board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment
desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye.
Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence;
in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure
the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious
way, one whispers to the other--"Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe,
do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry lad, I guess he's the
adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing
murderers from Sodom." Another runs to read the bill that's stuck
against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering
five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide, and
containing a description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah
to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah,
prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and
summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a
coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong
suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him
not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends
into the cabin.

"'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?' Oh! how that harmless
question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again.
But he rallies. 'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon
sail ye, sir?' Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah,
though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that
hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. 'We sail with the
next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing
him. 'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any honest man that goes a
passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another stab. But he swiftly calls away
the Captain from that scent. 'I'll sail with ye,'--he says,--'the
passage money how much is that?--I'll pay now.' For it is particularly
written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this
history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail. And
taken with the context, this is full of meaning.

"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime
in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this
world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without
a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere he
judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented
to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same
time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when
Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the
Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any
way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his passage. 'Point out my
state-room, Sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep.'
'Thou lookest like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thy room.' Jonah
enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing
him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and
mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed
to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws
himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost
resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in
that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah
feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale
shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.

"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf
with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all,
though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with
reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it
but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp
alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes
roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no
refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more
and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.
'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it
burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'

"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still
reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the
Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as
one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish,
praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid
the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the
man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught
to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy
of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.

"And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and
from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening,
glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded
smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not
bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to
break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her;
when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind
is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with
trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah
sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not
the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the
mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after
him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship--a
berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But the
frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear, 'What
meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!' Startled from his lethargy by that
direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck,
grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is
sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after
wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring
fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat.
And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep
gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing
bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the
tormented deep.

"Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing
attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark
him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last,
fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven,
they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was
upon them. The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they
mob him with their questions. 'What is thine occupation? Whence comest
thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior
of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where
from; whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions,
but likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the
unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is
upon him.

"'I am a Hebrew,' he cries--and then--'I fear the Lord the God of Heaven
who hath made the sea and the dry land!' Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well
mightest thou fear the Lord God THEN! Straightway, he now goes on to
make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more
appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating
God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his
deserts,--when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him
forth into the sea, for he knew that for HIS sake this great tempest
was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to
save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder;
then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not
unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.

"And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea;
when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea
is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth
water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless
commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into
the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory
teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto
the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a
weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for
direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He
leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that
spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy
temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not
clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to
God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of
him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before
you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model
for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like
Jonah."

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,
slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who,
when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.
His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the
warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his
swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple
hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.

There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves
of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed
eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.

But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly,
with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these
words:

"Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press
upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that
Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me,
for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down
from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and
listen as you listen, while some one of you reads ME that other and more
awful lesson which Jonah teaches to ME, as a pilot of the living God.
How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and
bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a
wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled
from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking
ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we
have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to
living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 'into the
midst of the seas,' where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand
fathoms down, and 'the weeds were wrapped about his head,' and all the
watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of
any plummet--'out of the belly of hell'--when the whale grounded upon
the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting
prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the
shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching
up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and
earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;' when the word of the
Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten--his ears, like
two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean--Jonah
did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the
Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!

"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from
Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God
has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than
to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe
to him who, in this world, courts not dishonour! Woe to him who would
not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him
who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is
himself a castaway!"

He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his
face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with
a heavenly enthusiasm,--"But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of
every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight,
than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than
the kelson is low? Delight is to him--a far, far upward, and inward
delight--who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever
stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong
arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has
gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the
truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out
from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,--top-gallant
delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his
God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the
waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake
from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness
will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final
breath--O Father!--chiefly known to me by Thy rod--mortal or immortal,
here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or
mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man
that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"

He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with
his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed,
and he was left alone in the place.



CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.


Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there
quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time.
He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove
hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little
negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife
gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his
heathenish way.

But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going
to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap
began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth
page--as I fancied--stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and
giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He
would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number
one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was
only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his
astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.

With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and
hideously marred about the face--at least to my taste--his countenance
yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot
hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw
the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes,
fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a
thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing
about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim.
He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.
Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn
out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it
otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was
his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous,
but it reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular
busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope
from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two
long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington
cannibalistically developed.

Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be
looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence,
never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared
wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book.
Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night
previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found
thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference
of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not
know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm
self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed
also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the
other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have
no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck
me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something
almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from
home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is--which was the only way he could
get there--thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in
the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving
the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to
himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he
had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be
true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or
so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself
out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he
must have "broken his digester."

As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that
mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then
only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering
round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain;
the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of
strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart
and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing
savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a
nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits.
Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself
mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have
repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I'll
try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but
hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs
and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little
noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last
night's hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be
bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps
a little complimented.

We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to
him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures
that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went
to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen
in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and, producing
his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat
exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly
passing between us.

If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's
breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left
us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as
I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against
mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were
married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends;
he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this
sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing
to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would
not apply.

After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room
together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his
enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out
some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and
mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them
towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he
silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers' pockets. I let them stay.
He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed
the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed
anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I
deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or
otherwise.

I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in
worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do
you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and
earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an
insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?--to do
the will of God--THAT is worship. And what is the will of God?--to do to
my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me--THAT is the
will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that
this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular
Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him
in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped
prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with
Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that
done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences
and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential
disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very
bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie
and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts'
honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg--a cosy, loving pair.



CHAPTER 11. Nightgown.


We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and
Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs
over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free
and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what
little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like
getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.

Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position
began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves
sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the
head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two
noses bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. We felt
very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors;
indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the
room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some
small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world
that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If
you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so
a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if,
like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown
of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general
consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this
reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which
is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this
sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and
your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the
one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.

We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all at
once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether
by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always
keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness
of being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright
except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element
of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part. Upon
opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and self-created
darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated
twelve-o'clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable revulsion. Nor did
I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to
strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt
a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said,
that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the
bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when
love once comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to
have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full
of such serene household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for
the landlord's policy of insurance. I was only alive to the condensed
confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real
friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed
the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a
blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit
lamp.

Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far
distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island; and,
eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly
complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his
words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar with
his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story such as
it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.



CHAPTER 12. Biographical.


Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and
South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.

When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in
a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green
sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire
to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His
father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the
maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable
warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins--royal stuff; though
sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his
untutored youth.

A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought a
passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of
seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence
could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled
off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when
she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low
tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the
water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its
prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the
ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with
one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up
the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled
a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.

In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a
cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and
Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild
desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told
him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage--this sea
Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin. They put him down among
the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter content to
toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming
ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his
untutored countrymen. For at bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a
profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to
make his people still happier than they were; and more than that,
still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon
convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked;
infinitely more so, than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in
old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on
to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also,
poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in
all meridians; I'll die a pagan.

And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,
wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer
ways about him, though now some time from home.

By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having
a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he
being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet;
and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had
unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan
Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,--as soon as
he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to
sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a
harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.

I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future
movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon
this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my
intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port for
an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to accompany
me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch,
the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap;
with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds.
To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection I now felt
for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not
fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant
of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as
known to merchant seamen.

His story being ended with his pipe's last dying puff, Queequeg embraced
me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the light, we
rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon were
sleeping.


CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.


Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber,
for a block, I settled my own and comrade's bill; using, however, my
comrade's money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed
amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between
me and Queequeg--especially as Peter Coffin's cock and bull stories
about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person
whom I now companied with.

We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own
poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and hammock, away we went
down to "the Moss," the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the
wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg
so much--for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their
streets,--but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we
heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg
now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked
him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and
whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in
substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet
he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of
assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate
with the hearts of whales. In short, like many inland reapers
and mowers, who go into the farmers' meadows armed with their own
scythes--though in no wise obliged to furnish them--even so, Queequeg,
for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.

Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about
the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners
of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his
heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the
thing--though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in
which to manage the barrow--Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it
fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. "Why,"
said I, "Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would
think. Didn't the people laugh?"

Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of
Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water
of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and
this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided
mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once
touched at Rokovoko, and its commander--from all accounts, a very
stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain--this
commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg's sister, a
pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding
guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo cottage, this Captain
marches in, and being assigned the post of honour, placed himself over
against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the
King, Queequeg's father. Grace being said,--for those people have their
grace as well as we--though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such
times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the
ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts--Grace, I say,
being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony
of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers
into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself
placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking
himself--being Captain of a ship--as having plain precedence over a
mere island King, especially in the King's own house--the Captain coolly
proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl;--taking it I suppose for a
huge finger-glass. "Now," said Queequeg, "what you tink now?--Didn't our
people laugh?"

At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner.
Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New
Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all
glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on
casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering
whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others
came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and
forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the
start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a
second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever
and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all
earthly effort.

Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little
Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings.
How I snuffed that Tartar air!--how I spurned that turnpike earth!--that
common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and
hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will
permit no records.

At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me.
His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth.
On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the
blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways
leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the
two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of
this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that
for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a
lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so
companionable; as though a white man were anything more dignified than a
whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who,
by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of
all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him
behind his back. I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was come. Dropping
his harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost
miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the air;
then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with
bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him,
lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff.

"Capting! Capting!" yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer;
"Capting, Capting, here's the devil."

"Hallo, _you_ sir," cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking
up to Queequeg, "what in thunder do you mean by that? Don't you know you
might have killed that chap?"

"What him say?" said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.

"He say," said I, "that you came near kill-e that man there," pointing
to the still shivering greenhorn.

"Kill-e," cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly
expression of disdain, "ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e
so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!"

"Look you," roared the Captain, "I'll kill-e YOU, you cannibal, if you
try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye."

But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to
mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted
the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to
side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor
fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all
hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it,
seemed madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost
in one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of
snapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of
being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing the
boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the
midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and
crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one
end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it
round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar
was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the
wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg,
stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of
a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog,
throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by turns revealing
his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I looked at the grand
and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved. The greenhorn had gone
down. Shooting himself perpendicularly from the water, Queequeg, now
took an instant's glance around him, and seeming to see just how matters
were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes more, and he rose again,
one arm still striking out, and with the other dragging a lifeless form.
The boat soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands
voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that
hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took
his last long dive.

Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he at
all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He only
asked for water--fresh water--something to wipe the brine off; that
done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the
bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying
to himself--"It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We
cannibals must help these Christians."



CHAPTER 14. Nantucket.


Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a
fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.

Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of
the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely
than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it--a mere hillock, and elbow of
sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than
you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some
gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they
don't grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have
to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that
pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true
cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses,
to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an
oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand
shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up,
belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island
of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will
sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these
extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was
settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle
swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant
Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne
out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same
direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they
discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,--the
poor little Indian's skeleton.

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take
to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in
the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more
experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last,
launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world;
put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in
at Behring's Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared
everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the
flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea
Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that
his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and
malicious assaults!

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from
their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like
so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and
Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add
Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm
all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds
of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he
owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of
way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but
floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea
as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of
the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the
bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on
the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and
fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. THERE is his home; THERE
lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it
overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie
cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as
chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so
that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more
strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull,
that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows;
so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails,
and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of
walruses and whales.



CHAPTER 15. Chowder.


It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly
to anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no
business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord of
the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the
Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept
hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that Cousin
Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he
plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck at
the Try Pots. But the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow
warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to the
larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a
corner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first
man we met where the place was: these crooked directions of his very
much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg
insisted that the yellow warehouse--our first point of departure--must
be left on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to
say it was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little
in the dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant
to inquire the way, we at last came to something which there was no
mistaking.

Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses' ears,
swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an
old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other
side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows.
Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I
could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort of
crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, TWO
of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. It's ominous, thinks I. A
Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones
staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair
of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints
touching Tophet?

I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman
with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn,
under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured
eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen
shirt.

"Get along with ye," said she to the man, "or I'll be combing ye!"

"Come on, Queequeg," said I, "all right. There's Mrs. Hussey."

And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving
Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs. Upon
making known our desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing
further scolding for the present, ushered us into a little room, and
seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently concluded
repast, turned round to us and said--"Clam or Cod?"

"What's that about Cods, ma'am?" said I, with much politeness.

"Clam or Cod?" she repeated.

"A clam for supper? a cold clam; is THAT what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?"
says I, "but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter
time, ain't it, Mrs. Hussey?"

But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple
Shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing
but the word "clam," Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to
the kitchen, and bawling out "clam for two," disappeared.

"Queequeg," said I, "do you think that we can make out a supper for us
both on one clam?"

However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the
apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder
came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends!
hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than
hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into
little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned
with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty
voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food
before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched
it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking
me of Mrs. Hussey's clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try
a little experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word
"cod" with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the
savoury steam came forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good
time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us.

We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks I
to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head?
What's that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? "But look,
Queequeg, ain't that a live eel in your bowl? Where's your harpoon?"

Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved
its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for
breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you
began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The area
before the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a polished
necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account books
bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the milk,
too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening
to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen's boats, I saw
Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the
sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head, looking very slip-shod,
I assure ye.

Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey
concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to precede
me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded his
harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. "Why not?" said I;
"every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon--but why not?" "Because
it's dangerous," says she. "Ever since young Stiggs coming from that
unfort'nt v'y'ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half, with
only three barrels of _ile_, was found dead in my first floor back, with
his harpoon in his side; ever since then I allow no boarders to take
sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg" (for
she had learned his name), "I will just take this here iron, and keep
it for you till morning. But the chowder; clam or cod to-morrow for
breakfast, men?"

"Both," says I; "and let's have a couple of smoked herring by way of
variety."



CHAPTER 16. The Ship.


In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise and
no small concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, that he had been
diligently consulting Yojo--the name of his black little god--and Yojo
had told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it
everyway, that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in
harbor, and in concert selecting our craft; instead of this, I say, Yojo
earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest wholly
with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us; and, in order to
do so, had already pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself, I,
Ishmael, should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though it
had turned out by chance; and in that vessel I must immediately ship
myself, for the present irrespective of Queequeg.

I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed great
confidence in the excellence of Yojo's judgment and surprising forecast
of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good
sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all
cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.

Now, this plan of Queequeg's, or rather Yojo's, touching the selection
of our craft; I did not like that plan at all. I had not a little relied
upon Queequeg's sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry
us and our fortunes securely. But as all my remonstrances produced
no effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce; and accordingly
prepared to set about this business with a determined rushing sort
of energy and vigor, that should quickly settle that trifling little
affair. Next morning early, leaving Queequeg shut up with Yojo in our
little bedroom--for it seemed that it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan,
or day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that
day; HOW it was I never could find out, for, though I applied myself
to it several times, I never could master his liturgies and XXXIX
Articles--leaving Queequeg, then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo
warming himself at his sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among
the shipping. After much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries,
I learnt that there were three ships up for three-years' voyages--The
Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and the Pequod. DEVIL-DAM, I do not know the
origin of; TIT-BIT is obvious; PEQUOD, you will no doubt remember, was
the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians; now extinct
as the ancient Medes. I peered and pryed about the Devil-dam; from her,
hopped over to the Tit-bit; and finally, going on board the Pequod,
looked around her for a moment, and then decided that this was the very
ship for us.

You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I
know;--square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-box
galliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a
rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old
school, rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed look
about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and calms
of all four oceans, her old hull's complexion was darkened like a French
grenadier's, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her venerable
bows looked bearded. Her masts--cut somewhere on the coast of Japan,
where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale--her masts stood
stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her
ancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped
flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Becket bled. But to all these
her old antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertaining
to the wild business that for more than half a century she had followed.
Old Captain Peleg, many years her chief-mate, before he commanded
another vessel of his own, and now a retired seaman, and one of the
principal owners of the Pequod,--this old Peleg, during the term of his
chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and inlaid
it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and device, unmatched
by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake's carved buckler or bedstead. She
was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with
pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of
a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All
round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous
jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for
pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not
through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of
sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported
there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved
from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who
steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds
back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a
most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having authority,
in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at first I saw
nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or
rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast. It seemed only
a temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical shape, some ten
feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber black bone taken
from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the right-whale.
Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of these slabs laced
together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at the apex united in
a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the
top-knot on some old Pottowottamie Sachem's head. A triangular opening
faced towards the bows of the ship, so that the insider commanded a
complete view forward.

And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who
by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and
the ship's work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of
command. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all
over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a
stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was
constructed.

There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of
the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen,
and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style;
only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest
wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from
his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to
windward;--for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed
together. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.

"Is this the Captain of the Pequod?" said I, advancing to the door of
the tent.

"Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of him?"
he demanded.

"I was thinking of shipping."

"Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer--ever been in a
stove boat?"

"No, Sir, I never have."

"Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say--eh?

"Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I've been several
voyages in the merchant service, and I think that--"

"Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that
leg?--I'll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of
the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now
ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships.
But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?--it looks
a little suspicious, don't it, eh?--Hast not been a pirate, hast
thou?--Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?--Dost not think of
murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?"

I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask
of these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated
Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather
distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the
Vineyard.

"But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of
shipping ye."

"Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world."

"Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?"

"Who is Captain Ahab, sir?"

"Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship."

"I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself."

"Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg--that's who ye are speaking to,
young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted
out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We
are part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest
to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of
finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap
eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one
leg."

"What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?"

"Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured,
chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a
boat!--ah, ah!"

I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at
the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I
could, "What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know
there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed
I might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident."

"Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see; thou
dost not talk shark a bit. SURE, ye've been to sea before now; sure of
that?"

"Sir," said I, "I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in the
merchant--"

"Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant
service--don't aggravate me--I won't have it. But let us understand each
other. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet feel
inclined for it?"

"I do, sir."

"Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale's
throat, and then jump after it? Answer, quick!"

"I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to be
got rid of, that is; which I don't take to be the fact."

"Good again. Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find
out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in order to
see the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well then, just
step forward there, and take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back
to me and tell me what ye see there."

For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not
knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But
concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg started
me on the errand.

Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived that the
ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely
pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but
exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I
could see.

"Well, what's the report?" said Peleg when I came back; "what did ye
see?"

"Not much," I replied--"nothing but water; considerable horizon though,
and there's a squall coming up, I think."

"Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to go
round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can't ye see the world where
you stand?"

I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would; and the
Pequod was as good a ship as any--I thought the best--and all this I now
repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed his willingness
to ship me.

"And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off," he added--"come
along with ye." And so saying, he led the way below deck into the cabin.

Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and
surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who along with
Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other
shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd
of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each
owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail
or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling
vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks
bringing in good interest.

Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a
Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to
this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the
peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified
by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same
Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They
are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.

So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with Scripture
names--a singularly common fashion on the island--and in childhood
naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the Quaker
idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless adventure
of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these unoutgrown
peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not unworthy a
Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when these things
unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain
and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion
of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and beneath
constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think
untraditionally and independently; receiving all nature's sweet or
savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding
breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental
advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language--that man makes
one in a whole nation's census--a mighty pageant creature, formed for
noble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically
regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems
a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For all
men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure
of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease. But,
as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with quite another; and
still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only results again from another
phase of the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.

Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman.
But unlike Captain Peleg--who cared not a rush for what are called
serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the
veriest of all trifles--Captain Bildad had not only been originally
educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all
his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island
creatures, round the Horn--all that had not moved this native born
Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his
vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of
common consistency about worthy Captain Peleg. Though refusing, from
conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself
had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe
to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns
upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his
days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do
not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably
he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's
religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another. This
world pays dividends. Rising from a little cabin-boy in short clothes
of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat;
from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a
ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous
career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of
sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his
well-earned income.

Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an
incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard
task-master. They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a
curious story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew,
upon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore
exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was
certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least. He never used to swear,
though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an inordinate
quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them. When Bildad was a
chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made
you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch something--a hammer
or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other,
never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished before him. His own
person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his
long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard,
his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his
broad-brimmed hat.

Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I
followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin. The space between the decks
was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so,
and never leaned, and this to save his coat tails. His broad-brim was
placed beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his drab vesture was
buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he seemed absorbed in
reading from a ponderous volume.

"Bildad," cried Captain Peleg, "at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have been
studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my certain
knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad?"

As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate,
Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up, and
seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg.

"He says he's our man, Bildad," said Peleg, "he wants to ship."

"Dost thee?" said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me.

"I dost," said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.

"What do ye think of him, Bildad?" said Peleg.

"He'll do," said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at
his book in a mumbling tone quite audible.

I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as Peleg,
his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer. But I said
nothing, only looking round me sharply. Peleg now threw open a chest,
and drawing forth the ship's articles, placed pen and ink before him,
and seated himself at a little table. I began to think it was high time
to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for the
voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no
wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares of
the profits called lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the
degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's
company. I was also aware that being a green hand at whaling, my own
lay would not be very large; but considering that I was used to the sea,
could steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that
from all I had heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay--that
is, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever
that might eventually amount to. And though the 275th lay was what they
call a rather LONG LAY, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had a
lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out
on it, not to speak of my three years' beef and board, for which I would
not have to pay one stiver.

It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely
fortune--and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those
that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the
world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim
sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the 275th lay
would be about the fair thing, but would not have been surprised had I
been offered the 200th, considering I was of a broad-shouldered make.

But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about
receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had heard
something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad;
how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore
the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly the
whole management of the ship's affairs to these two. And I did not know
but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about
shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod,
quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his
own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his
jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was
such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded
us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, "LAY not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth--"

"Well, Captain Bildad," interrupted Peleg, "what d'ye say, what lay
shall we give this young man?"

"Thou knowest best," was the sepulchral reply, "the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much, would it?--'where moth and rust do
corrupt, but LAY--'"

LAY, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one,
shall not LAY up many LAYS here below, where moth and rust do corrupt.
It was an exceedingly LONG LAY that, indeed; and though from the
magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet
the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and
seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make
a TEENTH of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven
hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at the time.

"Why, blast your eyes, Bildad," cried Peleg, "thou dost not want to
swindle this young man! he must have more than that."

"Seven hundred and seventy-seventh," again said Bildad, without lifting
his eyes; and then went on mumbling--"for where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also."

"I am going to put him down for the three hundredth," said Peleg, "do ye
hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say."

Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said,
"Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the
duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship--widows and orphans,
many of them--and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this
young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those
orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg."

"Thou Bildad!" roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the
cabin. "Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these
matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be
heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape
Horn."

"Captain Peleg," said Bildad steadily, "thy conscience may be drawing
ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can't tell; but as thou art still
an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be
but a leaky one; and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the
fiery pit, Captain Peleg."

"Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye
insult me. It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that
he's bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and
start my soul-bolts, but I'll--I'll--yes, I'll swallow a live goat with
all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured
son of a wooden gun--a straight wake with ye!"

As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a marvellous
oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.

Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and
responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up
all idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily
commanded, I stepped aside from the door to give egress to Bildad, who,
I made no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish from before the awakened
wrath of Peleg. But to my astonishment, he sat down again on the
transom very quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest intention of
withdrawing. He seemed quite used to impenitent Peleg and his ways. As
for Peleg, after letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more
left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, though he twitched a
little as if still nervously agitated. "Whew!" he whistled at last--"the
squall's gone off to leeward, I think. Bildad, thou used to be good at
sharpening a lance, mend that pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs
the grindstone. That's he; thank ye, Bildad. Now then, my young man,
Ishmael's thy name, didn't ye say? Well then, down ye go here, Ishmael,
for the three hundredth lay."

"Captain Peleg," said I, "I have a friend with me who wants to ship
too--shall I bring him down to-morrow?"

"To be sure," said Peleg. "Fetch him along, and we'll look at him."

"What lay does he want?" groaned Bildad, glancing up from the book in
which he had again been burying himself.

"Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad," said Peleg. "Has he ever
whaled it any?" turning to me.

"Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg."

"Well, bring him along then."

And, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I
had done a good morning's work, and that the Pequod was the identical
ship that Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape.

But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the Captain
with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though, indeed, in
many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out, and receive all
her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving
to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged, and the
shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the captain have
a family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he does not trouble
himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners till
all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a look at
him before irrevocably committing yourself into his hands. Turning back
I accosted Captain Peleg, inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found.

"And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It's all right enough; thou
art shipped."

"Yes, but I should like to see him."

"But I don't think thou wilt be able to at present. I don't know exactly
what's the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house; a sort
of sick, and yet he don't look so. In fact, he ain't sick; but no, he
isn't well either. Any how, young man, he won't always see me, so I
don't suppose he will thee. He's a queer man, Captain Ahab--so some
think--but a good one. Oh, thou'lt like him well enough; no fear, no
fear. He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak
much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be
forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as
'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed
his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance!
aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain't
Captain Bildad; no, and he ain't Captain Peleg; HE'S AHAB, boy; and Ahab
of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!"

"And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did
they not lick his blood?"

"Come hither to me--hither, hither," said Peleg, with a significance in
his eye that almost startled me. "Look ye, lad; never say that on board
the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself.
'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died
when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at
Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps,
other fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It's a
lie. I know Captain Ahab well; I've sailed with him as mate years ago;
I know what he is--a good man--not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but
a swearing good man--something like me--only there's a good deal more of
him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on
the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it
was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that
about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost
his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's been a kind of
moody--desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass
off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it's
better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. So
good-bye to thee--and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens to
have a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife--not three voyages
wedded--a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet girl that
old man has a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless
harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his
humanities!"

As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been
incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain
wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the time,
I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don't know what,
unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange
awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was
not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it; and it did
not disincline me towards him; though I felt impatience at what seemed
like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then. However,
my thoughts were at length carried in other directions, so that for the
present dark Ahab slipped my mind.



CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.


As Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all
day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I
cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations,
never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue
even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other
creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism
quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of
a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate
possessions yet owned and rented in his name.

I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these
things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals,
pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these
subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most
absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;--but what of that? Queequeg
thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content;
and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let
him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all--Presbyterians and Pagans
alike--for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and
sadly need mending.

Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and
rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door; but
no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside. "Queequeg,"
said I softly through the key-hole:--all silent. "I say, Queequeg! why
don't you speak? It's I--Ishmael." But all remained still as before. I
began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant time; I thought
he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked through the key-hole; but
the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the key-hole prospect
was but a crooked and sinister one. I could only see part of the
foot-board of the bed and a line of the wall, but nothing more. I
was surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden shaft of
Queequeg's harpoon, which the landlady the evening previous had taken
from him, before our mounting to the chamber. That's strange, thought I;
but at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he seldom or
never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside here, and no
possible mistake.

"Queequeg!--Queequeg!"--all still. Something must have happened.
Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly resisted.
Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the first person
I met--the chamber-maid. "La! la!" she cried, "I thought something must
be the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast, and the door was
locked; and not a mouse to be heard; and it's been just so silent ever
since. But I thought, may be, you had both gone off and locked your
baggage in for safe keeping. La! la, ma'am!--Mistress! murder! Mrs.
Hussey! apoplexy!"--and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I
following.

Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a
vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the occupation
of attending to the castors, and scolding her little black boy meantime.

"Wood-house!" cried I, "which way to it? Run for God's sake, and fetch
something to pry open the door--the axe!--the axe! he's had a stroke;
depend upon it!"--and so saying I was unmethodically rushing up stairs
again empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot and
vinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her countenance.

"What's the matter with you, young man?"

"Get the axe! For God's sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry
it open!"

"Look here," said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-cruet,
so as to have one hand free; "look here; are you talking about prying
open any of my doors?"--and with that she seized my arm. "What's the
matter with you? What's the matter with you, shipmate?"

In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand the
whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to one side of her
nose, she ruminated for an instant; then exclaimed--"No! I haven't seen
it since I put it there." Running to a little closet under the landing
of the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me that Queequeg's
harpoon was missing. "He's killed himself," she cried. "It's unfort'nate
Stiggs done over again there goes another counterpane--God pity his poor
mother!--it will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister?
Where's that girl?--there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell
him to paint me a sign, with--"no suicides permitted here, and no
smoking in the parlor;"--might as well kill both birds at once. Kill?
The Lord be merciful to his ghost! What's that noise there? You, young
man, avast there!"

And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force
open the door.

"I don't allow it; I won't have my premises spoiled. Go for the
locksmith, there's one about a mile from here. But avast!" putting her
hand in her side-pocket, "here's a key that'll fit, I guess; let's
see." And with that, she turned it in the lock; but, alas! Queequeg's
supplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within.

"Have to burst it open," said I, and was running down the entry a
little, for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing
I should not break down her premises; but I tore from her, and with a
sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark.

With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming
against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good
heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected; right
in the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on
top of his head. He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat
like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life.

"Queequeg," said I, going up to him, "Queequeg, what's the matter with
you?"

"He hain't been a sittin' so all day, has he?" said the landlady.

But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him; I almost felt
like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost
intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained;
especially, as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of
eight or ten hours, going too without his regular meals.

"Mrs. Hussey," said I, "he's ALIVE at all events; so leave us, if you
please, and I will see to this strange affair myself."

Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon
Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could
do--for all my polite arts and blandishments--he would not move a peg,
nor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in
the slightest way.

I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan; do
they fast on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so;
yes, it's part of his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; he'll
get up sooner or later, no doubt. It can't last for ever, thank God,
and his Ramadan only comes once a year; and I don't believe it's very
punctual then.

I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long
stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage, as
they called it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or brig,
confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only); after
listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o'clock, I went
up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Queequeg must
certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no; there he
was just where I had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began to
grow vexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be
sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room,
holding a piece of wood on his head.

"For heaven's sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up and have
some supper. You'll starve; you'll kill yourself, Queequeg." But not a
word did he reply.

Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed and to sleep;
and no doubt, before a great while, he would follow me. But previous to
turning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as
it promised to be a very cold night; and he had nothing but his ordinary
round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could not get into
the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle; and the mere thought
of Queequeg--not four feet off--sitting there in that uneasy position,
stark alone in the cold and dark; this made me really wretched. Think of
it; sleeping all night in the same room with a wide awake pagan on his
hams in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan!

But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break of
day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he
had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of
sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints,
but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his
forehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan was over.

Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion,
be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any
other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when
a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment
to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to
lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and
argue the point with him.

And just so I now did with Queequeg. "Queequeg," said I, "get into bed
now, and lie and listen to me." I then went on, beginning with the rise
and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various
religions of the present time, during which time I labored to show
Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in
cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless
for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and
common sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such an
extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained
me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan
of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the
spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be
half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish
such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg,
said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested
apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary
dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.

I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with
dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it
in. He said no; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great
feast given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great battle
wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o'clock in the
afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening.

"No more, Queequeg," said I, shuddering; "that will do;" for I knew the
inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who had
visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when
a great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the
yard or garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed
in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with
breadfruit and cocoanuts; and with some parsley in their mouths, were
sent round with the victor's compliments to all his friends, just as
though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys.

After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much
impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow seemed
dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered from his
own point of view; and, in the second place, he did not more than one
third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would; and, finally, he
no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion than
I did. He looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and
compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible
young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety.

At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty
breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not
make much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the
Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.



CHAPTER 18. His Mark.


As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg
carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us
from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal,
and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft,
unless they previously produced their papers.

"What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?" said I, now jumping on the
bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.

"I mean," he replied, "he must show his papers."

"Yes," said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from
behind Peleg's, out of the wigwam. "He must show that he's converted.
Son of darkness," he added, turning to Queequeg, "art thou at present in
communion with any Christian church?"

"Why," said I, "he's a member of the first Congregational Church." Here
be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at
last come to be converted into the churches.

"First Congregational Church," cried Bildad, "what! that worships in
Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman's meeting-house?" and so saying, taking
out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana
handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the
wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at
Queequeg.

"How long hath he been a member?" he then said, turning to me; "not very
long, I rather guess, young man."

"No," said Peleg, "and he hasn't been baptized right either, or it would
have washed some of that devil's blue off his face."

"Do tell, now," cried Bildad, "is this Philistine a regular member of
Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it
every Lord's day."

"I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting," said
I; "all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First
Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is."

"Young man," said Bildad sternly, "thou art skylarking with me--explain
thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me."

Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. "I mean, sir, the same
ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there,
and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of
us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole
worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some
queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in THAT we all join
hands."

"Splice, thou mean'st SPLICE hands," cried Peleg, drawing nearer. "Young
man, you'd better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand;
I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy--why Father Mapple
himself couldn't beat it, and he's reckoned something. Come aboard, come
aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog there--what's
that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By the great anchor, what
a harpoon he's got there! looks like good stuff that; and he handles it
about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you ever stand
in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?"

Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon
the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats
hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his
harpoon, cried out in some such way as this:--

"Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well,
spose him one whale eye, well, den!" and taking sharp aim at it, he
darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean across the
ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.

"Now," said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, "spos-ee him whale-e
eye; why, dad whale dead."

"Quick, Bildad," said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close
vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway.
"Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship's papers. We must have
Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog,
we'll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that's more than ever was given a
harpooneer yet out of Nantucket."

So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon
enrolled among the same ship's company to which I myself belonged.

When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for
signing, he turned to me and said, "I guess, Quohog there don't know how
to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name or
make thy mark?"

But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken
part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the
offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact
counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so
that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his appellative,
it stood something like this:--

Quohog. his X mark.

Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing Queequeg,
and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his
broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting
one entitled "The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to Lose," placed it in
Queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his,
looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, "Son of darkness, I must do my
duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the
souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I
sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn
the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind
thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!"

Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's language,
heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.

"Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,"
Peleg. "Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers--it takes the shark
out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish.
There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of all
Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to
good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and
sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove
and went to Davy Jones."

"Peleg! Peleg!" said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, "thou thyself,
as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what
it is to have the fear of death; how, then, can'st thou prate in this
ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this
same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan,
that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did'st thou not
think of Death and the Judgment then?"

"Hear him, hear him now," cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and
thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,--"hear him, all of ye.
Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink!
Death and the Judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an
everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us,
fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think
about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of;
and how to save all hands--how to rig jury-masts--how to get into the
nearest port; that was what I was thinking of."

Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck,
where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some
sailmakers who were mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then
he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which
otherwise might have been wasted.



CHAPTER 19. The Prophet.


"Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?"

Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from
the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when
the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us,
levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but
shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a
black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all
directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed
bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.

"Have ye shipped in her?" he repeated.

"You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose," said I, trying to gain a little
more time for an uninterrupted look at him.

"Aye, the Pequod--that ship there," he said, drawing back his whole
arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed
bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.

"Yes," said I, "we have just signed the articles."

"Anything down there about your souls?"

"About what?"

"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though,
I know many chaps that hav'n't got any,--good luck to 'em; and they are
all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."

"What are you jabbering about, shipmate?" said I.

"HE'S got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort
in other chaps," abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis
upon the word HE.

"Queequeg," said I, "let's go; this fellow has broken loose from
somewhere; he's talking about something and somebody we don't know."

"Stop!" cried the stranger. "Ye said true--ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder
yet, have ye?"

"Who's Old Thunder?" said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness
of his manner.

"Captain Ahab."

"What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?"

"Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye
hav'n't seen him yet, have ye?"

"No, we hav'n't. He's sick they say, but is getting better, and will be
all right again before long."

"All right again before long!" laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
derisive sort of laugh. "Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then
this left arm of mine will be all right; not before."

"What do you know about him?"

"What did they TELL you about him? Say that!"

"They didn't tell much of anything about him; only I've heard that he's
a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew."

"That's true, that's true--yes, both true enough. But you must jump when
he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go--that's the word with
Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape
Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights;
nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in
Santa?--heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash
he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage,
according to the prophecy. Didn't ye hear a word about them matters and
something more, eh? No, I don't think ye did; how could ye? Who knows
it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows'ever, mayhap, ye've heard tell
about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare
say. Oh yes, THAT every one knows a'most--I mean they know he's only one
leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off."

"My friend," said I, "what all this gibberish of yours is about, I
don't know, and I don't much care; for it seems to me that you must be a
little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of
that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about
the loss of his leg."

"ALL about it, eh--sure you do?--all?"

"Pretty sure."

With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like
stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a
little, turned and said:--"Ye've shipped, have ye? Names down on the
papers? Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be;
and then again, perhaps it won't be, after all. Anyhow, it's all fixed
and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I
suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye,
shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped
ye."

"Look here, friend," said I, "if you have anything important to tell
us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are
mistaken in your game; that's all I have to say."

"And it's said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way;
you are just the man for him--the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates,
morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell 'em I've concluded not to make one
of 'em."

"Ah, my dear fellow, you can't fool us that way--you can't fool us. It
is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great
secret in him."

"Morning to ye, shipmates, morning."

"Morning it is," said I. "Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this crazy
man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?"

"Elijah."

Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each
other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was
nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone
perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and
looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us,
though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I
said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my
comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner
that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging
us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This
circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing,
shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments
and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain
Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver
calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship
the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage
we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things.

I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really
dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg,
and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without
seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it
seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.



CHAPTER 20. All Astir.


A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod.
Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on
board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything
betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain
Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp
look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing
at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were
working till long after night-fall.

On the day following Queequeg's signing the articles, word was given at
all the inns where the ship's company were stopping, that their chests
must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon
the vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps,
resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they
always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail
for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and
there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod
was fully equipped.

Every one knows what a multitude of things--beds, sauce-pans, knives
and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are
indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling,
which necessitates a three-years' housekeeping upon the wide ocean,
far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And
though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means
to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of the
whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the
fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors
usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling
vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially
to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of
the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare
lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain
and duplicate ship.

At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the
Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water,
fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time
there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and
ends of things, both large and small.

Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain
Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable
spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if SHE
could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once
fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar
of pickles for the steward's pantry; another time with a bunch of quills
for the chief mate's desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a
roll of flannel for the small of some one's rheumatic back. Never did
any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity--Aunt Charity, as
everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this charitable
Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand
and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and
consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother
Bildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of
well-saved dollars.

But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on
board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and
a still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor
Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him
a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down
went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once in a
while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men
down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then
concluded by roaring back into his wigwam.

During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the
craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when
he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would
answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard
every day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend
to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been
downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart
that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage,
without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute
dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea.
But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be
already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his
suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said
nothing, and tried to think nothing.

At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would
certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start.



CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.


It was nearly six o'clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we
drew nigh the wharf.

"There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right," said I to
Queequeg, "it can't be shadows; she's off by sunrise, I guess; come on!"

"Avast!" cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close behind
us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating himself
between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight,
strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah.

"Going aboard?"

"Hands off, will you," said I.

"Lookee here," said Queequeg, shaking himself, "go 'way!"

"Ain't going aboard, then?"

"Yes, we are," said I, "but what business is that of yours? Do you know,
Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?"

"No, no, no; I wasn't aware of that," said Elijah, slowly and
wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable
glances.

"Elijah," said I, "you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We
are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be
detained."

"Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?"

"He's cracked, Queequeg," said I, "come on."

"Holloa!" cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a few
paces.

"Never mind him," said I, "Queequeg, come on."

But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my
shoulder, said--"Did ye see anything looking like men going towards that
ship a while ago?"

Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, "Yes,
I thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be sure."

"Very dim, very dim," said Elijah. "Morning to ye."

Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us; and
touching my shoulder again, said, "See if you can find 'em now, will ye?

"Find who?"

"Morning to ye! morning to ye!" he rejoined, again moving off. "Oh! I
was going to warn ye against--but never mind, never mind--it's all one,
all in the family too;--sharp frost this morning, ain't it? Good-bye to
ye. Shan't see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it's before the Grand
Jury." And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me, for
the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence.

At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound
quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the
hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward
to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a
light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a
tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his
face downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber
slept upon him.

"Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?" said I,
looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the wharf,
Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I would
have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter,
were it not for Elijah's otherwise inexplicable question. But I beat the
thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg
that perhaps we had best sit up with the body; telling him to establish
himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper's rear, as though
feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado, sat quietly
down there.

"Gracious! Queequeg, don't sit there," said I.

"Oh! perry dood seat," said Queequeg, "my country way; won't hurt him
face."

"Face!" said I, "call that his face? very benevolent countenance then;
but how hard he breathes, he's heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you
are heavy, it's grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look,
he'll twitch you off soon. I wonder he don't wake."

Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and
lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing
over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him
in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his
land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king,
chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening some
of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in
that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay
them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on
an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible
into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and
desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps
in some damp marshy place.

While narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the tomahawk
from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper's head.

"What's that for, Queequeg?"

"Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!"

He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe,
which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed
his soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The
strong vapour now completely filling the contracted hole, it began
to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; then seemed
troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat up and
rubbed his eyes.

"Holloa!" he breathed at last, "who be ye smokers?"

"Shipped men," answered I, "when does she sail?"

"Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. The Captain
came aboard last night."

"What Captain?--Ahab?"

"Who but him indeed?"

I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when we
heard a noise on deck.

"Holloa! Starbuck's astir," said the rigger. "He's a lively chief mate,
that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to." And so
saying he went on deck, and we followed.

It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and
threes; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively
engaged; and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various
last things on board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly
enshrined within his cabin.



CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.


At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship's riggers,
and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the
ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last
gift--a night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a
spare Bible for the steward--after all this, the two Captains, Peleg
and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg
said:

"Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Ahab is
all ready--just spoke to him--nothing more to be got from shore, eh?
Well, call all hands, then. Muster 'em aft here--blast 'em!"

"No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg," said Bildad,
"but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding."

How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain
Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the
quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as
well as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of
him was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then,
the idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the
ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was
not at all his proper business, but the pilot's; and as he was not
yet completely recovered--so they said--therefore, Captain Ahab stayed
below. And all this seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchant
service many captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable
time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table,
having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends, before they
quit the ship for good with the pilot.

But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain
Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and
commanding, and not Bildad.

"Aft here, ye sons of bachelors," he cried, as the sailors lingered at
the main-mast. "Mr. Starbuck, drive'em aft."

"Strike the tent there!"--was the next order. As I hinted before, this
whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the
Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to
be the next thing to heaving up the anchor.

"Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!--jump!"--was the next command, and
the crew sprang for the handspikes.

Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot
is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it
known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed pilots
of the port--he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in
order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned
in, for he never piloted any other craft--Bildad, I say, might now
be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching
anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody,
to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of
a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will.
Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had told them that no
profane songs would be allowed on board the Pequod, particularly in
getting under weigh; and Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice
copy of Watts in each seaman's berth.

Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped
and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he would
sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused
on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the
perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a
pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with the thought that in pious
Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and
seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and
turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the
act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first
kick.

"Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?" he roared.
"Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don't ye
spring, I say, all of ye--spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red
whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I
say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!" And so saying, he moved
along the windlass, here and there using his leg very freely, while
imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I,
Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day.

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It
was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into
night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose
freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of
teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white
ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from
the bows.

Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the
old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost
all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady
notes were heard,--

"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between."


Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They
were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the
boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was
yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads
and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring,
untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.

At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed
no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging
alongside.

It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at
this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet;
very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a
voyage--beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of
his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate
sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to
encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to
a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,--poor old Bildad
lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the
cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck, and
looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only
bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards
the land; looked aloft; looked right and left; looked everywhere
and nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin,
convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern,
for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say,
"Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can."

As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all
his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern
came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck--now
a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate.

But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look
about him,--"Captain Bildad--come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the
main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now!
Careful, careful!--come, Bildad, boy--say your last. Luck to ye,
Starbuck--luck to ye, Mr. Stubb--luck to ye, Mr. Flask--good-bye and
good luck to ye all--and this day three years I'll have a hot supper
smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away!"

"God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men," murmured old
Bildad, almost incoherently. "I hope ye'll have fine weather now, so
that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye--a pleasant sun is all
he needs, and ye'll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go.
Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don't stave the boats needlessly,
ye harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent.
within the year. Don't forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind
that cooper don't waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in
the green locker! Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, men; but don't
miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts. Have an
eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought.
If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye,
good-bye! Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr.
Starbuck; it'll spoil. Be careful with the butter--twenty cents the
pound it was, and mind ye, if--"

"Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,--away!" and with that,
Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.

Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a
screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave
three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone
Atlantic.



CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore.


Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded
mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive
bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her
helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon
the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous
voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another
tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest
things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this
six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say
that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably
drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port
is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm
blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale,
the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all
hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make
her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail
off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would
blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again;
for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her
bitterest foe!

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally
intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid
effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while
the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the
treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God--so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite,
than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!
For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of
the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart,
O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy
ocean-perishing--straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!



CHAPTER 24. The Advocate.


As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling;
and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among
landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I
am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done
to us hunters of whales.

In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish
the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not
accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a
stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society,
it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were
he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation
of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm
Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed
pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.

Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us
whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a
butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we
are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is
true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been
all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honour. And
as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall
soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown,
and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship
at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even
granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery
decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those
battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies'
plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit
of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran
who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the
apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air
over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared
with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!

But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it
unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding
adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round
the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!

But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of
scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.

Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling
fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit
out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some
score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did
Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties
upwards of L1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of
America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world;
sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen
thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth,
at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our
harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if
there be not something puissant in whaling?

But this is not the half; look again.

I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,
point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty
years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in
one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way
and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so
continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may
well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves
pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to
catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past
the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and
least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes
which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If
American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage
harbors, let them fire salutes to the honour and glory of the
whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted
between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes
of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that
scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were
as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their
succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters,
and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin
wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets would
not willingly have dared. All that is made such a flourish of in the old
South Sea Voyages, those things were but the life-time commonplaces of
our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates
three chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the
ship's common log. Ah, the world! Oh, the world!

Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial,
scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe and
the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast.
It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the
Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it
might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the
liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and
the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.

That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given
to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-born
discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores
as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there. The
whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover,
in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were
several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the
whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted
isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage
to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the
merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their
first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become
hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due;
for already she is on the threshold.

But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no
aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to
shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet
every time.

The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you
will say.

THE WHALE NO FAMOUS AUTHOR, AND WHALING NO FAMOUS CHRONICLER? Who wrote
the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed
the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than
Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from
Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our
glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!

True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no
good blood in their veins.

NO GOOD BLOOD IN THEIR VEINS? They have something better than royal
blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;
afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers
of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and
harpooneers--all kith and kin to noble Benjamin--this day darting the
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.

Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not
respectable.

WHALING NOT RESPECTABLE? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory
law, the whale is declared "a royal fish."*

Oh, that's only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any
grand imposing way.

THE WHALE NEVER FIGURED IN ANY GRAND IMPOSING WAY? In one of the mighty
triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world's capital,
the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were
the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*


*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.


Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real
dignity in whaling.

NO DIGNITY IN WHALING? The dignity of our calling the very heavens
attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your
hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I
know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty
whales. I account that man more honourable than that great captain of
antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.

And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered
prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small
but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if
hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather
have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or
more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here
I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a
whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.



CHAPTER 25. Postscript.


In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but
substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who
should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might
tell eloquently upon his cause--such an advocate, would he not be
blameworthy?

It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern
ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is
gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there
may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely--who knows?
Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his
coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they
anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint
machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential
dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but
meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably
smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil,
unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him
somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.

But the only thing to be considered here, is this--what kind of oil is
used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil,
nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What
then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted
state, the sweetest of all oils?

Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and
queens with coronation stuff!



CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.


The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a
Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy
coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard
as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would
not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of
general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which
his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those
summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his
thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and
cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely
the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the
contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped
up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified
Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come,
and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like
a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well
in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet
lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted
through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a
telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for
all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities
in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to
overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and
endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his
life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that
sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to
spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents
and inward presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent the
welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories
of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the
original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those
latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush
of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous
vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said
Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean,
not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises
from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly
fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

"Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there, is as careful
a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery." But we shall ere long
see what that word "careful" precisely means when used by a man like
Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.

Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a
sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all
mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this
business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of
the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted.
Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor
for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting
him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill
whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and that
hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was
his own father's? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn
limbs of his brother?

With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which
could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But
it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such
terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature
that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in
him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its
confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it
was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which,
while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or
whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet
cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors,
which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and
mighty man.

But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete
abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to
write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose
the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint
stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be;
men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble
and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any
ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their
costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves,
so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character
seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of
a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight,
completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this
august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but
that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it
shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic
dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The
great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His
omnipresence, our divine equality!

If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall
hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic
graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them
all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch
that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow
over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear
me out in it, thou Just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal
mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great
democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the
pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves
of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who
didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a
war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all
Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from
the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!



CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.


Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence,
according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky;
neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an
indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the
chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged
for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his
whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his
crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable
arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the
snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of
the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as
a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes
while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had,
for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he
thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of
it at all, might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his
mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor,
he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir
themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed
the order, and not sooner.

What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going,
unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a
world full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs;
what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that
thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black
little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would
almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his
nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready
loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he
turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from
the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in
readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his
legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.

I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his
peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air, whether
ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of
the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the
cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their
mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb's tobacco
smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent.

The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard. A
short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,
who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally
and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of
honour with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost
was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic
bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of
any possible danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion,
the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least
water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small
application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This
ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in
the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a
three years' voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted
that length of time. As a carpenter's nails are divided into wrought
nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask
was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. They
called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form, he could
be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in Arctic
whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted
into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those
battering seas.

Now these three mates--Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous
men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the
Pequod's boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which
Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales,
these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with
their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers;
even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins.

And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic
Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer,
who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when
the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and
moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy
and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set
down who the Pequod's harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of
them belonged.

First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected
for his squire. But Queequeg is already known.

Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly
promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last
remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring
island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the
fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego's
long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones, and black rounding
eyes--for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their
glittering expression--all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor
of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest
of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal
forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild
beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great
whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the
infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe
snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of
the earlier Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son
of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second
mate's squire.

Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black
negro-savage, with a lion-like tread--an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended
from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called
them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to
them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler,
lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been
anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors
most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold
life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what
manner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues,
and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six
feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at
him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to
beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus
Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man
beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that
at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the
mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though
pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the
American whale fishery as with the American army and military and
merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction
of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all
these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest
of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of
these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound
Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy
peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers
sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to
receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards,
they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but
Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders
in the Pequod, ISOLATOES too, I call such, not acknowledging the common
continent of men, but each ISOLATO living on a separate continent of his
own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were!
An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all
the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the
world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever
come back. Black Little Pip--he never did--oh, no! he went before. Poor
Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere long see him,
beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for,
to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and
beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there!



CHAPTER 28. Ahab.


For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen
of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches,
and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the
only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin
with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain they
but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and dictator was
there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate
into the now sacred retreat of the cabin.

Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly
gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague
disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the
sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened
at times by the ragged Elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly
recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived
of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was
almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish
prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or
uneasiness--to call it so--which I felt, yet whenever I came to look
about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such
emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew,
were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the
tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me
acquainted with, still I ascribed this--and rightly ascribed it--to the
fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation
in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect
of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most
forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings, and induce
confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage. Three
better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way,
could not readily be found, and they were every one of them Americans; a
Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the
ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather,
though all the time running away from it to the southward; and by every
degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that
merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one
of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the
transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water
with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I
mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I
levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me.
Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck.

There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the
recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when
the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them,
or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His
whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an
unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out
from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his
tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing,
you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that
perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of
a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and
without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top
to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly
alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it
was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say.
By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was
made to it, especially by the mates. But once Tashtego's senior, an old
Gay-Head Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till
he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded, and
then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in
an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially
negatived, by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man,
who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this
laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the
immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with
preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously
contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should
be tranquilly laid out--which might hardly come to pass, so he
muttered--then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would
find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.

So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid
brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted
that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric
white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that
this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of
the sperm whale's jaw. "Aye, he was dismasted off Japan," said the old
Gay-Head Indian once; "but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another
mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of 'em."

I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of
the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there
was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank.
His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a
shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the
ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude,
a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless,
forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his
officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures
and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful,
consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that,
but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his
face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.

Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin.
But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either
standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or
heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to
grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as
if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry
bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it
came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet,
for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck,
he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was
only making a passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling
preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, so
that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite
Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that
layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the
loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.

Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the
pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from
his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May,
trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest,
most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green
sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the
end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More
than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any
other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.



CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.


Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now
went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost
perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic.
The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days,
were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up--flaked up, with
rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in
jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their
absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man,
'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights.
But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new
spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the
soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory
shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights.
And all these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's
texture.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less
man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders,
the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the
night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he
seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits
were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. "It feels
like going down into one's tomb,"--he would mutter to himself--"for an
old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my
grave-dug berth."

So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were
set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below;
and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors
flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt
it to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when
this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the
silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man
would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way.
Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these,
he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his
wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such
would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that
their dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once,
the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy,
lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast,
Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a certain
unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was
pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but there might
be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly and
hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the
ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.

"Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldst wad me that
fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave;
where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at
last.--Down, dog, and kennel!"

Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly
scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, "I
am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like
it, sir."

"Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away,
as if to avoid some passionate temptation.

"No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamely be called
a dog, sir."

"Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone,
or I'll clear the world of thee!"

As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in
his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.

"I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,"
muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. "It's
very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't well know whether to go
back and strike him, or--what's that?--down here on my knees and pray
for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the
first time I ever DID pray. It's queer; very queer; and he's queer too;
aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old man Stubb ever
sailed with. How he flashed at me!--his eyes like powder-pans! is he
mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be
something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more
than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don't sleep then. Didn't
that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds
the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets
down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the
pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on
it? A hot old man! I guess he's got what some folks ashore call
a conscience; it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say--worse nor a
toothache. Well, well; I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep me
from catching it. He's full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the
after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what's
that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments with him in
the hold? Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old
game--Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be
born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think
of it, that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of
queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But
that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and
sleep when you can, is my twelfth--So here goes again. But how's that?
didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and
piled a lot of jackasses on top of THAT! He might as well have kicked
me, and done with it. Maybe he DID kick me, and I didn't observe it,
I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a
bleached bone. What the devil's the matter with me? I don't stand right
on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong
side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though--How? how?
how?--but the only way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again;
and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by
daylight."



CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.


When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the
bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor
of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe.
Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the
weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.

In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were
fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one
look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking
him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of
the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.

Some moments passed, during which the thick vapour came from his mouth
in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. "How
now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no
longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be
gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring--aye, and
ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with
such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the
strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe?
This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapours
among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll
smoke no more--"

He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the
waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe
made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.



CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.


Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.

"Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man's
ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick
back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then,
presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking
at it. But what was still more curious, Flask--you know how curious all
dreams are--through all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be
thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an insult, that
kick from Ahab. 'Why,' thinks I, 'what's the row? It's not a real leg,
only a false leg.' And there's a mighty difference between a living
thump and a dead thump. That's what makes a blow from the hand, Flask,
fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living
member--that makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to
myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against
that cursed pyramid--so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all
the while, I say, I was thinking to myself, 'what's his leg now, but
a cane--a whalebone cane. Yes,' thinks I, 'it was only a playful
cudgelling--in fact, only a whaleboning that he gave me--not a base
kick. Besides,' thinks I, 'look at it once; why, the end of it--the foot
part--what a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad footed farmer
kicked me, THERE'S a devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled
down to a point only.' But now comes the greatest joke of the
dream, Flask. While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of
badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the
shoulders, and slews me round. 'What are you 'bout?' says he. Slid! man,
but I was frightened. Such a phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was over
the fright. 'What am I about?' says I at last. 'And what business is
that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do YOU want a kick?'
By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round his
stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a
clout--what do you think, I saw?--why thunder alive, man, his stern
was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second
thoughts, 'I guess I won't kick you, old fellow.' 'Wise Stubb,' said he,
'wise Stubb;' and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of
his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn't going to stop saying
over his 'wise Stubb, wise Stubb,' I thought I might as well fall to
kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot for it,
when he roared out, 'Stop that kicking!' 'Halloa,' says I, 'what's
the matter now, old fellow?' 'Look ye here,' says he; 'let's argue
the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,' says
I--'right HERE it was.' 'Very good,' says he--'he used his ivory leg,
didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,' says I. 'Well then,' says he, 'wise Stubb,
what have you to complain of? Didn't he kick with right good will? it
wasn't a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you were
kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It's an
honour; I consider it an honour. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the
greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made
garter-knights of; but, be YOUR boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by
old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; BE kicked by him;
account his kicks honours; and on no account kick back; for you can't
help yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see that pyramid?' With that, he
all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into
the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was in my hammock! Now, what
do you think of that dream, Flask?"

"I don't know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.'"

"May be; may be. But it's made a wise man of me, Flask. D'ye see Ahab
standing there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best thing
you can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to him,
whatever he says. Halloa! What's that he shouts? Hark!"

"Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!

"If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!

"What do you think of that now, Flask? ain't there a small drop of
something queer about that, eh? A white whale--did ye mark that, man?
Look ye--there's something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask.
Ahab has that that's bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this way."



CHAPTER 32. Cetology.


Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost
in its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the
Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the
leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost
indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more
special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to
follow.

It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,
that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The
classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here
essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.

"No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.

"It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the
inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and
families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal"
(sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.

"Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters."
"Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea." "A field
strewn with thorns." "All these incomplete indications but serve to
torture us naturalists."

Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson,
those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real
knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in
some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are
the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at
large or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few:--The Authors
of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner;
Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson;
Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier;
John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the
Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what
ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited
extracts will show.

Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen
ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional
harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate
subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing
authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great
sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy
mentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper
upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest
of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the
profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the
then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to
this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats
and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference
to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past days,
will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, was to
them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a new
proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all,--the
Greenland whale is deposed,--the great sperm whale now reigneth!

There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living
sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree
succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's; both in
their time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact and
reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale to be found
in their volumes is necessarily small; but so far as it goes, it is of
excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific description. As
yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete
in any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an
unwritten life.

Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular
comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the
present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent
laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I
hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete;
because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very
reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical
description of the various species, or--in this place at least--to much
of any description. My object here is simply to project the draught of a
systematization of cetology. I am the architect, not the builder.

But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-Office
is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them;
to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very
pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should
essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job
might well appal me. Will he the (leviathan) make a covenant with thee?
Behold the hope of him is vain! But I have swam through libraries and
sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible
hands; I am in earnest; and I will try. There are some preliminaries to
settle.

First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology
is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it
still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of
Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnaeus declares, "I hereby separate the whales from
the fish." But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850,
sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnaeus's express edict,
were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the
Leviathan.

The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the whales from
the waters, he states as follows: "On account of their warm bilocular
heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem
intrantem feminam mammis lactantem," and finally, "ex lege naturae jure
meritoque." I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley
Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and
they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether
insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.

Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned
ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.
This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal
respect does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus has given
you those items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood;
whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded.

Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as
conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then, a
whale is A SPOUTING FISH WITH A HORIZONTAL TAIL. There you have
him. However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded
meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a
fish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is
still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have
noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a
vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail,
though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal
position.

By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude
from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified
with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other
hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.*
Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish must be
included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the grand
divisions of the entire whale host.


*I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and
Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included
by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a noisy,
contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on
wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials
as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the
Kingdom of Cetology.


First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary
BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all,
both small and large.

I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.

As the type of the FOLIO I present the SPERM WHALE; of the OCTAVO, the
GRAMPUS; of the DUODECIMO, the PORPOISE.

FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:--I. The SPERM
WHALE; II. the RIGHT WHALE; III. the FIN-BACK WHALE; IV. the HUMP-BACKED
WHALE; V. the RAZOR-BACK WHALE; VI. the SULPHUR-BOTTOM WHALE.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER I. (SPERM WHALE).--This whale, among the
English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter
whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the
French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the
Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe;
the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the most majestic in
aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being
the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is
obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged
upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically
considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was
almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil
was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days
spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a
creature identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland
or Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that
quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of
the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was
exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment
and medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays
buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the
true nature of spermaceti became known, its original name was still
retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so
strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the appellation must at
last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti
was really derived.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER II. (RIGHT WHALE).--In one respect this is the
most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted
by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and
the oil specially known as "whale oil," an inferior article in commerce.
Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the
following titles: The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale;
the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of
obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus multitudinously
baptised. What then is the whale, which I include in the second species
of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the
Greenland Whale of the English whalemen; the Baliene Ordinaire of the
French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale
which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and
English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen
have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor'
West Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them
Right Whale Cruising Grounds.

Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the
English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree
in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single
determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by
endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that
some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The
right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference
to elucidating the sperm whale.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER III. (FIN-BACK).--Under this head I reckon
a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and
Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale
whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the
Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and
in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less
portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great lips
present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds
of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which
he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is some
three or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the
back, of an angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if
not the slightest other part of the creature be visible, this isolated
fin will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from the surface. When
the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples,
and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled
surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it
somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on
it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. The Fin-Back is not
gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. Very
shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the
remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet
rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with
such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present
pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable
Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From
having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with
the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated WHALEBONE WHALES,
that is, whales with baleen. Of these so called Whalebone whales, there
would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are little
known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched
whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are the fishermen's
names for a few sorts.

In connection with this appellative of "Whalebone whales," it is of
great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be
convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is
in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon
either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those
marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford
the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other detached
bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents. How
then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are things whose
peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales,
without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other
and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked
whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then, this same
humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen;
but there again the similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the
other parts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such
irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached,
such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general
methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the
whale-naturalists has split.

But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the
whale, in his anatomy--there, at least, we shall be able to hit the
right classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the
Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have
seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the
Greenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the various
leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as
available to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated.
What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in
their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is
the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only one that can
possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed.

BOOK I. (FOLIO) CHAPTER IV. (HUMP-BACK).--This whale is often seen on
the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and
towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you
might call him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular
name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm
whale also has a hump though a smaller one. His oil is not very
valuable. He has baleen. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of
all the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any
other of them.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER V. (RAZOR-BACK).--Of this whale little is known
but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring
nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he
has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises in a long
sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does anybody
else.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER VI. (SULPHUR-BOTTOM).--Another retiring
gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the
Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen;
at least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas,
and then always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is
never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are
told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true
of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer.

Thus ends BOOK I. (FOLIO), and now begins BOOK II. (OCTAVO).

OCTAVOES.*--These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which
present may be numbered:--I., the GRAMPUS; II., the BLACK FISH; III.,
the NARWHALE; IV., the THRASHER; V., the KILLER.


*Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.
Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of
the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them
in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its dimensioned form
does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume
does.


BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER I. (GRAMPUS).--Though this fish, whose
loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb
to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not
popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the grand distinctive
features of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one.
He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet
in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist. He swims in
herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable in
quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is
regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.

BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER II. (BLACK FISH).--I give the popular
fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are the best.
Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so,
and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called,
because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the
Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and from the
circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he
carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale
averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost
all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin
in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more
profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena
whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment--as
some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by
themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their
blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you upwards of
thirty gallons of oil.

BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER III. (NARWHALE), that is, NOSTRIL
WHALE.--Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose
from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The
creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five
feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly
speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw
in a line a little depressed from the horizontal. But it is only
found on the sinister side, which has an ill effect, giving its owner
something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What
precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would be hard to
say. It does not seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and
bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for
a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin
said it was used for an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the
surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his
horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot prove either of these
surmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that however this one-sided
horn may really be used by the Narwhale--however that may be--it would
certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets.
The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, and
the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism
to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From certain
cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn
was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison,
and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also
distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the
horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it
was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells
me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when
Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window
of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; "when Sir
Martin returned from that voyage," saith Black Letter, "on bended knees
he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale,
which for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor." An Irish
author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise
present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the
unicorn nature.

The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a
milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black.
His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it, and
he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.

BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER IV. (KILLER).--Of this whale little is
precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed
naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say
that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage--a sort of
Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and
hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The
Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception
might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground
of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea;
Bonapartes and Sharks included.

BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER V. (THRASHER).--This gentleman is famous for
his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He mounts
the Folio whale's back, and as he swims, he works his passage by
flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar
process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both
are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.

Thus ends BOOK II. (OCTAVO), and begins BOOK III. (DUODECIMO).

DUODECIMOES.--These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza Porpoise.
II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.

To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five
feet should be marshalled among WHALES--a word, which, in the popular
sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set
down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my
definition of what a whale is--i.e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal
tail.

BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER 1. (HUZZA PORPOISE).--This is the
common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own
bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and something
must be done to distinguish them. I call him thus, because he always
swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing
themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their
appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine
spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward. They
are the lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted a
lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding
these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of godly
gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will
yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid
extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among
jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise
meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that
a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very
readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him; and
you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature.

BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER II. (ALGERINE PORPOISE).--A pirate. Very
savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger
than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make. Provoke him,
and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many times, but
never yet saw him captured.

BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER III. (MEALY-MOUTHED PORPOISE).--The
largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it is
known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been designated,
is that of the fishers--Right-Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance that
he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs
in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly
girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has
no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail,
and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils
all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable,
yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called
the "bright waist," that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two
separate colours, black above and white below. The white comprises part
of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he
had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and
mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise.


Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as
the Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the
Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive,
half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by
reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their
fore-castle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to
future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If
any of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then
he can readily be incorporated into this System, according to his Folio,
Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:--The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale;
the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon
Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the
Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic,
Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other lists of
uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I omit
them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for
mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.

Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be
here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have
kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus
unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the
crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small
erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true
ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever
completing anything. This whole book is but a draught--nay, but the
draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!



CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder.


Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place
as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising
from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown
of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.

The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is evinced
by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries
and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in
the person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an
officer called the Specksnyder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter;
usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In
those days, the captain's authority was restricted to the navigation
and general management of the vessel; while over the whale-hunting
department and all its concerns, the Specksnyder or Chief Harpooneer
reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted
title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but
his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply
as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain's more
inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the
harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since
in the American Fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat,
but under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling ground) the
command of the ship's deck is also his; therefore the grand political
maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart from
the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their
professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as
their social equal.

Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is
this--the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and
merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and
so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in
the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the
captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.

Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest
of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and
the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high
or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their
common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and
hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less
rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind
how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some
primitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious
externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed,
and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in
which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated
grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost
as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the
shabbiest of pilot-cloth.

And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least
given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage
he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he
required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon
the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar
circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he
addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or IN
TERROREM, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means
unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.

Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those
forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally
making use of them for other and more private ends than they were
legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain,
which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through
those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible
dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will,
it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men,
without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always,
in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever
keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and
leaves the highest honours that this air can give, to those men who
become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice
hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted
superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks
in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them,
that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted
potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown
of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian
herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the
tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest
sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in
his art, as the one now alluded to.

But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings
and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it
must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and
featured in the unbodied air!



CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.


It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread
face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and
master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an
observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the
smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on
the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the
tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But
presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to
the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, "Dinner, Mr.
Starbuck," disappears into the cabin.

When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck, the
first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck
rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after
a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness,
"Dinner, Mr. Stubb," and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges
about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to
see whether it will be all right with that important rope, he likewise
takes up the old burden, and with a rapid "Dinner, Mr. Flask," follows
after his predecessors.

But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck,
seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all
sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his
shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right
over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching
his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so
far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other
processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into
the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and,
then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's presence,
in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.

It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck
some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and
defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those
very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that
same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say
deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of
the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this
difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of
Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously,
therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he
who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own
private dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power
and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man's royalty of
state transcends Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who
has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It
is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now,
if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a
ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that
peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.

Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned
sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still
deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be
served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab,
there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind,
their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as he carved
the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world they
would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even
upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when reaching out his
knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab thereby
motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the mate received his meat as
though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little started
if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed it
noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like
the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly
dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were
somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab
forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a relief it was
to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. And
poor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this weary
family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would have
been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this
must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had
he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more would he have
been able to hold his head up in this honest world; nevertheless,
strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself,
the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all, did
Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners
of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear,
sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such
marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for
him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!

Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask
is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was badly
jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him;
and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb
even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small
appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask
must bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day;
for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck.
Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he
had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never
known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what
he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him.
Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from
my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of
old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before the
mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory:
there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any mere
sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official
capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance,
was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin
sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.

Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table
in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted
order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was
restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the three
harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees.
They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of the high and mighty
cabin.

In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire care-free
license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows
the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the
sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food
with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords;
they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices.
Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out
the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was
fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of
the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with
a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of
accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once
Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by
snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty
wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the
circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous,
shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny
of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing
spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous
visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one
continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished
with all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into
his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the
blinds of its door, till all was over.

It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing
his filed teeth to the Indian's: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the
floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low
carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin
framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a
ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious,
not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively
small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad,
baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed
strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through his
dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by
beef or by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a
mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating--an ugly sound enough--so
much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether
any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear
Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be
picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging
round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the
whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their
lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they
would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at
all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his
Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some
murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the
white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on
his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight,
the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous,
fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every
step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.

But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived
there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were
scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time,
when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.

In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale
captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights
the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that
anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth,
the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to
have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it
was something as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for
a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing,
residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin
was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally
included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He
lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled
Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of
the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter
there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age,
Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the
sullen paws of its gloom!



CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head.


It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the
other seamen my first mast-head came round.

In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost
simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port; even though she may
have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper
cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years' voyage
she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her--say, an empty vial
even--then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her
skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether
relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.

Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very
ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here.
I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old
Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.
For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by
their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia,
or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great
stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the dread
gale of God's wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders
priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of
mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among
archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical
purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair-like
formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious
long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount
to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a
modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In
Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him
a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of
his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a
tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless
stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his place by fogs
or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to
the last, literally died at his post. Of modern standers-of-mast-heads
we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and bronze men; who,
though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still entirely
incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange
sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of Vendome,
stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air;
careless, now, who rules the decks below; whether Louis Philippe, Louis
Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on
his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars,
his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals
will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his
mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that
London smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for
where there is smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor
Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however
madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks
upon which they gaze; however it may be surmised, that their spirits
penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals
and what rocks must be shunned.

It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head
standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is
not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole
historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us,
that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly
launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected lofty
spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by means
of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few
years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand,
who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh
the beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the
one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads
are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their
regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two
hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant
the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There
you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the
deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and
between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even
as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old
Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with
nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the
drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the
most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests
you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts
of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear
of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are
never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner--for
all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and
your bill of fare is immutable.

In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years'
voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the
mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be
deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion
of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute
of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a
comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock,
a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small
and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your
most usual point of perch is the head of the t' gallant-mast, where you
stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called
the t' gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner
feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure,
in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of
a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more
of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its
fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out
of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim
crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of
a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You
cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you
make a convenient closet of your watch-coat.

Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a
southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents
or pulpits, called CROW'S-NESTS, in which the look-outs of a Greenland
whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In
the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A Voyage among the
Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the
re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;" in
this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with
a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented
CROW'S-NEST of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good
craft. He called it the SLEET'S CROW'S-NEST, in honour of himself; he
being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous
false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our
own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so
likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we
may beget. In shape, the Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a large
tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with
a movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale.
Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a
little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the
stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for
umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which
to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical
conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this
crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him
(also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for
the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns
infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from
the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon
them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor of love
for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed
conveniences of his crow's-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many
of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his
experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for
the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called
the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to
the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the
Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down
blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very
discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned "binnacle
deviations," "azimuth compass observations," and "approximate errors,"
he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed
in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted
occasionally towards that well replenished little case-bottle, so nicely
tucked in on one side of his crow's nest, within easy reach of his hand.
Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, the
honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he
should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend
and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded
head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest
within three or four perches of the pole.

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as
Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is
greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those
seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used
to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a
chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there;
then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the
top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at
last mount to my ultimate destination.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but
sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how
could I--being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering
altitude--how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all
whale-ships' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out
every time."

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of
Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with
lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who
offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware
of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be
killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes
round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor
are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery
furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded
young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking
sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches
himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and
in moody phrase ejaculates:--

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand
blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded
young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient
"interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost
to all honourable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would
rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young
Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are
short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have
left their opera-glasses at home.

"Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've been
cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale
yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here."
Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in
the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of
vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending
cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity;
takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep,
blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every
strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every
dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him
the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by
continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs
away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like
Crammer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every
shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a
gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from
the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye,
move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity
comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps,
at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you
drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise
for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!



CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.


(ENTER AHAB: THEN, ALL)


It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one
morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the
cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that
hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the
garden.

Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old
rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over
dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did
you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also,
you would see still stranger foot-prints--the foot-prints of his one
unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.

But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as
his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his
thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the
main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought
turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely
possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every
outer movement.

"D'ye mark him, Flask?" whispered Stubb; "the chick that's in him pecks
the shell. 'Twill soon be out."

The hours wore on;--Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing the
deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.

It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the
bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with
one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft.

"Sir!" said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on
ship-board except in some extraordinary case.

"Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab. "Mast-heads, there! come down!"

When the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious and not
wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike
the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly
glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew,
started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were nigh him
resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched
hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among
the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have
summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But
this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:--

"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"

"Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed
voices.

"Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the
hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically
thrown them.

"And what do ye next, men?"

"Lower away, and after him!"

"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"

"A dead whale or a stove boat!"

More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the
countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began
to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they
themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.

But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his
pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost
convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:--

"All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white
whale. Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?"--holding up a
broad bright coin to the sun--"it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D'ye
see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul."

While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was
slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if
to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile
lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and
inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his
vitality in him.

Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast
with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the
other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever of ye
raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw;
whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes
punctured in his starboard fluke--look ye, whosoever of ye raises me
that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!"

"Huzza! huzza!" cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they
hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.

"It's a white whale, I say," resumed Ahab, as he threw down the topmaul:
"a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white water;
if ye see but a bubble, sing out."

All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even
more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention
of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was
separately touched by some specific recollection.

"Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale must be the same that
some call Moby Dick."

"Moby Dick?" shouted Ahab. "Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?"

"Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?" said the
Gay-Header deliberately.

"And has he a curious spout, too," said Daggoo, "very bushy, even for a
parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?"

"And he have one, two, three--oh! good many iron in him hide, too,
Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, like
him--him--" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and
round as though uncorking a bottle--"like him--him--"

"Corkscrew!" cried Ahab, "aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted
and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole
shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the
great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a
split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have
seen--Moby Dick--Moby Dick!"

"Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far
been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed
struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. "Captain
Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick--but it was not Moby Dick that took off
thy leg?"

"Who told thee that?" cried Ahab; then pausing, "Aye, Starbuck; aye, my
hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that
brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he shouted with
a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose;
"Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor
pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!" Then tossing both arms, with
measureless imprecations he shouted out: "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him
round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and
round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have
shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and
over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.
What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look
brave."

"Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the
excited old man: "A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for
Moby Dick!"

"God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and half shout. "God bless ye,
men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what's this long
face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not
game for Moby Dick?"

"I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain
Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I
came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance. How many barrels
will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it
will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market."

"Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest
a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and the
accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by
girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let
me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium HERE!"

"He smites his chest," whispered Stubb, "what's that for? methinks it
rings most vast, but hollow."

"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee
from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing,
Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."

"Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer. All visible objects, man,
are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act, the
undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth
the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man
will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside
except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that
wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But
'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength,
with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is
chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale
principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy,
man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that,
then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play
herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man,
is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off
thine eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish
stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to
anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing
unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I
meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of
spotted tawn--living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan
leopards--the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek,
and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the
crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?
See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it.
Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot,
Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin; no
wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt,
then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back,
when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings
seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!--Aye, aye!
thy silence, then, THAT voices thee. (ASIDE) Something shot from my
dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine;
cannot oppose me now, without rebellion."

"God keep me!--keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.

But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab
did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the
hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage;
nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment
their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast eyes lighted up with
the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the winds
blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah,
ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But
rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much
predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things
within. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost
necessities in our being, these still drive us on.

"The measure! the measure!" cried Ahab.

Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he
ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near
the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates
stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company
formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly
eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the
bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere
he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only to
fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.

"Drink and pass!" he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the
nearest seaman. "The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short
draughts--long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so; it
goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the
serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this
way it comes. Hand it me--here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so
brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!

"Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and
ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there
with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some
sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you
will yet see that--Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand
it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, were't not thou St.
Vitus' imp--away, thou ague!

"Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let
me touch the axis." So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the
three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so doing,
suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently from
Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some
nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the
same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic
life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic
aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eye of
Starbuck fell downright.

"In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three but
once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, THAT had
perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye
dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do
appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there--yon three
most honourable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain
the task? What, when the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using
his tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension, THAT
shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizings
and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!"

Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the
detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs
up, before him.

"Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye
not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers,
advance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!" Forthwith,
slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon
sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.

"Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow
them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha!
Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon
it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful
whaleboat's bow--Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt
Moby Dick to his death!" The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted;
and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were
simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and
shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds
among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all
dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.



CHAPTER 37. Sunset.


THE CABIN; BY THE STERN WINDOWS; AHAB SITTING ALONE, AND GAZING OUT.


I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I
sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them;
but first I pass.

Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine.
The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun--slow dived from noon--goes
down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then,
the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is
it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but
darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron--that
I know--not gold. 'Tis split, too--that I feel; the jagged edge galls
me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull,
mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!

Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred
me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me;
all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted with
the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly
and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good night--good
night! (WAVING HIS HAND, HE MOVES FROM THE WINDOW.)

'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least;
but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they
revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all
stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the
match itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've willed; and
what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad--Starbuck does; but I'm
demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm
to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered;
and--Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my
dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's
more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye
cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!
I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies--Take some one of your own
size; don't pommel ME! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but
YE have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have
no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see
if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve
yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is
laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded
gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds,
unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron
way!



CHAPTER 38. Dusk.


BY THE MAINMAST; STARBUCK LEANING AGAINST IT.


My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman!
Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But
he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see
his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I,
the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no
knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries;--aye, he would
be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I
plainly see my miserable office,--to obey, rebelling; and worse yet,
to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would
shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide.
The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small
gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God may
wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole
clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to
lift again.


[A BURST OF REVELRY FROM THE FORECASTLE.]


Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human
mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white whale
is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward!
mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life. Foremost
through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering
bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his
sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further
on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills me through!
Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like
this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,--as wild, untutored
things are forced to feed--Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent
horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the
soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim,
phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!



CHAPTER 39. First Night Watch.

Fore-Top.

(STUBB SOLUS, AND MENDING A BRACE.)


Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!--I've been thinking over it
ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence. Why so? Because a
laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer; and come what
will, one comfort's always left--that unfailing comfort is, it's all
predestinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor
eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure
the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it; had had the
gift, might readily have prophesied it--for when I clapped my eye upon
his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, WISE Stubb--that's my title--well,
Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be
coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish
leering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel funny. Fa, la! lirra,
skirra! What's my juicy little pear at home doing now? Crying its eyes
out?--Giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as
a frigate's pennant, and so am I--fa, la! lirra, skirra! Oh--

We'll drink to-night with hearts as light, To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim, And break on the lips while
meeting.


A brave stave that--who calls? Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye, sir--(ASIDE) he's
my superior, he has his too, if I'm not mistaken.--Aye, aye, sir, just
through with this job--coming.



CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.

HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.

(FORESAIL RISES AND DISCOVERS THE WATCH STANDING, LOUNGING, LEANING, AND
LYING IN VARIOUS ATTITUDES, ALL SINGING IN CHORUS.)

     Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
     Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
     Our captain's commanded.--

1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad for the
digestion! Take a tonic, follow me! (SINGS, AND ALL FOLLOW)

    Our captain stood upon the deck,
    A spy-glass in his hand,
    A viewing of those gallant whales
    That blew at every strand.
    Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,
    And by your braces stand,
    And we'll have one of those fine whales,
    Hand, boys, over hand!
    So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
    While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there, forward!

2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d'ye hear,
bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me
call the watch. I've the sort of mouth for that--the hogshead mouth.
So, so, (THRUSTS HIS HEAD DOWN THE SCUTTLE,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y!
Eight bells there below! Tumble up!

DUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I
mark this in our old Mogul's wine; it's quite as deadening to some as
filliping to others. We sing; they sleep--aye, lie down there, like
ground-tier butts. At 'em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail
'em through it. Tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell 'em
it's the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment.
That's the way--THAT'S it; thy throat ain't spoiled with eating
Amsterdam butter.

FRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to
anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand
by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!

PIP. (SULKY AND SLEEPY) Don't know where it is.

FRENCH SAILOR. Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men,
I say; merry's the word; hurrah! Damn me, won't you dance? Form, now,
Indian-file, and gallop into the double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs!
legs!

ICELAND SAILOR. I don't like your floor, maty; it's too springy to my
taste. I'm used to ice-floors. I'm sorry to throw cold water on the
subject; but excuse me.

MALTESE SAILOR. Me too; where's your girls? Who but a fool would take
his left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d'ye do? Partners! I
must have partners!

SICILIAN SAILOR. Aye; girls and a green!--then I'll hop with ye; yea,
turn grasshopper!

LONG-ISLAND SAILOR. Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more of us.
Hoe corn when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here
comes the music; now for it!

AZORE SAILOR. (ASCENDING, AND PITCHING THE TAMBOURINE UP THE SCUTTLE.)
Here you are, Pip; and there's the windlass-bitts; up you mount! Now,
boys! (THE HALF OF THEM DANCE TO THE TAMBOURINE; SOME GO BELOW; SOME
SLEEP OR LIE AMONG THE COILS OF RIGGING. OATHS A-PLENTY.)

AZORE SAILOR. (DANCING) Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it,
stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!

PIP. Jinglers, you say?--there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.

CHINA SAILOR. Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of
thyself.


FRENCH SAILOR. Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it!
Split jibs! tear yourselves!

TASHTEGO. (QUIETLY SMOKING) That's a white man; he calls that fun:
humph! I save my sweat.

OLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what
they are dancing over. I'll dance over your grave, I will--that's
the bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round
corners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and the green-skulled
crews! Well, well; belike the whole world's a ball, as you scholars have
it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you're
young; I was once.

3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!--whew! this is worse than pulling after
whales in a calm--give us a whiff, Tash.

(THEY CEASE DANCING, AND GATHER IN CLUSTERS. MEANTIME THE SKY
DARKENS--THE WIND RISES.)

LASCAR SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The sky-born,
high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!

MALTESE SAILOR. (RECLINING AND SHAKING HIS CAP.) It's the waves--the
snow's caps turn to jig it now. They'll shake their tassels soon. Now
would all the waves were women, then I'd go drown, and chassee with them
evermore! There's naught so sweet on earth--heaven may not match
it!--as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the
over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.

SICILIAN SAILOR. (RECLINING.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad--fleet
interlacings of the limbs--lithe swayings--coyings--flutterings! lip!
heart! hip! all graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye,
else come satiety. Eh, Pagan? (NUDGING.)

TAHITAN SAILOR. (RECLINING ON A MAT.) Hail, holy nakedness of our
dancing girls!--the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I
still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven
in the wood, my mat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn
and wilted quite. Ah me!--not thou nor I can bear the change! How
then, if so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring streams from
Pirohitee's peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drown the
villages?--The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (LEAPS TO HIS
FEET.)

PORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashing 'gainst the side! Stand
by for reefing, hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell
they'll go lunging presently.

DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou
holdest! Well done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He's no more
afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic
with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!

4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old
Ahab tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a
waterspout with a pistol--fire your ship right into it!

ENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old man's a grand old cove! We are the
lads to hunt him up his whale!

ALL. Aye! aye!

OLD MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort
of tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here there's none
but the crew's cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort
of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea.
Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there's another in the
sky--lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.

DAGGOO. What of that? Who's afraid of black's afraid of me! I'm quarried
out of it!

SPANISH SAILOR. (ASIDE.) He wants to bully, ah!--the old grudge makes
me touchy (ADVANCING.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark
side of mankind--devilish dark at that. No offence.

DAGGOO (GRIMLY). None.

ST. JAGO'S SAILOR. That Spaniard's mad or drunk. But that can't be, or
else in his one case our old Mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in
working.

5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. What's that I saw--lightning? Yes.

SPANISH SAILOR. No; Daggoo showing his teeth.

DAGGOO (SPRINGING). Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!

SPANISH SAILOR (MEETING HIM). Knife thee heartily! big frame, small
spirit!

ALL. A row! a row! a row!

TASHTEGO (WITH A WHIFF). A row a'low, and a row aloft--Gods and
men--both brawlers! Humph!

BELFAST SAILOR. A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge
in with ye!

ENGLISH SAILOR. Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard's knife! A ring, a ring!

OLD MANX SAILOR. Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring
Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad'st thou
the ring?

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Hands by the halyards! in
top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef topsails!

ALL. The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (THEY SCATTER.)


PIP (SHRINKING UNDER THE WINDLASS). Jollies? Lord help such jollies!
Crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower,
Pip, here comes the royal yard! It's worse than being in the whirled
woods, the last day of the year! Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now?
But there they go, all cursing, and here I don't. Fine prospects to 'em;
they're on the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall!
But those chaps there are worse yet--they are your white squalls, they.
White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I heard all their
chat just now, and the white whale--shirr! shirr!--but spoken of
once! and only this evening--it makes me jingle all over like my
tambourine--that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in to hunt him! Oh,
thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on
this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no
bowels to feel fear!



CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick.


I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest;
my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more
did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A
wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud
seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous
monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of
violence and revenge.

For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied,
secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly
frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of his
existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen him;
while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given battle to
him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of whale-cruisers;
the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire watery
circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest along
solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or
more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any sort;
the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the irregularity of the
times of sailing from home; all these, with other circumstances, direct
and indirect, long obstructed the spread through the whole world-wide
whaling-fleet of the special individualizing tidings concerning Moby
Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported to have
encountered, at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian,
a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after
doing great mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped them; to
some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in
question must have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as of late the
Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent
instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the monster
attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident ignorantly gave
battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were
content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to
the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual
cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and
the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded.

And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by chance
caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had every one of
them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any other
whale of that species. But at length, such calamities did ensue in these
assaults--not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs, or
devouring amputations--but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those
repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors
upon Moby Dick; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many
brave hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come.

Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more
horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do
fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising
terrible events,--as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in
maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound,
wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. And as the
sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses
every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness
of the rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen
as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary
to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most
directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing
in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but,
hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that
though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you
would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone, or aught hospitable beneath
that part of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too
such a calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all
tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.

No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over
the widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale did
in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints,
and half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which
eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything
that visibly appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally
strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White
Whale, few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his
jaw.

But there were still other and more vital practical influences at work.
Not even at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm
Whale, as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the
leviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There are
those this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous
enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would
perhaps--either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or
timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are
plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing
under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the Sperm
Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to
the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the North; seated on their
hatches, these men will hearken with a childish fireside interest
and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern whaling. Nor is the
pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere more
feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which stem him.

And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former
legendary times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book
naturalists--Olassen and Povelson--declaring the Sperm Whale not only to
be a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to be so
incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood. Nor
even down to so late a time as Cuvier's, were these or almost similar
impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, the Baron himself
affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included) are
"struck with the most lively terrors," and "often in the precipitancy of
their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to
cause instantaneous death." And however the general experiences in the
fishery may amend such reports as these; yet in their full terribleness,
even to the bloodthirsty item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in
them is, in some vicissitudes of their vocation, revived in the minds of
the hunters.

So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a few of
the fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier days
of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to induce long
practised Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring
warfare; such men protesting that although other leviathans might be
hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at such an apparition
as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it, would
be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity. On this head, there are
some remarkable documents that may be consulted.

Nevertheless, some there were, who even in the face of these things
were ready to give chase to Moby Dick; and a still greater number who,
chancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely, without the
specific details of any certain calamity, and without superstitious
accompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if
offered.

One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked
with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined,
was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had
actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same
instant of time.

Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit altogether
without some faint show of superstitious probability. For as the secrets
of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged, even to
the most erudite research; so the hidden ways of the Sperm Whale
when beneath the surface remain, in great part, unaccountable to his
pursuers; and from time to time have originated the most curious and
contradictory speculations regarding them, especially concerning the
mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he transports
himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points.

It is a thing well known to both American and English whale-ships, and
as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby,
that some whales have been captured far north in the Pacific, in whose
bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland
seas. Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has
been declared that the interval of time between the two assaults could
not have exceeded very many days. Hence, by inference, it has been
believed by some whalemen, that the Nor' West Passage, so long a problem
to man, was never a problem to the whale. So that here, in the real
living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old times of
the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said
to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface);
and that still more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near
Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land
by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost fully
equalled by the realities of the whalemen.

Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and knowing
that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped
alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should
go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only
ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time); that
though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would still
swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to spout thick
blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for again in
unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his unsullied jet would
once more be seen.

But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough in
the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike
the imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his
uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales,
but, as was elsewhere thrown out--a peculiar snow-white wrinkled
forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent
features; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he
revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him.

The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with
the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive
appellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by
his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue
sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden
gleamings.

Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his
deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural terror,
as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to specific
accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults. More than
all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught
else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers, with every
apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known to turn
round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their boats to
splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship.

Already several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar
disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual
in the fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's
infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death
that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an
unintelligent agent.

Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of
his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed
boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the
white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene, exasperating
sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the
eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had
dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking
with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale.
That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his
sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's
leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no
hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice.
Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal
encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale,
all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came
to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his
intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before
him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which
some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with
half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been
from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe
one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced
in their statue devil;--Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them;
but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he
pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and
torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice
in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle
demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly
personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon
the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt
by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a
mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at
the precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the
monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate,
corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he
probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.
Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long
months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one
hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape;
then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another;
and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on the homeward
voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems
all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage,
he was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital
strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified
by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even
there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung
to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more sufferable
latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated across the
tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's delirium seemed
left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his
dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he bore that
firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once
again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now gone; even
then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a
cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but
become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacy
subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson,
when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the
Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of
Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not
one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living
agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope may
stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it,
and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far
from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a
thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon
any one reasonable object.

This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted.
But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding
far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where
we here stand--however grand and wonderful, now quit it;--and take your
way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes;
where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root
of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique
buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken
throne, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he
patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of
ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that proud,
sad king! A family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled
royalties; and from your grim sire only will the old State-secret come.

Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means
are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to kill, or
change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind he did long
dissemble; in some sort, did still. But that thing of his dissembling
was only subject to his perceptibility, not to his will determinate.
Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling, that when
with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer thought him
otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the
terrible casualty which had overtaken him.

The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly
ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added moodiness which
always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the Pequod on the
present voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely,
that far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on
account of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent
isle were inclined to harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons he
was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full
of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and
scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable
idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart
his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes.
Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that,
yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on
his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is,
that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in
him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only
and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of his
old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him
then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the
ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on profitable cruises, the
profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an
audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge.

Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a
Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made
up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled
also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in
Starbuck, the invunerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in
Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered,
seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him
to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded
to the old man's ire--by what evil magic their souls were possessed,
that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much
their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be--what the White
Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in
some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon
of the seas of life,--all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than
Ishmael can go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one
tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his
pick? Who does not feel the irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow
of a seventy-four can stand still? For one, I gave myself up to the
abandonment of the time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to
encounter the whale, could see naught in that brute but the deadliest
ill.



CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of The Whale.


What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he
was to me, as yet remains unsaid.

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which
could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there
was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him,
which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and
yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of
putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale
that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself
here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all
these chapters might be naught.

Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as
if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas,
and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a
certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old
kings of Pegu placing the title "Lord of the White Elephants" above all
their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings
of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard;
and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger;
and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome,
having for the imperial colour the same imperial hue; and though this
pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white
man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all
this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among
the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal
sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many
touching, noble things--the innocence of brides, the benignity of age;
though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt
of wampum was the deepest pledge of honour; though in many climes,
whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge,
and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by
milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most
august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness
and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being
held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove
himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the
noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was
by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful
creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit
with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from
the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of
one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the
cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is
specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though
in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and
the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white
throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all
these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honourable,
and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea
of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness
which affrights in blood.

This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when
divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object
terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds.
Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics;
what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent
horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an
abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb
gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his
heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or
shark.*


*With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him
who would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not
the whiteness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable
hideousness of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness,
it might be said, only rises from the circumstance, that the
irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in the
fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringing together
two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us
with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be true;
yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified
terror.

As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that
creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the
same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly
hit by the French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish
mass for the dead begins with "Requiem eternam" (eternal rest), whence
REQUIEM denominating the mass itself, and any other funeral music. Now,
in allusion to the white, silent stillness of death in this shark, and
the mild deadliness of his habits, the French call him REQUIN.


Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual
wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all
imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great,
unflattering laureate, Nature.*


*I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged
gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch
below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the
main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and
with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth
its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous
flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered
cries, as some king's ghost in supernatural distress. Through its
inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took
hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white
thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled
waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of
towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only
hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and
turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney!
never had heard that name before; is it conceivable that this glorious
thing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But some time after, I
learned that goney was some seaman's name for albatross. So that by no
possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those
mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our
deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be
an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little
brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.

I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird
chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this,
that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses;
and these I have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I
beheld the Antarctic fowl.

But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will
tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea.
At last the Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern
tally round its neck, with the ship's time and place; and then letting
it escape. But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was
taken off in Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding,
the invoking, and adoring cherubim!


Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of
the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,
large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a
thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the
elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those
days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. At
their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which
every evening leads on the hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his
mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more
resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him. A
most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, western
world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the
glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a god,
bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid
his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly
streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his
circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon, the White
Steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through his
cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the
bravest Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe. Nor
can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of this noble
horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so clothed him
with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it which, though
commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.

But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that
accessory and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and
Albatross.

What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks
the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It
is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name
he bears. The Albino is as well made as other men--has no substantive
deformity--and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him
more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be so?

Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but
not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces
this crowning attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the
gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas has been denominated the White
Squall. Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice
omitted so potent an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of
that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of their
faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the
market-place!

Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all
mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue. It
cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of
the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering
there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of
consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And
from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of the shroud
in which we wrap them. Nor even in our superstitions do we fail to
throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms; all ghosts rising in a
milk-white fog--Yea, while these terrors seize us, let us add, that even
the king of terrors, when personified by the evangelist, rides on his
pallid horse.

Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious
thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest
idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.

But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to
account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we, then,
by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of
whiteness--though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped
of all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful,
but nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however
modified;--can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us
to the hidden cause we seek?

Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,
and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls. And
though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions about
to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few perhaps were
entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore may not be able to
recall them now.

Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely
acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare mention
of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless
processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded with
new-fallen snow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the
Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a White Friar or
a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?

Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and
kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White
Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of
an untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its
neighbors--the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer
towers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods,
comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of
that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is full of a soft,
dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes and
longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a spectralness
over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal
thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, followed by
the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly
unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading
the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does "the tall pale man" of the
Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the
green of the groves--why is this phantom more terrible than all the
whooping imps of the Blocksburg?

Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling
earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the
tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide
field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop
(like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of
house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;--it
is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest,
saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and
there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro,
this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful
greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid
pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.

I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness
is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of
objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught
of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost
solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under
any form at all approaching to muteness or universality. What I mean
by these two statements may perhaps be respectively elucidated by the
following examples.

First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if by
night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just
enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely
similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view his
ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness--as if from
encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round
him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded phantom
of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the
lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm they both go
down; he never rests till blue water is under him again. Yet where is
the mariner who will tell thee, "Sir, it was not so much the fear of
striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous whiteness that so
stirred me?"

Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the
snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the
mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast
altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be
to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the
backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an
unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig
to break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the
scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal trick
of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half
shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery,
views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean
ice monuments and splintered crosses.

But thou sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is but
a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo,
Ishmael.

Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley of
Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey--why is it that upon the
sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that
he cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness--why
will he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies
of affright? There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild
creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he
smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience of
former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt, of the black
bisons of distant Oregon?

No; but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the
knowledge of the demonism in the world. Though thousands of miles from
Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending, goring bison
herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies, which
this instant they may be trampling into dust.

Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings
of the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the
windrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking
of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt!

Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic
sign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere
those things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible
world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and
learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange
and far more portentous--why, as we have seen, it is at once the
most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the
Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in
things the most appalling to mankind.

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids
and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the
thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky
way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as
the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all
colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness,
full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows--a colourless, all-colour
of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory
of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues--every stately
or lovely emblazoning--the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea,
and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of
young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent
in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature
absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but
the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that
the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great
principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself, and
if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even
tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge--pondering all this, the
palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in
Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their
eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental
white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these
things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery
hunt?



CHAPTER 43. Hark!


"HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?"

It was the middle-watch; a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a
cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the
scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets
to fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed
precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle
their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence,
only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the
unceasingly advancing keel.

It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon, whose
post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a Cholo, the
words above.

"Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?"

"Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d'ye mean?"

"There it is again--under the hatches--don't you hear it--a cough--it
sounded like a cough."

"Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket."

"There again--there it is!--it sounds like two or three sleepers turning
over, now!"

"Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? It's the three soaked biscuits
ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye--nothing else. Look to the
bucket!"

"Say what ye will, shipmate; I've sharp ears."

"Aye, you are the chap, ain't ye, that heard the hum of the old
Quakeress's knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; you're
the chap."

"Grin away; we'll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody
down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I suspect
our old Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask, one
morning watch, that there was something of that sort in the wind."

"Tish! the bucket!"



CHAPTER 44. The Chart.


Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that
took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose
with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom,
and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread
them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating himself before
it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines and
shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace
additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At intervals, he
would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein were set down
the seasons and places in which, on various former voyages of various
ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen.

While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his
head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw
shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it
almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses
on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and
courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.

But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his
cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were
brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced, and
others were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before
him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to
the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.

Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans,
it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary
creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it
seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby
calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food; and, also, calling
to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular
latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to
certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground
in search of his prey.

So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the
sperm whale's resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that,
could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world; were the
logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated,
then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to correspond in
invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows.
On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory
charts of the sperm whale.*

     *Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne
     out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of
     the National Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By
     that circular, it appears that precisely such a chart is in
     course of completion; and portions of it are presented in
     the circular. "This chart divides the ocean into districts
     of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude;
     perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve
     columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each
     of which districts are three lines; one to show the number
     of days that have been spent in each month in every
     district, and the two others to show the number of days in
     which whales, sperm or right, have been seen."

Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the
sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct--say, rather, secret
intelligence from the Deity--mostly swim in VEINS, as they are called;
continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating
exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with
one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the
direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor's parallel,
and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own
unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary VEIN in which at these
times he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width
(more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but
never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship's mast-heads,
when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone. The sum is, that at
particular seasons within that breadth and along that path, migrating
whales may with great confidence be looked for.

And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate
feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing
the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his
art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly
without prospect of a meeting.

There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his
delirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality,
perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons
for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the
herds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year,
say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were found
there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and unquestionable
instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In general, the
same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries
and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So that though Moby
Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on what is called the
Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese
Coast; yet it did not follow, that were the Pequod to visit either of
those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, she would infallibly
encounter him there. So, too, with some other feeding grounds, where
he had at times revealed himself. But all these seemed only his casual
stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged
abode. And where Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have
hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made to whatever
way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a particular
set time or place were attained, when all possibilities would become
probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next
thing to a certainty. That particular set time and place were conjoined
in the one technical phrase--the Season-on-the-Line. For there and then,
for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had been periodically descried,
lingering in those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round,
loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There
it was, too, that most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had
taken place; there the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was
that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive
to his vengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering
vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering
hunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one
crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those
hopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his
unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest.

Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the
Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her commander
to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then running
down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time
to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season.
Yet the premature hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps, been
correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of
things. Because, an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days
and nights was before him; an interval which, instead of impatiently
enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance
the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote from his
periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the
Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other
waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor'-Westers,
Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might
blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's
circumnavigating wake.

But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not
but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary
whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of individual
recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the
thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar
snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not but
be unmistakable. And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab would mutter
to himself, as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he
would throw himself back in reveries--tallied him, and shall he escape?
His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep's ear! And
here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race; till a weariness
and faintness of pondering came over him; and in the open air of the
deck he would seek to recover his strength. Ah, God! what trances
of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved
revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own
bloody nails in his palms.

Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid
dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through
the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them
round and round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing
of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes
the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its
base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and
lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among
them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be
heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his
state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these,
perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent
weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens
of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming,
unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had
gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from
it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or
soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the
characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer
vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching
contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no
longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with
the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up
all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose,
by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and
devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay,
could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was
conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth.
Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when
what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated
thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be
sure, but without an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in
itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature
in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a
vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature
he creates.



CHAPTER 45. The Affidavit.


So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as
indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars
in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier
part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume; but the
leading matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly
enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover to
take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire
subject may induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main
points of this affair.

I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall
be content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of
items, practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from these
citations, I take it--the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of
itself.

First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after
receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an
interval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by
the same hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same
private cypher, have been taken from the body. In the instance where
three years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons; and I
think it may have been something more than that; the man who darted
them happening, in the interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to
Africa, went ashore there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated far
into the interior, where he travelled for a period of nearly two years,
often endangered by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas,
with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of
unknown regions. Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have
been on its travels; no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe,
brushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa; but to no purpose.
This man and this whale again came together, and the one vanquished the
other. I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to this; that
is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the second attack,
saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them, afterwards
taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance, it so fell out
that I was in the boat both times, first and last, and the last time
distinctly recognised a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale's
eye, which I had observed there three years previous. I say three years,
but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are three instances,
then, which I personally know the truth of; but I have heard of many
other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no
good ground to impeach.

Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however ignorant
the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several memorable
historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean has been at
distant times and places popularly cognisable. Why such a whale became
thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to his bodily
peculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for however peculiar
in that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end to his
peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly
valuable oil. No: the reason was this: that from the fatal experiences
of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about
such a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that
most fishermen were content to recognise him by merely touching their
tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea,
without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance. Like some
poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man, they
make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they
pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump for
their presumption.

But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
celebrity--Nay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he
famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death,
but he was admitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of
a name; had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was it not so,
O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long
did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft
seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack!
thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of
the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty
jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross
against the sky? Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked
like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain
prose, here are four whales as well known to the students of Cetacean
History as Marius or Sylla to the classic scholar.

But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at various
times creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels, were
finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out, chased and killed
by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their anchors with
that express object as much in view, as in setting out through the
Narragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had it in his mind to capture
that notorious murderous savage Annawon, the headmost warrior of the
Indian King Philip.

I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make
mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in
printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the
whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For
this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full
as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of
the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without
some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the
fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still
worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.

First: Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general
perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid
conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur.
One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and
deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at home,
however transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do you suppose
that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by the
whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to the
bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan--do you suppose that that
poor fellow's name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read
to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because the mails are very irregular
between here and New Guinea. In fact, did you ever hear what might be
called regular news direct or indirect from New Guinea? Yet I tell you
that upon one particular voyage which I made to the Pacific, among many
others we spoke thirty different ships, every one of which had had a
death by a whale, some of them more than one, and three that had each
lost a boat's crew. For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and
candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was
spilled for it.

Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is
an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that when
narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold enormousness,
they have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I
declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses,
when he wrote the history of the plagues of Egypt.

But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon
testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The Sperm
Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously
malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy, and
sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale HAS done it.

First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket,
was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, lowered her
boats, and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, several of
the whales were wounded; when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping
from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the
ship. Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in, that in
less than "ten minutes" she settled down and fell over. Not a surviving
plank of her has been seen since. After the severest exposure, part of
the crew reached the land in their boats. Being returned home at last,
Captain Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific in command of another
ship, but the gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and
breakers; for the second time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith
forswearing the sea, he has never tempted it since. At this day Captain
Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I have seen Owen Chace, who was
chief mate of the Essex at the time of the tragedy; I have read his
plain and faithful narrative; I have conversed with his son; and all
this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe.*


*The following are extracts from Chace's narrative: "Every fact seemed
to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which
directed his operations; he made two several attacks upon the ship, at
a short interval between them, both of which, according to their
direction, were calculated to do us the most injury, by being made
ahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for the shock;
to effect which, the exact manoeuvres which he made were necessary. His
aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated resentment and fury. He
came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered, and in
which we had struck three of his companions, as if fired with revenge
for their sufferings." Again: "At all events, the whole circumstances
taken together, all happening before my own eyes, and producing, at the
time, impressions in my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the
part of the whale (many of which impressions I cannot now recall),
induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my opinion."

Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during
a black night an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any
hospitable shore. "The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the
fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed
upon hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful
contemplation, seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's thought; the
dismal looking wreck, and THE HORRID ASPECT AND REVENGE OF THE WHALE,
wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again made its appearance."

In another place--p. 45,--he speaks of "THE MYSTERIOUS AND MORTAL ATTACK
OF THE ANIMAL."


Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807
totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic
particulars of this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter,
though from the whale hunters I have now and then heard casual allusions
to it.

Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J---, then
commanding an American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be
dining with a party of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in
the harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales,
the Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing strength
ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present. He peremptorily
denied for example, that any whale could so smite his stout sloop-of-war
as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful. Very good; but there
is more coming. Some weeks after, the Commodore set sail in this
impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he was stopped on the way by a
portly sperm whale, that begged a few moments' confidential business
with him. That business consisted in fetching the Commodore's craft such
a thwack, that with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest
port to heave down and repair. I am not superstitious, but I consider
the Commodore's interview with that whale as providential. Was not Saul
of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright? I tell you, the
sperm whale will stand no nonsense.

I will now refer you to Langsdorff's Voyages for a little circumstance
in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you
must know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern's
famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present century.
Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter:

"By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next day
we were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather was very
clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on
our fur clothing. For some days we had very little wind; it was not
till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up. An
uncommon large whale, the body of which was larger than the ship itself,
lay almost at the surface of the water, but was not perceived by any
one on board till the moment when the ship, which was in full sail,
was almost upon him, so that it was impossible to prevent its striking
against him. We were thus placed in the most imminent danger, as this
gigantic creature, setting up its back, raised the ship three feet at
least out of the water. The masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether,
while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck, concluding
that we had struck upon some rock; instead of this we saw the monster
sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain D'Wolf
applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel
had received any damage from the shock, but we found that very happily
it had escaped entirely uninjured."

Now, the Captain D'Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in
question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual
adventures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of
Dorchester near Boston. I have the honour of being a nephew of his. I
have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff.
He substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by no means a large
one: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast, and purchased by my
uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home.

In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full, too,
of honest wonders--the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient Dampier's
old chums--I found a little matter set down so like that just quoted
from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a
corroborative example, if such be needed.

Lionel, it seems, was on his way to "John Ferdinando," as he calls
the modern Juan Fernandes. "In our way thither," he says, "about four
o'clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues
from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which put our
men in such consternation that they could hardly tell where they were
or what to think; but every one began to prepare for death. And, indeed,
the shock was so sudden and violent, that we took it for granted the
ship had struck against a rock; but when the amazement was a little
over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no ground..... The
suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages, and
several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks. Captain Davis, who
lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his cabin!" Lionel then
goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake, and seems to substantiate
the imputation by stating that a great earthquake, somewhere about
that time, did actually do great mischief along the Spanish land. But
I should not much wonder if, in the darkness of that early hour of the
morning, the shock was after all caused by an unseen whale vertically
bumping the hull from beneath.

I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to
me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more
than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing
boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long
withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship
Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for his strength,
let me say, that there have been examples where the lines attached to a
running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship, and
secured there; the whale towing her great hull through the water, as a
horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if
the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts,
not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of
destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent
indication of his character, that upon being attacked he will frequently
open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several
consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one more and a
concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which
you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in
this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these
marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for
the millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is nothing new
under the sun.

In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate
of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius
general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work
every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always been
considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in
some one or two particulars, not at all affecting the matter presently
to be mentioned.

Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term
of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured
in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed
vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty
years. A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be
gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what precise species
this sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as
well as for other reasons, he must have been a whale; and I am strongly
inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a long
time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the
Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now I am
certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the
present constitution of things, a place for his habitual gregarious
resort. But further investigations have recently proved to me, that in
modern times there have been isolated instances of the presence of the
sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that
on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found
the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes
through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route,
pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.

In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance
called BRIT is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I have
every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale--squid or
cuttle-fish--lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures,
but by no means the largest of that sort, have been found at its
surface. If, then, you properly put these statements together, and
reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that, according to all
human reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster, that for half a century stove
the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm
whale.



CHAPTER 46. Surmises.


Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his
thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick;
though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one
passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long
habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways, altogether to
abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if
this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more
influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even
considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the
White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all
sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he
multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would
prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed
exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though
not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet
were by no means incapable of swaying him.

To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in
the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew,
for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was
over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual
man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual
mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in a
sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced will
were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain; still
he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his
captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from
it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would elapse
ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck
would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his
captain's leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial
influences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle
insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly
manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing
that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that
strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that
the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure
background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted meditation
unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches,
his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby
Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the
announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less
capricious and unreliable--they live in the varying outer weather, and
they inhale its fickleness--and when retained for any object remote and
blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the
end, it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and
employments should intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the
final dash.

Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion
mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent.
The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought
Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the
hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even
breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the
love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food
for their more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and
chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two
thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without
committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious
perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final
and romantic object--that final and romantic object, too many would have
turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all
hopes of cash--aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some months
go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same
quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon
cashier Ahab.

Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related
to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps
somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the
Pequod's voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing,
he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of
usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew
if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further
obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From
even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible
consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must
of course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection
could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand,
backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute
atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be subjected
to.

For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be
verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good
degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod's
voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force
himself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general
pursuit of his profession.

Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three
mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit
reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.



CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.


It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging
about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters.
Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,
for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet
somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie
lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own
invisible self.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I
kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between
the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as
Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword
between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and
unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did
there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by
the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were
the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving
and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp
subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and
that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending
of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here,
thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own
destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive,
indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly,
or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference
in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final
aspect of the completed fabric; this savage's sword, thought I,
which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this
easy, indifferent sword must be chance--aye, chance, free will, and
necessity--nowise incompatible--all interweavingly working together.
The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate
course--its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that;
free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and
chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of
necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though
thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the
last featuring blow at events.


Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball
of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds
whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was
that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward,
his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he
continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment
perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's
look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could
that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from
Tashtego the Indian's.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and
eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some
prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries
announcing their coming.

"There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!"

"Where-away?"

"On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!"

Instantly all was commotion.

The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and
reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from
other tribes of his genus.

"There go flukes!" was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales
disappeared.

"Quick, steward!" cried Ahab. "Time! time!"

Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact
minute to Ahab.

The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling
before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to
leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of
our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale
when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while
concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in the
opposite quarter--this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action;
for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego had
been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of
the men selected for shipkeepers--that is, those not appointed to the
boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The
sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed
in their places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed,
and the three boats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over
high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand
clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale.
So look the long line of man-of-war's men about to throw themselves on
board an enemy's ship.

But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took
every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was
surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.



CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.


The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side
of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the
tackles and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always
been deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the
captain's, on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The
figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white
tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese
jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers
of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a
glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled
round and round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the companions of
this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to
some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas;--a race notorious for
a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by some honest white mariners
supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents on the
water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose to be
elsewhere.

While yet the wondering ship's company were gazing upon these strangers,
Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their head, "All ready
there, Fedallah?"

"Ready," was the half-hissed reply.

"Lower away then; d'ye hear?" shouting across the deck. "Lower away
there, I say."

Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the men
sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with a
wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a dexterous,
off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors,
goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship's side into the tossed boats
below.

Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship's lee, when a fourth
keel, coming from the windward side, pulled round under the stern, and
showed the five strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern,
loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely,
so as to cover a large expanse of water. But with all their eyes again
riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of the other
boats obeyed not the command.

"Captain Ahab?--" said Starbuck.

"Spread yourselves," cried Ahab; "give way, all four boats. Thou, Flask,
pull out more to leeward!"

"Aye, aye, sir," cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round
his great steering oar. "Lay back!" addressing his crew.
"There!--there!--there again! There she blows right ahead, boys!--lay
back!"

"Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy."

"Oh, I don't mind'em, sir," said Archy; "I knew it all before now.
Didn't I hear 'em in the hold? And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it? What
say ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask."

"Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little
ones," drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom
still showed signs of uneasiness. "Why don't you break your backbones,
my boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They
are only five more hands come to help us--never mind from where--the
more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone--devils
are good fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that's the stroke
for a thousand pounds; that's the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah
for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men--all hearts
alive! Easy, easy; don't be in a hurry--don't be in a hurry. Why don't
you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so,
then:--softly, softly! That's it--that's it! long and strong. Give way
there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are
all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull,
can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes
don't ye pull?--pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out!
Here!" whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; "every mother's son
of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That's
it--that's it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits.
Start her--start her, my silver-spoons! Start her, marling-spikes!"

Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had
rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in
inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this
specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions
with his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted his chief
peculiarity. He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a
tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so
calculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such
queer invocations without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for
the mere joke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easy and
indolent himself, so loungingly managed his steering-oar, and so broadly
gaped--open-mouthed at times--that the mere sight of such a yawning
commander, by sheer force of contrast, acted like a charm upon the crew.
Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort of humorists, whose jollity
is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all inferiors on their
guard in the matter of obeying them.

In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely
across Stubb's bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were
pretty near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.

"Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye
please!"

"Halloa!" returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he
spoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set
like a flint from Stubb's.

"What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!

"Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,
boys!)" in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: "A sad
business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind,
Mr. Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what
will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There's hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr.
Stubb, and that's what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm's the
play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand."

"Aye, aye, I thought as much," soliloquized Stubb, when the boats
diverged, "as soon as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so. Aye, and that's
what he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long
suspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale's at the bottom
of it. Well, well, so be it! Can't be helped! All right! Give way, men!
It ain't the White Whale to-day! Give way!"

Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant
as the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably
awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship's
company; but Archy's fancied discovery having some time previous got
abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in some
small measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge
of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb's confident way
of accounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from
superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room for
all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise agency in the
matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious
shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket
dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.

Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the
furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a
circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger
yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five
trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which
periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst
boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen
pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and
displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the
gunwale, clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery
horizon; while at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a
fencer's, thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance any
tendency to trip; Ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar as in
a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him. All at once
the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained fixed,
while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat and
crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in the
rear paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily
down into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the
movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it.

"Every man look out along his oars!" cried Starbuck. "Thou, Queequeg,
stand up!"

Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage
stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the
spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme
stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with
the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing
himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently
eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.

Not very far distant Flask's boat was also lying breathlessly still; its
commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout
sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the
level of the stern platform. It is used for catching turns with the
whale line. Its top is not more spacious than the palm of a man's hand,
and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perched at the
mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks. But little
King-Post was small and short, and at the same time little King-Post was
full of a large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead stand-point
of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.

"I can't see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to
that."

Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his
way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty
shoulders for a pedestal.

"Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?"

"That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you
fifty feet taller."

Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the
boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to
Flask's foot, and then putting Flask's hand on his hearse-plumed head
and bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous
fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was
Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a
breastband to lean against and steady himself by.

At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous
habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect
posture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously
perverse and cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily
perched upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the
sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious;
for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of,
barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously
rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed
a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly
vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then
stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to
the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the
living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her
seasons for that.

Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing
solicitudes. The whales might have made one of their regular soundings,
not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were the case,
Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the
languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband,
where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and rammed
home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his match
across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer,
whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly
dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat, crying out in a
quick phrensy of hurry, "Down, down all, and give way!--there they are!"

To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been
visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white
water, and thin scattered puffs of vapour hovering over it, and
suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white
rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it
were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath this
atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin layer of
water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the other
indications, the puffs of vapour they spouted, seemed their forerunning
couriers and detached flying outriders.

All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled
water and air. But it bade fair to outstrip them; it flew on and on,
as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the
hills.

"Pull, pull, my good boys," said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but
intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp fixed glance
from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two
visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much
to his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to him. Only the
silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his
peculiar whispers, now harsh with command, now soft with entreaty.

How different the loud little King-Post. "Sing out and say something,
my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! Beach me, beach me on their
black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I'll sign over to you my
Martha's Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife and children, boys.
Lay me on--lay me on! O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad!
See! see that white water!" And so shouting, he pulled his hat from his
head, and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up, flirted it far
off upon the sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's
stern like a crazed colt from the prairie.

"Look at that chap now," philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his
unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his teeth, at a
short distance, followed after--"He's got fits, that Flask has. Fits?
yes, give him fits--that's the very word--pitch fits into 'em. Merrily,
merrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know;--merry's the word.
Pull, babes--pull, sucklings--pull, all. But what the devil are you
hurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only pull, and
keep pulling; nothing more. Crack all your backbones, and bite your
knives in two--that's all. Take it easy--why don't ye take it easy, I
say, and burst all your livers and lungs!"

But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of
his--these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed
light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious
seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of
red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.

Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of
Flask to "that whale," as he called the fictitious monster which
he declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its
tail--these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that
they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look
over the shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen
must put out their eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usage
pronouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and no limbs but
arms, in these critical moments.

It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the
omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along
the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green;
the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on
the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening
to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and
hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite
hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side;--all these,
with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps
of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing
down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her
screaming brood;--all this was thrilling.

Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever
heat of his first battle; not the dead man's ghost encountering the
first unknown phantom in the other world;--neither of these can feel
stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first
time finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the
hunted sperm whale.

The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and more
visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows
flung upon the sea. The jets of vapour no longer blended, but tilted
everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes.
The boats were pulled more apart; Starbuck giving chase to three whales
running dead to leeward. Our sail was now set, and, with the still
rising wind, we rushed along; the boat going with such madness through
the water, that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to
escape being torn from the row-locks.

Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship
nor boat to be seen.

"Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet
of his sail; "there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes.
There's white water again!--close to! Spring!"

Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted
that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, when
with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: "Stand up!" and
Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.

Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril
so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance
of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent
instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of
fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still
booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like
the erected crests of enraged serpents.

"That's his hump. THERE, THERE, give it to him!" whispered Starbuck.

A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of
Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from
astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail
collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapour shot up near by;
something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole
crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the
white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all
blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.

Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round
it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale,
tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the
water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes
the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom
of the ocean.

The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together;
the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white
fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal
in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar
to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those
boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew
darker with the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen.
The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were
useless as propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers.
So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures
Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching
it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this
forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in
the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign
and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the
midst of despair.

Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat,
we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over
the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat.
Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear.
We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by
the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were dimly
parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as
the ship at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within a
distance of not much more than its length.

Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it
tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at the base of a
cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no
more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed
against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on
board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from
their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us
up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of
our perishing,--an oar or a lance pole.



CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.


There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair
we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical
joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than
suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However,
nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts
down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard
things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of
potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small
difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of
life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly,
good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen
and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking
of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes
in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might
have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the
general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this
free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now
regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its
object.

"Queequeg," said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck,
and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water;
"Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?"
Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he gave me to
understand that such things did often happen.

"Mr. Stubb," said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his
oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; "Mr. Stubb, I
think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief
mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose
then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy
squall is the height of a whaleman's discretion?"

"Certain. I've lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape
Horn."

"Mr. Flask," said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing close
by; "you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you tell
me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an
oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death's
jaws?"

"Can't you twist that smaller?" said Flask. "Yes, that's the law.
I should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a whale face
foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind
that!"

Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement
of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings
in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters
of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the
superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my
life into the hands of him who steered the boat--oftentimes a fellow who
at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling
the craft with his own frantic stampings; considering that the
particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to be imputed
to Starbuck's driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall,
and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his
great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to this
uncommonly prudent Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a
devil's chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all
things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and make a
rough draft of my will. "Queequeg," said I, "come along, you shall be my
lawyer, executor, and legatee."

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their
last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more
fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life
that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon
the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away
from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good
as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary
clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might be. I survived
myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest. I looked
round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean
conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault.

Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock,
here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the
devil fetch the hindmost.



CHAPTER 50. Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah.


"Who would have thought it, Flask!" cried Stubb; "if I had but one leg
you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole
with my timber toe. Oh! he's a wonderful old man!"

"I don't think it so strange, after all, on that account," said Flask.
"If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing.
That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other
left, you know."

"I don't know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel."


Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering
the paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is
right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils
of the chase. So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears in their
eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the
thickest of the fight.

But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering
that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger;
considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and
extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then
comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any
maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the
joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.

Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of
his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of
the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving
his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually
apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt--above all for
Captain Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat's
crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads
of the owners of the Pequod. Therefore he had not solicited a boat's
crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head.
Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all
that matter. Until Cabaco's published discovery, the sailors had little
foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out
of port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the
whaleboats for service; when some time after this Ahab was now and then
found bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his
own hands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even
solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the line is
running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this was
observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra
coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better
withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety
he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is
sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the
knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed
how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the
semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter's chisel
gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there; all these
things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time. But
almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness
in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick;
for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster
in person. But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest
suspicion as to any boat's crew being assigned to that boat.

Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned
away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such
unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown
nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of
whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway
creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck,
oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that
Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin
to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable
excitement in the forecastle.

But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate
phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were
somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained
a muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like
this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be
linked with Ahab's peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort
of a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even
authority over him; all this none knew. But one cannot sustain
an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as
civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide
among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles
to the east of the continent--those insulated, immemorial, unalterable
countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the
ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal generations, when the memory of
the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants,
unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of
the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end; when though,
according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of
men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane
amours.



CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.


Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the
Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the
Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality,
southerly from St. Helena.

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;
and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery
silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen
far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it
looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from
the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight
nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a
look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And yet,
though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred
would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what emotions,
then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual
hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But when, after
spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights
without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence, his
unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every
reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had
lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. "There she blows!"
Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet
still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was a most
unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously
exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a
lowering.

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The
best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head
manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange,
upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows
of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air
beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic
influences were struggling in her--one to mount direct to heaven, the
other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched
Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that in him also two
different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes
along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap.
On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly
sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot,
yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he
saw it once, but not a second time.

This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days
after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it
was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it
disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after
night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously
jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be;
disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and somehow
seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and
further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.

Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance
with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested
the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that
whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however
far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast
by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there
reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition,
as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the
monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest
and most savage seas.

These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous
potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath
all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as
for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely
mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed
vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling
around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are
there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and
gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips,
the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity
of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.

Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither
before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And
every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and
spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp,
as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing
appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their
homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the
black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane
soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had
bred.

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called
of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had
attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea,
where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed
condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat
that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and unvarying;
still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky; still beckoning us
on from before, the solitary jet would at times be descried.

During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for the
time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck,
manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever addressed
his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and
aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await
the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists.
So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one
hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand
gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow
would all but congeal his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew
driven from the forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that
burstingly broke over its bows, stood in a line along the bulwarks in
the waist; and the better to guard against the leaping waves, each man
had slipped himself into a sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which
he swung as in a loosened belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the
silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore
on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves.
By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the
ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still
wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed
demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never
could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down
into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw him with
closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain
and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before
emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the
table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and currents
which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his tightly
clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back so
that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale
that swung from a beam in the ceiling.*


*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the
compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the
course of the ship.


Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this
gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.



CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.


South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising
ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross)
by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the
fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro
in the far ocean fisheries--a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.

As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral
appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her
spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over
with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to
see her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed
clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had
survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to
the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when
the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the air
came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the
mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking
fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own
look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.

"Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?"

But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the
act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand
into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make
himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the
distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod
were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first
mere mention of the White Whale's name to another ship, Ahab for a
moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat
to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking
advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and
knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and
shortly bound home, he loudly hailed--"Ahoy there! This is the Pequod,
bound round the world! Tell them to address all future letters to the
Pacific ocean! and this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them
to address them to--"

At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then,
in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish,
that for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted
away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and
aft with the stranger's flanks. Though in the course of his continual
voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed a similar sight, yet, to
any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings.

"Swim away from me, do ye?" murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water.
There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep
helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced. But
turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in the
wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,--"Up
helm! Keep her off round the world!"

Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings;
but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through
numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that
we left behind secure, were all the time before us.

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for
ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange
than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise
in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in
tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims
before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they
either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.



CHAPTER 53. The Gam.


The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had
spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had
this not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded
her--judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions--if so it
had been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative
answer to the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, he
cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain,
except he could contribute some of that information he so absorbingly
sought. But all this might remain inadequately estimated, were not
something said here of the peculiar usages of whaling-vessels when
meeting each other in foreign seas, and especially on a common
cruising-ground.

If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the
equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering
each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of
them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment
to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while
and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon the
illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling
vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth--off lone
Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how much more natural,
I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not only
interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and
sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of
course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose captains,
officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each other;
and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about.

For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on
board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a
date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn
files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would
receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to
which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And
in degree, all this will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing
each other's track on the cruising-ground itself, even though they
are equally long absent from home. For one of them may have received a
transfer of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel; and
some of those letters may be for the people of the ship she now meets.
Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable
chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors,
but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common
pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils.

Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference;
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case
with Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number of
English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they
do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for your
Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that
sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers
sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American
whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript
provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority
in the English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say,
seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than
all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless
little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does
not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few
foibles himself.

So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the
whalers have most reason to be sociable--and they are so. Whereas, some
merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic, will
oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition,
mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in
Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon
each other's rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea,
they first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such
a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down
hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As touching
Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run
away from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they
chance to cross each other's cross-bones, the first hail is--"How many
skulls?"--the same way that whalers hail--"How many barrels?" And that
question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are
infernal villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each
other's villanous likenesses.

But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another
whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a "GAM," a thing so
utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name
even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and
repeat gamesome stuff about "spouters" and "blubber-boilers," and such
like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and also
all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such
a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be
hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to
know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about
it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the
gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has
no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude,
that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that
assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on.

But what is a GAM? You might wear out your index-finger running up and
down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson
never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's ark does not hold it.
Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in
constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly,
it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With
that view, let me learnedly define it.

GAM. NOUN--A SOCIAL MEETING OF TWO (OR MORE) WHALESHIPS, GENERALLY ON A
CRUISING-GROUND; WHEN, AFTER EXCHANGING HAILS, THEY EXCHANGE VISITS BY
BOATS' CREWS; THE TWO CAPTAINS REMAINING, FOR THE TIME, ON BOARD OF ONE
SHIP, AND THE TWO CHIEF MATES ON THE OTHER.

There is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten
here. All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so
has the whale fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when
the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern
sheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often
steers himself with a pretty little milliner's tiller decorated with
gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa of
that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. High times indeed, if whaling
captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old aldermen
in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of
any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete boat's crew
must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of
the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and
the captain, having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit
all standing like a pine tree. And often you will notice that being
conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from
the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to the
importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor is
this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting
steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the
after-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus
completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself
sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent
pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of
foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a
spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again,
it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes, it would
never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying
himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with
his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he
generally carries his hands in his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps being
generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast.
Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones too,
where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment or
two, in a sudden squall say--to seize hold of the nearest oarsman's
hair, and hold on there like grim death.



CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho's Story.


(AS TOLD AT THE GOLDEN INN)


The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is
much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet
more travellers than in any other part.

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another
homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned
almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave
us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White
Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's
story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain
wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God
which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance,
with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the
secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears
of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was
unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private
property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it
seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy,
but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed
so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well
withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing
have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of
it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in
this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never
transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper
place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the
ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting
record.


*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head,
still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.


For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated
it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint's eve,
smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those
fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer
terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally
put, and which are duly answered at the time.

"Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about
rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket,
was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward
from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the
northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according to
daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than
common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the
captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck
awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit
them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though,
indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low down
as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her
cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals;
but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was the leak yet
undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking
some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest
harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.

"Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance
favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way,
because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at
them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free;
never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the
whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the
Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port
without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the
brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly
provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.

"'Lakeman!--Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?'
said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.

"On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but--I crave your
courtesy--may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now,
gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as
large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far
Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet
been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly
connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate,
those grand fresh-water seas of ours,--Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and
Superior, and Michigan,--possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many
of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of
races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles,
even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great
contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime
approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted
all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon by batteries,
and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the
fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their
beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out
their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient
and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines
of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric
beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes
to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and
Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the
full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer,
and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as
direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are,
for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many
a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though
an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured;
as much of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his
infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse
at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long followed our
austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as
vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh
from the latitudes of buck-horn handled bowie-knives. Yet was this
Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a
mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible
firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition
which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had
long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved
so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt--but,
gentlemen, you shall hear.

"It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing
her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again
increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps
every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our
Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole
way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of
the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability
would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on
account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the
solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it
altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles in
full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie
along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat
is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of
the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that her
captain begins to feel a little anxious.

"Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found
gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by
several of her company; especially by Radney the mate. He commanded
the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way
expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a
coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness
touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or
on sea that you can conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when
he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the
seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner in
her. So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was on
this head no small gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood
with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water;
clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen--that bubbling from the pumps
ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee
scupper-holes.

"Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional
world of ours--watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command
over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his
superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he
conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a
chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and
make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may,
gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a
head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings
of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and
a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he
been born son to Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly
as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love
Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.

"Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the
rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with
his gay banterings.

"'Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one
of ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell
ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best cut away
his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish
only began the job; he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters,
saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of 'em
are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom; making
improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump
overboard and scatter 'em. They're playing the devil with his estate, I
can tell him. But he's a simple old soul,--Rad, and a beauty too. Boys,
they say the rest of his property is invested in looking-glasses. I
wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the model of his nose.'

"'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared Radney,
pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. 'Thunder away at it!'

"'Aye, aye, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively, boys,
lively, now!' And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines;
the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping
of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life's
utmost energies.

"Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went
forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face
fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his
brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney
to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know
not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate
commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a
shovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig
to run at large.

"Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household
work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every
evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually
foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of
sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom
would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all
vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys,
if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho
that had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being
the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly
assigned captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should have
been freed from any trivial business not connected with truly nautical
duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention all these
particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood
between the two men.

"But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as
plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat
in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will
understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully
comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat still for
a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's malignant eye and
perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him and the slow-match
silently burning along towards them; as he instinctively saw all
this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper
passionateness in any already ireful being--a repugnance most felt, when
felt at all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved--this nameless
phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.

"Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily
exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that sweeping
the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And then, without
at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customary
sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done little or
nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a most
domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his
command; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an
uplifted cooper's club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by.

"Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for
all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt
could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still
smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained
doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the
hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do
his bidding.

"Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily
followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated his
intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had not
the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his
twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it was to
no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the windlass;
when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had
now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on
the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:

"'Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to
yourself.' But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where
the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of
his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions.
Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye
with the unflinching poniard of his glance, Steelkilt, clenching
his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back, told his
persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt) would
murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter
by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant
the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch
spouting blood like a whale.

"Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays
leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their
mastheads. They were both Canallers.

"'Canallers!' cried Don Pedro. 'We have seen many whale-ships in our
harbours, but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon: who and what are
they?'

"'Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You
must have heard of it.'

"'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary
land, we know but little of your vigorous North.'

"'Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha's very fine; and
ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such
information may throw side-light upon my story.'

"For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire
breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and
most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and
affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room
and bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman
arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or
broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk
counties; and especially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires
stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly
corrupt and often lawless life. There's your true Ashantee, gentlemen;
there howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you;
under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronising lee of churches.
For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan
freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so
sinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities.

"'Is that a friar passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the
crowded plazza, with humorous concern.

"'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in
Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian. 'Proceed, Senor.'

"'A moment! Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of all
us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by
no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima
for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look
surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast--"Corrupt as
Lima." It but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentiful than
billiard-tables, and for ever open--and "Corrupt as Lima." So, too,
Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St.
Mark!--St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you
pour out again.'

"Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would make
a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he. Like
Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile,
he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra,
ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this
effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly
sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features.
A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he
floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities.
Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of
these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful;
but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of
violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger
in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the
wildness of this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this; that
our wild whale-fishery contains so many of its most finished graduates,
and that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney men, are so much
distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish the
curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and
young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal
furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian
corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric
seas.

"'I see! I see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha
upon his silvery ruffles. 'No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I
had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold
and holy as the hills.--But the story.'

"I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly
had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the
four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the
ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, and
sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle. Others of the
sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued;
while standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down
with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious
scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran
close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into
the heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his
resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them
all; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily
slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass,
these sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade.

"'Come out of that, ye pirates!' roared the captain, now menacing them
with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. 'Come
out of that, ye cut-throats!'

"Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there,
defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to
understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt's) death would be the signal
for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in his heart
lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little desisted, but
still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty.

"'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their
ringleader.

"'Turn to! turn to!--I make no promise;--to your duty! Do you want to
sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!' and he
once more raised a pistol.

"'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt. 'Aye, let her sink. Not a man of us
turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say
ye, men?' turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.

"The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye
on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:--'It's not our
fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was
boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to
prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his
cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there,
men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to
yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready
to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but we won't be
flogged.'

"'Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!'

"'Look ye, now,' cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him,
'there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped
for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our
discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's
not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we
won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to!' roared the Captain.

"Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:--'I tell you what
it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby
rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till
you say the word about not flogging us, we don't do a hand's turn.'

"'Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there till
ye're sick of it. Down ye go.'

"'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against
it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down
into their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave.

"As the Lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks, the Captain
and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide
of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly called
for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the
companionway.

"Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something
down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them--ten in
number--leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained
neutral.

"All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and
aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which
last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking
through the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace;
the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps,
whose clinking and clanking at intervals through the dreary night
dismally resounded through the ship.

"At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck, summoned
the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was then
lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed
after it; when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the
Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days
this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and
then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and
suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready
to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united
perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to
surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his
demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to
stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth
morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the
desperate arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left.

"'Better turn to, now?' said the Captain with a heartless jeer.

"'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt.

"'Oh certainly,' the Captain, and the key clicked.

"It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of seven
of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last
hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as
the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two
Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of
their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their
keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle
at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any
devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he
would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was the
last night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no
opposition on the part of the other two; they swore they were ready for
that, or for any other mad thing, for anything in short but a surrender.
And what was more, they each insisted upon being the first man on deck,
when the time to make the rush should come. But to this their leader as
fiercely objected, reserving that priority for himself; particularly as
his two comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter;
and both of them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one
man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants
must come out.

"Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own
separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece
of treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be
the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; and
thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit.
But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to
the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villany, mixed
their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader
fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three
sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords;
and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight.

"Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and
all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a
few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still
struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious
allies, who at once claimed the honour of securing a man who had been
fully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along
the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the
mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till
morning. 'Damn ye,' cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them,
'the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!'

"At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had rebelled
from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former that
he had a good mind to flog them all round--thought, upon the whole,
he would do so--he ought to--justice demanded it; but for the present,
considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with a
reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.

"'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to the three men in the
rigging--'for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;' and,
seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the
two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads
sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.

"'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is still
rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up. Take
that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.'

"For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his
cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort
of hiss, 'What I say is this--and mind it well--if you flog me, I murder
you!'

"'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'--and the Captain drew off with
the rope to strike.

"'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.

"'But I must,'--and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.

"Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Captain;
who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck rapidly
two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said, 'I
won't do it--let him go--cut him down: d'ye hear?'

"But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale man,
with a bandaged head, arrested them--Radney the chief mate. Ever since
the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the tumult
on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole
scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak;
but mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the
captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his
pinioned foe.

"'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman.

"'So I am, but take that.' The mate was in the very act of striking,
when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing
no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat, whatever that
might have been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned
to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as
before.

"Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor
was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up,
besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.
Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own
instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still, no
sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed,
that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain
the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the
ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the
speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing--namely,
not to sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For,
spite of her leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still
maintained her mast-heads, and her captain was just as willing to
lower for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the
cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his
berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the
vital jaw of the whale.

"But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all
was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who
had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the chief
mate's watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than
half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he insisted,
against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the head
of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other circumstances,
Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.

"During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of
the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side.
In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a
considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between
this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next
trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the morning of the
third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure,
he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his
watches below.

"'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

"'What do you think? what does it look like?'

"'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

"'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length
before him; 'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough
twine,--have you any?'

"But there was none in the forecastle.

"'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

"'You don't mean to go a begging to HIM!' said a sailor.

"'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help himself
in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at him
quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given
him--neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night
an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the
Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for
a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm--nigh
to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready dug to
the seaman's hand--that fatal hour was then to come; and in the
fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and
stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.

"But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody
deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the
avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in
to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have
done.

"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second
day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man,
drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she
rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick.

"'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do
whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?'

"'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;--but
that would be too long a story.'

"'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

"'Nay, Dons, Dons--nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more
into the air, Sirs.'

"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend looks
faint;--fill up his empty glass!'

"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.--Now, gentlemen,
so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the
ship--forgetful of the compact among the crew--in the excitement of the
moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted
his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been
plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy.
'The White Whale--the White Whale!' was the cry from captain, mates,
and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious
to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed
askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass,
that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like
a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality
pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out
before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the
mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while
Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken
the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats were
lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely with
delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff
pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to
the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his
bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing
loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that
blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as
against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate.
That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted,
and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the
sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray,
and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to
remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round
in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing
high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.

"Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had
slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly
looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific,
downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He
cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose
again, with some tatters of Radney's red woollen shirt, caught in the
teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the
whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.

"In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port--a savage, solitary
place--where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the
Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted
among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double
war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.

"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called
upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving
down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over
their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both
by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent,
that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such a
weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so
heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the
ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon
from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the
Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with
him, and setting the sail of his best whale-boat, steered straight
before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a
reinforcement to his crew.

"On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed
to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but
the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt
hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water. The captain
presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes,
the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so
much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.

"'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.

"'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?' demanded Steelkilt;
'no lies.'

"'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'

"'Very good. Let me board you a moment--I come in peace.' With that he
leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood
face to face with the captain.

"'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me.
As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder
island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightning strike
me!'

"'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman. 'Adios, Senor!' and leaping
into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.

"Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the
roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time
arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck befriended
him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially
in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They
embarked; and so for ever got the start of their former captain, had he
been at all minded to work them legal retribution.

"Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived,
and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized
Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small
native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all
right there, again resumed his cruisings.

"Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of
Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses
to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that
destroyed him.

"'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.

"'I am, Don.'

"'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,
this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful!
Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to
press.'

"'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don
Sebastian's suit,' cried the company, with exceeding interest.

"'Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?'

"'Nay,' said Don Sebastian; 'but I know a worthy priest near by, who
will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised?
this may grow too serious.'

"'Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?'

"'Though there are no Auto-da-Fe's in Lima now,' said one of the company
to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy.
Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need of this.'

"'Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg
that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists
you can.'

"'This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,' said Don Sebastian,
gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.

"'Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light,
and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.

"'So help me Heaven, and on my honour the story I have told ye,
gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be
true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have
seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.'"



CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.


I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the
eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored
alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there.
It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those
curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day
confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the
world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong.

It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For
ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble
panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,
medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of
chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St. George's; ever
since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed, not
only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific
presentations of him.

Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to
be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta,
in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of
that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable
avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came
into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of
whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale
referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the
incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the
Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so
as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is
all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the
broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes.

But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter's
portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian
Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the
sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a strange
creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his
own "Perseus Descending," make out one whit better. The huge corpulence
of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing
one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its
distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be
taken for the Traitors' Gate leading from the Thames by water into the
Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and
Jonah's whale, as depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of
old primers. What shall be said of these? As for the book-binder's whale
winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor--as
stamped and gilded on the backs and title-pages of many books both
old and new--that is a very picturesque but purely fabulous creature,
imitated, I take it, from the like figures on antique vases.
Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call this
book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended
when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old
Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the Revival
of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a comparatively
late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a species of the
Leviathan.

In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you will
at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all manner
of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden,
come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the
original edition of the "Advancement of Learning" you will find some
curious whales.

But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those
pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations,
by those who know. In old Harris's collection of voyages there are some
plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671,
entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the
Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master." In one of those plates the
whales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among ice-isles,
with white bears running over their living backs. In another plate, the
prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendicular
flukes.

Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett,
a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage round Cape Horn
into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale
Fisheries." In this book is an outline purporting to be a "Picture of
a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from one killed on the
coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on deck." I doubt not the
captain had this veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines.
To mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which
applied, according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm
whale, would make the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet
long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out
of that eye!

Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for
the benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of
mistake. Look at that popular work "Goldsmith's Animated Nature." In the
abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged "whale"
and a "narwhale." I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly
whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale, one
glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century
such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent
public of schoolboys.

Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede, a great
naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these
are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland
whale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long
experienced man as touching that species, declares not to have its
counterpart in nature.

But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous
Baron. In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which he
gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that
picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your summary
retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not
a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had the benefit of
a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he derived that
picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor
in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions; that
is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the pencil
those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers inform us.

As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the
shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally
Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage; breakfasting
on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners:
their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.

But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have
been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a
drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly represent
the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars.
Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the living Leviathan
has never yet fairly floated himself for his portrait. The living whale,
in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in
unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight,
like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a
thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the
air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations. And, not
to speak of the highly presumable difference of contour between a young
sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the
case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such
is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that
his precise expression the devil himself could not catch.

But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded
whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all.
For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that
his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy
Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of
his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian
old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading personal characteristics;
yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan's
articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton
of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded
animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes
it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some
part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously
displayed in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to
the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four
regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But
all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human
fingers in an artificial covering. "However recklessly the whale may
sometimes serve us," said humorous Stubb one day, "he can never be truly
said to handle us without mittens."

For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs
conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world
which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit
the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very
considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding
out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in
which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is
by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of
being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had
best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.



CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True
Pictures of Whaling Scenes.


In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly
tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of
them which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern,
especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass
that matter by.

I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;
Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's. In the previous
chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins's is far
better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best. All Beale's
drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the
picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second
chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no
doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is
admirably correct and life-like in its general effect. Some of the Sperm
Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they
are wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though.

Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they
are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has
but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because
it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you can derive
anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living
hunters.

But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details
not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to
be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed,
and taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent
attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble
Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath
the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the air
upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of
the boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon
the monster's spine; and standing in that prow, for that one single
incomputable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the
incensed boiling spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping, as if
from a precipice. The action of the whole thing is wonderfully good and
true. The half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened sea; the wooden
poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads of the
swimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting expressions
of affright; while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing down
upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details
of this whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I could not
draw so good a one.

In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside
the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his black
weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian
cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so
abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave
supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the
small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the
Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while
the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of
tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock
in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean
steamer. Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; but behind, in
admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the
drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of
a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture lazily
hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole.

Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he
was either practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously
tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for
painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe, and
where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion
on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder
fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles of
France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the
successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned
centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these sea
battle-pieces of Garnery.

The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of
things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings
they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England's
experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the
Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only
finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of
the whale hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale
draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline
of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as
picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching
the profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right
whaleman, after giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale,
and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats
us to a series of classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives,
and grapnels; and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck
submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of
magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent
voyager (I honour him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it
was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a
sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.

In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other
French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes himself
"H. Durand." One of them, though not precisely adapted to our present
purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet
noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French whaler anchored,
inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the loosened sails
of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms in the background, both
drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is very fine, when
considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen under
one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is
quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the
very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the
vessel (in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a
quay; and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is
about giving chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and lances
lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its
hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands
half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship, the
smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke
over a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up
with earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the
excited seamen.



CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in
Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.


On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a
crippled beggar (or KEDGER, as the sailors say) holding a painted board
before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg.
There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed
to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being
crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years,
they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and exhibited that
stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification has
now come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in
Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you
will find in the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on
that stump, never a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with
downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating his own amputation.

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and
Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and
whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth,
or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other
like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little
ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material,
in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes
of dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the
skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with their
jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor,
they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner's
fancy.

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man
to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery.
Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a
savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready
at any moment to rebel against him.

Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic
hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian
war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of
carving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon.
For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark's tooth, that
miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has
cost steady years of steady application.

As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the
same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth, of
his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not
quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design,
as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full of barbaric spirit
and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert
Durer.

Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of
the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles
of American whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy.

At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung
by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is
sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking
whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some
old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for
weather-cocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all
intents and purposes so labelled with "HANDS OFF!" you cannot examine
them closely enough to decide upon their merit.

In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the
plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the
Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against
them in a surf of green surges.

Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually
girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky
point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of
whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough
whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you wish
to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact
intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else
so chance-like are such observations of the hills, that your precise,
previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery; like the
Soloma Islands, which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed
Mendanna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them.

Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out
great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as
when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies
locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased
Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright
points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic
skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the
starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying
Fish.

With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for
spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to
see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie
encamped beyond my mortal sight!



CHAPTER 58. Brit.


Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows
of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale
largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we
seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat.

On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from
the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly
swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that
wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated
from the water that escaped at the lip.

As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance
their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these
monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving
behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*


*That part of the sea known among whalemen as the "Brazil Banks" does
not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there
being shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable
meadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually
floating in those latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.


But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all
reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they
paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked
more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in the
great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance will
sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing them
to be such, taking them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil; even
so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this species of the
leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at last, their immense
magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that such bulky masses
of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort
of life that lives in a dog or a horse.

Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the
deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though
some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are
of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of
the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for
example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to
the sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any
generic respect be said to bear comparative analogy to him.

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the
seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and
repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita,
so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his
one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific
of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen
tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters;
though but a moment's consideration will teach, that however baby man
may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering
future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever,
to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize
the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the
continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense
of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a widow.
That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships
of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided;
two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a
miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews,
when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened
and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in
precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews.

But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it
is also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host who
murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath
spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her
own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks,
and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No
mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad
battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the
globe.

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide
under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden
beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish
brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the
dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more,
the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each
other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile
earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a
strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean
surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular
Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the
half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst
never return!


CHAPTER 59. Squid.


Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her
way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling
her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering
masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a
plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely,
alluring jet would be seen.

But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural
spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when
the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid
across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the slippered waves whispered
together as they softly ran on; in this profound hush of the visible
sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the main-mast-head.

In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and
higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before
our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening
for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose,
and silently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick?
thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on re-appearing once
more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the
negro yelled out--"There! there again! there she breaches! right ahead!
The White Whale, the White Whale!"

Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time the
bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab stood on
the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave
his orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction
indicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo.

Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect the
ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the particular
whale he pursued; however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed
him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly
perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave
orders for lowering.

The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab's in advance, and all
swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with
oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same
spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for
the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous
phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind.
A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing
cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating
from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as
if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible
face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or
instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless,
chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still
gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice
exclaimed--"Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to
have seen thee, thou white ghost!"

"What was it, Sir?" said Flask.

"The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and
returned to their ports to tell of it."

But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel;
the rest as silently following.

Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected with
the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it being
so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with
portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of them
declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few
of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its true nature and
form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to the sperm whale
his only food. For though other species of whales find their food above
water, and may be seen by man in the act of feeding, the spermaceti
whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones below the surface; and
only by inference is it that any one can tell of what, precisely, that
food consists. At times, when closely pursued, he will disgorge what
are supposed to be the detached arms of the squid; some of them thus
exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet in length. They fancy that
the monster to which these arms belonged ordinarily clings by them to
the bed of the ocean; and that the sperm whale, unlike other species, is
supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it.

There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop
Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in
which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with
some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond.
But much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he
assigns it.

By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of cuttle-fish,
to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would seem to belong,
but only as the Anak of the tribe.



CHAPTER 60. The Line.


With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as
for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented,
I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly
vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary
ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to
the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the
sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity
too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must
be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general
by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it
may give it compactness and gloss.

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not
so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and
I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things), is much more
handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark
fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian
to behold.

The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first
sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment
its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and
twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal
to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something
over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally
coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so
as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or
layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart,"
or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least
tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take
somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used
in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an
entire morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then
reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act
of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and twists.

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line
being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this;
because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into the
boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly
three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky
freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch in thickness; for
the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up
a considerable distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated
one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the American line-tub,
the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great
wedding-cake to present to the whales.

Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the
tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything.
This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First:
In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a
neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as
to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to the
harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug
of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the
first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This
arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the
lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the
whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking
minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed
boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of
the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is
taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again
carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon
the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs against his wrist
in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at
the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme
pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a
common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs
in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat
again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled
upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a
little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp--the rope
which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that
connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious
to detail.

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the
oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid
eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest
snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal
woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies,
and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any
unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible
contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus
circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones
to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit--strange thing! what
cannot habit accomplish?--Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes,
and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you
will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus
hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before
King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death,
with a halter around every neck, as you may say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for
those repeated whaling disasters--some few of which are casually
chronicled--of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the
line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in
the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings
of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and
wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the
heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and
you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning;
and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of
volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run
away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and
contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal
powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the
line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought
into actual play--this is a thing which carries more of true terror than
any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men
live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their
necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death,
that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.
And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would
not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before
your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.



CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale.


If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to
Queequeg it was quite a different object.

"When you see him 'quid," said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow
of his hoisted boat, "then you quick see him 'parm whale."

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special
to engage them, the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep
induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through
which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground;
that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish,
and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the
Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders
leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in
what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that
dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my
body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long
after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen
at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at last
all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing
that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman.
The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the wide trance
of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my
hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me;
with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not forty
fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the
capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue,
glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in
the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury
jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm
afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some
enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once
started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts
of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted
forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted
the sparkling brine into the air.

"Clear away the boats! Luff!" cried Ahab. And obeying his own order, he
dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and ere
the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the leeward,
but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he
swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave
orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in
whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats,
we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the
noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the
monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and
then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up.

"There go flukes!" was the cry, an announcement immediately followed by
Stubb's producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a respite was
granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale
rose again, and being now in advance of the smoker's boat, and much
nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honour
of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale had at length become
aware of his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was therefore no
longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And
still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault.

Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy,
he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting from the mad
yeast which he brewed.*


*It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance
the entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists. Though
apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about
him. So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does
so when going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the
upper part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water
formation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he
thereby may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish
galliot into a sharppointed New York pilot-boat.


"Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry yourselves; take plenty of
time--but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all," cried
Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. "Start her, now; give 'em
the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy--start
her, all; but keep cool, keep cool--cucumbers is the word--easy,
easy--only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the
buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys--that's all. Start
her!"

"Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!" screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some
old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat
involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke
which the eager Indian gave.

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. "Kee-hee!
Kee-hee!" yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat,
like a pacing tiger in his cage.

"Ka-la! Koo-loo!" howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a
mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels
cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still
encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from
his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the
welcome cry was heard--"Stand up, Tashtego!--give it to him!" The
harpoon was hurled. "Stern all!" The oarsmen backed water; the same
moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists.
It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two
additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its
increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled
with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed round and
round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that point, it
blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's hands, from
which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at
these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy's
sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving
to wrest it out of your clutch.

"Wet the line! wet the line!" cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated
by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it.* More
turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now
flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego
here changed places--stem for stern--a staggering business truly in that
rocking commotion.


*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be
stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the
running line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or
bailer, is set apart for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most
convenient.


From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of
the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you would
have thought the craft had two keels--one cleaving the water, the other
the air--as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once.
A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in
her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little
finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale
into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging
to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of
Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring
down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed
as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened
his flight.

"Haul in--haul in!" cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round
towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet
the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly
planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the
flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning
out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then ranging up for
another fling.

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a
hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled
and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing
upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every
face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all
the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the
spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of
the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked
lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and
again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again
sent it into the whale.

"Pull up--pull up!" he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale
relaxed in his wrath. "Pull up!--close to!" and the boat ranged along
the fish's flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned
his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully
churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold
watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of
breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the
innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from
his trance into that unspeakable thing called his "flurry," the monster
horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable,
mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping
astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied
twilight into the clear air of the day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view;
surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his
spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush
after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red
wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping
down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!

"He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo.

"Yes; both pipes smoked out!" and withdrawing his own from his mouth,
Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood
thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.



CHAPTER 62. The Dart.


A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.

According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes
off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary
steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost
oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous
arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in what is called
a long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the distance of
twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged and exhausting the chase,
the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost;
indeed, he is expected to set an example of superhuman activity to the
rest, not only by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid
exclamations; and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's
compass, while all the other muscles are strained and half started--what
that is none know but those who have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl
very heartily and work very recklessly at one and the same time. In this
straining, bawling state, then, with his back to the fish, all at once
the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry--"Stand up, and give it
to him!" He now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round on his
centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little
strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale. No
wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty
fair chances for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so many
hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some
of them actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that
some sperm whalemen are absent four years with four barrels; no wonder
that to many ship owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the
harpooneer that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his
body how can you expect to find it there when most wanted!

Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant,
that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and harpooneer
likewise start to running fore and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of
themselves and every one else. It is then they change places; and
the headsman, the chief officer of the little craft, takes his proper
station in the bows of the boat.

Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish
and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from first to
last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing
whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances obvious
to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a slight loss
of speed in the chase; but long experience in various whalemen of more
than one nation has convinced me that in the vast majority of failures
in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much the speed of the
whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that has
caused them.

To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this
world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of
toil.



CHAPTER 63. The Crotch.


Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in
productive subjects, grow the chapters.

The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention.
It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length, which
is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow,
for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the
harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow.
Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it
up as readily from its rest as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from
the wall. It is customary to have two harpoons reposing in the crotch,
respectively called the first and second irons.

But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with
the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the coming
drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It is a
doubling of the chances. But it very often happens that owing to the
instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale upon receiving
the first iron, it becomes impossible for the harpooneer, however
lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the second iron into him.
Nevertheless, as the second iron is already connected with the line,
and the line is running, hence that weapon must, at all events, be
anticipatingly tossed out of the boat, somehow and somewhere; else the
most terrible jeopardy would involve all hands. Tumbled into the water,
it accordingly is in such cases; the spare coils of box line (mentioned
in a preceding chapter) making this feat, in most instances, prudently
practicable. But this critical act is not always unattended with the
saddest and most fatal casualties.

Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror,
skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the lines,
or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all directions.
Nor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until the whale is
fairly captured and a corpse.

Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging
one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these
qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of
such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be
simultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is supplied
with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the first one
be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these particulars are
faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to elucidate several
most important, however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be
painted.



CHAPTER 64. Stubb's Supper.


Stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was
a calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow
business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men
with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers,
slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse in the
sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long intervals;
good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass we
moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever they call
it, in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will draw a bulky
freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but this grand argosy we
towed heavily forged along, as if laden with pig-lead in bulk.

Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod's
main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab
dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing
the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual orders for securing
it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman, went his way
into the cabin, and did not come forward again until morning.

Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had
evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the creature
was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed
working in him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that
Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand other whales were
brought to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his grand,
monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought from the sound on
the Pequod's decks, that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in
the deep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck, and thrust
rattling out of the port-holes. But by those clanking links, the vast
corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied by the head to the
stern, and by the tail to the bows, the whale now lies with its black
hull close to the vessel's and seen through the darkness of the night,
which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the two--ship and whale,
seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines while
the other remains standing.*


*A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside,
is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part
is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its
flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so
that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to
put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a
small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end, and
a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to the ship. By
adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side
of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily
made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last locked
fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with
its broad flukes or lobes.


If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known
on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an
unusual but still good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was
he in that the staid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned
to him for the time the sole management of affairs. One small, helping
cause of all this liveliness in Stubb, was soon made strangely manifest.
Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale
as a flavorish thing to his palate.

"A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut
me one from his small!"

Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a general
thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy defray
the current expenses of the war (at least before realizing the proceeds
of the voyage), yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers
who have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm Whale
designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering extremity of the body.

About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two
lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper
at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb
the only banqueter on whale's flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings
with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming
round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness. The few
sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping
of their tails against the hull, within a few inches of the sleepers'
hearts. Peering over the side you could just see them (as before you
heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and turning over on
their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the
bigness of a human head. This particular feat of the shark seems all
but miraculous. How at such an apparently unassailable surface, they
contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the
universal problem of all things. The mark they thus leave on the whale,
may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking
for a screw.

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks
will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs
round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down
every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant
butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's
live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks,
also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away
under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole
affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that
is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and
though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships
crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in
case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently
buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down,
touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most
socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no
conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless
numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm
whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never
seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of
devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.

But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was
going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his
own epicurean lips.

"Cook, cook!--where's that old Fleece?" he cried at length, widening
his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper;
and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing
with his lance; "cook, you cook!--sail this way, cook!"

The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously
roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling
along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something
the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like
his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and
limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy
fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops; this old Ebony floundered
along, and in obedience to the word of command, came to a dead stop on
the opposite side of Stubb's sideboard; when, with both hands folded
before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back
still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as
to bring his best ear into play.

"Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his
mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone? You've been
beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender. Don't I always say
that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks
now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a
shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are
welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must
keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and
deliver my message. Here, take this lantern," snatching one from his
sideboard; "now then, go and preach to 'em!"

Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck
to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low over the
sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand
he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a
mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling
behind, overheard all that was said.

"Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam
noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lips! Massa Stubb say
dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you
must stop dat dam racket!"

"Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden slap
on the shoulder,--"Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear that way
when you're preaching. That's no way to convert sinners, cook!"

"Who dat? Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turning to go.

"No, cook; go on, go on."

"Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:"--

"Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to it; try that," and
Fleece continued.

"Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you,
fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness--'top dat dam slappin' ob de
tail! How you tink to hear, spose you keep up such a dam slappin' and
bitin' dare?"

"Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have that swearing. Talk to
'em gentlemanly."

Once more the sermon proceeded.

"Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for; dat
is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de
pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den
you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned.
Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping
yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber out your
neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat
whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale
belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger
dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat
de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid, but to bit off de blubber
for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge to help
demselves."

"Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on."

"No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scougin' and slappin' each
oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word; no use a-preaching to
such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is full, and dare
bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get 'em full, dey wont hear you
den; for den dey sink in the sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and
can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber."

"Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction,
Fleece, and I'll away to my supper."

Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his
shrill voice, and cried--

"Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill
your dam bellies 'till dey bust--and den die."

"Now, cook," said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; "stand
just where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular
attention."

"All 'dention," said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the
desired position.

"Well," said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; "I shall now go
back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you,
cook?"

"What dat do wid de 'teak," said the old black, testily.

"Silence! How old are you, cook?"

"'Bout ninety, dey say," he gloomily muttered.

"And you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, cook,
and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak?" rapidly bolting another
mouthful at the last word, so that morsel seemed a continuation of the
question. "Where were you born, cook?"

"'Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roanoke."

"Born in a ferry-boat! That's queer, too. But I want to know what
country you were born in, cook!"

"Didn't I say de Roanoke country?" he cried sharply.

"No, you didn't, cook; but I'll tell you what I'm coming to, cook.
You must go home and be born over again; you don't know how to cook a
whale-steak yet."

"Bress my soul, if I cook noder one," he growled, angrily, turning round
to depart.

"Come back here, cook;--here, hand me those tongs;--now take that bit of
steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be?
Take it, I say"--holding the tongs towards him--"take it, and taste it."

Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old negro
muttered, "Best cooked 'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy."

"Cook," said Stubb, squaring himself once more; "do you belong to the
church?"

"Passed one once in Cape-Down," said the old man sullenly.

"And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town, where
you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his
beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here, and
tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?" said Stubb. "Where
do you expect to go to, cook?"

"Go to bed berry soon," he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.

"Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It's an awful question. Now
what's your answer?"

"When dis old brack man dies," said the negro slowly, changing his whole
air and demeanor, "he hisself won't go nowhere; but some bressed angel
will come and fetch him."

"Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah? And fetch
him where?"

"Up dere," said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and
keeping it there very solemnly.

"So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook, when you
are dead? But don't you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets?
Main-top, eh?"

"Didn't say dat t'all," said Fleece, again in the sulks.

"You said up there, didn't you? and now look yourself, and see where
your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by
crawling through the lubber's hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you don't
get there, except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It's a
ticklish business, but must be done, or else it's no go. But none of
us are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my orders. Do ye
hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t'other a'top of your heart,
when I'm giving my orders, cook. What! that your heart, there?--that's
your gizzard! Aloft! aloft!--that's it--now you have it. Hold it there
now, and pay attention."

"All 'dention," said the old black, with both hands placed as desired,
vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at
one and the same time.

"Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad,
that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that, don't
you? Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for my
private table here, the capstan, I'll tell you what to do so as not to
spoil it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live coal
to it with the other; that done, dish it; d'ye hear? And now to-morrow,
cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure you stand by to get
the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle. As for the ends of the
flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now ye may go."

But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.

"Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch.
D'ye hear? away you sail, then.--Halloa! stop! make a bow before you
go.--Avast heaving again! Whale-balls for breakfast--don't forget."

"Wish, by gor! whale eat him, 'stead of him eat whale. I'm bressed if
he ain't more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself," muttered the old man,
limping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.



CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish.


That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and,
like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so
outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and
philosophy of it.

It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right
Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large
prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a certain cook of the
court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be
eaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of
whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating. The
meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being well
seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls.
The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a great
porpoise grant from the crown.

The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all
hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but
when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet
long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men
like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not
so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have rare
old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous
doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly
juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain Englishmen, who
long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel--that
these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of
whales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among
the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called "fritters"; which, indeed,
they greatly resemble, being brown and crisp, and smelling something
like old Amsterdam housewives' dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They
have such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can hardly
keep his hands off.

But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his
exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be
delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as
the buffalo's (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid
pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that
is; like the transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the
third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for
butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into
some other substance, and then partaking of it. In the long try
watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip their
ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile. Many
a good supper have I thus made.

In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish.
The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump,
whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings),
they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess,
in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish among
some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the
epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to
have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a
calf's head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon
discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with an
intelligent looking calf's head before him, is somehow one of the
saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at
him, with an "Et tu Brute!" expression.

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence;
that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before
mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea,
and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever
murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if
he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and
he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market
of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the
long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of
the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will
be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in
his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that
provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized
and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest
on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is
adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my
civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is
that handle made of?--what but the bones of the brother of the very ox
you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring
that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did
the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders
formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two
that that society passed a resolution to patronise nothing but steel
pens.



CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.


When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and
weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general
thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting
him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very
soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the
common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a'lee; and then send
every one below to his hammock till daylight, with the reservation that,
until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept; that is, two and two for
an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see
that all goes well.

But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will
not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather
round the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a
stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning.
In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so
largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably
diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades,
a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to
tickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the
present case with the Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man
unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night,
would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and
those sharks the maggots in it.

Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was
concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman
came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for
immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering
three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid
sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an
incessant murdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deep
into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy
confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not
always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the
incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each
other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit
their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by
the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was
this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these
creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in
their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual
life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin,
one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried
to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.


*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel;
is about the bigness of a man's spread hand; and in general shape,
corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its
sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than
the lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when
being used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a
stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.


"Queequeg no care what god made him shark," said the savage, agonizingly
lifting his hand up and down; "wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de
god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."



CHAPTER 67. Cutting In.


It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio
professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was
turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would
have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.

In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous
things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and which
no single man can possibly lift--this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up
to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the strongest
point anywhere above a ship's deck. The end of the hawser-like rope
winding through these intricacies, was then conducted to the windlass,
and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over the whale; to
this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds, was
attached. And now suspended in stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb,
the mates, armed with their long spades, began cutting a hole in the
body for the insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two
side-fins. This done, a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole,
the hook is inserted, and the main body of the crew striking up a wild
chorus, now commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When
instantly, the entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in
her starts like the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she
trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More
and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the
windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last,
a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls
upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises
into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the
first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely
as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the body
precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For the
strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps the whale
rolling over and over in the water, and as the blubber in one strip
uniformly peels off along the line called the "scarf," simultaneously
cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates; and just as fast as
it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the
time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the
main-top; the men at the windlass then cease heaving, and for a moment
or two the prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let
down from the sky, and every one present must take good heed to dodge
it when it swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him headlong
overboard.

One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen weapon
called a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously slices
out a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into this
hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked
so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for what
follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman, warning all hands to
stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a few
sidelong, desperate, lunging slicings, severs it completely in twain;
so that while the short lower part is still fast, the long upper strip,
called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready for lowering.
The heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one tackle is
peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other is slowly
slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway
right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room. Into
this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long
blanket-piece as if it were a great live mass of plaited serpents.
And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and lowering
simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing,
the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship
straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the
general friction.



CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.


I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of
the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen
afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains
unchanged; but it is only an opinion.

The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you
know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence
of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and
ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.

Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's
skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point
of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption; because you
cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but
that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if
reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin? True, from the unmarred
dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with your hand an infinitely
thin, transparent substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds
of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is,
previous to being dried, when it not only contracts and thickens, but
becomes rather hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits, which
I use for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before;
and being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself
with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any rate, it is
pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you may
say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same infinitely thin,
isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the
whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as
the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say,
that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender
than the skin of a new-born child. But no more of this.

Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin,
as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one
hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity, or
rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths,
and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had
of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere
integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels
to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters
of the stuff of the whale's skin.

In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among
the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely
crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array,
something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these
marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above
mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved
upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick,
observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but
afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical;
that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids
hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present
connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm
Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old
Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on
the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the
mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian
rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other phenomena which
the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the
back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the
regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches,
altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those New
England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks
of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs--I should say,
that those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this
particular. It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are
probably made by hostile contact with other whales; for I have most
remarked them in the large, full-grown bulls of the species.

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of
the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long
pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very
happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber
as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho
slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this
cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself
comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would
become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the
North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are
found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it
observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies
are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of
an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire;
whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood,
and he dies. How wonderful is it then--except after explanation--that
this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it
is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed
to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall
overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly
frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued
in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by
experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a
Borneo negro in summer.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong
individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare
virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after
the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in
this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood
fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the
great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections,
how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the
whale!



CHAPTER 69. The Funeral.


Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!

The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the
beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue,
it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal.
Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and
splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious
flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting
poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats further
and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem
square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous
din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous
sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair
face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass
of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.

There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in
pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled.
In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if
peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they
most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not
the mightiest whale is free.

Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or
blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the
swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in
the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the
whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the
log--SHOALS, ROCKS, AND BREAKERS HEREABOUTS: BEWARE! And for years
afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly
sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there
when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's your
utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of
old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in
the air! There's orthodoxy!

Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror
to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a
world.

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than
the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in
them.



CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.


It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping
the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the
Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced
whale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.

Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck;
on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that
very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the
surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening
between him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a
discoloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear
in mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many
feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without so
much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus
made, he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts,
and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion
into the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb's boast, that he
demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?

When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable
till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale
it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full
grown leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm whale's head embraces
nearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a
burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this were as
vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers' scales.

The Pequod's whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head was
hoisted against the ship's side--about half way out of the sea, so that
it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And there
with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the
enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm
on that side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that
blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod's waist like the giant
Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith.

When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went
below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but
now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow
lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon
the sea.

A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to
gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he
took Stubb's long spade--still remaining there after the whale's
Decapitation--and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended
mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood
leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. "Speak, thou vast
and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a
beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head,
and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast
dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has
moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies
rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this
frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there,
in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast
been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side,
where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou
saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart
to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when
heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed
by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper
midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on
unharmed--while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that
would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O
head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of
Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!"

"Sail ho!" cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.

"Aye? Well, now, that's cheering," cried Ahab, suddenly erecting
himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow.
"That lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better
man.--Where away?"

"Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to
us!

"Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way,
and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man!
how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest
atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind."



CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam's Story.


Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than
the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.

By and by, through the glass the stranger's boats and manned mast-heads
proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and shooting
by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the Pequod could
not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what response would
be made.

Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships of
the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which signals
being collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels
attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale
commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at
considerable distances and with no small facility.

The Pequod's signal was at last responded to by the stranger's setting
her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring
her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under the Pequod's lee, and
lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was being
rigged by Starbuck's order to accommodate the visiting captain, the
stranger in question waved his hand from his boat's stern in token
of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that
the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her
captain, was fearful of infecting the Pequod's company. For, though
himself and boat's crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half
a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing
between; yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the
land, he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the
Pequod.

But this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an
interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam's
boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to the
Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this time it blew
very fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times by
the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed some
way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings
again. Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now and then, a
conversation was sustained between the two parties; but at intervals not
without still another interruption of a very different sort.

Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a singular
appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities
make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled
all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair. A
long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped
him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists. A
deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.

So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had
exclaimed--"That's he! that's he!--the long-togged scaramouch the
Town-Ho's company told us of!" Stubb here alluded to a strange story
told of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time
previous when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account
and what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in
question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the
Jeroboam. His story was this:

He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna
Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret
meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of a
trap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he
carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing gunpowder,
was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange, apostolic whim
having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket, where, with
that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady, common-sense
exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the
Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway upon
the ship's getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a
freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded
the captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby
he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and
vicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he
declared these things;--the dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited
imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united
to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant
crew, with an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of
him. As such a man, however, was not of much practical use in the ship,
especially as he refused to work except when he pleased, the incredulous
captain would fain have been rid of him; but apprised that that
individual's intention was to land him in the first convenient port, the
archangel forthwith opened all his seals and vials--devoting the ship
and all hands to unconditional perdition, in case this intention was
carried out. So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the crew,
that at last in a body they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel
was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain. He was therefore
forced to relinquish his plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any
way maltreated, say or do what he would; so that it came to pass that
Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship. The consequence of all
this was, that the archangel cared little or nothing for the captain and
mates; and since the epidemic had broken out, he carried a higher hand
than ever; declaring that the plague, as he called it, was at his sole
command; nor should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure.
The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before
him; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal
homage, as to a god. Such things may seem incredible; but, however
wondrous, they are true. Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking
in respect to the measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as
his measureless power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But
it is time to return to the Pequod.

"I fear not thy epidemic, man," said Ahab from the bulwarks, to Captain
Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern; "come on board."

But now Gabriel started to his feet.

"Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the horrible
plague!"

"Gabriel! Gabriel!" cried Captain Mayhew; "thou must either--" But
that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its seethings
drowned all speech.

"Hast thou seen the White Whale?" demanded Ahab, when the boat drifted
back.

"Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the horrible
tail!"

"I tell thee again, Gabriel, that--" But again the boat tore ahead as if
dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a succession
of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional caprices
of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted sperm
whale's head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was seen eyeing
it with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to
warrant.

When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story
concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from
Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed
leagued with him.

It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking
a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby
Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence,
Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the White
Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering insanity,
pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God
incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some year or two
afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey, the
chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him; and the captain himself
being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all
the archangel's denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in
persuading five men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after
much weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last
succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to
the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and
hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants
of his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his
boat's bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting
his wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance
for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its
quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies
of the oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious
life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his
descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a
chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman's head; but the
mate for ever sank.

It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the
Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.
Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated;
oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the
headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body. But
strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one,
when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is
discernible; the man being stark dead.

The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly descried
from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek--"The vial! the vial!" Gabriel
called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of the
whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with added influence;
because his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically
fore-announced it, instead of only making a general prophecy, which any
one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one of many marks in the
wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror to the ship.

Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions to
him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he
intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which
Ahab answered--"Aye." Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started
to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with
downward pointed finger--"Think, think of the blasphemer--dead, and down
there!--beware of the blasphemer's end!"

Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, "Captain, I have
just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy
officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag."

Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various ships,
whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed, depends
upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans. Thus,
most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received after
attaining an age of two or three years or more.

Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely tumbled,
damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in consequence
of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death
himself might well have been the post-boy.

"Can'st not read it?" cried Ahab. "Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it's but
a dim scrawl;--what's this?" As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a
long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to
insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without
its coming any closer to the ship.

Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, "Mr. Har--yes, Mr.
Harry--(a woman's pinny hand,--the man's wife, I'll wager)--Aye--Mr.
Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam;--why it's Macey, and he's dead!"

"Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife," sighed Mayhew; "but let
me have it."

"Nay, keep it thyself," cried Gabriel to Ahab; "thou art soon going that
way."

"Curses throttle thee!" yelled Ahab. "Captain Mayhew, stand by now to
receive it"; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck's hands, he
caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the boat.
But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat
drifted a little towards the ship's stern; so that, as if by magic, the
letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel's eager hand. He clutched it
in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the letter on it,
sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at Ahab's feet. Then
Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in
that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod.

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket
of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild
affair.



CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.


In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there
is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are
wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying
in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done
everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description
of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned
that upon first breaking ground in the whale's back, the blubber-hook
was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the
mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook
get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend
Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the
monster's back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many
cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the
whale till the whole tensing or stripping operation is concluded. The
whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the
immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the
level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the
whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill
beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the
Highland costume--a shirt and socks--in which to my eyes, at least,
he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to
observe him, as will presently be seen.

Being the savage's bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar
in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to
attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead
whale's back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by
a long cord. Just so, from the ship's steep side, did I hold Queequeg
down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery
a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his
waist.

It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we
proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at
both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow
leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were
wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage
and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag
me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us.
Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get
rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.

So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that
while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive
that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of
two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another's
mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster
and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in
Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an
injustice. And yet still further pondering--while I jerked him now
and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam
him--still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine
was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most
cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality
of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by
mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say
that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the
multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg's
monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came
very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I
would, I only had the management of one end of it.*


*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod
that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This improvement
upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb,
in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible
guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder.


I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the
whale and the ship--where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant
rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy
he was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the
night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent
blood which began to flow from the carcass--the rabid creatures swarmed
round it like bees in a beehive.

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them
aside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were
it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise
miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.

Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a
ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them.
Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then jerked
the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed
a peculiarly ferocious shark--he was provided with still another
protection. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tashtego
and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of keen
whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could
reach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterested and
benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg's best happiness, I admit; but
in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that both
he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water,
those indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg
than a tall. But poor Queequeg, I suppose, straining and gasping there
with that great iron hook--poor Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his
Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands of his gods.

Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in
and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea--what matters
it, after all? Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men
in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those
sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks
and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.

But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg. For now, as
with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last climbs
up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling over
the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent, consolatory
glance hands him--what? Some hot Cognac? No! hands him, ye gods! hands
him a cup of tepid ginger and water!

"Ginger? Do I smell ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb, coming near.
"Yes, this must be ginger," peering into the as yet untasted cup. Then
standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards the
astonished steward slowly saying, "Ginger? ginger? and will you have
the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of ginger?
Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to kindle a fire
in this shivering cannibal? Ginger!--what the devil is ginger?
Sea-coal? firewood?--lucifer matches?--tinder?--gunpowder?--what the
devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg
here."

"There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this
business," he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just
come from forward. "Will you look at that kannakin, sir; smell of it,
if you please." Then watching the mate's countenance, he added, "The
steward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap
to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the steward an
apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters by
which he blows back the life into a half-drowned man?"

"I trust not," said Starbuck, "it is poor stuff enough."

"Aye, aye, steward," cried Stubb, "we'll teach you to drug a
harpooneer; none of your apothecary's medicine here; you want to poison
us, do ye? You have got out insurances on our lives and want to murder
us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?"

"It was not me," cried Dough-Boy, "it was Aunt Charity that brought the
ginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits, but
only this ginger-jub--so she called it."

"Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with ye
to the lockers, and get something better. I hope I do no wrong, Mr.
Starbuck. It is the captain's orders--grog for the harpooneer on a
whale."

"Enough," replied Starbuck, "only don't hit him again, but--"

"Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something of
that sort; and this fellow's a weazel. What were you about saying, sir?"

"Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself."

When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and a sort
of tea-caddy in the other. The first contained strong spirits, and was
handed to Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity's gift, and that was
freely given to the waves.



CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk
Over Him.


It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale's
prodigious head hanging to the Pequod's side. But we must let it
continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to it.
For the present other matters press, and the best we can do now for the
head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold.

Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually
drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit,
gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the
Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking
anywhere near. And though all hands commonly disdained the capture of
those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not commissioned to
cruise for them at all, and though she had passed numbers of them near
the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale
had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the
announcement was made that a Right Whale should be captured that day, if
opportunity offered.

Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two
boats, Stubb's and Flask's, were detached in pursuit. Pulling further
and further away, they at last became almost invisible to the men at
the mast-head. But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap of
tumultuous white water, and soon after news came from aloft that one or
both the boats must be fast. An interval passed and the boats were in
plain sight, in the act of being dragged right towards the ship by the
towing whale. So close did the monster come to the hull, that at
first it seemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly going down in a
maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he wholly disappeared from
view, as if diving under the keel. "Cut, cut!" was the cry from the
ship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on the point of being
brought with a deadly dash against the vessel's side. But having plenty
of line yet in the tubs, and the whale not sounding very rapidly, they
paid out abundance of rope, and at the same time pulled with all their
might so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few minutes the struggle was
intensely critical; for while they still slacked out the tightened line
in one direction, and still plied their oars in another, the contending
strain threatened to take them under. But it was only a few feet advance
they sought to gain. And they stuck to it till they did gain it; when
instantly, a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the
keel, as the strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose
to view under her bows, snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its
drippings, that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water,
while the whale beyond also rose to sight, and once more the boats were
free to fly. But the fagged whale abated his speed, and blindly altering
his course, went round the stern of the ship towing the two boats after
him, so that they performed a complete circuit.

Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close
flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for
lance; and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while the
multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm Whale's body,
rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking at every
new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fountains that
poured from the smitten rock.

At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he
turned upon his back a corpse.

While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his flukes,
and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing, some
conversation ensued between them.

"I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard," said
Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so
ignoble a leviathan.

"Wants with it?" said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat's bow,
"did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm Whale's
head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a Right Whale's
on the larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never
afterwards capsize?"

"Why not?

"I don't know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so,
and he seems to know all about ships' charms. But I sometimes think
he'll charm the ship to no good at last. I don't half like that chap,
Stubb. Did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into
a snake's head, Stubb?"

"Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of a
dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by; look
down there, Flask"--pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of
both hands--"Aye, will I! Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in
disguise. Do you believe that cock and bull story about his having been
stowed away on board ship? He's the devil, I say. The reason why you
don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight; he carries
it coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now that I think of
it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots."

"He sleeps in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've
seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging."

"No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye
see, in the eye of the rigging."

"What's the old man have so much to do with him for?"

"Striking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose."

"Bargain?--about what?"

"Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and
the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away
his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then he'll
surrender Moby Dick."

"Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?"

"I don't know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked
one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the
old flag-ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and
gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at home. Well, he
was at home, and asked the devil what he wanted. The devil, switching
his hoofs, up and says, 'I want John.' 'What for?' says the old
governor. 'What business is that of yours,' says the devil, getting
mad,--'I want to use him.' 'Take him,' says the governor--and by the
Lord, Flask, if the devil didn't give John the Asiatic cholera before
he got through with him, I'll eat this whale in one mouthful. But look
sharp--ain't you all ready there? Well, then, pull ahead, and let's get
the whale alongside."

"I think I remember some such story as you were telling," said Flask,
when at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden
towards the ship, "but I can't remember where."

"Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three bloody-minded soladoes? Did
ye read it there, Flask? I guess ye did?"

"No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell me,
Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now, was
the same you say is now on board the Pequod?"

"Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn't the devil live
for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see
any parson a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a
latch-key to get into the admiral's cabin, don't you suppose he can
crawl into a porthole? Tell me that, Mr. Flask?"

"How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?"

"Do you see that mainmast there?" pointing to the ship; "well, that's
the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod's hold, and string
along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you see; well, that
wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's age. Nor all the coopers in creation
couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts enough."

"But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that you
meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance. Now, if
he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is going
to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him overboard--tell me
that?

"Give him a good ducking, anyhow."

"But he'd crawl back."

"Duck him again; and keep ducking him."

"Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though--yes, and
drown you--what then?"

"I should like to see him try it; I'd give him such a pair of black eyes
that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's cabin again for
a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he lives, and
hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil,
Flask; so you suppose I'm afraid of the devil? Who's afraid of
him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him and put him in
double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping
people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people the devil
kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor!"

"Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?"

"Do I suppose it? You'll know it before long, Flask. But I am going now
to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything very suspicious
going on, I'll just take him by the nape of his neck, and say--Look
here, Beelzebub, you don't do it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord
I'll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan,
and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail will come short
off at the stump--do you see; and then, I rather guess when he finds
himself docked in that queer fashion, he'll sneak off without the poor
satisfaction of feeling his tail between his legs."

"And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?"

"Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;--what else?"

"Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along, Stubb?"

"Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship."

The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side, where
fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing
him.

"Didn't I tell you so?" said Flask; "yes, you'll soon see this right
whale's head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti's."

In good time, Flask's saying proved true. As before, the Pequod steeply
leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the counterpoise of
both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may
well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go
over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come
back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep
trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard,
and then you will float light and right.

In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the
ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the
case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is cut off
whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately removed and
hoisted on deck, with all the well known black bone attached to what is
called the crown-piece. But nothing like this, in the present case,
had been done. The carcases of both whales had dropped astern; and
the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule carrying a pair of
overburdening panniers.

Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever
and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own
hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow;
while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only to
blend with, and lengthen Ahab's. As the crew toiled on, Laplandish
speculations were bandied among them, concerning all these passing
things.



CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale's Head--Contrasted View.


Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us
join them, and lay together our own.

Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right
Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly
hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all
the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between
them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this
moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we may freely go from one
to the other, by merely stepping across the deck:--where, I should like
to know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology
than here?

In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these
heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain
mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the Right Whale's sadly
lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale's head. As you behold
it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point
of pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is
heightened by the pepper and salt colour of his head at the summit,
giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short, he is what
the fishermen technically call a "grey-headed whale."

Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads--namely, the two
most important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side of
the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale's jaw, if you
narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would
fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it to the
magnitude of the head.

Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes, it is
plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more
than he can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the whale's
eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy, for
yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects
through your ears. You would find that you could only command some
thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-line of sight;
and about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking
straight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not
be able to see him, any more than if he were stealing upon you from
behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so to speak; but, at the
same time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for what is it that makes the
front of a man--what, indeed, but his eyes?

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes
are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to
produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of
the whale's eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of
solid head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating
two lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate the
impressions which each independent organ imparts. The whale, therefore,
must see one distinct picture on this side, and another distinct
picture on that side; while all between must be profound darkness and
nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look out on the world
from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window. But with the
whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two distinct
windows, but sadly impairing the view. This peculiarity of the whale's
eyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be
remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes.

A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this
visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with a
hint. So long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing
is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing
whatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one's experience
will teach him, that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of
things at one glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively,
and completely, to examine any two things--however large or however
small--at one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side
by side and touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two
objects, and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in
order to see one of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to
bear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary
consciousness. How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes,
in themselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more
comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same
moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one
side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he
can, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able
simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems
in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in this
comparison.

It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer
frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly
proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their
divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.

But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an
entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads
for hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf
whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so
wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With
respect to their ears, this important difference is to be observed
between the sperm whale and the right. While the ear of the former has
an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered
over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from without.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the
world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which
is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of
Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of
cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of
hearing? Not at all.--Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind?
Subtilize it.

Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant
over the sperm whale's head, that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending
by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and were it not
that the body is now completely separated from it, with a lantern we
might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach. But
let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us where we are. What
a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling,
lined, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as
bridal satins.

But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems
like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one
end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead,
and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such,
alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these
spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to behold,
when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, floating there
suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging
straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a
ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of
sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his
jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a
reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon
him.

In most cases this lower jaw--being easily unhinged by a practised
artist--is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting
the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone
with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles,
including canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.

With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an
anchor; and when the proper time comes--some few days after the other
work--Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists,
are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances
the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being
rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag
stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two
teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled
after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and
piled away like joists for building houses.



CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale's Head--Contrasted View.


Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right Whale's
head.

As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a
Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded);
so, at a broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather inelegant
resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago an
old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker's last. And
in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale, with
the swarming brood, might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her
progeny.

But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different
aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit and
look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take the whole head
for an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in its
sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange,
crested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass--this green,
barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the "crown," and the
Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes
solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak,
with a bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those live
crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost
sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the
technical term "crown" also bestowed upon it; in which case you will
take great interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a
diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for
him in this marvellous manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a very
sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip!
what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's
measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout
that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.

A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.
The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an
important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes
caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold,
we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should
take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the
road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a
pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while
these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, half
vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a
side, which depending from the upper part of the head or crown
bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily
mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres,
through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose
intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through
the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of bone, as they
stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks, curves,
hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the creature's age,
as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of this
criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical
probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater
age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.

In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous
"whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth;* another, "hogs' bristles"; a
third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language:
"There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his
upper CHOP, which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth."


*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or
rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the
upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these
tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn
countenance.


As every one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers,"
"blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and
other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has
long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time that the bone was
in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those
ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as
you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do we
nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a
tent spread over the same bone.

But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, standing
in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing all these
colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think
you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its
thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest
Turkey--the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor of the
mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting
it on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I
should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that
amount of oil.

Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started
with--that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely
different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no great
well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a
lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any
of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a
tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm
Whale only one.

Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie
together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will
not be very long in following.

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same
he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem
now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like
placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the
other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident
against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not
this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in
facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm
Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.



CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.


Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale's head, I would have
you, as a sensible physiologist, simply--particularly remark its front
aspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you investigate
it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated,
intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged
there. Here is a vital point; for you must either satisfactorily settle
this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an infidel as to one of
the most appalling, but not the less true events, perhaps anywhere to be
found in all recorded history.

You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm Whale,
the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the
water; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably
backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which
receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that the mouth is entirely
under the head, much in the same way, indeed, as though your own mouth
were entirely under your chin. Moreover you observe that the whale has
no external nose; and that what nose he has--his spout hole--is on the
top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides
of his head, nearly one third of his entire length from the front.
Wherefore, you must now have perceived that the front of the Sperm
Whale's head is a dead, blind wall, without a single organ or tender
prominence of any sort whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider
that only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the front of
the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you
get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial
development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad.
Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise
the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of
the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy.
In some previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the
body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head;
but with this difference: about the head this envelope, though not so
thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not
handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by
the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though
the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses' hoofs. I do not
think that any sensation lurks in it.

Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded Indiamen
chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, what do the
sailors do? They do not suspend between them, at the point of coming
contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood. No, they hold
there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the thickest
and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which
would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By
itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But
supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that
as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them,
capable, at will, of distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale,
as far as I know, has no such provision in him; considering, too,
the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head
altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out
of the water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope;
considering the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically
occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs there
may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with
the outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and
contraction. If this be so, fancy the irresistibleness of that might, to
which the most impalpable and destructive of all elements contributes.

Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable
wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a
mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood
is--by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest
insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the
specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this
expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable
braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all ignorant
incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the Sperm Whale
stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic
with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow. For
unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist
in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to
encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then? What befell
the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil at Lais?



CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.


Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must
know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated
upon.

Regarding the Sperm Whale's head as a solid oblong, you may, on an
inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower
is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an
unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the
expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of the
forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two
almost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an internal
wall of a thick tendinous substance.


*Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical
mathematics. I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a
solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the
steep inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both
sides.


The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb
of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand
infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole
extent. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the great
Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous great tierce is
mystically carved in front, so the whale's vast plaited forehead forms
innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his
wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished
with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun
of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages;
namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid,
and odoriferous state. Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed
in any other part of the creature. Though in life it remains perfectly
fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to
concrete; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when the
first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. A large whale's
case generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm, though from
unavoidable circumstances, considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and
dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business
of securing what you can.

I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun
was coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could not
possibly have compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like the
lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm Whale's
case.

It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale
embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head; and since--as
has been elsewhere set forth--the head embraces one third of the whole
length of the creature, then setting that length down at eighty feet for
a good sized whale, you have more than twenty-six feet for the depth
of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and down against a ship's
side.

As in decapitating the whale, the operator's instrument is brought close
to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the spermaceti
magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest a careless,
untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out its
invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the head, also, which
is at last elevated out of the water, and retained in that position by
the enormous cutting tackles, whose hempen combinations, on one side,
make quite a wilderness of ropes in that quarter.

Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous and--in
this particular instance--almost fatal operation whereby the Sperm
Whale's great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.



CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.


Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect
posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the
part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried
with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts,
travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that
it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it
is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down
the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he
lands on the summit of the head. There--still high elevated above the
rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries--he seems some Turkish
Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A
short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches
for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business
he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house,
sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time
this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like
a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other
end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three
alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian,
to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this
pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun,
till it entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the
whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail
of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the full-freighted
vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large
tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through the same round until
the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to
ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun,
until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down.

Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;
several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once a
queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian,
was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one-handed
hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or whether the
place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil
One himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular
reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden,
as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up--my God! poor
Tashtego--like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well,
dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with
a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!

"Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first
came to his senses. "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting one foot
into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip
itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost
before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime,
there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before
lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea,
as if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only
the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous
depth to which he had sunk.

At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing
the whip--which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles--a
sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all,
one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with
a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship
reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook,
upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be
on the point of giving way; an event still more likely from the violent
motions of the head.

"Come down, come down!" yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand
holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he
would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line,
rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the
buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.

"In heaven's name, man," cried Stubb, "are you ramming home a cartridge
there?--Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on
top of his head? Avast, will ye!"

"Stand clear of the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting of a
rocket.

Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass
dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the
suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering
copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging--now over the
sailors' heads, and now over the water--Daggoo, through a thick mist of
spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor,
buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea!
But hardly had the blinding vapour cleared away, when a naked figure
with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen
hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my
brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the
side, and every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment, and
no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now
jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.

"Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch
overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust
upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust
forth from the grass over a grave.

"Both! both!--it is both!"--cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and
soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and
with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the
waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was
long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.

Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after
the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made
side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then
dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards,
and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first
thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that
was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;--he had
thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a
somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in
the good old way--head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was
doing as well as could be expected.

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg,
the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully
accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently
hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten.
Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing,
riding and rowing.

I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be sure to
seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have either
seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern ashore; an accident
which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than the
Indian's, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the
Sperm Whale's well.

But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought
the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and
most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of
a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at
all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had been
nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but the dense
tendinous wall of the well--a double welded, hammered substance, as I
have before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a lump of which
sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking in this
substance was in the present instance materially counteracted by the
other parts of the head remaining undetached from it, so that it sank
very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance
for performing his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it
was a running delivery, so it was.

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant
spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber
and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be
recalled--the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey
in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that
leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed.
How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and
sweetly perished there?



CHAPTER 79. The Prairie.


To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as
yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as for
Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar,
or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome of the
Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only treats
of the various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces
of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail upon the
modifications of expression discernible therein. Nor have Gall and
his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the
phrenological characteristics of other beings than man. Therefore,
though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the application of these
two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my endeavor. I try all things;
I achieve what I can.

Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature.
He has no proper nose. And since the nose is the central and most
conspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most modifies and
finally controls their combined expression; hence it would seem that its
entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely affect
the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire,
cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable
to the completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in
keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the nose
from Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder! Nevertheless,
Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so
stately, that the same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were
hideous, in him is no blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A
nose to the whale would have been impertinent. As on your physiognomical
voyage you sail round his vast head in your jolly-boat, your noble
conceptions of him are never insulted by the reflection that he has a
nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit, which so often will insist upon
obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne.

In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to
be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head. This
aspect is sublime.

In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the
morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has a
touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the
elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as
that great golden seal affixed by the German Emperors to their decrees.
It signifies--"God: done this day by my hand." But in most creatures,
nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine
land lying along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like
Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so high, and descend so low, that the
eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all
above them in the forehead's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered
thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the
snow prints of the deer. But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and
mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified,
that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the
dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living
nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is
revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper;
nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with
riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men.
Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way
viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you
plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the
forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of genius.

But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written
a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his
doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his
pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale
been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by
their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile,
because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no
tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of
protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure
back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly
enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted
hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale
shall lord it.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is
no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's
face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing
fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could
not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle
meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of
the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you
can.



CHAPTER 80. The Nut.


If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his
brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square.

In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet
in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as
the side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level
base. But in life--as we have elsewhere seen--this inclined plane is
angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent
mass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skull forms a crater to
bed that part of the mass; while under the long floor of this crater--in
another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length and as many in
depth--reposes the mere handful of this monster's brain. The brain is at
least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hidden
away behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within the
amplified fortifications of Quebec. So like a choice casket is it
secreted in him, that I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny
that the Sperm Whale has any other brain than that palpable semblance
of one formed by the cubic-yards of his sperm magazine. Lying in strange
folds, courses, and convolutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more
in keeping with the idea of his general might to regard that mystic part
of him as the seat of his intelligence.

It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in
the creature's living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his
true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The
whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common
world.

If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view
of its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its
resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from
the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down
to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and you would
involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions on
one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say--This
man had no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by those negations,
considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and
power, you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the most
exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is.

But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper brain, you
deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another idea
for you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped's spine,
you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung
necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the
skull proper. It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely
undeveloped skulls. But the curious external resemblance, I take it
the Germans were not the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once
pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with
the vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a sort of basso-relievo, the
beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the phrenologists have
omitted an important thing in not pushing their investigations from the
cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe that much of a man's
character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel
your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine
never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the
firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.

Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His cranial
cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in that vertebra
the bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches across, being
eight in height, and of a triangular figure with the base downwards. As
it passes through the remaining vertebrae the canal tapers in size, but
for a considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now, of course,
this canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance--the
spinal cord--as the brain; and directly communicates with the brain.
And what is still more, for many feet after emerging from the brain's
cavity, the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost
equal to that of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be
unreasonable to survey and map out the whale's spine phrenologically?
For, viewed in this light, the wonderful comparative smallness of his
brain proper is more than compensated by the wonderful comparative
magnitude of his spinal cord.

But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I
would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to the
Sperm Whale's hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one
of the larger vertebrae, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer
convex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should call this
high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the Sperm Whale.
And that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason to
know.



CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.


The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick
De Deer, master, of Bremen.

At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and
Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide
intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with
their flag in the Pacific.

For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects.
While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping a
boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in the
bows instead of the stern.

"What has he in his hand there?" cried Starbuck, pointing to something
wavingly held by the German. "Impossible!--a lamp-feeder!"

"Not that," said Stubb, "no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he's
coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see that big
tin can there alongside of him?--that's his boiling water. Oh! he's all
right, is the Yarman."

"Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.
He's out of oil, and has come a-begging."

However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the
whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old
proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing
really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did
indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.

As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all
heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German
soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately
turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some
remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in
profound darkness--his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a
single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding
by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically
called a CLEAN one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name of
Jungfrau or the Virgin.

His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his
ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the
mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that
without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed
round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.

Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German
boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod's
keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger,
they were going all abreast with great speed straight before the wind,
rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in harness.
They left a great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a great
wide parchment upon the sea.

Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,
humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as
by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted
with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged
to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for
such venerable leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck
to their wake, though indeed their back water must have retarded him,
because the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one,
like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet. His spout was
short, slow, and laborious; coming forth with a choking sort of gush,
and spending itself in torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean
commotions in him, which seemed to have egress at his other buried
extremity, causing the waters behind him to upbubble.

"Who's got some paregoric?" said Stubb, "he has the stomach-ache, I'm
afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse
winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It's the first foul wind
I ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so before?
it must be, he's lost his tiller."

As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck
load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her
way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly
turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious
wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost
that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were hard to say.

"Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that wounded
arm," cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.

"Mind he don't sling thee with it," cried Starbuck. "Give way, or the
German will have him."

With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this
one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most
valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were
going with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit
for the time. At this juncture the Pequod's keels had shot by the three
German boats last lowered; but from the great start he had had, Derick's
boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by his foreign
rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being already so
nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron before they
could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quite
confident that this would be the case, and occasionally with a deriding
gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats.

"The ungracious and ungrateful dog!" cried Starbuck; "he mocks and dares
me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes ago!"--then
in his old intense whisper--"Give way, greyhounds! Dog to it!"

"I tell ye what it is, men"--cried Stubb to his crew--"it's against
my religion to get mad; but I'd like to eat that villainous
Yarman--Pull--won't ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do
ye love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come,
why don't some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who's that been dropping an
anchor overboard--we don't budge an inch--we're becalmed. Halloo, here's
grass growing in the boat's bottom--and by the Lord, the mast there's
budding. This won't do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short and long of
it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?"

"Oh! see the suds he makes!" cried Flask, dancing up and down--"What
a hump--Oh, DO pile on the beef--lays like a log! Oh! my lads, DO
spring--slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads--baked
clams and muffins--oh, DO, DO, spring,--he's a hundred barreller--don't
lose him now--don't oh, DON'T!--see that Yarman--Oh, won't ye pull for
your duff, my lads--such a sog! such a sogger! Don't ye love sperm?
There goes three thousand dollars, men!--a bank!--a whole bank! The bank
of England!--Oh, DO, DO, DO!--What's that Yarman about now?"

At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the
advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double view
of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same time economically
accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.

"The unmannerly Dutch dogger!" cried Stubb. "Pull now, men, like fifty
thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d'ye say,
Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces
for the honour of old Gayhead? What d'ye say?"

"I say, pull like god-dam,"--cried the Indian.

Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the Pequod's
three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed,
momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of
the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up
proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry
of, "There she slides, now! Hurrah for the white-ash breeze! Down with
the Yarman! Sail over him!"

But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all
their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not
a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the blade
of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to free
his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick's boat was nigh to
capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage;--that was
a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout, they took a
mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German's quarter.
An instant more, and all four boats were diagonically in the whale's
immediate wake, while stretching from them, on both sides, was the
foaming swell that he made.

It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was
now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual
tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of
fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight,
and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the
sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So have I
seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted broken circles in the
air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird has a
voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the fear
of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him;
he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his spiracle,
and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his
amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to
appal the stoutest man who so pitied.

Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod's
boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick
chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart,
ere the last chance would for ever escape.

But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all three
tigers--Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo--instinctively sprang to their feet,
and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their barbs; and
darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three Nantucket
irons entered the whale. Blinding vapours of foam and white-fire! The
three boats, in the first fury of the whale's headlong rush, bumped
the German's aside with such force, that both Derick and his baffled
harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.

"Don't be afraid, my butter-boxes," cried Stubb, casting a passing
glance upon them as he shot by; "ye'll be picked up presently--all
right--I saw some sharks astern--St. Bernard's dogs, you know--relieve
distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel a
sunbeam! Hurrah!--Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad
cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on
a plain--makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that
way; and there's danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a
hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he's going to Davy
Jones--all a rush down an endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this whale
carries the everlasting mail!"

But the monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he
tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew round
the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them;
while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would
soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they
caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at
last--owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-lined chocks of
the boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue--the
gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water, while the three
sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound,
for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of expending more
line, though the position was a little ticklish. But though boats have
been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this "holding on," as it
is called; this hooking up by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from
the back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan into soon rising
again to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril
of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is always the
best; for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken
whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the
enormous surface of him--in a full grown sperm whale something less than
2000 square feet--the pressure of the water is immense. We all know
what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even
here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale,
bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at
least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated
it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships, with all their guns,
and stores, and men on board.

As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down
into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any
sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths;
what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and
placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in
agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows.
Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan
was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and
to what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was
once so triumphantly said--"Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons?
or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot
hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as
straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble;
he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!" This the creature? this he? Oh!
that unfulfilments should follow the prophets. For with the strength
of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the
mountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod's fish-spears!

In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats
sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad
enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the
wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!

"Stand by, men; he stirs," cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly
vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by
magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every
oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in great part
from the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce
upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are
scared from it into the sea.

"Haul in! Haul in!" cried Starbuck again; "he's rising."

The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand's breadth
could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all
dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two
ship's lengths of the hunters.

His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land animals
there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins, whereby
when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off in
certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities
it is to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so
that when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly
drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial system; and when this is
heightened by the extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance
below the surface, his life may be said to pour from him in incessant
streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant
and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and
bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will
flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible
hills. Even now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously
drew over his swaying flukes, and the lances were darted into him,
they were followed by steady jets from the new made wound, which kept
continually playing, while the natural spout-hole in his head was only
at intervals, however rapid, sending its affrighted moisture into the
air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of him
had thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, was
untouched.

As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part of
his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly
revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were
beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the
noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's eyes
had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see.
But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his
blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the
gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the
solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.
Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially disclosed a strangely
discoloured bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel, low down on the
flank.

"A nice spot," cried Flask; "just let me prick him there once."

"Avast!" cried Starbuck, "there's no need of that!"

But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an
ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more than
sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with swift fury
blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying crews
all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat and marring the
bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he by
loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had
made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin,
then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up
the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most
piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water
is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled
melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the
ground--so the last long dying spout of the whale.

Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body
showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled. Immediately,
by Starbuck's orders, lines were secured to it at different points, so
that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken whale being suspended a
few inches beneath them by the cords. By very heedful management, when
the ship drew nigh, the whale was transferred to her side, and was
strongly secured there by the stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain
that unless artificially upheld, the body would at once sink to the
bottom.

It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade,
the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh,
on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of
harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales,
with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence of any
kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have been
some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for
the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a
lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron,
the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And
when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long before
America was discovered.

What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous
cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further
discoveries, by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways
to the sea, owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink.
However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to the
last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the ship
would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with the
body; then, when the command was given to break clear from it, such was
the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and
cables were fastened, that it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime
everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the
deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship
groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and
cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation.
In vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable
fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low
had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all
approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to
the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going over.

"Hold on, hold on, won't ye?" cried Stubb to the body, "don't be in such
a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do something or go
for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes, and run
one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains."

"Knife? Aye, aye," cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter's heavy
hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing
at the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were
given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific
snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the carcase sank.

Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm
Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately
accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great
buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the
surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and
broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their
bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that
this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so
sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it
is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with
noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of
life, with all their panting lard about them; even these brawny, buoyant
heroes do sometimes sink.

Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this
accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty
Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in
no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale;
his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this
incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are instances
where, after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale
again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this
is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious
magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship could
hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among
the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they
fasten buoys to him, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone
down, they know where to look for it when it shall have ascended again.

It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from
the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering
her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back,
belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of its
incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is so
similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful fishermen it is often
mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were now in
valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail,
made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to
leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.

Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.



CHAPTER 82. The Honour and Glory of Whaling.


There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true
method.

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up
to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its
great honourableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many
great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other
have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection
that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a
fraternity.

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and
to the eternal honour of our calling be it said, that the first whale
attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those
were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to
succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every one
knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda,
the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as
Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince
of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered
and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, rarely
achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this
Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt this
Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast,
in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton
of a whale, which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to
be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans
took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What
seems most singular and suggestively important in this story, is this:
it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda--indeed, by some supposed
to be indirectly derived from it--is that famous story of St. George and
the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many
old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and
often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a
dragon of the sea," saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale;
in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it
would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but
encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle
with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a
Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly
up to a whale.

Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though
the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely
represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted
on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance
of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists;
and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's whale might have
crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal
ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse;
bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible
with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to
hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself. In
fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will
fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by
name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and
both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or
fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even
a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we
harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order
of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that honourable
company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do with a
whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer with
disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we are
much better entitled to St. George's decoration than they.

Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long
remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that
antique Crockett and Kit Carson--that brawny doer of rejoicing good
deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether
that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere
appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed,
from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary
whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I
claim him for one of our clan.

But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of
Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more
ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly
they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the prophet?

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole
roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal
kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity in nothing
short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now
to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one
of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine
Vishnoo himself for our Lord;--Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten
earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale.
When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate
the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to
Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books,
whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before
beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained
something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these
Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became
incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths,
rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even
as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?

Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll
for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?



CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.


Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the
preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical
story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks
and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times,
equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the
dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those
traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.

One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's chief reason for questioning the Hebrew
story was this:--He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles,
embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented
Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head--a peculiarity only true
with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the
varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this
saying, "A penny roll would choke him"; his swallow is so very small.
But, to this, Bishop Jebb's anticipative answer is ready. It is not
necessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the
whale's belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And
this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the
Right Whale's mouth would accommodate a couple of whist-tables, and
comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have
ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right
Whale is toothless.

Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his
want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely in
reference to his incarcerated body and the whale's gastric juices. But
this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist
supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a
DEAD whale--even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned
their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them. Besides, it has
been divined by other continental commentators, that when Jonah was
thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his escape
to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a figure-head;
and, I would add, possibly called "The Whale," as some craft are
nowadays christened the "Shark," the "Gull," the "Eagle." Nor have there
been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned
in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver--an inflated bag
of wind--which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a
watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But
he had still another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I
remember right: Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean
Sea, and after three days he was vomited up somewhere within three days'
journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very much more than three
days' journey across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast.
How is that?

But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within that
short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him round by the
way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak of the passage through
the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another passage up the
Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would involve the complete
circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to speak of the Tigris
waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any whale to
swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape of Good Hope
at so early a day would wrest the honour of the discovery of that great
headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and so make
modern history a liar.

But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his
foolish pride of reason--a thing still more reprehensible in him, seeing
that he had but little learning except what he had picked up from the
sun and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and
abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a
Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah's going to Nineveh
via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal magnification of
the general miracle. And so it was. Besides, to this day, the highly
enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah. And
some three centuries ago, an English traveller in old Harris's Voyages,
speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honour of Jonah, in which Mosque was
a miraculous lamp that burnt without any oil.



CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling.


To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are
anointed; and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an
analogous operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it
to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly
be of no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and water are
hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to
make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in anointing
his boat, and one morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau
disappeared, took more than customary pains in that occupation; crawling
under its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in the
unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair from
the craft's bald keel. He seemed to be working in obedience to some
particular presentiment. Nor did it remain unwarranted by the event.

Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down to
them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered flight,
as of Cleopatra's barges from Actium.

Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb's was foremost. By great
exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but the
stricken whale, without at all sounding, still continued his horizontal
flight, with added fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the
planted iron must sooner or later inevitably extract it. It became
imperative to lance the flying whale, or be content to lose him. But
to haul the boat up to his flank was impossible, he swam so fast and
furious. What then remained?

Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and
countless subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced,
none exceed that fine manoeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small
sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts nothing like it. It
is only indispensable with an inveterate running whale; its grand
fact and feature is the wonderful distance to which the long lance is
accurately darted from a violently rocking, jerking boat, under extreme
headway. Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some ten or twelve
feet in length; the staff is much slighter than that of the harpoon,
and also of a lighter material--pine. It is furnished with a small rope
called a warp, of considerable length, by which it can be hauled back to
the hand after darting.

But before going further, it is important to mention here, that though
the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance, yet it
is seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently successful,
on account of the greater weight and inferior length of the harpoon as
compared with the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks. As a
general thing, therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before any
pitchpoling comes into play.

Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and
equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel
in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the
flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead.
Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its
length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers up
the coil of the warp in one hand, so as to secure its free end in his
grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then holding the lance full before
his waistband's middle, he levels it at the whale; when, covering
him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand, thereby
elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his
palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler,
balancing a long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless
impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming
distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale. Instead of
sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.

"That drove the spigot out of him!" cried Stubb. "'Tis July's immortal
Fourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were old
Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then,
Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we'd drink
round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew choice punch in the
spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff the
living stuff."

Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated,
the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful
leash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is
slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and
mutely watches the monster die.



CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.


That for six thousand years--and no one knows how many millions of ages
before--the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea,
and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so
many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back,
thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the
whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings--that all this should
be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter
minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D.
1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings
are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapour--this is surely a
noteworthy thing.

Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items
contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their
gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is
combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or a cod
might live a century, and never once raise its head above the surface.
But owing to his marked internal structure which gives him regular
lungs, like a human being's, the whale can only live by inhaling the
disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for
his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any degree
breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary attitude, the Sperm
Whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface; and
what is still more, his windpipe has no connexion with his mouth. No, he
breathes through his spiracle alone; and this is on the top of his head.

If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function
indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a
certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with the
blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I
shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific words.
Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in a man could be
aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils and not
fetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, he would then
live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is precisely the
case with the whale, who systematically lives, by intervals, his full
hour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing a single breath, or
so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air; for, remember, he has
no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and on each side of his spine
he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth of
vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are
completely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or more,
a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of vitality in
him, just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus
supply of drink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs.
The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable; and that the
supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true, seems the more
cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of
that leviathan in HAVING HIS SPOUTINGS OUT, as the fishermen phrase
it. This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the
Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform
with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and
jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he
rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to
a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so that
he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his regular
allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told, will he
finally go down to stay out his full term below. Remark, however, that
in different individuals these rates are different; but in any one
they are alike. Now, why should the whale thus insist upon having his
spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere
descending for good? How obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the
whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For
not by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing
a thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O
hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to thee!

In man, breathing is incessantly going on--one breath only serving
for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to
attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But the
Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.

It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole; if
it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water, then
I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell
seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at all
answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged
with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power of
smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout--whether it be water or
whether it be vapour--no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on
this head. Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper
olfactories. But what does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no
Cologne-water in the sea.

Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting
canal, and as that long canal--like the grand Erie Canal--is furnished
with a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the downward retention of
air or the upward exclusion of water, therefore the whale has no voice;
unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles,
he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say?
Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to
this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a
living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!

Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it
is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along,
horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little
to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down
in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether this
gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout of the
Sperm Whale is the mere vapour of the exhaled breath, or whether that
exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth, and
discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that the mouth indirectly
communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that this
is for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle. Because
the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be, when in feeding he
accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale's food is far beneath
the surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would. Besides, if
you regard him very closely, and time him with your watch, you will find
that when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods
of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration.

But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak out!
You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you not
tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to
settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the
knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand in
it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.

The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping
it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from it,
when, always, when you are close enough to a whale to get a close view
of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading
all around him. And if at such times you should think that you really
perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know that they are
not merely condensed from its vapour; or how do you know that they
are not those identical drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole
fissure, which is countersunk into the summit of the whale's head? For
even when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a calm, with
his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary's in the desert; even then,
the whale always carries a small basin of water on his head, as under
a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with
rain.

Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching the
precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be peering
into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to
this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when coming into
slight contact with the outer, vapoury shreds of the jet, which will
often happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from the acridness of
the thing so touching it. And I know one, who coming into still closer
contact with the spout, whether with some scientific object in view,
or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm.
Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is deemed poisonous; they try to
evade it. Another thing; I have heard it said, and I do not much doubt
it, that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes, it will blind you.
The wisest thing the investigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let
this deadly spout alone.

Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My
hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides
other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations
touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale;
I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed
fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other
whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am
convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as
Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes
up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep
thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the
curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected there,
a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my
head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought,
after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon;
this seems an additional argument for the above supposition.

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to
behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild
head overhung by a canopy of vapour, engendered by his incommunicable
contemplations, and that vapour--as you will sometimes see it--glorified
by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts.
For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate
vapour. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my
mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a
heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny;
but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts
of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this
combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who
regards them both with equal eye.



CHAPTER 86. The Tail.


Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope,
and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial, I
celebrate a tail.

Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale's tail to begin at that point of
the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises
upon its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet. The
compact round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat palms
or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in thickness.
At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly overlap, then sideways
recede from each other like wings, leaving a wide vacancy between. In
no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined than in
the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the
full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across.

The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut
into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:--upper,
middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are
long and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running
crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as
anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the student of old Roman
walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin
course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful
relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the
great strength of the masonry.

But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough,
the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of
muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins
and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and
largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluent
measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point.
Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it.

Nor does this--its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful
flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through
a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their most
appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony,
but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful,
strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that
all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved Hercules, and its
charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the
naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the
man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God
the Father in human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever
they may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled,
hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most
successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are of all
brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine
one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form
the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.

Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether
wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood it
be in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein no
fairy's arm can transcend it.

Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for
progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping;
Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.

First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in
a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never
wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the
whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled
forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this
which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster when
furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer by.

Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only
fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in his
conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In
striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the
blow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed
air, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke is then simply
irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can withstand it. Your only
salvation lies in eluding it; but if it comes sideways through the
opposing water, then partly owing to the light buoyancy of the whale
boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib or a dashed
plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the most
serious result. These submerged side blows are so often received in the
fishery, that they are accounted mere child's play. Some one strips off
a frock, and the hole is stopped.

Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the whale
the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this respect
there is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the
elephant's trunk. This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of
sweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft
slowness moves his immense flukes from side to side upon the surface
of the sea; and if he feel but a sailor's whisker, woe to that sailor,
whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch!
Had this tail any prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me of
Darmonodes' elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and with
low salutations presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed their
zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale does not
possess this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard of yet
another elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round his trunk
and extracted the dart.

Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the
middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence
of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a
hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of
his tail are flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the
thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would almost think a great
gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of vapour
from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that that was
the smoke from the touch-hole.

Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes
lie considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely
out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into
the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are
tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they
downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime BREACH--somewhere
else to be described--this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the
grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless
profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the
highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth
his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in
gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in
the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the
archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that
crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the east,
all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with
peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment
of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of
the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African
elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout
of all beings. For according to King Juba, the military elephants of
antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the
profoundest silence.

The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the
elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk
of the other are concerned, should not tend to place those two
opposite organs on an equality, much less the creatures to which they
respectively belong. For as the mightiest elephant is but a terrier
to Leviathan, so, compared with Leviathan's tail, his trunk is but the
stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant's trunk were as
the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush and crash
of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes, which in repeated instances have
one after the other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews
into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls.*


*Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale
and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the
elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to
the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of curious
similitude; among these is the spout. It is well known that the elephant
will often draw up water or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it,
jet it forth in a stream.


The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability
to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they
would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an
extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures,
that I have heard hunters who have declared them akin to Free-Mason
signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by these methods
intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wanting other
motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness, and
unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how I may,
then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know
not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more,
how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back
parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I
cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about
his face, I say again he has no face.



CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.


The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward from
the territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of all Asia.
In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of
Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, form a
vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia,
and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the thickly studded
oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced by several sally-ports
for the convenience of ships and whales; conspicuous among which are the
straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of Sunda, chiefly, vessels
bound to China from the west, emerge into the China seas.

Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing
midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green
promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little correspond
to the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire: and
considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks, and jewels,
and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of that oriental
sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of nature, that such
treasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least bear the
appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping
western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied
with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the
Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these
Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from
the endless procession of ships before the wind, which for centuries
past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra
and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east. But while
they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by no means renounce
their claim to more solid tribute.

Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among
the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the
vessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the
point of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they
have received at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of these
corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the present
day, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which, in
those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged.

With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these
straits; Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea, and
thence, cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented here and
there by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, and
gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whaling season there.
By these means, the circumnavigating Pequod would sweep almost all the
known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the world, previous to descending
upon the Line in the Pacific; where Ahab, though everywhere else foiled
in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle to Moby Dick, in the
sea he was most known to frequent; and at a season when he might most
reasonably be presumed to be haunting it.

But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does his crew
drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time, now,
the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs
no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the
whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be
transferred to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship carries
no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons and their wants. She has a
whole lake's contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with
utilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She
carries years' water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket water; which,
when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to
drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks, from
the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may
have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at a score
of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted
one grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like
themselves. So that did you carry them the news that another flood had
come; they would only answer--"Well, boys, here's the ark!"

Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western coast of
Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda; indeed, as most of
the ground, roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen as an
excellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained more
and more upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and
admonished to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs of the
land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils
the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was
descried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game
hereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when the
customary cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle of
singular magnificence saluted us.

But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity with which
of late they have been hunted over all four oceans, the Sperm Whales,
instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached companies, as in
former times, are now frequently met with in extensive herds, sometimes
embracing so great a multitude, that it would almost seem as if
numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and covenant for mutual
assistance and protection. To this aggregation of the Sperm Whale into
such immense caravans, may be imputed the circumstance that even in the
best cruising grounds, you may now sometimes sail for weeks and months
together, without being greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly
saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands.

Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and
forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon,
a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the
noon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right
Whale, which, dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like the cleft
drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting spout of the
Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist, continually
rising and falling away to leeward.

Seen from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill of
the sea, this host of vapoury spouts, individually curling up into the
air, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze, showed
like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis, descried
of a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.

As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains,
accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in
their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain;
even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through
the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle, and
swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.

Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers
handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads of their
yet suspended boats. If the wind only held, little doubt had they, that
chased through these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy
into the Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their
number. And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan, Moby
Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming, like the worshipped
white-elephant in the coronation procession of the Siamese! So with
stun-sail piled on stun-sail, we sailed along, driving these leviathans
before us; when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego was heard, loudly
directing attention to something in our wake.

Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in our rear.
It seemed formed of detached white vapours, rising and falling something
like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so completely come and
go; for they constantly hovered, without finally disappearing. Levelling
his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly revolved in his pivot-hole,
crying, "Aloft there, and rig whips and buckets to wet the
sails;--Malays, sir, and after us!"

As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should
fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot
pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay. But when the swift
Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was herself in hot chase; how very
kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her on to
her own chosen pursuit,--mere riding-whips and rowels to her, that they
were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the deck; in his
forward turn beholding the monsters he chased, and in the after one the
bloodthirsty pirates chasing him; some such fancy as the above seemed
his. And when he glanced upon the green walls of the watery defile in
which the ship was then sailing, and bethought him that through that
gate lay the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how that through that
same gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end;
and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates and
inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him on with their
curses;--when all these conceits had passed through his brain, Ahab's
brow was left gaunt and ribbed, like the black sand beach after some
stormy tide has been gnawing it, without being able to drag the firm
thing from its place.

But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and
when, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the
Pequod at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra
side, emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the
harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining
upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained
upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake of the whales, at
length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship neared them;
and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the boats. But
no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the Sperm
Whale, become notified of the three keels that were after them,--though
as yet a mile in their rear,--than they rallied again, and forming
in close ranks and battalions, so that their spouts all looked like
flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.

Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and
after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase,
when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating
token that they were now at last under the influence of that strange
perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive
it in the whale, they say he is gallied. The compact martial columns
in which they had been hitherto rapidly and steadily swimming, were now
broken up in one measureless rout; and like King Porus' elephants in the
Indian battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with consternation.
In all directions expanding in vast irregular circles, and aimlessly
swimming hither and thither, by their short thick spoutings, they
plainly betrayed their distraction of panic. This was still more
strangely evinced by those of their number, who, completely paralysed
as it were, helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the
sea. Had these Leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep, pursued over
the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not possibly have evinced
such excessive dismay. But this occasional timidity is characteristic
of almost all herding creatures. Though banding together in tens of
thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes of the West have fled before a
solitary horseman. Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded
together in the sheepfold of a theatre's pit, they will, at the
slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding,
trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best,
therefore, withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales
before us, for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not
infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,
yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced nor
retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is customary in
those cases, the boats at once separated, each making for some one
lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three minutes' time,
Queequeg's harpoon was flung; the stricken fish darted blinding spray
in our faces, and then running away with us like light, steered straight
for the heart of the herd. Though such a movement on the part of the
whale struck under such circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented; and
indeed is almost always more or less anticipated; yet does it present
one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. For as the swift
monster drags you deeper and deeper into the frantic shoal, you bid
adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a delirious throb.

As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of
speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we
thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by
the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was
like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer
through their complicated channels and straits, knowing not at what
moment it may be locked in and crushed.

But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering off
from this monster directly across our route in advance; now edging away
from that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while all the
time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand, pricking out of our
way whatever whales he could reach by short darts, for there was no time
to make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted
duty was now altogether dispensed with. They chiefly attended to the
shouting part of the business. "Out of the way, Commodore!" cried one,
to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the surface,
and for an instant threatened to swamp us. "Hard down with your tail,
there!" cried a second to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed
calmly cooling himself with his own fan-like extremity.

All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented
by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares of wood
of equal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they cross each
other's grain at right angles; a line of considerable length is then
attached to the middle of this block, and the other end of the line
being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly
among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For then, more whales
are close round you than you can possibly chase at one time. But sperm
whales are not every day encountered; while you may, then, you must
kill all you can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, you must wing
them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it
is, that at times like these the drugg, comes into requisition. Our boat
was furnished with three of them. The first and second were successfully
darted, and we saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered by the
enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg. They were cramped like
malefactors with the chain and ball. But upon flinging the third, in the
act of tossing overboard the clumsy wooden block, it caught under one
of the seats of the boat, and in an instant tore it out and carried it
away, dropping the oarsman in the boat's bottom as the seat slid from
under him. On both sides the sea came in at the wounded planks, but we
stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in, and so stopped the leaks for
the time.

It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were
it not that as we advanced into the herd, our whale's way greatly
diminished; moreover, that as we went still further and further from the
circumference of commotion, the direful disorders seemed waning. So that
when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing whale sideways
vanished; then, with the tapering force of his parting momentum, we
glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if
from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here
the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard
but not felt. In this central expanse the sea presented that smooth
satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced by the subtle moisture
thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now
in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every
commotion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of
the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight
or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of
horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic
circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle ones, and so have
gone round on their backs. Owing to the density of the crowd of reposing
whales, more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd, no
possible chance of escape was at present afforded us. We must watch for
a breach in the living wall that hemmed us in; the wall that had only
admitted us in order to shut us up. Keeping at the centre of the lake,
we were occasionally visited by small tame cows and calves; the women
and children of this routed host.

Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving
outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in
any one of those circles, the entire area at this juncture, embraced by
the whole multitude, must have contained at least two or three square
miles. At any rate--though indeed such a test at such a time might be
deceptive--spoutings might be discovered from our low boat that
seemed playing up almost from the rim of the horizon. I mention this
circumstance, because, as if the cows and calves had been purposely
locked up in this innermost fold; and as if the wide extent of the
herd had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause of its
stopping; or, possibly, being so young, unsophisticated, and every way
innocent and inexperienced; however it may have been, these smaller
whales--now and then visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the
lake--evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or else a still
becharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvel at. Like household
dogs they came snuffling round us, right up to our gunwales, and
touching them; till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly
domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched
their backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the
time refrained from darting it.

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still
stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended
in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the
whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to
become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth
exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly
and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different
lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still
spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;--even so did the
young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if
we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their
sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little
infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might
have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in
girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet
recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the
maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final
spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate
side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the
plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign
parts.

"Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; "him fast! him
fast!--Who line him! Who struck?--Two whale; one big, one little!"

"What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck.

"Look-e here," said Queequeg, pointing down.

As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of
fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows
the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the
air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame
Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam. Not
seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural line, with
the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen one, so that
the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas
seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan
amours in the deep.*


*The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but unlike
most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a gestation
which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a
time; though in some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and
Jacob:--a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously
situated, one on each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves
extend upwards from that. When by chance these precious parts in a
nursing whale are cut by the hunter's lance, the mother's pouring milk
and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The milk is very sweet
and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries.
When overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales salute MORE HOMINUM.


And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations
and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and
fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled
in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of
my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and
while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and
deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.

Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats,
still engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host; or
possibly carrying on the war within the first circle, where abundance of
room and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But the sight
of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to and fro
across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes. It is
sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful
and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or
maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handled
cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again.
A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned) in this part, but not
effectually, as it seemed, had broken away from the boat, carrying along
with him half of the harpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony of
the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the lone
mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay
wherever he went.

But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle
enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to
inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first the
intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we perceived that
by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this whale had
become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed; he had also run
away with the cutting-spade in him; and while the free end of the rope
attached to that weapon, had permanently caught in the coils of the
harpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose
from his flesh. So that tormented to madness, he was now churning
through the water, violently flailing with his flexible tail, and
tossing the keen spade about him, wounding and murdering his own
comrades.

This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake
began to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted
by half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly to
heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished;
in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central
circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was
departing. A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the
tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in
Spring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner centre,
as if to pile themselves up in one common mountain. Instantly Starbuck
and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck taking the stern.

"Oars! Oars!" he intensely whispered, seizing the helm--"gripe your
oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off,
you Queequeg--the whale there!--prick him!--hit him! Stand up--stand
up, and stay so! Spring, men--pull, men; never mind their backs--scrape
them!--scrape away!"

The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, leaving a
narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate endeavor
we at last shot into a temporary opening; then giving way rapidly,
and at the same time earnestly watching for another outlet. After many
similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last swiftly glided into what had
just been one of the outer circles, but now crossed by random whales,
all violently making for one centre. This lucky salvation was cheaply
purchased by the loss of Queequeg's hat, who, while standing in the bows
to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean from his head by
the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad flukes close
by.

Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon
resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having
clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their
onward flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless; but
the boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged whales
might be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one which Flask had
killed and waifed. The waif is a pennoned pole, two or three of which
are carried by every boat; and which, when additional game is at hand,
are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale, both to
mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior possession, should
the boats of any other ship draw near.

The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious
saying in the Fishery,--the more whales the less fish. Of all the
drugged whales only one was captured. The rest contrived to escape for
the time, but only to be taken, as will hereafter be seen, by some other
craft than the Pequod.



CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.


The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm
Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those
vast aggregations.

Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must
have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are
occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each.
Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts; those
composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but young
vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated.

In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a
male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm, evinces
his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of his
ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about
over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces
and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this Ottoman and
his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of the largest
leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not
more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They are
comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen
yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the
whole they are hereditarily entitled to EMBONPOINT.

It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent
ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in leisurely
search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time for the full flower
of the Equatorial feeding season, having just returned, perhaps, from
spending the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating summer of all
unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time they have lounged up and
down the promenade of the Equator awhile, they start for the Oriental
waters in anticipation of the cool season there, and so evade the other
excessive temperature of the year.

When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange
suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming
that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies,
with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away!
High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be
permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the
Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his bed;
for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the
most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales,
who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with
their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving
for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not
a few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters,--furrowed
heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and
dislocated mouths.

But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at
the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to watch
that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and
revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario,
like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines.
Granting other whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give
chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish
of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the
sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must
take care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help. For
like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my Lord
Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for the bower; and so,
being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the
world; every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as the ardour
of youth declines; as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends
her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated
Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens; our
Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life,
forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old
soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels saying his
prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his amorous errors.

Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so
is the lord and master of that school technically known as the
schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict character, however admirably
satirical, that after going to school himself, he should then go abroad
inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of it. His title,
schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from the name bestowed
upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that the man who first
thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of
Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that
famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was the nature of
those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils.

The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale
betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm
Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale--as a solitary Leviathan is
called--proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone,
he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to
wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is, though
she keeps so many moody secrets.

The schools composing none but young and vigorous males, previously
mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while
those female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or
forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious
of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter;
excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met,
and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.

The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like
a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness,
tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no
prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous
lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence though,
and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and separately go about in
quest of settlements, that is, harems.

Another point of difference between the male and female schools is
still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a
Forty-barrel-bull--poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike
a member of the harem school, and her companions swim around her with
every token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as
themselves to fall a prey.



CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.


The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter but one,
necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale
fishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.

It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company,
a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally killed
and captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised
many minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature. For
example,--after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale,
the body may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent storm; and
drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who, in a
calm, snugly tows it alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus
the most vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between
the fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, universal,
undisputed law applicable to all cases.

Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative
enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General in
A.D. 1695. But though no other nation has ever had any written whaling
law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and
lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse
comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of
the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's
Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne's farthing,
or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they.

I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.

II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.

But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable
brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to
expound it.

First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast,
when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all
controllable by the occupant or occupants,--a mast, an oar, a nine-inch
cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same.
Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, or any other
recognised symbol of possession; so long as the party waifing it plainly
evince their ability at any time to take it alongside, as well as their
intention so to do.

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen
themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks--the
Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright and
honourable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases,
where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim
possession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party. But
others are by no means so scrupulous.

Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated
in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of
a whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had
succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last, through peril of
their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat
itself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of another ship) came up
with the whale, struck, killed, seized, and finally appropriated it
before the very eyes of the plaintiffs. And when those defendants were
remonstrated with, their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs'
teeth, and assured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had done,
he would now retain their line, harpoons, and boat, which had remained
attached to the whale at the time of the seizure. Wherefore the
plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the value of their whale, line,
harpoons, and boat.

Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; Lord Ellenborough was
the judge. In the course of the defence, the witty Erskine went on
to illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con.
case, wherein a gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife's
viciousness, had at last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in
the course of years, repenting of that step, he instituted an action to
recover possession of her. Erskine was on the other side; and he
then supported it by saying, that though the gentleman had originally
harpooned the lady, and had once had her fast, and only by reason of the
great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last abandoned her; yet
abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish; and therefore
when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady then became that
subsequent gentleman's property, along with whatever harpoon might have
been found sticking in her.

Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the whale
and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other.

These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the very
learned Judge in set terms decided, to wit,--That as for the boat, he
awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it
to save their lives; but that with regard to the controverted whale,
harpoons, and line, they belonged to the defendants; the whale, because
it was a Loose-Fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons
and line because when the fish made off with them, it (the fish)
acquired a property in those articles; and hence anybody who afterwards
took the fish had a right to them. Now the defendants afterwards took
the fish; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs.

A common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge, might
possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the
matter, the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws
previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in
the above cited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish,
I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human
jurisprudence; for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture,
the Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the Philistines, has but two
props to stand on.

Is it not a saying in every one's mouth, Possession is half of the law:
that is, regardless of how the thing came into possession? But often
possession is the whole of the law. What are the sinews and souls of
Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession is
the whole of the law? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow's last
mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected villain's marble mansion
with a door-plate for a waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the
ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor Woebegone,
the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family from starvation;
what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop of
Savesoul's income of L100,000 seized from the scant bread and cheese
of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven
without any of Savesoul's help) what is that globular L100,000 but a
Fast-Fish? What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets
but Fast-Fish? What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor
Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother
Jonathan, is Texas but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these, is not
Possession the whole of the law?

But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable,
the kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is
internationally and universally applicable.

What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the
Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress?
What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India
to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All
Loose-Fish.

What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is
the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to
the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but
Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what
are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?



CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.


"De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam."
BRACTON, L. 3, C. 3.


Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with the
context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of
that land, the King, as Honourary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head,
and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division which,
in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is no intermediate
remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form, is to this day in
force in England; and as it offers in various respects a strange anomaly
touching the general law of Fast and Loose-Fish, it is here treated of
in a separate chapter, on the same courteous principle that prompts
the English railways to be at the expense of a separate car, specially
reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In the first place, in
curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned law is still in
force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance that happened within
the last two years.

It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some one
of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and
beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off from
the shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under the
jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden.
Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal
emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment
his. By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so.
Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his
perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of
them.

Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with their
trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled their fat
fish high and dry, promising themselves a good L150 from the precious
oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good
ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares; up
steps a very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, with
a copy of Blackstone under his arm; and laying it upon the whale's head,
he says--"Hands off! this fish, my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it
as the Lord Warden's." Upon this the poor mariners in their respectful
consternation--so truly English--knowing not what to say, fall to
vigorously scratching their heads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing
from the whale to the stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter,
or at all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy
of Blackstone. At length one of them, after long scratching about for
his ideas, made bold to speak,

"Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?"

"The Duke."

"But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?"

"It is his."

"We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is
all that to go to the Duke's benefit; we getting nothing at all for our
pains but our blisters?"

"It is his."

"Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of
getting a livelihood?"

"It is his."

"I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of
this whale."

"It is his."

"Won't the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?"

"It is his."

In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of
Wellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular
lights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be
deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman
of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to
take the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To
which my Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published)
that he had already done so, and received the money, and would be
obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend
gentleman) would decline meddling with other people's business. Is
this the still militant old man, standing at the corners of the three
kingdoms, on all hands coercing alms of beggars?

It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the
Duke to the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs
inquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested with
that right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives
us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs to
the King and Queen, "because of its superior excellence." And by the
soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in such
matters.

But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A reason
for that, ye lawyers!

In his treatise on "Queen-Gold," or Queen-pinmoney, an old King's Bench
author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: "Ye tail is ye Queen's,
that ye Queen's wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone." Now this
was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or
Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone
is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for
a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be
presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here.

There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers--the whale
and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and
nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary revenue.
I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by
inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same
way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head
peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be
humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there
seems a reason in all things, even in law.



CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.


"In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan,
insufferable fetor denying not inquiry." SIR T. BROWNE, V.E.


It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when we
were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapoury, mid-day sea, that the many
noses on the Pequod's deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the
three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was
smelt in the sea.

"I will bet something now," said Stubb, "that somewhere hereabouts are
some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day. I thought they
would keel up before long."

Presently, the vapours in advance slid aside; and there in the distance
lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be
alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed French colours from
his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and
hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the whale alongside
must be what the fishermen call a blasted whale, that is, a whale that
has died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an unappropriated corpse.
It may well be conceived, what an unsavory odor such a mass must
exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when the living are
incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded
by some, that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it.
Yet are there those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that
the oil obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and
by no means of the nature of attar-of-rose.

Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the Frenchman
had a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed even more
of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of
those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort
of prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies
almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless, in the
proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever turn
up his nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun blasted
whales in general.

The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Stubb vowed
he recognised his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that were
knotted round the tail of one of these whales.

"There's a pretty fellow, now," he banteringly laughed, standing in the
ship's bows, "there's a jackal for ye! I well know that these Crappoes
of Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering
their boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes,
and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes of
tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing that all the oil they
will get won't be enough to dip the Captain's wick into; aye, we all
know these things; but look ye, here's a Crappo that is content with our
leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean; aye, and is content too with
scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there. Poor
devil! I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let's make him a present
of a little oil for dear charity's sake. For what oil he'll get from
that drugged whale there, wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail; no, not
in a condemned cell. And as for the other whale, why, I'll agree to get
more oil by chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours, than
he'll get from that bundle of bones; though, now that I think of it, it
may contain something worth a good deal more than oil; yes, ambergris.
I wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It's worth trying. Yes,
I'm for it;" and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.

By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that whether
or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell, with no hope of
escaping except by its breezing up again. Issuing from the cabin, Stubb
now called his boat's crew, and pulled off for the stranger. Drawing
across her bow, he perceived that in accordance with the fanciful French
taste, the upper part of her stem-piece was carved in the likeness of a
huge drooping stalk, was painted green, and for thorns had copper
spikes projecting from it here and there; the whole terminating in a
symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red colour. Upon her head boards, in
large gilt letters, he read "Bouton de Rose,"--Rose-button, or Rose-bud;
and this was the romantic name of this aromatic ship.

Though Stubb did not understand the BOUTON part of the inscription, yet
the word ROSE, and the bulbous figure-head put together, sufficiently
explained the whole to him.

"A wooden rose-bud, eh?" he cried with his hand to his nose, "that will
do very well; but how like all creation it smells!"

Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck, he
had to pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come close to
the blasted whale; and so talk over it.

Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he
bawled--"Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses that
speak English?"

"Yes," rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who turned out to be
the chief-mate.

"Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the White Whale?"

"WHAT whale?"

"The WHITE Whale--a Sperm Whale--Moby Dick, have ye seen him?

"Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale--no."

"Very good, then; good bye now, and I'll call again in a minute."

Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab leaning
over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his two hands
into a trumpet and shouted--"No, Sir! No!" Upon which Ahab retired, and
Stubb returned to the Frenchman.

He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the
chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of
bag.

"What's the matter with your nose, there?" said Stubb. "Broke it?"

"I wish it was broken, or that I didn't have any nose at all!" answered
the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relish the job he was at very
much. "But what are you holding YOURS for?"

"Oh, nothing! It's a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, ain't it?
Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies, will ye,
Bouton-de-Rose?"

"What in the devil's name do you want here?" roared the Guernseyman,
flying into a sudden passion.

"Oh! keep cool--cool? yes, that's the word! why don't you pack those
whales in ice while you're working at 'em? But joking aside, though; do
you know, Rose-bud, that it's all nonsense trying to get any oil out of
such whales? As for that dried up one, there, he hasn't a gill in his
whole carcase."

"I know that well enough; but, d'ye see, the Captain here won't believe
it; this is his first voyage; he was a Cologne manufacturer before. But
come aboard, and mayhap he'll believe you, if he won't me; and so I'll
get out of this dirty scrape."

"Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow," rejoined Stubb,
and with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer scene presented
itself. The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted, were getting the
heavy tackles in readiness for the whales. But they worked rather slow
and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good humor. All their
noses upwardly projected from their faces like so many jib-booms.
Now and then pairs of them would drop their work, and run up to the
mast-head to get some fresh air. Some thinking they would catch the
plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held it to their
nostrils. Others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short
off at the bowl, were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so that it
constantly filled their olfactories.

Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding from
the Captain's round-house abaft; and looking in that direction saw a
fiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar from within.
This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrating
against the proceedings of the day, had betaken himself to the Captain's
round-house (CABINET he called it) to avoid the pest; but still, could
not help yelling out his entreaties and indignations at times.

Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the
Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate
expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus,
who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle.
Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man
had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore
held his peace on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and
confidential with him, so that the two quickly concocted a little plan
for both circumventing and satirizing the Captain, without his at all
dreaming of distrusting their sincerity. According to this little plan
of theirs, the Guernsey-man, under cover of an interpreter's office, was
to tell the Captain what he pleased, but as coming from Stubb; and as
for Stubb, he was to utter any nonsense that should come uppermost in
him during the interview.

By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He was a
small and dark, but rather delicate looking man for a sea-captain, with
large whiskers and moustache, however; and wore a red cotton velvet vest
with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb was now politely
introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at once ostentatiously put on the
aspect of interpreting between them.

"What shall I say to him first?" said he.

"Why," said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals, "you
may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me,
though I don't pretend to be a judge."

"He says, Monsieur," said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to his
captain, "that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain
and chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever caught from a
blasted whale they had brought alongside."

Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.

"What now?" said the Guernsey-man to Stubb.

"Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him
carefully, I'm quite certain that he's no more fit to command a
whale-ship than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he's a
baboon."

"He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one, is
far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he conjures us,
as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish."

Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his
crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast loose
the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.

"What now?" said the Guernsey-man, when the Captain had returned to
them.

"Why, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him now that--that--in
fact, tell him I've diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhaps somebody
else."

"He says, Monsieur, that he's very happy to have been of any service to
us."

Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties
(meaning himself and mate) and concluded by inviting Stubb down into his
cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux.

"He wants you to take a glass of wine with him," said the interpreter.

"Thank him heartily; but tell him it's against my principles to drink
with the man I've diddled. In fact, tell him I must go."

"He says, Monsieur, that his principles won't admit of his drinking; but
that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then Monsieur had
best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these whales, for
it's so calm they won't drift."

By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into his boat, hailed
the Guernsey-man to this effect,--that having a long tow-line in his
boat, he would do what he could to help them, by pulling out the lighter
whale of the two from the ship's side. While the Frenchman's boats,
then, were engaged in towing the ship one way, Stubb benevolently towed
away at his whale the other way, ostentatiously slacking out a most
unusually long tow-line.

Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the whale;
hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance, while the
Pequod slid in between him and Stubb's whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly
pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give notice of
his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous
cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an excavation in the
body, a little behind the side fin. You would almost have thought he was
digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struck
against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old Roman tiles and
pottery buried in fat English loam. His boat's crew were all in high
excitement, eagerly helping their chief, and looking as anxious as
gold-hunters.

And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and
screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning
to look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when
suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a faint
stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells without
being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into and then along with
another, without at all blending with it for a time.

"I have it, I have it," cried Stubb, with delight, striking something in
the subterranean regions, "a purse! a purse!"

Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls
of something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old
cheese; very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with
your thumb; it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour. And this, good
friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist.
Some six handfuls were obtained; but more was unavoidably lost in the
sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured were it not for
impatient Ahab's loud command to Stubb to desist, and come on board,
else the ship would bid them good bye.



CHAPTER 92. Ambergris.


Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as
an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain
Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that
subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day,
the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem
to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for
grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though
at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland
soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea. Besides,
amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance, used for
mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft,
waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in
perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum.
The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same
purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine
merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.

Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale
themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick
whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and
by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such
a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four
boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as
laborers do in blasting rocks.

I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain
hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors'
trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing
more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.

Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be
found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that
saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption;
how that we are sown in dishonour, but raised in glory. And likewise
call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh
the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of
ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the
worst.

I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot,
owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen,
and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be
considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of
the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous
aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout
a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They
hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma
originate?

I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the
Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because
those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as
the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in
small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and carry
it home in that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas,
and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding
any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold,
and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a
savor is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an
old city grave-yard, for the foundations of a Lying-in-Hospital.

I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be
likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former
times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which
latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great
work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer,
fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a
place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without
being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of
furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full
operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But all this is
quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four
years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not,
perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in the
state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that
living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by
no means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the
people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by
the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant,
when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance
of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the
open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water
dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a
warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance,
considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous elephant, with
jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian
town to do honour to Alexander the Great?



CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.


It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most
significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew; an
event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes
madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying
prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own.

Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. Some
few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work
the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing,
these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats'
crews. But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous
wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper. It
was so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by
abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember
his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.

In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony and a
white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour, driven in
one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and
torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom
very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to
his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with
finer, freer relish than any other race. For blacks, the year's calendar
should show naught but three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and
New Year's Days. Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was
brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous
ebony, panelled in king's cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all life's
peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he
had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his
brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily
subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by
strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the
natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut,
he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green; and at
melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon
into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the clear air of day,
suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop
will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you
the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy
ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural
gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then
the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies,
looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell. But let us to
the story.

It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's after-oarsman
chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed;
and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.

The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness;
but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and
therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing
him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness
to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.

Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as
the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which
happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat. The
involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in
hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale
line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as
to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water. That
instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly
straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks
of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken
several turns around his chest and neck.

Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He
hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath,
he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb,
exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?" Meantime Pip's blue, choked face
plainly looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash. In less than
half a minute, this entire thing happened.

"Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was
saved.

So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed
by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these
irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like,
but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done,
unofficially gave him much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never
jump from a boat, Pip, except--but all the rest was indefinite, as the
soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, STICK TO THE BOAT, is your
true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when LEAP FROM
THE BOAT, is still better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he
should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving
him too wide a margin to jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped
all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, "Stick to the boat,
Pip, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. We
can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for
thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and
don't jump any more." Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that
though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which
propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It was
under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this time
he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale started to
run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller's trunk.
Alas! Stubb was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful, bounteous,
blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away,
all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater's skin hammered out to the
extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip's ebon head showed
like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly
astern. Stubb's inexorable back was turned upon him; and the whale was
winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between
Pip and Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his
crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though
the loftiest and the brightest.

Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the
practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful
lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the
middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how
when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea--mark how closely they
hug their ship and only coast along her sides.

But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No; he
did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake,
and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very
quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards
oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested
by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances not
unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so
called, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to
military navies and armies.

But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly
spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and
Stubb's boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent
upon his fish, that Pip's ringed horizon began to expand around him
miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but
from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at
least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body
up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though.
Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of
the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;
and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the
joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,
God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters
heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the
loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's
insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man
comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and
frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his
God.

For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that
fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what
like abandonment befell myself.



CHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.


That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to
the Pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations
previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of
the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.

While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed
in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and
when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated
ere going to the try-works, of which anon.

It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several
others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I found
it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the
liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid.
A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this sperm was
such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a
softener! such a delicious molifier! After having my hands in it for
only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to
serpentine and spiralise.

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter
exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under
indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among
those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within
the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their
opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that
uncontaminated aroma,--literally and truly, like the smell of spring
violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky
meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible
sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit
the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying
the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from
all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm
till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a
strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly
squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the
gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving
feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually
squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as
much as to say,--Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish
any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come;
let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into
each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and
sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by
many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases
man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable
felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in
the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the
country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case
eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of
angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things
akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the
try-works.

First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering
part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It
is tough with congealed tendons--a wad of muscle--but still contains
some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first
cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like
blocks of Berkshire marble.

Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the
whale's flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and
often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is
a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name
imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked
snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and
purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason,
it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole
behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive
a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted,
supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison
season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an
unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.

There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in
the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling
adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation
original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance.
It is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the
tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting.
I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case,
coalescing.

Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but
sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the
dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland
or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior
souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.

Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's vocabulary.
But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's nipper is
a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of
Leviathan's tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is
about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the
oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless
blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.

But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at once
to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its inmates.
This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the
blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper
time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a scene of
terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one side, lit by a dull
lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. They generally
go in pairs,--a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. The whaling-pike is
similar to a frigate's boarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is
something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a
sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship
pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet
itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This
spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless;
the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from
him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his
assistants', would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among
veteran blubber-room men.



CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.


Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this
post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the
windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small
curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen
there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous
cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower
jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so
surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,--longer than
a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black
as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or,
rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that found in
the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for worshipping which,
King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it
for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th
chapter of the First Book of Kings.

Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and assisted
by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners call it,
and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier
carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the forecastle
deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an
African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside
out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to
double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging,
to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some three feet of it,
towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes
at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer
now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.
Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately
protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.

That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the
pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted
endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into
which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator's
desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent
on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric, what a lad for a
Pope were this mincer!*


*Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates
to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as
thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of
boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably
increased, besides perhaps improving it in quality.



CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.


Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished
by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the most solid
masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship.
It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to her
planks.

The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most
roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength,
fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and
mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The
foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly
secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all
sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased
with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened
hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in
number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When not in use, they are
kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone
and sand, till they shine within like silver punch-bowls. During the
night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil
themselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them--one
man in each pot, side by side--many confidential communications
are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound
mathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod,
with the soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first
indirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies
gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend from
any point in precisely the same time.

Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare
masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of
the furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted
with heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented
from communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir
extending under the entire inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel
inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished with water as
fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open direct
from the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment.

It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's try-works were
first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee
the business.

"All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the
works." This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting his
shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said that
in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a
time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick
ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the
crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains
considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames.
Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once
ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.
Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to
inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in
it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such
as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left
wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the
carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean
darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce
flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and
illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek
fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to
some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the
bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad
sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and
folded them in conflagrations.

The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth
in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the
pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge pronged
poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or
stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out
of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen
heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil,
which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth
of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the
windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not
otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their
eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all
begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting
barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in
the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other
their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth;
as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the
flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers
wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the
wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and
yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness
of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in
her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing
Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning
a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the
material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.

So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently
guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval,
in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the
ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before
me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred
visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable
drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm.

But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable)
thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was
horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote
my side, which leaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails,
just beginning to shake in the wind; I thought my eyes were open; I
was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically
stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all this, I could see
no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed but a minute since I
had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it.
Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by
flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift,
rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as
rushing from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered feeling, as of
death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with
the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way,
inverted. My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief
sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship's stern, with
my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I faced back, just
in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, and very
probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief from this
unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of being
brought by the lee!

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy
hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first
hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its
redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun,
the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking
flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the
glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp--all others but liars!

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's
accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of
deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean,
which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this
earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow
in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped. With
books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the
truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered
steel of woe. "All is vanity." ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold
of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and
jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of
operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all
of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as
passing wise, and therefore jolly;--not that man is fitted to sit
down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably
wondrous Solomon.

But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way
of understanding shall remain" (I.E., even while living) "in the
congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it
invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom
that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill
eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges,
and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces.
And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the
mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still
higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.



CHAPTER 97. The Lamp.


Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the Pequod's
forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single
moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some
illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay
in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a
score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.

In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of
queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in
darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he
seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an
Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night
the ship's black hull still houses an illumination.

See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of
lamps--often but old bottles and vials, though--to the copper cooler at
the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He
burns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore,
unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral
contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He
goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and
genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own
supper of game.



CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.


Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off
descried from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors, and
slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside
and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman of
old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great padded
surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due time, he
is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his
spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through the fire;--but now it
remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the description by
rehearsing--singing, if I may--the romantic proceeding of decanting off
his oil into the casks and striking them down into the hold, where
once again leviathan returns to his native profundities, sliding along
beneath the surface as before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow.

While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the
six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling
this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed
round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot
across the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at last
man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops, rap,
rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, EX OFFICIO,
every sailor is a cooper.

At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great
hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and down
go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches are
replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.

In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable
incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream with
freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of
the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as
in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the
bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire
ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is
deafening.

But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this
self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works,
you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a
most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses
a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the decks never
look so white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides,
from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent lye is
readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale
remains clinging to the side, that lye quickly exterminates it. Hands
go diligently along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags
restore them to their full tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower
rigging. All the numerous implements which have been in use are likewise
faithfully cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed
upon the try-works, completely hiding the pots; every cask is out of
sight; all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined
and simultaneous industry of almost the entire ship's company, the
whole of this conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew
themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to
toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as
bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.

Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and
humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;
propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not
to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to
such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short
of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and
bring us napkins!

But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent
on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again
soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot
somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest
uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through
for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their
wrists with all day rowing on the Line,--they only step to the deck to
carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea,
and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined
fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the
heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the
ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor
fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by
the cry of "There she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale,
and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this
is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long
toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable
sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its
defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul;
hardly is this done, when--THERE SHE BLOWS!--the ghost is spouted up,
and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's
old routine again.

Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two
thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with
thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage--and, foolish as I am, taught
thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!



CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.


Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck,
taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but
in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been
added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood,
he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely
eyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the
binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass,
that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his
purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast,
then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin
there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed
with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.

But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly
attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as
though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in
some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some
certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little
worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by
the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in
the Milky Way.

Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of the
heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands, the
head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst all
the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, yet,
untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its Quito
glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed
by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick
darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every
sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was
set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton
in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white
whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by
night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever
live to spend it.

Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun
and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun's disks
and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are in
luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to
derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by passing through
those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.

It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example
of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL
ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the
middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it;
and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that
knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three
Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a
crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned
zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the
keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.

Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now
pausing.

"There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and
all other grand and lofty things; look here,--three peaks as proud as
Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the
courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all
are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe,
which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but
mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those
who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now
this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign
of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a
former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in
throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be
it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then."

"No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws must
have left their mouldings there since yesterday," murmured Starbuck
to himself, leaning against the bulwarks. "The old man seems to read
Belshazzar's awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly.
He goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three mighty,
heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint
earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over
all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a
hope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil;
but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer.
Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain
snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain! This coin
speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. I will quit it,
lest Truth shake me falsely."

"There now's the old Mogul," soliloquized Stubb by the try-works, "he's
been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with
faces which I should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long.
And all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I have it now on
Negro Hill or in Corlaer's Hook, I'd not look at it very long ere
spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I regard this as
queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings; your doubloons
of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, your
doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; with plenty of gold
moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter joes. What
then should there be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing
wonderful? By Golconda! let me read it once. Halloa! here's signs and
wonders truly! That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the
zodiac, and what my almanac below calls ditto. I'll get the almanac and
as I have heard devils can be raised with Daboll's arithmetic, I'll try
my hand at raising a meaning out of these queer curvicues here with
the Massachusetts calendar. Here's the book. Let's see now. Signs and
wonders; and the sun, he's always among 'em. Hem, hem, hem; here they
are--here they go--all alive:--Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull
and Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he
wheels among 'em. Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the threshold
between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there;
the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the
bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts. That's my
small experience, so far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch's
navigator, and Daboll's arithmetic go. Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if
there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders! There's
a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark! By Jove, I have it! Look you,
Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter;
and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To
begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous dog, he begets us; then,
Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the
Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes
Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo,
a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly
dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our
first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes
Libra, or the Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we
are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the
Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang
come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing
himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the
battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing,
and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours
out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the
Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the
sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and
hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and
so, alow here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye! Adieu,
Doubloon! But stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round the
try-works, now, and let's hear what he'll have to say. There; he's
before it; he'll out with something presently. So, so; he's beginning."

"I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises
a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what's all this
staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true; and at
two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won't smoke
dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here's nine hundred and
sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em out."

"Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a
foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort
of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman--the old
hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea. He
luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the other side
of the mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and now he's
back again; what does that mean? Hark! he's muttering--voice like an old
worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!"

"If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when
the sun stands in some one of these signs. I've studied signs, and know
their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the old witch
in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe
sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what's the
horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign--the roaring and
devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee."

"There's another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men
in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg--all
tattooing--looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the
Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone;
thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I
suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the back country.
And by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of his thigh--I
guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don't know what to make
of the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers.
But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out
of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual. What does he
say, with that look of his? Ah, only makes a sign to the sign and bows
himself; there is a sun on the coin--fire worshipper, depend upon it.
Ho! more and more. This way comes Pip--poor boy! would he had died,
or I; he's half horrible to me. He too has been watching all of these
interpreters--myself included--and look now, he comes to read, with that
unearthly idiot face. Stand away again and hear him. Hark!"

"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."

"Upon my soul, he's been studying Murray's Grammar! Improving his mind,
poor fellow! But what's that he says now--hist!"

"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."

"Why, he's getting it by heart--hist! again."

"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."

"Well, that's funny."

"And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a crow,
especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw!
caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow? There he
stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked
into the sleeves of an old jacket."

"Wonder if he means me?--complimentary!--poor lad!--I could go hang
myself. Any way, for the present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity. I can stand
the rest, for they have plain wits; but he's too crazy-witty for my
sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering."

"Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire
to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what's the consequence? Then
again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught's nailed to
the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab!
the White Whale; he'll nail ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in old
Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver ring grown
over in it; some old darkey's wedding ring. How did it get there? And
so they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish up this old
mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the
shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious, gold! the green
miser'll hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes 'mong the worlds
blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey,
hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!"



CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm.

The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.


"Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?"

So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours, bearing
down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his
hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger
captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow. He was
a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or
thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in
festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed
behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar's surcoat.

"Hast seen the White Whale!"

"See you this?" and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it,
he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head
like a mallet.

"Man my boat!" cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near
him--"Stand by to lower!"

In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his
crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger.
But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the
moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never
once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was
always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to
the Pequod, and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other
vessel at a moment's warning. Now, it is no very easy matter
for anybody--except those who are almost hourly used to it, like
whalemen--to clamber up a ship's side from a boat on the open sea; for
the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks, and
then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. So, deprived
of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied
with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced to a
clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height
he could hardly hope to attain.

It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward
circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his
luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And
in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the
two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the
perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a
pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem
to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to
use their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute,
because the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood,
cried out, "I see, I see!--avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing
over the cutting-tackle."

As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two
previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive curved
blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This
was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his
solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the
fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the
word, held himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his
own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of
the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and
gently landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust
forth in welcome, the other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his
ivory leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades)
cried out in his walrus way, "Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones
together!--an arm and a leg!--an arm that never can shrink, d'ye
see; and a leg that never can run. Where did'st thou see the White
Whale?--how long ago?"

"The White Whale," said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm towards
the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a
telescope; "there I saw him, on the Line, last season."

"And he took that arm off, did he?" asked Ahab, now sliding down from
the capstan, and resting on the Englishman's shoulder, as he did so.

"Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?"

"Spin me the yarn," said Ahab; "how was it?"

"It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,"
began the Englishman. "I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time.
Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat
fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went
milling and milling round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish,
by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches
from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white
head and hump, all crows' feet and wrinkles."

"It was he, it was he!" cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended
breath.

"And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin."

"Aye, aye--they were mine--MY irons," cried Ahab, exultingly--"but on!"

"Give me a chance, then," said the Englishman, good-humoredly. "Well,
this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam
into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!

"Aye, I see!--wanted to part it; free the fast-fish--an old trick--I
know him."

"How it was exactly," continued the one-armed commander, "I do not know;
but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow;
but we didn't know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the
line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other whale's;
that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters stood, and
what a noble great whale it was--the noblest and biggest I ever saw,
sir, in my life--I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling rage
he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or
the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat's
crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped
into my first mate's boat--Mr. Mounttop's here (by the way,
Captain--Mounttop; Mounttop--the captain);--as I was saying, I jumped
into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale
with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old
great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir--hearts and souls
alive, man--the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat--both
eyes out--all befogged and bedeadened with black foam--the whale's tail
looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble
steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, with
a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after the
second iron, to toss it overboard--down comes the tail like a Lima
tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and,
flukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was
all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I seized
hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that
like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same
instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like a
flash; and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near me
caught me here" (clapping his hand just below his shoulder); "yes,
caught me just here, I say, and bore me down to Hell's flames, I was
thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the good God, the barb ript
its way along the flesh--clear along the whole length of my arm--came
out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;--and that gentleman there will tell
you the rest (by the way, captain--Dr. Bunger, ship's surgeon: Bunger,
my lad,--the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the yarn."

The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all the
time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote his
gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but sober
one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched
trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between a
marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other,
occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two
crippled captains. But, at his superior's introduction of him to Ahab,
he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding.

"It was a shocking bad wound," began the whale-surgeon; "and, taking my
advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy--"

"Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship," interrupted the one-armed
captain, addressing Ahab; "go on, boy."

"Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot
weather there on the Line. But it was no use--I did all I could; sat up
with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet--"

"Oh, very severe!" chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly altering
his voice, "Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he
couldn't see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seas
over, about three o'clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up with
me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great watcher, and very
dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why
don't ye? You know you're a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead,
boy, I'd rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other man."

"My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir"--said the
imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab--"is apt to
be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort. But
I may as well say--en passant, as the French remark--that I myself--that
is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy--am a strict total
abstinence man; I never drink--"

"Water!" cried the captain; "he never drinks it; it's a sort of fits to
him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on--go on with
the arm story."

"Yes, I may as well," said the surgeon, coolly. "I was about observing,
sir, before Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my
best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the
truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more
than two feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead line.
In short, it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came.
But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is
against all rule"--pointing at it with the marlingspike--"that is the
captain's work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had
that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one's brains
out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical
passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir"--removing his hat, and
brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull,
but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever
having been a wound--"Well, the captain there will tell you how that
came here; he knows."

"No, I don't," said the captain, "but his mother did; he was born with
it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you--you Bunger! was there ever such another
Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in
pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal."

"What became of the White Whale?" now cried Ahab, who thus far had been
impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen.

"Oh!" cried the one-armed captain, "oh, yes! Well; after he sounded,
we didn't see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I
didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till
some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby
Dick--as some call him--and then I knew it was he."

"Did'st thou cross his wake again?"

"Twice."

"But could not fasten?"

"Didn't want to try to: ain't one limb enough? What should I do without
this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he
swallows."

"Well, then," interrupted Bunger, "give him your left arm for bait to
get the right. Do you know, gentlemen"--very gravely and mathematically
bowing to each Captain in succession--"Do you know, gentlemen, that the
digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine
Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest
even a man's arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the
White Whale's malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means
to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But
sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine
in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let
one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth
or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks,
d'ye see. No possible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully
incorporate it into his general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if
you are quick enough about it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for the
sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to the other, why in that
case the arm is yours; only let the whale have another chance at you
shortly, that's all."

"No, thank ye, Bunger," said the English Captain, "he's welcome to the
arm he has, since I can't help it, and didn't know him then; but not to
another one. No more White Whales for me; I've lowered for him once, and
that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know
that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye,
he's best let alone; don't you think so, Captain?"--glancing at the
ivory leg.

"He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let
alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He's all a
magnet! How long since thou saw'st him last? Which way heading?"

"Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend's," cried Bunger, stoopingly
walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; "this man's
blood--bring the thermometer!--it's at the boiling point!--his pulse
makes these planks beat!--sir!"--taking a lancet from his pocket, and
drawing near to Ahab's arm.

"Avast!" roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks--"Man the boat!
Which way heading?"

"Good God!" cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put.
"What's the matter? He was heading east, I think.--Is your Captain
crazy?" whispering Fedallah.

But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to
take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle
towards him, commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower.

In a moment he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men
were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him.
With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own,
Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.



CHAPTER 101. The Decanter.


Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that
she hailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby,
merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of
Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman's opinion, comes not
far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point
of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our
Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous
fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted
out the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale;
though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant
Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets
pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic: not
elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were
the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the great Sperm
Whale; and that for half a century they were the only people of the
whole globe who so harpooned him.

In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,
and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape
Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any
sort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one;
and returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm, the
Amelia's example was soon followed by other ships, English and American,
and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were thrown open.
But not content with this good deed, the indefatigable house again
bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons--how many, their mother only
knows--and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I think, at their
expense, the British government was induced to send the sloop-of-war
Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded
by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and
did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In
1819, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to
go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship--well
called the "Syren"--made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus
that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known.
The Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a
Nantucketer.

All honour to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to
the present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have
slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world.

The ship named after him was worthy of the honour, being a very fast
sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight
somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the
forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps--every
soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine
gam I had--long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his
ivory heel--it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that
ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever
lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it
at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it's
squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands--visitors and all--were
called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each
other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our
jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the
howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts
did not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that we
had to pass the flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting down
the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it to my
taste.

The beef was fine--tough, but with body in it. They said it was
bull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for
certain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial,
symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that you
could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were swallowed.
If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching out
of you like billiard-balls. The bread--but that couldn't be helped;
besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread contained the
only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it
was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all
in all, taking her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the
cook's boilers, including his own live parchment boilers; fore and aft,
I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty;
fine flip and strong; crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to
hat-band.

But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other
English whalers I know of--not all though--were such famous, hospitable
ships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the
joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing?
I will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers
is matter for historical research. Nor have I been at all sparing of
historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.

The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders,
Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant
in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions,
touching plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English
merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence, in
the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normal and natural,
but incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have some special
origin, which is here pointed out, and will be still further elucidated.

During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an
ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I
knew must be about whalers. The title was, "Dan Coopman," wherefore I
concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam
cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was
reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one
"Fitz Swackhammer." But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man,
professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus and
St. Pott's, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box
of sperm candles for his trouble--this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he
spied the book, assured me that "Dan Coopman" did not mean "The Cooper,"
but "The Merchant." In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book
treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other subjects, contained
a very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in this chapter it
was, headed, "Smeer," or "Fat," that I found a long detailed list of the
outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from
which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:

400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock
fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins
of butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese
(probably an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of
beer.

Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in
the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes,
barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.

At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all
this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were
incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic
application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my
own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by
every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen
whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and
Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their
naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the
nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game
in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country
where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.

The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as those
polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that
climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen,
including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not much
exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet
of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I say,
we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks'
allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin.
Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might
fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in
a boat's head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem
somewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But
this was very far North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with
the constitution; upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would
be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his
boat; and grievous loss might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford.

But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers
of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English
whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they, when
cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the
world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the
decanter.



CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.


Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly
dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail
upon some few interior structural features. But to a large and thorough
sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still
further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters,
and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost
bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his
unconditional skeleton.

But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the
fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the
whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures
on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a
specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can you land
a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook dishes a
roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been,
Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone;
the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters,
ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of
leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and
cheeseries in his bowels.

I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far
beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed
with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged
to, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his
poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the
heads of the lances. Think you I let that chance go, without using my
boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the
contents of that young cub?

And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their
gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted
to my late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides.
For being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey
of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with
the lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side
glen not very far distant from what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his
capital.

Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted
with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought
together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his
people could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices,
chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes;
and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the
wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.

Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an
unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his
head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings
seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped of
its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun,
then the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a
grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.

The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved with
Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests
kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head
again sent forth its vapoury spout; while, suspended from a bough, the
terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung
sword that so affrighted Damocles.

It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy
Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the
industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous carpet
on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and
the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden
branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying
air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the
leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied
verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!--pause!--one word!--whither
flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless
toilings? Speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!--but one single word with
thee! Nay--the shuttle flies--the figures float from forth the loom; the
freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves;
and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and
by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only
when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through
it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that
are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly
heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby
have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in
all this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be
overheard afar.

Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the
great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging--a gigantic idler! Yet,
as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around
him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven
over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but
himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim
god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.

Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the
skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real
jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as
an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests
should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced
before this skeleton--brushed the vines aside--broke through the
ribs--and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid
its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbours. But soon my line was
out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered.
I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.

Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the skeleton.
From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the
altitude of the final rib, "How now!" they shouted; "Dar'st thou measure
this our god! That's for us." "Aye, priests--well, how long do ye make
him, then?" But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them, concerning
feet and inches; they cracked each other's sconces with their
yard-sticks--the great skull echoed--and seizing that lucky chance, I
quickly concluded my own admeasurements.

These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be
it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied
measurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can
refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell
me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where
they have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, I
have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have
what the proprietors call "the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or
River Whale in the United States." Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire,
England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable has
in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size,
by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's.

In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons
belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar
grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir
Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir
Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a
great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony
cavities--spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan--and swing all day
upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and
shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of
keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at
the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo
in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view
from his forehead.

The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied
verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild
wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving
such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished
the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was
then composing--at least, what untattooed parts might remain--I did not
trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all
enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.



CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton.


In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain
statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we
are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.

According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base
upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of seventy tons for the largest
sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful
calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between
eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty
feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least
ninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would
considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one
thousand one hundred inhabitants.

Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this
leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman's imagination?

Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole,
jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now
simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his
unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large
a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far the
most complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated concerning it in
this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your mind, or under your
arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete notion of the
general structure we are about to view.

In length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two
Feet; so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have
been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one
fifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet,
his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of
plain back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, for something less than a
third of its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once
enclosed his vitals.

To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine,
extending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled
the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty
of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the
time, but a long, disconnected timber.

The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck,
was nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each
successively longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one
of the middle ribs, which measured eight feet and some inches. From
that part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only
spanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness, they all bore
a seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribs were the most
arched. In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay
footpath bridges over small streams.

In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the
circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of
the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest of
the Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the fish
which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest depth of the
invested body of this particular whale must have been at least sixteen
feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured but little more than eight
feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion of the
living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I now saw
but a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of
added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the
ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered joints; and in place of the
weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank!

How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try
to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead
attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the
heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry
flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale
be truly and livingly found out.

But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a
crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now
it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar.

There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are
not locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on
a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest,
a middle one, is in width something less than three feet, and in depth
more than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the
tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white
billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but they
had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children,
who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the
spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple
child's play.



CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.


From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon
to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not
compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial
folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail,
and the yards he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic
involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great
cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a
line-of-battle-ship.

Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me
to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not
overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him
out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him
in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it
now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and
antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the
Leviathan--to an ant or a flea--such portly terms might justly be deemed
unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is
altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest
words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been
convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have
invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased
for that purpose; because that famous lexicographer's uncommon personal
bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author
like me.

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,
though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing
of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard
capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an
inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my
thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their
outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole
circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and
mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas
of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its
suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal
theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose
a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the
flea, though many there be who have tried it.

Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my credentials
as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I have been
a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and wells,
wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by way of
preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the earlier
geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now almost
completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are called
the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate intercepted
links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose remote
posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil Whales
hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the last
preceding the superficial formations. And though none of them
precisely answer to any known species of the present time, they are yet
sufficiently akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking
rank as Cetacean fossils.

Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their bones
and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals, been
found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in
Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Among the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, which in the
year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street
opening almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; and bones
disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's
time. Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some utterly
unknown Leviathanic species.

But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost
complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842, on
the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous
slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen
angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed
upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being
taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned out
that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed species. A
significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this
book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the
shape of his fully invested body. So Owen rechristened the monster
Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the London Geological Society,
pronounced it, in substance, one of the most extraordinary creatures
which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence.

When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks,
jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to
the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on
the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical
Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back
to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun;
for time began with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and I
obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged
bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in
all the 25,000 miles of this world's circumference, not an inhabitable
hand's breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the
whale's; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines
of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan?
Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems
a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck
at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of
the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs exist after
all humane ages are over.

But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the
stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his
ancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim
for them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable
print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah,
some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a
sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins, and
dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the
moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was there
swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled.

Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity
of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by
the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.

"Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams
of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are
oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine, that
by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the temple, no Whale can pass it
without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is, that on either
side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into the Sea,
and wound the Whales when they light upon 'em. They keep a Whale's Rib
of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the Ground with
its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be
reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back. This Rib (says John Leo) is said
to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historians
affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy'd of Mahomet, came from this Temple,
and some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth
by the Whale at the Base of the Temple."

In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a
Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.



CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?--Will He Perish?


Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from
the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether,
in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the
original bulk of his sires.

But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the
present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are
found in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological period
prior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those
belonging to its latter formations exceed in size those of its earlier
ones.

Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the largest is the
Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less than
seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already seen,
that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a large
sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen's authority, that
Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet long at the time of
capture.

But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an
advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may
it not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated?

Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of such
gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For Pliny
tells us of Whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus
of others which measured eight hundred feet in length--Rope Walks and
Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of Banks and Solander,
Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish member of the Academy of Sciences
setting down certain Iceland Whales (reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies)
at one hundred and twenty yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet.
And Lacepede, the French naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales,
in the very beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at
one hundred metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet. And this work
was published so late as A.D. 1825.

But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day is
as big as his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where Pliny
is, I, a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell him so.
Because I cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies
that were buried thousands of years before even Pliny was born, do not
measure so much in their coffins as a modern Kentuckian in his socks;
and while the cattle and other animals sculptured on the oldest Egyptian
and Nineveh tablets, by the relative proportions in which they are
drawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred, stall-fed, prize cattle
of Smithfield, not only equal, but far exceed in magnitude the fattest
of Pharaoh's fat kine; in the face of all this, I will not admit that of
all animals the whale alone should have degenerated.

But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more
recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient look-outs
at the mast-heads of the whaleships, now penetrating even through
Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers
of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all
continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure
so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last
be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man,
smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.

Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo,
which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the prairies
of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and scowled with
their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals,
where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch; in such
a comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished, to show that
the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction.

But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a
period ago--not a good lifetime--the census of the buffalo in Illinois
exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present day
not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region; and though the
cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man; yet the far
different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an
end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales for
forty-eight months think they have done extremely well, and thank God,
if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the days
of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the West, when
the far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and
a virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of
months, mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain
not forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need
were, could be statistically stated.

Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the
gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former years
(the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in
small pods, were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in
consequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more
remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales,
influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense
caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and
pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely
separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally fallacious seems
the conceit, that because the so-called whale-bone whales no longer
haunt many grounds in former years abounding with them, hence that
species also is declining. For they are only being driven from
promontory to cape; and if one coast is no longer enlivened with
their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has been very
recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle.

Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have two
firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever remain
impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty Swiss
have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the savannas and
glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at last resort to
their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate glassy barriers and
walls there, come up among icy fields and floes; and in a charmed circle
of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit from man.

But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one
cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this
positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions.
But though for some time past a number of these whales, not less than
13,000, have been annually slain on the nor'-west coast by the Americans
alone; yet there are considerations which render even this circumstance
of little or no account as an opposing argument in this matter.

Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the populousness
of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall we say to
Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one hunting the
King of Siam took 4,000 elephants; that in those regions elephants are
numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes. And there seems no
reason to doubt that if these elephants, which have now been hunted for
thousands of years, by Semiramis, by Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the
successive monarchs of the East--if they still survive there in great
numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all hunting, since he
has a pasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as large as all
Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles
of the sea combined.

Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity
of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more,
therefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult generations
must be contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain some idea
of, by imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and family vaults of
creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, and children
who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this countless host to
the present human population of the globe.

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his
species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas
before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the
Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he
despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like
the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still
survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood,
spout his frothed defiance to the skies.



CHAPTER 106. Ahab's Leg.


The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel
Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence to
his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his
boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And
when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so
vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman (it
was, as ever, something about his not steering inflexibly enough); then,
the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench,
that though it still remained entire, and to all appearances lusty, yet
Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy.

And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his
pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the
condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not
been very long prior to the Pequod's sailing from Nantucket, that he
had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible;
by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his
ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise
smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme
difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured.

Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all
the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a
former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous
reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest
songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable
events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought
Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the
ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it is
an inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural
enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world,
but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of
all hell's despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still
fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs
beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an
inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while
even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying
pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic
significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their
diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the
genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the
sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the
glad, hay-making suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must
needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad.
The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of
sorrow in the signers.

Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more
properly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other
particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some,
why it was, that for a certain period, both before and after the sailing
of the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such Grand-Lama-like
exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought speechless refuge, as
it were, among the marble senate of the dead. Captain Peleg's bruited
reason for this thing appeared by no means adequate; though, indeed,
as touching all Ahab's deeper part, every revelation partook more of
significant darkness than of explanatory light. But, in the end, it all
came out; this one matter did, at least. That direful mishap was at
the bottom of his temporary recluseness. And not only this, but to that
ever-contracting, dropping circle ashore, who, for any reason, possessed
the privilege of a less banned approach to him; to that timid circle the
above hinted casualty--remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by
Ahab--invested itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the land
of spirits and of wails. So that, through their zeal for him, they had
all conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up the knowledge of
this thing from others; and hence it was, that not till a considerable
interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the Pequod's decks.

But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air,
or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not
with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain
practical procedures;--he called the carpenter.

And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without delay
set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him supplied
with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which had thus
far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful selection
of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured. This done, the
carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that night; and to
provide all the fittings for it, independent of those pertaining to
the distrusted one in use. Moreover, the ship's forge was ordered to be
hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and, to accelerate
the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at once to the
forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.



CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.


Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high
abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But
from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they
seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of
the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod's carpenter was no duplicate;
hence, he now comes in person on this stage.

Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging
to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical extent,
alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own;
the carpenter's pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all
those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an
auxiliary material. But, besides the application to him of the generic
remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in
those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring
in a large ship, upon a three or four years' voyage, in uncivilized
and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readiness in ordinary
duties:--repairing stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the shape of
clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull's eyes in the deck, or new tree-nails
in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more directly
pertaining to his special business; he was moreover unhesitatingly
expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both useful and
capricious.

The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold,
was his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished with several
vices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all times
except when whales were alongside, this bench was securely lashed
athwartships against the rear of the Try-works.

A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole:
the carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and straightway
files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board,
and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of right-whale bone, and
cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes a pagoda-looking
cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist: the carpenter concocts a
soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermillion stars to be painted upon
the blade of his every oar; screwing each oar in his big vice of wood,
the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. A sailor takes
a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the carpenter drills his ears.
Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers, and clapping
one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there; but the poor fellow
unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the
handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in
that, if he would have him draw the tooth.

Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent
and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he
deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. But
while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with such
liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to argue some
uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For nothing was
this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal stolidity as
it were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the surrounding
infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity
discernible in the whole visible world; which while pauselessly active
in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace, and ignores you,
though you dig foundations for cathedrals. Yet was this half-horrible
stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an all-ramifying
heartlessness;--yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old,
crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked now
and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have served
to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle
of Noah's ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long
wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss;
but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings
might have originally pertained to him? He was a stript abstract; an
unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born babe; living without
premeditated reference to this world or the next. You might almost
say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of
unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so
much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to
it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven; but merely by
a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure
manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early
oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of
those unreasoning but still highly useful, MULTUM IN PARVO, Sheffield
contrivances, assuming the exterior--though a little swelled--of a
common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of various sizes,
but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers,
nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted to use the
carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do was to open that part
of him, and the screw was fast: or if for tweezers, take him up by the
legs, and there they were.

Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,
was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a
common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously
did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few
drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was; and there it
had abided for now some sixty years or more. And this it was, this same
unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him; this it was, that kept
him a great part of the time soliloquizing; but only like an unreasoning
wheel, which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was a
sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the
time to keep himself awake.



CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter.

The Deck--First Night Watch.


(CARPENTER STANDING BEFORE HIS VICE-BENCH, AND BY THE LIGHT OF TWO
LANTERNS BUSILY FILING THE IVORY JOIST FOR THE LEG, WHICH JOIST IS
FIRMLY FIXED IN THE VICE. SLABS OF IVORY, LEATHER STRAPS, PADS, SCREWS,
AND VARIOUS TOOLS OF ALL SORTS LYING ABOUT THE BENCH. FORWARD, THE RED
FLAME OF THE FORGE IS SEEN, WHERE THE BLACKSMITH IS AT WORK.)


Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should be soft,
and that is soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and
shinbones. Let's try another. Aye, now, this works better (SNEEZES).
Halloa, this bone dust is (SNEEZES)--why it's (SNEEZES)--yes it's
(SNEEZES)--bless my soul, it won't let me speak! This is what an old
fellow gets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree, and
you don't get this dust; amputate a live bone, and you don't get it
(SNEEZES). Come, come, you old Smut, there, bear a hand, and let's have
that ferule and buckle-screw; I'll be ready for them presently. Lucky
now (SNEEZES) there's no knee-joint to make; that might puzzle a little;
but a mere shinbone--why it's easy as making hop-poles; only I should
like to put a good finish on. Time, time; if I but only had the time, I
could turn him out as neat a leg now as ever (SNEEZES) scraped to a lady
in a parlor. Those buckskin legs and calves of legs I've seen in shop
windows wouldn't compare at all. They soak water, they do; and of
course get rheumatic, and have to be doctored (SNEEZES) with washes and
lotions, just like live legs. There; before I saw it off, now, I must
call his old Mogulship, and see whether the length will be all right;
too short, if anything, I guess. Ha! that's the heel; we are in luck;
here he comes, or it's somebody else, that's certain.

AHAB (ADVANCING)

(DURING THE ENSUING SCENE, THE CARPENTER CONTINUES SNEEZING AT TIMES)


Well, manmaker!

Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length.
Let me measure, sir.

Measured for a leg! good. Well, it's not the first time. About it!
There; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast here,
carpenter; let me feel its grip once. So, so; it does pinch some.

Oh, sir, it will break bones--beware, beware!

No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this
slippery world that can hold, man. What's Prometheus about there?--the
blacksmith, I mean--what's he about?

He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.

Right. It's a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He makes a
fierce red flame there!

Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work.

Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that
old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a
blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what's made in fire must
properly belong to fire; and so hell's probable. How the soot flies!
This must be the remainder the Greek made the Africans of. Carpenter,
when he's through with that buckle, tell him to forge a pair of steel
shoulder-blades; there's a pedlar aboard with a crushing pack.

Sir?

Hold; while Prometheus is about it, I'll order a complete man after a
desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest
modelled after the Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to 'em, to stay
in one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist; no heart at all,
brass forehead, and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains; and let
me see--shall I order eyes to see outwards? No, but put a sky-light on
top of his head to illuminate inwards. There, take the order, and away.

Now, what's he speaking about, and who's he speaking to, I should like
to know? Shall I keep standing here? (ASIDE).

'Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here's one. No,
no, no; I must have a lantern.

Ho, ho! That's it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my turn.

What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man?
Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols.

I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter.


Carpenter? why that's--but no;--a very tidy, and, I may say,
an extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here,
carpenter;--or would'st thou rather work in clay?

Sir?--Clay? clay, sir? That's mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir.

The fellow's impious! What art thou sneezing about?

Bone is rather dusty, sir.

Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury thyself under
living people's noses.

Sir?--oh! ah!--I guess so;--yes--dear!

Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good
workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well
for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall
nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that
is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst
thou not drive that old Adam away?

Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard
something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never
entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still
pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?

It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once
was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the
soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a
hair, do I. Is't a riddle?

I should humbly call it a poser, sir.

Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing
may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where
thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most
solitary hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers? Hold, don't
speak! And if I still feel the smart of my crushed leg, though it be now
so long dissolved; then, why mayst not thou, carpenter, feel the fiery
pains of hell for ever, and without a body? Hah!

Good Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculate over again;
I think I didn't carry a small figure, sir.

Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises.--How long before the
leg is done?

Perhaps an hour, sir.

Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (TURNS TO GO). Oh, Life! Here
I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for
a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will
not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the
whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with
the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was
the world's); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By
heavens! I'll get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to
one small, compendious vertebra. So.

CARPENTER (RESUMING HIS WORK).


Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb always says
he's queer; says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer; he's
queer, says Stubb; he's queer--queer, queer; and keeps dinning it into
Mr. Starbuck all the time--queer--sir--queer, queer, very queer. And
here's his leg! Yes, now that I think of it, here's his bedfellow! has
a stick of whale's jaw-bone for a wife! And this is his leg; he'll stand
on this. What was that now about one leg standing in three places, and
all three places standing in one hell--how was that? Oh! I don't wonder
he looked so scornful at me! I'm a sort of strange-thoughted sometimes,
they say; but that's only haphazard-like. Then, a short, little old body
like me, should never undertake to wade out into deep waters with tall,
heron-built captains; the water chucks you under the chin pretty quick,
and there's a great cry for life-boats. And here's the heron's leg!
long and slim, sure enough! Now, for most folks one pair of legs lasts
a lifetime, and that must be because they use them mercifully, as a
tender-hearted old lady uses her roly-poly old coach-horses. But Ahab;
oh he's a hard driver. Look, driven one leg to death, and spavined the
other for life, and now wears out bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there,
you Smut! bear a hand there with those screws, and let's finish it
before the resurrection fellow comes a-calling with his horn for
all legs, true or false, as brewery-men go round collecting old beer
barrels, to fill 'em up again. What a leg this is! It looks like a real
live leg, filed down to nothing but the core; he'll be standing on this
to-morrow; he'll be taking altitudes on it. Halloa! I almost forgot the
little oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude. So,
so; chisel, file, and sand-paper, now!



CHAPTER 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.


According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and lo! no
inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must have
sprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck went down into
the cabin to report this unfavourable affair.*


*In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it
is a regular semiweekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench
the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals, is
removed by the ship's pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be kept
damply tight; while by the changed character of the withdrawn water, the
mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious cargo.


Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing nigh to Formosa and
the Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical outlets from
the China waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab with
a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him;
and another separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the
Japanese islands--Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke. With his snow-white new
ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table, and with a long
pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man, with his
back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old
courses again.

"Who's there?" hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning round
to it. "On deck! Begone!"

"Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir. We
must up Burtons and break out."

"Up Burtons and break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to here
for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops?"

"Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make good
in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving,
sir."

"So it is, so it is; if we get it."

"I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir."

"And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it leak!
I'm all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks,
but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that's a far worse plight
than the Pequod's, man. Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can
find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if
found, in this life's howling gale? Starbuck! I'll not have the Burtons
hoisted."

"What will the owners say, sir?"

"Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What
cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck,
about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But
look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye,
my conscience is in this ship's keel.--On deck!"

"Captain Ahab," said the reddening mate, moving further into the cabin,
with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost seemed
not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation
of itself, but within also seemed more than half distrustful of itself;
"A better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would quickly
enough resent in a younger man; aye, and in a happier, Captain Ahab."

"Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?--On
deck!"

"Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir--to be forbearing!
Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto, Captain Ahab?"

Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most
South-Sea-men's cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck,
exclaimed: "There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one
Captain that is lord over the Pequod.--On deck!"

For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks,
you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of
the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose,
and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: "Thou hast
outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of
Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of
thyself, old man."

"He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!"
murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. "What's that he said--Ahab
beware of Ahab--there's something there!" Then unconsciously using the
musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little
cabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and
returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.

"Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck," he said lowly to the mate;
then raising his voice to the crew: "Furl the t'gallant-sails, and
close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up Burton,
and break out in the main-hold."

It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting
Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of honesty in him;
or mere prudential policy which, under the circumstance, imperiously
forbade the slightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient,
in the important chief officer of his ship. However it was, his orders
were executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.



CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.


Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold
were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it
being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the
slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight
sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they
go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost
puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask
containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards,
vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after
tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and
iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks
were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if
you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea
like an air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless
student with all Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons
did not visit them then.

Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast
bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh
to his endless end.

Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;
dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the
higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as
harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but--as
we have elsewhere seen--mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and
finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating
all day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the
clumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen,
the harpooneers are the holders, so called.

Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should
have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where,
stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about
amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom
of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor
pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he
caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after
some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill
of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few
long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his
frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones
grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller;
they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply
looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that
immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And like
circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes
seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe that
cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this
waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who
were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous and
fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing
near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last
revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell.
So that--let us say it again--no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and
holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping
over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying
hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final
rest, and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher
towards his destined heaven.

Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself,
what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour he
asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was
just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he
had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich
war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all
whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes,
and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not
unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior,
stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to
the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars
are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild,
uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the
white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at
the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual
sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks.
No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial
to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes
were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and
much lee-way adown the dim ages.

Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter
was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever it might
include. There was some heathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber aboard,
which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal
groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin
was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of
the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent
promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took
Queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg's
person as he shifted the rule.

"Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated the Long Island
sailor.

Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general
reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin
was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches
at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools,
and to work.

When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted,
he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring
whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.

Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the
people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one's
consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to
him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some
dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will
shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be
indulged.

Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with
an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock
drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along
with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also,
biscuits were then ranged round the sides within: a flask of fresh water
was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in
the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a
pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he
might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving
a few minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his little
god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he
called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him.
The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg
in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in view. "Rarmai"
(it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last, and signed to be replaced
in his hammock.

But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all this
while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took him
by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.

"Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? where
go ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where
the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little
errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's now been missing long: I think
he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he
must be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;--I found
it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I'll beat ye your dying
march."

"I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that in
violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues;
and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their
wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken
in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip,
in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all
our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?--Hark! he speaks
again: but more wildly now."

"Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where's his harpoon?
Lay it across here.--Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game cock
now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!--mind ye that;
Queequeg dies game!--take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game! I
say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward; died all
a'shiver;--out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles
he's a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped from
a whale-boat! I'd never beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail
him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame upon all
cowards--shame upon them! Let 'em go drown like Pip, that jumped from a
whale-boat. Shame! shame!"

During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip
was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.

But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now
that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon
there seemed no need of the carpenter's box: and thereupon, when some
expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the
cause of his sudden convalescence was this;--at a critical moment, he
had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone;
and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet,
he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of
his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word,
it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere
sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some
violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;
that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing,
generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day.
So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after
sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a
vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms
and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then
springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon,
pronounced himself fit for a fight.

With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and
emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there.
Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of
grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was
striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on
his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and
seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on
his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical
treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own
proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but
whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart
beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in
the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were
inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must
have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when
one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg--"Oh, devilish
tantalization of the gods!"



CHAPTER 111. The Pacific.


When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South
Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear Pacific
with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was
answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues
of blue.

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently
awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those
fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St.
John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery
prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should
rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed
shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that
we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like
slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their
restlessness.

To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must
ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of
the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same
waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday
planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still
gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between
float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown
Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine
Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay
to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal
swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.

But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing like an
iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one
nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles
(in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other
consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in
which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at
length upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese
cruising-ground, the old man's purpose intensified itself. His firm lips
met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead's veins swelled
like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran through
the vaulted hull, "Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick blood!"



CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.


Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in
these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active
pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old
blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after
concluding his contributory work for Ahab's leg, but still retained
it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost
incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do
some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping their
various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an
eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads,
harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement,
as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded
by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulance did come from
him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically
broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the
heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so it
was.--Most miserable!

A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing
yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the
curiosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their persisted
questionings he had finally given in; and so it came to pass that every
one now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate.

Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter's midnight, on the road
running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt
the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning,
dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both
feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four
acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied fifth
act of the grief of his life's drama.

He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly
encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals called ruin. He had been
an artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a house
and garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three
blithe, ruddy children; every Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church,
planted in a grove. But one night, under cover of darkness, and further
concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into
his happy home, and robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to
tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into
his family's heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of that
fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for
prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was in
the basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so
that always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no
unhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of
her young-armed old husband's hammer; whose reverberations, muffled by
passing through the floors and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly,
in her nursery; and so, to stout Labor's iron lullaby, the blacksmith's
infants were rocked to slumber.

Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst
thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon
him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a
truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and
all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked down some
virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the
responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than useless
old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him easier to
harvest.

Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew more
and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the last;
the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly
gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows fell; the
forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother dived
down into the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed her
thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a vagabond
in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to flaxen
curls!

Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death
is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but
the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the
Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of
such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against
suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly
spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and
wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite
Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them--"Come hither,
broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate
death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come
hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and
abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put
up THY gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we
marry thee!"

Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by fall
of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth went
a-whaling.



CHAPTER 113. The Forge.


With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about
mid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter
placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the
coals, and with the other at his forge's lungs, when Captain Ahab came
along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While
yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last,
Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the
anvil--the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights,
some of which flew close to Ahab.

"Are these thy Mother Carey's chickens, Perth? they are always flying
in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;--look here, they
burn; but thou--thou liv'st among them without a scorch."

"Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab," answered Perth, resting
for a moment on his hammer; "I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou
scorch a scar."

"Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful
to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others
that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou
not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet
hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?--What wert thou making there?"

"Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it."

"And can'st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard
usage as it had?"

"I think so, sir."

"And I suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never
mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?"

"Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one."

"Look ye here, then," cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning
with both hands on Perth's shoulders; "look ye here--HERE--can ye
smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith," sweeping one hand across his
ribbed brow; "if thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay
my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes.
Answer! Can'st thou smoothe this seam?"

"Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?"

"Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for
though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the
bone of my skull--THAT is all wrinkles! But, away with child's play; no
more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here!" jingling the leathern bag,
as if it were full of gold coins. "I, too, want a harpoon made; one that
a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth; something that will
stick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There's the stuff," flinging
the pouch upon the anvil. "Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered
nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses."

"Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the
best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work."

"I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from the
melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge me
first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer these
twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! I'll
blow the fire."

When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one, by
spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. "A
flaw!" rejecting the last one. "Work that over again, Perth."

This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one, when
Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, then,
with regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to
him the glowing rods, one after the other, and the hard pressed forge
shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed silently, and
bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse or
some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid aside.

"What's that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?" muttered Stubb,
looking on from the forecastle. "That Parsee smells fire like a fusee;
and smells of it himself, like a hot musket's powder-pan."

At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as
Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near
by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent face.

"Would'st thou brand me, Perth?" wincing for a moment with the pain;
"have I been but forging my own branding-iron, then?"

"Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this
harpoon for the White Whale?"

"For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them
thyself, man. Here are my razors--the best of steel; here, and make the
barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea."

For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain
not use them.

"Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave, sup,
nor pray till--but here--to work!"

Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the
shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith
was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he
cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.

"No, no--no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy,
there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me
as much blood as will cover this barb?" holding it high up. A cluster of
dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh,
and the White Whale's barbs were then tempered.

"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!"
deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the
baptismal blood.

Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of hickory,
with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket of
the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of
it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing
his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly
bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and
now for the seizings."

At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns
were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the pole
was then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope
was traced half-way along the pole's length, and firmly secured so, with
intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope--like the Three
Fates--remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the
weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole,
both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his cabin,
light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. Oh,
Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy strange
mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the
melancholy ship, and mocked it!



CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.


Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising
ground, the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild,
pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the
stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing,
or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy
minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small success
for their pains.

At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow
heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so
sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone
cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy
quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the
ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and
would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a
remorseless fang.

These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a
certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he
regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing
only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high
rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when
the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears, while their
hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.

The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these
there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied
children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when
the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most
mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate,
and form one seamless whole.

Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as
temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem
to open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath upon
them prove but tarnishing.

Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in
ye,--though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,--in ye,
men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some
few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them.
Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling
threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a
storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this
life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one
pause:--through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless
faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then
disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once
gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men,
and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no
more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will
never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like
those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of
our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.

And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side into that
same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:--

"Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride's
eye!--Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping
cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep
down and do believe."

And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that same
golden light:--

"I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that
he has always been jolly!"



CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.


And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down
before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been welded.

It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her
last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad
holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing
round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to
pointing her prow for home.

The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting
at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down;
and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the
last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colours
were flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of
her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her
top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious
fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp.

As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most surprising
success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in the same
seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without securing a
single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to
make room for the far more valuable sperm, but additional supplemental
casks had been bartered for, from the ships she had met; and these were
stowed along the deck, and in the captain's and officers' state-rooms.
Even the cabin table itself had been knocked into kindling-wood; and the
cabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil-butt, lashed down to the
floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, the sailors had actually
caulked and pitched their chests, and filled them; it was humorously
added, that the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and
filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled
it; that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and
filled them; that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the
captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands
into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction.

As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the
barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing
still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge
try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like POKE or stomach skin of
the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the clenched
hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates and harpooneers were
dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the
Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly secured
aloft between the foremast and mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with
glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious
jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy at
the masonry of the try-works, from which the huge pots had been
removed. You would have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed
Bastille, such wild cries they raised, as the now useless brick and
mortar were being hurled into the sea.

Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the
ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was
full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual
diversion.

And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black,
with a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other's
wakes--one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings
as to things to come--their two captains in themselves impersonated the
whole striking contrast of the scene.

"Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's commander, lifting
a glass and a bottle in the air.

"Hast seen the White Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply.

"No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all," said the other
good-humoredly. "Come aboard!"

"Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?"

"Not enough to speak of--two islanders, that's all;--but come aboard,
old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your brow. Come
along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and homeward-bound."

"How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud, "Thou art
a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me an empty
ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward there!
Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!"

And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the other
stubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted; the crew
of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the receding
Bachelor; but the Bachelor's men never heeding their gaze for the lively
revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the taffrail, eyed the
homewardbound craft, he took from his pocket a small vial of sand, and
then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed thereby bringing two
remote associations together, for that vial was filled with Nantucket
soundings.



CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.


Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favourites
sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the
rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed
it with the Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor,
whales were seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab.

It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson
fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun
and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such
plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that
it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of
the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had
gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.

Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned
off from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from the now
tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales
dying--the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring--that strange
spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a
wondrousness unknown before.

"He turns and turns him to it,--how slowly, but how steadfastly, his
homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too
worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!--Oh
that these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights.
Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe;
in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks
furnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still
rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the
Niger's unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith; but
see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it heads
some other way.

"Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded
thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas;
thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the
wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor
has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round
again, without a lesson to me.

"Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed
jet!--that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh
whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that
only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker
half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable
imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living
things, exhaled as air, but water now.

"Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild
fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though
hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!"



CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.


The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to
windward; one, less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These
last three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one
could not be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay
by its side all night; and that boat was Ahab's.

The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale's spout-hole; and
the lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare
upon the black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves, which
gently chafed the whale's broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach.

Ahab and all his boat's crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who crouching
in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played round the
whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails. A sound
like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of
Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.

Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee; and
hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a
flooded world. "I have dreamed it again," said he.

"Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor
coffin can be thine?"

"And who are hearsed that die on the sea?"

"But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two
hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by
mortal hands; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in
America."

"Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:--a hearse and its plumes
floating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha! Such a
sight we shall not soon see."

"Believe it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man."

"And what was that saying about thyself?"

"Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy pilot."

"And when thou art so gone before--if that ever befall--then ere I can
follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?--Was it not
so? Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two
pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it."

"Take another pledge, old man," said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up
like fire-flies in the gloom--"Hemp only can kill thee."

"The gallows, ye mean.--I am immortal then, on land and on sea," cried
Ahab, with a laugh of derision;--"Immortal on land and on sea!"

Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came on, and the
slumbering crew arose from the boat's bottom, and ere noon the dead
whale was brought to the ship.



CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.


The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Ahab,
coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would
ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to
the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed
on the nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point the ship's
prow for the equator. In good time the order came. It was hard upon high
noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat, was
about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his
latitude.

Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of
effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing
focus of the glassy ocean's immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks
lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness
of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God's throne.
Well that Ahab's quadrant was furnished with coloured glasses, through
which to take sight of that solar fire. So, swinging his seated form
to the roll of the ship, and with his astrological-looking instrument
placed to his eye, he remained in that posture for some moments to
catch the precise instant when the sun should gain its precise meridian.
Meantime while his whole attention was absorbed, the Parsee was kneeling
beneath him on the ship's deck, and with face thrown up like Ahab's,
was eyeing the same sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded
their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness.
At length the desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon
his ivory leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that
precise instant. Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked up
towards the sun and murmured to himself: "Thou sea-mark! thou high and
mighty Pilot! thou tellest me truly where I AM--but canst thou cast the
least hint where I SHALL be? Or canst thou tell where some other thing
besides me is this moment living? Where is Moby Dick? This instant thou
must be eyeing him. These eyes of mine look into the very eye that is
even now beholding him; aye, and into the eye that is even now equally
beholding the objects on the unknown, thither side of thee, thou sun!"

Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its
numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered:
"Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and
Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what
after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou
thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds
thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water
or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence
thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed
be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live
vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched
with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the
glances of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God
had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!"
dashing it to the deck, "no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee;
the level ship's compass, and the level deadreckoning, by log and by
line; THESE shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye,"
lighting from the boat to the deck, "thus I trample on thee, thou paltry
thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!"

As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live
and dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and a
fatalistic despair that seemed meant for himself--these passed over
the mute, motionless Parsee's face. Unobserved he rose and glided away;
while, awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the seamen clustered
together on the forecastle, till Ahab, troubledly pacing the deck,
shouted out--"To the braces! Up helm!--square in!"

In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled upon
her heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon
her long, ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one
sufficient steed.

Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Pequod's
tumultuous way, and Ahab's also, as he went lurching along the deck.

"I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of
its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down,
to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine,
what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!"

"Aye," cried Stubb, "but sea-coal ashes--mind ye that, Mr.
Starbuck--sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well; I heard Ahab
mutter, 'Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine;
swears that I must play them, and no others.' And damn me, Ahab, but
thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!"



CHAPTER 119. The Candles.


Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal
crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent
but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes
that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these
resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all
storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless
sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.

Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and
bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly
ahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the
thunder, and blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled masts
fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the
tempest had left for its after sport.

Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at every
flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional disaster
might have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb and Flask
were directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the
boats. But all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted to the very
top of the cranes, the windward quarter boat (Ahab's) did not escape.
A great rolling sea, dashing high up against the reeling ship's high
teetering side, stove in the boat's bottom at the stern, and left it
again, all dripping through like a sieve.

"Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck," said Stubb, regarding the wreck,
"but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can't fight it. You see,
Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it leaps, all
round the world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as for me, all
the start I have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But never
mind; it's all in fun: so the old song says;"--(SINGS.)

  Oh! jolly is the gale,
  And a joker is the whale,
  A' flourishin' his tail,--
  Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!

  The scud all a flyin',
  That's his flip only foamin';
  When he stirs in the spicin',--
  Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!

  Thunder splits the ships,
  But he only smacks his lips,
  A tastin' of this flip,--
  Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!


"Avast Stubb," cried Starbuck, "let the Typhoon sing, and strike his
harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy
peace."

"But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward;
and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr.
Starbuck, there's no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my
throat. And when that's done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a
wind-up."

"Madman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own."

"What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else, never
mind how foolish?"

"Here!" cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, and pointing his
hand towards the weather bow, "markest thou not that the gale comes from
the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for Moby Dick? the very
course he swung to this day noon? now mark his boat there; where is
that stove? In the stern-sheets, man; where he is wont to stand--his
stand-point is stove, man! Now jump overboard, and sing away, if thou
must!

"I don't half understand ye: what's in the wind?"

"Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to
Nantucket," soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb's
question. "The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it
into a fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward,
all is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward--I see it lightens up
there; but not with the lightning."

At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, following
the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at the same
instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.

"Who's there?"

"Old Thunder!" said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to his
pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed
lances of fire.

Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off
the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea some
ships carry to each mast, is intended to conduct it into the water. But
as this conductor must descend to considerable depth, that its end may
avoid all contact with the hull; and as moreover, if kept constantly
towing there, it would be liable to many mishaps, besides interfering
not a little with some of the rigging, and more or less impeding the
vessel's way in the water; because of all this, the lower parts of a
ship's lightning-rods are not always overboard; but are generally made
in long slender links, so as to be the more readily hauled up into the
chains outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may require.

"The rods! the rods!" cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished to
vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux,
to light Ahab to his post. "Are they overboard? drop them over, fore and
aft. Quick!"

"Avast!" cried Ahab; "let's have fair play here, though we be the weaker
side. Yet I'll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and Andes, that
all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let them be, sir."

"Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The corpusants! the corpusants!"

All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each
tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of
the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like
three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.

"Blast the boat! let it go!" cried Stubb at this instant, as a swashing
sea heaved up under his own little craft, so that its gunwale violently
jammed his hand, as he was passing a lashing. "Blast it!"--but
slipping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames; and
immediately shifting his tone he cried--"The corpusants have mercy on us
all!"

To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of
the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses
from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething
sea; but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when
God's burning finger has been laid on the ship; when His "Mene, Mene,
Tekel Upharsin" has been woven into the shrouds and the cordage.

While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from the
enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle,
all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like a far away
constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the gigantic
jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed
the black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted mouth of
Tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth, which strangely gleamed as
if they too had been tipped by corpusants; while lit up by the
preternatural light, Queequeg's tattooing burned like Satanic blue
flames on his body.

The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once more
the Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. A moment
or two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one. It
was Stubb. "What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry; it was not the
same in the song."

"No, no, it wasn't; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I
hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces?--have
they no bowels for a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck--but it's too dark
to look. Hear me, then: I take that mast-head flame we saw for a sign
of good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be
chock a' block with sperm-oil, d'ye see; and so, all that sperm will
work up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three masts will
yet be as three spermaceti candles--that's the good promise we saw."

At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb's face slowly beginning
to glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: "See! see!" and once
more the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled
supernaturalness in their pallor.

"The corpusants have mercy on us all," cried Stubb, again.

At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame,
the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab's front, but with his head bowed away
from him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging rigging, where
they had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen,
arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous, like a
knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. In various enchanted
attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running skeletons in
Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all their eyes
upcast.

"Aye, aye, men!" cried Ahab. "Look up at it; mark it well; the white
flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast
links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it;
blood against fire! So."

Then turning--the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot
upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm, he
stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.

"Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian
once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to
this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now
know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence
wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all
are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless,
placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will
dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the
personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at
best; whencesoe'er I came; wheresoe'er I go; yet while I earthly live,
the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war
is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will
kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power;
and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there's that
in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy
fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to
thee."

[SUDDEN, REPEATED FLASHES OF LIGHTNING; THE NINE FLAMES LEAP LENGTHWISE
TO THRICE THEIR PREVIOUS HEIGHT; AHAB, WITH THE REST, CLOSES HIS EYES,
HIS RIGHT HAND PRESSED HARD UPON THEM.]

"I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung
from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then
grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of
these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning
flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten
brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh!
Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou
leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping
out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the
flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou
art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what
hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater.
Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten;
certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I
know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent.
There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom
all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through
thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou
foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable
riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read
my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with
thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!"

"The boat! the boat!" cried Starbuck, "look at thy boat, old man!"

Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly lashed
in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat's
bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather
sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a
levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there
like a serpent's tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm--"God, God
is against thee, old man; forbear! 'tis an ill voyage! ill begun, ill
continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a
fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this."

Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the
braces--though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast
mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But
dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the
burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to
transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end.
Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart
that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:--

"All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and
heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye
may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out
the last fear!" And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the
flame.

As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of
some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so
much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts;
so at those last words of Ahab's many of the mariners did run from him
in a terror of dismay.



CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.

AHAB STANDING BY THE HELM. STARBUCK APPROACHING HIM.


"We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working loose
and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?"

"Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I'd sway them up
now."

"Sir!--in God's name!--sir?"

"Well."

"The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?"

"Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises,
but it has not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.--By
masts and keels! he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some
coasting smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest
trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now
sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none but cowards
send down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a hooroosh aloft
there! I would e'en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic
is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!"



CHAPTER 121. Midnight.--The Forecastle Bulwarks.


STUBB AND FLASK MOUNTED ON THEM, AND PASSING ADDITIONAL LASHINGS OVER
THE ANCHORS THERE HANGING.


"No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please, but you
will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how long
ago is it since you said the very contrary? Didn't you once say that
whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on its
insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft
and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didn't you say so?"

"Well, suppose I did? What then? I've part changed my flesh since that
time, why not my mind? Besides, supposing we ARE loaded with powder
barrels aft and lucifers forward; how the devil could the lucifers get
afire in this drenching spray here? Why, my little man, you have
pretty red hair, but you couldn't get afire now. Shake yourself; you're
Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask; might fill pitchers at your coat
collar. Don't you see, then, that for these extra risks the Marine
Insurance companies have extra guarantees? Here are hydrants, Flask. But
hark, again, and I'll answer ye the other thing. First take your leg off
from the crown of the anchor here, though, so I can pass the rope;
now listen. What's the mighty difference between holding a mast's
lightning-rod in the storm, and standing close by a mast that hasn't
got any lightning-rod at all in a storm? Don't you see, you timber-head,
that no harm can come to the holder of the rod, unless the mast is first
struck? What are you talking about, then? Not one ship in a hundred
carries rods, and Ahab,--aye, man, and all of us,--were in no more
danger then, in my poor opinion, than all the crews in ten thousand
ships now sailing the seas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose you would
have every man in the world go about with a small lightning-rod running
up the corner of his hat, like a militia officer's skewered feather,
and trailing behind like his sash. Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's
easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be
sensible."

"I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard."

"Yes, when a fellow's soaked through, it's hard to be sensible, that's
a fact. And I am about drenched with this spray. Never mind; catch the
turn there, and pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors
now as if they were never going to be used again. Tying these two
anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man's hands behind him. And what
big generous hands they are, to be sure. These are your iron fists,
hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder, Flask, whether the world is
anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable,
though. There, hammer that knot down, and we've done. So; next to
touching land, lighting on deck is the most satisfactory. I say, just
wring out my jacket skirts, will ye? Thank ye. They laugh at long-togs
so, Flask; but seems to me, a Long tailed coat ought always to be worn
in all storms afloat. The tails tapering down that way, serve to carry
off the water, d'ye see. Same with cocked hats; the cocks form gable-end
eave-troughs, Flask. No more monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me; I
must mount a swallow-tail, and drive down a beaver; so. Halloa! whew!
there goes my tarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord, that the winds that come
from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad."



CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.--Thunder and Lightning.


THE MAIN-TOP-SAIL YARD.--TASHTEGO PASSING NEW LASHINGS AROUND IT.


"Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What's
the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don't want thunder; we want rum; give
us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!"



CHAPTER 123. The Musket.


During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pequod's
jaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by
its spasmodic motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached
to it--for they were slack--because some play to the tiller was
indispensable.

In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock
to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the
compasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the
Pequod's; at almost every shock the helmsman had not failed to notice
the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon the cards; it is
a sight that hardly anyone can behold without some sort of unwonted
emotion.

Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the
strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb--one engaged forward and the
other aft--the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails
were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like
the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when
that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.

The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and a
storm-trysail was set further aft; so that the ship soon went through
the water with some precision again; and the course--for the present,
East-south-east--which he was to steer, if practicable, was once more
given to the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he had only
steered according to its vicissitudes. But as he was now bringing the
ship as near her course as possible, watching the compass meanwhile, lo!
a good sign! the wind seemed coming round astern; aye, the foul breeze
became fair!

Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of "HO! THE
FAIR WIND! OH-YE-HO, CHEERLY MEN!" the crew singing for joy, that so
promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents
preceding it.

In compliance with the standing order of his commander--to report
immediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided change
in the affairs of the deck,--Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to
the breeze--however reluctantly and gloomily,--than he mechanically went
below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance.

Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it
a moment. The cabin lamp--taking long swings this way and that--was
burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man's bolted
door,--a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper panels.
The isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain humming
silence to reign there, though it was hooped round by all the roar of
the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as
they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest,
upright man; but out of Starbuck's heart, at that instant when he saw
the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with
its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew
it for itself.

"He would have shot me once," he murmured, "yes, there's the very musket
that he pointed at me;--that one with the studded stock; let me touch
it--lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly lances,
strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded? I must see. Aye, aye; and
powder in the pan;--that's not good. Best spill it?--wait. I'll cure
myself of this. I'll hold the musket boldly while I think.--I come
to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and
doom,--THAT'S fair for Moby Dick. It's a fair wind that's only fair for
that accursed fish.--The very tube he pointed at me!--the very one;
THIS one--I hold it here; he would have killed me with the very thing I
handle now.--Aye and he would fain kill all his crew. Does he not say
he will not strike his spars to any gale? Has he not dashed his heavenly
quadrant? and in these same perilous seas, gropes he not his way by mere
dead reckoning of the error-abounding log? and in this very Typhoon, did
he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods? But shall this crazed
old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom
with him?--Yes, it would make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and
more, if this ship come to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my
soul swears this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this
instant--put aside, that crime would not be his. Ha! is he muttering in
his sleep? Yes, just there,--in there, he's sleeping. Sleeping? aye,
but still alive, and soon awake again. I can't withstand thee, then, old
man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to;
all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands, this is
all thou breathest. Aye, and say'st the men have vow'd thy vow; say'st
all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!--But is there no other way? no
lawful way?--Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What! hope to wrest
this old man's living power from his own living hands? Only a fool
would try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes
and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would
be more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the
sight; could not possibly fly his howlings; all comfort, sleep itself,
inestimable reason would leave me on the long intolerable voyage. What,
then, remains? The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan
the nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and
a whole continent between me and law.--Aye, aye, 'tis so.--Is heaven
a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed,
tindering sheets and skin together?--And would I be a murderer, then,
if"--and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the
loaded musket's end against the door.

"On this level, Ahab's hammock swings within; his head this way. A
touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.--Oh
Mary! Mary!--boy! boy! boy!--But if I wake thee not to death, old man,
who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck's body this day week
may sink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall
I?--The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails
are reefed and set; she heads her course."

"Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!"

Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's
tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream
to speak.

The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel;
Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he
placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.

"He's too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell
him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say."



CHAPTER 124. The Needle.


Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of
mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on
like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded
so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world
boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible
sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his
bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian
kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of
molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.

Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time
the tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to eye
the bright sun's rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly settled by
the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun's rearward place, and how
the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating wake.

"Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of
the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye!
Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!"

But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards the
helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.

"East-sou-east, sir," said the frightened steersman.

"Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched fist. "Heading East at this
hour in the morning, and the sun astern?"

Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then
observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very
blinding palpableness must have been the cause.

Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse
of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost
seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two
compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.

But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew,
the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, "I have it! It has happened
before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our compasses--that's
all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it."

"Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said the pale mate,
gloomily.

Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than
one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as
developed in the mariner's needle, is, as all know, essentially one with
the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled
at, that such things should be. Instances where the lightning has
actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and
rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more fatal;
all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before magnetic
steel was of no more use than an old wife's knitting needle. But in
either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original
virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected,
the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship; even were
the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.

Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed
compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took
the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were
exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship's course to be
changed accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod
thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair
one had only been juggling her.

Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said nothing,
but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and Flask--who
in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings--likewise
unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some of them lowly
rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate. But as
ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed;
or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into their
congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab's.

For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But
chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper
sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.

"Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I wrecked
thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But
Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck--a lance without
a pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker's needles.
Quick!"

Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about
to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to
revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a
matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old
man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though clumsily
practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious sailors,
without some shudderings and evil portents.

"Men," said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed
him the things he had demanded, "my men, the thunder turned old Ahab's
needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that
will point as true as any."

Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this
was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might
follow. But Starbuck looked away.

With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the
lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade
him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the maul,
after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed the
blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered
that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then
going through some small strange motions with it--whether indispensable
to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe
of the crew, is uncertain--he called for linen thread; and moving to the
binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, and horizontally
suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of the compass-cards.
At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at
either end; but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had
been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back from the
binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,--"Look
ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun
is East, and that compass swears it!"

One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could
persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk
away.

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his
fatal pride.



CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.


While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage, the log
and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident reliance
upon other means of determining the vessel's place, some merchantmen,
and many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave the
log; though at the same time, and frequently more for form's sake than
anything else, regularly putting down upon the customary slate the
course steered by the ship, as well as the presumed average rate of
progression every hour. It had been thus with the Pequod. The wooden
reel and angular log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the
railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it; sun and
wind had warped it; all the elements had combined to rot a thing that
hung so idly. But heedless of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he
happened to glance upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet scene,
and he remembered how his quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic
oath about the level log and line. The ship was sailing plungingly;
astern the billows rolled in riots.

"Forward, there! Heave the log!"

Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman. "Take
the reel, one of ye, I'll heave."

They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship's lee side, where the
deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into
the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.

The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting
handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved, so
stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to him.

Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty
turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old
Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to
speak.

"Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have
spoiled it."

"'Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee?
Thou seem'st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it."

"I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these
grey hairs of mine 'tis not worth while disputing, 'specially with a
superior, who'll ne'er confess."

"What's that? There now's a patched professor in Queen Nature's
granite-founded College; but methinks he's too subservient. Where wert
thou born?"

"In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir."

"Excellent! Thou'st hit the world by that."

"I know not, sir, but I was born there."

"In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it's good. Here's a man
from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man;
which is sucked in--by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall
butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So."

The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long
dragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In
turn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the towing
resistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely.

"Hold hard!"

Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the tugging
log was gone.

"I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad
sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here, Tahitian;
reel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and
mend thou the line. See to it."

"There he goes now; to him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer
seems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in,
Tahitian! These lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken, and
dragging slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?"

"Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whale-boat. Pip's missing.
Let's see now if ye haven't fished him up here, fisherman. It drags
hard; I guess he's holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off; we haul
in no cowards here. Ho! there's his arm just breaking water. A hatchet!
a hatchet! cut it off--we haul in no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir,
sir! here's Pip, trying to get on board again."

"Peace, thou crazy loon," cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm.
"Away from the quarter-deck!"

"The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser," muttered Ahab, advancing.
"Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?

"Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!"

"And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of
thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve
through! Who art thou, boy?"

"Bell-boy, sir; ship's-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip!
One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high--looks
cowardly--quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip the
coward?"

"There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look
down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him,
ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home
henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou
art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let's down."

"What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's hand,
and feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this,
perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope;
something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come
and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I
will not let this go."

"Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse
horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in
gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods
oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not
what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come!
I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an
Emperor's!"

"There go two daft ones now," muttered the old Manxman. "One daft with
strength, the other daft with weakness. But here's the end of the rotten
line--all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new
line altogether. I'll see Mr. Stubb about it."



CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.


Steering now south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, and her progress
solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod held on
her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such
unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled
by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed
the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.

At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the
Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the
dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch--then headed
by Flask--was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly--like
half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod's murdered
Innocents--that one and all, they started from their reveries, and for
the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all transfixedly
listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild cry remained
within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the crew said it was
mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers remained unappalled.
Yet the grey Manxman--the oldest mariner of all--declared that the wild
thrilling sounds that were heard, were the voices of newly drowned men
in the sea.

Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when
he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not
unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus
explained the wonder.

Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers
of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or some dams
that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and kept company
with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail. But this
only the more affected some of them, because most mariners cherish a
very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not only from their
peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the human look of their
round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising from
the water alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances, seals have
more than once been mistaken for men.

But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At
sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore;
and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for
sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was thus
with the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may, he
had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard--a cry and a
rushing--and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and
looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the
sea.

The life-buoy--a long slender cask--was dropped from the stern, where it
always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to seize it,
and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken, so that it
slowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its every pore; and
the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom, as if to
yield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.

And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out
for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground; that man
was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the
time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this event, at
least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil
in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged. They
declared that now they knew the reason of those wild shrieks they had
heard the night before. But again the old Manxman said nay.

The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to see
to it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as
in the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of
the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly
connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be;
therefore, they were going to leave the ship's stern unprovided with a
buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg hinted a hint
concerning his coffin.

"A life-buoy of a coffin!" cried Starbuck, starting.

"Rather queer, that, I should say," said Stubb.

"It will make a good enough one," said Flask, "the carpenter here can
arrange it easily."

"Bring it up; there's nothing else for it," said Starbuck, after a
melancholy pause. "Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so--the coffin,
I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it."

"And shall I nail down the lid, sir?" moving his hand as with a hammer.

"Aye."

"And shall I caulk the seams, sir?" moving his hand as with a
caulking-iron.

"Aye."

"And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?" moving his hand as
with a pitch-pot.

"Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin, and
no more.--Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me."

"He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he baulks.
Now I don't like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he wears it
like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he won't put
his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin?
And now I'm ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It's like turning an old
coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I don't like this
cobbling sort of business--I don't like it at all; it's undignified;
it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats do tinkerings; we are their
betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square
mathematical jobs, something that regularly begins at the beginning, and
is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at the conclusion; not
a cobbler's job, that's at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at
the end. It's the old woman's tricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord!
what an affection all old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of
sixty-five who ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that's
the reason I never would work for lonely widow old women ashore, when
I kept my job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken it into their
lonely old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at
sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay
over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the
snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before
with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied
up in the rigging, ere they would do the job. But I'm made of knotty
Aroostook hemlock; I don't budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing
about with a grave-yard tray! But never mind. We workers in woods make
bridal-bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We
work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask
the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too confounded cobbling,
and then we stash it if we can. Hem! I'll do the job, now, tenderly.
I'll have me--let's see--how many in the ship's company, all told? But
I've forgotten. Any way, I'll have me thirty separate, Turk's-headed
life-lines, each three feet long hanging all round to the coffin. Then,
if the hull go down, there'll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for
one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun! Come hammer,
caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and marling-spike! Let's to it."



CHAPTER 127. The Deck.


THE COFFIN LAID UPON TWO LINE-TUBS, BETWEEN THE VICE-BENCH AND THE OPEN
HATCHWAY; THE CARPENTER CAULKING ITS SEAMS; THE STRING OF TWISTED OAKUM
SLOWLY UNWINDING FROM A LARGE ROLL OF IT PLACED IN THE BOSOM OF
HIS FROCK.--AHAB COMES SLOWLY FROM THE CABIN-GANGWAY, AND HEARS PIP
FOLLOWING HIM.


"Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand
complies with my humor more genially than that boy.--Middle aisle of a
church! What's here?"

"Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the
hatchway!"

"Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault."

"Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does."

"Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy
shop?"

"I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?"

"Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?"

"Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but
they've set me now to turning it into something else."

"Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,
monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the
next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those
same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a
jack-of-all-trades."

"But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do."

"The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a
coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the
craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in
hand. Dost thou never?"

"Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I'm indifferent enough, sir, for that; but
the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there
was none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark
to it."

"Aye, and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board; and what in
all things makes the sounding-board is this--there's naught beneath. And
yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.
Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against
the churchyard gate, going in?

"Faith, sir, I've--"

"Faith? What's that?"

"Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamation-like--that's all,
sir."

"Um, um; go on."

"I was about to say, sir, that--"

"Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight."

"He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes. I've heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos,
is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some sort of
Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He's always under
the Line--fiery hot, I tell ye! He's looking this way--come, oakum;
quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and I'm the
professor of musical glasses--tap, tap!"

(AHAB TO HIMSELF.)

"There's a sight! There's a sound! The grey-headed woodpecker tapping
the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that
thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag,
that fellow. Rat-tat! So man's seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all
materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here
now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made
the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life.
A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some
spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!
I'll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth,
that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain
twilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed
sound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return
again. Now, then, Pip, we'll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous
philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds
must empty into thee!"



CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.


Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down
upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the
time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the
broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all
fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from
the smitten hull.

"Bad news; she brings bad news," muttered the old Manxman. But ere her
commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he
could hopefully hail, Ahab's voice was heard.

"Hast seen the White Whale?"

"Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?"

Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected question;
and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the stranger captain
himself, having stopped his vessel's way, was seen descending her
side. A few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched the Pequod's
main-chains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he was recognised by
Ahab for a Nantucketer he knew. But no formal salutation was exchanged.

"Where was he?--not killed!--not killed!" cried Ahab, closely advancing.
"How was it?"

It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous, while
three of the stranger's boats were engaged with a shoal of whales, which
had led them some four or five miles from the ship; and while they were
yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and head of Moby Dick had
suddenly loomed up out of the water, not very far to leeward; whereupon,
the fourth rigged boat--a reserved one--had been instantly lowered in
chase. After a keen sail before the wind, this fourth boat--the swiftest
keeled of all--seemed to have succeeded in fastening--at least, as
well as the man at the mast-head could tell anything about it. In the
distance he saw the diminished dotted boat; and then a swift gleam
of bubbling white water; and after that nothing more; whence it was
concluded that the stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with
his pursuers, as often happens. There was some apprehension, but no
positive alarm, as yet. The recall signals were placed in the rigging;
darkness came on; and forced to pick up her three far to windward
boats--ere going in quest of the fourth one in the precisely opposite
direction--the ship had not only been necessitated to leave that boat to
its fate till near midnight, but, for the time, to increase her distance
from it. But the rest of her crew being at last safe aboard, she crowded
all sail--stunsail on stunsail--after the missing boat; kindling a fire
in her try-pots for a beacon; and every other man aloft on the look-out.
But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain the
presumed place of the absent ones when last seen; though she then
paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her; and not finding
anything, had again dashed on; again paused, and lowered her boats; and
though she had thus continued doing till daylight; yet not the least
glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.

The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal his
object in boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with his
own in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five miles
apart, on parallel lines, and so sweeping a double horizon, as it were.

"I will wager something now," whispered Stubb to Flask, "that some one
in that missing boat wore off that Captain's best coat; mayhap, his
watch--he's so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of two
pious whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the height of
the whaling season? See, Flask, only see how pale he looks--pale in the
very buttons of his eyes--look--it wasn't the coat--it must have been
the--"

"My boy, my own boy is among them. For God's sake--I beg, I
conjure"--here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far
had but icily received his petition. "For eight-and-forty hours let me
charter your ship--I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it--if
there be no other way--for eight-and-forty hours only--only that--you
must, oh, you must, and you SHALL do this thing."

"His son!" cried Stubb, "oh, it's his son he's lost! I take back the
coat and watch--what says Ahab? We must save that boy."

"He's drowned with the rest on 'em, last night," said the old Manx
sailor standing behind them; "I heard; all of ye heard their spirits."

Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the Rachel's
the more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was one of the
Captain's sons among the number of the missing boat's crew; but among
the number of the other boat's crews, at the same time, but on the other
hand, separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes of the chase,
there had been still another son; as that for a time, the wretched
father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity; which
was only solved for him by his chief mate's instinctively adopting the
ordinary procedure of a whale-ship in such emergencies, that is, when
placed between jeopardized but divided boats, always to pick up the
majority first. But the captain, for some unknown constitutional reason,
had refrained from mentioning all this, and not till forced to it by
Ahab's iciness did he allude to his one yet missing boy; a little lad,
but twelve years old, whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving
hardihood of a Nantucketer's paternal love, had thus early sought to
initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation almost immemorially
the destiny of all his race. Nor does it unfrequently occur, that
Nantucket captains will send a son of such tender age away from them,
for a protracted three or four years' voyage in some other ship than
their own; so that their first knowledge of a whaleman's career shall
be unenervated by any chance display of a father's natural but untimely
partiality, or undue apprehensiveness and concern.

Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of Ahab;
and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without
the least quivering of his own.

"I will not go," said the stranger, "till you say aye to me. Do to me
as you would have me do to you in the like case. For YOU too have a boy,
Captain Ahab--though but a child, and nestling safely at home now--a
child of your old age too--Yes, yes, you relent; I see it--run, run,
men, now, and stand by to square in the yards."

"Avast," cried Ahab--"touch not a rope-yarn"; then in a voice that
prolongingly moulded every word--"Captain Gardiner, I will not do it.
Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I
forgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch,
and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers:
then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before."

Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin,
leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter
rejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment,
Gardiner silently hurried to the side; more fell than stepped into his
boat, and returned to his ship.

Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel
was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot,
however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung round;
starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat against a
head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while all the while, her
masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as three tall cherry
trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs.

But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw
that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort.
She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.



CHAPTER 129. The Cabin.


(AHAB MOVING TO GO ON DECK; PIP CATCHES HIM BY THE HAND TO FOLLOW.)

"Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is coming
when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee by him.
There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady.
Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired
health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall serve thee, as if
thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit here in my own screwed
chair; another screw to it, thou must be."

"No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me for
your one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I remain a
part of ye."

"Oh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless
fidelity of man!--and a black! and crazy!--but methinks like-cures-like
applies to him too; he grows so sane again."

"They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip, whose
drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living skin.
But I will never desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must go with
ye."

"If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab's purpose keels up in him.
I tell thee no; it cannot be."

"Oh good master, master, master!

"Weep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is mad.
Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and still
know that I am there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand!--Met! True art
thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for ever bless
thee; and if it come to that,--God for ever save thee, let what will
befall."

(AHAB GOES; PIP STEPS ONE STEP FORWARD.)


"Here he this instant stood; I stand in his air,--but I'm alone. Now
were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he's missing. Pip! Pip!
Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip? He must be up here; let's try the
door. What? neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar; and yet there's no opening
it. It must be the spell; he told me to stay here: Aye, and told me this
screwed chair was mine. Here, then, I'll seat me, against the transom,
in the ship's full middle, all her keel and her three masts before me.
Here, our old sailors say, in their black seventy-fours great
admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it over rows of captains and
lieutenants. Ha! what's this? epaulets! epaulets! the epaulets all come
crowding! Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs!
What an odd feeling, now, when a black boy's host to white men with gold
lace upon their coats!--Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip?--a little
negro lad, five feet high, hang-dog look, and cowardly! Jumped from a
whale-boat once;--seen him? No! Well then, fill up again, captains, and
let's drink shame upon all cowards! I name no names. Shame upon them!
Put one foot upon the table. Shame upon all cowards.--Hist! above there,
I hear ivory--Oh, master! master! I am indeed down-hearted when you walk
over me. But here I'll stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they
bulge through; and oysters come to join me."



CHAPTER 130. The Hat.


And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a
preliminary cruise, Ahab,--all other whaling waters swept--seemed to
have chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely
there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and
longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a
vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually
encountered Moby Dick;--and now that all his successive meetings with
various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference
with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned
against; now it was that there lurked a something in the old man's eyes,
which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting
polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months' night
sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Ahab's purpose now
fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It
domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings,
fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a
single spear or leaf.

In this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced or natural,
vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more strove
to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to
finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of
Ahab's iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the deck, ever
conscious that the old man's despot eye was on them.

But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours; when
he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have seen that
even as Ahab's eyes so awed the crew's, the inscrutable Parsee's glance
awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it.
Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah
now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious
at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal
substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen
being's body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by
night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go
below. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan
but wondrous eyes did plainly say--We two watchmen never rest.

Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon the
deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot-hole, or
exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits,--the main-mast
and the mizen; or else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle,--his
living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step; his hat slouched
heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he stood, however the
days and nights were added on, that he had not swung in his hammock;
yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never tell unerringly
whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at times; or whether
he was still intently scanning them; no matter, though he stood so in
the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp
gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The
clothes that the night had wet, the next day's sunshine dried upon him;
and so, day after day, and night after night; he went no more beneath
the planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for.

He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,--breakfast and
dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly grew
all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still grow
idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure. But though
his whole life was now become one watch on deck; and though the Parsee's
mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet these two never
seemed to speak--one man to the other--unless at long intervals some
passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a potent spell
seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck crew,
they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak one word;
by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal
interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they
stood far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by
the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the
Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned
substance.

And yet, somehow, did Ahab--in his own proper self, as daily, hourly,
and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,--Ahab
seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again both
seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean shade
siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and keel
was solid Ahab.

At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard
from aft,--"Man the mast-heads!"--and all through the day, till after
sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking of
the helmsman's bell, was heard--"What d'ye see?--sharp! sharp!"

But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the
children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac
old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity; at least, of nearly
all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether
Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But if
these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from verbally
expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them.

"I will have the first sight of the whale myself,"--he said. "Aye!
Ahab must have the doubloon! and with his own hands he rigged a nest
of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved
block, to secure to the main-mast head, he received the two ends of the
downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared a pin for
the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This done, with that
end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked round upon
his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance long upon
Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then settling his
firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,--"Take the rope, sir--I give
it into thy hands, Starbuck." Then arranging his person in the basket,
he gave the word for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being
the one who secured the rope at last; and afterwards stood near it. And
thus, with one hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad
upon the sea for miles and miles,--ahead, astern, this side, and
that,--within the wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height.

When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in
the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is
hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under these
circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge
to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in such a
wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations aloft
cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them at the
deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few minutes
cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural fatality, if,
unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should by some
carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the
sea. So Ahab's proceedings in this matter were not unusual; the only
strange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the one
only man who had ever ventured to oppose him with anything in the
slightest degree approaching to decision--one of those too, whose
faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt somewhat;--it was
strange, that this was the very man he should select for his watchman;
freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted person's
hands.

Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there ten
minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly
incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these
latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head
in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a thousand feet
straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and went eddying
again round his head.

But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed
not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked
it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least
heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every
sight.

"Your hat, your hat, sir!" suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who
being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though
somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing
them.

But already the sable wing was before the old man's eyes; the long
hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with
his prize.

An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to replace
it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would
be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen
accounted good. Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and
on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while
from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly
discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.



CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.


The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the
life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably
misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were
fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships,
cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to
carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.

Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and
some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you
now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled,
half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.

"Hast seen the White Whale?"

"Look!" replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and with
his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.

"Hast killed him?"

"The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that," answered the
other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered
sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.

"Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab
held it out, exclaiming--"Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold
his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs;
and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin,
where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"

"Then God keep thee, old man--see'st thou that"--pointing to the
hammock--"I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only
yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only THAT one I bury; the rest were
buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb." Then turning to his
crew--"Are ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and
lift the body; so, then--Oh! God"--advancing towards the hammock with
uplifted hands--"may the resurrection and the life--"

"Brace forward! Up helm!" cried Ahab like lightning to his men.

But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the sound
of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea; not so
quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled
her hull with their ghostly baptism.

As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy
hanging at the Pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief.

"Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!" cried a foreboding voice in her wake.
"In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us your
taffrail to show us your coffin!"



CHAPTER 132. The Symphony.


It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was
transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and
man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's
chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;
but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed
mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong,
troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and
shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were,
that distinguished them.

Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle
air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the
girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion--most seen
here at the Equator--denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving
alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm
and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the
ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the
morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's
forehead of heaven.

Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how
oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen
little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around
their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on
the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and
watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more
and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely
aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment,
the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome
sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long
cruel--forbidding--now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck,
and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however
wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to
bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea;
nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side;
and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that
stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch
him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.

Ahab turned.

"Starbuck!"

"Sir."

"Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such
a day--very much such a sweetness as this--I struck my first whale--a
boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty--forty--forty years ago!--ago! Forty
years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and
storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab
forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors
of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not
spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation
of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's
exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the
green country without--oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of
solitary command!--when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so
keenly known to me before--and how for forty years I have fed upon dry
salted fare--fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!--when the
poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the
world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts--away, whole oceans away, from
that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn
the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow--wife?
wife?--rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor
girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy,
the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand
lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey--more a
demon than a man!--aye, aye! what a forty years' fool--fool--old fool,
has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy
the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or
better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this
weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under
me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep.
Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look
very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and
humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled
centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!--crack my heart!--stave my
brain!--mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have
I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old?
Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is
better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By
the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass,
man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on
board!--lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick.
That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see
in that eye!"

"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why
should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us
fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are
Starbuck's--wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow
youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,
longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!--this instant let me alter
the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl
on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some such
mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."

"They have, they have. I have seen them--some summer days in the
morning. About this time--yes, it is his noon nap now--the boy
vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of
cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back
to dance him again."

"'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning,
should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's
sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my
Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy's face
from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!"

But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and
cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.

"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor
commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep
pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not
so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this
arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy
in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power;
how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think
thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that
living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in
this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all
the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon
Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where
do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged
to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and
the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been
making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the
mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how
we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid
greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut
swaths--Starbuck!"

But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.

Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at
two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly
leaning over the same rail.



CHAPTER 133. The Chase--First Day.


That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man--as his wont at
intervals--stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went
to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing
up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing nigh to
some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that
peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the
living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner
surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and
then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible,
Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly altered, and the
sail to be shortened.

The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated
at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and
lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery
wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift
tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.

"Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!"

Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle
deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they
seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear
with their clothes in their hands.

"What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.

"Nothing, nothing sir!" was the sound hailing down in reply.

"T'gallant sails!--stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!"

All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for
swaying him to the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they were
hoisting him thither, when, while but two thirds of the way aloft,
and while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the
main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the
air. "There she blows!--there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is
Moby Dick!"

Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous
whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final
perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just
beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian's
head was almost on a level with Ahab's heel. From this height the whale
was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing
his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into the
air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they had
so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

"And did none of ye see it before?" cried Ahab, hailing the perched men
all around him.

"I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I
cried out," said Tashtego.

"Not the same instant; not the same--no, the doubloon is mine, Fate
reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the
White Whale first. There she blows!--there she blows!--there she blows!
There again!--there again!" he cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic
tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale's visible jets.
"He's going to sound! In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by
three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship.
Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So; steady, man, steady! There go
flukes! No, no; only black water! All ready the boats there? Stand by,
stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck; lower, lower,--quick, quicker!" and he
slid through the air to the deck.

"He is heading straight to leeward, sir," cried Stubb, "right away from
us; cannot have seen the ship yet."

"Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!--brace up!
Shiver her!--shiver her!--So; well that! Boats, boats!"

Soon all the boats but Starbuck's were dropped; all the boat-sails
set--all the paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to
leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up
Fedallah's sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.

Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea;
but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew
still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a
noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came
so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump
was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing,
and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish
foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head
beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went
the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical
rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters
interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake;
and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But
these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly
feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like to
some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but
shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back;
and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and
to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and
rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons.

A gentle joyousness--a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested
the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with
ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering
eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness,
rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that
great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so
divinely swam.

On each soft side--coincident with the parted swell, that but once
leaving him, then flowed so wide away--on each bright side, the whale
shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters who
namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured
to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of
tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all
who for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way
thou may'st have bejuggled and destroyed before.

And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among
waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby
Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his
submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw.
But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant
his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's Natural
Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the
grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringly
halting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls longingly lingered
over the agitated pool that he left.

With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift, the
three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's reappearance.

"An hour," said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern; and he gazed
beyond the whale's place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing
vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed
whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze now
freshened; the sea began to swell.

"The birds!--the birds!" cried Tashtego.

In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were
now all flying towards Ahab's boat; and when within a few yards began
fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous,
expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man's; Ahab could discover
no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its
depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white
weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose,
till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked
rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable
bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast,
shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The
glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble
tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled
the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon
Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and
seizing Perth's harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and
stand by to stern.

Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its
bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale's head while yet
under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that
malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself,
as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath
the boat.

Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for
an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of
a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his
mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into
the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish
pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab's
head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale
now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With
unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the
tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other's heads to gain the
uttermost stern.

And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the
whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his
body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from
the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and
while the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis
impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with
this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and
helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized
the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from
its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the
frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an
enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain,
and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two
floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew
at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold fast
to the oars to lash them across.

At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first
to perceive the whale's intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a
movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand
had made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only
slipping further into the whale's mouth, and tilting over sideways as it
slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him out of
it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the sea.

Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little
distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the
billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body;
so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose--some twenty or more feet
out of the water--the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves,
dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray
still higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel
billows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to
overleap its summit with their scud.


*This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation
(pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down
poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously
described. By this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively
view whatever objects may be encircling him.


But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly round
and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful
wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault.
The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood of
grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book
of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's
insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,--though he could still
keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless
Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock
might burst. From the boat's fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and
mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not
succor him; more than enough was it for them to look to themselves.
For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale's aspect, and so
planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed
horizontally swooping upon them. And though the other boats, unharmed,
still hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into the eddy to
strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant destruction of
the jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that case could they
themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then, they remained on
the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had now become the old
man's head.

Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship's
mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene;
and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!--"Sail on
the"--but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and
whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing
to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,--"Sail on the whale!--Drive him
off!"

The Pequod's prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed circle, she
effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly swam
off, the boats flew to the rescue.

Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine
caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily strength did
crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom: for a time, lying
all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one trodden under foot
of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as
desolate sounds from out ravines.

But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more
abbreviate it. In an instant's compass, great hearts sometimes condense
to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused
through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary
in each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their
life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous
intensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures
contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls.

"The harpoon," said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on one
bended arm--"is it safe?"

"Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it," said Stubb, showing it.

"Lay it before me;--any missing men?"

"One, two, three, four, five;--there were five oars, sir, and here are
five men."

"That's good.--Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him! there!
there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!--Hands off from me!
The eternal sap runs up in Ahab's bones again! Set the sail; out oars;
the helm!"

It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked
up by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase is thus
continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus now. But
the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale,
for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with a
velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these circumstances,
pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a
hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long a period, such an
unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing barely tolerable
only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as it
sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate means of
overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were
soon swayed up to their cranes--the two parts of the wrecked boat having
been previously secured by her--and then hoisting everything to her
side, and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it
with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the
Pequod bore down in the leeward wake of Moby-Dick. At the well known,
methodic intervals, the whale's glittering spout was regularly announced
from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be reported as just gone
down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the deck, binnacle-watch
in hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted hour expired, his
voice was heard.--"Whose is the doubloon now? D'ye see him?" and if the
reply was, No, sir! straightway he commanded them to lift him to his
perch. In this way the day wore on; Ahab, now aloft and motionless;
anon, unrestingly pacing the planks.

As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men aloft,
or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a still
greater breadth--thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at
every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon
the quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow to shattered stern.
At last he paused before it; and as in an already over-clouded sky fresh
troops of clouds will sometimes sail across, so over the old man's face
there now stole some such added gloom as this.

Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to
evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in
his Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed--"The
thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha!"

"What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man! did
I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I could swear
thou wert a poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck."

"Aye, sir," said Starbuck drawing near, "'tis a solemn sight; an omen,
and an ill one."

"Omen? omen?--the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to
man, they will honourably speak outright; not shake their heads, and
give an old wives' darkling hint.--Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles
of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and
ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of
the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold--I
shiver!--How now? Aloft there! D'ye see him? Sing out for every spout,
though he spout ten times a second!"

The day was nearly done; only the hem of his golden robe was rustling.
Soon, it was almost dark, but the look-out men still remained unset.

"Can't see the spout now, sir;--too dark"--cried a voice from the air.

"How heading when last seen?"

"As before, sir,--straight to leeward."

"Good! he will travel slower now 'tis night. Down royals and top-gallant
stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before morning; he's
making a passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm there! keep her
full before the wind!--Aloft! come down!--Mr. Stubb, send a fresh hand
to the fore-mast head, and see it manned till morning."--Then advancing
towards the doubloon in the main-mast--"Men, this gold is mine, for I
earned it; but I shall let it abide here till the White Whale is dead;
and then, whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be
killed, this gold is that man's; and if on that day I shall again raise
him, then, ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye! Away
now!--the deck is thine, sir!"

And so saying, he placed himself half way within the scuttle, and
slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals
rousing himself to see how the night wore on.



CHAPTER 134. The Chase--Second Day.


At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh.

"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the light
to spread.

"See nothing, sir."

"Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought
for;--the top-gallant sails!--aye, they should have been kept on her all
night. But no matter--'tis but resting for the rush."

Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale,
continued through day into night, and through night into day, is a thing
by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such is the
wonderful skill, prescience of experience, and invincible confidence
acquired by some great natural geniuses among the Nantucket commanders;
that from the simple observation of a whale when last descried, they
will, under certain given circumstances, pretty accurately foretell both
the direction in which he will continue to swim for a time, while out of
sight, as well as his probable rate of progression during that period.
And, in these cases, somewhat as a pilot, when about losing sight of
a coast, whose general trending he well knows, and which he desires
shortly to return to again, but at some further point; like as this
pilot stands by his compass, and takes the precise bearing of the
cape at present visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright
the remote, unseen headland, eventually to be visited: so does the
fisherman, at his compass, with the whale; for after being chased, and
diligently marked, through several hours of daylight, then, when night
obscures the fish, the creature's future wake through the darkness
is almost as established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the
pilot's coast is to him. So that to this hunter's wondrous skill, the
proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all
desired purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land. And as the
mighty iron Leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known in
its every pace, that, with watches in their hands, men time his rate as
doctors that of a baby's pulse; and lightly say of it, the up train or
the down train will reach such or such a spot, at such or such an hour;
even so, almost, there are occasions when these Nantucketers time that
other Leviathan of the deep, according to the observed humor of his
speed; and say to themselves, so many hours hence this whale will have
gone two hundred miles, will have about reached this or that degree of
latitude or longitude. But to render this acuteness at all successful in
the end, the wind and the sea must be the whaleman's allies; for of what
present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that
assures him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his
port? Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile
matters touching the chase of whales.

The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a
cannon-ball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level
field.

"By salt and hemp!" cried Stubb, "but this swift motion of the deck
creeps up one's legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two
brave fellows!--Ha, ha! Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise,
on the sea,--for by live-oaks! my spine's a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait
that leaves no dust behind!"

"There she blows--she blows!--she blows!--right ahead!" was now the
mast-head cry.

"Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I knew it--ye can't escape--blow on and
split your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your
trump--blister your lungs!--Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller
shuts his watergate upon the stream!"

And Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies
of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine
worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might
have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the
growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed,
as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand
of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of
the previous day; the rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed,
unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging
towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled
along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the
vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of
that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race.

They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all;
though it was put together of all contrasting things--oak, and maple,
and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp--yet all these ran into each
other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and
directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of
the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all
varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal
goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.

The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were
outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one
hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others,
shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking
yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for
their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to
seek out the thing that might destroy them!

"Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when, after
the lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard.
"Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd jet
that way, and then disappears."

It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some
other thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for
hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its
pin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the
air vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant
halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as--much nearer to the ship
than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead--Moby Dick
bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not
by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White
Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon
of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths,
the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of
air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the
distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged
waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his
act of defiance.

"There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his
immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to
Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved
against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for
the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and
stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling
intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.

"Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and
thy harpoon are at hand!--Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore.
The boats!--stand by!"

Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like
shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and
halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from
his perch.

"Lower away," he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat--a spare one,
rigged the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine--keep
away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!"

As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first
assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for the
three crews. Ahab's boat was central; and cheering his men, he told them
he would take the whale head-and-head,--that is, pull straight up to his
forehead,--a not uncommon thing; for when within a certain limit, such
a course excludes the coming onset from the whale's sidelong vision.
But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all three boats were
plain as the ship's three masts to his eye; the White Whale churning
himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing
among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling
battle on every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him from every
boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which
those boats were made. But skilfully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling
like trained chargers in the field; the boats for a while eluded him;
though, at times, but by a plank's breadth; while all the time, Ahab's
unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to shreds.

But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed
and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three
lines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of themselves,
warped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him; though now
for a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to rally for a more
tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab first paid out more
line: and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it again--hoping
that way to disencumber it of some snarls--when lo!--a sight more savage
than the embattled teeth of sharks!

Caught and twisted--corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose harpoons
and lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came flashing
and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab's boat. Only one
thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached
within--through--and then, without--the rays of steel; dragged in
the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice
sundering the rope near the chocks--dropped the intercepted fagot of
steel into the sea; and was all fast again. That instant, the White
Whale made a sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines;
by so doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and
Flask towards his flukes; dashed them together like two rolling husks on
a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in
a boiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of
the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly
stirred bowl of punch.

While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out after
the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while
aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching his
legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was lustily
singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while the old man's
line--now parting--admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to
rescue whom he could;--in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand
concreted perils,--Ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards
Heaven by invisible wires,--as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly
from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its
bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell
again--gunwale downwards--and Ahab and his men struggled out from under
it, like seals from a sea-side cave.

The first uprising momentum of the whale--modifying its direction as
he struck the surface--involuntarily launched him along it, to a little
distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his
back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from
side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip
or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and
came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work
for that time was done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the
ocean, and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued his
leeward way at a traveller's methodic pace.

As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again
came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the
floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at, and
safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and
ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable
intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all these were there;
but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen any one. As
with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now found grimly clinging to
his boat's broken half, which afforded a comparatively easy float; nor
did it so exhaust him as the previous day's mishap.

But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him; as
instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of
Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist him. His ivory
leg had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter.

"Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who he
will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has."

"The ferrule has not stood, sir," said the carpenter, now coming up; "I
put good work into that leg."

"But no bones broken, sir, I hope," said Stubb with true concern.

"Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!--d'ye see it.--But even with
a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living bone of
mine one jot more me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor white whale,
nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and
inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrape
yonder roof?--Aloft there! which way?"

"Dead to leeward, sir."

"Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest of
the spare boats and rig them--Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the boat's
crews."

"Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir."

"Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate! that the
unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!"

"Sir?"

"My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane--there, that
shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet.
By heaven it cannot be!--missing?--quick! call them all."

The old man's hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company, the
Parsee was not there.

"The Parsee!" cried Stubb--"he must have been caught in--"

"The black vomit wrench thee!--run all of ye above, alow, cabin,
forecastle--find him--not gone--not gone!"

But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was
nowhere to be found.

"Aye, sir," said Stubb--"caught among the tangles of your line--I
thought I saw him dragging under."

"MY line! MY line? Gone?--gone? What means that little word?--What
death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry.
The harpoon, too!--toss over the litter there,--d'ye see it?--the forged
iron, men, the white whale's--no, no, no,--blistered fool! this hand did
dart it!--'tis in the fish!--Aloft there! Keep him nailed--Quick!--all
hands to the rigging of the boats--collect the oars--harpooneers!
the irons, the irons!--hoist the royals higher--a pull on all the
sheets!--helm there! steady, steady for your life! I'll ten times girdle
the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I'll slay
him yet!

"Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck;
"never, never wilt thou capture him, old man--In Jesus' name no more of
this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove
to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil
shadow gone--all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:--

"What more wouldst thou have?--Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish
till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom
of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh,
oh,--Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"

"Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that
hour we both saw--thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in this
matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this
hand--a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This
whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion
years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act
under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.--Stand round
me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered
lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab--his body's part; but
Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel
strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale;
and I may look so. But ere I break, yell hear me crack; and till ye hear
THAT, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in
the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they
drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again,
to sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick--two days he's floated--tomorrow
will be the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more,--but only to spout
his last! D'ye feel brave men, brave?"

"As fearless fire," cried Stubb.

"And as mechanical," muttered Ahab. Then as the men went forward, he
muttered on: "The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the same
to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek
to drive out of others' hearts what's clinched so fast in mine!--The
Parsee--the Parsee!--gone, gone? and he was to go before:--but still was
to be seen again ere I could perish--How's that?--There's a riddle now
might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line
of judges:--like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain. I'LL, I'LL solve it,
though!"

When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.

So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as
on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the
grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns
in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening
their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken keel of
Ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while still as
on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle; his
hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial; sat due
eastward for the earliest sun.



CHAPTER 135. The Chase.--Third Day.


The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the
solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the
daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.

"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.

"In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all. Helm
there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day
again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the
angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a
fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food for thought, had
Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels;
THAT'S tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has
that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a
calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much
for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm--frozen
calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents
turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this
moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort
of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy clefts of
Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it; they whip
it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they
cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison
corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and
now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!--it's
tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable
world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a
noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight
it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run
through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not
stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing--a nobler
thing than THAT. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things
that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are
bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most
special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I
say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and
gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the
clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous
mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of
the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the land swift
and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal
Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these
Trades, or something like them--something so unchangeable, and full as
strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there! What d'ye see?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun!
Aye, aye, it must be so. I've oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye,
he's chasing ME now; not I, HIM--that's bad; I might have known it, too.
Fool! the lines--the harpoons he's towing. Aye, aye, I have run him by
last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but the regular look
outs! Man the braces!"

Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's
quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced
ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own
white wake.

"Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck to
himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. "God keep
us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside wet my
flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!"

"Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen basket.
"We should meet him soon."

"Aye, aye, sir," and straightway Starbuck did Ahab's bidding, and once
more Ahab swung on high.

A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now held
long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the
weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three
mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced
it.

"Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On deck
there!--brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's eye. He's too
far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that
helmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But
let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea; there's
time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young; aye, and
not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-hills of
Nantucket! The same!--the same!--the same to Noah as to me. There's
a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They must lead
somewhere--to something else than common land, more palmy than the
palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward,
then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old
mast-head! What's this?--green? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks.
No such green weather stains on Ahab's head! There's the difference now
between man's old age and matter's. But aye, old mast, we both grow old
together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, minus
a leg, that's all. By heaven this dead wood has the better of my live
flesh every way. I can't compare with it; and I've known some ships made
of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of
vital fathers. What's that he said? he should still go before me, my
pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at the
bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all
night I've been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye,
like many more thou told'st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee;
but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-head--keep a good
eye upon the whale, the while I'm gone. We'll talk to-morrow, nay,
to-night, when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and tail."

He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered
through the cloven blue air to the deck.

In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop's
stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the
mate,--who held one of the tackle-ropes on deck--and bade him pause.

"Starbuck!"

"Sir?"

"For the third time my soul's ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck."

"Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so."

"Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing,
Starbuck!"

"Truth, sir: saddest truth."

"Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of
the flood;--and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested comb,
Starbuck. I am old;--shake hands with me, man."

Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck's tears the glue.

"Oh, my captain, my captain!--noble heart--go not--go not!--see, it's a
brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!"

"Lower away!"--cried Ahab, tossing the mate's arm from him. "Stand by
the crew!"

In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.

"The sharks! the sharks!" cried a voice from the low cabin-window there;
"O master, my master, come back!"

But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and the
boat leaped on.

Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when
numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath
the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they
dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat with their
bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in
those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in
the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching
regiments in the east. But these were the first sharks that had been
observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried;
and whether it was that Ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow
barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the
sharks--a matter sometimes well known to affect them,--however it was,
they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others.

"Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and
following with his eyes the receding boat--"canst thou yet ring boldly
to that sight?--lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by
them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?--For
when three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure
the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third the evening
and the end of that thing--be that end what it may. Oh! my God! what
is this that shoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yet
expectant,--fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swim before me,
as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim.
Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to
see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem
clearing; but clouds sweep between--Is my journey's end coming? My legs
feel faint; like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,--beats
it yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck!--stave it off--move, move!
speak aloud!--Mast-head there! See ye my boy's hand on the
hill?--Crazed;--aloft there!--keep thy keenest eye upon the boats:--

"Mark well the whale!--Ho! again!--drive off that hawk! see! he pecks--he
tears the vane"--pointing to the red flag flying at the main-truck--"Ha!
he soars away with it!--Where's the old man now? see'st thou that sight,
oh Ahab!--shudder, shudder!"

The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast-heads--a
downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had sounded; but
intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on his way a little
sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew maintaining the profoundest
silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and hammered against the
opposing bow.

"Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads
drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no
hearse can be mine:--and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!"

Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; then
quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of
ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a
subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with
trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot lengthwise,
but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it
hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back
into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for
an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of
flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the
marble trunk of the whale.

"Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward to
the attack; but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded in
him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell
from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad
white forehead, beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted together;
as head on, he came churning his tail among the boats; and once more
flailed them apart; spilling out the irons and lances from the two
mates' boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of their bows,
but leaving Ahab's almost without a scar.

While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks; and as the
whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire flank as he
shot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round
and round to the fish's back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which,
during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines
around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment
frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.

The harpoon dropped from his hand.

"Befooled, befooled!"--drawing in a long lean breath--"Aye, Parsee! I
see thee again.--Aye, and thou goest before; and this, THIS then is the
hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of
thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those
boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to
me; if not, Ahab is enough to die--Down, men! the first thing that but
offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are
not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.--Where's the
whale? gone down again?"

But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with the
corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter had
been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily
swimming forward; and had almost passed the ship,--which thus far had
been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the present
her headway had been stopped. He seemed swimming with his utmost
velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight path in the
sea.

"Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third
day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that
madly seekest him!"

Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled to
leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was sliding
by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck's face as he
leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow
him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he
saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three
mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats
which had but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in
repairing them. One after the other, through the port-holes, as he sped,
he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves
on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all this; as he
heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving
a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking that the vane or
flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had
just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer
and nails, and so nail it to the mast.

Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the resistance
to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some
latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White
Whale's way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly
nearing him once more; though indeed the whale's last start had not been
so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves the
unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to the
boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades became
jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea, at almost
every dip.

"Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull on!
'tis the better rest, the shark's jaw than the yielding water."

"But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"

"They will last long enough! pull on!--But who can tell"--he
muttered--"whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on
Ahab?--But pull on! Aye, all alive, now--we near him. The helm! take the
helm! let me pass,"--and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward
to the bows of the still flying boat.

At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along
with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its
advance--as the whale sometimes will--and Ahab was fairly within the
smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled
round his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when,
with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the
poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the
hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked
into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh
flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly
canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the
gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed
into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen--who foreknew not the
precise instant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for its
effects--these were flung out; but so fell, that, in an instant two of
them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a combing
wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man helplessly
dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.

Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,
instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering
sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with
the line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on their
seats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment the treacherous line
felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air!

"What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!--'tis whole again; oars! oars!
Burst in upon him!"

Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled
round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution,
catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing
in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it--it may be--a
larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing
prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.

Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. "I grow blind; hands!
stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night?"

"The whale! The ship!" cried the cringing oarsmen.

"Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for
ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I see:
the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?"

But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the
sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks
burst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat
lay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew, trying
hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water.

Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego's mast-head hammer
remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as
with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his own
forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon the
bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just as soon
as he.

"The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air,
now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's
fainting fit. Up helm, I say--ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is this the
end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab,
Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again!
He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one,
whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now!"

"Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help
Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale!
Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking
eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too
soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou
grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of
as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet
ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou
grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye
not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in
his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though;--cherries!
cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die!"

"Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope
my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will
now come to her, for the voyage is up."

From the ship's bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive; hammers,
bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in their
hands, just as they had darted from their various employments; all their
enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side strangely
vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of overspreading
semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution, swift vengeance,
eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal
man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's
starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their
faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook
on their bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters
pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.

"The ship! The hearse!--the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat;
"its wood could only be American!"

Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its
keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far
off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a
time, he lay quiescent.

"I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer.
Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only
god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed
prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I
cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh,
lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in
my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in,
ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber
of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering
whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at
thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins
and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let
me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee,
thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!"

The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting
velocity the line ran through the grooves;--ran foul. Ahab stooped to
clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the
neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was
shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the
heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty
tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its
depths.

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The
ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering
mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana;
only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or
fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers
still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric
circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating
oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all
round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod
out of sight.

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the
sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the
erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag,
which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying
billows they almost touched;--at that instant, a red arm and a hammer
hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing
the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that
tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home
among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there;
this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the
hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill,
the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen
there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his
imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the
flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink
to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and
helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white
surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great
shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.




Epilogue

"AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE" Job.

The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?--Because one
did survive the wreck.

It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he whom the
Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that bowsman
assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three
men were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So,
floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it,
when the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then,
but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had
subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting
towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling
circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital
centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of
its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great
force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and
floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day
and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks,
they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks
sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer,
and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in
her retracing search after her missing children, only found another
orphan.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #74]
[Last updated: May 3, 2011]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SAWYER ***




Produced by David Widger. The previous edition was updated by Jose
Menendez.





                   THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
                                BY
                            MARK TWAIN
                     (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)




                           P R E F A C E

MOST of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or
two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were
schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but
not from an individual--he is a combination of the characteristics of
three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of
architecture.

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children
and slaves in the West at the period of this story--that is to say,
thirty or forty years ago.

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and
girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account,
for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what
they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked,
and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

                                                            THE AUTHOR.

HARTFORD, 1876.



                          T O M   S A W Y E R



CHAPTER I

"TOM!"

No answer.

"TOM!"

No answer.

"What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!"

No answer.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the
room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or
never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her
state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not
service--she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.
She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but
still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--"

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching
under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the
punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

"I never did see the beat of that boy!"

She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the
tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom.
So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and
shouted:

"Y-o-u-u TOM!"

There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to
seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.

"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in
there?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What IS that
truck?"

"I don't know, aunt."

"Well, I know. It's jam--that's what it is. Forty times I've said if
you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch."

The switch hovered in the air--the peril was desperate--

"My! Look behind you, aunt!"

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The
lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and
disappeared over it.

His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle
laugh.

"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks
enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old
fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks,
as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days,
and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how
long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he
can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down
again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy,
and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile
the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for
us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my
own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash
him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so,
and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man
that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the
Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, *
and [* Southwestern for "afternoon"] I'll just be obleeged to make him
work, to-morrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work
Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more
than he hates anything else, and I've GOT to do some of my duty by him,
or I'll be the ruination of the child."

Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home
barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's
wood and split the kindlings before supper--at least he was there in
time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the
work. Tom's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already
through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a
quiet boy, and had no adventurous, troublesome ways.

While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity
offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and
very deep--for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like
many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she
was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she
loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low
cunning. Said she:

"Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?"

"Yes'm."

"Powerful warm, warn't it?"

"Yes'm."

"Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?"

A bit of a scare shot through Tom--a touch of uncomfortable suspicion.
He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said:

"No'm--well, not very much."

The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said:

"But you ain't too warm now, though." And it flattered her to reflect
that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing
that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew
where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move:

"Some of us pumped on our heads--mine's damp yet. See?"

Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of
circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new
inspiration:

"Tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to
pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!"

The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His
shirt collar was securely sewed.

"Bother! Well, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hookey
and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of a
singed cat, as the saying is--better'n you look. THIS time."

She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom
had stumbled into obedient conduct for once.

But Sidney said:

"Well, now, if I didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread,
but it's black."

"Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!"

But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said:

"Siddy, I'll lick you for that."

In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into
the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them--one needle
carried white thread and the other black. He said:

"She'd never noticed if it hadn't been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes
she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to
geeminy she'd stick to one or t'other--I can't keep the run of 'em. But
I bet you I'll lam Sid for that. I'll learn him!"

He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very
well though--and loathed him.

Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles.
Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him
than a man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore
them down and drove them out of his mind for the time--just as men's
misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This
new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just
acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed.
It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble,
produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short
intervals in the midst of the music--the reader probably remembers how
to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave
him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full
of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an
astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet--no doubt, as far as
strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with
the boy, not the astronomer.

The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom
checked his whistle. A stranger was before him--a boy a shade larger
than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive
curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy
was well dressed, too--well dressed on a week-day. This was simply
astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth
roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes
on--and it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of
ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom's vitals. The
more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his
nose at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed
to him to grow. Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved--but
only sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all
the time. Finally Tom said:

"I can lick you!"

"I'd like to see you try it."

"Well, I can do it."

"No you can't, either."

"Yes I can."

"No you can't."

"I can."

"You can't."

"Can!"

"Can't!"

An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said:

"What's your name?"

"'Tisn't any of your business, maybe."

"Well I 'low I'll MAKE it my business."

"Well why don't you?"

"If you say much, I will."

"Much--much--MUCH. There now."

"Oh, you think you're mighty smart, DON'T you? I could lick you with
one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to."

"Well why don't you DO it? You SAY you can do it."

"Well I WILL, if you fool with me."

"Oh yes--I've seen whole families in the same fix."

"Smarty! You think you're SOME, now, DON'T you? Oh, what a hat!"

"You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you to knock it
off--and anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs."

"You're a liar!"

"You're another."

"You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up."

"Aw--take a walk!"

"Say--if you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a
rock off'n your head."

"Oh, of COURSE you will."

"Well I WILL."

"Well why don't you DO it then? What do you keep SAYING you will for?
Why don't you DO it? It's because you're afraid."

"I AIN'T afraid."

"You are."

"I ain't."

"You are."

Another pause, and more eying and sidling around each other. Presently
they were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said:

"Get away from here!"

"Go away yourself!"

"I won't."

"I won't either."

So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and
both shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with
hate. But neither could get an advantage. After struggling till both
were hot and flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution,
and Tom said:

"You're a coward and a pup. I'll tell my big brother on you, and he
can thrash you with his little finger, and I'll make him do it, too."

"What do I care for your big brother? I've got a brother that's bigger
than he is--and what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too."
[Both brothers were imaginary.]

"That's a lie."

"YOUR saying so don't make it so."

Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said:

"I dare you to step over that, and I'll lick you till you can't stand
up. Anybody that'll take a dare will steal sheep."

The new boy stepped over promptly, and said:

"Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it."

"Don't you crowd me now; you better look out."

"Well, you SAID you'd do it--why don't you do it?"

"By jingo! for two cents I WILL do it."

The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out
with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys
were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and
for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and
clothes, punched and scratched each other's nose, and covered
themselves with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and
through the fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, and
pounding him with his fists. "Holler 'nuff!" said he.

The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying--mainly from rage.

"Holler 'nuff!"--and the pounding went on.

At last the stranger got out a smothered "'Nuff!" and Tom let him up
and said:

"Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fooling with next
time."

The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing,
snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and
threatening what he would do to Tom the "next time he caught him out."
To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and
as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw
it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like
an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he
lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the
enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the
window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and called
Tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went
away; but he said he "'lowed" to "lay" for that boy.

He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in
at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt;
and when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn
his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in
its firmness.



CHAPTER II

SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and
fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if
the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in
every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom
and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond
the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far
enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a
long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and
a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board
fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a
burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant
whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed
fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at
the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from
the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but
now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at
the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there
waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling,
fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only
a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of
water under an hour--and even then somebody generally had to go after
him. Tom said:

"Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some."

Jim shook his head and said:

"Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis
water an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars
Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend
to my own business--she 'lowed SHE'D 'tend to de whitewashin'."

"Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always
talks. Gimme the bucket--I won't be gone only a a minute. SHE won't
ever know."

"Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n
me. 'Deed she would."

"SHE! She never licks anybody--whacks 'em over the head with her
thimble--and who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but
talk don't hurt--anyways it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you
a marvel. I'll give you a white alley!"

Jim began to waver.

"White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw."

"My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful
'fraid ole missis--"

"And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe."

Jim was only human--this attraction was too much for him. He put down
his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing
interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was
flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was
whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field
with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.

But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had
planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys
would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and
they would make a world of fun of him for having to work--the very
thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and
examined it--bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an
exchange of WORK, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an
hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his
pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark
and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a
great, magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in
sight presently--the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been
dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump--proof enough that his
heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned
ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As
he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned
far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious
pomp and circumstance--for he was personating the Big Missouri, and
considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and
captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself
standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

"Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he
drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

"Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and
stiffened down his sides.

"Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow!
Chow!" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles--for it was
representing a forty-foot wheel.

"Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-lingling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!"
The left hand began to describe circles.

"Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead
on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! LIVELY now!
Come--out with your spring-line--what're you about there! Take a turn
round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now--let her
go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!"
(trying the gauge-cocks).

Tom went on whitewashing--paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben
stared a moment and then said: "Hi-YI! YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you!"

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then
he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as
before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the
apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?"

Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

"Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing."

"Say--I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of
course you'd druther WORK--wouldn't you? Course you would!"

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

"What do you call work?"

"Why, ain't THAT work?"

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom
Sawyer."

"Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you LIKE it?"

The brush continued to move.

"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get
a chance to whitewash a fence every day?"

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom
swept his brush daintily back and forth--stepped back to note the
effect--added a touch here and there--criticised the effect again--Ben
watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more
absorbed. Presently he said:

"Say, Tom, let ME whitewash a little."

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

"No--no--I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's
awful particular about this fence--right here on the street, you know
--but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and SHE wouldn't. Yes,
she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very
careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two
thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done."

"No--is that so? Oh come, now--lemme just try. Only just a little--I'd
let YOU, if you was me, Tom."

"Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly--well, Jim wanted to
do it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't
let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this
fence and anything was to happen to it--"

"Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say--I'll give
you the core of my apple."

"Well, here--No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard--"

"I'll give you ALL of it!"

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his
heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in
the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by,
dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more
innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every
little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time
Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for
a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in
for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on,
hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being
a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling
in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles,
part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a
spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk,
a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six
fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a
dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of
orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company
--and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out
of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He
had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely,
that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only
necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great
and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have
comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do,
and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And
this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers
or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or
climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in
England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles
on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them
considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service,
that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place
in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to
report.



CHAPTER III

TOM presented himself before Aunt Polly, who was sitting by an open
window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bedroom,
breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. The balmy summer
air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing murmur
of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her knitting
--for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her lap. Her
spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had thought
that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at seeing him
place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. He said: "Mayn't
I go and play now, aunt?"

"What, a'ready? How much have you done?"

"It's all done, aunt."

"Tom, don't lie to me--I can't bear it."

"I ain't, aunt; it IS all done."

Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see
for herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent.
of Tom's statement true. When she found the entire fence whitewashed,
and not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even
a streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable.
She said:

"Well, I never! There's no getting round it, you can work when you're
a mind to, Tom." And then she diluted the compliment by adding, "But
it's powerful seldom you're a mind to, I'm bound to say. Well, go 'long
and play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you."

She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took
him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to
him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a
treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort.
And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he "hooked" a
doughnut.

Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway
that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and
the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a
hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties
and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect,
and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general
thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at
peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his
black thread and getting him into trouble.

Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by
the back of his aunt's cow-stable. He presently got safely beyond the
reach of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square
of the village, where two "military" companies of boys had met for
conflict, according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of
these armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These
two great commanders did not condescend to fight in person--that being
better suited to the still smaller fry--but sat together on an eminence
and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through
aides-de-camp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and
hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged,
the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the
necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and
marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new
girl in the garden--a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair
plaited into two long-tails, white summer frock and embroidered
pantalettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A
certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a
memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction;
he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor
little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had
confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest
boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time
she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is
done.

He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she
had discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present,
and began to "show off" in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to
win her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some
time; but by-and-by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous
gymnastic performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl
was wending her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and
leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer.
She halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom
heaved a great sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face
lit up, right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment
before she disappeared.

The boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and
then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as if
he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction.
Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his
nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side,
in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally
his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he
hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But
only for a minute--only while he could button the flower inside his
jacket, next his heart--or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not
much posted in anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway.

He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, "showing
off," as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom
comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some
window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode
home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.

All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered
"what had got into the child." He took a good scolding about clodding
Sid, and did not seem to mind it in the least. He tried to steal sugar
under his aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said:

"Aunt, you don't whack Sid when he takes it."

"Well, Sid don't torment a body the way you do. You'd be always into
that sugar if I warn't watching you."

Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his
immunity, reached for the sugar-bowl--a sort of glorying over Tom which
was wellnigh unbearable. But Sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped
and broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even
controlled his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would
not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly
still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and
there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model
"catch it." He was so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold
himself when the old lady came back and stood above the wreck
discharging lightnings of wrath from over her spectacles. He said to
himself, "Now it's coming!" And the next instant he was sprawling on
the floor! The potent palm was uplifted to strike again when Tom cried
out:

"Hold on, now, what 'er you belting ME for?--Sid broke it!"

Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But
when she got her tongue again, she only said:

"Umf! Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some
other audacious mischief when I wasn't around, like enough."

Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something
kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a
confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that.
So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.
Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart
his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the
consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice
of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then,
through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured
himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching
one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and
die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured
himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and
his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how
her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back
her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more! But he would lie
there cold and white and make no sign--a poor little sufferer, whose
griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos
of these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to
choke; and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he
winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a
luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear
to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it;
it was too sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin
Mary danced in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an
age-long visit of one week to the country, he got up and moved in
clouds and darkness out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in
at the other.

He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought
desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the
river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and
contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while,
that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without
undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought
of his flower. He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily
increased his dismal felicity. He wondered if she would pity him if she
knew? Would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms
around his neck and comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all
the hollow world? This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable
suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind and set it
up in new and varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he
rose up sighing and departed in the darkness.

About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street
to where the Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell
upon his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the
curtain of a second-story window. Was the sacred presence there? He
climbed the fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till
he stood under that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion;
then he laid him down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon
his back, with his hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor
wilted flower. And thus he would die--out in the cold world, with no
shelter over his homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the
death-damps from his brow, no loving face to bend pityingly over him
when the great agony came. And thus SHE would see him when she looked
out upon the glad morning, and oh! would she drop one little tear upon
his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright
young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down?

The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the
holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains!

The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz
as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound
as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the
fence and shot away in the gloom.

Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his
drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, Sid woke up; but if he
had any dim idea of making any "references to allusions," he thought
better of it and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom's eye.

Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made
mental note of the omission.



CHAPTER IV

THE sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful
village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family
worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid
courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of
originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter
of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.

Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to "get
his verses." Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his
energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the
Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter.
At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson,
but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human
thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary
took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through
the fog:

"Blessed are the--a--a--"

"Poor"--

"Yes--poor; blessed are the poor--a--a--"

"In spirit--"

"In spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for they--they--"

"THEIRS--"

"For THEIRS. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they--they--"

"Sh--"

"For they--a--"

"S, H, A--"

"For they S, H--Oh, I don't know what it is!"

"SHALL!"

"Oh, SHALL! for they shall--for they shall--a--a--shall mourn--a--a--
blessed are they that shall--they that--a--they that shall mourn, for
they shall--a--shall WHAT? Why don't you tell me, Mary?--what do you
want to be so mean for?"

"Oh, Tom, you poor thick-headed thing, I'm not teasing you. I wouldn't
do that. You must go and learn it again. Don't you be discouraged, Tom,
you'll manage it--and if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice.
There, now, that's a good boy."

"All right! What is it, Mary, tell me what it is."

"Never you mind, Tom. You know if I say it's nice, it is nice."

"You bet you that's so, Mary. All right, I'll tackle it again."

And he did "tackle it again"--and under the double pressure of
curiosity and prospective gain he did it with such spirit that he
accomplished a shining success. Mary gave him a brand-new "Barlow"
knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that
swept his system shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would
not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" Barlow, and there was
inconceivable grandeur in that--though where the Western boys ever got
the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its
injury is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. Tom
contrived to scarify the cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin
on the bureau, when he was called off to dress for Sunday-school.

Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went
outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he
dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves;
poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the
kitchen and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the
door. But Mary removed the towel and said:

"Now ain't you ashamed, Tom. You mustn't be so bad. Water won't hurt
you."

Tom was a trifle disconcerted. The basin was refilled, and this time
he stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big
breath and began. When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes
shut and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony
of suds and water was dripping from his face. But when he emerged from
the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped
short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line
there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in
front and backward around his neck. Mary took him in hand, and when she
was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of
color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls
wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [He privately
smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his
hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and
his own filled his life with bitterness.] Then Mary got out a suit of
his clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two years--they
were simply called his "other clothes"--and so by that we know the
size of his wardrobe. The girl "put him to rights" after he had dressed
himself; she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his
vast shirt collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned
him with his speckled straw hat. He now looked exceedingly improved and
uncomfortable. He was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there
was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. He
hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she
coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought them
out. He lost his temper and said he was always being made to do
everything he didn't want to do. But Mary said, persuasively:

"Please, Tom--that's a good boy."

So he got into the shoes snarling. Mary was soon ready, and the three
children set out for Sunday-school--a place that Tom hated with his
whole heart; but Sid and Mary were fond of it.

Sabbath-school hours were from nine to half-past ten; and then church
service. Two of the children always remained for the sermon
voluntarily, and the other always remained too--for stronger reasons.
The church's high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three
hundred persons; the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort
of pine board tree-box on top of it for a steeple. At the door Tom
dropped back a step and accosted a Sunday-dressed comrade:

"Say, Billy, got a yaller ticket?"

"Yes."

"What'll you take for her?"

"What'll you give?"

"Piece of lickrish and a fish-hook."

"Less see 'em."

Tom exhibited. They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands.
Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and
some small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. He waylaid other
boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten or
fifteen minutes longer. He entered the church, now, with a swarm of
clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started a
quarrel with the first boy that came handy. The teacher, a grave,
elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment and Tom pulled a
boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy
turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear
him say "Ouch!" and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom's whole
class were of a pattern--restless, noisy, and troublesome. When they
came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses
perfectly, but had to be prompted all along. However, they worried
through, and each got his reward--in small blue tickets, each with a
passage of Scripture on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of
the recitation. Ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be
exchanged for it; ten red tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow
tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty
cents in those easy times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would
have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even
for a Dore Bible? And yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way--it
was the patient work of two years--and a boy of German parentage had
won four or five. He once recited three thousand verses without
stopping; but the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and
he was little better than an idiot from that day forth--a grievous
misfortune for the school, for on great occasions, before company, the
superintendent (as Tom expressed it) had always made this boy come out
and "spread himself." Only the older pupils managed to keep their
tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a Bible, and
so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy
circumstance; the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for
that day that on the spot every scholar's heart was fired with a fresh
ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks. It is possible that Tom's
mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but
unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory
and the eclat that came with it.

In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with
a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its
leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sunday-school superintendent
makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as
necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer
who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert
--though why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of
music is ever referred to by the sufferer. This superintendent was a
slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair;
he wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his
ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his
mouth--a fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning
of the whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped
on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note,
and had fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the
fashion of the day, like sleigh-runners--an effect patiently and
laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes
pressed against a wall for hours together. Mr. Walters was very earnest
of mien, and very sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred
things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly
matters, that unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had
acquired a peculiar intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. He
began after this fashion:

"Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty
as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There
--that is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see
one little girl who is looking out of the window--I am afraid she
thinks I am out there somewhere--perhaps up in one of the trees making
a speech to the little birds. [Applausive titter.] I want to tell you
how good it makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces
assembled in a place like this, learning to do right and be good." And
so forth and so on. It is not necessary to set down the rest of the
oration. It was of a pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar
to us all.

The latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights
and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings
and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases
of isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary. But now every
sound ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of Mr. Walters' voice, and
the conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent
gratitude.

A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which
was more or less rare--the entrance of visitors: lawyer Thatcher,
accompanied by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged
gentleman with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless
the latter's wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless
and full of chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, too--he could
not meet Amy Lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. But
when he saw this small new-comer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in
a moment. The next moment he was "showing off" with all his might
--cuffing boys, pulling hair, making faces--in a word, using every art
that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause. His
exaltation had but one alloy--the memory of his humiliation in this
angel's garden--and that record in sand was fast washing out, under
the waves of happiness that were sweeping over it now.

The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr.
Walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. The
middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personage--no less a one
than the county judge--altogether the most august creation these
children had ever looked upon--and they wondered what kind of material
he was made of--and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half
afraid he might, too. He was from Constantinople, twelve miles away--so
he had travelled, and seen the world--these very eyes had looked upon
the county court-house--which was said to have a tin roof. The awe
which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence
and the ranks of staring eyes. This was the great Judge Thatcher,
brother of their own lawyer. Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to
be familiar with the great man and be envied by the school. It would
have been music to his soul to hear the whisperings:

"Look at him, Jim! He's a going up there. Say--look! he's a going to
shake hands with him--he IS shaking hands with him! By jings, don't you
wish you was Jeff?"

Mr. Walters fell to "showing off," with all sorts of official
bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments,
discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a
target. The librarian "showed off"--running hither and thither with his
arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that
insect authority delights in. The young lady teachers "showed off"
--bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting
pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones
lovingly. The young gentlemen teachers "showed off" with small
scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to
discipline--and most of the teachers, of both sexes, found business up
at the library, by the pulpit; and it was business that frequently had
to be done over again two or three times (with much seeming vexation).
The little girls "showed off" in various ways, and the little boys
"showed off" with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads
and the murmur of scufflings. And above it all the great man sat and
beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself
in the sun of his own grandeur--for he was "showing off," too.

There was only one thing wanting to make Mr. Walters' ecstasy
complete, and that was a chance to deliver a Bible-prize and exhibit a
prodigy. Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough
--he had been around among the star pupils inquiring. He would have given
worlds, now, to have that German lad back again with a sound mind.

And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward
with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and
demanded a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters
was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten
years. But there was no getting around it--here were the certified
checks, and they were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated
to a place with the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was
announced from headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the
decade, and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero
up to the judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to
gaze upon in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envy--but
those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too
late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by
trading tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling
whitewashing privileges. These despised themselves, as being the dupes
of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass.

The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the
superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked
somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him
that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light,
perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two
thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises--a dozen would
strain his capacity, without a doubt.

Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in
her face--but he wouldn't look. She wondered; then she was just a grain
troubled; next a dim suspicion came and went--came again; she watched;
a furtive glance told her worlds--and then her heart broke, and she was
jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. Tom
most of all (she thought).

Tom was introduced to the Judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath
would hardly come, his heart quaked--partly because of the awful
greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. He would
have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. The
Judge put his hand on Tom's head and called him a fine little man, and
asked him what his name was. The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out:

"Tom."

"Oh, no, not Tom--it is--"

"Thomas."

"Ah, that's it. I thought there was more to it, maybe. That's very
well. But you've another one I daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't
you?"

"Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas," said Walters, "and say
sir. You mustn't forget your manners."

"Thomas Sawyer--sir."

"That's it! That's a good boy. Fine boy. Fine, manly little fellow.
Two thousand verses is a great many--very, very great many. And you
never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for
knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it's what
makes great men and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man
yourself, some day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say, It's all
owing to the precious Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood--it's all
owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learn--it's all owing to
the good superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and
gave me a beautiful Bible--a splendid elegant Bible--to keep and have
it all for my own, always--it's all owing to right bringing up! That is
what you will say, Thomas--and you wouldn't take any money for those
two thousand verses--no indeed you wouldn't. And now you wouldn't mind
telling me and this lady some of the things you've learned--no, I know
you wouldn't--for we are proud of little boys that learn. Now, no
doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples. Won't you tell us
the names of the first two that were appointed?"

Tom was tugging at a button-hole and looking sheepish. He blushed,
now, and his eyes fell. Mr. Walters' heart sank within him. He said to
himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest
question--why DID the Judge ask him? Yet he felt obliged to speak up
and say:

"Answer the gentleman, Thomas--don't be afraid."

Tom still hung fire.

"Now I know you'll tell me," said the lady. "The names of the first
two disciples were--"

"DAVID AND GOLIAH!"

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.



CHAPTER V

ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to
ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon.
The Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and
occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt
Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her--Tom being placed
next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open
window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd
filed up the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better
days; the mayor and his wife--for they had a mayor there, among other
unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair,
smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, her
hill mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and
much the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg
could boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyer
Riverson, the new notable from a distance; next the belle of the
village, followed by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young
heart-breakers; then all the young clerks in town in a body--for they
had stood in the vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of
oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet;
and last of all came the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful
care of his mother as if she were cut glass. He always brought his
mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. The boys all
hated him, he was so good. And besides, he had been "thrown up to them"
so much. His white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as
usual on Sundays--accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked
upon boys who had as snobs.

The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more,
to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the
church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the
choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered all
through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred,
but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago,
and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in
some foreign country.

The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in
a peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country.
His voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached
a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost
word and then plunged down as if from a spring-board:

  Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry BEDS of ease,

  Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' BLOODY seas?

He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church "sociables" he was
always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies
would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps,
and "wall" their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, "Words
cannot express it; it is too beautiful, TOO beautiful for this mortal
earth."

After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into
a bulletin-board, and read off "notices" of meetings and societies and
things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of
doom--a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities,
away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there is
to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went
into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the
church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself;
for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United
States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the
President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed
by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of
European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light
and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear
withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with
a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace
and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a
grateful harvest of good. Amen.

There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat
down. The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer,
he only endured it--if he even did that much. He was restive all
through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously
--for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the
clergyman's regular route over it--and when a little trifle of new
matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature
resented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the
midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of
him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together,
embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that
it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread
of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legs
and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat-tails; going
through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly
safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for
it they did not dare--he believed his soul would be instantly destroyed
if he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. But with the
closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the
instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt
detected the act and made him let it go.

The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through
an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod
--and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone
and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be
hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after
church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew
anything else about the discourse. However, this time he was really
interested for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving
picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the
millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a
little child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of
the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the
conspicuousness of the principal character before the on-looking
nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he
wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion.

Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed.
Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was
a large black beetle with formidable jaws--a "pinchbug," he called it.
It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to
take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went
floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger
went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless
legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was
safe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found
relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle
dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and
the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle;
the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked
around it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again;
grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a
gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another;
began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle
between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last,
and then indifferent and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by
little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There
was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a
couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring
spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind
fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked
foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart,
too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a
wary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle,
lighting with his fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even
closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his
ears flapped again. But he grew tired once more, after a while; tried
to amuse himself with a fly but found no relief; followed an ant
around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that;
yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then
there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the
aisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in
front of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before the
doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with his
progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit
with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer
sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it
out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and
died in the distance.

By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with
suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. The
discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all
possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest
sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of
unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor
parson had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to
the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction
pronounced.

Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there
was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of
variety in it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the
dog should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright
in him to carry it off.



CHAPTER VI

MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found
him so--because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He
generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening
holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much
more odious.

Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was
sick; then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague
possibility. He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he
investigated again. This time he thought he could detect colicky
symptoms, and he began to encourage them with considerable hope. But
they soon grew feeble, and presently died wholly away. He reflected
further. Suddenly he discovered something. One of his upper front teeth
was loose. This was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a
"starter," as he called it, when it occurred to him that if he came
into court with that argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that
would hurt. So he thought he would hold the tooth in reserve for the
present, and seek further. Nothing offered for some little time, and
then he remembered hearing the doctor tell about a certain thing that
laid up a patient for two or three weeks and threatened to make him
lose a finger. So the boy eagerly drew his sore toe from under the
sheet and held it up for inspection. But now he did not know the
necessary symptoms. However, it seemed well worth while to chance it,
so he fell to groaning with considerable spirit.

But Sid slept on unconscious.

Tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe.

No result from Sid.

Tom was panting with his exertions by this time. He took a rest and
then swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans.

Sid snored on.

Tom was aggravated. He said, "Sid, Sid!" and shook him. This course
worked well, and Tom began to groan again. Sid yawned, stretched, then
brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at
Tom. Tom went on groaning. Sid said:

"Tom! Say, Tom!" [No response.] "Here, Tom! TOM! What is the matter,
Tom?" And he shook him and looked in his face anxiously.

Tom moaned out:

"Oh, don't, Sid. Don't joggle me."

"Why, what's the matter, Tom? I must call auntie."

"No--never mind. It'll be over by and by, maybe. Don't call anybody."

"But I must! DON'T groan so, Tom, it's awful. How long you been this
way?"

"Hours. Ouch! Oh, don't stir so, Sid, you'll kill me."

"Tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? Oh, Tom, DON'T! It makes my
flesh crawl to hear you. Tom, what is the matter?"

"I forgive you everything, Sid. [Groan.] Everything you've ever done
to me. When I'm gone--"

"Oh, Tom, you ain't dying, are you? Don't, Tom--oh, don't. Maybe--"

"I forgive everybody, Sid. [Groan.] Tell 'em so, Sid. And Sid, you
give my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's
come to town, and tell her--"

But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in
reality, now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his
groans had gathered quite a genuine tone.

Sid flew down-stairs and said:

"Oh, Aunt Polly, come! Tom's dying!"

"Dying!"

"Yes'm. Don't wait--come quick!"

"Rubbage! I don't believe it!"

But she fled up-stairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels.
And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached
the bedside she gasped out:

"You, Tom! Tom, what's the matter with you?"

"Oh, auntie, I'm--"

"What's the matter with you--what is the matter with you, child?"

"Oh, auntie, my sore toe's mortified!"

The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a
little, then did both together. This restored her and she said:

"Tom, what a turn you did give me. Now you shut up that nonsense and
climb out of this."

The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a
little foolish, and he said:

"Aunt Polly, it SEEMED mortified, and it hurt so I never minded my
tooth at all."

"Your tooth, indeed! What's the matter with your tooth?"

"One of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful."

"There, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. Open your mouth.
Well--your tooth IS loose, but you're not going to die about that.
Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen."

Tom said:

"Oh, please, auntie, don't pull it out. It don't hurt any more. I wish
I may never stir if it does. Please don't, auntie. I don't want to stay
home from school."

"Oh, you don't, don't you? So all this row was because you thought
you'd get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love
you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart
with your outrageousness." By this time the dental instruments were
ready. The old lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom's tooth
with a loop and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the
chunk of fire and suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The
tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now.

But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school
after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in
his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and
admirable way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the
exhibition; and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of
fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly
without an adherent, and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and
he said with a disdain which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to
spit like Tom Sawyer; but another boy said, "Sour grapes!" and he
wandered away a dismantled hero.

Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry
Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and
dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless
and vulgar and bad--and because all their children admired him so, and
delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like
him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied
Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders
not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.
Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown
men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat
was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat,
when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons
far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat
of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs
dragged in the dirt when not rolled up.

Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps
in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to
school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could
go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it
suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he
pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring
and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor
put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything
that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every
harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.

Tom hailed the romantic outcast:

"Hello, Huckleberry!"

"Hello yourself, and see how you like it."

"What's that you got?"

"Dead cat."

"Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him?"

"Bought him off'n a boy."

"What did you give?"

"I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house."

"Where'd you get the blue ticket?"

"Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick."

"Say--what is dead cats good for, Huck?"

"Good for? Cure warts with."

"No! Is that so? I know something that's better."

"I bet you don't. What is it?"

"Why, spunk-water."

"Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water."

"You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?"

"No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did."

"Who told you so!"

"Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny
told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and
the nigger told me. There now!"

"Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I
don't know HIM. But I never see a nigger that WOULDN'T lie. Shucks! Now
you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck."

"Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the
rain-water was."

"In the daytime?"

"Certainly."

"With his face to the stump?"

"Yes. Least I reckon so."

"Did he say anything?"

"I don't reckon he did. I don't know."

"Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame
fool way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good. You got to go
all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a
spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the
stump and jam your hand in and say:

  'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,
   Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,'

and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm's busted."

"Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner
done."

"No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this
town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work
spunk-water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,
Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many
warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean."

"Yes, bean's good. I've done that."

"Have you? What's your way?"

"You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some
blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and
dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of
the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece
that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to
fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the
wart, and pretty soon off she comes."

"Yes, that's it, Huck--that's it; though when you're burying it if you
say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better.
That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and
most everywheres. But say--how do you cure 'em with dead cats?"

"Why, you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long about
midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's
midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see
'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk;
and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em
and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm
done with ye!' That'll fetch ANY wart."

"Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?"

"No, but old Mother Hopkins told me."

"Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch."

"Say! Why, Tom, I KNOW she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own
self. He come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he
took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. Well, that
very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a layin drunk, and broke
his arm."

"Why, that's awful. How did he know she was a-witching him?"

"Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you
right stiddy, they're a-witching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz
when they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer backards."

"Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?"

"To-night. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Williams to-night."

"But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday night?"

"Why, how you talk! How could their charms work till midnight?--and
THEN it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I don't
reckon."

"I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?"

"Of course--if you ain't afeard."

"Afeard! 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?"

"Yes--and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you kep' me
a-meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and says
'Dern that cat!' and so I hove a brick through his window--but don't
you tell."

"I won't. I couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me,
but I'll meow this time. Say--what's that?"

"Nothing but a tick."

"Where'd you get him?"

"Out in the woods."

"What'll you take for him?"

"I don't know. I don't want to sell him."

"All right. It's a mighty small tick, anyway."

"Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm
satisfied with it. It's a good enough tick for me."

"Sho, there's ticks a plenty. I could have a thousand of 'em if I
wanted to."

"Well, why don't you? Becuz you know mighty well you can't. This is a
pretty early tick, I reckon. It's the first one I've seen this year."

"Say, Huck--I'll give you my tooth for him."

"Less see it."

Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry
viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said:

"Is it genuwyne?"

Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy.

"Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade."

Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been
the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier
than before.

When Tom reached the little isolated frame schoolhouse, he strode in
briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed.
He hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with
business-like alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great
splint-bottom arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study.
The interruption roused him.

"Thomas Sawyer!"

Tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble.

"Sir!"

"Come up here. Now, sir, why are you late again, as usual?"

Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of
yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric
sympathy of love; and by that form was THE ONLY VACANT PLACE on the
girls' side of the schoolhouse. He instantly said:

"I STOPPED TO TALK WITH HUCKLEBERRY FINN!"

The master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. The buzz of
study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his
mind. The master said:

"You--you did what?"

"Stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn."

There was no mistaking the words.

"Thomas Sawyer, this is the most astounding confession I have ever
listened to. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your
jacket."

The master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of
switches notably diminished. Then the order followed:

"Now, sir, go and sit with the girls! And let this be a warning to you."

The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but
in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe of
his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good
fortune. He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl
hitched herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks
and whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon
the long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book.

By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur
rose upon the dull air once more. Presently the boy began to steal
furtive glances at the girl. She observed it, "made a mouth" at him and
gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. When she
cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. She thrust it
away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less
animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it
remain. Tom scrawled on his slate, "Please take it--I got more." The
girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. Now the boy began to draw
something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time
the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began to
manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on,
apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of noncommittal attempt to
see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she
gave in and hesitatingly whispered:

"Let me see it."

Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable
ends to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney. Then the
girl's interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot
everything else. When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then
whispered:

"It's nice--make a man."

The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick.
He could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not
hypercritical; she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered:

"It's a beautiful man--now make me coming along."

Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and
armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. The girl said:

"It's ever so nice--I wish I could draw."

"It's easy," whispered Tom, "I'll learn you."

"Oh, will you? When?"

"At noon. Do you go home to dinner?"

"I'll stay if you will."

"Good--that's a whack. What's your name?"

"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer."

"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me
Tom, will you?"

"Yes."

Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from
the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Tom
said:

"Oh, it ain't anything."

"Yes it is."

"No it ain't. You don't want to see."

"Yes I do, indeed I do. Please let me."

"You'll tell."

"No I won't--deed and deed and double deed won't."

"You won't tell anybody at all? Ever, as long as you live?"

"No, I won't ever tell ANYbody. Now let me."

"Oh, YOU don't want to see!"

"Now that you treat me so, I WILL see." And she put her small hand
upon his and a little scuffle ensued, Tom pretending to resist in
earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were
revealed: "I LOVE YOU."

"Oh, you bad thing!" And she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened
and looked pleased, nevertheless.

Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his
ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that wise he was borne across the
house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles
from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few
awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a
word. But although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant.

As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but the
turmoil within him was too great. In turn he took his place in the
reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and
turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into
continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and
got "turned down," by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought
up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with
ostentation for months.



CHAPTER VII

THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his
ideas wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It
seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was
utterly dead. There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of
sleepy days. The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying
scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees.
Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green
sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of
distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other
living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's
heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to
pass the dreary time. His hand wandered into his pocket and his face
lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know
it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the
tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed
with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it
was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned
him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction.

Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and
now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an
instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn
friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a
pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner.
The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were
interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of
the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the
middle of it from top to bottom.

"Now," said he, "as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and
I'll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side,
you're to leave him alone as long as I can keep him from crossing over."

"All right, go ahead; start him up."

The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator. Joe
harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This
change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with
absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong,
the two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to
all things else. At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The
tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as
anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would
have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and Tom's fingers would be
twitching to begin, Joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep
possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was
too strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was
angry in a moment. Said he:

"Tom, you let him alone."

"I only just want to stir him up a little, Joe."

"No, sir, it ain't fair; you just let him alone."

"Blame it, I ain't going to stir him much."

"Let him alone, I tell you."

"I won't!"

"You shall--he's on my side of the line."

"Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?"

"I don't care whose tick he is--he's on my side of the line, and you
sha'n't touch him."

"Well, I'll just bet I will, though. He's my tick and I'll do what I
blame please with him, or die!"

A tremendous whack came down on Tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on
Joe's; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from
the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. The boys had been too
absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile
before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over
them. He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he
contributed his bit of variety to it.

When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and
whispered in her ear:

"Put on your bonnet and let on you're going home; and when you get to
the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the
lane and come back. I'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same
way."

So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with
another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and
when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they
sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil
and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising
house. When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking.
Tom was swimming in bliss. He said:

"Do you love rats?"

"No! I hate them!"

"Well, I do, too--LIVE ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your
head with a string."

"No, I don't care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewing-gum."

"Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now."

"Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it awhile, but you must give
it back to me."

That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their
legs against the bench in excess of contentment.

"Was you ever at a circus?" said Tom.

"Yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if I'm good."

"I been to the circus three or four times--lots of times. Church ain't
shucks to a circus. There's things going on at a circus all the time.
I'm going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up."

"Oh, are you! That will be nice. They're so lovely, all spotted up."

"Yes, that's so. And they get slathers of money--most a dollar a day,
Ben Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?"

"What's that?"

"Why, engaged to be married."

"No."

"Would you like to?"

"I reckon so. I don't know. What is it like?"

"Like? Why it ain't like anything. You only just tell a boy you won't
ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's
all. Anybody can do it."

"Kiss? What do you kiss for?"

"Why, that, you know, is to--well, they always do that."

"Everybody?"

"Why, yes, everybody that's in love with each other. Do you remember
what I wrote on the slate?"

"Ye--yes."

"What was it?"

"I sha'n't tell you."

"Shall I tell YOU?"

"Ye--yes--but some other time."

"No, now."

"No, not now--to-morrow."

"Oh, no, NOW. Please, Becky--I'll whisper it, I'll whisper it ever so
easy."

Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm
about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth
close to her ear. And then he added:

"Now you whisper it to me--just the same."

She resisted, for a while, and then said:

"You turn your face away so you can't see, and then I will. But you
mustn't ever tell anybody--WILL you, Tom? Now you won't, WILL you?"

"No, indeed, indeed I won't. Now, Becky."

He turned his face away. She bent timidly around till her breath
stirred his curls and whispered, "I--love--you!"

Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches,
with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her
little white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and
pleaded:

"Now, Becky, it's all done--all over but the kiss. Don't you be afraid
of that--it ain't anything at all. Please, Becky." And he tugged at her
apron and the hands.

By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing
with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and
said:

"Now it's all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain't
ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but
me, ever never and forever. Will you?"

"No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry
anybody but you--and you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either."

"Certainly. Of course. That's PART of it. And always coming to school
or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't
anybody looking--and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because
that's the way you do when you're engaged."

"It's so nice. I never heard of it before."

"Oh, it's ever so gay! Why, me and Amy Lawrence--"

The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused.

"Oh, Tom! Then I ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!"

The child began to cry. Tom said:

"Oh, don't cry, Becky, I don't care for her any more."

"Yes, you do, Tom--you know you do."

Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and
turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with
soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was
up, and he strode away and went outside. He stood about, restless and
uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping
she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began
to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle
with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and
entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with
her face to the wall. Tom's heart smote him. He went to her and stood a
moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly:

"Becky, I--I don't care for anybody but you."

No reply--but sobs.

"Becky"--pleadingly. "Becky, won't you say something?"

More sobs.

Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an
andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:

"Please, Becky, won't you take it?"

She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over
the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently
Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she
flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:

"Tom! Come back, Tom!"

She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions
but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid
herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she
had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross
of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers
about her to exchange sorrows with.



CHAPTER VIII

TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of
the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He
crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing
juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour
later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of
Cardiff Hill, and the schoolhouse was hardly distinguishable away off
in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless
way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading
oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had
even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was
broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a
woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense
of loneliness the more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in
melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He
sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands,
meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and
he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be
very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and
ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the
grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve
about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he
could be willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl.
What had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world, and been
treated like a dog--like a very dog. She would be sorry some day--maybe
when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY!

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one
constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift
insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned
his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever
so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas--and never came
back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown
recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and
jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves
upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the
romantic. No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all
war-worn and illustrious. No--better still, he would join the Indians,
and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the
trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come
back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and
prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a
bloodcurdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions
with unappeasable envy. But no, there was something gaudier even than
this. He would be a pirate! That was it! NOW his future lay plain
before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would
fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go
plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the
Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore! And at
the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village
and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet
doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt
bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his
slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull
and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings,
"It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!"

Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from
home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore
he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources
together. He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under
one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded
hollow. He put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:

"What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!"

Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it
up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides
were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was boundless!
He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:

"Well, that beats anything!"

Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The
truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and
all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a
marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a
fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just
used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had
gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they
had been separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably
failed. Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations.
He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its
failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several
times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places
afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided
that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he
would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around till he
found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it.
He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and
called--

"Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug,
doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!"

The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a
second and then darted under again in a fright.

"He dasn't tell! So it WAS a witch that done it. I just knowed it."

He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he
gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have
the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a
patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to
his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been
standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble
from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:

"Brother, go find your brother!"

He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must
have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last
repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each
other.

Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green
aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a
suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log,
disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and in
a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged, with
fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an
answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way
and that. He said cautiously--to an imaginary company:

"Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow."

Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom.
Tom called:

"Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?"

"Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that--that--"

"Dares to hold such language," said Tom, prompting--for they talked
"by the book," from memory.

"Who art thou that dares to hold such language?"

"I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know."

"Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute
with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!"

They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground,
struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful
combat, "two up and two down." Presently Tom said:

"Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!"

So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. By and
by Tom shouted:

"Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?"

"I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of
it."

"Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in
the book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor
Guy of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the
back."

There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received
the whack and fell.

"Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill YOU. That's fair."

"Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book."

"Well, it's blamed mean--that's all."

"Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and
lam me with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and
you be Robin Hood a little while and kill me."

This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then
Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to
bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe,
representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth,
gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, "Where this arrow
falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree." Then he
shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a
nettle and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.

The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off
grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern
civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.
They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than
President of the United States forever.



CHAPTER IX

AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual.
They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and
waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be
nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He
would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was
afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark.
Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little,
scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking
of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to
crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were
abroad. A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber. And
now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could
locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a deathwatch in the wall at
the bed's head made Tom shudder--it meant that somebody's days were
numbered. Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was
answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an
agony. At last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity
begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven,
but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his
half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a
neighboring window disturbed him. A cry of "Scat! you devil!" and the
crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt's woodshed
brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and
out of the window and creeping along the roof of the "ell" on all
fours. He "meow'd" with caution once or twice, as he went; then jumped
to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. Huckleberry Finn
was there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the
gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall
grass of the graveyard.

It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a
hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board
fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of
the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the
whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a
tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over
the graves, leaning for support and finding none. "Sacred to the memory
of" So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer
have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.

A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the
spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked
little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the
pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the
sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the
protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet
of the grave.

Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting
of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness.
Tom's reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said
in a whisper:

"Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?"

Huckleberry whispered:

"I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, AIN'T it?"

"I bet it is."

There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter
inwardly. Then Tom whispered:

"Say, Hucky--do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?"

"O' course he does. Least his sperrit does."

Tom, after a pause:

"I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm.
Everybody calls him Hoss."

"A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead
people, Tom."

This was a damper, and conversation died again.

Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said:

"Sh!"

"What is it, Tom?" And the two clung together with beating hearts.

"Sh! There 'tis again! Didn't you hear it?"

"I--"

"There! Now you hear it."

"Lord, Tom, they're coming! They're coming, sure. What'll we do?"

"I dono. Think they'll see us?"

"Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't
come."

"Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't
doing any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us
at all."

"I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver."

"Listen!"

The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled
sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.

"Look! See there!" whispered Tom. "What is it?"

"It's devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful."

Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an
old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable
little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a
shudder:

"It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em! Lordy, Tom, we're goners!
Can you pray?"

"I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now
I lay me down to sleep, I--'"

"Sh!"

"What is it, Huck?"

"They're HUMANS! One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's
voice."

"No--'tain't so, is it?"

"I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to
notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely--blamed old rip!"

"All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here
they come again. Now they're hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot!
They're p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o' them
voices; it's Injun Joe."

"That's so--that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a
dern sight. What kin they be up to?"

The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the
grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place.

"Here it is," said the third voice; and the owner of it held the
lantern up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.

Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a
couple of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open
the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came
and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so
close the boys could have touched him.

"Hurry, men!" he said, in a low voice; "the moon might come out at any
moment."

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was
no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight
of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck
upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or
two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid
with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the
ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid
face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered
with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a
large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then
said:

"Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with
another five, or here she stays."

"That's the talk!" said Injun Joe.

"Look here, what does this mean?" said the doctor. "You required your
pay in advance, and I've paid you."

"Yes, and you done more than that," said Injun Joe, approaching the
doctor, who was now standing. "Five years ago you drove me away from
your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to
eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get
even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for
a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for
nothing. And now I've GOT you, and you got to SETTLE, you know!"

He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this
time. The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the
ground. Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:

"Here, now, don't you hit my pard!" and the next moment he had
grappled with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and
main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels.
Injun Joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched
up Potter's knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and
round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the
doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams'
grave and felled Potter to the earth with it--and in the same instant
the half-breed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the
young man's breast. He reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him
with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the
dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in
the dark.

Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over
the two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately,
gave a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:

"THAT score is settled--damn you."

Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in
Potter's open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three
--four--five minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His
hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it
fall, with a shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and
gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe's.

"Lord, how is this, Joe?" he said.

"It's a dirty business," said Joe, without moving.

"What did you do it for?"

"I! I never done it!"

"Look here! That kind of talk won't wash."

Potter trembled and grew white.

"I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink to-night. But it's
in my head yet--worse'n when we started here. I'm all in a muddle;
can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe--HONEST, now, old
feller--did I do it? Joe, I never meant to--'pon my soul and honor, I
never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awful--and him
so young and promising."

"Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard
and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering
like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched
you another awful clip--and here you've laid, as dead as a wedge til
now."

"Oh, I didn't know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if
I did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I
reckon. I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I've fought, but
never with weepons. They'll all say that. Joe, don't tell! Say you
won't tell, Joe--that's a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and
stood up for you, too. Don't you remember? You WON'T tell, WILL you,
Joe?" And the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid
murderer, and clasped his appealing hands.

"No, you've always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I
won't go back on you. There, now, that's as fair as a man can say."

"Oh, Joe, you're an angel. I'll bless you for this the longest day I
live." And Potter began to cry.

"Come, now, that's enough of that. This ain't any time for blubbering.
You be off yonder way and I'll go this. Move, now, and don't leave any
tracks behind you."

Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The
half-breed stood looking after him. He muttered:

"If he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he
had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so
far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by himself
--chicken-heart!"

Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the
lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the
moon's. The stillness was complete again, too.



CHAPTER X

THE two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with
horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time,
apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump
that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them
catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay
near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give
wings to their feet.

"If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down!"
whispered Tom, in short catches between breaths. "I can't stand it much
longer."

Huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed
their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it.
They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst
through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering
shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered:

"Huckleberry, what do you reckon'll come of this?"

"If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging'll come of it."

"Do you though?"

"Why, I KNOW it, Tom."

Tom thought a while, then he said:

"Who'll tell? We?"

"What are you talking about? S'pose something happened and Injun Joe
DIDN'T hang? Why, he'd kill us some time or other, just as dead sure as
we're a laying here."

"That's just what I was thinking to myself, Huck."

"If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he's fool enough. He's
generally drunk enough."

Tom said nothing--went on thinking. Presently he whispered:

"Huck, Muff Potter don't know it. How can he tell?"

"What's the reason he don't know it?"

"Because he'd just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D'you reckon
he could see anything? D'you reckon he knowed anything?"

"By hokey, that's so, Tom!"

"And besides, look-a-here--maybe that whack done for HIM!"

"No, 'taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and
besides, he always has. Well, when pap's full, you might take and belt
him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. He says so,
his own self. So it's the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a
man was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono."

After another reflective silence, Tom said:

"Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?"

"Tom, we GOT to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn't
make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to
squeak 'bout this and they didn't hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less
take and swear to one another--that's what we got to do--swear to keep
mum."

"I'm agreed. It's the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear
that we--"

"Oh no, that wouldn't do for this. That's good enough for little
rubbishy common things--specially with gals, cuz THEY go back on you
anyway, and blab if they get in a huff--but there orter be writing
'bout a big thing like this. And blood."

Tom's whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and
awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping
with it. He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moonlight,
took a little fragment of "red keel" out of his pocket, got the moon on
his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow
down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up
the pressure on the up-strokes. [See next page.]

   "Huck Finn and
    Tom Sawyer swears
    they will keep mum
    about This and They
    wish They may Drop
    down dead in Their
    Tracks if They ever
    Tell and Rot."

Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing,
and the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel
and was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said:

"Hold on! Don't do that. A pin's brass. It might have verdigrease on
it."

"What's verdigrease?"

"It's p'ison. That's what it is. You just swaller some of it once
--you'll see."

So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy
pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In
time, after many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the
ball of his little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to
make an H and an F, and the oath was complete. They buried the shingle
close to the wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and
the fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and
the key thrown away.

A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the
ruined building, now, but they did not notice it.

"Tom," whispered Huckleberry, "does this keep us from EVER telling
--ALWAYS?"

"Of course it does. It don't make any difference WHAT happens, we got
to keep mum. We'd drop down dead--don't YOU know that?"

"Yes, I reckon that's so."

They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up
a long, lugubrious howl just outside--within ten feet of them. The boys
clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright.

"Which of us does he mean?" gasped Huckleberry.

"I dono--peep through the crack. Quick!"

"No, YOU, Tom!"

"I can't--I can't DO it, Huck!"

"Please, Tom. There 'tis again!"

"Oh, lordy, I'm thankful!" whispered Tom. "I know his voice. It's Bull
Harbison." *

[* If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of
him as "Harbison's Bull," but a son or a dog of that name was "Bull
Harbison."]

"Oh, that's good--I tell you, Tom, I was most scared to death; I'd a
bet anything it was a STRAY dog."

The dog howled again. The boys' hearts sank once more.

"Oh, my! that ain't no Bull Harbison!" whispered Huckleberry. "DO, Tom!"

Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. His
whisper was hardly audible when he said:

"Oh, Huck, IT S A STRAY DOG!"

"Quick, Tom, quick! Who does he mean?"

"Huck, he must mean us both--we're right together."

"Oh, Tom, I reckon we're goners. I reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout
where I'LL go to. I been so wicked."

"Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a
feller's told NOT to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I'd a tried
--but no, I wouldn't, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay
I'll just WALLER in Sunday-schools!" And Tom began to snuffle a little.

"YOU bad!" and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. "Consound it, Tom
Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'longside o' what I am. Oh, LORDY, lordy,
lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance."

Tom choked off and whispered:

"Look, Hucky, look! He's got his BACK to us!"

Hucky looked, with joy in his heart.

"Well, he has, by jingoes! Did he before?"

"Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought. Oh, this is bully,
you know. NOW who can he mean?"

The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears.

"Sh! What's that?" he whispered.

"Sounds like--like hogs grunting. No--it's somebody snoring, Tom."

"That IS it! Where 'bouts is it, Huck?"

"I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to
sleep there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he
just lifts things when HE snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever
coming back to this town any more."

The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more.

"Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?"

"I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe!"

Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the
boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to
their heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealthily
down, the one behind the other. When they had got to within five steps
of the snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap.
The man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight.
It was Muff Potter. The boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes
too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They tiptoed
out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little
distance to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on
the night air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing
within a few feet of where Potter was lying, and FACING Potter, with
his nose pointing heavenward.

"Oh, geeminy, it's HIM!" exclaimed both boys, in a breath.

"Say, Tom--they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller's
house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill
come in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening; and
there ain't anybody dead there yet."

"Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't. Didn't Gracie Miller fall
in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?"

"Yes, but she ain't DEAD. And what's more, she's getting better, too."

"All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just as dead sure as Muff
Potter's a goner. That's what the niggers say, and they know all about
these kind of things, Huck."

Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom
window the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution,
and fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his
escapade. He was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid was awake, and
had been so for an hour.

When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone. There was a late look in the
light, a late sense in the atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not
been called--persecuted till he was up, as usual? The thought filled
him with bodings. Within five minutes he was dressed and down-stairs,
feeling sore and drowsy. The family were still at table, but they had
finished breakfast. There was no voice of rebuke; but there were
averted eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a
chill to the culprit's heart. He sat down and tried to seem gay, but it
was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into
silence and let his heart sink down to the depths.

After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom almost brightened in
the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. His aunt
wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so;
and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray
hairs with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any
more. This was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom's heart was
sorer now than his body. He cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised
to reform over and over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling
that he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a
feeble confidence.

He left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward Sid;
and so the latter's prompt retreat through the back gate was
unnecessary. He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging,
along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before, with the air
of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to
trifles. Then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his
desk and his jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony
stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go.
His elbow was pressing against some hard substance. After a long time
he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with
a sigh. It was in a paper. He unrolled it. A long, lingering, colossal
sigh followed, and his heart broke. It was his brass andiron knob!

This final feather broke the camel's back.



CHAPTER XI

CLOSE upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified
with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet undreamed-of telegraph;
the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to
house, with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course the
schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon; the town would have
thought strangely of him if he had not.

A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been
recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potter--so the story ran.
And it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter washing
himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock in the morning, and
that Potter had at once sneaked off--suspicious circumstances,
especially the washing which was not a habit with Potter. It was also
said that the town had been ransacked for this "murderer" (the public
are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a
verdict), but that he could not be found. Horsemen had departed down
all the roads in every direction, and the Sheriff "was confident" that
he would be captured before night.

All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heartbreak
vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not a
thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful,
unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful place,
he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal
spectacle. It seemed to him an age since he was there before. Somebody
pinched his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then both
looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything
in their mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent upon the
grisly spectacle before them.

"Poor fellow!" "Poor young fellow!" "This ought to be a lesson to
grave robbers!" "Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him!" This
was the drift of remark; and the minister said, "It was a judgment; His
hand is here."

Now Tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid
face of Injun Joe. At this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle,
and voices shouted, "It's him! it's him! he's coming himself!"

"Who? Who?" from twenty voices.

"Muff Potter!"

"Hallo, he's stopped!--Look out, he's turning! Don't let him get away!"

People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't
trying to get away--he only looked doubtful and perplexed.

"Infernal impudence!" said a bystander; "wanted to come and take a
quiet look at his work, I reckon--didn't expect any company."

The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came through,
ostentatiously leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was
haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood
before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face
in his hands and burst into tears.

"I didn't do it, friends," he sobbed; "'pon my word and honor I never
done it."

"Who's accused you?" shouted a voice.

This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked
around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe,
and exclaimed:

"Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never--"

"Is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him by the Sheriff.

Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to
the ground. Then he said:

"Something told me 't if I didn't come back and get--" He shuddered;
then waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, "Tell
'em, Joe, tell 'em--it ain't any use any more."

Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the
stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every
moment that the clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head,
and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed. And when he had
finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to
break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and
vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and
it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.

"Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?" somebody
said.

"I couldn't help it--I couldn't help it," Potter moaned. "I wanted to
run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." And he fell
to sobbing again.

Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes
afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the
lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe
had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to them, the most
balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could
not take their fascinated eyes from his face.

They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when opportunity should
offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master.

Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a
wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd
that the wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy
circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were
disappointed, for more than one villager remarked:

"It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it."

Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as
much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning Sid said:

"Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me
awake half the time."

Tom blanched and dropped his eyes.

"It's a bad sign," said Aunt Polly, gravely. "What you got on your
mind, Tom?"

"Nothing. Nothing 't I know of." But the boy's hand shook so that he
spilled his coffee.

"And you do talk such stuff," Sid said. "Last night you said, 'It's
blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' You said that over and over. And
you said, 'Don't torment me so--I'll tell!' Tell WHAT? What is it
you'll tell?"

Everything was swimming before Tom. There is no telling what might
have happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's
face and she came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said:

"Sho! It's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night
myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it."

Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed
satisfied. Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could,
and after that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his
jaws every night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and
frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow
listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage
back to its place again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and
the toothache grew irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to
make anything out of Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself.

It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding
inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his
mind. Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries,
though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises;
he noticed, too, that Tom never acted as a witness--and that was
strange; and Sid did not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a
marked aversion to these inquests, and always avoided them when he
could. Sid marvelled, but said nothing. However, even inquests went out
of vogue at last, and ceased to torture Tom's conscience.

Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his
opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such
small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. The
jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge
of the village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed, it was
seldom occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's
conscience.

The villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather Injun Joe and
ride him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his
character that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead
in the matter, so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of
his inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the
grave-robbery that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not
to try the case in the courts at present.



CHAPTER XII

ONE of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret
troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest
itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had
struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to "whistle her down the
wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's
house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she
should die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an
interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there
was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat;
there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to
try all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are
infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of
producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in
these things. When something fresh in this line came out she was in a
fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing,
but on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the
"Health" periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance
they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the "rot" they
contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up,
and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and
what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing to
wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her
health-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they
had recommended the month before. She was as simple-hearted and honest
as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered
together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed
with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with
"hell following after." But she never suspected that she was not an
angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the suffering
neighbors.

The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low condition was a
windfall to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him
up in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then
she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to;
then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets
till she sweated his soul clean and "the yellow stains of it came
through his pores"--as Tom said.

Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy
and pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths,
and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to
assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plasters. She
calculated his capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every
day with quack cure-alls.

Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase
filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must
be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first
time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with
gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water
treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer. She
gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the
result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again;
for the "indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a
wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.

Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be
romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have
too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he
thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of
professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he
became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself
and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no
misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the
bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish,
but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a
crack in the sitting-room floor with it.

One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow
cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging
for a taste. Tom said:

"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter."

But Peter signified that he did want it.

"You better make sure."

Peter was sure.

"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't
anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't
blame anybody but your own self."

Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the
Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then
delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging
against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc.
Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of
enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming
his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again
spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time
to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty
hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the
flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment,
peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter.

"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"

"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.

"Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?"

"Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they're having
a good time."

"They do, do they?" There was something in the tone that made Tom
apprehensive.

"Yes'm. That is, I believe they do."

"You DO?"

"Yes'm."

The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized
by anxiety. Too late he divined her "drift." The handle of the telltale
teaspoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it
up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the
usual handle--his ear--and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.

"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?"

"I done it out of pity for him--because he hadn't any aunt."

"Hadn't any aunt!--you numskull. What has that got to do with it?"

"Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a
roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a
human!"

Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing
in a new light; what was cruelty to a cat MIGHT be cruelty to a boy,
too. She began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little,
and she put her hand on Tom's head and said gently:

"I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it DID do you good."

Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping
through his gravity.

"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter.
It done HIM good, too. I never see him get around so since--"

"Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you
try and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take
any more medicine."

Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange
thing had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late,
he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his
comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to
be looking everywhere but whither he really was looking--down the road.
Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted; he gazed
a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom
accosted him; and "led up" warily to opportunities for remark about
Becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and
watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the
owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks
ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered
the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock
passed in at the gate, and Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next
instant he was out, and "going on" like an Indian; yelling, laughing,
chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing
handsprings, standing on his head--doing all the heroic things he could
conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if
Becky Thatcher was noticing. But she seemed to be unconscious of it
all; she never looked. Could it be possible that she was not aware that
he was there? He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came
war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the
schoolhouse, broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every
direction, and fell sprawling, himself, under Becky's nose, almost
upsetting her--and she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard
her say: "Mf! some people think they're mighty smart--always showing
off!"

Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed
and crestfallen.



CHAPTER XIII

TOM'S mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a
forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found
out what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had
tried to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since
nothing would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them
blame HIM for the consequences--why shouldn't they? What right had the
friendless to complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he
would lead a life of crime. There was no choice.

By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and the bell for school to
"take up" tinkled faintly upon his ear. He sobbed, now, to think he
should never, never hear that old familiar sound any more--it was very
hard, but it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold
world, he must submit--but he forgave them. Then the sobs came thick
and fast.

Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, Joe Harper
--hard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his heart.
Plainly here were "two souls with but a single thought." Tom, wiping
his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about a
resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by
roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by
hoping that Joe would not forget him.

But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had just been
going to make of Tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. His
mother had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never
tasted and knew nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him
and wished him to go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him
to do but succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having
driven her poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die.

As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to
stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death
relieved them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans.
Joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and
dying, some time, of cold and want and grief; but after listening to
Tom, he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a
life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate.

Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi
River was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded
island, with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as
a rendezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further
shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson's
Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a
matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted up Huckleberry
Finn, and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he
was indifferent. They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on
the river-bank two miles above the village at the favorite hour--which
was midnight. There was a small log raft there which they meant to
capture. Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he
could steal in the most dark and mysterious way--as became outlaws. And
before the afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet
glory of spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear
something." All who got this vague hint were cautioned to "be mum and
wait."

About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles,
and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the
meeting-place. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay
like an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the
quiet. Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. It was answered from under
the bluff. Tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the
same way. Then a guarded voice said:

"Who goes there?"

"Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names."

"Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas." Tom
had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature.

"'Tis well. Give the countersign."

Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to
the brooding night:

"BLOOD!"

Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it,
tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. There was
an easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it
lacked the advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate.

The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn
himself out with getting it there. Finn the Red-Handed had stolen a
skillet and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought
a few corn-cobs to make pipes with. But none of the pirates smoked or
"chewed" but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it
would never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought;
matches were hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire
smouldering upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went
stealthily thither and helped themselves to a chunk. They made an
imposing adventure of it, saying, "Hist!" every now and then, and
suddenly halting with finger on lip; moving with hands on imaginary
dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal whispers that if "the foe"
stirred, to "let him have it to the hilt," because "dead men tell no
tales." They knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the
village laying in stores or having a spree, but still that was no
excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way.

They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and
Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded
arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper:

"Luff, and bring her to the wind!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Steady, steady-y-y-y!"

"Steady it is, sir!"

"Let her go off a point!"

"Point it is, sir!"

As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream
it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for
"style," and were not intended to mean anything in particular.

"What sail's she carrying?"

"Courses, tops'ls, and flying-jib, sir."

"Send the r'yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of ye
--foretopmaststuns'l! Lively, now!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Shake out that maintogalans'l! Sheets and braces! NOW my hearties!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Hellum-a-lee--hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port,
port! NOW, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!"

"Steady it is, sir!"

The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her
head right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so
there was not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was
said during the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was
passing before the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed
where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of
star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening.
The Black Avenger stood still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon
the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing
"she" could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death
with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips.
It was but a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson's Island
beyond eyeshot of the village, and so he "looked his last" with a
broken and satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last,
too; and they all looked so long that they came near letting the
current drift them out of the range of the island. But they discovered
the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. About two o'clock in
the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the
head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed
their freight. Part of the little raft's belongings consisted of an old
sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to
shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in the open
air in good weather, as became outlaws.

They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty
steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some
bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone"
stock they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that
wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited
island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would
return to civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw
its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple,
and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines.

When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of
corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass,
filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they
would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting
camp-fire.

"AIN'T it gay?" said Joe.

"It's NUTS!" said Tom. "What would the boys say if they could see us?"

"Say? Well, they'd just die to be here--hey, Hucky!"

"I reckon so," said Huckleberry; "anyways, I'm suited. I don't want
nothing better'n this. I don't ever get enough to eat, gen'ally--and
here they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so."

"It's just the life for me," said Tom. "You don't have to get up,
mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that
blame foolishness. You see a pirate don't have to do ANYTHING, Joe,
when he's ashore, but a hermit HE has to be praying considerable, and
then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way."

"Oh yes, that's so," said Joe, "but I hadn't thought much about it,
you know. I'd a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I've tried it."

"You see," said Tom, "people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like
they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And a
hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put
sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and--"

"What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?" inquired Huck.

"I dono. But they've GOT to do it. Hermits always do. You'd have to do
that if you was a hermit."

"Dern'd if I would," said Huck.

"Well, what would you do?"

"I dono. But I wouldn't do that."

"Why, Huck, you'd HAVE to. How'd you get around it?"

"Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away."

"Run away! Well, you WOULD be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You'd be
a disgrace."

The Red-Handed made no response, being better employed. He had
finished gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded
it with tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a
cloud of fragrant smoke--he was in the full bloom of luxurious
contentment. The other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and
secretly resolved to acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said:

"What does pirates have to do?"

Tom said:

"Oh, they have just a bully time--take ships and burn them, and get
the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's
ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships--make
'em walk a plank."

"And they carry the women to the island," said Joe; "they don't kill
the women."

"No," assented Tom, "they don't kill the women--they're too noble. And
the women's always beautiful, too.

"And don't they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no! All gold and silver
and di'monds," said Joe, with enthusiasm.

"Who?" said Huck.

"Why, the pirates."

Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.

"I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a
regretful pathos in his voice; "but I ain't got none but these."

But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough,
after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand
that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for
wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe.

Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the
eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the
Red-Handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the
weary. The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main
had more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers
inwardly, and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority
to make them kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to
say them at all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as
that, lest they might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from
heaven. Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge
of sleep--but an intruder came, now, that would not "down." It was
conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing
wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then
the real torture came. They tried to argue it away by reminding
conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of
times; but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin
plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no
getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only
"hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain
simple stealing--and there was a command against that in the Bible. So
they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business,
their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.
Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent
pirates fell peacefully to sleep.



CHAPTER XIV

WHEN Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the
cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in
the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred;
not a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dewdrops
stood upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the
fire, and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe
and Huck still slept.

Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently
the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray of
the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life
manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to
work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A little green worm came
crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air
from time to time and "sniffing around," then proceeding again--for he
was measuring, Tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own
accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling,
by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to
go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its
curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and
began a journey over him, his whole heart was glad--for that meant that
he was going to have a new suit of clothes--without the shadow of a
doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared,
from nowhere in particular, and went about their labors; one struggled
manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms,
and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. A brown spotted lady-bug
climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to
it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire,
your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it
--which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was
credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its
simplicity more than once. A tumblebug came next, heaving sturdily at
its ball, and Tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs against
its body and pretend to be dead. The birds were fairly rioting by this
time. A catbird, the Northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head,
and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of
enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and
stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one
side and eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel
and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came skurrying along, sitting up at
intervals to inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had
probably never seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to
be afraid or not. All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long
lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near,
and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.

Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with a
shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and
tumbling over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white
sandbar. They felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the
distance beyond the majestic waste of water. A vagrant current or a
slight rise in the river had carried off their raft, but this only
gratified them, since its going was something like burning the bridge
between them and civilization.

They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and
ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. Huck found
a spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad
oak or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a
wildwood charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee.
While Joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to
hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river-bank
and threw in their lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had
not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some
handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch and a small catfish--provisions
enough for quite a family. They fried the fish with the bacon, and were
astonished; for no fish had ever seemed so delicious before. They did
not know that the quicker a fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is
caught the better he is; and they reflected little upon what a sauce
open-air sleeping, open-air exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient
of hunger make, too.

They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while Huck had a smoke,
and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. They
tramped gayly along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush,
among solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the
ground with a drooping regalia of grape-vines. Now and then they came
upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers.

They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but nothing to be
astonished at. They discovered that the island was about three miles
long and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to
was only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards
wide. They took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the
middle of the afternoon when they got back to camp. They were too
hungry to stop to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and
then threw themselves down in the shade to talk. But the talk soon
began to drag, and then died. The stillness, the solemnity that brooded
in the woods, and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the
spirits of the boys. They fell to thinking. A sort of undefined longing
crept upon them. This took dim shape, presently--it was budding
homesickness. Even Finn the Red-Handed was dreaming of his doorsteps
and empty hogsheads. But they were all ashamed of their weakness, and
none was brave enough to speak his thought.

For some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar
sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a
clock which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound
became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started,
glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude.
There was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen
boom came floating down out of the distance.

"What is it!" exclaimed Joe, under his breath.

"I wonder," said Tom in a whisper.

"'Tain't thunder," said Huckleberry, in an awed tone, "becuz thunder--"

"Hark!" said Tom. "Listen--don't talk."

They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom
troubled the solemn hush.

"Let's go and see."

They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town.
They parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. The
little steam ferryboat was about a mile below the village, drifting
with the current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people. There were
a great many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the
neighborhood of the ferryboat, but the boys could not determine what
the men in them were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst
from the ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud,
that same dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again.

"I know now!" exclaimed Tom; "somebody's drownded!"

"That's it!" said Huck; "they done that last summer, when Bill Turner
got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes him
come up to the top. Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put
quicksilver in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody
that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop."

"Yes, I've heard about that," said Joe. "I wonder what makes the bread
do that."

"Oh, it ain't the bread, so much," said Tom; "I reckon it's mostly
what they SAY over it before they start it out."

"But they don't say anything over it," said Huck. "I've seen 'em and
they don't."

"Well, that's funny," said Tom. "But maybe they say it to themselves.
Of COURSE they do. Anybody might know that."

The other boys agreed that there was reason in what Tom said, because
an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not be
expected to act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such
gravity.

"By jings, I wish I was over there, now," said Joe.

"I do too" said Huck "I'd give heaps to know who it is."

The boys still listened and watched. Presently a revealing thought
flashed through Tom's mind, and he exclaimed:

"Boys, I know who's drownded--it's us!"

They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a gorgeous triumph; they
were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account;
tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor
lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being
indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole
town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety
was concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a pirate, after
all.

As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her accustomed
business and the skiffs disappeared. The pirates returned to camp. They
were jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious
trouble they were making. They caught fish, cooked supper and ate it,
and then fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying
about them; and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their
account were gratifying to look upon--from their point of view. But
when the shadows of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to
talk, and sat gazing into the fire, with their minds evidently
wandering elsewhere. The excitement was gone, now, and Tom and Joe
could not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home who were not
enjoying this fine frolic as much as they were. Misgivings came; they
grew troubled and unhappy; a sigh or two escaped, unawares. By and by
Joe timidly ventured upon a roundabout "feeler" as to how the others
might look upon a return to civilization--not right now, but--

Tom withered him with derision! Huck, being uncommitted as yet, joined
in with Tom, and the waverer quickly "explained," and was glad to get
out of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted homesickness
clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny was effectually laid to
rest for the moment.

As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and presently to snore. Joe
followed next. Tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time,
watching the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on his knees,
and went searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung
by the camp-fire. He picked up and inspected several large
semi-cylinders of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose
two which seemed to suit him. Then he knelt by the fire and painfully
wrote something upon each of these with his "red keel"; one he rolled up
and put in his jacket pocket, and the other he put in Joe's hat and
removed it to a little distance from the owner. And he also put into the
hat certain schoolboy treasures of almost inestimable value--among them
a lump of chalk, an India-rubber ball, three fishhooks, and one of that
kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough crystal." Then he tiptoed his
way cautiously among the trees till he felt that he was out of hearing,
and straightway broke into a keen run in the direction of the sandbar.



CHAPTER XV

A FEW minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading
toward the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was
half-way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he
struck out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam
quartering upstream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he
had expected. However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along
till he found a low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his
jacket pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through
the woods, following the shore, with streaming garments. Shortly before
ten o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and
saw the ferryboat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank.
Everything was quiet under the blinking stars. He crept down the bank,
watching with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four
strokes and climbed into the skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's
stern. He laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting.

Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to "cast
off." A minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up,
against the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in
his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. At
the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and Tom
slipped overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards
downstream, out of danger of possible stragglers.

He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his
aunt's back fence. He climbed over, approached the "ell," and looked in
at the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. There sat
Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother, grouped together,
talking. They were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the
door. Tom went to the door and began to softly lift the latch; then he
pressed gently and the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing
cautiously, and quaking every time it creaked, till he judged he might
squeeze through on his knees; so he put his head through and began,
warily.

"What makes the candle blow so?" said Aunt Polly. Tom hurried up.
"Why, that door's open, I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of
strange things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid."

Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He lay and "breathed"
himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his
aunt's foot.

"But as I was saying," said Aunt Polly, "he warn't BAD, so to say
--only mischEEvous. Only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. He
warn't any more responsible than a colt. HE never meant any harm, and
he was the best-hearted boy that ever was"--and she began to cry.

"It was just so with my Joe--always full of his devilment, and up to
every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he
could be--and laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for taking
that cream, never once recollecting that I throwed it out myself
because it was sour, and I never to see him again in this world, never,
never, never, poor abused boy!" And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her heart
would break.

"I hope Tom's better off where he is," said Sid, "but if he'd been
better in some ways--"

"SID!" Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not
see it. "Not a word against my Tom, now that he's gone! God'll take
care of HIM--never you trouble YOURself, sir! Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don't
know how to give him up! I don't know how to give him up! He was such a
comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most."

"The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away--Blessed be the name of
the Lord! But it's so hard--Oh, it's so hard! Only last Saturday my
Joe busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him
sprawling. Little did I know then, how soon--Oh, if it was to do over
again I'd hug him and bless him for it."

"Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just
exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took
and filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur
would tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom's head
with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. But he's out of all his
troubles now. And the last words I ever heard him say was to reproach--"

But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely
down. Tom was snuffling, now, himself--and more in pity of himself than
anybody else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word
for him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself
than ever before. Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's
grief to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with
joy--and the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to
his nature, too, but he resisted and lay still.

He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was
conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim;
then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the
missing lads had promised that the village should "hear something"
soon; the wise-heads had "put this and that together" and decided that
the lads had gone off on that raft and would turn up at the next town
below, presently; but toward noon the raft had been found, lodged
against the Missouri shore some five or six miles below the village
--and then hope perished; they must be drowned, else hunger would have
driven them home by nightfall if not sooner. It was believed that the
search for the bodies had been a fruitless effort merely because the
drowning must have occurred in mid-channel, since the boys, being good
swimmers, would otherwise have escaped to shore. This was Wednesday
night. If the bodies continued missing until Sunday, all hope would be
given over, and the funerals would be preached on that morning. Tom
shuddered.

Mrs. Harper gave a sobbing good-night and turned to go. Then with a
mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each
other's arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted. Aunt Polly
was tender far beyond her wont, in her good-night to Sid and Mary. Sid
snuffled a bit and Mary went off crying with all her heart.

Aunt Polly knelt down and prayed for Tom so touchingly, so
appealingly, and with such measureless love in her words and her old
trembling voice, that he was weltering in tears again, long before she
was through.

He had to keep still long after she went to bed, for she kept making
broken-hearted ejaculations from time to time, tossing unrestfully, and
turning over. But at last she was still, only moaning a little in her
sleep. Now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside, shaded the
candle-light with his hand, and stood regarding her. His heart was full
of pity for her. He took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the
candle. But something occurred to him, and he lingered considering. His
face lighted with a happy solution of his thought; he put the bark
hastily in his pocket. Then he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and
straightway made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him.

He threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found nobody at large
there, and walked boldly on board the boat, for he knew she was
tenantless except that there was a watchman, who always turned in and
slept like a graven image. He untied the skiff at the stern, slipped
into it, and was soon rowing cautiously upstream. When he had pulled a
mile above the village, he started quartering across and bent himself
stoutly to his work. He hit the landing on the other side neatly, for
this was a familiar bit of work to him. He was moved to capture the
skiff, arguing that it might be considered a ship and therefore
legitimate prey for a pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be
made for it and that might end in revelations. So he stepped ashore and
entered the woods.

He sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meanwhile to keep
awake, and then started warily down the home-stretch. The night was far
spent. It was broad daylight before he found himself fairly abreast the
island bar. He rested again until the sun was well up and gilding the
great river with its splendor, and then he plunged into the stream. A
little later he paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp, and
heard Joe say:

"No, Tom's true-blue, Huck, and he'll come back. He won't desert. He
knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and Tom's too proud for
that sort of thing. He's up to something or other. Now I wonder what?"

"Well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?"

"Pretty near, but not yet, Huck. The writing says they are if he ain't
back here to breakfast."

"Which he is!" exclaimed Tom, with fine dramatic effect, stepping
grandly into camp.

A sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as
the boys set to work upon it, Tom recounted (and adorned) his
adventures. They were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the
tale was done. Then Tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till
noon, and the other pirates got ready to fish and explore.



CHAPTER XVI

AFTER dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the
bar. They went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a
soft place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands.
Sometimes they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They
were perfectly round white things a trifle smaller than an English
walnut. They had a famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on
Friday morning.

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and
chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until
they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal
water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their
legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun.
And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each
other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with
averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and
struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all
went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing,
sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time.

When they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the
dry, hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by
and by break for the water again and go through the original
performance once more. Finally it occurred to them that their naked
skin represented flesh-colored "tights" very fairly; so they drew a
ring in the sand and had a circus--with three clowns in it, for none
would yield this proudest post to his neighbor.

Next they got their marbles and played "knucks" and "ring-taw" and
"keeps" till that amusement grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another
swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off
his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his
ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the
protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he
had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to
rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped into the "dumps," and fell
to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay
drowsing in the sun. Tom found himself writing "BECKY" in the sand with
his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his
weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. He
erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving
the other boys together and joining them.

But Joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so
homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay
very near the surface. Huck was melancholy, too. Tom was downhearted,
but tried hard not to show it. He had a secret which he was not ready
to tell, yet, but if this mutinous depression was not broken up soon,
he would have to bring it out. He said, with a great show of
cheerfulness:

"I bet there's been pirates on this island before, boys. We'll explore
it again. They've hid treasures here somewhere. How'd you feel to light
on a rotten chest full of gold and silver--hey?"

But it roused only faint enthusiasm, which faded out, with no reply.
Tom tried one or two other seductions; but they failed, too. It was
discouraging work. Joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and looking
very gloomy. Finally he said:

"Oh, boys, let's give it up. I want to go home. It's so lonesome."

"Oh no, Joe, you'll feel better by and by," said Tom. "Just think of
the fishing that's here."

"I don't care for fishing. I want to go home."

"But, Joe, there ain't such another swimming-place anywhere."

"Swimming's no good. I don't seem to care for it, somehow, when there
ain't anybody to say I sha'n't go in. I mean to go home."

"Oh, shucks! Baby! You want to see your mother, I reckon."

"Yes, I DO want to see my mother--and you would, too, if you had one.
I ain't any more baby than you are." And Joe snuffled a little.

"Well, we'll let the cry-baby go home to his mother, won't we, Huck?
Poor thing--does it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like
it here, don't you, Huck? We'll stay, won't we?"

Huck said, "Y-e-s"--without any heart in it.

"I'll never speak to you again as long as I live," said Joe, rising.
"There now!" And he moved moodily away and began to dress himself.

"Who cares!" said Tom. "Nobody wants you to. Go 'long home and get
laughed at. Oh, you're a nice pirate. Huck and me ain't cry-babies.
We'll stay, won't we, Huck? Let him go if he wants to. I reckon we can
get along without him, per'aps."

But Tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed to see Joe go
sullenly on with his dressing. And then it was discomforting to see
Huck eying Joe's preparations so wistfully, and keeping up such an
ominous silence. Presently, without a parting word, Joe began to wade
off toward the Illinois shore. Tom's heart began to sink. He glanced at
Huck. Huck could not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. Then he said:

"I want to go, too, Tom. It was getting so lonesome anyway, and now
it'll be worse. Let's us go, too, Tom."

"I won't! You can all go, if you want to. I mean to stay."

"Tom, I better go."

"Well, go 'long--who's hendering you."

Huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. He said:

"Tom, I wisht you'd come, too. Now you think it over. We'll wait for
you when we get to shore."

"Well, you'll wait a blame long time, that's all."

Huck started sorrowfully away, and Tom stood looking after him, with a
strong desire tugging at his heart to yield his pride and go along too.
He hoped the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on. It
suddenly dawned on Tom that it was become very lonely and still. He
made one final struggle with his pride, and then darted after his
comrades, yelling:

"Wait! Wait! I want to tell you something!"

They presently stopped and turned around. When he got to where they
were, he began unfolding his secret, and they listened moodily till at
last they saw the "point" he was driving at, and then they set up a
war-whoop of applause and said it was "splendid!" and said if he had
told them at first, they wouldn't have started away. He made a plausible
excuse; but his real reason had been the fear that not even the secret
would keep them with him any very great length of time, and so he had
meant to hold it in reserve as a last seduction.

The lads came gayly back and went at their sports again with a will,
chattering all the time about Tom's stupendous plan and admiring the
genius of it. After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to
learn to smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said he would like to
try, too. So Huck made pipes and filled them. These novices had never
smoked anything before but cigars made of grape-vine, and they "bit"
the tongue, and were not considered manly anyway.

Now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff,
charily, and with slender confidence. The smoke had an unpleasant
taste, and they gagged a little, but Tom said:

"Why, it's just as easy! If I'd a knowed this was all, I'd a learnt
long ago."

"So would I," said Joe. "It's just nothing."

"Why, many a time I've looked at people smoking, and thought well I
wish I could do that; but I never thought I could," said Tom.

"That's just the way with me, hain't it, Huck? You've heard me talk
just that way--haven't you, Huck? I'll leave it to Huck if I haven't."

"Yes--heaps of times," said Huck.

"Well, I have too," said Tom; "oh, hundreds of times. Once down by the
slaughter-house. Don't you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was there, and
Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it. Don't you remember,
Huck, 'bout me saying that?"

"Yes, that's so," said Huck. "That was the day after I lost a white
alley. No, 'twas the day before."

"There--I told you so," said Tom. "Huck recollects it."

"I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day," said Joe. "I don't feel
sick."

"Neither do I," said Tom. "I could smoke it all day. But I bet you
Jeff Thatcher couldn't."

"Jeff Thatcher! Why, he'd keel over just with two draws. Just let him
try it once. HE'D see!"

"I bet he would. And Johnny Miller--I wish could see Johnny Miller
tackle it once."

"Oh, don't I!" said Joe. "Why, I bet you Johnny Miller couldn't any
more do this than nothing. Just one little snifter would fetch HIM."

"'Deed it would, Joe. Say--I wish the boys could see us now."

"So do I."

"Say--boys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're
around, I'll come up to you and say, 'Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.'
And you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll
say, 'Yes, I got my OLD pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't
very good.' And I'll say, 'Oh, that's all right, if it's STRONG
enough.' And then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as
ca'm, and then just see 'em look!"

"By jings, that'll be gay, Tom! I wish it was NOW!"

"So do I! And when we tell 'em we learned when we was off pirating,
won't they wish they'd been along?"

"Oh, I reckon not! I'll just BET they will!"

So the talk ran on. But presently it began to flag a trifle, and grow
disjointed. The silences widened; the expectoration marvellously
increased. Every pore inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting
fountain; they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues
fast enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings down their
throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings
followed every time. Both boys were looking very pale and miserable,
now. Joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. Tom's followed.
Both fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might
and main. Joe said feebly:

"I've lost my knife. I reckon I better go and find it."

Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance:

"I'll help you. You go over that way and I'll hunt around by the
spring. No, you needn't come, Huck--we can find it."

So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour. Then he found it lonesome,
and went to find his comrades. They were wide apart in the woods, both
very pale, both fast asleep. But something informed him that if they
had had any trouble they had got rid of it.

They were not talkative at supper that night. They had a humble look,
and when Huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare
theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very well--something they
ate at dinner had disagreed with them.

About midnight Joe awoke, and called the boys. There was a brooding
oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. The boys
huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of
the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was
stifling. They sat still, intent and waiting. The solemn hush
continued. Beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in
the blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quivering glow that
vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. By and by
another came, a little stronger. Then another. Then a faint moan came
sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting
breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the Spirit
of the Night had gone by. There was a pause. Now a weird flash turned
night into day and showed every little grass-blade, separate and
distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed three white,
startled faces, too. A deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling
down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A
sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the
flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. Another fierce glare lit up the
forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the tree-tops
right over the boys' heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick
gloom that followed. A few big rain-drops fell pattering upon the
leaves.

"Quick! boys, go for the tent!" exclaimed Tom.

They sprang away, stumbling over roots and among vines in the dark, no
two plunging in the same direction. A furious blast roared through the
trees, making everything sing as it went. One blinding flash after
another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a
drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets
along the ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring
wind and the booming thunder-blasts drowned their voices utterly.
However, one by one they straggled in at last and took shelter under
the tent, cold, scared, and streaming with water; but to have company
in misery seemed something to be grateful for. They could not talk, the
old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises would have
allowed them. The tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the
sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast.
The boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and
bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that stood upon the river-bank.
Now the battle was at its highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of
lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in
clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy
river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim
outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the
drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. Every little while
some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger
growth; and the unflagging thunder-peals came now in ear-splitting
explosive bursts, keen and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. The storm
culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island
to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the tree-tops, blow it away, and
deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. It was a
wild night for homeless young heads to be out in.

But at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker
and weaker threatenings and grumblings, and peace resumed her sway. The
boys went back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there was
still something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the
shelter of their beds, was a ruin, now, blasted by the lightnings, and
they were not under it when the catastrophe happened.

Everything in camp was drenched, the camp-fire as well; for they were
but heedless lads, like their generation, and had made no provision
against rain. Here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked through
and chilled. They were eloquent in their distress; but they presently
discovered that the fire had eaten so far up under the great log it had
been built against (where it curved upward and separated itself from
the ground), that a handbreadth or so of it had escaped wetting; so
they patiently wrought until, with shreds and bark gathered from the
under sides of sheltered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. Then
they piled on great dead boughs till they had a roaring furnace, and
were glad-hearted once more. They dried their boiled ham and had a
feast, and after that they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified
their midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a dry spot to
sleep on, anywhere around.

As the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over them,
and they went out on the sandbar and lay down to sleep. They got
scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. After
the meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little homesick once
more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as
he could. But they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming,
or anything. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray
of cheer. While it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. This
was to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a
change. They were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before
they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like
so many zebras--all of them chiefs, of course--and then they went
tearing through the woods to attack an English settlement.

By and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon
each other from ambush with dreadful war-whoops, and killed and scalped
each other by thousands. It was a gory day. Consequently it was an
extremely satisfactory one.

They assembled in camp toward supper-time, hungry and happy; but now a
difficulty arose--hostile Indians could not break the bread of
hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple
impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There was no other
process that ever they had heard of. Two of the savages almost wished
they had remained pirates. However, there was no other way; so with
such show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe
and took their whiff as it passed, in due form.

And behold, they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had
gained something; they found that they could now smoke a little without
having to go and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough to
be seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely to fool away this high
promise for lack of effort. No, they practised cautiously, after
supper, with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening.
They were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would
have been in the scalping and skinning of the Six Nations. We will
leave them to smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use
for them at present.



CHAPTER XVII

BUT there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil
Saturday afternoon. The Harpers, and Aunt Polly's family, were being
put into mourning, with great grief and many tears. An unusual quiet
possessed the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all
conscience. The villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air,
and talked little; but they sighed often. The Saturday holiday seemed a
burden to the children. They had no heart in their sports, and
gradually gave them up.

In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the
deserted schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found
nothing there to comfort her. She soliloquized:

"Oh, if I only had a brass andiron-knob again! But I haven't got
anything now to remember him by." And she choked back a little sob.

Presently she stopped, and said to herself:

"It was right here. Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn't say
that--I wouldn't say it for the whole world. But he's gone now; I'll
never, never, never see him any more."

This thought broke her down, and she wandered away, with tears rolling
down her cheeks. Then quite a group of boys and girls--playmates of
Tom's and Joe's--came by, and stood looking over the paling fence and
talking in reverent tones of how Tom did so-and-so the last time they
saw him, and how Joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with
awful prophecy, as they could easily see now!)--and each speaker
pointed out the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and
then added something like "and I was a-standing just so--just as I am
now, and as if you was him--I was as close as that--and he smiled, just
this way--and then something seemed to go all over me, like--awful, you
know--and I never thought what it meant, of course, but I can see now!"

Then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and
many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or
less tampered with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided
who DID see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them,
the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance, and
were gaped at and envied by all the rest. One poor chap, who had no
other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the
remembrance:

"Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once."

But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that,
and so that cheapened the distinction too much. The group loitered
away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices.

When the Sunday-school hour was finished, the next morning, the bell
began to toll, instead of ringing in the usual way. It was a very still
Sabbath, and the mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing hush
that lay upon nature. The villagers began to gather, loitering a moment
in the vestibule to converse in whispers about the sad event. But there
was no whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of dresses
as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. None
could remember when the little church had been so full before. There
was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then Aunt Polly
entered, followed by Sid and Mary, and they by the Harper family, all
in deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well,
rose reverently and stood until the mourners were seated in the front
pew. There was another communing silence, broken at intervals by
muffled sobs, and then the minister spread his hands abroad and prayed.
A moving hymn was sung, and the text followed: "I am the Resurrection
and the Life."

As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the
graces, the winning ways, and the rare promise of the lost lads that
every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in
remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them always
before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor
boys. The minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the
departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the
people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes
were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had
seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide. The
congregation became more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went on,
till at last the whole company broke down and joined the weeping
mourners in a chorus of anguished sobs, the preacher himself giving way
to his feelings, and crying in the pulpit.

There was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed; a moment
later the church door creaked; the minister raised his streaming eyes
above his handkerchief, and stood transfixed! First one and then
another pair of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one
impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came
marching up the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of
drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in
the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!

Aunt Polly, Mary, and the Harpers threw themselves upon their restored
ones, smothered them with kisses and poured out thanksgivings, while
poor Huck stood abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what to
do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes. He wavered, and
started to slink away, but Tom seized him and said:

"Aunt Polly, it ain't fair. Somebody's got to be glad to see Huck."

"And so they shall. I'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing!" And
the loving attentions Aunt Polly lavished upon him were the one thing
capable of making him more uncomfortable than he was before.

Suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice: "Praise God
from whom all blessings flow--SING!--and put your hearts in it!"

And they did. Old Hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and
while it shook the rafters Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the
envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was
the proudest moment of his life.

As the "sold" congregation trooped out they said they would almost be
willing to be made ridiculous again to hear Old Hundred sung like that
once more.

Tom got more cuffs and kisses that day--according to Aunt Polly's
varying moods--than he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew
which expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself.



CHAPTER XVIII

THAT was Tom's great secret--the scheme to return home with his
brother pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to
the Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six
miles below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the
town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and
alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a
chaos of invalided benches.

At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to
Tom, and very attentive to his wants. There was an unusual amount of
talk. In the course of it Aunt Polly said:

"Well, I don't say it wasn't a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody
suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity
you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come
over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give
me a hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off."

"Yes, you could have done that, Tom," said Mary; "and I believe you
would if you had thought of it."

"Would you, Tom?" said Aunt Polly, her face lighting wistfully. "Say,
now, would you, if you'd thought of it?"

"I--well, I don't know. 'Twould 'a' spoiled everything."

"Tom, I hoped you loved me that much," said Aunt Polly, with a grieved
tone that discomforted the boy. "It would have been something if you'd
cared enough to THINK of it, even if you didn't DO it."

"Now, auntie, that ain't any harm," pleaded Mary; "it's only Tom's
giddy way--he is always in such a rush that he never thinks of
anything."

"More's the pity. Sid would have thought. And Sid would have come and
DONE it, too. Tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late, and
wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so
little."

"Now, auntie, you know I do care for you," said Tom.

"I'd know it better if you acted more like it."

"I wish now I'd thought," said Tom, with a repentant tone; "but I
dreamt about you, anyway. That's something, ain't it?"

"It ain't much--a cat does that much--but it's better than nothing.
What did you dream?"

"Why, Wednesday night I dreamt that you was sitting over there by the
bed, and Sid was sitting by the woodbox, and Mary next to him."

"Well, so we did. So we always do. I'm glad your dreams could take
even that much trouble about us."

"And I dreamt that Joe Harper's mother was here."

"Why, she was here! Did you dream any more?"

"Oh, lots. But it's so dim, now."

"Well, try to recollect--can't you?"

"Somehow it seems to me that the wind--the wind blowed the--the--"

"Try harder, Tom! The wind did blow something. Come!"

Tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then
said:

"I've got it now! I've got it now! It blowed the candle!"

"Mercy on us! Go on, Tom--go on!"

"And it seems to me that you said, 'Why, I believe that that door--'"

"Go ON, Tom!"

"Just let me study a moment--just a moment. Oh, yes--you said you
believed the door was open."

"As I'm sitting here, I did! Didn't I, Mary! Go on!"

"And then--and then--well I won't be certain, but it seems like as if
you made Sid go and--and--"

"Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom? What did I make him do?"

"You made him--you--Oh, you made him shut it."

"Well, for the land's sake! I never heard the beat of that in all my
days! Don't tell ME there ain't anything in dreams, any more. Sereny
Harper shall know of this before I'm an hour older. I'd like to see her
get around THIS with her rubbage 'bout superstition. Go on, Tom!"

"Oh, it's all getting just as bright as day, now. Next you said I
warn't BAD, only mischeevous and harum-scarum, and not any more
responsible than--than--I think it was a colt, or something."

"And so it was! Well, goodness gracious! Go on, Tom!"

"And then you began to cry."

"So I did. So I did. Not the first time, neither. And then--"

"Then Mrs. Harper she began to cry, and said Joe was just the same,
and she wished she hadn't whipped him for taking cream when she'd
throwed it out her own self--"

"Tom! The sperrit was upon you! You was a prophesying--that's what you
was doing! Land alive, go on, Tom!"

"Then Sid he said--he said--"

"I don't think I said anything," said Sid.

"Yes you did, Sid," said Mary.

"Shut your heads and let Tom go on! What did he say, Tom?"

"He said--I THINK he said he hoped I was better off where I was gone
to, but if I'd been better sometimes--"

"THERE, d'you hear that! It was his very words!"

"And you shut him up sharp."

"I lay I did! There must 'a' been an angel there. There WAS an angel
there, somewheres!"

"And Mrs. Harper told about Joe scaring her with a firecracker, and
you told about Peter and the Painkiller--"

"Just as true as I live!"

"And then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout dragging the river for
us, and 'bout having the funeral Sunday, and then you and old Miss
Harper hugged and cried, and she went."

"It happened just so! It happened just so, as sure as I'm a-sitting in
these very tracks. Tom, you couldn't told it more like if you'd 'a'
seen it! And then what? Go on, Tom!"

"Then I thought you prayed for me--and I could see you and hear every
word you said. And you went to bed, and I was so sorry that I took and
wrote on a piece of sycamore bark, 'We ain't dead--we are only off
being pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle; and then you
looked so good, laying there asleep, that I thought I went and leaned
over and kissed you on the lips."

"Did you, Tom, DID you! I just forgive you everything for that!" And
she seized the boy in a crushing embrace that made him feel like the
guiltiest of villains.

"It was very kind, even though it was only a--dream," Sid soliloquized
just audibly.

"Shut up, Sid! A body does just the same in a dream as he'd do if he
was awake. Here's a big Milum apple I've been saving for you, Tom, if
you was ever found again--now go 'long to school. I'm thankful to the
good God and Father of us all I've got you back, that's long-suffering
and merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though
goodness knows I'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His
blessings and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there's
few enough would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long
night comes. Go 'long Sid, Mary, Tom--take yourselves off--you've
hendered me long enough."

The children left for school, and the old lady to call on Mrs. Harper
and vanquish her realism with Tom's marvellous dream. Sid had better
judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the
house. It was this: "Pretty thin--as long a dream as that, without any
mistakes in it!"

What a hero Tom was become, now! He did not go skipping and prancing,
but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the
public eye was on him. And indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see
the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food
and drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as
proud to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been the
drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie
into town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away
at all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would
have given anything to have that swarthy suntanned skin of his, and his
glittering notoriety; and Tom would not have parted with either for a
circus.

At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered
such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not
long in becoming insufferably "stuck-up." They began to tell their
adventures to hungry listeners--but they only began; it was not a thing
likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish
material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely
puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached.

Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory
was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished,
maybe she would be wanting to "make up." Well, let her--she should see
that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she
arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group
of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was
tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes,
pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter
when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her
captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye
in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious
vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only "set
him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that
he knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved
irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and
wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more
particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp
pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. She tried to go away, but
her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She
said to a girl almost at Tom's elbow--with sham vivacity:

"Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to Sunday-school?"

"I did come--didn't you see me?"

"Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?"

"I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go. I saw YOU."

"Did you? Why, it's funny I didn't see you. I wanted to tell you about
the picnic."

"Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?"

"My ma's going to let me have one."

"Oh, goody; I hope she'll let ME come."

"Well, she will. The picnic's for me. She'll let anybody come that I
want, and I want you."

"That's ever so nice. When is it going to be?"

"By and by. Maybe about vacation."

"Oh, won't it be fun! You going to have all the girls and boys?"

"Yes, every one that's friends to me--or wants to be"; and she glanced
ever so furtively at Tom, but he talked right along to Amy Lawrence
about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the
great sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing within
three feet of it."

"Oh, may I come?" said Grace Miller.

"Yes."

"And me?" said Sally Rogers.

"Yes."

"And me, too?" said Susy Harper. "And Joe?"

"Yes."

And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged
for invitations but Tom and Amy. Then Tom turned coolly away, still
talking, and took Amy with him. Becky's lips trembled and the tears
came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on
chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of
everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and
had what her sex call "a good cry." Then she sat moody, with wounded
pride, till the bell rang. She roused up, now, with a vindictive cast
in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what
SHE'D do.

At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant
self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate
her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden
falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind
the schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and so
absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book,
that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides.
Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for
throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He
called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He
wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked,
for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function. He
did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he
could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as
otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and
again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could
not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that
Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the
living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her
fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.

Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had to
attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in
vain--the girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, hang her, ain't I ever
going to get rid of her?" At last he must be attending to those
things--and she said artlessly that she would be "around" when school
let out. And he hastened away, hating her for it.

"Any other boy!" Tom thought, grating his teeth. "Any boy in the whole
town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is
aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw
this town, mister, and I'll lick you again! You just wait till I catch
you out! I'll just take and--"

And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy
--pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. "Oh, you do, do you? You
holler 'nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!" And so the
imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction.

Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of
Amy's grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the
other distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but
as the minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph
began to cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absent-mindedness
followed, and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her
ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came. At last she
grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. When
poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept
exclaiming: "Oh, here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience
at last, and said, "Oh, don't bother me! I don't care for them!" and
burst into tears, and got up and walked away.

Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she
said:

"Go away and leave me alone, can't you! I hate you!"

So the boy halted, wondering what he could have done--for she had said
she would look at pictures all through the nooning--and she walked on,
crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was
humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truth--the girl
had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom Sawyer.
He was far from hating Tom the less when this thought occurred to him.
He wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much
risk to himself. Tom's spelling-book fell under his eye. Here was his
opportunity. He gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and
poured ink upon the page.

Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act,
and moved on, without discovering herself. She started homeward, now,
intending to find Tom and tell him; Tom would be thankful and their
troubles would be healed. Before she was half way home, however, she
had changed her mind. The thought of Tom's treatment of her when she
was talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with
shame. She resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged
spelling-book's account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain.



CHAPTER XIX

TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt
said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an
unpromising market:

"Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!"

"Auntie, what have I done?"

"Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an
old softy, expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage
about that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that
you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I
don't know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It makes
me feel so bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make
such a fool of myself and never say a word."

This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had
seemed to Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked
mean and shabby now. He hung his head and could not think of anything
to say for a moment. Then he said:

"Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it--but I didn't think."

"Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your own
selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from
Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could
think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think
to pity us and save us from sorrow."

"Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn't mean to be mean. I
didn't, honest. And besides, I didn't come over here to laugh at you
that night."

"What did you come for, then?"

"It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got
drownded."

"Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this world if I could
believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never
did--and I know it, Tom."

"Indeed and 'deed I did, auntie--I wish I may never stir if I didn't."

"Oh, Tom, don't lie--don't do it. It only makes things a hundred times
worse."

"It ain't a lie, auntie; it's the truth. I wanted to keep you from
grieving--that was all that made me come."

"I'd give the whole world to believe that--it would cover up a power
of sins, Tom. I'd 'most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. But it
ain't reasonable; because, why didn't you tell me, child?"

"Why, you see, when you got to talking about the funeral, I just got
all full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the church, and I
couldn't somehow bear to spoil it. So I just put the bark back in my
pocket and kept mum."

"What bark?"

"The bark I had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. I wish, now,
you'd waked up when I kissed you--I do, honest."

The hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness
dawned in her eyes.

"DID you kiss me, Tom?"

"Why, yes, I did."

"Are you sure you did, Tom?"

"Why, yes, I did, auntie--certain sure."

"What did you kiss me for, Tom?"

"Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so sorry."

The words sounded like truth. The old lady could not hide a tremor in
her voice when she said:

"Kiss me again, Tom!--and be off with you to school, now, and don't
bother me any more."

The moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin of a
jacket which Tom had gone pirating in. Then she stopped, with it in her
hand, and said to herself:

"No, I don't dare. Poor boy, I reckon he's lied about it--but it's a
blessed, blessed lie, there's such a comfort come from it. I hope the
Lord--I KNOW the Lord will forgive him, because it was such
goodheartedness in him to tell it. But I don't want to find out it's a
lie. I won't look."

She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. Twice she put
out her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained. Once
more she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the
thought: "It's a good lie--it's a good lie--I won't let it grieve me."
So she sought the jacket pocket. A moment later she was reading Tom's
piece of bark through flowing tears and saying: "I could forgive the
boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!"



CHAPTER XX

THERE was something about Aunt Polly's manner, when she kissed Tom,
that swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy
again. He started to school and had the luck of coming upon Becky
Thatcher at the head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his
manner. Without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and said:

"I acted mighty mean to-day, Becky, and I'm so sorry. I won't ever,
ever do that way again, as long as ever I live--please make up, won't
you?"

The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face:

"I'll thank you to keep yourself TO yourself, Mr. Thomas Sawyer. I'll
never speak to you again."

She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had not
even presence of mind enough to say "Who cares, Miss Smarty?" until the
right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a
fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the schoolyard wishing she were
a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently
encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She
hurled one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to
Becky, in her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to
"take in," she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured
spelling-book. If she had had any lingering notion of exposing Alfred
Temple, Tom's offensive fling had driven it entirely away.

Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself.
The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied
ambition. The darling of his desires was, to be a doctor, but poverty
had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village
schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and
absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. He kept
that book under lock and key. There was not an urchin in school but was
perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. Every boy
and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two
theories were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in
the case. Now, as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the
door, she noticed that the key was in the lock! It was a precious
moment. She glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant
she had the book in her hands. The title-page--Professor Somebody's
ANATOMY--carried no information to her mind; so she began to turn the
leaves. She came at once upon a handsomely engraved and colored
frontispiece--a human figure, stark naked. At that moment a shadow fell
on the page and Tom Sawyer stepped in at the door and caught a glimpse
of the picture. Becky snatched at the book to close it, and had the
hard luck to tear the pictured page half down the middle. She thrust
the volume into the desk, turned the key, and burst out crying with
shame and vexation.

"Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a
person and look at what they're looking at."

"How could I know you was looking at anything?"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer; you know you're
going to tell on me, and oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! I'll be
whipped, and I never was whipped in school."

Then she stamped her little foot and said:

"BE so mean if you want to! I know something that's going to happen.
You just wait and you'll see! Hateful, hateful, hateful!"--and she
flung out of the house with a new explosion of crying.

Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he said
to himself:

"What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never been licked in school!
Shucks! What's a licking! That's just like a girl--they're so
thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. Well, of course I ain't going to tell
old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting
even on her, that ain't so mean; but what of it? Old Dobbins will ask
who it was tore his book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do just the way
he always does--ask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the
right girl he'll know it, without any telling. Girls' faces always tell
on them. They ain't got any backbone. She'll get licked. Well, it's a
kind of a tight place for Becky Thatcher, because there ain't any way
out of it." Tom conned the thing a moment longer, and then added: "All
right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fix--let her sweat it
out!"

Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. In a few moments
the master arrived and school "took in." Tom did not feel a strong
interest in his studies. Every time he stole a glance at the girls'
side of the room Becky's face troubled him. Considering all things, he
did not want to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. He
could get up no exultation that was really worthy the name. Presently
the spelling-book discovery was made, and Tom's mind was entirely full
of his own matters for a while after that. Becky roused up from her
lethargy of distress and showed good interest in the proceedings. She
did not expect that Tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he
spilt the ink on the book himself; and she was right. The denial only
seemed to make the thing worse for Tom. Becky supposed she would be
glad of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she
found she was not certain. When the worst came to the worst, she had an
impulse to get up and tell on Alfred Temple, but she made an effort and
forced herself to keep still--because, said she to herself, "he'll tell
about me tearing the picture sure. I wouldn't say a word, not to save
his life!"

Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all
broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly
upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout--he
had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck
to the denial from principle.

A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the air
was drowsy with the hum of study. By and by, Mr. Dobbins straightened
himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book,
but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. Most of the
pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched
his movements with intent eyes. Mr. Dobbins fingered his book absently
for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read!
Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit
look as she did, with a gun levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot
his quarrel with her. Quick--something must be done! done in a flash,
too! But the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his invention.
Good!--he had an inspiration! He would run and snatch the book, spring
through the door and fly. But his resolution shook for one little
instant, and the chance was lost--the master opened the volume. If Tom
only had the wasted opportunity back again! Too late. There was no help
for Becky now, he said. The next moment the master faced the school.
Every eye sank under his gaze. There was that in it which smote even
the innocent with fear. There was silence while one might count ten
--the master was gathering his wrath. Then he spoke: "Who tore this book?"

There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The stillness
continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt.

"Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?"

A denial. Another pause.

"Joseph Harper, did you?"

Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the
slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of
boys--considered a while, then turned to the girls:

"Amy Lawrence?"

A shake of the head.

"Gracie Miller?"

The same sign.

"Susan Harper, did you do this?"

Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was trembling
from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of
the situation.

"Rebecca Thatcher" [Tom glanced at her face--it was white with terror]
--"did you tear--no, look me in the face" [her hands rose in appeal]
--"did you tear this book?"

A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain. He sprang to his
feet and shouted--"I done it!"

The school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. Tom stood a
moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped
forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the
adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed pay
enough for a hundred floggings. Inspired by the splendor of his own
act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flaying that even Mr.
Dobbins had ever administered; and also received with indifference the
added cruelty of a command to remain two hours after school should be
dismissed--for he knew who would wait for him outside till his
captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as loss, either.

Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against Alfred Temple;
for with shame and repentance Becky had told him all, not forgetting
her own treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way,
soon, to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last with Becky's
latest words lingering dreamily in his ear--

"Tom, how COULD you be so noble!"



CHAPTER XXI

VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew
severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a
good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule were seldom
idle now--at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and
young ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins'
lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under
his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle
age, and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great
day approached, all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he
seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least
shortcomings. The consequence was, that the smaller boys spent their
days in terror and suffering and their nights in plotting revenge. They
threw away no opportunity to do the master a mischief. But he kept
ahead all the time. The retribution that followed every vengeful
success was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always retired from
the field badly worsted. At last they conspired together and hit upon a
plan that promised a dazzling victory. They swore in the sign-painter's
boy, told him the scheme, and asked his help. He had his own reasons
for being delighted, for the master boarded in his father's family and
had given the boy ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go
on a visit to the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to
interfere with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great
occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy
said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on
Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his
chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried
away to school.

In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in
the evening the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with
wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in
his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him.
He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches on each side and
six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town
and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of
citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the
scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of
small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort;
rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in
lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their
grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and
the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with
non-participating scholars.

The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly
recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the
stage," etc.--accompanying himself with the painfully exact and
spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used--supposing the
machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though
cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his
manufactured bow and retired.

A little shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc.,
performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and
sat down flushed and happy.

Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into
the unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death"
speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the
middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under
him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the
house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than
its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom
struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak
attempt at applause, but it died early.

"The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian Came
Down," and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,
and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The
prime feature of the evening was in order, now--original "compositions"
by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of
the platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with
dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to
"expression" and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been
illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers before them, their
grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line
clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one; "Memories of Other
Days"; "Religion in History"; "Dream Land"; "The Advantages of
Culture"; "Forms of Political Government Compared and Contrasted";
"Melancholy"; "Filial Love"; "Heart Longings," etc., etc.

A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine language";
another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words
and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that
conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable
sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one
of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort
was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and
religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring
insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the
banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient
to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps.
There is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel
obliged to close their compositions with a sermon; and you will find
that the sermon of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in
the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But
enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable.

Let us return to the "Examination." The first composition that was
read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" Perhaps the reader can
endure an extract from it:

  "In the common walks of life, with what delightful
   emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some
   anticipated scene of festivity! Imagination is busy
   sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the
   voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the
   festive throng, 'the observed of all observers.' Her
   graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling
   through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is
   brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly.

  "In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by,
   and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into
   the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright
   dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to
   her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming
   than the last. But after a while she finds that
   beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the
   flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates
   harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its
   charms; and with wasted health and imbittered heart,
   she turns away with the conviction that earthly
   pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!"

And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to
time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of "How
sweet!" "How eloquent!" "So true!" etc., and after the thing had closed
with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic.

Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting"
paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two
stanzas of it will do:

   "A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA

   "Alabama, good-bye! I love thee well!
      But yet for a while do I leave thee now!
    Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell,
      And burning recollections throng my brow!
    For I have wandered through thy flowery woods;
      Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream;
    Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods,
      And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam.

   "Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full heart,
      Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes;
    'Tis from no stranger land I now must part,
      'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs.
    Welcome and home were mine within this State,
      Whose vales I leave--whose spires fade fast from me
    And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete,
      When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!"

There were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem was
very satisfactory, nevertheless.

Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young
lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and
began to read in a measured, solemn tone:

  "A VISION

   "Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the
   throne on high not a single star quivered; but
   the deep intonations of the heavy thunder
   constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the
   terrific lightning revelled in angry mood
   through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming
   to scorn the power exerted over its terror by
   the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous
   winds unanimously came forth from their mystic
   homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by
   their aid the wildness of the scene.

   "At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human
   sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof,

   "'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter
   and guide--My joy in grief, my second bliss
   in joy,' came to my side. She moved like one of
   those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks
   of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a
   queen of beauty unadorned save by her own
   transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it
   failed to make even a sound, and but for the
   magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as
   other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided
   away un-perceived--unsought. A strange sadness
   rested upon her features, like icy tears upon
   the robe of December, as she pointed to the
   contending elements without, and bade me contemplate
   the two beings presented."

This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with
a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took
the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest
effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the
prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it
was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that
Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it.

It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in
which the word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience
referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average.

Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair
aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of
America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he
made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered
titter rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set
himself to right it. He sponged out lines and remade them; but he only
distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced.
He threw his entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not
to be put down by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon
him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it
even manifestly increased. And well it might. There was a garret above,
pierced with a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle
came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag
tied about her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly
descended she curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung
downward and clawed at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher
and higher--the cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's
head--down, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her
desperate claws, clung to it, and was snatched up into the garret in an
instant with her trophy still in her possession! And how the light did
blaze abroad from the master's bald pate--for the sign-painter's boy
had GILDED it!

That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.

   NOTE:--The pretended "compositions" quoted in
   this chapter are taken without alteration from a
   volume entitled "Prose and Poetry, by a Western
   Lady"--but they are exactly and precisely after
   the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much
   happier than any mere imitations could be.



CHAPTER XXII

TOM joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by
the showy character of their "regalia." He promised to abstain from
smoking, chewing, and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he
found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the
surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very
thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and
swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a
chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing
from the order. Fourth of July was coming; but he soon gave that up
--gave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hours--and
fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was
apparently on his deathbed and would have a big public funeral, since
he was so high an official. During three days Tom was deeply concerned
about the Judge's condition and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his
hopes ran high--so high that he would venture to get out his regalia
and practise before the looking-glass. But the Judge had a most
discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the
mend--and then convalescent. Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of
injury, too. He handed in his resignation at once--and that night the
Judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom resolved that he would never
trust a man like that again.

The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style calculated
to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy again, however
--there was something in that. He could drink and swear, now--but found
to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he could,
took the desire away, and the charm of it.

Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning
to hang a little heavily on his hands.

He attempted a diary--but nothing happened during three days, and so
he abandoned it.

The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a
sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were
happy for two days.

Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained
hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man in
the world (as Tom supposed), Mr. Benton, an actual United States
Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment--for he was not
twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it.

A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in
tents made of rag carpeting--admission, three pins for boys, two for
girls--and then circusing was abandoned.

A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came--and went again and left the
village duller and drearier than ever.

There were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so
delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder.

Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her
parents during vacation--so there was no bright side to life anywhere.

The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very
cancer for permanency and pain.

Then came the measles.

During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its
happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got
upon his feet at last and moved feebly down-town, a melancholy change
had come over everything and every creature. There had been a
"revival," and everybody had "got religion," not only the adults, but
even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the
sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him
everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly
away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him
visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who
called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a
warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression;
and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of
Huckleberry Finn and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his
heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all
the town was lost, forever and forever.

And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain,
awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his
head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his
doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was
about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above
to the extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might
have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a
battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the
getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf
from under an insect like himself.

By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its
object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His
second was to wait--for there might not be any more storms.

The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks
he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad
at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how
lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted
listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a
juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her
victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a
stolen melon. Poor lads! they--like Tom--had suffered a relapse.



CHAPTER XXIII

AT last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred--and vigorously: the murder
trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of village
talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to
the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and
fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his
hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how he could be suspected of
knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be
comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold shiver
all the time. He took Huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him.
It would be some relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to
divide his burden of distress with another sufferer. Moreover, he
wanted to assure himself that Huck had remained discreet.

"Huck, have you ever told anybody about--that?"

"'Bout what?"

"You know what."

"Oh--'course I haven't."

"Never a word?"

"Never a solitary word, so help me. What makes you ask?"

"Well, I was afeard."

"Why, Tom Sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found out.
YOU know that."

Tom felt more comfortable. After a pause:

"Huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?"

"Get me to tell? Why, if I wanted that half-breed devil to drownd me
they could get me to tell. They ain't no different way."

"Well, that's all right, then. I reckon we're safe as long as we keep
mum. But let's swear again, anyway. It's more surer."

"I'm agreed."

So they swore again with dread solemnities.

"What is the talk around, Huck? I've heard a power of it."

"Talk? Well, it's just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the
time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's I want to hide som'ers."

"That's just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he's a goner.
Don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?"

"Most always--most always. He ain't no account; but then he hain't
ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money
to get drunk on--and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do
that--leastways most of us--preachers and such like. But he's kind of
good--he give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two;
and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck."

"Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my
line. I wish we could get him out of there."

"My! we couldn't get him out, Tom. And besides, 'twouldn't do any
good; they'd ketch him again."

"Yes--so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the
dickens when he never done--that."

"I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest looking
villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before."

"Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that if he
was to get free they'd lynch him."

"And they'd do it, too."

The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the
twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood
of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that
something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But
nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in
this luckless captive.

The boys did as they had often done before--went to the cell grating
and gave Potter some tobacco and matches. He was on the ground floor
and there were no guards.

His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences
before--it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and
treacherous to the last degree when Potter said:

"You've been mighty good to me, boys--better'n anybody else in this
town. And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says I,
'I used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the
good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and now they've
all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble; but Tom don't, and Huck
don't--THEY don't forget him, says I, 'and I don't forget them.' Well,
boys, I done an awful thing--drunk and crazy at the time--that's the
only way I account for it--and now I got to swing for it, and it's
right. Right, and BEST, too, I reckon--hope so, anyway. Well, we won't
talk about that. I don't want to make YOU feel bad; you've befriended
me. But what I want to say, is, don't YOU ever get drunk--then you won't
ever get here. Stand a litter furder west--so--that's it; it's a prime
comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck of
trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. Good friendly
faces--good friendly faces. Git up on one another's backs and let me
touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands--yourn'll come through the bars, but
mine's too big. Little hands, and weak--but they've helped Muff Potter
a power, and they'd help him more if they could."

Tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of
horrors. The next day and the day after, he hung about the court-room,
drawn by an almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing himself
to stay out. Huck was having the same experience. They studiously
avoided each other. Each wandered away, from time to time, but the same
dismal fascination always brought them back presently. Tom kept his
ears open when idlers sauntered out of the court-room, but invariably
heard distressing news--the toils were closing more and more
relentlessly around poor Potter. At the end of the second day the
village talk was to the effect that Injun Joe's evidence stood firm and
unshaken, and that there was not the slightest question as to what the
jury's verdict would be.

Tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. He
was in a tremendous state of excitement. It was hours before he got to
sleep. All the village flocked to the court-house the next morning, for
this was to be the great day. Both sexes were about equally represented
in the packed audience. After a long wait the jury filed in and took
their places; shortly afterward, Potter, pale and haggard, timid and
hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated where all
the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was Injun Joe,
stolid as ever. There was another pause, and then the judge arrived and
the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. The usual whisperings
among the lawyers and gathering together of papers followed. These
details and accompanying delays worked up an atmosphere of preparation
that was as impressive as it was fascinating.

Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter
washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder
was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After some
further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said:

"Take the witness."

The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when
his own counsel said:

"I have no questions to ask him."

The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse.
Counsel for the prosecution said:

"Take the witness."

"I have no questions to ask him," Potter's lawyer replied.

A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's
possession.

"Take the witness."

Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the audience
began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw away his
client's life without an effort?

Several witnesses deposed concerning Potter's guilty behavior when
brought to the scene of the murder. They were allowed to leave the
stand without being cross-questioned.

Every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the
graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well was
brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were cross-examined
by Potter's lawyer. The perplexity and dissatisfaction of the house
expressed itself in murmurs and provoked a reproof from the bench.
Counsel for the prosecution now said:

"By the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we
have fastened this awful crime, beyond all possibility of question,
upon the unhappy prisoner at the bar. We rest our case here."

A groan escaped from poor Potter, and he put his face in his hands and
rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned in
the court-room. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion
testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defence rose and said:

"Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we
foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed
while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium
produced by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that
plea." [Then to the clerk:] "Call Thomas Sawyer!"

A puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even
excepting Potter's. Every eye fastened itself with wondering interest
upon Tom as he rose and took his place upon the stand. The boy looked
wild enough, for he was badly scared. The oath was administered.

"Thomas Sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of June, about the
hour of midnight?"

Tom glanced at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue failed him. The
audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. After a
few moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and
managed to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house
hear:

"In the graveyard!"

"A little bit louder, please. Don't be afraid. You were--"

"In the graveyard."

A contemptuous smile flitted across Injun Joe's face.

"Were you anywhere near Horse Williams' grave?"

"Yes, sir."

"Speak up--just a trifle louder. How near were you?"

"Near as I am to you."

"Were you hidden, or not?"

"I was hid."

"Where?"

"Behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave."

Injun Joe gave a barely perceptible start.

"Any one with you?"

"Yes, sir. I went there with--"

"Wait--wait a moment. Never mind mentioning your companion's name. We
will produce him at the proper time. Did you carry anything there with
you."

Tom hesitated and looked confused.

"Speak out, my boy--don't be diffident. The truth is always
respectable. What did you take there?"

"Only a--a--dead cat."

There was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked.

"We will produce the skeleton of that cat. Now, my boy, tell us
everything that occurred--tell it in your own way--don't skip anything,
and don't be afraid."

Tom began--hesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his subject his
words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every sound ceased
but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips
and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of
time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. The strain upon
pent emotion reached its climax when the boy said:

"--and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell,
Injun Joe jumped with the knife and--"

Crash! Quick as lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore his
way through all opposers, and was gone!



CHAPTER XXIV

TOM was a glittering hero once more--the pet of the old, the envy of
the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village
paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be
President, yet, if he escaped hanging.

As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom
and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort
of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find
fault with it.

Tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights
were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested all his dreams, and always
with doom in his eye. Hardly any temptation could persuade the boy to
stir abroad after nightfall. Poor Huck was in the same state of
wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the whole story to the lawyer
the night before the great day of the trial, and Huck was sore afraid
that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding
Injun Joe's flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court.
The poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of
that? Since Tom's harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the
lawyer's house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had been
sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, Huck's
confidence in the human race was well-nigh obliterated.

Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly
he wished he had sealed up his tongue.

Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured; the
other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never could draw
a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse.

Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun
Joe was found. One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a
detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head,
looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of
that craft usually achieve. That is to say, he "found a clew." But you
can't hang a "clew" for murder, and so after that detective had got
through and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before.

The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened
weight of apprehension.



CHAPTER XXV

THERE comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has
a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This
desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe
Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had gone
fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed. Huck
would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to
him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a
hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no
capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time
which is not money. "Where'll we dig?" said Huck.

"Oh, most anywhere."

"Why, is it hid all around?"

"No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck
--sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a
limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but
mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses."

"Who hides it?"

"Why, robbers, of course--who'd you reckon? Sunday-school
sup'rintendents?"

"I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and have
a good time."

"So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and
leave it there."

"Don't they come after it any more?"

"No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or
else they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by
and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the
marks--a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's
mostly signs and hy'roglyphics."

"Hyro--which?"

"Hy'roglyphics--pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean
anything."

"Have you got one of them papers, Tom?"

"No."

"Well then, how you going to find the marks?"

"I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house or
on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out.
Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again
some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the Still-House branch,
and there's lots of dead-limb trees--dead loads of 'em."

"Is it under all of them?"

"How you talk! No!"

"Then how you going to know which one to go for?"

"Go for all of 'em!"

"Why, Tom, it'll take all summer."

"Well, what of that? Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred
dollars in it, all rusty and gray, or rotten chest full of di'monds.
How's that?"

Huck's eyes glowed.

"That's bully. Plenty bully enough for me. Just you gimme the hundred
dollars and I don't want no di'monds."

"All right. But I bet you I ain't going to throw off on di'monds. Some
of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiece--there ain't any, hardly, but's
worth six bits or a dollar."

"No! Is that so?"

"Cert'nly--anybody'll tell you so. Hain't you ever seen one, Huck?"

"Not as I remember."

"Oh, kings have slathers of them."

"Well, I don' know no kings, Tom."

"I reckon you don't. But if you was to go to Europe you'd see a raft
of 'em hopping around."

"Do they hop?"

"Hop?--your granny! No!"

"Well, what did you say they did, for?"

"Shucks, I only meant you'd SEE 'em--not hopping, of course--what do
they want to hop for?--but I mean you'd just see 'em--scattered around,
you know, in a kind of a general way. Like that old humpbacked Richard."

"Richard? What's his other name?"

"He didn't have any other name. Kings don't have any but a given name."

"No?"

"But they don't."

"Well, if they like it, Tom, all right; but I don't want to be a king
and have only just a given name, like a nigger. But say--where you
going to dig first?"

"Well, I don't know. S'pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the
hill t'other side of Still-House branch?"

"I'm agreed."

So they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their
three-mile tramp. They arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves
down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke.

"I like this," said Tom.

"So do I."

"Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your
share?"

"Well, I'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to
every circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a gay time."

"Well, ain't you going to save any of it?"

"Save it? What for?"

"Why, so as to have something to live on, by and by."

"Oh, that ain't any use. Pap would come back to thish-yer town some
day and get his claws on it if I didn't hurry up, and I tell you he'd
clean it out pretty quick. What you going to do with yourn, Tom?"

"I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red
necktie and a bull pup, and get married."

"Married!"

"That's it."

"Tom, you--why, you ain't in your right mind."

"Wait--you'll see."

"Well, that's the foolishest thing you could do. Look at pap and my
mother. Fight! Why, they used to fight all the time. I remember, mighty
well."

"That ain't anything. The girl I'm going to marry won't fight."

"Tom, I reckon they're all alike. They'll all comb a body. Now you
better think 'bout this awhile. I tell you you better. What's the name
of the gal?"

"It ain't a gal at all--it's a girl."

"It's all the same, I reckon; some says gal, some says girl--both's
right, like enough. Anyway, what's her name, Tom?"

"I'll tell you some time--not now."

"All right--that'll do. Only if you get married I'll be more lonesomer
than ever."

"No you won't. You'll come and live with me. Now stir out of this and
we'll go to digging."

They worked and sweated for half an hour. No result. They toiled
another half-hour. Still no result. Huck said:

"Do they always bury it as deep as this?"

"Sometimes--not always. Not generally. I reckon we haven't got the
right place."

So they chose a new spot and began again. The labor dragged a little,
but still they made progress. They pegged away in silence for some
time. Finally Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from
his brow with his sleeve, and said:

"Where you going to dig next, after we get this one?"

"I reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on
Cardiff Hill back of the widow's."

"I reckon that'll be a good one. But won't the widow take it away from
us, Tom? It's on her land."

"SHE take it away! Maybe she'd like to try it once. Whoever finds one
of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. It don't make any difference
whose land it's on."

That was satisfactory. The work went on. By and by Huck said:

"Blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. What do you think?"

"It is mighty curious, Huck. I don't understand it. Sometimes witches
interfere. I reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now."

"Shucks! Witches ain't got no power in the daytime."

"Well, that's so. I didn't think of that. Oh, I know what the matter
is! What a blamed lot of fools we are! You got to find out where the
shadow of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig!"

"Then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing. Now
hang it all, we got to come back in the night. It's an awful long way.
Can you get out?"

"I bet I will. We've got to do it to-night, too, because if somebody
sees these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go
for it."

"Well, I'll come around and maow to-night."

"All right. Let's hide the tools in the bushes."

The boys were there that night, about the appointed time. They sat in
the shadow waiting. It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by
old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked
in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the
distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. The boys were
subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. By and by they judged
that twelve had come; they marked where the shadow fell, and began to
dig. Their hopes commenced to rise. Their interest grew stronger, and
their industry kept pace with it. The hole deepened and still deepened,
but every time their hearts jumped to hear the pick strike upon
something, they only suffered a new disappointment. It was only a stone
or a chunk. At last Tom said:

"It ain't any use, Huck, we're wrong again."

"Well, but we CAN'T be wrong. We spotted the shadder to a dot."

"I know it, but then there's another thing."

"What's that?".

"Why, we only guessed at the time. Like enough it was too late or too
early."

Huck dropped his shovel.

"That's it," said he. "That's the very trouble. We got to give this
one up. We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of
thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts
a-fluttering around so. I feel as if something's behind me all the time;
and I'm afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's others in front
a-waiting for a chance. I been creeping all over, ever since I got here."

"Well, I've been pretty much so, too, Huck. They most always put in a
dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out for it."

"Lordy!"

"Yes, they do. I've always heard that."

"Tom, I don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. A
body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure."

"I don't like to stir 'em up, either. S'pose this one here was to
stick his skull out and say something!"

"Don't Tom! It's awful."

"Well, it just is. Huck, I don't feel comfortable a bit."

"Say, Tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else."

"All right, I reckon we better."

"What'll it be?"

Tom considered awhile; and then said:

"The ha'nted house. That's it!"

"Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why, they're a dern sight
worse'n dead people. Dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't come
sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep over your
shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a ghost does. I
couldn't stand such a thing as that, Tom--nobody could."

"Yes, but, Huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. They won't
hender us from digging there in the daytime."

"Well, that's so. But you know mighty well people don't go about that
ha'nted house in the day nor the night."

"Well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's been
murdered, anyway--but nothing's ever been seen around that house except
in the night--just some blue lights slipping by the windows--no regular
ghosts."

"Well, where you see one of them blue lights flickering around, Tom,
you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. It stands to
reason. Becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em."

"Yes, that's so. But anyway they don't come around in the daytime, so
what's the use of our being afeard?"

"Well, all right. We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say so--but I
reckon it's taking chances."

They had started down the hill by this time. There in the middle of
the moonlit valley below them stood the "ha'nted" house, utterly
isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very
doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a
corner of the roof caved in. The boys gazed awhile, half expecting to
see a blue light flit past a window; then talking in a low tone, as
befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck far off to the
right, to give the haunted house a wide berth, and took their way
homeward through the woods that adorned the rearward side of Cardiff
Hill.



CHAPTER XXVI

ABOUT noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had
come for their tools. Tom was impatient to go to the haunted house;
Huck was measurably so, also--but suddenly said:

"Lookyhere, Tom, do you know what day it is?"

Tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted
his eyes with a startled look in them--

"My! I never once thought of it, Huck!"

"Well, I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was
Friday."

"Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might 'a' got into an
awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday."

"MIGHT! Better say we WOULD! There's some lucky days, maybe, but
Friday ain't."

"Any fool knows that. I don't reckon YOU was the first that found it
out, Huck."

"Well, I never said I was, did I? And Friday ain't all, neither. I had
a rotten bad dream last night--dreampt about rats."

"No! Sure sign of trouble. Did they fight?"

"No."

"Well, that's good, Huck. When they don't fight it's only a sign that
there's trouble around, you know. All we got to do is to look mighty
sharp and keep out of it. We'll drop this thing for to-day, and play.
Do you know Robin Hood, Huck?"

"No. Who's Robin Hood?"

"Why, he was one of the greatest men that was ever in England--and the
best. He was a robber."

"Cracky, I wisht I was. Who did he rob?"

"Only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like.
But he never bothered the poor. He loved 'em. He always divided up with
'em perfectly square."

"Well, he must 'a' been a brick."

"I bet you he was, Huck. Oh, he was the noblest man that ever was.
They ain't any such men now, I can tell you. He could lick any man in
England, with one hand tied behind him; and he could take his yew bow
and plug a ten-cent piece every time, a mile and a half."

"What's a YEW bow?"

"I don't know. It's some kind of a bow, of course. And if he hit that
dime only on the edge he would set down and cry--and curse. But we'll
play Robin Hood--it's nobby fun. I'll learn you."

"I'm agreed."

So they played Robin Hood all the afternoon, now and then casting a
yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark about the
morrow's prospects and possibilities there. As the sun began to sink
into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long shadows of
the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of Cardiff
Hill.

On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again.
They had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little in
their last hole, not with great hope, but merely because Tom said there
were so many cases where people had given up a treasure after getting
down within six inches of it, and then somebody else had come along and
turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. The thing failed this
time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools and went away feeling
that they had not trifled with fortune, but had fulfilled all the
requirements that belong to the business of treasure-hunting.

When they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and
grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun,
and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the
place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. Then they
crept to the door and took a trembling peep. They saw a weed-grown,
floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a
ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere hung ragged and
abandoned cobwebs. They presently entered, softly, with quickened
pulses, talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound,
and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat.

In a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the
place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own
boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look up-stairs.
This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring
each other, and of course there could be but one result--they threw
their tools into a corner and made the ascent. Up there were the same
signs of decay. In one corner they found a closet that promised
mystery, but the promise was a fraud--there was nothing in it. Their
courage was up now and well in hand. They were about to go down and
begin work when--

"Sh!" said Tom.

"What is it?" whispered Huck, blanching with fright.

"Sh!... There!... Hear it?"

"Yes!... Oh, my! Let's run!"

"Keep still! Don't you budge! They're coming right toward the door."

The boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to
knot-holes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear.

"They've stopped.... No--coming.... Here they are. Don't whisper
another word, Huck. My goodness, I wish I was out of this!"

Two men entered. Each boy said to himself: "There's the old deaf and
dumb Spaniard that's been about town once or twice lately--never saw
t'other man before."

"T'other" was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant
in his face. The Spaniard was wrapped in a serape; he had bushy white
whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore
green goggles. When they came in, "t'other" was talking in a low voice;
they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their backs to the
wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. His manner became less
guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded:

"No," said he, "I've thought it all over, and I don't like it. It's
dangerous."

"Dangerous!" grunted the "deaf and dumb" Spaniard--to the vast
surprise of the boys. "Milksop!"

This voice made the boys gasp and quake. It was Injun Joe's! There was
silence for some time. Then Joe said:

"What's any more dangerous than that job up yonder--but nothing's come
of it."

"That's different. Away up the river so, and not another house about.
'Twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we didn't succeed."

"Well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the daytime!--anybody
would suspicion us that saw us."

"I know that. But there warn't any other place as handy after that
fool of a job. I want to quit this shanty. I wanted to yesterday, only
it warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys
playing over there on the hill right in full view."

"Those infernal boys" quaked again under the inspiration of this
remark, and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was
Friday and concluded to wait a day. They wished in their hearts they
had waited a year.

The two men got out some food and made a luncheon. After a long and
thoughtful silence, Injun Joe said:

"Look here, lad--you go back up the river where you belong. Wait there
till you hear from me. I'll take the chances on dropping into this town
just once more, for a look. We'll do that 'dangerous' job after I've
spied around a little and think things look well for it. Then for
Texas! We'll leg it together!"

This was satisfactory. Both men presently fell to yawning, and Injun
Joe said:

"I'm dead for sleep! It's your turn to watch."

He curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. His comrade
stirred him once or twice and he became quiet. Presently the watcher
began to nod; his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to snore
now.

The boys drew a long, grateful breath. Tom whispered:

"Now's our chance--come!"

Huck said:

"I can't--I'd die if they was to wake."

Tom urged--Huck held back. At last Tom rose slowly and softly, and
started alone. But the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak
from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. He
never made a second attempt. The boys lay there counting the dragging
moments till it seemed to them that time must be done and eternity
growing gray; and then they were grateful to note that at last the sun
was setting.

Now one snore ceased. Injun Joe sat up, stared around--smiled grimly
upon his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his knees--stirred him
up with his foot and said:

"Here! YOU'RE a watchman, ain't you! All right, though--nothing's
happened."

"My! have I been asleep?"

"Oh, partly, partly. Nearly time for us to be moving, pard. What'll we
do with what little swag we've got left?"

"I don't know--leave it here as we've always done, I reckon. No use to
take it away till we start south. Six hundred and fifty in silver's
something to carry."

"Well--all right--it won't matter to come here once more."

"No--but I'd say come in the night as we used to do--it's better."

"Yes: but look here; it may be a good while before I get the right
chance at that job; accidents might happen; 'tain't in such a very good
place; we'll just regularly bury it--and bury it deep."

"Good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down,
raised one of the rearward hearth-stones and took out a bag that
jingled pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for
himself and as much for Injun Joe, and passed the bag to the latter,
who was on his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowie-knife.

The boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant.
With gloating eyes they watched every movement. Luck!--the splendor of
it was beyond all imagination! Six hundred dollars was money enough to
make half a dozen boys rich! Here was treasure-hunting under the
happiest auspices--there would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to
where to dig. They nudged each other every moment--eloquent nudges and
easily understood, for they simply meant--"Oh, but ain't you glad NOW
we're here!"

Joe's knife struck upon something.

"Hello!" said he.

"What is it?" said his comrade.

"Half-rotten plank--no, it's a box, I believe. Here--bear a hand and
we'll see what it's here for. Never mind, I've broke a hole."

He reached his hand in and drew it out--

"Man, it's money!"

The two men examined the handful of coins. They were gold. The boys
above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted.

Joe's comrade said:

"We'll make quick work of this. There's an old rusty pick over amongst
the weeds in the corner the other side of the fireplace--I saw it a
minute ago."

He ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. Injun Joe took the pick,
looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to
himself, and then began to use it. The box was soon unearthed. It was
not very large; it was iron bound and had been very strong before the
slow years had injured it. The men contemplated the treasure awhile in
blissful silence.

"Pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe.

"'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be around here one
summer," the stranger observed.

"I know it," said Injun Joe; "and this looks like it, I should say."

"Now you won't need to do that job."

The half-breed frowned. Said he:

"You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing. 'Tain't
robbery altogether--it's REVENGE!" and a wicked light flamed in his
eyes. "I'll need your help in it. When it's finished--then Texas. Go
home to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me."

"Well--if you say so; what'll we do with this--bury it again?"

"Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] NO! by the great Sachem, no!
[Profound distress overhead.] I'd nearly forgot. That pick had fresh
earth on it! [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What
business has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth
on them? Who brought them here--and where are they gone? Have you heard
anybody?--seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave them to come and
see the ground disturbed? Not exactly--not exactly. We'll take it to my
den."

"Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number
One?"

"No--Number Two--under the cross. The other place is bad--too common."

"All right. It's nearly dark enough to start."

Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously
peeping out. Presently he said:

"Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be
up-stairs?"

The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife,
halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The
boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came
creaking up the stairs--the intolerable distress of the situation woke
the stricken resolution of the lads--they were about to spring for the
closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and Injun Joe landed
on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered
himself up cursing, and his comrade said:

"Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up
there, let them STAY there--who cares? If they want to jump down, now,
and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes
--and then let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my
opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and
took us for ghosts or devils or something. I'll bet they're running
yet."

Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight
was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving.
Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening
twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box.

Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them
through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not they.
They were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take
the townward track over the hill. They did not talk much. They were too
much absorbed in hating themselves--hating the ill luck that made them
take the spade and the pick there. But for that, Injun Joe never would
have suspected. He would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait
there till his "revenge" was satisfied, and then he would have had the
misfortune to find that money turn up missing. Bitter, bitter luck that
the tools were ever brought there!

They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should come
to town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him
to "Number Two," wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought
occurred to Tom.

"Revenge? What if he means US, Huck!"

"Oh, don't!" said Huck, nearly fainting.

They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to
believe that he might possibly mean somebody else--at least that he
might at least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified.

Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger! Company
would be a palpable improvement, he thought.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom's dreams that night.
Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times it
wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and
wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay
in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he
noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away--somewhat as if
they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it
occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! There
was one very strong argument in favor of this idea--namely, that the
quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen
as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys
of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references
to "hundreds" and "thousands" were mere fanciful forms of speech, and
that no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed
for a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found
in actual money in any one's possession. If his notions of hidden
treasure had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a
handful of real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable
dollars.

But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer
under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found
himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a
dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch
a hurried breakfast and go and find Huck. Huck was sitting on the
gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and
looking very melancholy. Tom concluded to let Huck lead up to the
subject. If he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to
have been only a dream.

"Hello, Huck!"

"Hello, yourself."

Silence, for a minute.

"Tom, if we'd 'a' left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a' got
the money. Oh, ain't it awful!"

"'Tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream! Somehow I most wish it was.
Dog'd if I don't, Huck."

"What ain't a dream?"

"Oh, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was."

"Dream! If them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much dream
it was! I've had dreams enough all night--with that patch-eyed Spanish
devil going for me all through 'em--rot him!"

"No, not rot him. FIND him! Track the money!"

"Tom, we'll never find him. A feller don't have only one chance for
such a pile--and that one's lost. I'd feel mighty shaky if I was to see
him, anyway."

"Well, so'd I; but I'd like to see him, anyway--and track him out--to
his Number Two."

"Number Two--yes, that's it. I been thinking 'bout that. But I can't
make nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?"

"I dono. It's too deep. Say, Huck--maybe it's the number of a house!"

"Goody!... No, Tom, that ain't it. If it is, it ain't in this
one-horse town. They ain't no numbers here."

"Well, that's so. Lemme think a minute. Here--it's the number of a
room--in a tavern, you know!"

"Oh, that's the trick! They ain't only two taverns. We can find out
quick."

"You stay here, Huck, till I come."

Tom was off at once. He did not care to have Huck's company in public
places. He was gone half an hour. He found that in the best tavern, No.
2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied.
In the less ostentatious house, No. 2 was a mystery. The
tavern-keeper's young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he
never saw anybody go into it or come out of it except at night; he did
not know any particular reason for this state of things; had had some
little curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most of the
mystery by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was
"ha'nted"; had noticed that there was a light in there the night before.

"That's what I've found out, Huck. I reckon that's the very No. 2
we're after."

"I reckon it is, Tom. Now what you going to do?"

"Lemme think."

Tom thought a long time. Then he said:

"I'll tell you. The back door of that No. 2 is the door that comes out
into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle trap
of a brick store. Now you get hold of all the door-keys you can find,
and I'll nip all of auntie's, and the first dark night we'll go there
and try 'em. And mind you, keep a lookout for Injun Joe, because he
said he was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a
chance to get his revenge. If you see him, you just follow him; and if
he don't go to that No. 2, that ain't the place."

"Lordy, I don't want to foller him by myself!"

"Why, it'll be night, sure. He mightn't ever see you--and if he did,
maybe he'd never think anything."

"Well, if it's pretty dark I reckon I'll track him. I dono--I dono.
I'll try."

"You bet I'll follow him, if it's dark, Huck. Why, he might 'a' found
out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money."

"It's so, Tom, it's so. I'll foller him; I will, by jingoes!"

"Now you're TALKING! Don't you ever weaken, Huck, and I won't."



CHAPTER XXVIII

THAT night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung
about the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the
alley at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody entered the
alley or left it; nobody resembling the Spaniard entered or left the
tavern door. The night promised to be a fair one; so Tom went home with
the understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on,
Huck was to come and "maow," whereupon he would slip out and try the
keys. But the night remained clear, and Huck closed his watch and
retired to bed in an empty sugar hogshead about twelve.

Tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. Also Wednesday. But Thursday
night promised better. Tom slipped out in good season with his aunt's
old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid the
lantern in Huck's sugar hogshead and the watch began. An hour before
midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones
thereabouts) were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had
entered or left the alley. Everything was auspicious. The blackness of
darkness reigned, the perfect stillness was interrupted only by
occasional mutterings of distant thunder.

Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the
towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern.
Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then there was a
season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck's spirits like a
mountain. He began to wish he could see a flash from the lantern--it
would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that Tom was alive
yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely he must have
fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and
excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself drawing closer and
closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and
momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away
his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to
inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the
way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Tom came
tearing by him: "Run!" said he; "run, for your life!"

He needn't have repeated it; once was enough; Huck was making thirty
or forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys
never stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house
at the lower end of the village. Just as they got within its shelter
the storm burst and the rain poured down. As soon as Tom got his breath
he said:

"Huck, it was awful! I tried two of the keys, just as soft as I could;
but they seemed to make such a power of racket that I couldn't hardly
get my breath I was so scared. They wouldn't turn in the lock, either.
Well, without noticing what I was doing, I took hold of the knob, and
open comes the door! It warn't locked! I hopped in, and shook off the
towel, and, GREAT CAESAR'S GHOST!"

"What!--what'd you see, Tom?"

"Huck, I most stepped onto Injun Joe's hand!"

"No!"

"Yes! He was lying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old
patch on his eye and his arms spread out."

"Lordy, what did you do? Did he wake up?"

"No, never budged. Drunk, I reckon. I just grabbed that towel and
started!"

"I'd never 'a' thought of the towel, I bet!"

"Well, I would. My aunt would make me mighty sick if I lost it."

"Say, Tom, did you see that box?"

"Huck, I didn't wait to look around. I didn't see the box, I didn't
see the cross. I didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the
floor by Injun Joe; yes, I saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the
room. Don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?"

"How?"

"Why, it's ha'nted with whiskey! Maybe ALL the Temperance Taverns have
got a ha'nted room, hey, Huck?"

"Well, I reckon maybe that's so. Who'd 'a' thought such a thing? But
say, Tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if Injun Joe's
drunk."

"It is, that! You try it!"

Huck shuddered.

"Well, no--I reckon not."

"And I reckon not, Huck. Only one bottle alongside of Injun Joe ain't
enough. If there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and I'd do it."

There was a long pause for reflection, and then Tom said:

"Lookyhere, Huck, less not try that thing any more till we know Injun
Joe's not in there. It's too scary. Now, if we watch every night, we'll
be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we'll
snatch that box quicker'n lightning."

"Well, I'm agreed. I'll watch the whole night long, and I'll do it
every night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job."

"All right, I will. All you got to do is to trot up Hooper Street a
block and maow--and if I'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the window
and that'll fetch me."

"Agreed, and good as wheat!"

"Now, Huck, the storm's over, and I'll go home. It'll begin to be
daylight in a couple of hours. You go back and watch that long, will
you?"

"I said I would, Tom, and I will. I'll ha'nt that tavern every night
for a year! I'll sleep all day and I'll stand watch all night."

"That's all right. Now, where you going to sleep?"

"In Ben Rogers' hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's nigger man,
Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and
any time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can
spare it. That's a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don't
ever act as if I was above him. Sometime I've set right down and eat
WITH him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when
he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing."

"Well, if I don't want you in the daytime, I'll let you sleep. I won't
come bothering around. Any time you see something's up, in the night,
just skip right around and maow."



CHAPTER XXIX

THE first thing Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of news
--Judge Thatcher's family had come back to town the night before. Both
Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a moment,
and Becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. He saw her and
they had an exhausting good time playing "hi-spy" and "gully-keeper"
with a crowd of their school-mates. The day was completed and crowned
in a peculiarly satisfactory way: Becky teased her mother to appoint
the next day for the long-promised and long-delayed picnic, and she
consented. The child's delight was boundless; and Tom's not more
moderate. The invitations were sent out before sunset, and straightway
the young folks of the village were thrown into a fever of preparation
and pleasurable anticipation. Tom's excitement enabled him to keep
awake until a pretty late hour, and he had good hopes of hearing Huck's
"maow," and of having his treasure to astonish Becky and the picnickers
with, next day; but he was disappointed. No signal came that night.

Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and
rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything
was ready for a start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar
the picnics with their presence. The children were considered safe
enough under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few
young gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. The old steam ferryboat
was chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up the
main street laden with provision-baskets. Sid was sick and had to miss
the fun; Mary remained at home to entertain him. The last thing Mrs.
Thatcher said to Becky, was:

"You'll not get back till late. Perhaps you'd better stay all night
with some of the girls that live near the ferry-landing, child."

"Then I'll stay with Susy Harper, mamma."

"Very well. And mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble."

Presently, as they tripped along, Tom said to Becky:

"Say--I'll tell you what we'll do. 'Stead of going to Joe Harper's
we'll climb right up the hill and stop at the Widow Douglas'. She'll
have ice-cream! She has it most every day--dead loads of it. And she'll
be awful glad to have us."

"Oh, that will be fun!"

Then Becky reflected a moment and said:

"But what will mamma say?"

"How'll she ever know?"

The girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly:

"I reckon it's wrong--but--"

"But shucks! Your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? All she
wants is that you'll be safe; and I bet you she'd 'a' said go there if
she'd 'a' thought of it. I know she would!"

The Widow Douglas' splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. It and
Tom's persuasions presently carried the day. So it was decided to say
nothing anybody about the night's programme. Presently it occurred to
Tom that maybe Huck might come this very night and give the signal. The
thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. Still he
could not bear to give up the fun at Widow Douglas'. And why should he
give it up, he reasoned--the signal did not come the night before, so
why should it be any more likely to come to-night? The sure fun of the
evening outweighed the uncertain treasure; and, boy-like, he determined
to yield to the stronger inclination and not allow himself to think of
the box of money another time that day.

Three miles below town the ferryboat stopped at the mouth of a woody
hollow and tied up. The crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest
distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and
laughter. All the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone
through with, and by-and-by the rovers straggled back to camp fortified
with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things
began. After the feast there was a refreshing season of rest and chat
in the shade of spreading oaks. By-and-by somebody shouted:

"Who's ready for the cave?"

Everybody was. Bundles of candles were procured, and straightway there
was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the
hillside--an opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive oaken door
stood unbarred. Within was a small chamber, chilly as an ice-house, and
walled by Nature with solid limestone that was dewy with a cold sweat.
It was romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look
out upon the green valley shining in the sun. But the impressiveness of
the situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. The moment
a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it; a
struggle and a gallant defence followed, but the candle was soon
knocked down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter
and a new chase. But all things have an end. By-and-by the procession
went filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering
rank of lights dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their
point of junction sixty feet overhead. This main avenue was not more
than eight or ten feet wide. Every few steps other lofty and still
narrower crevices branched from it on either hand--for McDougal's cave
was but a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and
out again and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days and
nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and
never find the end of the cave; and that he might go down, and down,
and still down, into the earth, and it was just the same--labyrinth
under labyrinth, and no end to any of them. No man "knew" the cave.
That was an impossible thing. Most of the young men knew a portion of
it, and it was not customary to venture much beyond this known portion.
Tom Sawyer knew as much of the cave as any one.

The procession moved along the main avenue some three-quarters of a
mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch
avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by
surprise at points where the corridors joined again. Parties were able
to elude each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond
the "known" ground.

By-and-by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth
of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow
drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of
the day. Then they were astonished to find that they had been taking no
note of time and that night was about at hand. The clanging bell had
been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of close to the day's
adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. When the ferryboat
with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for
the wasted time but the captain of the craft.

Huck was already upon his watch when the ferryboat's lights went
glinting past the wharf. He heard no noise on board, for the young
people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are nearly
tired to death. He wondered what boat it was, and why she did not stop
at the wharf--and then he dropped her out of his mind and put his
attention upon his business. The night was growing cloudy and dark. Ten
o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered lights began
to wink out, all straggling foot-passengers disappeared, the village
betook itself to its slumbers and left the small watcher alone with the
silence and the ghosts. Eleven o'clock came, and the tavern lights were
put out; darkness everywhere, now. Huck waited what seemed a weary long
time, but nothing happened. His faith was weakening. Was there any use?
Was there really any use? Why not give it up and turn in?

A noise fell upon his ear. He was all attention in an instant. The
alley door closed softly. He sprang to the corner of the brick store.
The next moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to have
something under his arm. It must be that box! So they were going to
remove the treasure. Why call Tom now? It would be absurd--the men
would get away with the box and never be found again. No, he would
stick to their wake and follow them; he would trust to the darkness for
security from discovery. So communing with himself, Huck stepped out
and glided along behind the men, cat-like, with bare feet, allowing
them to keep just far enough ahead not to be invisible.

They moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left
up a cross-street. They went straight ahead, then, until they came to
the path that led up Cardiff Hill; this they took. They passed by the
old Welshman's house, half-way up the hill, without hesitating, and
still climbed upward. Good, thought Huck, they will bury it in the old
quarry. But they never stopped at the quarry. They passed on, up the
summit. They plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach
bushes, and were at once hidden in the gloom. Huck closed up and
shortened his distance, now, for they would never be able to see him.
He trotted along awhile; then slackened his pace, fearing he was
gaining too fast; moved on a piece, then stopped altogether; listened;
no sound; none, save that he seemed to hear the beating of his own
heart. The hooting of an owl came over the hill--ominous sound! But no
footsteps. Heavens, was everything lost! He was about to spring with
winged feet, when a man cleared his throat not four feet from him!
Huck's heart shot into his throat, but he swallowed it again; and then
he stood there shaking as if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at
once, and so weak that he thought he must surely fall to the ground. He
knew where he was. He knew he was within five steps of the stile
leading into Widow Douglas' grounds. Very well, he thought, let them
bury it there; it won't be hard to find.

Now there was a voice--a very low voice--Injun Joe's:

"Damn her, maybe she's got company--there's lights, late as it is."

"I can't see any."

This was that stranger's voice--the stranger of the haunted house. A
deadly chill went to Huck's heart--this, then, was the "revenge" job!
His thought was, to fly. Then he remembered that the Widow Douglas had
been kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to
murder her. He wished he dared venture to warn her; but he knew he
didn't dare--they might come and catch him. He thought all this and
more in the moment that elapsed between the stranger's remark and Injun
Joe's next--which was--

"Because the bush is in your way. Now--this way--now you see, don't
you?"

"Yes. Well, there IS company there, I reckon. Better give it up."

"Give it up, and I just leaving this country forever! Give it up and
maybe never have another chance. I tell you again, as I've told you
before, I don't care for her swag--you may have it. But her husband was
rough on me--many times he was rough on me--and mainly he was the
justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain't all.
It ain't a millionth part of it! He had me HORSEWHIPPED!--horsewhipped
in front of the jail, like a nigger!--with all the town looking on!
HORSEWHIPPED!--do you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But
I'll take it out of HER."

"Oh, don't kill her! Don't do that!"

"Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill HIM if he was
here; but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't
kill her--bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils--you notch
her ears like a sow!"

"By God, that's--"

"Keep your opinion to yourself! It will be safest for you. I'll tie
her to the bed. If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? I'll not cry,
if she does. My friend, you'll help me in this thing--for MY sake
--that's why you're here--I mightn't be able alone. If you flinch, I'll
kill you. Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll kill
her--and then I reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this
business."

"Well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. The quicker the
better--I'm all in a shiver."

"Do it NOW? And company there? Look here--I'll get suspicious of you,
first thing you know. No--we'll wait till the lights are out--there's
no hurry."

Huck felt that a silence was going to ensue--a thing still more awful
than any amount of murderous talk; so he held his breath and stepped
gingerly back; planted his foot carefully and firmly, after balancing,
one-legged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over, first on one
side and then on the other. He took another step back, with the same
elaboration and the same risks; then another and another, and--a twig
snapped under his foot! His breath stopped and he listened. There was
no sound--the stillness was perfect. His gratitude was measureless. Now
he turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushes--turned
himself as carefully as if he were a ship--and then stepped quickly but
cautiously along. When he emerged at the quarry he felt secure, and so
he picked up his nimble heels and flew. Down, down he sped, till he
reached the Welshman's. He banged at the door, and presently the heads
of the old man and his two stalwart sons were thrust from windows.

"What's the row there? Who's banging? What do you want?"

"Let me in--quick! I'll tell everything."

"Why, who are you?"

"Huckleberry Finn--quick, let me in!"

"Huckleberry Finn, indeed! It ain't a name to open many doors, I
judge! But let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble."

"Please don't ever tell I told you," were Huck's first words when he
got in. "Please don't--I'd be killed, sure--but the widow's been good
friends to me sometimes, and I want to tell--I WILL tell if you'll
promise you won't ever say it was me."

"By George, he HAS got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!"
exclaimed the old man; "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad."

Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the
hill, and just entering the sumach path on tiptoe, their weapons in
their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great
bowlder and fell to listening. There was a lagging, anxious silence,
and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry.

Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the hill
as fast as his legs could carry him.



CHAPTER XXX

AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck
came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman's door.
The inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a
hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call
came from a window:

"Who's there!"

Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone:

"Please let me in! It's only Huck Finn!"

"It's a name that can open this door night or day, lad!--and welcome!"

These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the
pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing
word had ever been applied in his case before. The door was quickly
unlocked, and he entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his
brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves.

"Now, my boy, I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be
ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too
--make yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you'd turn up and
stop here last night."

"I was awful scared," said Huck, "and I run. I took out when the
pistols went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now becuz
I wanted to know about it, you know; and I come before daylight becuz I
didn't want to run across them devils, even if they was dead."

"Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it--but
there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they
ain't dead, lad--we are sorry enough for that. You see we knew right
where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along
on tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of them--dark as a cellar
that sumach path was--and just then I found I was going to sneeze. It
was the meanest kind of luck! I tried to keep it back, but no use
--'twas bound to come, and it did come! I was in the lead with my pistol
raised, and when the sneeze started those scoundrels a-rustling to get
out of the path, I sung out, 'Fire boys!' and blazed away at the place
where the rustling was. So did the boys. But they were off in a jiffy,
those villains, and we after them, down through the woods. I judge we
never touched them. They fired a shot apiece as they started, but their
bullets whizzed by and didn't do us any harm. As soon as we lost the
sound of their feet we quit chasing, and went down and stirred up the
constables. They got a posse together, and went off to guard the river
bank, and as soon as it is light the sheriff and a gang are going to
beat up the woods. My boys will be with them presently. I wish we had
some sort of description of those rascals--'twould help a good deal.
But you couldn't see what they were like, in the dark, lad, I suppose?"

"Oh yes; I saw them down-town and follered them."

"Splendid! Describe them--describe them, my boy!"

"One's the old deaf and dumb Spaniard that's ben around here once or
twice, and t'other's a mean-looking, ragged--"

"That's enough, lad, we know the men! Happened on them in the woods
back of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. Off with you, boys,
and tell the sheriff--get your breakfast to-morrow morning!"

The Welshman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room
Huck sprang up and exclaimed:

"Oh, please don't tell ANYbody it was me that blowed on them! Oh,
please!"

"All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit of
what you did."

"Oh no, no! Please don't tell!"

When the young men were gone, the old Welshman said:

"They won't tell--and I won't. But why don't you want it known?"

Huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too
much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he
knew anything against him for the whole world--he would be killed for
knowing it, sure.

The old man promised secrecy once more, and said:

"How did you come to follow these fellows, lad? Were they looking
suspicious?"

Huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. Then he said:

"Well, you see, I'm a kind of a hard lot,--least everybody says so,
and I don't see nothing agin it--and sometimes I can't sleep much, on
account of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way
of doing. That was the way of it last night. I couldn't sleep, and so I
come along up-street 'bout midnight, a-turning it all over, and when I
got to that old shackly brick store by the Temperance Tavern, I backed
up agin the wall to have another think. Well, just then along comes
these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their
arm, and I reckoned they'd stole it. One was a-smoking, and t'other one
wanted a light; so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up
their faces and I see that the big one was the deaf and dumb Spaniard,
by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t'other one was a
rusty, ragged-looking devil."

"Could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?"

This staggered Huck for a moment. Then he said:

"Well, I don't know--but somehow it seems as if I did."

"Then they went on, and you--"

"Follered 'em--yes. That was it. I wanted to see what was up--they
sneaked along so. I dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the
dark and heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the Spaniard
swear he'd spile her looks just as I told you and your two--"

"What! The DEAF AND DUMB man said all that!"

Huck had made another terrible mistake! He was trying his best to keep
the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard might
be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in
spite of all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of his
scrape, but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after
blunder. Presently the Welshman said:

"My boy, don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head
for all the world. No--I'd protect you--I'd protect you. This Spaniard
is not deaf and dumb; you've let that slip without intending it; you
can't cover that up now. You know something about that Spaniard that
you want to keep dark. Now trust me--tell me what it is, and trust me
--I won't betray you."

Huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent over
and whispered in his ear:

"'Tain't a Spaniard--it's Injun Joe!"

The Welshman almost jumped out of his chair. In a moment he said:

"It's all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and
slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because
white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun! That's a
different matter altogether."

During breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man
said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going
to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for
marks of blood. They found none, but captured a bulky bundle of--

"Of WHAT?"

If the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more
stunning suddenness from Huck's blanched lips. His eyes were staring
wide, now, and his breath suspended--waiting for the answer. The
Welshman started--stared in return--three seconds--five seconds--ten
--then replied:

"Of burglar's tools. Why, what's the MATTER with you?"

Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. The
Welshman eyed him gravely, curiously--and presently said:

"Yes, burglar's tools. That appears to relieve you a good deal. But
what did give you that turn? What were YOU expecting we'd found?"

Huck was in a close place--the inquiring eye was upon him--he would
have given anything for material for a plausible answer--nothing
suggested itself--the inquiring eye was boring deeper and deeper--a
senseless reply offered--there was no time to weigh it, so at a venture
he uttered it--feebly:

"Sunday-school books, maybe."

Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud
and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot,
and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a-man's pocket,
because it cut down the doctor's bill like everything. Then he added:

"Poor old chap, you're white and jaded--you ain't well a bit--no
wonder you're a little flighty and off your balance. But you'll come
out of it. Rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, I hope."

Huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such
a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel
brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the
talk at the widow's stile. He had only thought it was not the treasure,
however--he had not known that it wasn't--and so the suggestion of a
captured bundle was too much for his self-possession. But on the whole
he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond
all question that that bundle was not THE bundle, and so his mind was
at rest and exceedingly comfortable. In fact, everything seemed to be
drifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be still
in No. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and Tom
could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of
interruption.

Just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. Huck
jumped for a hiding-place, for he had no mind to be connected even
remotely with the late event. The Welshman admitted several ladies and
gentlemen, among them the Widow Douglas, and noticed that groups of
citizens were climbing up the hill--to stare at the stile. So the news
had spread. The Welshman had to tell the story of the night to the
visitors. The widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken.

"Don't say a word about it, madam. There's another that you're more
beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allow
me to tell his name. We wouldn't have been there but for him."

Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled
the main matter--but the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals of
his visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he
refused to part with his secret. When all else had been learned, the
widow said:

"I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that
noise. Why didn't you come and wake me?"

"We judged it warn't worth while. Those fellows warn't likely to come
again--they hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use of
waking you up and scaring you to death? My three negro men stood guard
at your house all the rest of the night. They've just come back."

More visitors came, and the story had to be told and retold for a
couple of hours more.

There was no Sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but everybody
was early at church. The stirring event was well canvassed. News came
that not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. When the
sermon was finished, Judge Thatcher's wife dropped alongside of Mrs.
Harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said:

"Is my Becky going to sleep all day? I just expected she would be
tired to death."

"Your Becky?"

"Yes," with a startled look--"didn't she stay with you last night?"

"Why, no."

Mrs. Thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as Aunt Polly,
talking briskly with a friend, passed by. Aunt Polly said:

"Good-morning, Mrs. Thatcher. Good-morning, Mrs. Harper. I've got a
boy that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom stayed at your house last
night--one of you. And now he's afraid to come to church. I've got to
settle with him."

Mrs. Thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever.

"He didn't stay with us," said Mrs. Harper, beginning to look uneasy.
A marked anxiety came into Aunt Polly's face.

"Joe Harper, have you seen my Tom this morning?"

"No'm."

"When did you see him last?"

Joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. The people had
stopped moving out of church. Whispers passed along, and a boding
uneasiness took possession of every countenance. Children were
anxiously questioned, and young teachers. They all said they had not
noticed whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferryboat on the
homeward trip; it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was
missing. One young man finally blurted out his fear that they were
still in the cave! Mrs. Thatcher swooned away. Aunt Polly fell to
crying and wringing her hands.

The alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to
street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and the
whole town was up! The Cardiff Hill episode sank into instant
insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled,
skiffs were manned, the ferryboat ordered out, and before the horror
was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down highroad and
river toward the cave.

All the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. Many women
visited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. They
cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. All the
tedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned at
last, all the word that came was, "Send more candles--and send food."
Mrs. Thatcher was almost crazed; and Aunt Polly, also. Judge Thatcher
sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but they
conveyed no real cheer.

The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered with
candle-grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. He found Huck
still in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with
fever. The physicians were all at the cave, so the Widow Douglas came
and took charge of the patient. She said she would do her best by him,
because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the Lord's,
and nothing that was the Lord's was a thing to be neglected. The
Welshman said Huck had good spots in him, and the widow said:

"You can depend on it. That's the Lord's mark. He don't leave it off.
He never does. Puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from his
hands."

Early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into the
village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. All the
news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern were
being ransacked that had never been visited before; that every corner
and crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that wherever one
wandered through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flitting
hither and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistol-shots sent
their hollow reverberations to the ear down the sombre aisles. In one
place, far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names
"BECKY & TOM" had been found traced upon the rocky wall with
candle-smoke, and near at hand a grease-soiled bit of ribbon. Mrs.
Thatcher recognized the ribbon and cried over it. She said it was the
last relic she should ever have of her child; and that no other memorial
of her could ever be so precious, because this one parted latest from
the living body before the awful death came. Some said that now and
then, in the cave, a far-away speck of light would glimmer, and then a
glorious shout would burst forth and a score of men go trooping down the
echoing aisle--and then a sickening disappointment always followed; the
children were not there; it was only a searcher's light.

Three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, and
the village sank into a hopeless stupor. No one had heart for anything.
The accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of the
Temperance Tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered the
public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. In a lucid interval, Huck
feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally asked--dimly
dreading the worst--if anything had been discovered at the Temperance
Tavern since he had been ill.

"Yes," said the widow.

Huck started up in bed, wild-eyed:

"What? What was it?"

"Liquor!--and the place has been shut up. Lie down, child--what a turn
you did give me!"

"Only tell me just one thing--only just one--please! Was it Tom Sawyer
that found it?"

The widow burst into tears. "Hush, hush, child, hush! I've told you
before, you must NOT talk. You are very, very sick!"

Then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a great
powwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone forever--gone
forever! But what could she be crying about? Curious that she should
cry.

These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck's mind, and under the
weariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself:

"There--he's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but somebody
could find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there ain't many left, now, that's got hope
enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching."



CHAPTER XXXI

NOW to return to Tom and Becky's share in the picnic. They tripped
along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the
familiar wonders of the cave--wonders dubbed with rather
over-descriptive names, such as "The Drawing-Room," "The Cathedral,"
"Aladdin's Palace," and so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking
began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion
began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous
avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of
names, dates, post-office addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky
walls had been frescoed (in candle-smoke). Still drifting along and
talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave
whose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an
overhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a
little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone
sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and
ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his
small body behind it in order to illuminate it for Becky's
gratification. He found that it curtained a sort of steep natural
stairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once the
ambition to be a discoverer seized him. Becky responded to his call,
and they made a smoke-mark for future guidance, and started upon their
quest. They wound this way and that, far down into the secret depths of
the cave, made another mark, and branched off in search of novelties to
tell the upper world about. In one place they found a spacious cavern,
from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the
length and circumference of a man's leg; they walked all about it,
wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous
passages that opened into it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching
spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering
crystals; it was in the midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by
many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the joining of great
stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless
water-drip of centuries. Under the roof vast knots of bats had packed
themselves together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the
creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and
darting furiously at the candles. Tom knew their ways and the danger of
this sort of conduct. He seized Becky's hand and hurried her into the
first corridor that offered; and none too soon, for a bat struck
Becky's light out with its wing while she was passing out of the
cavern. The bats chased the children a good distance; but the fugitives
plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got rid of the
perilous things. Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which
stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows.
He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would be best
to sit down and rest awhile, first. Now, for the first time, the deep
stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the
children. Becky said:

"Why, I didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any of
the others."

"Come to think, Becky, we are away down below them--and I don't know
how far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn't
hear them here."

Becky grew apprehensive.

"I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom? We better start back."

"Yes, I reckon we better. P'raps we better."

"Can you find the way, Tom? It's all a mixed-up crookedness to me."

"I reckon I could find it--but then the bats. If they put our candles
out it will be an awful fix. Let's try some other way, so as not to go
through there."

"Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would be so awful!" and the
girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities.

They started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long
way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything
familiar about the look of it; but they were all strange. Every time
Tom made an examination, Becky would watch his face for an encouraging
sign, and he would say cheerily:

"Oh, it's all right. This ain't the one, but we'll come to it right
away!"

But he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently
began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate
hope of finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was "all
right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words
had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, "All is lost!"
Becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep
back the tears, but they would come. At last she said:

"Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get
worse and worse off all the time."

"Listen!" said he.

Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were
conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the
empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that
resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.

"Oh, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid," said Becky.

"It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know," and
he shouted again.

The "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it
so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened;
but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and
hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a certain
indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to Becky--he
could not find his way back!

"Oh, Tom, you didn't make any marks!"

"Becky, I was such a fool! Such a fool! I never thought we might want
to come back! No--I can't find the way. It's all mixed up."

"Tom, Tom, we're lost! we're lost! We never can get out of this awful
place! Oh, why DID we ever leave the others!"

She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom
was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. He
sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in his
bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing
regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. Tom
begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell
to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable
situation; this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope
again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he
would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than
she, she said.

So they moved on again--aimlessly--simply at random--all they could do
was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of
reviving--not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its
nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age
and familiarity with failure.

By-and-by Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out. This economy meant
so much! Words were not needed. Becky understood, and her hope died
again. She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in
his pockets--yet he must economize.

By-and-by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to
pay attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time
was grown to be so precious, moving, in some direction, in any
direction, was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down
was to invite death and shorten its pursuit.

At last Becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat
down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends
there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried,
and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his
encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like
sarcasms. Fatigue bore so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to
sleep. Tom was grateful. He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it
grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams; and
by-and-by a smile dawned and rested there. The peaceful face reflected
somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts
wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. While he was deep in
his musings, Becky woke up with a breezy little laugh--but it was
stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it.

"Oh, how COULD I sleep! I wish I never, never had waked! No! No, I
don't, Tom! Don't look so! I won't say it again."

"I'm glad you've slept, Becky; you'll feel rested, now, and we'll find
the way out."

"We can try, Tom; but I've seen such a beautiful country in my dream.
I reckon we are going there."

"Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying."

They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They tried
to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was
that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not
be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after this--they
could not tell how long--Tom said they must go softly and listen for
dripping water--they must find a spring. They found one presently, and
Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly tired, yet Becky
said she thought she could go a little farther. She was surprised to
hear Tom dissent. She could not understand it. They sat down, and Tom
fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay.
Thought was soon busy; nothing was said for some time. Then Becky broke
the silence:

"Tom, I am so hungry!"

Tom took something out of his pocket.

"Do you remember this?" said he.

Becky almost smiled.

"It's our wedding-cake, Tom."

"Yes--I wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got."

"I saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, Tom, the way grown-up
people do with wedding-cake--but it'll be our--"

She dropped the sentence where it was. Tom divided the cake and Becky
ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety. There was
abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. By-and-by Becky
suggested that they move on again. Tom was silent a moment. Then he
said:

"Becky, can you bear it if I tell you something?"

Becky's face paled, but she thought she could.

"Well, then, Becky, we must stay here, where there's water to drink.
That little piece is our last candle!"

Becky gave loose to tears and wailings. Tom did what he could to
comfort her, but with little effect. At length Becky said:

"Tom!"

"Well, Becky?"

"They'll miss us and hunt for us!"

"Yes, they will! Certainly they will!"

"Maybe they're hunting for us now, Tom."

"Why, I reckon maybe they are. I hope they are."

"When would they miss us, Tom?"

"When they get back to the boat, I reckon."

"Tom, it might be dark then--would they notice we hadn't come?"

"I don't know. But anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as they
got home."

A frightened look in Becky's face brought Tom to his senses and he saw
that he had made a blunder. Becky was not to have gone home that night!
The children became silent and thoughtful. In a moment a new burst of
grief from Becky showed Tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers
also--that the Sabbath morning might be half spent before Mrs. Thatcher
discovered that Becky was not at Mrs. Harper's.

The children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched
it melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand
alone at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin
column of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and then--the horror of
utter darkness reigned!

How long afterward it was that Becky came to a slow consciousness that
she was crying in Tom's arms, neither could tell. All that they knew
was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of
a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more. Tom said
it might be Sunday, now--maybe Monday. He tried to get Becky to talk,
but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. Tom said
that they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was
going on. He would shout and maybe some one would come. He tried it;
but in the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he
tried it no more.

The hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives again.
A portion of Tom's half of the cake was left; they divided and ate it.
But they seemed hungrier than before. The poor morsel of food only
whetted desire.

By-and-by Tom said:

"SH! Did you hear that?"

Both held their breath and listened. There was a sound like the
faintest, far-off shout. Instantly Tom answered it, and leading Becky
by the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction.
Presently he listened again; again the sound was heard, and apparently
a little nearer.

"It's them!" said Tom; "they're coming! Come along, Becky--we're all
right now!"

The joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. Their speed was
slow, however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be
guarded against. They shortly came to one and had to stop. It might be
three feet deep, it might be a hundred--there was no passing it at any
rate. Tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he could.
No bottom. They must stay there and wait until the searchers came. They
listened; evidently the distant shoutings were growing more distant! a
moment or two more and they had gone altogether. The heart-sinking
misery of it! Tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of no use. He
talked hopefully to Becky; but an age of anxious waiting passed and no
sounds came again.

The children groped their way back to the spring. The weary time
dragged on; they slept again, and awoke famished and woe-stricken. Tom
believed it must be Tuesday by this time.

Now an idea struck him. There were some side passages near at hand. It
would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight of the
heavy time in idleness. He took a kite-line from his pocket, tied it to
a projection, and he and Becky started, Tom in the lead, unwinding the
line as he groped along. At the end of twenty steps the corridor ended
in a "jumping-off place." Tom got down on his knees and felt below, and
then as far around the corner as he could reach with his hands
conveniently; he made an effort to stretch yet a little farther to the
right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding
a candle, appeared from behind a rock! Tom lifted up a glorious shout,
and instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged to--Injun
Joe's! Tom was paralyzed; he could not move. He was vastly gratified
the next moment, to see the "Spaniard" take to his heels and get
himself out of sight. Tom wondered that Joe had not recognized his
voice and come over and killed him for testifying in court. But the
echoes must have disguised the voice. Without doubt, that was it, he
reasoned. Tom's fright weakened every muscle in his body. He said to
himself that if he had strength enough to get back to the spring he
would stay there, and nothing should tempt him to run the risk of
meeting Injun Joe again. He was careful to keep from Becky what it was
he had seen. He told her he had only shouted "for luck."

But hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run.
Another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought
changes. The children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. Tom believed
that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Saturday, now,
and that the search had been given over. He proposed to explore another
passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all other terrors. But
Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be
roused. She said she would wait, now, where she was, and die--it would
not be long. She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he
chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak
to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he
would stay by her and hold her hand until all was over.

Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a
show of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the
cave; then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one
of the passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick
with bodings of coming doom.



CHAPTER XXXII

TUESDAY afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St.
Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public
prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private
prayer that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but still no good
news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the
quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain
the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a
great part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking to
hear her call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute
at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a moan. Aunt Polly had
drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost
white. The village went to its rest on Tuesday night, sad and forlorn.

Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village
bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad
people, who shouted, "Turn out! turn out! they're found! they're
found!" Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed
itself and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open
carriage drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its
homeward march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring
huzzah after huzzah!

The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the
greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half-hour
a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house, seized
the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's hand, tried to
speak but couldn't--and drifted out raining tears all over the place.

Aunt Polly's happiness was complete, and Mrs. Thatcher's nearly so. It
would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched with
the great news to the cave should get the word to her husband. Tom lay
upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of
the wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it
withal; and closed with a description of how he left Becky and went on
an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as far as his
kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the fullest stretch of
the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a far-off
speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line and groped toward it,
pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole, and saw the broad
Mississippi rolling by! And if it had only happened to be night he would
not have seen that speck of daylight and would not have explored that
passage any more! He told how he went back for Becky and broke the good
news and she told him not to fret her with such stuff, for she was
tired, and knew she was going to die, and wanted to. He described how he
labored with her and convinced her; and how she almost died for joy when
she had groped to where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how
he pushed his way out at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat
there and cried for gladness; how some men came along in a skiff and Tom
hailed them and told them their situation and their famished condition;
how the men didn't believe the wild tale at first, "because," said they,
"you are five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in"
--then took them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them
rest till two or three hours after dark and then brought them home.

Before day-dawn, Judge Thatcher and the handful of searchers with him
were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clews they had strung
behind them, and informed of the great news.

Three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to be
shaken off at once, as Tom and Becky soon discovered. They were
bedridden all of Wednesday and Thursday, and seemed to grow more and
more tired and worn, all the time. Tom got about, a little, on
Thursday, was down-town Friday, and nearly as whole as ever Saturday;
but Becky did not leave her room until Sunday, and then she looked as
if she had passed through a wasting illness.

Tom learned of Huck's sickness and went to see him on Friday, but
could not be admitted to the bedroom; neither could he on Saturday or
Sunday. He was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep still
about his adventure and introduce no exciting topic. The Widow Douglas
stayed by to see that he obeyed. At home Tom learned of the Cardiff
Hill event; also that the "ragged man's" body had eventually been found
in the river near the ferry-landing; he had been drowned while trying
to escape, perhaps.

About a fortnight after Tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to
visit Huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting
talk, and Tom had some that would interest him, he thought. Judge
Thatcher's house was on Tom's way, and he stopped to see Becky. The
Judge and some friends set Tom to talking, and some one asked him
ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. Tom said he
thought he wouldn't mind it. The Judge said:

"Well, there are others just like you, Tom, I've not the least doubt.
But we have taken care of that. Nobody will get lost in that cave any
more."

"Why?"

"Because I had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago,
and triple-locked--and I've got the keys."

Tom turned as white as a sheet.

"What's the matter, boy! Here, run, somebody! Fetch a glass of water!"

The water was brought and thrown into Tom's face.

"Ah, now you're all right. What was the matter with you, Tom?"

"Oh, Judge, Injun Joe's in the cave!"



CHAPTER XXXIII

WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of
men were on their way to McDougal's cave, and the ferryboat, well
filled with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that
bore Judge Thatcher.

When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in
the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground,
dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing
eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer
of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own
experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but
nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now,
which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated
before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day
he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast.

Injun Joe's bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The
great foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through,
with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock
formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had
wrought no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if
there had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been
useless still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away Injun Joe could
not have squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. So he had
only hacked that place in order to be doing something--in order to pass
the weary time--in order to employ his tortured faculties. Ordinarily
one could find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices
of this vestibule, left there by tourists; but there were none now. The
prisoner had searched them out and eaten them. He had also contrived to
catch a few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their
claws. The poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at
hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages,
builded by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had
broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone,
wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop
that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a
clock-tick--a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop
was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the
foundations of Rome were laid; when Christ was crucified; when the
Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the
massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be
falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of
history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the
thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did
this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for
this flitting human insect's need? and has it another important object
to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No matter. It is many and
many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch
the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that
pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when he comes to see the
wonders of McDougal's cave. Injun Joe's cup stands first in the list of
the cavern's marvels; even "Aladdin's Palace" cannot rival it.

Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked
there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and
hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all
sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as
satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the
hanging.

This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing--the petition to
the governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been largely
signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a
committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail
around the governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample
his duty under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five
citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself
there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names
to a pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently
impaired and leaky water-works.

The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have
an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure from the
Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he reckoned
there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he
wanted to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said:

"I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything but
whiskey. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a' ben
you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey business; and I knowed you
hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and
told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's always
told me we'd never get holt of that swag."

"Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. YOU know his tavern
was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you
was to watch there that night?"

"Oh yes! Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It was that very night that I
follered Injun Joe to the widder's."

"YOU followed him?"

"Yes--but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him,
and I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it
hadn't ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right."

Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only
heard of the Welshman's part of it before.

"Well," said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question,
"whoever nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon
--anyways it's a goner for us, Tom."

"Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!"

"What!" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "Tom, have you got on
the track of that money again?"

"Huck, it's in the cave!"

Huck's eyes blazed.

"Say it again, Tom."

"The money's in the cave!"

"Tom--honest injun, now--is it fun, or earnest?"

"Earnest, Huck--just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go
in there with me and help get it out?"

"I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not
get lost."

"Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the
world."

"Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's--"

"Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll
agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I
will, by jings."

"All right--it's a whiz. When do you say?"

"Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?"

"Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days,
now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom--least I don't think I could."

"It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go,
Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me
know about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the
skiff down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You
needn't ever turn your hand over."

"Less start right off, Tom."

"All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little
bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these
new-fangled things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's
the time I wished I had some when I was in there before."

A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who
was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several miles
below "Cave Hollow," Tom said:

"Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the
cave hollow--no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do you see
that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's
one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now."

They landed.

"Now, Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got out
of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it."

Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly
marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said:

"Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this
country. You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be
a robber, but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to
run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it
quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in--because of course
there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it.
Tom Sawyer's Gang--it sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?"

"Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?"

"Oh, most anybody. Waylay people--that's mostly the way."

"And kill them?"

"No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom."

"What's a ransom?"

"Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and
after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them.
That's the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You shut up the
women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich, and
awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take
your hat off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers
--you'll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and
after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and
after that you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd
turn right around and come back. It's so in all the books."

"Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate."

"Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and
circuses and all that."

By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom
in the lead. They toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel,
then made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. A few steps
brought them to the spring, and Tom felt a shudder quiver all through
him. He showed Huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of
clay against the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched the
flame struggle and expire.

The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and
gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. They went on, and presently
entered and followed Tom's other corridor until they reached the
"jumping-off place." The candles revealed the fact that it was not
really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet
high. Tom whispered:

"Now I'll show you something, Huck."

He held his candle aloft and said:

"Look as far around the corner as you can. Do you see that? There--on
the big rock over yonder--done with candle-smoke."

"Tom, it's a CROSS!"

"NOW where's your Number Two? 'UNDER THE CROSS,' hey? Right yonder's
where I saw Injun Joe poke up his candle, Huck!"

Huck stared at the mystic sign awhile, and then said with a shaky voice:

"Tom, less git out of here!"

"What! and leave the treasure?"

"Yes--leave it. Injun Joe's ghost is round about there, certain."

"No it ain't, Huck, no it ain't. It would ha'nt the place where he
died--away out at the mouth of the cave--five mile from here."

"No, Tom, it wouldn't. It would hang round the money. I know the ways
of ghosts, and so do you."

Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Misgivings gathered in his
mind. But presently an idea occurred to him--

"Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Injun Joe's
ghost ain't a going to come around where there's a cross!"

The point was well taken. It had its effect.

"Tom, I didn't think of that. But that's so. It's luck for us, that
cross is. I reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box."

Tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended.
Huck followed. Four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the
great rock stood in. The boys examined three of them with no result.
They found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock, with
a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender, some
bacon rind, and the well-gnawed bones of two or three fowls. But there
was no money-box. The lads searched and researched this place, but in
vain. Tom said:

"He said UNDER the cross. Well, this comes nearest to being under the
cross. It can't be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on
the ground."

They searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged.
Huck could suggest nothing. By-and-by Tom said:

"Lookyhere, Huck, there's footprints and some candle-grease on the
clay about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. Now,
what's that for? I bet you the money IS under the rock. I'm going to
dig in the clay."

"That ain't no bad notion, Tom!" said Huck with animation.

Tom's "real Barlow" was out at once, and he had not dug four inches
before he struck wood.

"Hey, Huck!--you hear that?"

Huck began to dig and scratch now. Some boards were soon uncovered and
removed. They had concealed a natural chasm which led under the rock.
Tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he
could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. He proposed to
explore. He stooped and passed under; the narrow way descended
gradually. He followed its winding course, first to the right, then to
the left, Huck at his heels. Tom turned a short curve, by-and-by, and
exclaimed:

"My goodness, Huck, lookyhere!"

It was the treasure-box, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern,
along with an empty powder-keg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two
or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish
well soaked with the water-drip.

"Got it at last!" said Huck, ploughing among the tarnished coins with
his hand. "My, but we're rich, Tom!"

"Huck, I always reckoned we'd get it. It's just too good to believe,
but we HAVE got it, sure! Say--let's not fool around here. Let's snake
it out. Lemme see if I can lift the box."

It weighed about fifty pounds. Tom could lift it, after an awkward
fashion, but could not carry it conveniently.

"I thought so," he said; "THEY carried it like it was heavy, that day
at the ha'nted house. I noticed that. I reckon I was right to think of
fetching the little bags along."

The money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross
rock.

"Now less fetch the guns and things," said Huck.

"No, Huck--leave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we
go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our
orgies there, too. It's an awful snug place for orgies."

"What orgies?"

"I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to
have them, too. Come along, Huck, we've been in here a long time. It's
getting late, I reckon. I'm hungry, too. We'll eat and smoke when we
get to the skiff."

They presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked warily
out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking in the
skiff. As the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got
under way. Tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting
cheerily with Huck, and landed shortly after dark.

"Now, Huck," said Tom, "we'll hide the money in the loft of the
widow's woodshed, and I'll come up in the morning and we'll count it
and divide, and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it
where it will be safe. Just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till
I run and hook Benny Taylor's little wagon; I won't be gone a minute."

He disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two
small sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started
off, dragging his cargo behind him. When the boys reached the
Welshman's house, they stopped to rest. Just as they were about to move
on, the Welshman stepped out and said:

"Hallo, who's that?"

"Huck and Tom Sawyer."

"Good! Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting.
Here--hurry up, trot ahead--I'll haul the wagon for you. Why, it's not
as light as it might be. Got bricks in it?--or old metal?"

"Old metal," said Tom.

"I judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool
away more time hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the
foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work. But
that's human nature--hurry along, hurry along!"

The boys wanted to know what the hurry was about.

"Never mind; you'll see, when we get to the Widow Douglas'."

Huck said with some apprehension--for he was long used to being
falsely accused:

"Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing."

The Welshman laughed.

"Well, I don't know, Huck, my boy. I don't know about that. Ain't you
and the widow good friends?"

"Yes. Well, she's ben good friends to me, anyway."

"All right, then. What do you want to be afraid for?"

This question was not entirely answered in Huck's slow mind before he
found himself pushed, along with Tom, into Mrs. Douglas' drawing-room.
Mr. Jones left the wagon near the door and followed.

The place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any
consequence in the village was there. The Thatchers were there, the
Harpers, the Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister, the editor,
and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. The widow
received the boys as heartily as any one could well receive two such
looking beings. They were covered with clay and candle-grease. Aunt
Polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head
at Tom. Nobody suffered half as much as the two boys did, however. Mr.
Jones said:

"Tom wasn't at home, yet, so I gave him up; but I stumbled on him and
Huck right at my door, and so I just brought them along in a hurry."

"And you did just right," said the widow. "Come with me, boys."

She took them to a bedchamber and said:

"Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of clothes
--shirts, socks, everything complete. They're Huck's--no, no thanks,
Huck--Mr. Jones bought one and I the other. But they'll fit both of you.
Get into them. We'll wait--come down when you are slicked up enough."

Then she left.



CHAPTER XXXIV

HUCK said: "Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain't
high from the ground."

"Shucks! what do you want to slope for?"

"Well, I ain't used to that kind of a crowd. I can't stand it. I ain't
going down there, Tom."

"Oh, bother! It ain't anything. I don't mind it a bit. I'll take care
of you."

Sid appeared.

"Tom," said he, "auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon.
Mary got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting about
you. Say--ain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?"

"Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist 'tend to your own business. What's all this
blow-out about, anyway?"

"It's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. This time
it's for the Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they
helped her out of the other night. And say--I can tell you something,
if you want to know."

"Well, what?"

"Why, old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people
here to-night, but I overheard him tell auntie to-day about it, as a
secret, but I reckon it's not much of a secret now. Everybody knows
--the widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. Mr. Jones was
bound Huck should be here--couldn't get along with his grand secret
without Huck, you know!"

"Secret about what, Sid?"

"About Huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. I reckon Mr. Jones
was going to make a grand time over his surprise, but I bet you it will
drop pretty flat."

Sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way.

"Sid, was it you that told?"

"Oh, never mind who it was. SOMEBODY told--that's enough."

"Sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and
that's you. If you had been in Huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down the
hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can't do any but mean
things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones.
There--no thanks, as the widow says"--and Tom cuffed Sid's ears and
helped him to the door with several kicks. "Now go and tell auntie if
you dare--and to-morrow you'll catch it!"

Some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper-table, and a
dozen children were propped up at little side-tables in the same room,
after the fashion of that country and that day. At the proper time Mr.
Jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow for the
honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was
another person whose modesty--

And so forth and so on. He sprung his secret about Huck's share in the
adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but the
surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and
effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. However,
the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many
compliments and so much gratitude upon Huck that he almost forgot the
nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely
intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze
and everybody's laudations.

The widow said she meant to give Huck a home under her roof and have
him educated; and that when she could spare the money she would start
him in business in a modest way. Tom's chance was come. He said:

"Huck don't need it. Huck's rich."

Nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept
back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. But
the silence was a little awkward. Tom broke it:

"Huck's got money. Maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots of
it. Oh, you needn't smile--I reckon I can show you. You just wait a
minute."

Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at each other with a
perplexed interest--and inquiringly at Huck, who was tongue-tied.

"Sid, what ails Tom?" said Aunt Polly. "He--well, there ain't ever any
making of that boy out. I never--"

Tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and Aunt Polly
did not finish her sentence. Tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon
the table and said:

"There--what did I tell you? Half of it's Huck's and half of it's mine!"

The spectacle took the general breath away. All gazed, nobody spoke
for a moment. Then there was a unanimous call for an explanation. Tom
said he could furnish it, and he did. The tale was long, but brimful of
interest. There was scarcely an interruption from any one to break the
charm of its flow. When he had finished, Mr. Jones said:

"I thought I had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but it
don't amount to anything now. This one makes it sing mighty small, I'm
willing to allow."

The money was counted. The sum amounted to a little over twelve
thousand dollars. It was more than any one present had ever seen at one
time before, though several persons were there who were worth
considerably more than that in property.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a
mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a
sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked
about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the
citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every
"haunted" house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was
dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for
hidden treasure--and not by boys, but men--pretty grave, unromantic
men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were
courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that
their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were
treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be
regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and
saying commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up
and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village
paper published biographical sketches of the boys.

The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six per cent., and Judge
Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had
an income, now, that was simply prodigious--a dollar for every week-day
in the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got
--no, it was what he was promised--he generally couldn't collect it. A
dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in
those old simple days--and clothe him and wash him, too, for that
matter.

Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no
commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When
Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her
whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded
grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that
whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine
outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie--a lie that
was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to
breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about the hatchet! Becky
thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he
walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight
off and told Tom about it.

Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some
day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the
National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school
in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or
both.

Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow
Douglas' protection introduced him into society--no, dragged him into
it, hurled him into it--and his sufferings were almost more than he
could bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and
brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had
not one little spot or stain which he could press to his heart and know
for a friend. He had to eat with a knife and fork; he had to use
napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his book, he had to go to
church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in
his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of
civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot.

He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up
missing. For forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in
great distress. The public were profoundly concerned; they searched
high and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third
morning Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads
down behind the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found
the refugee. Huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some
stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort, with
his pipe. He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of
rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and
happy. Tom routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing,
and urged him to go home. Huck's face lost its tranquil content, and
took a melancholy cast. He said:

"Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't
work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's good to
me, and friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes me get up just
at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to
thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them
blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air
git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set
down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a
cellar-door for--well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and
sweat and sweat--I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in
there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by
a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell--everything's
so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."

"Well, everybody does that way, Huck."

"Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't
STAND it. It's awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy--I don't
take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing; I
got to ask to go in a-swimming--dern'd if I hain't got to ask to do
everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort--I'd got
to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in
my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke; she
wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor
scratch, before folks--" [Then with a spasm of special irritation and
injury]--"And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such a
woman! I HAD to shove, Tom--I just had to. And besides, that school's
going to open, and I'd a had to go to it--well, I wouldn't stand THAT,
Tom. Looky here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's
just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead
all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and
I ain't ever going to shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't ever got into
all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now you just take
my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes--not
many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable
hard to git--and you go and beg off for me with the widder."

"Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair; and besides if
you'll try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it."

"Like it! Yes--the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long
enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed
smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and
I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a
cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to
come up and spile it all!"

Tom saw his opportunity--

"Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning
robber."

"No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?"

"Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But Huck, we can't let you
into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know."

Huck's joy was quenched.

"Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?"

"Yes, but that's different. A robber is more high-toned than what a
pirate is--as a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up
in the nobility--dukes and such."

"Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn't shet me
out, would you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, WOULD you, Tom?"

"Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I DON'T want to--but what would people
say? Why, they'd say, 'Mph! Tom Sawyer's Gang! pretty low characters in
it!' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't."

Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally
he said:

"Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if
I can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, Tom."

"All right, Huck, it's a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I'll ask the
widow to let up on you a little, Huck."

"Will you, Tom--now will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of
the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd
through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?"

"Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together and have the initiation
to-night, maybe."

"Have the which?"

"Have the initiation."

"What's that?"

"It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's
secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and
all his family that hurts one of the gang."

"That's gay--that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you."

"Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at
midnight, in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find--a ha'nted
house is the best, but they're all ripped up now."

"Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom."

"Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with
blood."

"Now, that's something LIKE! Why, it's a million times bullier than
pirating. I'll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be
a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon
she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet."



CONCLUSION

SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a BOY, it
must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming
the history of a MAN. When one writes a novel about grown people, he
knows exactly where to stop--that is, with a marriage; but when he
writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are
prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the
story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they
turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that
part of their lives at present.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

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Title: War and Peace

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Posting Date: January 10, 2009 [EBook #2600]
Release Date: April, 2001

Language: English


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WAR AND PEACE

By Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi





BOOK ONE: 1805





CHAPTER I


"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that
Antichrist--I really believe he is Antichrist--I will have nothing more
to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful
slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened
you--sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna
Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With
these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and
importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna
had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la
grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the
elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered
by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible,
I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10--Annette
Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an
embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on
his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that
refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and
with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance
who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna,
kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head,
and complacently seated himself on the sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's mind
at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness
and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be
discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like
these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are staying the
whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I must
put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is coming for
me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been
put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force of habit
said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold, listless
tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has
burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale
part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty years,
overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had
become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not
feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the
expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it
did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips expressed,
as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect,
which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to
correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna burst
out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand things,
but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She is
betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign
recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one
thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform
the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will
not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of
revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of
this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just
one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial
spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness
of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find,
and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer did
Novosiltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot
understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for
himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what have they
promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not
perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and
that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a
word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian
neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty
destiny of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been sent
instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of
Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a
cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am expecting
two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is
connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best
French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones. And
also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been
received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me," he
added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him,
though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his
visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be
appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a poor
creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were
trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it for the
baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor
anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was
pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,"
was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke
beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and
courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pavlovna wished
both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of a man recommended
to the Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to
the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political
and social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate
conversation--"I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life are
distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children? I don't
speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like him," she added in a tone
admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows. "Two such charming
children. And really you appreciate them less than anyone, and so you
don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I lack the
bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am
dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her face
assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her Majesty's
and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all a
father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools.
Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That
is the only difference between them." He said this smiling in a way more
natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth
very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father
there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna Pavlovna,
looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?" she
asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I
don't feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little person who is
very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary
Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and
perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of
the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in five
years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what we
fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the
well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army under the
late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is very clever
but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a
brother; I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He is an
aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pavlovna's
hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange that affair for
me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-slafe with an f, as
a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good
family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the
maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as
he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise, young
Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can be
arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her father
to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and her badge
as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkonskaya, known as la
femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg, * was also there. She had been
married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did not go to
any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince Vasili's son,
Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio
and many others had also come.


     * The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.


To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my aunt,"
or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or her to
a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who had come
sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to arrive;
and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna Pavlovna
mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not
one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them
cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful and
solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in
the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her
Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each visitor, though
politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a
sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return
to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth,
but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming when she
occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the case
with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect--the shortness of her
upper lip and her half-open mouth--seemed to be her own special and
peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this pretty
young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and health, and
carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young ones
who looked at her, after being in her company and talking to her a
little while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life
and health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile
and the constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that they were in a
specially amiable mood that day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying
steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat
down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a
pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought my work,"
said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present.
"Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me," she
added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to be quite a
small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed." And she spread
out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray dress,
girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone else,"
replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince Vasili to
Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only
just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his
first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod she
accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite of
this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight
of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face
when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than
the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to
the clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression which
distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her aunt
as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as
if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little
princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health. Anna
Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know the Abbe
Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now committed
a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had
finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to another who
wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet spread apart,
he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she
resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready
to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As
the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes
round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that
creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check the
machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pavlovna moved about her
drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a
word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational machine in steady,
proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety about
Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he approached
the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said there, and
again when he passed to another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pavlovna's
was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all the
intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like a child
in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing any
clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident and
refined expression on the faces of those present he was always expecting
to hear something very profound. At last he came up to Morio. Here the
conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity
to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing.





CHAPTER III


Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company had
settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed round the
abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the beautiful Princess
Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little Princess Bolkonskaya,
very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age. The third
group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished
manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of
politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up as a
treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a specially
choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in the
kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served up to her
guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly choice
morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the
murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d'Enghien had
perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons
for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna, with a
pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in the sound of
that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness to
comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone to
listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to another.
"How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a third;
and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest and most
advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef on a hot
dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the beautiful
young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of another
group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with which
she had first entered the room--the smile of a perfectly beautiful
woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss
and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling
diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her, not looking
at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously allowing each the
privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and shapely shoulders,
back, and bosom--which in the fashion of those days were very much
exposed--and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as
she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so lovely that not only
did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even
appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She
seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted his
shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something extraordinary
when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also with her
unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he, smilingly
inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and considered
a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the story was
being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful round arm,
altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her still more
beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond necklace. From time
to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and whenever the story
produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at once adopted just
the expression she saw on the maid of honor's face, and again relapsed
into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in her
seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle and
moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary resemblance
to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that in spite of
this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features were like his
sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by a joyous,
self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation, and by the
wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the contrary
was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen
self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, nose, and
mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, and his arms
and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging his
shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone which
showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he had
uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure
whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was dressed in
a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of cuisse de nymphe
effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then current,
to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to Paris to visit
Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon Bonaparte, who also
enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in his presence Napoleon
happened to fall into one of the fainting fits to which he was subject,
and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter spared him, and this
magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies looked
agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the little
princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle into her
work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story
prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he was
talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to the
rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe about
the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by the young
man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet theory. Both were
talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally, which was why Anna
Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the
people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one powerful
nation like Russia--barbaric as she is said to be--to place herself
disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the
maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the
world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at Pierre,
asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The Italian's
face instantly changed and assumed an offensively affected, sugary
expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have had
the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think of
the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.





CHAPTER IV


Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome young
man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about
him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step,
offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was
evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had
found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to
them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed
to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from her
with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's
hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been pleased
to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same coquettish
manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has been telling us
such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who from
the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with glad,
affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he looked round
Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance with whoever was
touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming face he gave him an
unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper with
you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the vicomte
who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished to
say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his daughter
got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the Frenchman,
holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent his rising.
"This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me of a pleasure,
and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave your
enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna Pavlovna:
"Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a whole month
and this is the first time I have seen him in society. Nothing is so
necessary for a young man as the society of clever women."

Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew his
father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who had
been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Prince Vasili
in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed had
left her kindly and tear-worn face and it now expressed only anxiety and
fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him into the
anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me what news I
may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might not go
away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he would
be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered Prince
Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I should advise
you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn. That would be the
best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now come to
Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her only son.
It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had obtained an
invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat listening to the
vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened her, an embittered
look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment; then she
smiled again and clutched Prince Vasili's arm more tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son--and I shall always regard you as a benefactor," she
added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked Golitsyn
and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always were," she said,
trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her beautiful
head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she stood
waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized
if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having once realized that
if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him, he would soon be unable
to ask for himself, he became chary of using his influence. But in
Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her second appeal, something
like qualms of conscience. She had reminded him of what was quite true;
he had been indebted to her father for the first steps in his career.
Moreover, he could see by her manners that she was one of those
women--mostly mothers--who, having once made up their minds, will not
rest until they have gained their end, and are prepared if necessary
to go on insisting day after day and hour after hour, and even to make
scenes. This last consideration moved him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's memory,
I will do the impossible--your son shall be transferred to the Guards.
Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you--I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait--just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..." she
faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich Kutuzov...
recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at rest, and
then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered since
his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that all the
Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before, "we
shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed
all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone her face
resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She returned to the
group where the vicomte was still talking, and again pretended to
listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her task was
accomplished.





CHAPTER V


"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan?"
asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa and
Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and Monsieur
Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of the
nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is as if
the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a sarcastic
smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!' * They say he was very fine
when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in Italian: "'Dio
mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


     * God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!


"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite but
hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis XVII,
for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he became more
animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward of their betrayal
of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they are sending ambassadors
to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much gravity
as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d'azur--maison Conde," said he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others but
follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone too far.
By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French society--I mean
good French society--will have been forever destroyed, and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which always
accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, "has declared
that he will leave it to the French people themselves to choose their
own form of government; and I believe that once free from the usurper,
the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the arms of its
rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the royalist
emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it will
be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into the
conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte without
looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to know the real
state of French public opinion."

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'" Prince
Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting Napoleon's words.
"'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I do not know how far
he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one
hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their appreciation
of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and
though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she
was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was a
political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed greatness
of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole responsibility of
that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing her
work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping his knee
with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at his
audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon alone
understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general good,
he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great because
he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all
that was good in it--equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and
of the press--and only for that reason did he obtain power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to commit
murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have called him
a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he might rid
them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great man. The
Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by
this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his
wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that... But
won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected an
ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most important.
What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices,
and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon has retained
in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last
deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were,
"high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not love
liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality.
Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the contrary. We
wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of
Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in
a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the fact
of a great man executing a duc--or even an ordinary man who--is innocent
and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His
smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another--a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to
ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly that
this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were
silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince Andrew.
"Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish between
his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor. So it
seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of this
reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man was
great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he
gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are other acts
which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of
Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time to
go.

Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to attend,
and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it.
Excuse me, Vicomte--I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She must
have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her
taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a livery,
get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his
audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several
persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did however
smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and
her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no longer and
went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told
it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna and the
others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so agreeably ending
Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the anecdote the
conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last and
next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, and when and
where.





CHAPTER VI


Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests began
to take their leave.

Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with huge
red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a drawing
room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say something
particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he was
absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his own, the
general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the plume, till
the general asked him to restore it. All his absent-mindedness and
inability to enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by
his kindly, simple, and modest expression. Anna Pavlovna turned toward
him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his
indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to see you again, but I also hope
you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre."

When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again everybody
saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions are
opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am." And
everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.

Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders
to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant
princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.

"Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little princess,
taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in a low
voice.

Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match she
contemplated between Anatole and the little princess' sister-in-law.

"I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone.
"Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au
revoir!"--and she left the hall.

Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his face
close to her, began to whisper something.

Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and a
cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to
the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of
understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as usual
spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.

"I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince Hippolyte
"-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not? Delightful!"

"They say the ball will be very good," replied the princess, drawing up
her downy little lip. "All the pretty women in society will be there."

"Not all, for you will not be there; not all," said Prince Hippolyte
smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he
even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either from
awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after the
shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long time, as
though embracing her.

Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at her
husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did he
seem.

"Are you ready?" he asked his wife, looking past her.

Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest fashion
reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out into the porch
following the princess, whom a footman was helping into the carriage.

"Princesse, au revoir," cried he, stumbling with his tongue as well as
with his feet.

The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the dark
carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince Hippolyte, under
pretense of helping, was in everyone's way.

"Allow me, sir," said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold, disagreeable
tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.

"I am expecting you, Pierre," said the same voice, but gently and
affectionately.

The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte
laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte
whom he had promised to take home.

"Well, mon cher," said the vicomte, having seated himself beside
Hippolyte in the carriage, "your little princess is very nice, very nice
indeed, quite French," and he kissed the tips of his fingers. Hippolyte
burst out laughing.

"Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,"
continued the vicomte. "I pity the poor husband, that little officer who
gives himself the airs of a monarch."

Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, "And you were
saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to
know how to deal with them."


Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew's study like
one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, took
from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar's
Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.

"What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now," said
Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white hands.

Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his eager
face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.

"That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the
right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but--I do not
know how to express it... not by a balance of political power...."

It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such abstract
conversation.

"One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you
at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.

Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.

"Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the other."

"But you must decide on something! Your father expects it."

Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor,
and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow
his father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to
Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money. Write to
me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre had
already been choosing a career for three months, and had not decided
on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was speaking.
Pierre rubbed his forehead.

"But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he had
met that evening.

"That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us
talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?"

"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to
tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the army;
but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world is
not right."

Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish words. He
put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such nonsense,
but it would in fact have been difficult to give any other answer than
the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.

"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,"
he said.

"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew smiled ironically.

"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..."

"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.

"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He paused.
"I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit me!"





CHAPTER VII


The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince Andrew
shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it had had
in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa.
The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as
fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely placed a
chair for her.

"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly and
fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married? How
stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so,
but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you are,
Monsieur Pierre!"

"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he
wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess with
none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
intercourse with young women.

The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the quick.

"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand it; I
don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars. How is
it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need it? Now
you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is Uncle's
aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well known, so much
appreciated by everyone. The other day at the Apraksins' I heard a lady
asking, 'Is that the famous Prince Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed.
"He is so well received everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp
to the Emperor. You know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously.
Annette and I were speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?"

Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
conversation, gave no reply.

"When are you starting?" he asked.

"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of," said
the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had spoken
to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly ill-suited
to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member. "Today when I
remembered that all these delightful associations must be broken off...
and then you know, Andre..." (she looked significantly at her husband)
"I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered, and a shudder ran down her
back.

Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone besides
Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone of
frigid politeness.

"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he.

"There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim of
his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone in
the country."

"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince Andrew gently.

"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to be
afraid."

Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a
joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she
felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the
gist of the matter lay in that.

"I still can't understand what you are afraid of," said Prince Andrew
slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.

The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.

"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..."

"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew. "You
had better go."

The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered.
Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.

Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him and
now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.

"Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?" exclaimed the little
princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful
grimace. "I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed
so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no
pity for me. Why is it?"

"Lise!" was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an
entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself
regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:

"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave
like that six months ago?"

"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still more emphatically.

Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to
all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the
sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.

"Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because... I assure you
I myself have experienced... and so... because... No, excuse me!
An outsider is out of place here... No, don't distress yourself...
Good-by!"

Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.

"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of the
pleasure of spending the evening with you."

"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess without
restraining her angry tears.

"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch which
indicates that patience is exhausted.

Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess' pretty
face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes
glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the timid,
deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its
drooping tail.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she muttered, and lifting her dress with one hand
she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.

"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand as
he would have done to a stranger.





CHAPTER VIII


The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead
with his small hand.

"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh, going to the door.

They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room.
Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and glass bore
that imprint of newness found in the households of the newly married.
Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and,
with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on
his face, began to talk--as one who has long had something on his mind
and suddenly determines to speak out.

"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry till
you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and
until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen
her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable
mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing--or all that is
good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you marry
expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every
step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing
room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an
idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he waved his arm.

Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and
the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend
in amazement.

"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of those
rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what would I
not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I
mention this, because I like you."

As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski who
had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed eyes had
uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face
was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which the fire
of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light. It
was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary times, the more
impassioned he became in these moments of almost morbid irritation.

"You don't understand why I say this," he continued, "but it is the
whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," said he
(though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he
worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing
but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with
a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you
have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with
regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality--these are
the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war,
the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for
nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit," continued Prince
Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen to me. And that stupid set
without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women... If you only knew
what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right.
Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything--that's what women are
when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in society it
seems as if there were something in them, but there's nothing, nothing,
nothing! No, don't marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince
Andrew.

"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should consider
yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have everything
before you, everything. And you..."

He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he
thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.

"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his friend
a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the highest
degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which might be best
described as strength of will. Pierre was always astonished at Prince
Andrew's calm manner of treating everybody, his extraordinary memory,
his extensive reading (he had read everything, knew everything, and had
an opinion about everything), but above all at his capacity for work and
study. And if Pierre was often struck by Andrew's lack of capacity
for philosophical meditation (to which he himself was particularly
addicted), he regarded even this not as a defect but as a sign of
strength.

Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise
and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels
that they may run smoothly.

"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's the use of talking
about me? Let us talk about you," he added after a silence, smiling at
his reassuring thoughts.

That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face.

"But what is there to say about me?" said Pierre, his face relaxing into
a careless, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate son!" He suddenly
blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great effort to say
this. "Without a name and without means... And it really..." But he
did not say what "it really" was. "For the present I am free and am
all right. Only I haven't the least idea what I am to do; I wanted to
consult you seriously."

Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance--friendly and
affectionate as it was--expressed a sense of his own superiority.

"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among our
whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all the
same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up visiting
those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so badly--all
this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"

"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging his
shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"

"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme il
faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women, 'women
and wine' I don't understand!"

Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the dissipated
life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to reform by
marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.

"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy thought,
"seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading such a life I
can't decide or think properly about anything. One's head aches, and one
spends all one's money. He asked me for tonight, but I won't go."

"You give me your word of honor not to go?"

"On my honor!"





CHAPTER IX


It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a cloudless,
northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending to drive
straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more he felt the
impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was light enough to
see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed more like morning
or evening than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole Kuragin
was expecting the usual set for cards that evening, after which there
was generally a drinking bout, finishing with visits of a kind Pierre
was very fond of.

"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.

But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go
there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so
passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to
that he decided to go. The thought immediately occurred to him that his
promise to Prince Andrew was of no account, because before he gave it he
had already promised Prince Anatole to come to his gathering; "besides,"
thought he, "all such 'words of honor' are conventional things with no
definite meaning, especially if one considers that by tomorrow one may
be dead, or something so extraordinary may happen to one that honor and
dishonor will be all the same!" Pierre often indulged in reflections
of this sort, nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to
Kuragin's.

Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards' barracks, in which
Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the stairs,
and went in at the open door. There was no one in the anteroom; empty
bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of
alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the distance.

Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet dispersed.
Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in which were the
remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw him, was drinking on
the sly what was left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds of
laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the growling of a bear, and
general commotion. Some eight or nine young men were crowding anxiously
round an open window. Three others were romping with a young bear, one
pulling him by the chain and trying to set him at the others.

"I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one.

"Mind, no holding on!" cried another.

"I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands."

"There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on."

"At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth.

"Jacob, bring a bottle!" shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow who
stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine linen
shirt unfastened in front. "Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here is Petya!
Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre.

Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,
particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober ring,
cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was Dolokhov,
an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist, who
was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him merrily.

"I don't understand. What's it all about?"

"Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole, taking a
glass from the table he went up to Pierre.

"First of all you must drink!"

Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows at
the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and listening
to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre's glass while
explaining that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English naval
officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge
of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.

"Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last
glass, "or I won't let you go!"

"No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to the
window.

Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and distinctly
repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself particularly to
Anatole and Pierre.

Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue eyes. He
was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore no mustache,
so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was clearly
seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely curved. The middle
of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed firmly on the firm
lower one, and something like two distinct smiles played continually
round the two corners of the mouth; this, together with the resolute,
insolent intelligence of his eyes, produced an effect which made it
impossible not to notice his face. Dolokhov was a man of small means and
no connections. Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles,
Dolokhov lived with him and had placed himself on such a footing that
all who knew them, including Anatole himself, respected him more than
they did Anatole. Dolokhov could play all games and nearly always won.
However much he drank, he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin
and Dolokhov were at that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces
of Petersburg.

The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented anyone
from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two footmen, who
were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions and shouts of
the gentlemen around.

Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted to
smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame, but
could not move it. He smashed a pane.

"You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre.

Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame out with
a crash.

"Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov.

"Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole.

"First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of rum
in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of the sky,
the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.

Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the window
sill. "Listen!" cried he, standing there and addressing those in the
room. All were silent.

"I bet fifty imperials"--he spoke French that the Englishman might
understand him, but he did, not speak it very well--"I bet fifty
imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?" added he, addressing
the Englishman.

"No, fifty," replied the latter.

"All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle of rum
without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on this
spot" (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the window)
"and without holding on to anything. Is that right?"

"Quite right," said the Englishman.

Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the buttons
of his coat and looking down at him--the Englishman was short--began
repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.

"Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill to
attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else does the
same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?"

The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to
accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and though
he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on translating
Dolokhov's words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar of the Life
Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the window sill,
leaned over, and looked down.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the stones of
the pavement.

"Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad
jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.

Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it easily,
Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and lowered his
legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he adjusted himself on
his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right and then to
the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and placed
them on the window sill, though it was already quite light. Dolokhov's
back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were lit up from both
sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the Englishman in front. Pierre
stood smiling but silent. One man, older than the others present,
suddenly pushed forward with a scared and angry look and wanted to seize
hold of Dolokhov's shirt.

"I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible man.

Anatole stopped him.

"Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed. Eh?...
What then?... Eh?"

Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, arranged
himself on his seat.

"If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words separately
through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down there. Now
then!"

Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the bottle
and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised his free hand
to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped to pick up some
broken glass remained in that position without taking his eyes from the
window and from Dolokhov's back. Anatole stood erect with staring eyes.
The Englishman looked on sideways, pursing up his lips. The man who had
wished to stop the affair ran to a corner of the room and threw himself
on a sofa with his face to the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a
faint smile forgot to fade though his features now expressed horror
and fear. All were still. Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov
still sat in the same position, only his head was thrown further back
till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the
bottle was lifted higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The
bottle was emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head
tilting yet further back. "Why is it so long?" thought Pierre. It seemed
to him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made
a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously; this
was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the sloping
ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered still more
with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the window sill, but
refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered his eyes and thought he
would never open them again. Suddenly he was aware of a stir all around.
He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on the window sill, with a pale but
radiant face.

"It's empty."

He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dolokhov
jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.

"Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil take
you!" came from different sides.

The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money.
Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the window
sill.

"Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he
suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a
bottle. I'll do it.... Bring a bottle!"

"Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling.

"What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, you go
giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices.

"I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging the
table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb out
of the window.

They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who
touched him was sent flying.

"No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit and
I'll get round him.... Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but now we
are all going to ----'s."

"Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with
us."

And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground,
and began dancing round the room with it.





CHAPTER X


Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess Drubetskaya who
had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on the evening of Anna
Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an exception
made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of Semenov Guards with the
rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment to Kutuzov's staff
despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's endeavors and entreaties. Soon after
Anna Pavlovna's reception Anna Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went
straight to her rich relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when
in the town and where her darling Bory, who had only just entered a
regiment of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards
as a cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a
time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August, and
her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join them
on the march to Radzivilov.

It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs--the
mother and the youngest daughter--both named Nataly. Ever since
the morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going
continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostova's big house on
the Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself and
her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the visitors
who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one another in
relays.

The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental type
of face, evidently worn out with childbearing--she had had twelve.
A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a
distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikhaylovna
Drubetskaya, who as a member of the household was also seated in the
drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the visitors. The young
people were in one of the inner rooms, not considering it necessary to
take part in receiving the visitors. The count met the guests and saw
them off, inviting them all to dinner.

"I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"--he called
everyone without exception and without the slightest variation in his
tone, "my dear," whether they were above or below him in rank--"I thank
you for myself and for our two dear ones whose name day we are keeping.
But mind you come to dinner or I shall be offended, ma chere! On
behalf of the whole family I beg you to come, mon cher!" These words he
repeated to everyone without exception or variation, and with the same
expression on his full, cheerful, clean-shaven face, the same firm
pressure of the hand and the same quick, repeated bows. As soon as he
had seen a visitor off he returned to one of those who were still in the
drawing room, drew a chair toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out
his legs and putting his hands on his knees with the air of a man who
enjoys life and knows how to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity,
offered surmises about the weather, or touched on questions of health,
sometimes in Russian and sometimes in very bad but self-confident
French; then again, like a man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment
of duty, he rose to see some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray
hairs over his bald patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his
way back from the anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and
pantry into the large marble dining hall, where tables were being set
out for eighty people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in
silver and china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he
would call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of
all his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table
would say: "Well, Dmitri, you'll see that things are all as they should
be? That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it." And with a
complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.

"Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess'
gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The
countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with
her husband's portrait on it.

"I'm quite worn out by these callers. However, I'll see her and no more.
She is so affected. Ask her in," she said to the footman in a sad voice,
as if saying: "Very well, finish me off."

A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling
daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.

"Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child...
at the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so
delighted..." came the sounds of animated feminine voices, interrupting
one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and the scraping
of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which last out until,
at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of dresses and say,
"I am so delighted... Mamma's health... and Countess Apraksina..." and
then, again rustling, pass into the anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles,
and drive away. The conversation was on the chief topic of the day: the
illness of the wealthy and celebrated beau of Catherine's day, Count
Bezukhov, and about his illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved
so improperly at Anna Pavlovna's reception.

"I am so sorry for the poor count," said the visitor. "He is in such bad
health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill him!"

"What is that?" asked the countess as if she did not know what the
visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of
Count Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times.

"That's what comes of a modern education," exclaimed the visitor. "It
seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as he
liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible things
that he has been expelled by the police."

"You don't say so!" replied the countess.

"He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince
Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up to
heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it. Dolokhov
has been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back to Moscow.
Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's affair hushed
up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg."

"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess.

"They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the visitor.
"He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy woman, but
there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear somewhere, put it in a
carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The police tried
to interfere, and what did the young men do? They tied a policeman and
the bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka Canal. And there
was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his back!"

"What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted the
count, dying with laughter.

"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?"

Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.

"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the
visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who
amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so well
educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has done for
him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in spite of his
money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite declined: I have
my daughters to consider."

"Why do you say this young man is so rich?" asked the countess, turning
away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of inattention. "His
children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also is illegitimate."

The visitor made a gesture with her hand.

"I should think he has a score of them."

Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation, evidently
wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went on in
society.

"The fact of the matter is," said she significantly, and also in a half
whisper, "everyone knows Count Cyril's reputation.... He has lost count
of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite."

"How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the
countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man."

"He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I was
saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but the count
is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to the
Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death--and he is so
ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from
Petersburg--no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune, Pierre
or Prince Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know
it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself. Besides, Cyril
Vladimirovich is my mother's second cousin. He's also my Bory's
godfather," she added, as if she attached no importance at all to the
fact.

"Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on some
inspection business," remarked the visitor.

"Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, "that is a pretext. The
fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich, hearing how ill he
is."

"But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke," said the count; and
seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the young
ladies. "I can just imagine what a funny figure that policeman cut!"

And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly form
again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who always eats
well and, in particular, drinks well. "So do come and dine with us!" he
said.





CHAPTER XI


Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably,
but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they now
rose and took their leave. The visitor's daughter was already smoothing
down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when suddenly from
the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls running to
the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a girl of thirteen,
hiding something in the folds of her short muslin frock, darted in and
stopped short in the middle of the room. It was evident that she had
not intended her flight to bring her so far. Behind her in the doorway
appeared a student with a crimson coat collar, an officer of the Guards,
a girl of fifteen, and a plump rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.

The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his arms wide
and threw them round the little girl who had run in.

"Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it is.
My dear pet!"

"Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with
feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her
husband.

"How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name
day," said the visitor. "What a charming child," she added, addressing
the mother.

This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life--with
childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her
bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs
in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers--was just at that
charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not
yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her
flushed face in the lace of her mother's mantilla--not paying the least
attention to her severe remark--and began to laugh. She laughed, and in
fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she produced
from the folds of her frock.

"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha managed
to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother
and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim
visitor could not help joining in.

"Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you," said the mother,
pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and turning to the
visitor she added: "She is my youngest girl."

Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla,
glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.

The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it
necessary to take some part in it.

"Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of yours? A
daughter, I suppose?"

Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish
things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.

Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna Mikhaylovna's
son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest son; Sonya, the
count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya, his youngest boy,
had all settled down in the drawing room and were obviously trying to
restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth that
shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back rooms, from which they
had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing
than the drawing-room talk of society scandals, the weather, and
Countess Apraksina. Now and then they glanced at one another, hardly
able to suppress their laughter.

The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood,
were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though not alike. Boris
was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had regular, delicate
features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open expression.
Dark hairs were already showing on his upper lip, and his whole face
expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas blushed when he entered
the drawing room. He evidently tried to find something to say, but
failed. Boris on the contrary at once found his footing, and related
quietly and humorously how he had known that doll Mimi when she was
still quite a young lady, before her nose was broken; how she had aged
during the five years he had known her, and how her head had cracked
right across the skull. Having said this he glanced at Natasha. She
turned away from him and glanced at her younger brother, who was
screwing up his eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable
to control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed from the room as
fast as her nimble little feet would carry her. Boris did not laugh.

"You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the
carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile.

"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered, returning
his smile.

Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump
boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been
disturbed.





CHAPTER XII


The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting the
young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four years
older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were
Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender little brunette with
a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black
plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion
and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular
arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and
flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of
manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises
to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it proper to
show an interest in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite
of herself her eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who
was going to join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that
her smile could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it
was clear that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more
energy and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like
Natasha and Boris, escape from the drawing room.

"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and pointing
to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and so for
friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his old father,
and entering the military service, my dear. And there was a place
and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department! Isn't that
friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone.

"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.

"They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and they'll say
so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My dear, there's
friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the hussars."

The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.

"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and
turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from friendship
at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation."

He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were both
regarding him with a smile of approbation.

"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us
today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with
him. It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging his shoulders and
speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.

"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't wish
to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except in the
army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.--I don't know how to
hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness
of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady visitor.

The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any moment
to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.

"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up! This
Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he rose
from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it," he added,
not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile.

The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to young
Rostov.

"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so dull
without you," said she, giving him a tender smile.

The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish
smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation
without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart
of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk
he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and
hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial smile
on her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas' animation
vanished. He waited for the first pause in the conversation, and then
with a distressed face left the room to find Sonya.

"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their
sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out.
"Cousinage--dangereux voisinage;" * she added.


     * Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.


"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people had
brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no
one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much suffering,
how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in
them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is
always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both
for girls and boys."

"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.

"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess. "Till now I have
always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full
confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who
imagine that their children have no secrets from them. "I know I shall
always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his
impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he will
all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."

"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the count, who
always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding that
everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an hussar. What's one
to do, my dear?"

"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor; "a
little volcano!"

"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And what a
voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth when I say
she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an Italian to
give her lessons."

"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train it
at that age."

"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our mothers used
to be married at twelve or thirteen."

"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the countess
with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' and went on, evidently concerned
with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I were to be
severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what they might be up
to on the sly" (she meant that they would be kissing), "but as it is,
I know every word she utters. She will come running to me of her own
accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I spoil her, but
really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister I was stricter."

"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome elder
daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.

But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally do;
on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant,
expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at learning,
was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said was
true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone--the visitors and
countess alike--turned to look at her as if wondering why she had said
it, and they all felt awkward.

"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to make
something exceptional of them," said the visitor.

"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned out
splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera.

The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.

"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess, when
she had seen her guests out.





CHAPTER XIII


When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation
in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already
growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming
at once, when she heard the young man's discreet steps approaching
neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly among the
flower tubs and hid there.

Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a little
dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined
his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her ambush,
waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while before the
glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha was about
to call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me," thought she.
Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears, and muttering
angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked her first impulse to
run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching--as under an
invisible cap--to see what went on in the world. She was experiencing
a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering to herself, kept looking
round toward the drawing-room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.

"Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he, running up
to her.

"It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya.

"Ah, I know what it is."

"Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!"

"So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that,
for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand.

Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not stirring
and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes.
"What will happen now?" thought she.

"Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are everything!"
said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you."

"I don't like you to talk like that."

"Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him and
kissed her.

"Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had gone
out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her.

"Boris, come here," said she with a sly and significant look. "I
have something to tell you. Here, here!" and she led him into the
conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.

Boris followed her, smiling.

"What is the something?" asked he.

She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown
down on one of the tubs, picked it up.

"Kiss the doll," said she.

Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
reply.

"Don't you want to? Well, then, come here," said she, and went further
in among the plants and threw down the doll. "Closer, closer!" she
whispered.

She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and
fear appeared on her flushed face.

"And me? Would you like to kiss me?" she whispered almost inaudibly,
glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from
excitement.

Boris blushed.

"How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still
more, but he waited and did nothing.

Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so
that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing
back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.

Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs
and stood, hanging her head.

"Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..."

"You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in.

"Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four
years... then I will ask for your hand."

Natasha considered.

"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender
little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?"

A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.

"Settled!" replied Boris.

"Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?"

She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining
sitting room.





CHAPTER XIV


After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave
orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite
to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished to have
a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew
her chair nearer to that of the countess.

"With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There are not
many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your friendship."

Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her
friend's hand.

"Vera," she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a
favorite, "how is it you have so little tact? Don't you see you are not
wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..."

The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.

"If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied as
she rose to go to her own room.

But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting,
one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sonya was
sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the
first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at the other window
and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and Natasha looked at Vera
with guilty, happy faces.

It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but
apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.

"How often have I asked you not to take my things?" she said. "You have
a room of your own," and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.

"In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen.

"You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued Vera.
"You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed of
you."

Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one
replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the
room with the inkstand in her hand.

"And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and Boris, or
between you two? It's all nonsense!"

"Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense,
speaking very gently.

She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
everyone.

"Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!"

"All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer. "We
don't interfere with you and Berg."

"I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be anything
wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are behaving with
Boris."

"Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have
nothing to complain of."

"Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome," said
Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly. (She used the word
"diplomat," which was just then much in vogue among the children, in the
special sense they attached to it.) "Why does she bother me?" And she
added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand it, because you've
never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame de Genlis
and nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by Nicholas,
was considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure is to be
unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you please," she
finished quickly.

"I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..."

"Well, now you've done what you wanted," put in Nicholas--"said
unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let's go to the nursery."

All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.

"The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none to
anyone."

"Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices through
the door.

The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant effect
on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been said to her,
went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at
her own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and calmer.


In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.

"Ah, my dear," said the countess, "my life is not all roses either.
Don't I know that at the rate we are living our means won't last long?
It's all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the country do we
get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows what besides! But
don't let's talk about me; tell me how you managed everything. I often
wonder at you, Annette--how at your age you can rush off alone in a
carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those ministers and great people,
and know how to deal with them all! It's quite astonishing. How did you
get things settled? I couldn't possibly do it."

"Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never know
what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you love
to distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a certain
pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of those big
people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an interview with
So and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two, three, or four
times--till I get what I want. I don't mind what they think of me."

"Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" asked the countess. "You
see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my Nicholas is
going as a cadet. There's no one to interest himself for him. To whom
did you apply?"

"To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to everything,
and put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna
enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she had endured
to gain her end.

"Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not seen him
since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I expect he has
forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said the countess,
with a smile.

"He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna, "overflowing
with amiability. His position has not turned his head at all. He said to
me, 'I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear Princess. I am at
your command.' Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very kind relation.
But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do anything for his
happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way that my position is now
a terrible one," continued Anna Mikhaylovna, sadly, dropping her voice.
"My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and makes no progress. Would you
believe it, I have literally not a penny and don't know how to equip
Boris." She took out her handkerchief and began to cry. "I need five
hundred rubles, and have only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a
state.... My only hope now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov.
If he will not assist his godson--you know he is Bory's godfather--and
allow him something for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been
thrown away.... I shall not be able to equip him."

The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.

"I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess, "that
here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all alone... that
tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a burden to him,
and Bory's life is only just beginning...."

"Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess.

"Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish. Still,
I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and I shall speak to him
straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it's really all the
same to me when my son's fate is at stake." The princess rose. "It's now
two o'clock and you dine at four. There will just be time."

And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the most of
time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and went into the
anteroom with him.

"Good-by, my dear," said she to the countess who saw her to the door,
and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, "Wish me good
luck."

"Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the count
coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added: "If
he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the house, you
know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite him, my dear.
We will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He says Count Orlov
never gave such a dinner as ours will be!"





CHAPTER XV


"My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as Countess
Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the straw
covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother,
drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and
tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him. Count
Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future depends on
him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you so well know how
to be."

"If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of it..."
answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it for your
sake."

Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the
entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to
be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the
rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old
cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses, and,
hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency was worse
today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.

"We may as well go back," said the son in French.

"My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand on
his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.

Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without taking
off his cloak.

"My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the hall
porter, "I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's why I
have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my friend... I
only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying here, is he not?
Please announce me."

The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and turned
away.

"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to a
footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat, who
ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.

The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a large
Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes briskly
ascended the carpeted stairs.

"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a touch,
"you promised me!"

The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.

They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to the
apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.

Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall, were
about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as they
entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasili
came out--wearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast, as
was his custom when at home--taking leave of a good-looking, dark-haired
man. This was the celebrated Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.

"Then it is certain?" said the prince.

"Prince, humanum est errare, * but..." replied the doctor, swallowing
his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.


     * To err is human.


"Very well, very well..."

Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the doctor
with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of inquiry. The
son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow suddenly clouded his
mother's face, and he smiled slightly.

"Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our
dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive look
fixed on her.

Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and perplexed.
Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging the bow turned
to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a movement of the head and
lips indicating very little hope for the patient.

"Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It is
terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris. "He
wanted to thank you himself."

Boris bowed again politely.

"Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you have
done for us."

"I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna,"
said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in tone and manner,
here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed under an
obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than he had done
in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception.

"Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing Boris
with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on in his
usual tone of indifference.

"I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency," replied
Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque manner nor
a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so quietly and
respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.

"Are you living with your mother?"

"I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding, "your
excellency."

"That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said Anna
Mikhaylovna.

"I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice.
"I never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that
unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler too,
I am told."

"But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic
smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure,
but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the
doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again
expressing deep sorrow.

"They give little hope," replied the prince.

"And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me and
Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this fact
ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction.

Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw that
he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's fortune,
and hastened to reassure him.

"If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle," said
she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern, "I know
his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one with him
except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She bent
her head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his final duty,
Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can make things no
worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if he is so ill. We
women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know how to say these
things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it may be for me. I
am used to suffering."

Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he had
done at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid of Anna
Mikhaylovna.

"Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna Mikhaylovna?"
said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are expecting a
crisis."

"But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the
welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a
Christian..."

A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, the
count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of her body
was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince Vasili turned
to her.

"Well, how is he?"

"Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the
princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.

"Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy
smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am at
your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have gone
through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.

The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room as
Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position she had
conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili to take a
seat beside her.

"Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the
count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile
and don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him to
dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the prince.

"On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become depressed,
"I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young man.... Here
he is, and the count has not once asked for him."

He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight of
stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms.





CHAPTER XVI


Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in
Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and
sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true.
Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now been
for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his father's house.
Though he expected that the story of his escapade would be already known
in Moscow and that the ladies about his father--who were never favorably
disposed toward him--would have used it to turn the count against him,
he nevertheless on the day of his arrival went to his father's part of
the house. Entering the drawing room, where the princesses spent most
of their time, he greeted the ladies, two of whom were sitting at
embroidery frames while a third read aloud. It was the eldest who was
reading--the one who had met Anna Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were
embroidering: both were rosy and pretty and they differed only in that
one had a little mole on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre
was received as if he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess
paused in her reading and silently stared at him with frightened eyes;
the second assumed precisely the same expression; while the youngest,
the one with the mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition,
bent over her frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene
she foresaw. She drew her wool down through the canvas and, scarcely
able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the
pattern.

"How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?"

"I recognize you only too well, too well."

"How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual, but
unabashed.

"The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently you have
done your best to increase his mental sufferings."

"Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked.

"Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see
him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready--it is almost
time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were busy, and
busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he, Pierre, was only
busy causing him annoyance.

Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed and
said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can see
him."

And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of the
sister with the mole.

Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house. He
sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are going to
behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very badly; that is
all I have to say to you. The count is very, very ill, and you must not
see him at all."

Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole time in
his rooms upstairs.

When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his room,
stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at the wall,
as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and glaring savagely
over his spectacles, and then again resuming his walk, muttering
indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.

"England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger at
someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the rights
of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre--who at that moment
imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just effected the
dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured London--could
pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and handsome young
officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left Moscow when Boris
was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten him, but in his usual
impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the hand with a friendly
smile.

"Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile. "I have
come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not well."

"Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him," answered
Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.

Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it
necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least
embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.

"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a
considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.

"Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his son,
Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how we
went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an age..."

"You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and slightly
sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna Mikhaylovna
Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is Nicholas. I
never knew any Madame Jacquot."

Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.

"Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One has so
many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well, now we
know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne expedition?
The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon gets across the
Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. If only Villeneuve
doesn't make a mess of things!"

Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read the
papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name.

"We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal
than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know nothing
about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy with
gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and your
father."

Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his companion's
sake that the latter might say something he would afterwards regret.
But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, looking straight into
Pierre's eyes.

"Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on. "Everybody
is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune, though he may
perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..."

"Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid."

Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say
something disconcerting to himself.

"And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not
changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is
trying to get something out of the rich man?"

"So it does," thought Pierre.

"But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are quite
mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are very
poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that your
father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and neither
I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him."

For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he jumped
up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick, clumsy
way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a feeling of
mingled shame and vexation.

"Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I know
very well..."

But Boris again interrupted him.

"I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You
must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being put
at ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make it
a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you come to
dinner at the Rostovs'?"

And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and
extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,
became quite pleasant again.

"No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful fellow!
What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you don't know me.
We have not met for such a long time... not since we were children. You
might think that I... I understand, quite understand. I could not have
done it myself, I should not have had the courage, but it's splendid. I
am very glad to have made your acquaintance. It's queer," he added after
a pause, "that you should have suspected me!" He began to laugh. "Well,
what of it! I hope we'll get better acquainted," and he pressed Boris'
hand. "Do you know, I have not once been in to see the count. He has not
sent for me.... I am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?"

"And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked
Boris with a smile.

Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the
same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the
Boulogne expedition.

A footman came in to summon Boris--the princess was going. Pierre, in
order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to dinner,
and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his spectacles
into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing up and down
the room for a long time, no longer piercing an imaginary foe with
his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance of that pleasant,
intelligent, and resolute young man.

As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a lonely
life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man and made up
his mind that they would be friends.

Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her eyes
and her face was tearful.

"It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may I
shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be left
like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces put
it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare him!... Adieu,
Prince! May God support you..."

"Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her.

"Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when they
were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody."

"I don't understand, Mamma--what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked the
son.

"The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it."

"But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?"

"Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!"

"Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..."

"Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!" exclaimed the mother.





CHAPTER XVII


After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all alone
applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.

"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid who
kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then I'll
find you another place."

The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating poverty,
and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with her always
found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking to her with
exaggerated politeness.

"I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid.

"Ask the count to come to me."

The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look as
usual.

"Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to have,
my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras were not
ill-spent. He is worth it!"

He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands ruffling
his gray hair.

"What are your commands, little countess?"

"You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his
waistcoat. "It's the saute, most likely," she added with a smile. "Well,
you see, Count, I want some money."

Her face became sad.

"Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out his
pocketbook.

"I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking out
her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat.

"Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out in a
tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call will rush
to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!"

Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the count's
house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the room.

"This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the deferential
young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a moment, "yes,
bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't bring me such
tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean ones for the
countess."

"Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing deeply.

"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me to
inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the count
was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always a sign of
approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it brought at once?"

"Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess."

"What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile when
the young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible' with him.
That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible."

"Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world," said
the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum."

"You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the count,
and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study.

When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money, all
in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the countess'
little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something was agitating
her.

"Well, my dear?" asked the countess.

"Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is so
ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..."

"Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began, with a
blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified, elderly face, and
she took the money from under the handkerchief.

Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be ready
to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.

"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."

Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
kindhearted, and because they--friends from childhood--had to think
about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
But those tears were pleasant to them both.





CHAPTER XVIII


Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was
already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen into
his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.
From time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were
expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le terrible
dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for common
sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was known to the
Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and Petersburg, and both cities
wondered at her, laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told good
stories about her, while none the less all without exception respected
and feared her.

In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of war
that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the recruiting. None
of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew it had appeared.
The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were smoking and
talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head first to one
side and then to the other watched the smokers with evident pleasure
and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he egged on
against each other.

One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and wrinkled
face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most fashionable
young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and,
having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the
smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an old bachelor,
Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a man with "a sharp tongue" as they
said in Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending to his companion.
The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards, irreproachably washed,
brushed, and buttoned, held his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with
red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome
mouth in rings. This was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenov
regiment with whom Boris was to travel to join the army, and about
whom Natasha had, teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her
"intended." The count sat between them and listened attentively. His
favorite occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very
fond of, was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting
two loquacious talkers at one another.

"Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich," said
Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary Russian
expressions with the choicest French phrases--which was a peculiarity of
his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l'etat; * you want
to make something out of your company?"


     * You expect to make an income out of the government.


"No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry the
advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
position now, Peter Nikolaevich..."

Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain calm
and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no direct bearing
on himself. He could remain silent for hours without being at all put
out of countenance himself or making others uncomfortable, but as
soon as the conversation concerned himself he would begin to talk
circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.

"Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I should
get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even with the
rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and thirty," said
he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful, pleasant smile,
as if it were obvious to him that his success must always be the chief
desire of everyone else.

"Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I shall
be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies occur
much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what can be
done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a little
aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting a smoke
ring.

"La balance y est... * A German knows how to skin a flint, as the
proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side of
his mouth and winking at the count.


      * So that squares matters.


The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that Shinshin was
talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference,
continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards he had already
gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime
the company commander might get killed and he, as senior in the company,
might easily succeed to the post; how popular he was with everyone in
the regiment, and how satisfied his father was with him. Berg evidently
enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem to suspect that others,
too, might have their own interests. But all he said was so prettily
sedate, and the naivete of his youthful egotism was so obvious, that he
disarmed his hearers.

"Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go--foot or horse--that
I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking his
feet off the sofa.

Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the drawing
room.

It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests,
expecting the summons to zakuska, * avoid engaging in any long
conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in order
to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The host and
hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at one another,
and the visitors try to guess from these glances who, or what, they are
waiting for--some important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish
that is not yet ready.


     * Hors d'oeuvres.


Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the
middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come across,
blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make him talk, but
he went on naively looking around through his spectacles as if in search
of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. He was in
the way and was the only one who did not notice the fact. Most of the
guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked with curiosity at
this big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy, modest fellow
could have played such a prank on a policeman.

"You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him.

"Oui, madame," replied he, looking around him.

"You have not yet seen my husband?"

"Non, madame." He smiled quite inappropriately.

"You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it's very
interesting."

"Very interesting."

The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter
understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It was
charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was heard on all
sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.

"Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there.

"Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna
entered the room.

All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.

"Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her
children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all
others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the count who
was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay? Nowhere
to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just see how
these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed to the girls. "You must
look for husbands for them whether you like it or not...."

"Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called
Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up
fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl, but
I like her."

She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule and,
having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with the pleasure
of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and addressed herself to
Pierre.

"Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high tone
of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up her
sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a childlike
way through his spectacles.

"Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell
your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my
evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to
follow, for this was clearly only a prelude.

"A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed and
he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame, sir,
for shame! It would be better if you went to the war."

She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly keep
from laughing.

"Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya Dmitrievna.

The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed
on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them because
Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna Mikhaylovna
with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling Julie Karagina
went in with Nicholas. After them other couples followed, filling the
whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors, and governesses
followed singly. The footmen began moving about, chairs scraped, the
band struck up in the gallery, and the guests settled down in their
places. Then the strains of the count's household band were replaced by
the clatter of knives and forks, the voices of visitors, and the soft
steps of the footmen. At one end of the table sat the countess with
Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna Mikhaylovna on her left, the
other lady visitors were farther down. At the other end sat the count,
with the hussar colonel on his left and Shinshin and the other male
visitors on his right. Midway down the long table on one side sat the
grownup young people: Vera beside Berg, and Pierre beside Boris; and on
the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses. From behind the
crystal decanters and fruit vases the count kept glancing at his wife
and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his
neighbors' glasses, not neglecting his own. The countess in turn,
without omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from
behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed
by their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the
ladies' end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the
men's end the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the
colonel of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so
much that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg
with tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a
heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the guests
were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting opposite.
Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a great deal.
Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and went on to the
game without omitting a single dish or one of the wines. These latter
the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in a napkin, from behind
the next man's shoulders and whispered: "Dry Madeira"... "Hungarian"...
or "Rhine wine" as the case might be. Of the four crystal glasses
engraved with the count's monogram that stood before his plate,
Pierre held out one at random and drank with enjoyment, gazing with
ever-increasing amiability at the other guests. Natasha, who sat
opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen look at the boy they
are in love with and have just kissed for the first time. Sometimes that
same look fell on Pierre, and that funny lively little girl's look made
him inclined to laugh without knowing why.

Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina, to
whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya wore
a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned
pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas
and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept looking round
uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might be put upon the
children. The German tutor was trying to remember all the dishes, wines,
and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full description of the dinner
to his people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended when the butler
with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned, trying to
appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was mortified because
no one would understand that it was not to quench his thirst or from
greediness that he wanted it, but simply from a conscientious desire for
knowledge.





CHAPTER XIX


At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more animated. The
colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared in
Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day been
forwarded by courier to the commander in chief.

"And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked Shinshin.
"He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our turn next."

The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted to
the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's remark.

"It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a German
accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He declares in ze
manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze danger vreatening
Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as vell as ze sanctity
of its alliances..." he spoke this last word with particular emphasis as
if in it lay the gist of the matter.

Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he
repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:

... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and absolute
aim--to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations--has now decided
him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a new condition
for the attainment of that purpose.

"Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of wine
with dignity and looking to the count for approval.

"Connaissez-vous le Proverbe: * 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but turn
spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and smiling.
"Cela nous convient a merveille.*(2) Suvorov now--he knew what he was
about; yet they beat him a plate couture,*(3) and where are we to find
Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"*(4) said he, continually changing
from French to Russian.


     *Do you know the proverb?

     *(2) That suits us down to the ground.

     *(3) Hollow.

     *(4) I just ask you that.


"Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the colonel,
thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen all vill
pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"... he dwelt
particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he ended, again
turning to the count. "Zat is how ve old hussars look at it, and zere's
an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a young hussar, how do you
judge of it?" he added, addressing Nicholas, who when he heard that the
war was being discussed had turned from his partner with eyes and ears
intent on the colonel.

"I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up, turning his
plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as much decision and
desperation as though he were at that moment facing some great danger.
"I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer," he concluded,
conscious--as were others--after the words were uttered that his remarks
were too enthusiastic and emphatic for the occasion and were therefore
awkward.

"What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie.

Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them and down
to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.

Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly.

"That's fine," said he.

"The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping the
table.

"What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya Dmitrievna's
deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the table. "What are
you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the hussar, "and why are
you exciting yourself? Do you think the French are here?"

"I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile.

"It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You know my
son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going."

"I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in
God's hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a battle,"
replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried the whole
length of the table.

"That's true!"

Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end and
the men's at the other.

"You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you won't
ask!"

"I will," replied Natasha.

Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She half
rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to what
was coming, and turning to her mother:

"Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,
audible the whole length of the table.

"What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her daughter's
face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her sternly with a
threatening and forbidding movement of her head.

The conversation was hushed.

"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice sounded
still more firm and resolute.

The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook her
fat finger.

"Cossack!" she said threateningly.

Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the
elders.

"You had better take care!" said the countess.

"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried boldly,
with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good part.

Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.

"You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and to
Pierre, glancing at him again.

"Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.

Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even
Marya Dmitrievna.

"Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice cream."

"Carrot ices."

"No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed; "I
want to know!"

Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the guests
joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer but at the
incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had dared to
treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.

Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be
pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band
again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests, leaving
their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and reached across
the table to clink glasses with the count, with the children, and with
one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs scraped, and in the
same order in which they had entered but with redder faces, the guests
returned to the drawing room and to the count's study.





CHAPTER XX


The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the count's
visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms, some in the
sitting room, some in the library.

The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from
dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything.
The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered round the
clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played first. After she
had played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the
other young ladies in begging Natasha and Nicholas, who were noted for
their musical talent, to sing something. Natasha, who was treated as
though she were grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the
same time felt shy.

"What shall we sing?" she said.

"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.

"Well, then, let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But where
is Sonya?"

She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room ran to
look for her.

Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran to the
nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that she must
be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage was the place
of mourning for the younger female generation in the Rostov household.
And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on Nurse's dirty feather
bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy pink dress under her,
hiding her face with her slender fingers, and sobbing so convulsively
that her bare little shoulders shook. Natasha's face, which had been so
radiantly happy all that saint's day, suddenly changed: her eyes became
fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad neck and the corners of
her mouth drooped.

"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And
Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she began
to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was crying.
Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and hid her face
still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the blue-striped
feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort Sonya sat up and
began wiping her eyes and explaining.

"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have come...
he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she showed
a paper she held in her hand--with the verses Nicholas had written,
"still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can understand... what
a soul he has!"

And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.

"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and Boris
also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice... there are
no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin... one would
have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it can't be done.
And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the countess as her
mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling Nicholas' career and am
heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God is my witness," and she
made the sign of the cross, "I love her so much, and all of you, only
Vera... And what for? What have I done to her? I am so grateful to you
that I would willingly sacrifice everything, only I have nothing...."

Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in the
feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that she
understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.

"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true reason
of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to you since
dinner? Hasn't she?"

"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some others, and
she found them on my table and said she'd show them to Mamma, and that
I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him to marry me,
but that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with her all day...
Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..."

And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha lifted
her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began comforting
her.

"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you remember
how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting room after
supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't quite remember
how, but don't you remember that it could all be arranged and how nice
it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has married his first
cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know. And Boris says it
is quite possible. You know I have told him all about it. And he is so
clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you cry, Sonya, dear love,
darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed. "Vera's spiteful; never
mind her! And all will come right and she won't say anything to Mamma.
Nicholas will tell her himself, and he doesn't care at all for Julie."

Natasha kissed her on the hair.

Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it
seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin
playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.

"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her
frock and hair.

"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that had
strayed from under her friend's plaits.

Both laughed.

"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"

"Come along!"

"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said
Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!"

And she set off at a run along the passage.

Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran
after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face
and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people sang
the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted. Then
Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:


   At nighttime in the moon's fair glow
     How sweet, as fancies wander free,
   To feel that in this world there's one
     Who still is thinking but of thee!

   That while her fingers touch the harp
     Wafting sweet music o'er the lea,
   It is for thee thus swells her heart,
     Sighing its message out to thee...

   A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,
     But oh! till then I cannot live!...


He had not finished the last verse before the young people began to
get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and the
coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.


Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged him,
as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political conversation in
which several others joined but which bored Pierre. When the music began
Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing and
blushing:

"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."

"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you will
be my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the slender
little girl.

While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning up,
Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly happy;
she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was
sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady.
She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had given her to hold.
Assuming quite the pose of a society woman (heaven knows when and where
she had learned it) she talked with her partner, fanning herself and
smiling over the fan.

"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she crossed
the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.

Natasha blushed and laughed.

"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised at?"


In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs being
pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya Dmitrievna had
been playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and older
visitors. They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long, and
replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First came
Marya Dmitrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The count,
with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to
Marya Dmitrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit
up his face and as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended,
he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery,
addressing the first violin:

"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"

This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his youth.
(Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)

"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite
forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her
curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her laughter.

And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure at the
jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout partner,
Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened his
shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by
a smile that broadened his round face more and more, prepared the
onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively gay
strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a merry peasant
dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly
filled by the domestic serfs--the men on one side and the women on the
other--who with beaming faces had come to see their master making merry.

"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked the
nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.

The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did not
want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her powerful arms
hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the countess), and only her
stern but handsome face really joined in the dance. What was expressed
by the whole of the count's plump figure, in Marya Dmitrievna found
expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering nose.
But if the count, getting more and more into the swing of it, charmed
the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and the
agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna
produced no less impression by slight exertions--the least effort
to move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp her
foot--which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual
severity. The dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could
not attract a moment's attention to their own evolutions and did not
even try to do so. All were watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna.
Natasha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look
at Papa!" though as it was they never took their eyes off the couple.
In the intervals of the dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and
shouted to the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster;
lightly, more lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying
round Marya Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until,
turning his partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas,
raising his soft foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling
and making a wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and
laughter led by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily
and wiping their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.

"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count.

"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up her
sleeves and puffing heavily.





CHAPTER XXI


While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being danced, to a
tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen and
cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had a sixth stroke.
The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession,
communion was administered to the dying man, preparations made for the
sacrament of unction, and in his house there was the bustle and thrill
of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates,
a group of undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up, waited in
expectation of an important order for an expensive funeral. The Military
Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to
inquire after the count's health, came himself that evening to bid a
last farewell to the celebrated grandee of Catherine's court, Count
Bezukhov.

The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up
respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an
hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their
bows and trying to escape as quickly as possible from the glances fixed
on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince
Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,
escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times in
low tones.

When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all alone on
a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the other, leaning
his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his hand. After sitting
so for a while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened eyes,
went with unusually hurried steps down the long corridor leading to the
back of the house, to the room of the eldest princess.

Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous
whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying man's
room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy at
his door, which creaked slightly when opened.

"The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed,"
said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was
listening naively to his words.

"I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?" asked the lady,
adding the priest's clerical title, as if she had no opinion of her own
on the subject.

"Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament," replied the priest, passing his
hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his bald
head.

"Who was that? The Military Governor himself?" was being asked at the
other side of the room. "How young-looking he is!"

"Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes
anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction."

"I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times."

The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes red
from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a
graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a
table.

"Beautiful," said the doctor in answer to a remark about the weather.
"The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow one feels as
if one were in the country."

"Yes, indeed," replied the princess with a sigh. "So he may have
something to drink?"

Lorrain considered.

"Has he taken his medicine?"

"Yes."

The doctor glanced at his watch.

"Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar," and
he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.

"Dere has neffer been a gase," a German doctor was saying to an
aide-de-camp, "dat one liffs after de sird stroke."

"And what a well-preserved man he was!" remarked the aide-de-camp. "And
who will inherit his wealth?" he added in a whisper.

"It von't go begging," replied the German with a smile.

Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second
princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to Lorrain's
instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.

"Do you think he can last till morning?" asked the German, addressing
Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.

Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger before
his nose.

"Tonight, not later," said he in a low voice, and he moved away with a
decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to understand
and state the patient's condition.


Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room.

In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning before
the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt pastilles.
The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture, whatnots,
cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white feather bed was
just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to bark.

"Ah, is it you, cousin?"

She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely smooth
that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and covered with
varnish.

"Has anything happened?" she asked. "I am so terrified."

"No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about business,
Catiche," * muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on the chair
she had just vacated. "You have made the place warm, I must say," he
remarked. "Well, sit down: let's have a talk."


     *Catherine.


"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her unchanging
stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the prince, she
prepared to listen.

"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't."

"Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending it
downwards as was his habit.

It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both
understood without naming.

The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for her
legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion in her
prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up at the icons
with a sigh. This might have been taken as an expression of sorrow and
devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting before long. Prince Vasili
understood it as an expression of weariness.

"And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn out
as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a very
serious talk."

Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously, now
on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant expression
which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes too seemed
strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly and at the next
glanced round in alarm.

The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony
hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved
not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.

"Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,"
continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not
without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of
everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love you
all, like children of my own, as you know."

The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the same
dull expression.

"And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince Vasili
went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at her.
"You know, Catiche, that we--you three sisters, Mamontov, and my
wife--are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it is
for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me; but,
my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for anything. Do
you know I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing to his portrait,
"definitely demanded that he should be called."

Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not make
out whether she was considering what he had just said or whether she was
simply looking at him.

"There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she
replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow his
noble soul peacefully to leave this..."

"Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently, rubbing
his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little table that
he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you know yourself
that last winter the count made a will by which he left all his
property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre."

"He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he
cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate."

"But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little table
and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if a letter
has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for Pierre's
legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of the count's
services, his request would be granted?..."

The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about the
subject under discussion than those they are talking with.

"I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand, "that
letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew of it.
The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, then as soon
as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate what he meant by
the words all is over, "and the count's papers are opened, the will and
letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and the petition will certainly
be granted. Pierre will get everything as the legitimate son."

"And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if anything
might happen, only not that.

"But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be the
legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must know, my
dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether they have
been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been overlooked, you
ought to know where they are, and must find them, because..."

"What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and not
changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you think we are
all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot inherit... un
batard!" * she added, as if supposing that this translation of the
word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the invalidity of his
contention.


     * A bastard.


"Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so intelligent,
how is it you don't see that if the count has written a letter to the
Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate, it follows that
Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count Bezukhov, and will then
inherit everything under the will? And if the will and letter are not
destroyed, then you will have nothing but the consolation of having been
dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit! * That's certain."


     * And all that follows therefrom.


"I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and you,
mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the princess with
the expression women assume when they suppose they are saying something
witty and stinging.

"My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili impatiently,
"I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about your interests
as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I tell you for the
tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and the will in Pierre's
favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear girl, you and your
sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me, then believe
an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich" (the family
solicitor) "and he says the same."

At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas; her
thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her voice
when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she herself
evidently did not expect.

"That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and I
don't now."

She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.

"And this is gratitude--this is recognition for those who have
sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid! Fine! I
don't want anything, Prince."

"Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..." replied
Prince Vasili.

But the princess did not listen to him.

"Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could expect
nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and ingratitude--the
blackest ingratitude--in this house..."

"Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince Vasili,
his cheeks twitching more than ever.

"Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and
sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has
been intriguing!"

The princess wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand. She
had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole human race.
She gave her companion an angry glance.

"There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it was
all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was afterwards
forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to ease his
last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and not to let
him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..."

"Who sacrificed everything for him," chimed in the princess, who would
again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, "though he
never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin," she added with a sigh, "I
shall always remember that in this world one must expect no reward, that
in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this world one has
to be cunning and cruel."

"Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart."

"No, I have a wicked heart."

"I know your heart," repeated the prince. "I value your friendship and
wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don't upset yourself, and let
us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or be it but an
hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above all where it is.
You must know. We will take it at once and show it to the count. He has,
no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it. You understand that
my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his wishes; that is my
only reason for being here. I came simply to help him and you."

"Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing--I know!" cried the
princess.

"That's not the point, my dear."

"It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that Anna
Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the infamous, vile
woman!"

"Do not let us lose any time..."

"Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here and
told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us, especially about
Sophie--I can't repeat them--that it made the count quite ill and he
would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was then he wrote this
vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was invalid."

"We've got to it at last--why did you not tell me about it sooner?"

"It's in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow," said the
princess, ignoring his question. "Now I know! Yes; if I have a sin,
a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!" almost shrieked the
princess, now quite changed. "And what does she come worming herself in
here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind. The time will come!"





CHAPTER XXII


While these conversations were going on in the reception room and the
princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent for) and
Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him) was driving
into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels rolled softly
over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna, having turned with
words of comfort to her companion, realized that he was asleep in
his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre followed Anna
Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began to think of the
interview with his dying father which awaited him. He noticed that they
had not come to the front entrance but to the back door. While he
was getting down from the carriage steps two men, who looked like
tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and hid in the shadow of
the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed several other men of the
same kind hiding in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither
Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the coachman, who could not help
seeing these people, took any notice of them. "It seems to be all
right," Pierre concluded, and followed Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly
ascended the narrow dimly lit stone staircase, calling to Pierre,
who was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why it was
necessary for him to go to the count at all, still less why he had to go
by the back stairs, yet judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of assurance
and haste, Pierre concluded that it was all absolutely necessary.
Halfway up the stairs they were almost knocked over by some men who,
carrying pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These
men pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass
and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.

"Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna Mikhaylovna
of one of them.

"Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were now
permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am."

"Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he reached the
landing. "I'd better go to my own room."

Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up.

"Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her son's
when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no less than
you do, but be a man!"

"But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at her
over his spectacles.

"Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done you.
Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death." She
sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust yourself to
me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests."

Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this had
to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who was
already opening a door.

This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the
princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been
in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of
these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past
with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the
princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The first
door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid with the
decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything in the house
was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna in
passing instinctively glanced into the room, where Prince Vasili and the
eldest princess were sitting close together talking. Seeing them pass,
Prince Vasili drew back with obvious impatience, while the princess
jumped up and with a gesture of desperation slammed the door with all
her might.

This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear depicted
on Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity that Pierre
stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Anna
Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly and sighed, as
if to say that this was no more than she had expected.

"Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in
reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.

Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what
"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these
things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit
room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those sumptuous
but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front approach, but
even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and water had been
spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a censer and by
a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them. They went into
the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian windows opening
into the conservatory, with its large bust and full length portrait of
Catherine the Great. The same people were still sitting here in almost
the same positions as before, whispering to one another. All became
silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn Anna Mikhaylovna as she
entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre who, hanging his head,
meekly followed her.

Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the decisive
moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg lady she now,
keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even more boldly than
that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her the person the
dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured. Casting a rapid
glance at all those in the room and noticing the count's confessor
there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble, not exactly bowing yet
seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and respectfully received the blessing
first of one and then of another priest.

"God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the priests;
"all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man is the
count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!"

Having said this she went up to the doctor.

"Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is there
any hope?"

The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his
shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her
shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved away
from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful and
tenderly sad voice, she said:

"Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit
and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone was
watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind it.

Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly, moved
toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna had
disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned to him
with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they
whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him with a kind
of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had never before
received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had been talking to
the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an aide-de-camp picked up
and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the doctors became respectfully
silent as he passed by, and moved to make way for him. At first Pierre
wished to take another seat so as not to trouble the lady, and also to
pick up the glove himself and to pass round the doctors who were not
even in his way; but all at once he felt that this would not do, and
that tonight he was a person obliged to perform some sort of awful
rite which everyone expected of him, and that he was therefore bound
to accept their services. He took the glove in silence from the
aide-de-camp, and sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands
symmetrically on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue,
and decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in
order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on his
own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the will of
those who were guiding him.

Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect
majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three
stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the morning;
his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and noticed
Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never used to do),
and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain whether it was firmly
fixed on.

"Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is well!"
and he turned to go.

But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated, not
knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the count,"
yet ashamed to call him "father."

"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my friend..."

Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"
suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili
in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went
through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him, and
the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the door.
Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, and at
last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but resolute
in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly on the arm
said:

"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be administered.
Come."

Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed
that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all
followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission to
enter that room.





CHAPTER XXIII


Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its
walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the
columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and
on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly illuminated
with red light like a Russian church during evening service. Under
the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in that chair
on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed, Pierre
saw--covered to the waist by a bright green quilt--the familiar,
majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that gray mane of
hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a lion, and the deep
characteristically noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He lay
just under the icons; his large thick hands outside the quilt. Into the
right hand, which was lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been thrust
between forefinger and thumb, and an old servant, bending over from
behind the chair, held it in position. By the chair stood the priests,
their long hair falling over their magnificent glittering vestments,
with lighted tapers in their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the
service. A little behind them stood the two younger princesses holding
handkerchiefs to their eyes, and just in front of them their eldest
sister, Catiche, with a vicious and determined look steadily fixed on
the icons, as though declaring to all that she could not answer
for herself should she glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek,
sorrowful, and all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door
near the strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the
invalid chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on
the carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose,
and was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward
each time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety
and resignation to the will of God. "If you do not understand these
sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so much the worse for you!"

Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;
the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently crossing
themselves, and the reading of the church service, the subdued chanting
of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and the shuffling of
feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna Mikhaylovna, with an
air of importance that showed that she felt she quite knew what she was
about, went across the room to where Pierre was standing and gave him
a taper. He lit it and, distracted by observing those around him, began
crossing himself with the hand that held the taper.

Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the mole,
watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and remained
with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing Pierre she
again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look at him
without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be out of
temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In the midst
of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased, they whispered
to one another, and the old servant who was holding the count's hand got
up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna stepped forward
and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to Lorrain from behind her
back. The French doctor held no taper; he was leaning against one of the
columns in a respectful attitude implying that he, a foreigner, in spite
of all differences of faith, understood the full importance of the rite
now being performed and even approved of it. He now approached the
sick man with the noiseless step of one in full vigor of life, with his
delicate white fingers raised from the green quilt the hand that was
free, and turning sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The
sick man was given something to drink, there was a stir around him, then
the people resumed their places and the service continued. During this
interval Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which he
had been leaning, and--with an air which intimated that he knew what he
was about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse
for them--did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined the
eldest princess, and moved with her to the side of the room where stood
the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the bed both
Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back door, but returned
to their places one after the other before the service was concluded.
Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to the rest of
what went on, having made up his mind once for all that what he saw
happening around him that evening was in some way essential.

The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest was
heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received the
sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as before. Around
him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and whispers, among which
Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct.

Pierre heard her say:

"Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be impossible..."

The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and servants
that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with its gray
mane--which, though he saw other faces as well, he had not lost sight of
for a single moment during the whole service. He judged by the cautious
movements of those who crowded round the invalid chair that they had
lifted the dying man and were moving him.

"Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the servants
say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath. Here!"
exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the bearers and
the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the weight they
were carrying were too much for them.

As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young man
he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the dying
man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised by
those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his gray, curly,
leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow and cheekbones,
its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic expression, was
not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the same as Pierre
remembered it three months before, when the count had sent him to
Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly with the uneven
movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze fixed itself upon
nothing.

After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who had
carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched Pierre's hand
and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on which the sick
man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony just
completed. He lay with his head propped high on the pillows. His hands
were symmetrically placed on the green silk quilt, the palms downward.
When Pierre came up the count was gazing straight at him, but with a
look the significance of which could not be understood by mortal man.
Either this look meant nothing but that as long as one has eyes they
must look somewhere, or it meant too much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing
what to do, and glanced inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made
a hurried sign with her eyes, glancing at the sick man's hand and moving
her lips as if to send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck
so as not to touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his
lips to the large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a
single muscle of the count's face stirred. Once more Pierre looked
questioningly at Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was to do next. Anna
Mikhaylovna with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed.
Pierre obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right.
Anna Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively
symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that his
stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to look
as small as possible. He looked at the count, who still gazed at the
spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat down. Anna Mikhaylovna
indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the pathetic importance
of these last moments of meeting between the father and son. This lasted
about two minutes, which to Pierre seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad
muscles and lines of the count's face began to twitch. The twitching
increased, the handsome mouth was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre
realize how near death his father was), and from that distorted mouth
issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Anna Mikhaylovna looked attentively
at the sick man's eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed
first to Pierre, then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an
inquiring whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the
sick man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who
stood constantly at the head of the bed.

"Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up to
turn the count's heavy body toward the wall.

Pierre rose to help him.

While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back
helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward. Whether he
noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded that lifeless arm,
or whether some other thought flitted across his dying brain, at any
rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's terror-stricken face,
and again at the arm, and on his face a feeble, piteous smile appeared,
quite out of keeping with his features, that seemed to deride his own
helplessness. At sight of this smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering
in his breast and a tickling in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The
sick man was turned on to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.

"He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the
princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go."

Pierre went out.





CHAPTER XXIV


There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili and the
eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of Catherine the
Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre and his companion
they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the princess hide
something as she whispered:

"I can't bear the sight of that woman."

"Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said Prince
Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor Anna
Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out."

To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze
below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the small
drawing room.

"There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup of this
delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of restrained
animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese handleless
cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid in the small
circular room. Around the table all who were at Count Bezukhov's house
that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre well remembered
this small circular drawing room with its mirrors and little tables.
During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not know how to dance,
had liked sitting in this room to watch the ladies who, as they passed
through in their ball dresses with diamonds and pearls on their bare
shoulders, looked at themselves in the brilliantly lighted mirrors which
repeated their reflections several times. Now this same room was dimly
lighted by two candles. On one small table tea things and supper dishes
stood in disorder, and in the middle of the night a motley throng
of people sat there, not merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and
betraying by every word and movement that they none of them forgot what
was happening and what was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did
not eat anything though he would very much have liked to. He looked
inquiringly at his monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe
to the reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the eldest
princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a
short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside the
princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.

"Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not
necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the same
state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.

"But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but
impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other
from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment when he
needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is already
prepared..."

Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar attitude, with
one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which were so flabby
that they looked heavier below, were twitching violently; but he wore
the air of a man little concerned in what the two ladies were saying.

"Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases. You know
how fond the count is of her."

"I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the two
ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid portfolio she
held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is in his writing
table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...."

She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to bar
her path.

"I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the
portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.
"Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je vous en
conjure..."

The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the
portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if
the princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna
Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost none
of its honeyed firmness and softness.

"Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place in a
family consultation; is it not so, Prince?"

"Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so loud
that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. "Why do you
remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to interfere, making
a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room? Intriguer!" she
hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the portfolio.

But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold on the
portfolio, and changed her grip.

Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise, "this is
absurd! Come, let go I tell you."

The princess let go.

"And you too!"

But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.

"Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will go
and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?"

"But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn sacrament,
allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your opinion," said
she, turning to the young man who, having come quite close, was gazing
with astonishment at the angry face of the princess which had lost all
dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Prince Vasili.

"Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince Vasili
severely. "You don't know what you are doing."

"Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.

Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.

At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so long
and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and banged
against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed out
wringing her hands.

"What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you leave
me alone with him!"

Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping, quickly
caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. The eldest
princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed her. A few
minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard face, again
biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression showed an
irrepressible hatred.

"Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been
waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her
handkerchief and rushed from the room.

Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was
sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre
noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in an
ague.

"Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there was
in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in it
before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am
near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all! Death is
awful..." and he burst into tears.

Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow, quiet
steps.

"Pierre!" she said.

Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his
forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:

"He is no more...."

Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.

"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
tears."

She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one could
see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned he was
fast asleep with his head on his arm.

In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:

"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you. But
God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in command of
an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I know you well
enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but it imposes
duties on you, and you must be a man."

Pierre was silent.

"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not been
there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle promised
me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But he had no
time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your father's wish?"

Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the
morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of
Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would herself
wish to die, that his end was not only touching but edifying. As to the
last meeting between father and son, it was so touching that she could
not think of it without tears, and did not know which had behaved better
during those awful moments--the father who so remembered everything
and everybody at last and had spoken such pathetic words to the son, or
Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief,
though he tried hard to hide it in order not to sadden his dying father.
"It is painful, but it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such
men as the old count and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of
the eldest princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in
whispers and as a great secret.





CHAPTER XXV


At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the
arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the
old prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich
(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow to
Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to
say that there are only two sources of human vice--idleness and
superstition, and only two virtues--activity and intelligence. He
himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these two
cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry
till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was
occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving
problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working
in the garden, or superintending the building that was always going on
at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating activity,
regularity in his household was carried to the highest point of
exactitude. He always came to table under precisely the same conditions,
and not only at the same hour but at the same minute. With those about
him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was sharp and invariably
exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he inspired such fear
and respect as few hardhearted men would have aroused. Although he was
in retirement and had now no influence in political affairs, every high
official appointed to the province in which the prince's estate lay
considered it his duty to visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber
just as the architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince
appeared punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this
antechamber experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when
the enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather
small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray
eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his shrewd,
youthfully glittering eyes.

On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive, Princess
Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed for the
morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and repeating a
silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and every morning
prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.

An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose
quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in."

Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess timidly
opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused at the
entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after glancing round
continued his work.

The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use.
The large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted
bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while
standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with
tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around--all indicated
continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot
shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure
of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince still possessed the
tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a few more turns
of the lathe he removed his foot from the pedal, wiped his chisel,
dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching
the table, summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a blessing,
so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding
her tenderly and attentively, said severely:

"Quite well? All right then, sit down." He took the exercise book
containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a chair
with his foot.

"For tomorrow!" said he, quickly finding the page and making a scratch
from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.

The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.

"Wait a bit, here's a letter for you," said the old man suddenly, taking
a letter addressed in a woman's hand from a bag hanging above the table,
onto which he threw it.

At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the
princess' face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.

"From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his still
sound, yellowish teeth.

"Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and a
timid smile.

"I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said the
prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the
third!"

"Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still more
and holding out the letter.

"The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing the
letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward him the
exercise book containing geometrical figures.

"Well, madam," he began, stooping over the book close to his daughter
and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat, so that
she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of old age
and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these triangles
are equal; please note that the angle ABC..."

The princess looked in a scared way at her father's eyes glittering
close to her; the red patches on her face came and went, and it was
plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened that her
fear would prevent her understanding any of her father's further
explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was the teacher's
fault or the pupil's, this same thing happened every day: the princess'
eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear anything, but was
only conscious of her stern father's withered face close to her, of his
breath and the smell of him, and could think only of how to get away
quickly to her own room to make out the problem in peace. The old man
was beside himself: moved the chair on which he was sitting noisily
backward and forward, made efforts to control himself and not become
vehement, but almost always did become vehement, scolded, and sometimes
flung the exercise book away.

The princess gave a wrong answer.

"Well now, isn't she a fool!" shouted the prince, pushing the book aside
and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up and down,
lightly touched his daughter's hair and sat down again.

He drew up his chair, and continued to explain.

"This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary,
having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's lesson,
was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam! I don't want
to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and you'll like it,"
and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the nonsense out of your
head."

She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an uncut
book from the high desk.

"Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has sent
you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I have looked
at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go."

He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.

Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared expression that
rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly face yet plainer. She
sat down at her writing table, on which stood miniature portraits and
which was littered with books and papers. The princess was as untidy as
her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book and eagerly broke
the seal of her letter. It was from her most intimate friend from
childhood; that same Julie Karagina who had been at the Rostovs'
name-day party.

Julie wrote in French:


Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is
separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my happiness
are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance separating us
our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart rebels against
fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions around me I cannot
overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in my heart ever since
we parted. Why are we not together as we were last summer, in your big
study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa? Why cannot I now, as
three months ago, draw fresh moral strength from your look, so gentle,
calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so well and seem to see before me
as I write?


Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the mirror
which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and
thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular hopelessness
at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me," thought the princess,
turning away and continuing to read. But Julie did not flatter her
friend, the princess' eyes--large, deep and luminous (it seemed as if at
times there radiated from them shafts of warm light)--were so beautiful
that very often in spite of the plainness of her face they gave her an
attraction more powerful than that of beauty. But the princess never saw
the beautiful expression of her own eyes--the look they had when she
was not thinking of herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced
unnatural expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She went on
reading:


All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is already
abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on their march
to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg and it is thought
intends to expose his precious person to the chances of war. God grant
that the Corsican monster who is destroying the peace of Europe may
be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the Almighty, in His
goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing of my brothers, this
war has deprived me of one of the associations nearest my heart. I mean
young Nicholas Rostov, who with his enthusiasm could not bear to remain
inactive and has left the university to join the army. I will confess to
you, dear Mary, that in spite of his extreme youth his departure for
the army was a great grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you
last summer, is so noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which
one seldom finds nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly,
he is so frank and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that
my relations with him, transient as they were, have been one of the
sweetest comforts to my poor heart, which has already suffered so much.
Someday I will tell you about our parting and all that was said then.
That is still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know
these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are
generally the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too
young ever to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship,
this poetic and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of
this! The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of
old Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses
have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur
Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been
recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and possessor
of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince Vasili played
a very despicable part in this affair and that he returned to Petersburg
quite crestfallen.

I confess I understand very little about all these matters of wills and
inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom we all used
to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count Bezukhov and the
owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to
watch the change in the tone and manners of the mammas burdened by
marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies themselves, toward
him, though, between you and me, he always seemed to me a poor sort
of fellow. As for the past two years people have amused themselves
by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't even know), the
matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as the future Countess
Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have no desire for the post. A
propos of marriages: do you know that a while ago that universal auntie
Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of
marriage for you. It is neither more nor less than with Prince Vasili's
son Anatole, whom they wish to reform by marrying him to someone rich
and distinguee, and it is on you that his relations' choice has fallen.
I don't know what you will think of it, but I consider it my duty to
let you know of it. He is said to be very handsome and a terrible
scapegrace. That is all I have been able to find out about him.

But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper,
and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the
mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here. Though
there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to grasp, it
is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul. Adieu! Give
my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments to Mademoiselle
Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.

JULIE

P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.


The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her luminous
eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then she suddenly
rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She took a sheet of
paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is the reply she wrote,
also in French:


Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great
delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which
you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual effect
on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say, if I
dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? Ah, if
we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why do you
suppose that I should look severely on your affection for that young
man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I understand such
feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve of
them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian
love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is worthier, sweeter,
and better than the feelings which the beautiful eyes of a young man can
inspire in a romantic and loving young girl like yourself.

The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and
my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last
representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own
turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as late as
possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!

I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He always
seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the quality I value
most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played by Prince
Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine
Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are terribly
true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still more sorry for Pierre. So young,
and burdened with such riches--to what temptations he will be exposed!
If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be poorer
than the poorest beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume
you have sent me and which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you
tell me that among some good things it contains others which our weak
human understanding cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend
time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit.
I never could understand the fondness some people have for confusing
their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their
doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration
quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Epistles
and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they contain;
for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and
holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh which forms
an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather confine
ourselves to studying those sublime rules which our divine Saviour has
left for our guidance here below. Let us try to conform to them and
follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less we let our feeble
human minds roam, the better we shall please God, who rejects all
knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we seek to fathom
what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will He
vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.

My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me that
he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasili. In
regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you, dear sweet
friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution to which we must
conform. However painful it may be to me, should the Almighty lay
the duties of wife and mother upon me I shall try to perform them as
faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by examining my feelings
toward him whom He may give me for husband.

I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy arrival
at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief one,
however, for he will leave, us again to take part in this unhappy war
into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only where you
are--at the heart of affairs and of the world--is the talk all of
war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature--which townsfolk
consider characteristic of the country--rumors of war are heard
and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day
before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I witnessed a
heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled from our
people and starting to join the army. You should have seen the state of
the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should
have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the
laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of
injuries--and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing
one another.

Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most Holy
Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!

MARY


"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already dispatched
mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling Mademoiselle
Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r's.
She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous, mournful, and gloomy world a
quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and self-satisfied.

"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and evidently
listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with exaggerated
grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael Ivanovich. He is in
a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."

"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to
warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge him
and would not have others do so."

The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five minutes
late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting
room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock, as the
day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played the
clavichord.





CHAPTER XXVI


The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of
the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house
through the closed doors came the sound of difficult passages--twenty
times repeated--of a sonata by Dussek.

Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to the
porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to
alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old Tikhon, wearing
a wig, put his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in
a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the door.
Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival nor any other unusual event
must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Prince Andrew
apparently knew this as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to
ascertain whether his father's habits had changed since he was at home
last, and, having assured himself that they had not, he turned to his
wife.

"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room," he
said.

The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes
and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak just as
merrily and prettily as ever.

"Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around with
the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball. "Let's
come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at Tikhon, at
her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.

"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by surprise."

Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.

"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who
kissed his hand.

Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord
came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.

"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let her
know."

"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne," said the little
princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my sister-in-law's
friendship for you. She was not expecting us?"

They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound
of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped and
made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.

The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the
middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary's heavy tread and the sound
of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who had only
met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each other's
arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they happened to
touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her hand to her
heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready to cry or to
laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as lovers
of music do when they hear a false note. The two women let go of one
another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other's
hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kissing each
other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew's surprise both began to
cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle Bourienne also began to cry. Prince
Andrew evidently felt ill at ease, but to the two women it seemed quite
natural that they should cry, and apparently it never entered their
heads that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.

"Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then laughed.
"I dreamed last night..."--"You were not expecting us?..." "Ah! Mary,
you have got thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..."

"I knew the princess at once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I did not
see you."

Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, and
he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess Mary had
turned toward her brother, and through her tears the loving, warm,
gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment,
rested on Prince Andrew's face.

The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip
continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary
and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of
glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had
had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in her
condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had left
all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would have
to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that Kitty
Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor for Mary,
a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess Mary was
still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were full
of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following a train of
thought independent of her sister-in-law's words. In the midst of a
description of the last Petersburg fete she addressed her brother:

"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing.

Lise sighed too.

"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her brother.

"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
promotion..."

Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of
thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her figure.

"Is it certain?" she said.

The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said: "Yes,
quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..."

Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's and
unexpectedly again began to cry.

"She needs rest," said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise?
Take her to your room and I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the same?"

"Yes, just the same. Though I don't know what your opinion will be,"
answered the princess joyfully.

"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the
lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which
showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he was
aware of his weaknesses.

"The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and my
geometry lessons," said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her lessons in
geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.

When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the old
prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his father.
The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor of his
son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments while
he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-fashioned
style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when Prince Andrew
entered his father's dressing room (not with the contemptuous look and
manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated face with which
he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large leather-covered
chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to Tikhon.

"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old
man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was
holding fast to plait, would allow.

"You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like this
he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he held out
his cheek.

The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He used
to say that a nap "after dinner was silver--before dinner, golden.")
He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, bushy
eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father on the
spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's favorite
topic--making fun of the military men of the day, and more particularly
of Bonaparte.

"Yes, Father, I have come to you and brought my wife who is pregnant,"
said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his father's face with
an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?"

"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from
morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well."

"Thank God," said his son smiling.

"God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on," he continued, returning to
his hobby; "tell me how the Germans have taught you to fight Bonaparte
by this new science you call 'strategy.'"

Prince Andrew smiled.

"Give me time to collect my wits, Father," said he, with a smile that
showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his son from loving and
honoring him. "Why, I have not yet had time to settle down!"

"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to see
whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand. "The house
for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there and show her
over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's their woman's
way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About Mikhelson's army
I understand--Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous expedition.... But what's
the southern army to do? Prussia is neutral... I know that. What about
Austria?" said he, rising from his chair and pacing up and down the room
followed by Tikhon, who ran after him, handing him different articles of
clothing. "What of Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"

Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began--at first
reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from habit
changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on--to explain
the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained how an army,
ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring her out
of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part of that army was
to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two hundred and twenty
thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand Russians, were to operate in
Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty thousand Russians and as many English
were to land at Naples, and how a total force of five hundred thousand
men was to attack the French from different sides. The old prince did
not evince the least interest during this explanation, but as if he were
not listening to it continued to dress while walking about, and three
times unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The
white one, the white one!"

This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he wanted.
Another time he interrupted, saying:

"And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head reproachfully
said: "That's bad! Go on, go on."

The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old age:
"Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra." *


     * "Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll
     return."


His son only smiled.

"I don't say it's a plan I approve of," said the son; "I am only telling
you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now, not worse than
this one."

"Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated,
meditatively and rapidly:

"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room."





CHAPTER XXVII


At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the
dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle
Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who
by a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though the
position of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly
not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who generally kept
very strictly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even important
government officials to his table, had unexpectedly selected Michael
Ivanovich (who always went into a corner to blow his nose on his checked
handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and had
more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not
a whit worse than you or I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the
taciturn Michael Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.

In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was
exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen--one
behind each chair--stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head
butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making
signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the door
by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at a large
gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes
Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted
portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate)
of a ruling prince, in a crown--an alleged descendant of Rurik and
ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew, looking again at that
genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at
a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.

"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had
come up to him.

Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not understand
what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired her with
reverence and was beyond question.

"Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew. "Fancy, with
his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!"

Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's
criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were heard
coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily as was
his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his manners
with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the great clock
struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from the drawing
room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes from under
their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and rested on
the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar enters, the
sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired in all around
him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly on the back of
her neck.

"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into her
eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit down, sit
down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"

He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman moved
the chair for her.

"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded figure.
"You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"

He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips only
and not with his eyes.

"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he said.

The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She was
silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father, and
she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual acquaintances, and
she became still more animated and chattered away giving him greetings
from various people and retailing the town gossip.

"Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has cried
her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively.

As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more sternly,
and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had formed a
definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael Ivanovich.

"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of it.
Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling
me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I never
thought much of him."

Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such
things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a peg on
which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked inquiringly at the
young prince, wondering what would follow.

"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to the
architect.

And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and the
generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced not
only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the
A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant
little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any
Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced that
there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war, but
only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing,
pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with his
father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened to him
with evident pleasure.

"The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov himself
fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not know how to
escape?"

"Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked
away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider,
Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would
have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled
the devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what chance
has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and your
generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call in the
French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The German,
Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the Frenchman,
Moreau," he said, alluding to the invitation made that year to Moreau
to enter the Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the Potemkins,
Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows have all lost
your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you, but we'll see what
will happen. Buonaparte has become a great commander among them! Hm!..."

"I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince Andrew, "I
am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may laugh as much as
you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great general!"

"Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy
with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you
Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says the same thing."

"To be sure, your excellency," replied the architect.

The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.

"Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got
splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only
idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began everybody
has beaten the Germans. They beat no one--except one another. He made
his reputation fighting them."

And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to
him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His
son made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were
presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion. He
listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how this
old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could know and
discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European military and
political events.

"You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state of
affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't sleep
at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours shown his
skill?" he concluded.

"That would take too long to tell," answered the son.

"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's
another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he exclaimed in
excellent French.

"You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!"

"Dieu sait quand reviendra..." hummed the prince out of tune and, with a
laugh still more so, he quitted the table.

The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of
the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her
father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she
took her sister-in-law's arm and drew her into another room.

"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps that is why I am
afraid of him."

"Oh, he is so kind!" answered Princess Mary.





CHAPTER XXVIII


Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not altering
his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little princess was
in her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling coat without
epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms assigned to him.
After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing the trunks put in, he
ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those things he always kept
with him remained in his room; a small box, a large canteen fitted with
silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a saber--a present from his
father who had brought it from the siege of Ochakov. All these traveling
effects of Prince Andrew's were in very good order: new, clean, and in
cloth covers carefully tied with tapes.

When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men capable
of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments
one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince Andrew's face
looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him he paced
briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking straight before him
and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear going to the war, or was
he sad at leaving his wife?--perhaps both, but evidently he did not
wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing footsteps in the passage he
hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped at a table as if tying the
cover of the small box, and assumed his usual tranquil and impenetrable
expression. It was the heavy tread of Princess Mary that he heard.

"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she had
apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another talk with
you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You are not angry
with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha," she added, as if to
explain such a question.

She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously
strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be
Andrusha--the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in
childhood.

"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a smile.

"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room. Oh,
Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting down on
the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a dear, merry
child. I have grown so fond of her."

Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical and
contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.

"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from them,
Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated in
society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter into
everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. * Think
what it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,
to be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in her
condition! It's very hard."


     * To understand all is to forgive all.


Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at those we
think we thoroughly understand.

"You live in the country and don't think the life terrible," he replied.

"I... that's different. Why speak of me? I don't want any other life,
and can't, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young society
woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her life,
all alone--for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what poor
resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best society.
There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...."

"I don't like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all," said Prince Andrew.

"No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be pitied.
She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her, and she's
even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am even more
so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She and Michael
Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle and kind,
because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says: 'We don't
love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we
have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless after losing her
own father. She is very good-natured, and my father likes her way of
reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads splendidly."

"To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes makes
things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked suddenly.

Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.

"For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she.

"He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting very
trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their father
in order to puzzle or test his sister.

"You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of intellectual
pride," said the princess, following the train of her own thoughts
rather than the trend of the conversation--"and that's a great sin.
How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what feeling except
veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I am so contented
and happy with him. I only wish you were all as happy as I am."

Her brother shook his head incredulously.

"The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,
Andrew... is Father's way of treating religious subjects. I don't
understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what is
as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing
that makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of
improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was a
monk he received and had a long talk with."

"Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your powder,"
said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.

"Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me. Andrew..."
she said timidly after a moment's silence, "I have a great favor to ask
of you."

"What is it, dear?"

"No--promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble
and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,
Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet
taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were
the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request was
granted.

She looked timidly at her brother.

"Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew, as
if guessing what it was about.

"Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as
you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our
grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out what
she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?"

"Of course. What is it?"

"Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will
never take it off. Do you promise?"

"If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won't break my neck... To
please you..." said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the pained
expression his joke had brought to his sister's face, he repented and
added: "I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad."

"Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring you
to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace," said she in a voice
trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before her
brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour in a gold
setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.

She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.

"Please, Andrew, for my sake!..."

Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes lit
up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her brother
would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew understood,
crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of tenderness, for
he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.

"Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down again
on the sofa. They were silent for a while.

"As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you always
used to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so sweet, so
good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one."

"I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or blamed
her. Why do you say all this to me?"

Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as if
she felt guilty.

"I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to. And I
am sorry for that," he went on.

The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried to
say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the little
princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings
about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had complained of her
fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After crying she had fallen
asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.

"Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and never
shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach myself
with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in whatever
circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the truth... if
you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why this
is so I don't know..."

As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed
her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and
unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over
her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.

"Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or--go and wake and I'll come
in a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take these
away. Put this on the seat and this to the right."

Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:
"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him
to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have been
answered."

"Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come immediately."

On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected one
wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne smiling
sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic and
artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.

"Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason
blushing and dropping her eyes.

Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger suddenly
came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at her forehead
and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt that the
Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he reached his
sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hurrying
one word after another, came through the open door. She was speaking as
usual in French, and as if after long self-restraint she wished to make
up for lost time.

"No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her mouth
full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old age.... Ha, ha,
ha! Mary!"

This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh Prince
Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of others some
five times. He entered the room softly. The little princess, plump and
rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work in her hands, talking
incessantly, repeating Petersburg reminiscences and even phrases. Prince
Andrew came up, stroked her hair, and asked if she felt rested after
their journey. She answered him and continued her chatter.

The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn
night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.
Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense
house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The
domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to
the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in
the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess
Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been called to his
father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All
were waiting for them to come out.

When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age
spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but his
son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.

"Going?" And he went on writing.

"I've come to say good-by."

"Kiss me here," and he touched his cheek: "Thanks, thanks!"

"What do you thank me for?"

"For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman's apron strings. The
Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!" And he went on writing, so
that his quill spluttered and squeaked. "If you have anything to say,
say it. These two things can be done together," he added.

"About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your hands..."

"Why talk nonsense? Say what you want."

"When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur.... Let
him be here...."

The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed his
stern eyes on his son.

"I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work," said
Prince Andrew, evidently confused. "I know that out of a million cases
only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been
telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened."

"Hm... Hm..." muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what he was
writing. "I'll do it."

He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to
laugh.

"It's a bad business, eh?"

"What is bad, Father?"

"The wife!" said the old prince, briefly and significantly.

"I don't understand!" said Prince Andrew.

"No, it can't be helped, lad," said the prince. "They're all like that;
one can't unmarry. Don't be afraid; I won't tell anyone, but you know it
yourself."

He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it, looked
straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see through
him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.

The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him. The
old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and throwing
down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed rapidity.

"What's to be done? She's pretty! I will do everything. Make your mind
easy," said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.

Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his father
understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his son.

"Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done shall
be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich. * I have
written that he should make use of you in proper places and not keep you
long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember and like him.
Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all right--serve
him. Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone if he is in
disfavor. Now come here."


     *Kutuzov.


He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his son
was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised the
lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled with his
bold, tall, close handwriting.

"I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;
hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond and
a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of Suvorov's
wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you to read
when I am gone. You will find them useful."

Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long time
yet. He felt that he must not say it.

"I will do it all, Father," he said.

"Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced
him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt me,
your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous
voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not behaved like a
son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!"

"You need not have said that to me, Father," said the son with a smile.

The old man was silent.

"I also wanted to ask you," continued Prince Andrew, "if I'm killed
and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you--as I said
yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please."

"Not let the wife have him?" said the old man, and laughed.

They stood silent, facing one another. The old man's sharp eyes were
fixed straight on his son's. Something twitched in the lower part of the
old prince's face.

"We've said good-by. Go!" he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry voice,
opening his door.

"What is it? What?" asked both princesses when they saw for a moment at
the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white dressing
gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.

Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.

"Well!" he said, turning to his wife.

And this "Well!" sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,: "Now go
through your performance."

"Andrew, already!" said the little princess, turning pale and looking
with dismay at her husband.

He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.

He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her face,
and carefully placed her in an easy chair.

"Adieu, Mary," said he gently to his sister, taking her by the hand and
kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.

The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne chafing
her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law, still looked
with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through which Prince
Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From
the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent sound of the old man
angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince Andrew gone when the study
door opened quickly and the stern figure of the old man in the white
dressing gown looked out.

"Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the
unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed
the door.





BOOK TWO: 1805





CHAPTER I


In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and towns of
the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly arriving from
Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and burdening the
inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the headquarters of
the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.

On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just reached
Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be inspected
by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance of the
locality and surroundings--fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled roofs, and
hills in the distance--and despite the fact that the inhabitants (who
gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not Russians, the regiment
had just the appearance of any Russian regiment preparing for an
inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.

On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received that
the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march. Though
the words of the order were not clear to the regimental commander, and
the question arose whether the troops were to be in marching order or
not, it was decided at a consultation between the battalion commanders
to present the regiment in parade order, on the principle that it is
always better to "bow too low than not bow low enough." So the soldiers,
after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending and cleaning all night long
without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and company commanders
calculated and reckoned, and by morning the regiment--instead of the
straggling, disorderly crowd it had been on its last march the day
before--presented a well-ordered array of two thousand men each of whom
knew his place and his duty, had every button and every strap in place,
and shone with cleanliness. And not only externally was all in order,
but had it pleased the commander in chief to look under the uniforms he
would have found on every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the
appointed number of articles, "awl, soap, and all," as the soldiers
say. There was only one circumstance concerning which no one could be at
ease. It was the state of the soldiers' boots. More than half the men's
boots were in holes. But this defect was not due to any fault of the
regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not
been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the regiment had marched
some seven hundred miles.

The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and
thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider from
chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform
showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold epaulettes
which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive shoulders. He
had the air of a man happily performing one of the most solemn duties of
his life. He walked about in front of the line and at every step pulled
himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain that the commander
admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was
engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides military
matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied no small part of his
thoughts.

"Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the battalion
commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain that they both
felt happy). "We had our hands full last night. However, I think the
regiment is not a bad one, eh?"

The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.

"It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow."

"What?" asked the commander.

At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had been
posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an aide-de-camp
followed by a Cossack.

The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been
clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief
wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on
the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
whatever.

A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the day
before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army
of the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering this
junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of his view,
to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the troops
arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the regiment;
so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the commander
in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know these
circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that the
men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and that the
commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On hearing this the
regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged his shoulders, and
spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.

"A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked.

"There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was said
'on the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully to
the battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping resolutely
forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice accustomed to
command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?" he asked the
aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently relating to the
personage he was referring to.

"In an hour's time, I should say."

"Shall we have time to change clothes?"

"I don't know, General...."

The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered the
soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders ran off
to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the greatcoats
were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares that had up
to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and stretch and
hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and fro, throwing
up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and pulling the straps
over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and drawing the sleeves on
with upraised arms.

In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had become gray
instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his jerky steps
to the front of the regiment and examined it from a distance.

"Whatever is this? This!" he shouted and stood still. "Commander of the
third company!"

"Commander of the third company wanted by the general!... commander to
the general... third company to the commander." The words passed along
the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing officer.

When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination in a
cry of: "The general to the third company," the missing officer appeared
from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged man and not in
the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on his toes toward the
general. The captain's face showed the uneasiness of a schoolboy who is
told to repeat a lesson he has not learned. Spots appeared on his nose,
the redness of which was evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth
twitched nervously. The general looked the captain up and down as he
came up panting, slackening his pace as he approached.

"You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?"
shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and pointing
at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat of bluish
cloth, which contrasted with the others. "What have you been after? The
commander in chief is expected and you leave your place? Eh? I'll teach
you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade.... Eh...?"

The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,
pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this
pressure lay his only hope of salvation.

"Well, why don't you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as a
Hungarian?" said the commander with an austere gibe.

"Your excellency..."

"Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
excellency?... nobody knows."

"Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to the
ranks," said the captain softly.

"Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier? If
a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the others."

"Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march."

"Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the
regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says
a word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I beg
you to dress your men decently."

And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his jerky
steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display of
anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further excuse for
wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at another
because his line was not straight, he reached the third company.

"H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted the
commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there were still
five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray uniform.

Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with his
clear, insolent eyes in the general's face.

"Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his coat... the
ras..." he did not finish.

"General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..." Dolokhov
hurriedly interrupted.

"No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!"

"Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing
tones.

The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became silent,
angrily pulling down his tight scarf.

"I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as he
turned away.





CHAPTER II


"He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment.

The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the stirrup
with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle, righted himself,
drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute countenance, opening
his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered like a bird
preening its plumage and became motionless.

"Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking voice
which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment, and welcome
for the approaching chief.

Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a high,
light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs and drawn
by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped the suite and
a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general, in a white
uniform that looked strange among the Russian black ones. The caleche
stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov and the Austrian general were
talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled slightly as treading heavily
he stepped down from the carriage just as if those two thousand men
breathlessly gazing at him and the regimental commander did not exist.

The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as with a
jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence the feeble
voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment roared, "Health
to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all became silent. At
first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment moved; then he and the
general in white, accompanied by the suite, walked between the ranks.

From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief and
devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and from
the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals, bending forward
and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and from the way he
darted forward at every word or gesture of the commander in chief,
it was evident that he performed his duty as a subordinate with even
greater zeal than his duty as a commander. Thanks to the strictness and
assiduity of its commander the regiment, in comparison with others that
had reached Braunau at the same time, was in splendid condition. There
were only 217 sick and stragglers. Everything was in good order except
the boots.

Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few
friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, sometimes
also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several times shook his
head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian general with an expression
which seemed to say that he was not blaming anyone, but could not help
noticing what a bad state of things it was. The regimental commander
ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to miss a single word of
the commander in chief's regarding the regiment. Behind Kutuzov, at a
distance that allowed every softly spoken word to be heard, followed
some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen talked among themselves
and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the commander in chief walked a
handsome adjutant. This was Prince Bolkonski. Beside him was his
comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer, extremely stout, with a kindly,
smiling, handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvitski could hardly keep from
laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who walked beside him.
This hussar, with a grave face and without a smile or a change in the
expression of his fixed eyes, watched the regimental commander's back
and mimicked his every movement. Each time the commander started and
bent forward, the hussar started and bent forward in exactly the same
manner. Nesvitski laughed and nudged the others to make them look at the
wag.

Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which were
starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the
third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected this,
involuntarily came closer to him.

"Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had been
reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.

One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself
more than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the regimental
commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed him he drew
himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not have sustained
it had the commander in chief continued to look at him, and so Kutuzov,
who evidently understood his case and wished him nothing but good,
quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile flitting over his
scarred and puffy face.

"Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you satisfied
with him?" he asked the regimental commander.

And the latter--unconscious that he was being reflected in the hussar
officer as in a looking glass--started, moved forward, and answered:
"Highly satisfied, your excellency!"

"We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking away from
him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus."

The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this and did
not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of the red-nosed
captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose
with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help laughing. Kutuzov
turned round. The officer evidently had complete control of his face,
and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a grimace and then assume
a most serious, deferential, and innocent expression.

The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently trying
to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from among the
suite and said in French:

"You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the ranks
in this regiment."

"Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov.

Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat, did
not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired soldier,
with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks, went up to the
commander in chief, and presented arms.

"Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.

"This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew.

"Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your duty.
The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you deserve well."

The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as boldly as
they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by their expression
to tear open the veil of convention that separates a commander in chief
so widely from a private.

"One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm,
ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault
and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!"

Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had turned
from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned away with
a grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said to him and
everything he could say had long been known to him, that he was weary of
it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away and went to the
carriage.

The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their appointed
quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and clothes and
to rest after their hard marches.

"You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the regimental
commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its quarters and
riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front. (The regimental
commander's face now that the inspection was happily over beamed with
irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's service... it can't be
helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on parade... I am the first to
apologize, you know me!... He was very pleased!" And he held out his
hand to the captain.

"Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the captain,
his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where two front
teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end of a gun at
Ismail.

"And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him--he may be quite easy.
And tell me, please--I've been meaning to ask--how is he behaving
himself, and in general..."

"As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your excellency;
but his character..." said Timokhin.

"And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander.

"It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day he
is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a wild
beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew."

"Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one must
have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important
connections... Well, then, you just..."

"I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile that he
understood his commander's wish.

"Well, of course, of course!"

The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and, reining
in his horse, said to him:

"After the next affair... epaulettes."

Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the mocking
smile on his lips change.

"Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup of
vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could hear.
"I thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company and
overtook the next one.

"Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said
Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.

"In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the
regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).

The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected the
soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could be
heard on every side.

"And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?"

"And so he is! Quite blind!"

"No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands... he
noticed everything..."

"When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..."

"And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were smeared
with chalk--as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as they do
the guns."

"I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You were
near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau."

"Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't know!
The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are putting
them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte will
begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool. You'd
better listen more carefully!"

"What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is turning
into the village already... they will have their buckwheat cooked before
we reach our quarters."

"Give me a biscuit, you devil!"

"And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That's just it, friend! Ah,
well, never mind, here you are."

"They might call a halt here or we'll have to do another four miles
without eating."

"Wasn't it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still and
are drawn along."

"And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all seemed
to be Poles--all under the Russian crown--but here they're all regular
Germans."

"Singers to the front" came the captain's order.

And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A
drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and flourishing
his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing with the
words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and concluding: "On then,
brothers, on to glory, led by Father Kamenski." This song had been
composed in the Turkish campaign and now being sung in Austria, the only
change being that the words "Father Kamenski" were replaced by "Father
Kutuzov."

Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms
as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer--a lean, handsome
soldier of forty--looked sternly at the singers and screwed up his eyes.
Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on him, he raised
both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but precious object
above his head and, holding it there for some seconds, suddenly flung it
down and began:

"Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!"

"Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet player,
in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the front
and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his shoulders and
flourished his castanets as if threatening someone. The soldiers,
swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously, marched with long
steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the creaking of springs,
and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard. Kutuzov and his suite were
returning to the town. The commander in chief made a sign that the
men should continue to march at ease, and he and all his suite showed
pleasure at the sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing
soldier and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file
from the right flank, beside which the carriage passed the company,
a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted notice. It was Dolokhov
marching with particular grace and boldness in time to the song and
looking at those driving past as if he pitied all who were not at that
moment marching with the company. The hussar cornet of Kutuzov's suite
who had mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from the carriage
and rode up to Dolokhov.

Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to the
wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a private
and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov had spoken
to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of an old
friend.

"My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making his
horse keep pace with the company.

"How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see."

The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy
gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of
Dolokhov's reply.

"And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov.

"All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto the
staff?"

"I was attached; I'm on duty."

Both were silent.

"She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the song,
arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness. Their
conversation would probably have been different but for the effect of
that song.

"Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov.

"The devil only knows! They say so."

"I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song demanded.

"I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said
Zherkov.

"Why, have you too much money?"

"Do come."

"I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get
reinstated."

"Well, that's only till the first engagement."

"We shall see."

They were again silent.

"Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the staff..."

Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg--I'll
take it!"

"Well, never mind; I only..."

"And I only..."

"Good-by."

"Good health..."

        "It's a long, long way.
        To my native land..."


Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly from foot
to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down, galloped past
the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping time to the song.





CHAPTER III


On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into his
private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers relating
to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the letters that
had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command of the advanced
army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the room with the required
papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrath were
sitting at the table on which a plan was spread out.

"Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this exclamation he
was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with the conversation in
French.

"All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of expression
and intonation that obliged one to listen to each deliberately spoken
word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened with pleasure to his
own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if the matter depended on my
personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the Emperor Francis would have
been fulfilled long ago. I should long ago have joined the archduke. And
believe me on my honour that to me personally it would be a pleasure
to hand over the supreme command of the army into the hands of a better
informed and more skillful general--of whom Austria has so many--and to
lay down all this heavy responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes
too strong for us, General."

And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at
liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not,
but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole point."

The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to reply
in the same tone.

"On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that
contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your
excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by
His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the splendid
Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have been
accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently
prearranged sentence.

Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.

"But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with which
His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine that the
Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a leader as General
Mack, have by now already gained a decisive victory and no longer need
our aid," said Kutuzov.

The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an Austrian
defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the unfavorable rumors
that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an Austrian victory
sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on blandly smiling with the
same expression, which seemed to say that he had a right to suppose so.
And, in fact, the last letter he had received from Mack's army informed
him of a victory and stated strategically the position of the army was
very favorable.

"Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew. "Please
have a look at it"--and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about the corners
of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following passage, in
German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter:


We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men with
which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech. Also,
as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage of
commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not
cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line
of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his
intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful
ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the Imperial
Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in conjunction with
it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the fate he deserves.


Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at the
member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.

"But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect the
worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have done with
jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round at the
aide-de-camp.

"Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince
Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports
from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is one
from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he said,
handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French out of all
this, showing all the news we have had of the movements of the Austrian
army, and then give it to his excellency."

Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from the
first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have liked
to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both, stepped
softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.

Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia, he
had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his face,
in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his former
affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man who has time
to think of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with
agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed more satisfaction
with himself and those around him, his smile and glance were brighter
and more attractive.

Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very kindly,
promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the other adjutants,
and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more serious commissions.
From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade, Prince Andrew's father.


Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his industry,
firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to have such a
subordinate by me.


On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army generally,
Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two quite
opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be different
from themselves and from everyone else, expected great things of him,
listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with them Prince
Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority, disliked him and
considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But among these people
Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that they respected and even
feared him.

Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers in
his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp on duty,
Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book.

"Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski.

"I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not
advancing."

"And why is it?"

Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.

"Any news from Mack?"

"No."

"If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come."

"Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.

But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the
order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,
who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.
Prince Andrew stopped short.

"Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general speaking
quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and advancing
straight toward the inner door.

"The commander in chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly up
to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom shall I
announce?"

The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was
rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.

"The commander in chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly.

The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He took out
a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out the leaf,
gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and threw himself
into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if asking, "Why do they
look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched his neck as if he
intended to say something, but immediately, with affected indifference,
began to hum to himself, producing a queer sound which immediately broke
off. The door of the private room opened and Kutuzov appeared in the
doorway. The general with the bandaged head bent forward as though
running away from some danger, and, making long, quick strides with his
thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.

"Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice.

Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly
immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a wave
and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head respectfully,
closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before him, and closed
the door himself behind him.

The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been beaten
and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be correct.
Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various directions with
orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had hitherto been
inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.

Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief interest
lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack and heard the
details of his disaster he understood that half the campaign was lost,
understood all the difficulties of the Russian army's position, and
vividly imagined what awaited it and the part he would have to
play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the thought of the
humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's time he might,
perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian encounter with the
French since Suvorov met them. He feared that Bonaparte's genius might
outweigh all the courage of the Russian troops, and at the same time
could not admit the idea of his hero being disgraced.

Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward his
room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the corridor
he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkov; they
were as usual laughing.

"Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale
face and glittering eyes.

"There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski.

Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward them
from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general who on
Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the Russian army, and
the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the previous evening.
There was room enough in the wide corridor for the generals to pass the
three officers quite easily, but Zherkov, pushing Nesvitski aside with
his arm, said in a breathless voice,

"They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please
make way!"

The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid
embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly
appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.

"Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and addressing
the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate you."

He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with the
other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.

The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing
the seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment's
attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.

"I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived, quite
well, only a little bruised just here," he added, pointing with a
beaming smile to his head.

The general frowned, turned away, and went on.

"Gott, wie naiv!" * said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.


     * "Good God, what simplicity!"


Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but
Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and
turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of
Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest.

"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said sharply,
with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent your doing
so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in my presence, I
will teach you to behave yourself."

Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they gazed
at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.

"What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov.

"I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski, and
taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to say.

"Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to soothe
him.

"What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his
excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers serving
our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and grieving at
the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely lackeys who care
nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille hommes massacres et
l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la le mot pour rire," *
he said, as if strengthening his views by this French sentence. "C'est
bien pour un garcon de rien comme cet individu dont vous avez fait un
ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour vous. *(2) Only a hobbledehoy could
amuse himself in this way," he added in Russian--but pronouncing the
word with a French accent--having noticed that Zherkov could still hear
him.


     * "Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies
     destroyed, and you find that a cause for jesting!"

     * (2) "It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow
     of whom you have made a friend, but not for you, not for
     you."


He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he turned
and went out of the corridor.





CHAPTER IV


The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The
squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in
the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were
assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known
throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet Rostov,
ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had lived with the
squadron commander.

On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the news
of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this squadron was
proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at cards all night,
had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early in the morning from
a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet uniform, with a jerk to his
horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg over the saddle with a supple
youthful movement, stood for a moment in the stirrup as if loathe to
part from his horse, and at last sprang down and called to his orderly.

"Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up
headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he
continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young
people show to everyone when they are happy.

"Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his head.

"Mind, walk him up and down well!"

Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had already
thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's head. It was
evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that it paid
to serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his flank, and
lingered for a moment.

"Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and
holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the
porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork in
hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face
immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon gut
Morgen!" * he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to
greet the young man.


    * "A very good morning! A very good morning!"


"Schon fleissig?" * said Rostov with the same gay brotherly smile which
did not leave his eager face. "Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen! Kaiser
Alexander hoch!" *(2) said he, quoting words often repeated by the
German landlord.


    * "Busy already?"

    * (2) "Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians!
     Hurrah for Emperor Alexander!"


The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and
waving it above his head cried:

"Und die ganze Welt hoch!" *


    * "And hurrah for the whole world!"


Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and cried laughing,
"Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German cleaning his
cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging for hay had any
reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight and
brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of their mutual affection,
and parted smiling, the German returning to his cowshed and Rostov going
to the cottage he occupied with Denisov.

"What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly, whom
all the regiment knew for a rogue.

"Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing," answered
Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early to brag about
it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's lost and will come
back in a rage. Will you have coffee?"

"Yes, bring some."

Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!" said
he. "Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw Denisov
coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face, sparkling black
eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore an unfastened cloak,
wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a crumpled shako on the back
of his head. He came up to the porch gloomily, hanging his head.

"Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!"

"Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice.

"Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room.

"Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and have
seen Fraulein Mathilde."

"Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a damned
fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill luck! Such ill
luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on. Hullo there! Tea!"

Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong
teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his thick
tangled black hair.

"And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed "the
rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both hands.
"Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd."

He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in his
fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while he
continued to shout.

"He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles it;
gives the singles and snatches the doubles!"

He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it away.
Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked cheerfully
with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov.

"If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one to do
but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's there?"
he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy boots and the
clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a respectful cough.

"The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka.

Denisov's face puckered still more.

"Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in it.
"Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove the
purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the quartermaster.

Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new coins
in separate piles, began counting them.

"Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came Denisov's
voice from the next room.

"Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping voice,
and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same squadron, entered
the room.

Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little hand
which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been transferred
from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very well in
the regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him and was
unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to the man.

"Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook was a
young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)

The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in the
face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.

"I saw you riding this morning..." he added.

"Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the horse
for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half that sum.
"He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he added.

"The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and show
you what kind of rivet to use."

"Yes, please do," said Rostov.

"I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse
you'll thank me for."

"Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid
Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.

In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the threshold
facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing Rostov,
Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder with his
thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned and gave a
shudder of disgust.

"Ugh! I don't like that fellow," he said, regardless of the
quartermaster's presence.

Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but what's
one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to Telyanin.

Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had left
him, rubbing his small white hands.

"Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he
entered.

"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting up and
looking carelessly about him.

"I have."

"Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about yesterday's
order. Have you got it, Denisov?"

"Not yet. But where are you off to?"

"I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin.

They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant
explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.

When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on the
table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a sheet of
paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am witing to
her."

He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,
evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to
write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.

"You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We are
childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God, one is
pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send him to the
devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to him not in the
least abashed.

"Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the quartermaster
for the money."

Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.

"Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the
puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov.

"Seven new and three old imperials."

"Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you sca'cwow?
Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka.

"Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said
Rostov, blushing.

"Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled Denisov.

"But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will offend
me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated.

"No, I tell you."

And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.

"Where have you put it, Wostov?"

"Under the lower pillow."

"It's not there."

Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.

"That's a miwacle."

"Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the pillows one
at a time and shaking them.

He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.

"Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you kept
it under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it just here.
Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka.

"I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it."

"But it isn't?..."

"You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget it.
Feel in your pockets."

"No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov, "but I
remember putting it there."

Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and under
the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of the
room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the
latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found
Denisov glanced at Rostov.

"Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..."

Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and instantly
dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested somewhere
below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not draw breath.

"And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant and
yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka.

"Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!" shouted
Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man with a
threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you, I'll flog
you all."

Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled on
his saber, and put on his cap.

"I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his
orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.

"Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov, going
toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused, thought a
moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted at, seized his
arm.

"Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood out
like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The purse is
here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found."

"I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and
went to the door.

"And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov, rushing at
the cadet to restrain him.

But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though Denisov
were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his face.

"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling voice.
"There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it is not
so, then..."

He could not finish, and ran out of the room.

"Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words Rostov
heard.

Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters.

"The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's
orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the cadet's
troubled face.

"No, nothing."

"You've only just missed him," said the orderly.

The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and
Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was
an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to
it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch.

In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish of
sausages and a bottle of wine.

"Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and raising his
eyebrows.

"Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word; and
he sat down at the nearest table.

Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in the
room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of knives
and the munching of the lieutenant.

When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a double
purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white, turned-up
fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his eyebrows gave it to
the waiter.

"Please be quick," he said.

The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.

"Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost inaudible,
voice.

With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him the
purse.

"Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly pale, and
added, "Look at it, young man."

Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in it, and
looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his usual way
and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.

"If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these wretched
little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well, let me have
it, young man, I'm going."

Rostov did not speak.

"And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite decently
here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it."

He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go of
it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into the
pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his mouth
slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my
pocket and that's quite simple and is no one else's business."

"Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted brows
he glanced into Rostov's eyes.

Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to Rostov's
and back, and back again and again in an instant.

"Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost
dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took it..." he
whispered just above Telyanin's ear.

"What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin.

But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an entreaty for
pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of doubt fell
from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to pity the
miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun had to be
completed.

"Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered Telyanin,
taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room. "We must have an
explanation..."

"I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov.

"I..."

Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his
eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not rising
to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible.

"Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,
take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and
mother!..."

Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the
room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced his
steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you do it?"

"Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.

"Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take the
money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.





CHAPTER V


That same evening there was an animated discussion among the squadron's
officers in Denisov's quarters.

"And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!" said
a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and
many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with
excitement.

The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks for
affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.

"I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I
lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on
duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me
apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..."

"You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted the
staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache. "You
tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an officer has
stolen..."

"I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of other
officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but I am not
a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that here one
would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying--so let him give
me satisfaction..."

"That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the point.
Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to demand
satisfaction of his regimental commander?"

Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the
conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered the
staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head.

"You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other
officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel was
called Bogdanich) "shuts you up."

"He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth."

"Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and must
apologize."

"Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov.

"I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and
severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him
but to the whole regiment--all of us--you're to blame all round. The
case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken
advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the
officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and
disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of one
scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like that. And
Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what was not true.
It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear fellow? You landed
yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth the thing over, some
conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole
affair public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but why not
apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdanich may be,
anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel! You're quick at taking
offense, but you don't mind disgracing the whole regiment!" The staff
captain's voice began to tremble. "You have been in the regiment next
to no time, my lad, you're here today and tomorrow you'll be appointed
adjutant somewhere and can snap your fingers when it is said 'There are
thieves among the Pavlograd officers!' But it's not all the same to us!
Am I not right, Denisov? It's not the same!"

Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked with
his glittering black eyes at Rostov.

"You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued
the staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and, God
willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of the
regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old fellow! And
all this is not right, it's not right! You may take offense or not but I
always stick to mother truth. It's not right!"

And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.

"That's twue, devil take it!" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then,
Wostov, now then!"

 Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one
officer and then at the other.

"No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand. You're
wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of the
regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me the honor
of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame, to blame all
round. Well, what else do you want?..."

"Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning round and
clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand.

"I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow."

"That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address
Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and
apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!"

"Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me," said
Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I can't,
do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little boy asking
forgiveness?"

Denisov began to laugh.

"It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay for your
obstinacy," said Kirsten.

"No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling. I
can't..."

"Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has become
of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov.

"He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list tomowwow,"
muttered Denisov.

"It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said the
staff captain.

"Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!" shouted
Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.

Just then Zherkov entered the room.

"What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer.

"We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his whole
army."

"It's not true!"

"I've seen him myself!"

"What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?"

"Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how did
you come here?"

"I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil, Mack.
An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on Mack's
arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just come out
of a hot bath."

"Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days."

The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.

"We're going into action, gentlemen!"

"Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!"





CHAPTER VI


Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges over
the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October 23 the
Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian
baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling
through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.

It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and
then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could
be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down below,
the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed houses, its
cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed jostling
masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels, an island,
and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of
the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky left bank of the
Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic background of green
treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a convent stood out beyond a
wild virgin pine forest, and far away on the other side of the Enns the
enemy's horse patrols could be discerned.

Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in command of
the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the country through
his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who had been sent to the
rearguard by the commander in chief, was sitting on the trail of a gun
carriage. A Cossack who accompanied him had handed him a knapsack and
a flask, and Nesvitski was treating some officers to pies and real
doppelkummel. The officers gladly gathered round him, some on their
knees, some squatting Turkish fashion on the wet grass.

"Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's a
fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski was
saying.

"Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased to
be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely place!
We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a splendid
house!"

"Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take
another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining the
countryside--"See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look there
in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something.
They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident approval.

"So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like," added he,
munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be to slip in
over there."

He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed and
gleamed.

"That would be fine, gentlemen!"

The officers laughed.

"Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls among
them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!"

"They must be feeling dull, too," said one of the bolder officers,
laughing.

Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out something to
the general, who looked through his field glass.

"Yes, so it is, so it is," said the general angrily, lowering the field
glass and shrugging his shoulders, "so it is! They'll be fired on at the
crossing. And why are they dawdling there?"

On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and from
their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant report of
a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the crossing.

Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.

"Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said.

"It's a bad business," said the general without answering him, "our men
have been wasting time."

"Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski.

"Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order that
had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that
they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected."

"Very good," answered Nesvitski.

He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the knapsack
and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.

"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who watched
him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the hill.

"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said the
general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to pass the
time."

"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.

In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and began
loading.

"One!" came the command.

Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little smoke
showing the spot where it burst.

The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone got
up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as plainly
visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of the
approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came fully
out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot
and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous and
spirited impression.





CHAPTER VII


Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge, where
there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who had
alighted from his horse and whose big body was jammed against the
railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood a few
steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each time Prince
Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him back again and
pressed him against the railings, and all he could do was to smile.

"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy
soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow! You
can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"

But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted at
the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to the
left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to
shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense
mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the rapid, noisy
little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round the piles of
the bridge chased each other along. Looking on the bridge he saw equally
uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder straps, covered shakos,
knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, under the shakos, faces with
broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and
feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks of the
bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of
white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with
a type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along;
sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot,
an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and
sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's
baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides,
moved across the bridge.

"It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are there
many more of you to come?"

"A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat, with
a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.

"If he" (he meant the enemy) "begins popping at the bridge now,"
said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, "you'll forget to scratch
yourself."

That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a cart.

"Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?" said an orderly,
running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.

And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry soldiers who
had evidently been drinking.

"And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt end
of his gun..." a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said gaily,
with a wide swing of his arm.

"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud laugh.
And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who had been
struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.

"Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll all
be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.

"As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young soldier with
an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I felt like dying
of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that frightened!" said he, as if
bragging of having been frightened.

That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had gone
before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a German, and
seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow with
a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A woman with an unweaned
baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl with bright red cheeks
were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently these fugitives were
allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes of all the soldiers
turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was passing at foot pace
all the soldiers' remarks related to the two young ones. Every face bore
almost the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts about the women.

"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"

"Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German, who,
angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast eyes.

"See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"

"There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!"

"I have seen as much before now, mate!"

"Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an
apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.

The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.

"Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple.

The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on the
bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed. When
they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with the same
kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens, the horses of
a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the bridge, and the whole
crowd had to wait.

"And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the soldiers.
"Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait? It'll
be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed in
too"--different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men looked at
one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the bridge.

Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski
suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...
something big, that splashed into the water.

"Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly, looking
round at the sound.

"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily.

The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon ball.

"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of the
way! Make way!"

With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting
continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make way
for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and those
nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed still
harder from behind.

"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from behind
him.

Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but separated by
the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red and shaggy, with
his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak hanging jauntily over
his shoulder.

"Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov
evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot
whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a small
bare hand as red as his face.

"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?"

"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his white
teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which twitched
its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting white foam
from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his hoofs, and
apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider let him. "What
is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of the way!... Let
us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! I'll hack you with my
saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber from its scabbard and
flourishing it.

The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and
Denisov joined Nesvitski.

"How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had
ridden up to him.

"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov. "They
keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to fight,
let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."

"What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's new
cloak and saddlecloth.

Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that diffused
a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.

"Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth, and
scented myself."

The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and
the determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted
frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through
to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the order,
and having done this he rode back.

Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge.
Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the
ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw
nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,
resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to emerge
on his side of it.

The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the
trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,
estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually
encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past them in
regular order.

"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one.

"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked another.

"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose prancing
horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.

"I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine
cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the mud
off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more like a bird
than a man."

"There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look fine,"
said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent under the
weight of his knapsack.

"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!" the
hussar shouted back.





CHAPTER VIII


The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing
together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last
the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last
battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars
remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could
be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible from
the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which the
river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile away.
At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of our
Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the high
ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These were the
French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at a trot. All
the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they tried to talk of
other things and to look in other directions, thought only of what
was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking at the patches
appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy's troops. The
weather had cleared again since noon and the sun was descending brightly
upon the Danube and the dark hills around it. It was calm, and at
intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of the enemy could be heard
from the hill. There was no one now between the squadron and the enemy
except a few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some seven hundred
yards was all that separated them. The enemy ceased firing, and that
stern, threatening, inaccessible, and intangible line which separates
two hostile armies was all the more clearly felt.

"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing
the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And
what is there? Who is there?--there beyond that field, that tree, that
roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear
and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must
be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will
inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But you are
strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such
excitedly animated and healthy men." So thinks, or at any rate feels,
anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a
particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything that
takes place at such moments.

On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon rose,
and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron. The
officers who had been standing together rode off to their places. The
hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence fell on the whole
squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and at the squadron
commander, awaiting the word of command. A second and a third cannon
ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the hussars, but the balls
with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads of the horsemen and fell
somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not look round, but at the sound
of each shot, as at the word of command, the whole squadron with its
rows of faces so alike yet so different, holding its breath while the
ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers
without turning their heads glanced at one another, curious to see their
comrades' impression. Every face, from Denisov's to that of the bugler,
showed one common expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement,
around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the
soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every
time a ball flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook--a
handsome horse despite its game leg--had the happy air of a schoolboy
called up before a large audience for an examination in which he feels
sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a
clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat
under fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of
something new and stern showed round the mouth.

"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight! Look at
me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept turning
his horse in front of the squadron.

The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole short
sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in which
he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually did,
especially toward evening when he had emptied his second bottle; he was
only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds when
they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the sides of his good
horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling backwards in the saddle,
he galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse
voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The
staff captain on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a walk to meet
him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always, only his
eyes were brighter than usual.

"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a fight.
You'll see--we shall retire."

"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,
Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it at
last."

And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostov felt
perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge. Denisov
galloped up to him.

"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."

"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping
here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron
back."

The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire without
having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in the front
line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted the farther side
of the river.

The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the
hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich Schubert, came
up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostov,
without taking any notice of him although they were now meeting for the
first time since their encounter concerning Telyanin. Rostov, feeling
that he was at the front and in the power of a man toward whom he now
admitted that he had been to blame, did not lift his eyes from the
colonel's athletic back, his nape covered with light hair, and his red
neck. It seemed to Rostov that Bogdanich was only pretending not to
notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet's courage,
so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it seemed to
him that Bogdanich rode so near in order to show him his courage. Next
he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack
just to punish him--Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack,
Bogdanich would come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously
extend the hand of reconciliation.

The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as he
had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After his
dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the regiment,
saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front when he could
get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and had succeeded in
attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince Bagration. He now came
to his former chief with an order from the commander of the rear guard.

"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of gloomy
gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an order to stop
and fire the bridge."

"An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely.

"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious tone,
"but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the hussars
must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"

Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout Nesvitski
came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his
weight.

"How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to fire
the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are all beside
themselves over there and one can't make anything out."

The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to Nesvitski.

"You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said
nothing about firing it."

"But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap and
smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand, "wasn't I
telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material had been put
in position?"

"I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell me to
burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders strictly
to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would it burn, I
could not know by the holy spirit!"

"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand.
"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.

"On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"

"You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in an
offended tone.

"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be quick or
the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."

The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the stout
staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.

"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would still
do the right thing.

Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to blame
for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to
the bridge.

"There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He wishes to
test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his face. "Let
him see whether I am a coward!" he thought.

Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy,
the colonel, closely--to find in his face confirmation of his own
conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and looked as
he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came the word of
command.

"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him.

Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The men
were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the colonel, he
had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid
that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse into
an orderly's charge, and he felt the blood rush to his heart with a
thud. Denisov rode past him, leaning back and shouting something. Rostov
saw nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs catching
and their sabers clattering.

"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.

Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud, stumbled,
and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.

"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
triumphant, cheerful face.

Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy and
was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front the
better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing Rostov, shouted
to him:

"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right! Come
back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who, showing off
his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:

"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.

"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning in
his saddle.


Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were standing
together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small group of
men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord, and blue
riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then at what was
approaching in the distance from the opposite side--the blue uniforms
and groups with horses, easily recognizable as artillery.

"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they get
there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot range
and wipe them out?" These were the questions each man of the troops
on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself with a
sinking heart--watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright evening
light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with their
bayonets and guns.

"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within
grapeshot range now."

"He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the suite.

"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have done
the job just as well."

"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the hussars,
but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know whether he
was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency! How you look
at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the Vladimir medal
and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the squadron may be
recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. Our Bogdanich knows how
things are done."

"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot."

He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being detached
and hurriedly removed.

On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at the
moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
reports one after another, and a third.

"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the officer of
the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen, fallen!"

"Two, I think."

"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning away.

The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again
but at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening there,
as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in
setting it on fire and the French batteries were now firing at them, no
longer to hinder them but because the guns were trained and there was
someone to fire at.

The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the hussars
got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot went too
high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and
knocked three of them over.

Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on the
bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he
had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like the
other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a
rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar nearest
to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to him with
the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men seized the
hussar and began lifting him.

"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but still
he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.

Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed
into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the
sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep!
How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the
waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway
blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and
the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace
and happiness... "I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I
were there," thought Rostov. "In myself alone and in that sunshine there
is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this
uncertainty and hurry... There--they are shouting again, and again are
all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is
here above me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see
the sun, this water, that gorge!..."

At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and of
the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one
feeling of sickening agitation.

"O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
me!" Rostov whispered.

The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their voices
sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.

"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just above
his ear.

"It's all over; but I am a coward--yes, a coward!" thought Rostov, and
sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one foot,
from the orderly and began to mount.

"Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.

"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks and
it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the dogs!
But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting at you like
a target."

And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov, composed of
the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from the suite.

"Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this was
true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation which
the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.

"Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I don't get
promoted to a sublieutenancy."

"Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel
triumphantly and gaily.

"And if he asks about the losses?"

"A trifle," said the colonel in his bass voice: "two hussars wounded,
and one knocked out," he added, unable to restrain a happy smile, and
pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing distinctness.





CHAPTER IX


Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the command
of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it,
losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies,
and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything that had
been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men commanded
by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube, stopping where
overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as
necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its heavy equipment.
There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the
courage and endurance--acknowledged even by the enemy--with which the
Russians fought, the only consequence of these actions was a yet more
rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had escaped capture at Ulm and
had joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army,
and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces.
The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an
offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared in accord with the
modern science of strategics, had been handed to Kutuzov when he was in
Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable
aim remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces that were
advancing from Russia, without losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.

On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the
left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time
with the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left bank,
and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken:
banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, after a
fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a fight had
not only held the field but had repulsed the French. Though the troops
were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of their number in
killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number of sick and
wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a letter
in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the enemy; and
though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems converted into military
hospitals could no longer accommodate all the sick and wounded, yet the
stand made at Krems and the victory over Mortier raised the spirits of
the army considerably. Throughout the whole army and at headquarters
most joyful though erroneous rumors were rife of the imaginary approach
of columns from Russia, of some victory gained by the Austrians, and of
the retreat of the frightened Bonaparte.

Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the Austrian
General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse had been
wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a mark
of the commander in chief's special favor he was sent with the news of
this victory to the Austrian court, now no longer at Vienna (which was
threatened by the French) but at Brunn. Despite his apparently delicate
build Prince Andrew could endure physical fatigue far better than many
very muscular men, and on the night of the battle, having arrived at
Krems excited but not weary, with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov,
he was sent immediately with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so sent
meant not only a reward but an important step toward promotion.

The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow that
had fallen the previous day--the day of the battle. Reviewing his
impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself the
impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the send-off
given him by the commander in chief and his fellow officers, Prince
Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise enjoying the feelings of a
man who has at length begun to attain a long-desired happiness. As soon
as he closed his eyes his ears seemed filled with the rattle of the
wheels and the sensation of victory. Then he began to imagine that
the Russians were running away and that he himself was killed, but he
quickly roused himself with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that
this was not so but that on the contrary the French had run away. He
again recalled all the details of the victory and his own calm courage
during the battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark
starry night was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was
thawing in the sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides
of the road were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.

At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.
The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the front
cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each of
the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were being
jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he heard Russian
words), others were eating bread; the more severely wounded looked
silently, with the languid interest of sick children, at the envoy
hurrying past them.

Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what
action they had been wounded. "Day before yesterday, on the Danube,"
answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the
soldier three gold pieces.

"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up.

"Get well soon, lads!" he continued, turning to the soldiers. "There's
plenty to do still."

"What news, sir?" asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a
conversation.

"Good news!... Go on!" he shouted to the driver, and they galloped on.

It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the paved
streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings, the
lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that
atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so attractive to a
soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and sleepless night,
Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt even more vigorous and
alert than he had done the day before. Only his eyes gleamed feverishly
and his thoughts followed one another with extraordinary clearness and
rapidity. He again vividly recalled the details of the battle, no longer
dim, but definite and in the concise form in which he imagined himself
stating them to the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual
questions that might be put to him and the answers he would give. He
expected to be at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance
to the palace, however, an official came running out to meet him, and
learning that he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.

"To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will find
the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to the
Minister of War."

The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait, and went
in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and bowing
with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along a
corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The
adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any
attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.

Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he
approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and
without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into
one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly
suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to despise the
adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder, they
probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes narrowed
disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with peculiarly
deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened when he saw the
minister seated at a large table reading some papers and making pencil
notes on them, and for the first two or three minutes taking no notice
of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each side of the minister's bent
bald head with its gray temples. He went on reading to the end, without
raising his eyes at the opening of the door and the sound of footsteps.

"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the
papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.

Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army interested
the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he was
concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger that
impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me," he
thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together, arranged them
evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual and distinctive
head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the firm, intelligent
expression on his face changed in a way evidently deliberate and
habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial smile (which
does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man who is
continually receiving many petitioners one after another.

"From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good news?
There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high time!"

He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it
with a mournful expression.

"Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a calamity!
What a calamity!"

Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and looked
at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.

"Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is
not captured." Again he pondered. "I am very glad you have brought good
news, though Schmidt's death is a heavy price to pay for the victory.
His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I thank
you! You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the parade.
However, I will let you know."

The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,
reappeared.

"Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to see
you," he added, bowing his head.

When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest
and happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the
indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant. The
whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle seemed
the memory of a remote event long past.





CHAPTER X


Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance of
his in the diplomatic service.

"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor," said
Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the prince's
things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was ushering Bolkonski
in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am sitting
here ill, as you see."

After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin
settled down comfortably beside the fire.

After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived of
all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, Prince
Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious surroundings such
as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant,
after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in Russian
(for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who would, he
supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the Austrians which was
then particularly strong.

Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle as
Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but
had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutuzov.
Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high
in the military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilibin gave
promise of rising in his diplomatic career. He still a young man but
no longer a young diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age
of sixteen, had been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now held a rather
important post in Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador
in Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those many
diplomats who are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities,
avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one of those,
who, liking work, knew how to do it, and despite his indolence would
sometimes spend a whole night at his writing table. He worked well
whatever the import of his work. It was not the question "What for?"
but the question "How?" that interested him. What the diplomatic matter
might be he did not care, but it gave him great pleasure to prepare a
circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly.
Bilibin's services were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for
his skill in dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres.

Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be made
elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to say
something striking and took part in a conversation only when that was
possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original,
finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the
inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so
that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to
drawing room. And, in fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about
in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters
considered important.

His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always
looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers after a
Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the principal play
of expression on his face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds
and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would descend and
deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always
twinkled and looked out straight.

"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.

Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the
engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.

"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
skittles," said he in conclusion.

Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.

"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a distance
and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute estime que
je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que votre victoire
n'est pas des plus victorieuses." *


     * "But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox
     Russian army, I must say that your victory was not
     particularly victorious."


He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in
Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.

"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier
and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your fingers!
Where's the victory?"

"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can at any rate say without
boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..."

"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?"

"Because not everything happens as one expects or with the smoothness of
a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at their rear by seven
in the morning but had not reached it by five in the afternoon."

"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile. "You
ought to have been there at seven in the morning."

"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince Andrew in
the same tone.

"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to take
marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but still why
didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only the Minister
of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and King Francis
is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor secretary of the
Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of my joy to give my
Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to the Prater... True,
we have no Prater here..."

He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
forehead.

"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I
confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties
here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack loses
a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl give no signs
of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at last gains a
real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility of the French,
and the Minister of War does not even care to hear the details."

"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar, for
Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but what
do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories? Bring us nice
news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one archduke's as
good as another, as you know) and even if it is only over a fire brigade
of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and we'll fire off some
cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on purpose to vex us. The
Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke Ferdinand disgraces himself.
You abandon Vienna, give up its defense--as much as to say: 'Heaven is
with us, but heaven help you and your capital!' The one general whom we
all loved, Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate
us on the victory! Admit that more irritating news than yours could not
have been conceived. It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose.
Besides, suppose you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke
Karl gained a victory, what effect would that have on the general course
of events? It's too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French
army!"

"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"

"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count, our
dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."

After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and
especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not take in
the full significance of the words he heard.

"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and
showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was fully
described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that your
victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be
received as a savior."

"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince
Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before Krems
was really of small importance in view of such events as the fall of
Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the bridge and
its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard reports that
Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said.

"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is defending
us--doing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending us. But
Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has not yet been taken and I
hope it will not be, for it is mined and orders have been given to
blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the mountains of
Bohemia, and you and your army would have spent a bad quarter of an hour
between two fires."

"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said Prince
Andrew.

"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they daren't
say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, it won't
be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will
decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin quoting one
of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing.
"The only question is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor
Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia joins the
Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will be war. If not
it is merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of the new
Campo Formio are to be drawn up."

"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what luck
the man has!"

"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to
indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he
repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down
laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u! * I
shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!"


    * "We must let him off the u!"


"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the
campaign is over?"

"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is not
used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the first
place because her provinces have been pillaged--they say the Holy
Russian army loots terribly--her army is destroyed, her capital
taken, and all this for the beaux yeux * of His Sardinian Majesty. And
therefore--this is between ourselves--I instinctively feel that we are
being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France and
projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately."


    * Fine eyes.


"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would be too base."

"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again becoming
smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.

When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in a
clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows, he
felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far away
from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery, Bonaparte's
new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience with the
Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.

He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry
and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now
again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill,
the French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode
forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily whistling all around,
and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done since
childhood.

He woke up...

"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself like
a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.





CHAPTER XI


Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first
thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be presented
to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War, the polite
Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's conversation. Having
dressed for his attendance at court in full parade uniform, which he had
not worn for a long time, he went into Bilibin's study fresh, animated,
and handsome, with his hand bandaged. In the study were four gentlemen
of the diplomatic corps. With Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a
secretary to the embassy, Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin
introduced him to the others.

The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay society
men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which Bilibin, their
leader, called les notres. * This set, consisting almost exclusively of
diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had nothing to do with
war or politics but related to high society, to certain women, and to
the official side of the service. These gentlemen received Prince
Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they did not extend to many. From
politeness and to start conversation, they asked him a few questions
about the army and the battle, and then the talk went off into merry
jests and gossip.


    * Ours.


"But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of
a fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his
appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.
Can you fancy the figure he cut?..."

"But the worst of it, gentlemen--I am giving Kuragin away to you--is
that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking
advantage of it!"

Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over its
arm. He began to laugh.

"Tell me about that!" he said.

"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.

"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew,
"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the
Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing among
the women!"

"La femme est la compagne de l'homme," * announced Prince Hippolyte, and
began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.


    * "Woman is man's companion."


Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's face,
and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom--he had to admit--he had
almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the butt of this set.

"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski. "Kuragin
is exquisite when he discusses politics--you should see his gravity!"

He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began talking
to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered round these
two.

"The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began
Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without
expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless
His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our alliance...

"Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him
by the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than
nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the
nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end." And
he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite finished.

"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with
satisfaction.

Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was evidently
distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain the wild
laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.

"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in this
house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I can, with
all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it would be easy,
but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more difficult, and I
beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be shown him. You can
undertake the theater, I society, and you, Hippolyte, of course the
women."

"We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours,"
kissing his finger tips.

"In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane
interests," said Bilibin.

"I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,
gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew
looking at his watch.

"Where to?"

"To the Emperor."

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come back
early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand."

"When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the way
that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said Bilibin,
accompanying him to the hall.

"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I know the facts, I
can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.

"Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for giving
audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do it, as you
will see."





CHAPTER XII


At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he had
been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into his
face and just nodded to him with his long head. But after it was
over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day ceremoniously informed
Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give him an audience. The Emperor
Francis received him standing in the middle of the room. Before the
conversation began Prince Andrew was struck by the fact that the Emperor
seemed confused and blushed as if not knowing what to say.

"Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly.

Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:
"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor spoke
as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions--the answers
to these questions, as was only too evident, did not interest him.

"At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor.

"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at the
front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after five in
the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and expecting
that he would have a chance to give a reliable account, which he had
ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the Emperor smiled
and interrupted him.

"How many miles?"

"From where to where, Your Majesty?"

"From Durrenstein to Krems."

"Three and a half miles, Your Majesty."

"The French have abandoned the left bank?"

"According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during the
night."

"Is there sufficient forage in Krems?"

"Forage has not been supplied to the extent..."

The Emperor interrupted him.

"At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?"

"At seven o'clock, I believe."

"At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!"

The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew withdrew and
was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides. Everywhere he saw
friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's adjutant reproached
him for not having stayed at the palace, and offered him his own house.
The Minister of War came up and congratulated him on the Maria Theresa
Order of the third grade, which the Emperor was conferring on him. The
Empress' chamberlain invited him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess
also wished to see him. He did not know whom to answer, and for a few
seconds collected his thoughts. Then the Russian ambassador took him by
the shoulder, led him to the window, and began to talk to him.

Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was joyfully
received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was awarded
the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army received rewards.
Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend the whole morning
calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries. Between four and five in
the afternoon, having made all his calls, he was returning to Bilibin's
house thinking out a letter to his father about the battle and his visit
to Brunn. At the door he found a vehicle half full of luggage. Franz,
Bilibin's man, was dragging a portmanteau with some difficulty out of
the front door.

Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to a bookshop to
provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent some
time in the shop.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the
portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The
scoundrel is again at our heels!"

"Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew.

Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed excitement.

"There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This affair of
the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without striking a
blow!"

Prince Andrew could not understand.

"But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the town
knows?"

"I come from the archduchess'. I heard nothing there."

"And you didn't see that everybody is packing up?"

"I did not... What is it all about?" inquired Prince Andrew impatiently.

"What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that
Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat is
now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or two."

"What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was mined?"

"That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why."

Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.

"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It
will be cut off," said he.

"That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered
Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, those
gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux, * Murat, Lannes, and Belliard,
mount and ride to the bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)
'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is mined and
doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its head and
an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up the bridge
and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign the Emperor
Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and take it!' 'Yes,
let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the bridge, cross it,
and now with their whole army are on this side of the Danube, marching
on us, you, and your lines of communication."


    * The marshalls.


"Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news
grieved him and yet he was pleased.

As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless
situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead it
out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift him from
the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame!
Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching the army
he would give an opinion at the war council which would be the only one
that could save the army, and how he alone would be entrusted with the
executing of the plan.

"Stop this jesting," he said

"I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder. These
gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white handkerchiefs; they
assure the officer on duty that they, the marshals, are on their way to
negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the tete-de-pont. *
They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that the war is over, that
the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with Bonaparte, that they
desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on. The officer sends for
Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace the officers, crack jokes, sit on the
cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets to the bridge unobserved,
flings the bags of incendiary material into the water, and approaches
the tete-de-pont. At length appears the lieutenant general, our dear
Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the
Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can
shake one another's hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience
to make Prince Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen,
Gascons indeed, so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so
flattered by his rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals,
and so dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes,
qu'il n'y voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur
l'ennemi!" *(2) In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did not
forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation.
"The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the
bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went on, his excitement
subsiding under the delightful interest of his own story, "is that the
sergeant in charge of the cannon which was to give the signal to fire
the mines and blow up the bridge, this sergeant, seeing that the French
troops were running onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes
stayed his hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than his general,
goes up to Auersperg and says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are
the French!' Murat, seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed
to speak, turns to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a
true Gascon) and says: 'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian
discipline, if you allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It
was a stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and
orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair
of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
rascality...."


     * Bridgehead.

     * (2) That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that
     he ought to be firing at the enemy.


"It may be treachery," said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the gray
overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of firing, and the
glory that awaited him.

"Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light," replied
Bilibin. "It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just
as at Ulm... it is..."--he seemed to be trying to find the right
expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes (It is... it
is a bit of Mack. We are Macked)," he concluded, feeling that he
had produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
slight smile he began to examine his nails.

"Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had risen
and was going toward his room.

"I am going away."

"Where to?"

"To the army."

"But you meant to stay another two days?"

"But now I am off at once."

And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went to
his room.

"Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been
thinking about you. Why are you going?"

And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
vanished from his face.

Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.

"Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back to
the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, it is
heroism!"

"Not at all," said Prince Andrew.

"But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the other
side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the contrary,
is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no longer fit for
anything else.... You have not been ordered to return and have not been
dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and go with us wherever our
ill luck takes us. They say we are going to Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very
decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in my caleche."

"Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski.

"I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are you
going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two things,"
and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you will not reach
your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will share defeat and
disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army."

And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
insoluble.

"I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he thought:
"I am going to save the army."

"My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin.





CHAPTER XIII


That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkonski
set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would find it and
fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.

In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy
baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince
Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was moving with
great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstructed
with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew
took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack commander, and hungry and
weary, making his way past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the
commander in chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the
position of the army reached him as he went along, and the appearance of
the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed these rumors.

"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des extremites
de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme sort--(le sort de
l'armee d'Ulm)." * He remembered these words in Bonaparte's address
to his army at the beginning of the campaign, and they awoke in him
astonishment at the genius of his hero, a feeling of wounded pride,
and a hope of glory. "And should there be nothing left but to die?" he
thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it no worse than others."


     * "That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of
     the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same
     fate--(the fate of the army at Ulm)."


He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of detachments,
carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and vehicles of all
kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy road, three and
sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and before, as far as ear
could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, the creaking of carts
and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, shouts, the
urging of horses, and the swearing of soldiers, orderlies, and officers.
All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be seen, some
flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers
sat waiting for something, and again soldiers straggling from their
companies, crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or
returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At
each ascent or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the
din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud
pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,
traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their faces
that they despaired of the possibility of checking this disorder.

"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski, recalling
Bilibin's words.

Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up to
a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse vehicle,
evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available materials and
looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet, and a caleche. A
soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat behind the
apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. Prince Andrew rode up
and was just putting his question to a soldier when his attention
was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An
officer in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was driving
the woman's vehicle for trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes
of his whip fell on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed
piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron
and, waving her thin arms from under the woolen shawl, cried:

"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect
me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
our people..."

"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry officer to the
soldier. "Turn back with your slut!"

"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?" screamed the
doctor's wife.

"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?" said Prince
Andrew riding up to the officer.

The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!"

"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
lips.

"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy rage,
"who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander here, not
you! Go back or I'll flatten you into a pancake," repeated he. This
expression evidently pleased him.

"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp," came a voice from
behind.

Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might expose him to
what he dreaded more than anything in the world--to ridicule; but his
instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence Prince
Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised his
riding whip.

"Kind...ly let--them--pass!"

The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.

"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's this
disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."

Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with
a sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in chief
was.

On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to sort
out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his mind. "This
is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking as he went up
to the window of the first house, when a familiar voice called him by
name.

He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the little
window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something, and
flourishing his arm, called him to enter.

"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he shouted.

Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant
having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm. This
was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing countenance.

"Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski.

"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.

"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked Nesvitski.

"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I could
do to get here."

"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,
we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and have
something to eat."

"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other
adjutant.

"Where are headquarters?"

"We are to spend the night in Znaim."

"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said Nesvitski.
"They've made up splendid packs for me--fit to cross the Bohemian
mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's the matter
with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added, noticing that
Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.

"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.

He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife and
the convoy officer.

"What is the commander in chief doing here?" he asked.

"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.

"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable, abominable,
quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off to the house
where the commander in chief was.

Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his
suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the
house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian
general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlovski was
squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs turned
up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards. Kozlovski's face
looked worn--he too had evidently not slept all night. He glanced at
Prince Andrew and did not even nod to him.

"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to the
clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."

"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing angrily
and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.

Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and
dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him, the
disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and
Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the commander
in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding the
horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that something important and
disastrous was about to happen.

He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.

"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration."

"What about capitulation?"

"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."

Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.
Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened,
and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway.
Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the expression of the
commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied with
thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He looked
straight at his adjutant's face without recognizing him.

"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.

"One moment, your excellency."

Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in chief.

"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew rather
loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.

"Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"

Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.

"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may
Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"

His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left
hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which he wore
a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently
habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration kissed him on the neck
instead.

"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage.
"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.

"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain
with Prince Bagration's detachment."

"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed, he
added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!"

They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.

"There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old man's
penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's mind. "If
a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God," he added as
if speaking to himself.

Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him and
involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near his
temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty eye
socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men's death,"
thought Bolkonski.

"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said.

Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been
saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying
on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew.
There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he
questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his interview with the
Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems
affair, and about some ladies they both knew.





CHAPTER XIV


On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the army he
commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that the
French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in immense
force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the troops that were
arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at Krems, Napoleon's
army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him off completely
and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he would find
himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutuzov decided to abandon
the road connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia, he would
have to march with no road into unknown parts of the Bohemian mountains,
defending himself against superior forces of the enemy and abandoning
all hope of a junction with Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat
along the road from Krems to Olmutz, to unite with the troops arriving
from Russia, he risked being forestalled on that road by the French
who had crossed the Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and
transport, having to accept battle on the march against an enemy three
times as strong, who would hem him in from two sides.

Kutuzov chose this latter course.

The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles off
on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the
French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the
French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army to a
disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to forestall
the French with his whole army was impossible. The road for the French
from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the
Russians from Krems to Znaim.

The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard, four
thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the Krems-Znaim to
the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march without resting,
and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he succeeded
in forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as possible.
Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road to Znaim.

Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills, with his
hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as stragglers
by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrunn
a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrunn from
Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to march for some days
before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration with his four thousand
hungry, exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy army
that came upon him at Hollabrunn, which was clearly impossible. But a
freak of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick
that had placed the Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without
a fight led Murat to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way. Meeting
Bagration's weak detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be
Kutuzov's whole army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the
arrival of the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna,
and with this object offered a three days' truce on condition that both
armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that
negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he therefore
offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count Nostitz, the
Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed Murat's emissary
and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed. Another emissary rode
to the Russian line to announce the peace negotiations and to offer the
Russian army the three days' truce. Bagration replied that he was not
authorized either to accept or refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to
Kutuzov to report the offer he had received.

A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving Bagration's
exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport and heavy convoys
(whose movements were concealed from the French) advance if but one
stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the only, and a quite
unexpected, chance of saving the army. On receiving the news he
immediately dispatched Adjutant General Wintzingerode, who was in
attendance on him, to the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not merely
to agree to the truce but also to offer terms of capitulation, and
meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back to hasten to the utmost the
movements of the baggage trains of the entire army along the Krems-Znaim
road. Bagration's exhausted and hungry detachment, which alone covered
this movement of the transport and of the whole army, had to remain
stationary in face of an enemy eight times as strong as itself.

Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which were in
no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to pass, and
also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered, proved
correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen miles from
Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal of a truce and
a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the following letter to
Murat:


Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,

at eight o'clock in the morning

To PRINCE MURAT,

I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command only
my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice without my
order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign. Break
the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him that the
general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so, and that no
one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.

If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I will
ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the Russian
army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and artillery.

The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are nothing
when they have no powers; this one had none.... The Austrians let
themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna bridge, you are
letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor.

NAPOLEON


Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to
Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all
the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim
escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first time
for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was in store
for him.





CHAPTER XV


Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who had
persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and reported
himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet reached Murat's
detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In Bagration's detachment
no one knew anything of the general position of affairs. They talked of
peace but did not believe in its possibility; others talked of a battle
but also disbelieved in the nearness of an engagement. Bagration,
knowing Bolkonski to be a favorite and trusted adjutant, received him
with distinction and special marks of favor, explaining to him that
there would probably be an engagement that day or the next, and giving
him full liberty to remain with him during the battle or to join the
rearguard and have an eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very
important."

"However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said Bagration as
if to reassure Prince Andrew.

"If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a medal
he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he wishes to
stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a brave officer,"
thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying, asked the prince's
permission to ride round the position to see the disposition of the
forces, so as to know his bearings should he be sent to execute an
order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly dressed man with a
diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of speaking French though
he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince Andrew.

On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who
seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors, benches,
and fencing from the village.

"There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff officer
pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in hand. And
there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and sit. This
morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again. I must go
there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a moment."

"Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese," said
Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.

"Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you something."

They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed and
weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.

"Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the
reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than
once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The prince
gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you, Captain," and he
turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer who without his boots
(he had given them to the canteen keeper to dry), in only his stockings,
rose when they entered, smiling not altogether comfortably.

"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he continued.
"One would think that as an artillery officer you would set a good
example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be sounded
and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The staff
officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of you,
all!" he added in a tone of command.

Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery officer
Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged foot to the
other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent, kindly eyes from
Prince Andrew to the staff officer.

"The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain Tushin
smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently wishing to adopt
a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt that his jest was
unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.

"Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to preserve
his gravity.

Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure.
There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather comic,
but extremely attractive.

The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode on.

Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking
soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left some
entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which showed up
red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt sleeves despite
the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host of white ants;
spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown up from behind the
bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer rode up, looked at
the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it they came upon some
dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by others, who ran from the
entrenchment. They had to hold their noses and put their horses to a
trot to escape from the poisoned atmosphere of these latrines.

"Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince," * said the staff
officer.


    * "This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince."


They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could already be
seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the position.

"That's our battery," said the staff officer indicating the highest
point. "It's in charge of the queer fellow we saw without his boots. You
can see everything from there; let's go there, Prince."

"Thank you very much, I will go on alone," said Prince Andrew, wishing
to rid himself of this staff officer's company, "please don't trouble
yourself further."

The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.

The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly and
cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had been
in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road seven
miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and alarm
could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French lines the
more confident was the appearance of our troops. The soldiers in
their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major and company
officers were counting the men, poking the last man in each section in
the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers scattered over
the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and were building
shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the fires sat others,
dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg bands or mending
boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and porridge cookers.
In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly
at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample, which a quartermaster
sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an officer who sat on a log
before his shelter, had been tasted.

Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,
crowded round a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting
a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to him. The
soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with reverential faces,
emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and walked away from
the sergeant major with brightened expressions, licking their lips and
wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats. All their faces were
as serene as if all this were happening at home awaiting peaceful
encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before an action in
which at least half of them would be left on the field. After passing a
chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiers--fine fellows
busy with similar peaceful affairs--near the shelter of the regimental
commander, higher than and different from the others, Prince Andrew came
out in front of a platoon of grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two
soldiers held him while two others were flourishing their switches and
striking him regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally.
A stout major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the
screams kept repeating:

"It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,
honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor in
him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!"

So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but unnatural
screams, continued.

"Go on, go on!" said the major.

A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his face
stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the adjutant
as he rode by.

Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our front
line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and left flanks,
but in the center where the men with a flag of truce had passed that
morning, the lines were so near together that the men could see one
another's faces and speak to one another. Besides the soldiers who
formed the picket line on either side, there were many curious onlookers
who, jesting and laughing, stared at their strange foreign enemies.

Since early morning--despite an injunction not to approach the picket
line--the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away. The
soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a curiosity,
no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the sight-seers and
grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew halted to have a look
at the French.

"Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a
Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer and
was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark to him
jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to keep up with
him. There now, Sidorov!"

"Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was considered
an adept at French.

The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince Andrew
recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying. Dolokhov had
come from the left flank where their regiment was stationed, with his
captain.

"Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and
trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible to
him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?"

Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot
dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about the
campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the Russians, was
trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and had fled all
the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the Russians had not
surrendered but had beaten the French.

"We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you off," said
Dolokhov.

"Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said the
French grenadier.

The French onlookers and listeners laughed.

"We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...," * said Dolokhov.


    * "On vous fera danser."


"Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?" * asked a Frenchman.


    * "What's he singing about?"


"It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a
former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
others..."

"Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.

"Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily.

"The devil skin your Emperor."

And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and shouldering
his musket walked away.

"Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain.

"Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now,
Sidorov, you have a try!"

Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless
sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaska," he said,
trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.

"Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy and
good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the French
involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed to be
to unload the muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as
quickly as possible.

But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
confronted one another as before.





CHAPTER XVI


Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left, Prince
Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff officer had
told him the whole field could be seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped
beside the farthest of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an
artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at attention when the
officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his measured, monotonous pacing.
Behind the guns were their limbers and still farther back picket ropes
and artillerymen's bonfires. To the left, not far from the farthest
cannon, was a small, newly constructed wattle shed from which came the
sound of officers' voices in eager conversation.

It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the
greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just facing
it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon Grabern
could be seen, and in three places to left and right the French troops
amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of whom were
evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left from
that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but it
was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye. Our right flank was
posted on a rather steep incline which dominated the French position.
Our infantry were stationed there, and at the farthest point the
dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery stood and from which
Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the easiest and most
direct descent and ascent to the brook separating us from Schon Grabern.
On the left our troops were close to a copse, in which smoked the
bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood. The French line was
wider than ours, and it was plain that they could easily outflank us
on both sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it
difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew took
out his notebook and, leaning on the cannon, sketched a plan of the
position. He made some notes on two points, intending to mention them to
Bagration. His idea was, first, to concentrate all the artillery in the
center, and secondly, to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the
dip. Prince Andrew, being always near the commander in chief, closely
following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly studying
historical accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the
course of events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined
only important possibilities: "If the enemy attacks the right flank,"
he said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs must
hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that case
the dragoons could successfully make a flank counterattack. If they
attack our center we, having the center battery on this high ground,
shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat to the dip by
echelons." So he reasoned.... All the time he had been beside the gun,
he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly, but as often happens
had not understood a word of what they were saying. Suddenly, however,
he was struck by a voice coming from the shed, and its tone was so
sincere that he could not but listen.

"No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, a
familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what is
beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend."

Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't
escape it anyhow."

"All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third manly
voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are very
wise, because you can take everything along with you--vodka and snacks."

And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
laughed.

"Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the familiar
voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is. Whatever we may
say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only
an atmosphere."

The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.

"Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said.

"Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in
the sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable,
philosophizing voice with pleasure.

"Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a
future life..."

He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air; nearer and
nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon ball, as if it
had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded into the ground near
the shed with super human force, throwing up a mass of earth. The ground
seemed to groan at the terrible impact.

And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth and
his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed followed
by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer who hurried
off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.





CHAPTER XVII


Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes
ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was
a battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a report.
The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and galloped back
to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the cannonade behind him
growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our guns had begun to reply.
From the bottom of the slope, where the parleys had taken place, came
the report of musketry.

Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern letter,
and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at once
moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the Russian
wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the Emperor to
crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.

"It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood
rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?"

Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and drinking
vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same rapid
movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets ready,
and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that filled his
heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but enjoyable!" was what the
face of each soldier and each officer seemed to say.

Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up, he saw,
in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming toward him.
The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding a
white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for
him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and recognizing
Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while Prince Andrew
told him what he had seen.

The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince
Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face
and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking and
feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that impassive
face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince Bagration bent
his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew told him, and
said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that everything that
took place and was reported to him was exactly what he had foreseen.
Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride, spoke quickly.
Prince Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental accent, spoke
particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that there was no need to
hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the direction of Tushin's
battery. Prince Andrew followed with the suite. Behind Prince Bagration
rode an officer of the suite, the prince's personal adjutant, Zherkov,
an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed
horse, and a civilian--an accountant who had asked permission to
be present at the battle out of curiosity. The accountant, a stout,
full-faced man, looked around him with a naive smile of satisfaction
and presented a strange appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and
adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy
officer's saddle.

"He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to the
accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach already."

"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather cunning
smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of Zherkov's joke, and
purposely trying to appear stupider than he really was.

"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer. (He
remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a
prince, but could not get it quite right.)

By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a ball
struck the ground in front of them.

"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive smile.

"A French pancake," answered Zherkov.

"So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!"

He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking
when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which suddenly
ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding
a little to their right and behind the accountant, crashed to earth with
his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent over their saddles and
turned their horses away. The accountant stopped, facing the Cossack,
and examined him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the
horse still struggled.

Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing the
cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to say, "Is
it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with the case
of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his saber
which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber of a kind
no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story of Suvorov
giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the recollection was
particularly pleasant at that moment. They had reached the battery at
which Prince Andrew had been when he examined the battlefield.

"Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman standing by
the ammunition wagon.

He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you frightened
here?" and the artilleryman understood him.

"Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired, freckled
gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.

"Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he rode
past the limbers to the farthest cannon.

As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his
suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see
the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its
former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding
a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with
a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's mouth. The short,
round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over the tail of the gun
carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked out
shading his eyes with his small hand.

"Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a feeble
voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill suited to his weak
figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!"

Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his cap
with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military salute
but like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though Tushin's
guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing incendiary
balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just opposite, in front of
which large masses of French were advancing.

No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but after
consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had great
respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the
village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the officer's report,
and began deliberately to examine the whole battlefield extended before
him. The French had advanced nearest on our right. Below the height on
which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet
flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of musketry was heard,
and much farther to the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the
suite pointed out to Bagration a French column that was outflanking us.
To the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration
ordered two battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right
flank. The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that
if these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support.
Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked at
him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's remark was
just and that really no answer could be made to it. But at that moment
an adjutant galloped up with a message from the commander of the
regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses of the French were
coming down upon them and that his regiment was in disorder and was
retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagration bowed his head in
sign of assent and approval. He rode off at a walk to the right and sent
an adjutant to the dragoons with orders to attack the French. But this
adjutant returned half an hour later with the news that the commander
of the dragoons had already retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as
a heavy fire had been opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and
so had hastened to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.

"Very good!" said Bagration.

As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also, and
as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go there
himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in command
(the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at Braunau) that
he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow in the rear,
as the right flank would probably not be able to withstand the enemy's
attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion that had been in
support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened
attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the commanding officers and
the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders were
really given, but that Prince Bagration tried to make it appear that
everything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of subordinate
commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at least in accord
with his intentions. Prince Andrew noticed, however, that though what
happened was due to chance and was independent of the commander's will,
owing to the tact Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable.
Officers who approached him with disturbed countenances became calm;
soldiers and officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his
presence, and were evidently anxious to display their courage before
him.





CHAPTER XVIII


Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right flank,
began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard but where
on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to
the hollow the less they could see but the more they felt the nearness
of the actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded men. One with a
bleeding head and no cap was being dragged along by two soldiers who
supported him under the arms. There was a gurgle in his throat and he
was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat or
mouth. Another was walking sturdily by himself but without his musket,
groaning aloud and swinging his arm which had just been hurt, while
blood from it was streaming over his greatcoat as from a bottle. He had
that moment been wounded and his face showed fear rather than suffering.
Crossing a road they descended a steep incline and saw several men
lying on the ground; they also met a crowd of soldiers some of whom were
unwounded. The soldiers were ascending the hill breathing heavily, and
despite the general's presence were talking loudly and gesticulating.
In front of them rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the
smoke, and an officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after
the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration rode up
to the ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning
the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked with
smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with it. Some
were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the touchpans or
taking charges from their pouches, while others were firing, though who
they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke which there was no
wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and whistling of bullets were
often heard. "What is this?" thought Prince Andrew approaching the crowd
of soldiers. "It can't be an attack, for they are not moving; it can't
be a square--for they are not drawn up for that."

The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
pleasant smile--his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as
a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had
been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack
had been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know what
had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to him, and
could not say with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or his
regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at the commencement
of the action balls and shells began flying all over his regiment and
hitting men and that afterwards someone had shouted "Cavalry!" and our
men had begun firing. They were still firing, not at the cavalry which
had disappeared, but at French infantry who had come into the hollow and
were firing at our men. Prince Bagration bowed his head as a sign
that this was exactly what he had desired and expected. Turning to his
adjutant he ordered him to bring down the two battalions of the Sixth
Chasseurs whom they had just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by
the changed expression on Prince Bagration's face at this moment. It
expressed the concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of
a man who on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water.
The dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation
of profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes looked before him
eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although his
movements were still slow and measured.

The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating him
to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were. "Please,
your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing for support
at an officer of the suite who turned away from him. "There, you see!"
and he drew attention to the bullets whistling, singing, and hissing
continually around them. He spoke in the tone of entreaty and reproach
that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who has picked up an ax: "We are
used to it, but you, sir, will blister your hands." He spoke as if those
bullets could not kill him, and his half-closed eyes gave still more
persuasiveness to his words. The staff officer joined in the colonel's
appeals, but Bagration did not reply; he only gave an order to
cease firing and re-form, so as to give room for the two approaching
battalions. While he was speaking, the curtain of smoke that had
concealed the hollow, driven by a rising wind, began to move from right
to left as if drawn by an invisible hand, and the hill opposite, with
the French moving about on it, opened out before them. All eyes fastened
involuntarily on this French column advancing against them and winding
down over the uneven ground. One could already see the soldiers' shaggy
caps, distinguish the officers from the men, and see the standard
flapping against its staff.

"They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite.

The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The clash
would take place on this side of it...

The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly formed up
and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the laggards, came
two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had
reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of men marching in step
could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to Bagration, marched
a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a stupid and happy
expression--the same man who had rushed out of the wattle shed. At that
moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how dashing a fellow he
would appear as he passed the commander.

With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly with
his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to his full
height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with the heavy
tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He carried close
to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and not like a real
weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and now back at the men
without losing step, his whole powerful body turning flexibly. It was as
if all the powers of his soul were concentrated on passing the commander
in the best possible manner, and feeling that he was doing it well he
was happy. "Left... left... left..." he seemed to repeat to himself at
each alternate step; and in time to this, with stern but varied faces,
the wall of soldiers burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in
step, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating
to himself at each alternate step, "Left... left... left..." A fat
major skirted a bush, puffing and falling out of step; a soldier who had
fallen behind, his face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot,
panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the air,
flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell into the
column to the measure of "Left... left!" "Close up!" came the company
commander's voice in jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a semicircle
round something where the ball had fallen, and an old trooper on the
flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside the dead men,
ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a hop, looked back
angrily, and through the ominous silence and the regular tramp of feet
beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear left... left... left.

"Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration.

"Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from
the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We know
that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though fearing to
relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.

The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.

Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and dismounted.
He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over his felt coat,
stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The head of the French
column, with its officers leading, appeared from below the hill.

"Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous voice,
turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging his arms,
he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the awkward gait of
a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading him
forward, and experienced great happiness.

The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside Bagration,
could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets, and even their
faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who, with gaitered legs
and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with difficulty.) Prince Bagration
gave no further orders and silently continued to walk on in front of the
ranks. Suddenly one shot after another rang out from the French, smoke
appeared all along their uneven ranks, and musket shots sounded. Several
of our men fell, among them the round-faced officer who had marched so
gaily and complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard,
Bagration looked round and shouted, "Hurrah!"

"Hurrah--ah!--ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and passing
Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular but joyous
and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.





CHAPTER XIX


The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed to
set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French advance. The
French were putting out the fire which the wind was spreading, and thus
gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the center to the other side
of the dip in the ground at the rear was hurried and noisy, but the
different companies did not get mixed. But our left--which consisted
of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the Pavlograd hussars--was
simultaneously attacked and outflanked by superior French forces under
Lannes and was thrown into confusion. Bagration had sent Zherkov to the
general commanding that left flank with orders to retreat immediately.

Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse about
and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his courage
failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it was
dangerous.

Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where the
firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where they
could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.

The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander of
the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which Dolokhov was
serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had been
assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment in which Rostov
was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two commanders were much
exasperated with one another and, long after the action had begun on
the right flank and the French were already advancing, were engaged
in discussion with the sole object of offending one another. But the
regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were by no means ready for the
impending action. From privates to general they were not expecting a
battle and were engaged in peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the
horses and the infantry collecting wood.

"He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the hussars,
flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so let him do
what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars... Bugler, sount ze
retreat!"

But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the capotes of
Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the milldam and forming
up within twice the range of a musket shot. The general in command of
the infantry went toward his horse with jerky steps, and having mounted
drew himself up very straight and tall and rode to the Pavlograd
commander. The commanders met with polite bows but with secret
malevolence in their hearts.

"Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my men
in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to occupy the
position and prepare for an attack."

"I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!" suddenly
replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..."

"I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if you
are not aware of the fact..."

"Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel, touching
his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so goot to
come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't vish to
destroy my men for your pleasure!"

"You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own pleasure and
I won't allow it to be said!"

Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the general
expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front line, as
if their differences would be settled there amongst the bullets. They
reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and they halted in
silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the line, for from
where they had been before it had been evident that it was impossible
for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken ground, as well as that
the French were outflanking our left. The general and colonel looked
sternly and significantly at one another like two fighting cocks
preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs of cowardice
in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As there was
nothing to be said, and neither wished to give occasion for it to be
alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire, they
would have remained there for a long time testing each other's courage
had it not been that just then they heard the rattle of musketry and a
muffled shout almost behind them in the wood. The French had attacked
the men collecting wood in the copse. It was no longer possible for the
hussars to retreat with the infantry. They were cut off from the line of
retreat on the left by the French. However inconvenient the position, it
was now necessary to attack in order to cut away through for themselves.

The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to mount
before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns bridge,
there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and again that
terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear--resembling the line
separating the living from the dead--lay between them. All were
conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether they would cross
it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them all.

The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to questions put
to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on having
his own way, gave an order. No one said anything definite, but the rumor
of an attack spread through the squadron. The command to form up rang
out and the sabers whizzed as they were drawn from their scabbards.
Still no one moved. The troops of the left flank, infantry and hussars
alike, felt that the commander did not himself know what to do, and this
irresolution communicated itself to the men.

"If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at last
the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which he had so
often heard from his fellow hussars.

"Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot
fo'ward!"

The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at the
reins and started of his own accord.

Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his hussars and
still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see distinctly but
took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some way off.

"Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks
drooping as he broke into a gallop.

Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more
elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had been
in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible--and now he
had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I
will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.

"Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now,"
thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a full
gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was already
visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep over the
squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at that instant
the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away from him, and
Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be carried forward
with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same spot. From behind him
Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against him and looked angrily at
him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped past.

"How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov asked
and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle of a field.
Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw nothing before
him but the motionless earth and the stubble around him. There was warm
blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the horse is killed." Rook
tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back, pinning his rider's leg.
Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled but could not rise. Rostov
also tried to rise but fell back, his sabretache having become entangled
in the saddle. Where our men were, and where the French, he did not
know. There was no one near.

Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now the
line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself and
could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he wondered
as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something superfluous was
hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if it were not his.
He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find blood on it. "Ah,
here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing some men running
toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a man wearing a strange
shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned, and with a hooked nose. Then
came two more, and many more running behind. One of them said something
strange, not in Russian. In among the hindmost of these men wearing
similar shakos was a Russian hussar. He was being held by the arms and
his horse was being led behind him.

"It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will take
me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing his eyes.
"Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching Frenchmen, and though
but a moment before he had been galloping to get at them and hack them
to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful that he could not believe
his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they running? Can they be coming at me?
And why? To kill me? Me whom everyone is so fond of?" He remembered
his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the
enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible. "But perhaps they may
do it!" For more than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or
realizing the situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked
nose, was already so close that the expression of his face could be
seen. And the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down,
holding his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized
his pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and
ran with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the
feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns bridge,
but with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One single
sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed his
whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across the field with
the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then turning his
good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder of terror went
through him: "No, better not look," he thought, but having reached the
bushes he glanced round once more. The French had fallen behind, and
just as he looked round the first man changed his run to a walk and,
turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade farther back. Rostov
paused. "No, there's some mistake," thought he. "They can't have wanted
to kill me." But at the same time, his left arm felt as heavy as if
a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He could run no more. The
Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov closed his eyes and stooped
down. One bullet and then another whistled past him. He mustered his
last remaining strength, took hold of his left hand with his right, and
reached the bushes. Behind these were some Russian sharpshooters.





CHAPTER XX


The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the outskirts
of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting mixed, and
retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his fear, uttered the
senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in battle, and that word
infected the whole crowd with a feeling of panic.

"Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives.

The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the general
realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment, and the
thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service who had
never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters for
negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and above
all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for self-preservation, he
clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring his horse, galloped to
the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell around, but fortunately
missed him. His one desire was to know what was happening and at any
cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he had made one, so that he,
an exemplary officer of twenty-two years' service, who had never been
censured, should not be held to blame.

Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind
the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and
descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides
the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of soldiers
attend to the voice of their commander, or would they, disregarding him,
continue their flight? Despite his desperate shouts that used to seem
so terrible to the soldiers, despite his furious purple countenance
distorted out of all likeness to his former self, and the flourishing of
his saber, the soldiers all continued to run, talking, firing into the
air, and disobeying orders. The moral hesitation which decided the fate
of battles was evidently culminating in a panic.

The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the
powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at that
moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any apparent
reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and Russian
sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was Timokhin's company,
which alone had maintained its order in the wood and, having lain in
ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed
only with a sword, had rushed at the enemy with such a desperate cry and
such mad, drunken determination that, taken by surprise, the French had
thrown down their muskets and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin,
killed a Frenchman at close quarters and was the first to seize the
surrendering French officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the
battalions re-formed, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank
in half were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to
join up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and Major
Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies
pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the commander's
stirrup, almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a bluish coat
of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was bandaged, and
over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung. He had an officer's
sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his blue eyes looked impudently
into the commander's face, and his lips were smiling. Though the
commander was occupied in giving instructions to Major Ekonomov, he
could not help taking notice of the soldier.

"Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to the
French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I stopped the
company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and spoke in abrupt
sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I beg you will remember
this, your excellency!"

"All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major
Ekonomov.

But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around his
head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.

"A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your excellency!"


Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of the
action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the center,
send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew also, to order
the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When the supports attached
to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the middle of the action
by someone's order, the battery had continued firing and was only not
captured by the French because the enemy could not surmise that anyone
could have the effrontery to continue firing from four quite undefended
guns. On the contrary, the energetic action of that battery led the
French to suppose that here--in the center--the main Russian forces were
concentrated. Twice they had attempted to attack this point, but on each
occasion had been driven back by grapeshot from the four isolated guns
on the hillock.

Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in
setting fire to Schon Grabern.

"Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine! Grand!
Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen, brightening
up.

All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the
direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the soldiers
cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!" The fire,
fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French columns that had
advanced beyond the village went back; but as though in revenge for this
failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the right of the village and began
firing them at Tushin's battery.

In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in
successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed this
battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our guns, one
knocking over two horses and another tearing off a munition-wagon
driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were, however, not diminished,
but only changed character. The horses were replaced by others from a
reserve gun carriage, the wounded were carried away, and the four guns
were turned against the ten-gun battery. Tushin's companion officer
had been killed at the beginning of the engagement and within an hour
seventeen of the forty men of the guns' crews had been disabled, but the
artillerymen were still as merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed
the French appearing below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.

Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly to
"refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it, ran
forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the French.

"Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels and
working the screws himself.

Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always made him
jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun, now
aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing dead
or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in his feeble
voice, so high pitched and irresolute. His face grew more and more
animated. Only when a man was killed or wounded did he frown and turn
away from the sight, shouting angrily at the men who, as is always the
case, hesitated about lifting the injured or dead. The soldiers, for the
most part handsome fellows and, as is always the case in an artillery
company, a head and shoulders taller and twice as broad as their
officer--all looked at their commander like children in an embarrassing
situation, and the expression on his face was invariably reflected on
theirs.

Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and
activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense of
fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded never
occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more elated. It
seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a day, since he
had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and that the corner
of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar ground. Though he
thought of everything, considered everything, and did everything the
best of officers could do in his position, he was in a state akin to
feverish delirium or drunkenness.

From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle and
thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and perspiring faces
of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight of the blood of men
and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on the enemy's side (always
followed by a ball flying past and striking the earth, a man, a gun, a
horse), from the sight of all these things a fantastic world of his
own had taken possession of his brain and at that moment afforded him
pleasure. The enemy's guns were in his fancy not guns but pipes from
which occasional puffs were blown by an invisible smoker.

"There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a small
cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left by the
wind.

"Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back."

"What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing close
by, who heard him muttering.

"Nothing... only a shell..." he answered.

"Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna" * was the
name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which was large
and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their guns seemed to
him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard Number One of the
second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at him more often than
at anyone else and took delight in his every movement. The sound of
musketry at the foot of the hill, now diminishing, now increasing,
seemed like someone's breathing. He listened intently to the ebb and
flow of these sounds.


    * Daughter of Matthew.


"Ah! Breathing again, breathing!" he muttered to himself.

He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was throwing
cannon balls at the French with both hands.

"Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was saying as
he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice called above his
head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!"

Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had turned
him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping voice:

"Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..."

"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his
superior.

"I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap. "I..."

But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon
ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.
He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another ball
stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.

"Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance.

The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the same
order.

It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the space
where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with a
broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed horses.
Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the limbers lay
several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he approached
and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the mere thought
of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid," thought he, and
dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the order and did not
leave the battery. He decided to have the guns removed from their
positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together with Tushin, stepping
across the bodies and under a terrible fire from the French, he attended
to the removal of the guns.

"A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an
artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!"

Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to seem
not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two cannon
that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down the hill
(one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind), Prince Andrew rode
up to Tushin.

"Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to Tushin.

"Good-by, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-by, my dear
fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes.





CHAPTER XXI


The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing
dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous. The
cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on
the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns,
continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the staff,
among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice sent to
Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one another,
they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to proceed,
reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and,
silently--fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep
without knowing why--rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the orders
were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves after
troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty infantry
officer who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's wattle
shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's" carriage.
At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one hand with
the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat.

"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For God's
sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!"

It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift and
been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.

"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"

"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on, lad,"
he said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the wounded
officer?"

"He has been set down. He died," replied someone.

"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
Antonov."

The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was pale
and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on "Matvevna,"
the gun from which they had removed the dead officer. The cloak they
spread under him was wet with blood which stained his breeches and arm.

"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on
which Rostov sat.

"No, it's a sprain."

"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin.

"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the artilleryman,
wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if apologizing for the
state of his gun.

It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by the
infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they halted. It
had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the uniforms ten paces
off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on the
right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of shot gleamed in
the darkness. This was the last French attack and was met by soldiers
who had sheltered in the village houses. They all rushed out of the
village again, but Tushin's guns could not move, and the artillerymen,
Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they awaited their
fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly, streamed out
of a side street.

"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.

"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now," said
another.

"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows! Nothing
could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to drink?"

The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and again in
the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded by the
humming infantry as by a frame.

In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was flowing
always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and the sound of
hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and voices of the
wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound in the darkness
of the night. The gloom that enveloped the army was filled with their
groans, which seemed to melt into one with the darkness of the night.
After a while the moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on a
white horse followed by his suite, and said something in passing: "What
did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank us?" came eager
questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began pressing closer
together and a report spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently
those in front had halted. All remained where they were in the middle of
the muddy road.

Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin,
having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing
station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the
soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged himself to the
fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his whole
body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but he kept awake by
an excruciating pain in his arm, for which he could find no satisfactory
position. He kept closing his eyes and then again looking at the fire,
which seemed to him dazzlingly red, and at the feeble, round-shouldered
figure of Tushin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him.
Tushin's large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and
commiseration on Rostov, who saw that Tushin with his whole heart wished
to help him but could not.

From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry, who
were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The sound
of voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud, the
crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous rumble.

It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through the
gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a storm.
Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed before and
around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on his heels, held
his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.

"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company,
your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"

With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came up to
the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns moved a
trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers rushed to
the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately, each trying
to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding on to.

"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them
shouted hoarsely.

Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.

"Must one die like a dog?" said he.

Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier ran
up, begging a little fire for the infantry.

"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you, fellow
countrymen. Thanks for the fire--we'll return it with interest," said
he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.

Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and passed
by the fire. One of them stumbled.

"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he.

"He's dead--why carry him?" said another.

"Shut up!"

And they disappeared into the darkness with their load.

"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.

"Yes."

"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here," said
a gunner, coming up to Tushin.

"Coming, friend."

Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight, walked
away from the fire.

Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared
for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some commanding
officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old man with
the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the
general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a
glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the signet
ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew,
pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.

In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, and
the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture, shaking his
head in perplexity--perhaps because the banner really interested him,
perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at
a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut there was a
French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our dragoons. Our officers
were flocking in to look at him. Prince Bagration was thanking the
individual commanders and inquiring into details of the action and our
losses. The general whose regiment had been inspected at Braunau was
informing the prince that as soon as the action began he had withdrawn
from the wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and, allowing the
French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two battalions and
had broken up the French troops.

"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come
on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'--and that's
what I did."

The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not managed
to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened. Perhaps
it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid all that
confusion what did or did not happen?

"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he
continued--remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last
interview with the gentleman-ranker--"that Private Dolokhov, who was
reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence and
particularly distinguished himself."

"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency," chimed in
Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the hussars all that
day, but had heard about them from an infantry officer. "They broke up
two squares, your excellency."

Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of his
usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the glory
of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious expression,
though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie devoid of any
foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:

"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically: infantry,
cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were abandoned in
the center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for someone. (Prince
Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left flank; he knew that all
the guns there had been abandoned at the very beginning of the action.)
"I think I sent you?" he added, turning to the staff officer on duty.

"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I can't
understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had only just
left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added, modestly.

Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the
village and had already been sent for.

"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince
Andrew.

"Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff officer,
with a smile to Bolkonski.

"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly and
abruptly.

All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way
timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past the
generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always was by the
sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of the banner and
stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.

"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not so much
at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom Zherkov laughed
loudest.

Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his guilt
and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive present
themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so excited that
he had not thought about it until that moment. The officers' laughter
confused him still more. He stood before Bagration with his lower
jaw trembling and was hardly able to mutter: "I don't know... your
excellency... I had no men... your excellency."

"You might have taken some from the covering troops."

Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that
was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who has
blundered looks at an examiner.

The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not wishing
to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture to
intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows and his
fingers twitched nervously.

"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
voice, "you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I went
there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two guns
smashed, and no supports at all."

Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at Bolkonski,
who spoke with suppressed agitation.

"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he
continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that battery
and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company," and without
awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.

Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show distrust
in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to credit it,
bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince Andrew went out
with him.

"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin.

Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He felt
sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped.


"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will all
this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows before
him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense. Irresistible
drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his eyes, and the
impression of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged
with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers--wounded and
unwounded--it was they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting
the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To
rid himself of them he closed his eyes.

For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand, Sonya's
thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov with his
voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with Telyanin and
Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier with the harsh
voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that were so agonizingly,
incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and always dragging it in one
direction. He tried to get away from them, but they would not for an
instant let his shoulder move a hair's breadth. It would not ache--it
would be well--if only they did not pull it, but it was impossible to
get rid of them.

He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung less
than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling snow were
fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the doctor had not
come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at
the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.

"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or pity
me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He sighed and,
doing so, groaned involuntarily.

"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his shirt out
over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt and added:
"What a lot of men have been crippled today--frightful!"

Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why did
I come here?" he wondered.

Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant of
Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.





BOOK THREE: 1805





CHAPTER I


Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans.
Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own advantage. He
was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom getting on had
become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he never rightly accounted
to himself, but which formed the whole interest of his life,
were constantly shaping themselves in his mind, arising from the
circumstances and persons he met. Of these plans he had not merely one
or two in his head but dozens, some only beginning to form themselves,
some approaching achievement, and some in course of disintegration. He
did not, for instance, say to himself: "This man now has influence, I
must gain his confidence and friendship and through him obtain a special
grant." Nor did he say to himself: "Pierre is a rich man, I must entice
him to marry my daughter and lend me the forty thousand rubles I need."
But when he came across a man of position his instinct immediately told
him that this man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince
Vasili took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him,
become intimate with him, and finally make his request.

He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an appointment as
Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time conferred the status of
Councilor of State, and insisted on the young man accompanying him to
Petersburg and staying at his house. With apparent absent-mindedness,
yet with unhesitating assurance that he was doing the right thing,
Prince Vasili did everything to get Pierre to marry his daughter. Had he
thought out his plans beforehand he could not have been so natural and
shown such unaffected familiarity in intercourse with everybody both
above and below him in social standing. Something always drew him toward
those richer and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in
seizing the most opportune moment for making use of people.

Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and a rich man, felt
himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset and
preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He had to
sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the purpose of
which was not clear to him, to question his chief steward, to visit his
estate near Moscow, and to receive many people who formerly did not
even wish to know of his existence but would now have been offended
and grieved had he chosen not to see them. These different
people--businessmen, relations, and acquaintances alike--were all
disposed to treat the young heir in the most friendly and flattering
manner: they were all evidently firmly convinced of Pierre's noble
qualities. He was always hearing such words as: "With your remarkable
kindness," or, "With your excellent heart," "You are yourself so
honorable Count," or, "Were he as clever as you," and so on, till
he began sincerely to believe in his own exceptional kindness and
extraordinary intelligence, the more so as in the depth of his heart it
had always seemed to him that he really was very kind and intelligent.
Even people who had formerly been spiteful toward him and evidently
unfriendly now became gentle and affectionate. The angry eldest
princess, with the long waist and hair plastered down like a doll's,
had come into Pierre's room after the funeral. With drooping eyes
and frequent blushes she told him she was very sorry about their past
misunderstandings and did not now feel she had a right to ask him for
anything, except only for permission, after the blow she had received,
to remain for a few weeks longer in the house she so loved and where
she had sacrificed so much. She could not refrain from weeping at these
words. Touched that this statuesque princess could so change, Pierre
took her hand and begged her forgiveness, without knowing what for.
From that day the eldest princess quite changed toward Pierre and began
knitting a striped scarf for him.

"Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with a
great deal from the deceased," said Prince Vasili to him, handing him a
deed to sign for the princess' benefit.

Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to throw
this bone--a bill for thirty thousand rubles--to the poor princess that
it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the affair of the
inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after that the princess
grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became affectionate to him,
especially the youngest, the pretty one with the mole, who often made
him feel confused by her smiles and her own confusion when meeting him.

It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it
would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he could
not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides, he had
no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or not. He
was always busy and always felt in a state of mild and cheerful
intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some important and
general movement; that something was constantly expected of him, that if
he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many people, but if he
did this and that, all would be well; and he did what was demanded of
him, but still that happy result always remained in the future.

More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession of Pierre's affairs
and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of Count
Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air of a
man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would not, for
pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was the son of
his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth, to the caprice
of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few days he spent in
Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would call Pierre, or go to
him himself, and tell him what ought to be done in a tone of weariness
and assurance, as if he were adding every time: "You know I am
overwhelmed with business and it is purely out of charity that I trouble
myself about you, and you also know quite well that what I propose is
the only thing possible."

"Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince Vasili
one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow, speaking as if
he were saying something which had long since been agreed upon and could
not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm giving you a place in
my carriage. I am very glad. All our important business here is now
settled, and I ought to have been off long ago. Here is something I have
received from the chancellor. I asked him for you, and you have been
entered in the diplomatic corps and made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber.
The diplomatic career now lies open before you."

Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words
were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his career,
wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili interrupted him in the
special deep cooing tone, precluding the possibility of interrupting
his speech, which he used in extreme cases when special persuasion was
needed.

"Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my conscience,
and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever complained yet of
being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you could throw it
up tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself when you get to
Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from these terrible
recollections." Prince Vasili sighed. "Yes, yes, my boy. And my valet
can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly forgetting," he added. "You
know, mon cher, your father and I had some accounts to settle, so I have
received what was due from the Ryazan estate and will keep it; you won't
require it. We'll go into the accounts later."

By "what was due from the Ryazan estate" Prince Vasili meant several
thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre's peasants, which the
prince had retained for himself.

In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of
gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather the
rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasili had procured for him,
and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so numerous
that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of bewilderment, bustle,
and continual expectation of some good, always in front of him but never
attained.

Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in Petersburg.
The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been reduced to the
ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince Andrew
was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend his nights as he
used to like to spend them, or to open his mind by intimate talks with
a friend older than himself and whom he respected. His whole time was
taken up with dinners and balls and was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili's
house in the company of the stout princess, his wife, and his beautiful
daughter Helene.

Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of
attitude toward him that had taken place in society.

Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that what
he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that remarks
which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind became foolish
as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte's stupidest
remarks came out clever and apt. Now everything Pierre said was
charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say so, he could see that she
wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.

In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna
Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added: "You
will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful to
see."

When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some
link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and
Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation were
being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased him as an
entertaining supposition.

Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the novelty she
offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a diplomatist fresh
from Berlin with the very latest details of the Emperor Alexander's
visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august friends had pledged
themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold the cause of justice
against the enemy of the human race. Anna Pavlovna received Pierre with
a shade of melancholy, evidently relating to the young man's recent loss
by the death of Count Bezukhov (everyone constantly considered it a
duty to assure Pierre that he was greatly afflicted by the death of the
father he had hardly known), and her melancholy was just like the august
melancholy she showed at the mention of her most august Majesty the
Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre felt flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna
arranged the different groups in her drawing room with her habitual
skill. The large group, in which were Prince Vasili and the generals,
had the benefit of the diplomat. Another group was at the tea table.
Pierre wished to join the former, but Anna Pavlovna--who was in the
excited condition of a commander on a battlefield to whom thousands
of new and brilliant ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in
action--seeing Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:

"Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening." (She
glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) "My dear Helene, be charitable to
my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for ten minutes.
And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count who will not
refuse to accompany you."

The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre, looking
as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.

"Isn't she exquisite?" she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately
beauty as she glided away. "And how she carries herself! For so young a
girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It comes from her
heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least worldly of men
would occupy a most brilliant position in society. Don't you think so? I
only wanted to know your opinion," and Anna Pavlovna let Pierre go.

Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene's perfection of
manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was just of her beauty and her
remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in society.

The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed
desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene and inclined rather to show
her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if inquiring what
she was to do with these people. On leaving them, Anna Pavlovna again
touched Pierre's sleeve, saying: "I hope you won't say that it is dull
in my house again," and she glanced at Helene.

Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the
possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt
coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to see
Helene, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome and
the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation, Helene
turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she gave to
everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so little meaning
for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt was just speaking of
a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to Pierre's father, Count
Bezukhov, and showed them her own box. Princess Helene asked to see the
portrait of the aunt's husband on the box lid.

"That is probably the work of Vinesse," said Pierre, mentioning a
celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the
snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.

He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox,
passing it across Helene's back. Helene stooped forward to make room,
and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at evening parties,
wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut very low at front and
back. Her bust, which had always seemed like marble to Pierre, was
so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could not but perceive the
living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near to his lips that he need
only have bent his head a little to have touched them. He was conscious
of the warmth of her body, the scent of perfume, and the creaking of her
corset as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty forming a complete
whole with her dress, but all the charm of her body only covered by her
garments. And having once seen this he could not help being aware of it,
just as we cannot renew an illusion we have once seen through.

"So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?" Helene seemed to
say. "You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman who
may belong to anyone--to you too," said her glance. And at that moment
Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his wife, and that
it could not be otherwise.

He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing at the
altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know, he did not
even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he knew not why,
that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would happen.

Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more to see
her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen her every
day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could not, any more
than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the
mist and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he has
once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was terribly close to him.
She already had power over him, and between them there was no longer any
barrier except the barrier of his own will.

"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's
voice, "I see you are all right there."

And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done anything
reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him that everyone
knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.

A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna said
to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?"

This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and
Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg house
done up.

"That's a good thing, but don't move from Prince Vasili's. It is good to
have a friend like the prince," she said, smiling at Prince Vasili. "I
know something about that. Don't I? And you are still so young. You need
advice. Don't be angry with me for exercising an old woman's privilege."

She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they have
mentioned their age. "If you marry it will be a different thing," she
continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at
Helene nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He
muttered something and colored.

When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking of what
had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely understood that
the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her beauty was
mentioned he had said absent-mindedly: "Yes, she's good looking," he had
understood that this woman might belong to him.

"But she's stupid. I have myself said she is stupid," he thought. "There
is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites in me.
I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her and she
with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that's why he was sent
away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her father... It's
bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this (the reflection
was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and was conscious
that another line of thought had sprung up, and while thinking of her
worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she
would love him become quite different, and how all he had thought and
heard of her might be false. And he again saw her not as the daughter
of Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body only veiled by its gray
dress. "But no! Why did this thought never occur to me before?" and
again he told himself that it was impossible, that there would be
something unnatural, and as it seemed to him dishonorable, in this
marriage. He recalled her former words and looks and the words and looks
of those who had seen them together. He recalled Anna Pavlovna's words
and looks when she spoke to him about his house, recalled thousands of
such hints from Prince Vasili and others, and was seized by terror lest
he had already, in some way, bound himself to do something that was
evidently wrong and that he ought not to do. But at the very time he was
expressing this conviction to himself, in another part of his mind her
image rose in all its womanly beauty.





CHAPTER II


In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection in
four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to
visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son Anatole
where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the daughter of that
rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking these new affairs,
Prince Vasili had to settle matters with Pierre, who, it is true, had
latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in Prince Vasili's house
where he was staying, and had been absurd, excited, and foolish in
Helene's presence (as a lover should be), but had not yet proposed to
her.

"This is all very fine, but things must be settled," said Prince Vasili
to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that Pierre
who was under such obligations to him ("But never mind that") was not
behaving very well in this matter. "Youth, frivolity... well, God be
with him," thought he, relishing his own goodness of heart, "but it must
be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow will be Lelya's name day.
I will invite two or three people, and if he does not understand what he
ought to do then it will be my affair--yes, my affair. I am her father."

Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" and after the sleepless night
when he had decided that to marry Helene would be a calamity and that he
ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision, had not
left Prince Vasili's and felt with terror that in people's eyes he was
every day more and more connected with her, that it was impossible for
him to return to his former conception of her, that he could not break
away from her, and that though it would be a terrible thing he would
have to unite his fate with hers. He might perhaps have been able
to free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had rarely before given
receptions) now hardly let a day go by without having an evening party
at which Pierre had to be present unless he wished to spoil the general
pleasure and disappoint everyone's expectation. Prince Vasili, in the
rare moments when he was at home, would take Pierre's hand in passing
and draw it downwards, or absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled,
clean-shaven cheek for Pierre to kiss and would say: "Till tomorrow,"
or, "Be in to dinner or I shall not see you," or, "I am staying in for
your sake," and so on. And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed in (as
he said) for Pierre's sake, hardly exchanged a couple of words with him,
Pierre felt unable to disappoint him. Every day he said to himself one
and the same thing: "It is time I understood her and made up my mind
what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No, she
is not stupid, she is an excellent girl," he sometimes said to himself
"she never makes a mistake, never says anything stupid. She says little,
but what she does say is always clear and simple, so she is not stupid.
She never was abashed and is not abashed now, so she cannot be a bad
woman!" He had often begun to make reflections or think aloud in
her company, and she had always answered him either by a brief but
appropriate remark--showing that it did not interest her--or by a silent
look and smile which more palpably than anything else showed Pierre her
superiority. She was right in regarding all arguments as nonsense in
comparison with that smile.

She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant for him
alone, in which there was something more significant than in the general
smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that everyone was
waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line, and he knew that
sooner or later he would step across it, but an incomprehensible terror
seized him at the thought of that dreadful step. A thousand times during
that month and a half while he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer to
that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to himself: "What am I doing? I need
resolution. Can it be that I have none?"

He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this matter
he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself and really
possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when they feel
themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was overpowered by
a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at Anna Pavlovna's,
an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire paralyzed his will.

On Helene's name day, a small party of just their own people--as his
wife said--met for supper at Prince Vasili's. All these friends and
relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl
would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.
Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,
was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the
more important guests--an old general and his wife, and Anna Pavlovna
Scherer. At the other end sat the younger and less important guests, and
there too sat the members of the family, and Pierre and Helene, side by
side. Prince Vasili was not having any supper: he went round the table
in a merry mood, sitting down now by one, now by another, of the guests.
To each of them he made some careless and agreeable remark except to
Pierre and Helene, whose presence he seemed not to notice. He enlivened
the whole party. The wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal
gleamed, so did the ladies' toilets and the gold and silver of the
men's epaulets; servants in scarlet liveries moved round the table, the
clatter of plates, knives, and glasses mingled with the animated hum of
several conversations. At one end of the table, the old chamberlain was
heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at which
she laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the misfortunes of
some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the center of the table, Prince Vasili
attracted everybody's attention. With a facetious smile on his face, he
was telling the ladies about last Wednesday's meeting of the Imperial
Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich Vyazmitinov, the new military governor
general of Petersburg, had received and read the then famous rescript
of the Emperor Alexander from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the
Emperor said that he was receiving from all sides declarations of
the people's loyalty, that the declaration from Petersburg gave him
particular pleasure, and that he was proud to be at the head of such a
nation and would endeavor to be worthy of it. This rescript began with
the words: "Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach me," etc.

"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked one of
the ladies.

"Exactly, not a hair's breadth farther," answered Prince Vasili,
laughing, "'Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From all sides... Sergey
Kuzmich...' Poor Vyazmitinov could not get any farther! He began the
rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered 'Sergey' he sobbed,
'Kuz-mi-ch,' tears, and 'From all sides' was smothered in sobs and he
could get no farther. And again his handkerchief, and again: 'Sergey
Kuzmich, From all sides,'... and tears, till at last somebody else was
asked to read it."

"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated
laughing.

"Don't be unkind," cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of the table holding
up a threatening finger. "He is such a worthy and excellent man, our
dear Vyazmitinov...."

Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where the
honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and under the
influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre and
Helene sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the table, a
suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that had nothing
to do with Sergey Kuzmich--a smile of bashfulness at their own feelings.
But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much as they
enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however they avoided
looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant as they seemed
of them, one could feel by the occasional glances they gave that the
story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the food were all a
pretense, and that the whole attention of that company was directed
to--Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing of Sergey
Kuzmich and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his daughter, and
while he laughed the expression on his face clearly said: "Yes... it's
getting on, it will all be settled today." Anna Pavlovna threatened
him on behalf of "our dear Vyazmitinov," and in her eyes, which, for an
instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read a congratulation on his
future son-in-law and on his daughter's happiness. The old princess
sighed sadly as she offered some wine to the old lady next to her and
glanced angrily at her daughter, and her sigh seemed to say: "Yes,
there's nothing left for you and me but to sip sweet wine, my dear,
now that the time has come for these young ones to be thus boldly,
provocatively happy." "And what nonsense all this is that I am saying!"
thought a diplomatist, glancing at the happy faces of the lovers.
"That's happiness!"

Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting that
society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a healthy
and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this human feeling
dominated everything else and soared above all their affected chatter.
Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the animation was
evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the footmen waiting at
table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their duties as they looked
at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face and at the red, broad, and
happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It seemed as if the very light of
the candles was focused on those two happy faces alone.

Pierre felt that he was the center of it all, and this both pleased and
embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some occupation.
He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only now and
then detached ideas and impressions from the world of reality shot
unexpectedly through his mind.

"So it is all finished!" he thought. "And how has it all happened? How
quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself alone,
but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They are all
expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I cannot, I
cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not know, but it will
certainly happen!" thought Pierre, glancing at those dazzling shoulders
close to his eyes.

Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it
awkward to attract everyone's attention and to be considered a lucky man
and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris possessed
of a Helen. "But no doubt it always is and must be so!" he consoled
himself. "And besides, what have I done to bring it about? How did
it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then there was
nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I played cards with
her and picked up her reticule and drove out with her. How did it begin,
when did it all come about?" And here he was sitting by her side as her
betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her nearness, her breathing, her
movements, her beauty. Then it would suddenly seem to him that it was
not she but he was so unusually beautiful, and that that was why they
all looked so at him, and flattered by this general admiration he would
expand his chest, raise his head, and rejoice at his good fortune.
Suddenly he heard a familiar voice repeating something to him a second
time. But Pierre was so absorbed that he did not understand what was
said.

"I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated Prince
Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear fellow."

Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling at
him and Helene. "Well, what of it, if you all know it?" thought Pierre.
"What of it? It's the truth!" and he himself smiled his gentle childlike
smile, and Helene smiled too.

"When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?" repeated Prince
Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a dispute.

"How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre.

"Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh.

After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the
drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking leave
of Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an important
occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go away,
refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a mournful
silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity of his
diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre's happiness. The old general
grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was. "Oh, the old fool,"
he thought. "That Princess Helene will be beautiful still when she's
fifty."

"I think I may congratulate you," whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old
princess, kissing her soundly. "If I hadn't this headache I'd have
stayed longer."

The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
daughter's happiness.

While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a long time
alone with Helene in the little drawing room where they were sitting.
He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained alone with her,
but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that it was inevitable,
but he could not make up his mind to take the final step. He felt
ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone else's place here beside
Helene. "This happiness is not for you," some inner voice whispered to
him. "This happiness is for those who have not in them what there is in
you."

But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether she was
satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple manner that
this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest she had ever had.

Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in
the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to Pierre with languid
footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasili gave
him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just said was
so strange that one could not take it in. But then the expression of
severity changed, and he drew Pierre's hand downwards, made him sit
down, and smiled affectionately.

"Well, Lelya?" he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and
addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural to
parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which Prince
Vasili had only acquired by imitating other parents.

And he again turned to Pierre.

"Sergey Kuzmich--From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top button of
his waistcoat.

Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the story
about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince Vasili just then, and Prince
Vasili saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered something and
went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince was disconcerted.
The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the world touched
Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed disconcerted, and her
look seemed to say: "Well, it is your own fault."

"The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!" thought Pierre, and he
again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey Kuzmich,
asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it properly.
Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it.

When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his wife,
was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.

"Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear..."

"Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady.

Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat down on
a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and seemed to be
dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.

"Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are about."

The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified and
indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room. Pierre and
Helene still sat talking just as before.

"Still the same," she said to her husband.

Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and his
face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him. Shaking
himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps went
past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he went
joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant that Pierre
rose in alarm on seeing it.

"Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!" (He
put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)--"My dear
boy... Lelya... I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I loved your
father... and she will make you a good wife... God bless you!..."

He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with his
malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.

"Princess, come here!" he shouted.

The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using
her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful
Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again.

"All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so
it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because it's
definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held the
hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom as it
rose and fell.

"Helene!" he said aloud and paused.

"Something special is always said in such cases," he thought, but could
not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face. She
drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.

"Oh, take those off... those..." she said, pointing to his spectacles.

Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes have
from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a frightened and
inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but
with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his
lips and met them with her own. Her face struck Pierre, by its altered,
unpleasantly excited expression.

"It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought Pierre.

"Je vous aime!" * he said, remembering what has to be said at such
moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of himself.


    * "I love you."


Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's large,
newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people said,
of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.





CHAPTER III


Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from Prince Vasili in
November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying him a
visit. "I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I shall
think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see you at the same
time, my honored benefactor," wrote Prince Vasili. "My son Anatole is
accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you will allow him
personally to express the deep respect that, emulating his father, he
feels for you."

"It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors are
coming to us of their own accord," incautiously remarked the little
princess on hearing the news.

Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.

A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one evening
in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.

Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasili's
character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and
Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high position and honors. And now,
from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little princess,
he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion changed into
a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever he mentioned
him. On the day of Prince Vasili's arrival, Prince Bolkonski was
particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he was in a bad
temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or whether his being in a bad
temper made him specially annoyed at Prince Vasili's visit, he was in a
bad temper, and in the morning Tikhon had already advised the architect
not to go to the prince with his report.

"Do you hear how he's walking?" said Tikhon, drawing the architect's
attention to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on his
heels--we know what that means...."

However, at nine o'clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable
collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day
before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the
habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still
visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the
soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince went
through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and the outbuildings,
frowning and silent.

"Can a sleigh pass?" he asked his overseer, a venerable man, resembling
his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him back to the
house.

"The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor."

The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be thanked,"
thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!"

"It would have been hard to drive up, your honor," he added. "I heard,
your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor."

The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
frowning.

"What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?" he said in his
shrill, harsh voice. "The road is not swept for the princess my
daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!"

"Your honor, I thought..."

"You thought!" shouted the prince, his words coming more and more
rapidly and indistinctly. "You thought!... Rascals! Blackguards!... I'll
teach you to think!" and lifting his stick he swung it and would have
hit Alpatych, the overseer, had not the latter instinctively avoided the
blow. "Thought... Blackguards..." shouted the prince rapidly.

But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the
stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before
him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he continued to
shout: "Blackguards!... Throw the snow back on the road!" did not lift
his stick again but hurried into the house.

Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew
that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle
Bourienne with a radiant face that said: "I know nothing, I am the same
as usual," and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast eyes.
What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such occasions she
ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not. She thought:
"If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not sympathize with
him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he will say (as he has
done before) that I'm in the dumps."

The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted.

"Fool... or dummy!" he muttered.

"And the other one is not here. They've been telling tales," he
thought--referring to the little princess who was not in the dining
room.

"Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?"

"She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a bright
smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state."

"Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down.

His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he
flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little
princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the prince
that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to appear.

"I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne: "Heaven
knows what a fright might do."

In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, and
with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not
realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The prince
reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his contempt
for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to life at Bald
Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle Bourienne, spent whole
days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often talked with her
about the old prince and criticized him.

"So we are to have visitors, mon prince?" remarked Mademoiselle
Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. "His
Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his son, I understand?" she said
inquiringly.

"Hm!--his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the
service," said the prince disdainfully. "Why his son is coming I don't
understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don't
want him." (He looked at his blushing daughter.) "Are you unwell today?
Eh? Afraid of the 'minister' as that idiot Alpatych called him this
morning?"

"No, mon pere."

Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice
of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the
conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and
after the soup the prince became more genial.

After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess
was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her maid. She grew
pale on seeing her father-in-law.

She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her cheeks
had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.

"Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the prince's
question as to how she felt.

"Do you want anything?"

"No, merci, mon pere."

"Well, all right, all right."

He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood with
bowed head.

"Has the snow been shoveled back?"

"Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only my
stupidity."

"All right, all right," interrupted the prince, and laughing his
unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to kiss, and then
proceeded to his study.

Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by coachmen
and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to one of the
lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.

Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.

Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo before a
table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly fixed his
large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual round
of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him.
And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and a rich and ugly
heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought, turn out very well
and amusingly. "And why not marry her if she really has so much money?
That never does any harm," thought Anatole.

He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had
become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his
father's room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to him.
Prince Vasili's two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked round
with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter
entered, as if to say: "Yes, that's how I want you to look."

"I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?" Anatole asked, as if
continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been mentioned
during the journey.

"Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
with the old prince."

"If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I can't bear
those old men! Eh?"

"Remember, for you everything depends on this."

In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants' rooms that
the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of both had
been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room,
vainly trying to master her agitation.

"Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never
happen!" she said, looking at herself in the glass. "How shall I enter
the drawing room? Even if I like him I can't now be myself with him."
The mere thought of her father's look filled her with terror. The little
princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received from Masha,
the lady's maid, the necessary report of how handsome the minister's son
was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and with what difficulty
the father had dragged his legs upstairs while the son had followed him
like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received this information,
the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose chattering voices
had reached her from the corridor, went into Princess Mary's room.

"You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess, waddling in,
and sinking heavily into an armchair.

She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the morning,
but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully done and her
face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded
outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still
more noticeable how much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch
had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne's toilet which rendered her
fresh and pretty face yet more attractive.

"What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?" she began.
"They'll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing room and we
shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself up at all!"

The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and merrily
began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary should be
dressed. Princess Mary's self-esteem was wounded by the fact that
the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both her
companions' not having the least conception that it could be otherwise.
To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them would be to
betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to dress her would
prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her beautiful eyes
grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took on the unattractive
martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she submitted herself to
Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women quite sincerely tried
to make her look pretty. She was so plain that neither of them could
think of her as a rival, so they began dressing her with perfect
sincerity, and with the naive and firm conviction women have that dress
can make a face pretty.

"No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty," said Lise, looking
sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. "You have a maroon
dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life may
be at stake. But this one is too light, it's not becoming!"

It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary
that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little
princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were placed
in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged lower on
the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They forgot that
the frightened face and the figure could not be altered, and that
however they might change the setting and adornment of that face, it
would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three changes to
which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair had been arranged
on the top of her head (a style that quite altered and spoiled her
looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a pale-blue scarf, the
little princess walked twice round her, now adjusting a fold of the
dress with her little hand, now arranging the scarf and looking at her
with her head bent first on one side and then on the other.

"No, it will not do," she said decidedly, clasping her hands. "No, Mary,
really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little gray
everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie," she said to the
maid, "bring the princess her gray dress, and you'll see, Mademoiselle
Bourienne, how I shall arrange it," she added, smiling with a foretaste
of artistic pleasure.

But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained
sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in the
mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to burst
into sobs.

"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "just one more
little effort."

The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to Princess
Mary.

"Well, now we'll arrange something quite simple and becoming," she said.

The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne's, and Katie's, who was
laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping of
birds.

"No, leave me alone," said Princess Mary.

Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds
was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful
eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at
them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist.

"At least, change your coiffure," said the little princess. "Didn't I
tell you," she went on, turning reproachfully to Mademoiselle Bourienne,
"Mary's is a face which such a coiffure does not suit in the least. Not
in the least! Please change it."

"Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to me,"
answered a voice struggling with tears.

Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to themselves
that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse than usual,
but it was too late. She was looking at them with an expression they
both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This expression in Princess
Mary did not frighten them (she never inspired fear in anyone), but they
knew that when it appeared on her face, she became mute and was not to
be shaken in her determination.

"You will change it, won't you?" said Lise. And as Princess Mary gave no
answer, she left the room.

Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise's request,
she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look in her
glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with downcast eyes and
pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and strangely attractive
being rose in her imagination, and carried her into a totally different
happy world of his own. She fancied a child, her own--such as she had
seen the day before in the arms of her nurse's daughter--at her own
breast, the husband standing by and gazing tenderly at her and the
child. "But no, it is impossible, I am too ugly," she thought.

"Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment," came the
maid's voice at the door.

She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking, and
before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and, her
eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a
lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments. A painful
doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a
man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess Mary dreamed of
happiness and of children, but her strongest, most deeply hidden longing
was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this feeling from
others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. "O God," she said,
"how am I to stifle in my heart these temptations of the devil? How am I
to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill
Thy will?" And scarcely had she put that question than God gave her the
answer in her own heart. "Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be
not anxious or envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden
from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be
God's will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill
His will." With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope for the
fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed,
and having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and
coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What
could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without Whose
care not a hair of man's head can fall?





CHAPTER IV


When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his son were already
in the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle
Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her heels,
the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little princess,
indicating her to the gentlemen, said: "Voila Marie!" Princess Mary saw
them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince Vasili's face, serious
for an instant at the sight of her, but immediately smiling again, and
the little princess curiously noting the impression "Marie" produced on
the visitors. And she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and
pretty face, and her unusually animated look which was fixed on him,
but him she could not see, she only saw something large, brilliant,
and handsome moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili
approached first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her
hand and answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she
remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still could
not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and she
touched with her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful
light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was
struck by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a button
of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in, slightly
swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked with beaming
face at the princess without speaking and evidently not thinking about
her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready or eloquent in
conversation, but he had the faculty, so invaluable in society, of
composure and imperturbable self-possession. If a man lacking in
self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and betrays a
consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an anxiety to find
something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was dumb, swung his
foot, and smilingly examined the princess' hair. It was evident that he
could be silent in this way for a very long time. "If anyone finds this
silence inconvenient, let him talk, but I don't want to," he seemed to
say. Besides this, in his behavior to women Anatole had a manner
which particularly inspires in them curiosity, awe, and even love--a
supercilious consciousness of his own superiority. It was as if he said
to them: "I know you, I know you, but why should I bother about you?
You'd be only too glad, of course." Perhaps he did not really think this
when he met women--even probably he did not, for in general he thought
very little--but his looks and manner gave that impression. The princess
felt this, and as if wishing to show him that she did not even dare
expect to interest him, she turned to his father. The conversation was
general and animated, thanks to Princess Lise's voice and little downy
lip that lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with that
playful manner often employed by lively chatty people, and consisting
in the assumption that between the person they so address and themselves
there are some semi-private, long-established jokes and amusing
reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist--just as none
existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone and the
little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew, into these
amusing recollections of things that had never occurred. Mademoiselle
Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt herself
pleasantly made to share in these merry reminiscences.

"Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to
ourselves, dear prince," said the little princess (of course, in French)
to Prince Vasili. "It's not as at Annette's * receptions where you
always ran away; you remember cette chere Annette!"


    * Anna Pavlovna.


"Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!"

"And our little tea table?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Why is it you were never at Annette's?" the little princess asked
Anatole. "Ah, I know, I know," she said with a sly glance, "your brother
Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!" and she shook her finger at
him, "I have even heard of your doings in Paris!"

"And didn't Hippolyte tell you?" asked Prince Vasili, turning to his son
and seizing the little princess' arm as if she would have run away and
he had just managed to catch her, "didn't he tell you how he himself was
pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the door? Oh, she
is a pearl among women, Princess," he added, turning to Princess Mary.

When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized the
opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections.

She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since Anatole
had left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole answered the
Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a smile, talked to her
about her native land. When he saw the pretty little Bourienne, Anatole
came to the conclusion that he would not find Bald Hills dull either.
"Not at all bad!" he thought, examining her, "not at all bad, that
little companion! I hope she will bring her along with her when we're
married, la petite est gentille." *


    * The little one is charming.


The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and considering
what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him. "What are
Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince Vasili is a shallow
braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine specimen," he grumbled to
himself. What angered him was that the coming of these visitors revived
in his mind an unsettled question he always tried to stifle, one about
which he always deceived himself. The question was whether he could ever
bring himself to part from his daughter and give her to a husband. The
prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing beforehand
that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only
with his feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life without
Princess Mary, little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to
him. "And why should she marry?" he thought. "To be unhappy for certain.
There's Lise, married to Andrew--a better husband one would think could
hardly be found nowadays--but is she contented with her lot? And who
would marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They'll take her for her
connections and wealth. Are there no women living unmarried, and even
the happier for it?" So thought Prince Bolkonski while dressing, and
yet the question he was always putting off demanded an immediate
answer. Prince Vasili had brought his son with the evident intention of
proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask for an answer.
His birth and position in society were not bad. "Well, I've nothing
against it," the prince said to himself, "but he must be worthy of her.
And that is what we shall see."

"That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he added aloud.

He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing rapidly
round the company. He noticed the change in the little princess' dress,
Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, Princess Mary's unbecoming coiffure,
Mademoiselle Bourienne's and Anatole's smiles, and the loneliness of his
daughter amid the general conversation. "Got herself up like a fool!"
he thought, looking irritably at her. "She is shameless, and he ignores
her!"

He went straight up to Prince Vasili.

"Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!"

"Friendship laughs at distance," began Prince Vasili in his usual rapid,
self-confident, familiar tone. "Here is my second son; please love and
befriend him."

Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.

"Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well, come and kiss
me," and he offered his cheek.

Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and perfect
composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his father had
told him to expect.

Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa
and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it and began
questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen
attentively to what Prince Vasili said, but kept glancing at Princess
Mary.

"And so they are writing from Potsdam already?" he said, repeating
Prince Vasili's last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his
daughter.

"Is it for visitors you've got yourself up like that, eh?" said he.
"Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for the
visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you are
never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent."

"It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess, with a
blush.

"You must do as you please," said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his
daughter-in-law, "but she need not make a fool of herself, she's plain
enough as it is."

And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who was
reduced to tears.

"On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well," said
Prince Vasili.

"Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince Bolkonski,
turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get acquainted."

"Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile beside
the old prince.

"Well, my dear boy, I hear you've been educated abroad, not taught to
read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me,
my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?" asked the old man,
scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.

"No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly able to
restrain his laughter.

"Ah! That's a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the Tsar
and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve. Well, are
you off to the front?"

"No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am attached...
what is it I am attached to, Papa?" said Anatole, turning to his father
with a laugh.

"A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha, ha!"
laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly
Prince Bolkonski frowned.

"You may go," he said to Anatole.

Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.

"And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't you?"
said the old prince to Prince Vasili.

"I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education there
is much better than ours."

"Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The lad's
a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now." He took Prince
Vasili's arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were alone
together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the old
prince.

"Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can't part from her?"
said the old prince angrily. "What an idea! I'm ready for it tomorrow!
Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better. You know
my principles--everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow in your
presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can stay and I'll
see." The old prince snorted. "Let her marry, it's all the same to me!"
he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting from his son.

"I will tell you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a crafty
man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so keen-sighted
companion. "You know, you see right through people. Anatole is no
genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an excellent son or
kinsman."

"All right, all right, we'll see!"

As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time
without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women of
Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real
till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately
increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in
darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of significance.

Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The
handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband absorbed
all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and
magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams of a future
family life continually rose in her imagination. She drove them away and
tried to conceal them.

"But am I not too cold with him?" thought the princess. "I try to be
reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him already,
but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine that I do
not like him."

And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to her new
guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole.

Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole's
arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young woman
without any definite position, without relations or even a country, did
not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkonski, to reading
aloud to him and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince who, able to
appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain, badly dressed,
ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in love with her and carry her
off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew
a story, heard from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she
liked to repeat to herself. It was the story of a girl who had been
seduced, and to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and
reproached her for yielding to a man without being married. Mademoiselle
Bourienne was often touched to tears as in imagination she told this
story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince, had
appeared. He would carry her away and then sa pauvre mere would appear
and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself in Mademoiselle
Bourienne's head at the very time she was talking to Anatole about
Paris. It was not calculation that guided her (she did not even for a
moment consider what she should do), but all this had long been familiar
to her, and now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around
him and she wished and tried to please him as much as possible.

The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,
unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the
familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any
struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.

Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man
tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the
spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was
beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne
that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him with great
suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.

After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess Mary was
asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits,
came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic world and the
look she felt upon her made that world still more poetic. But Anatole's
expression, though his eyes were fixed on her, referred not to her but
to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne's little foot, which he was
then touching with his own under the clavichord. Mademoiselle Bourienne
was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her lovely eyes there was a
look of fearful joy and hope that was also new to the princess.

"How she loves me!" thought Princess Mary. "How happy I am now, and how
happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband? Can it
be possible?" she thought, not daring to look at his face, but still
feeling his eyes gazing at her.

In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole
kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the courage,
but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came near to her
shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up and kissed
Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but then he did
everything so simply and with such assurance!) Mademoiselle Bourienne
flushed, and gave the princess a frightened look.

"What delicacy!" thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie"
(Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not
value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and
kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand.

"No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving
well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!" she said. And
smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.





CHAPTER V


They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as he
got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.

"Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind--yes, kind,
that is the chief thing," thought Princess Mary; and fear, which she had
seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round, it seemed
to her that someone was there standing behind the screen in the dark
corner. And this someone was he--the devil--and he was also this man
with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.

She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.

Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long
time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at someone, now
working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre mere
rebuking her for her fall.

The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly made.
She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every position was
awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her now more than
ever because Anatole's presence had vividly recalled to her the time
when she was not like that and when everything was light and gay. She
sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and nightcap and Katie, sleepy
and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy feather bed for the third
time, muttering to herself.

"I told you it was all lumps and holes!" the little princess repeated.
"I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it's not my fault!" and her
voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.

The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard him
pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though he
had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more pointed
because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter, whom he
loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would consider
the whole matter and decide what was right and how he should act, but
instead of that he only excited himself more and more.

"The first man that turns up--she forgets her father and everything
else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her tail and is unlike
herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she knew I should notice
it. Fr... fr... fr! And don't I see that that idiot had eyes only for
Bourienne--I shall have to get rid of her. And how is it she has not
pride enough to see it? If she has no pride for herself she might at
least have some for my sake! She must be shown that the blockhead thinks
nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but
I'll let her see...."

The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a
mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,
Princess Mary's self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to
be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this
thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.

"What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting the
nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. "I never
invited them. They came to disturb my life--and there is not much of it
left."

"Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered by the
shirt.

Tikhon knew his master's habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and
therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive expression of
the face that emerged from the shirt.

"Gone to bed?" asked the prince.

Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his
master's thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince
Vasili and his son.

"They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency."

"No good... no good..." said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his feet
into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing gown, he
went to the couch on which he slept.

Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle Bourienne,
they quite understood one another as to the first part of their romance,
up to the appearance of the pauvre mere; they understood that they had
much to say to one another in private and so they had been seeking an
opportunity since morning to meet one another alone. When Princess Mary
went to her father's room at the usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and
Anatole met in the conservatory.

Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special trepidation.
It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that her fate would be
decided that day, but that they also knew what she thought about it.
She read this in Tikhon's face and in that of Prince Vasili's valet, who
made her a low bow when she met him in the corridor carrying hot water.

The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of
his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking
expression of her father's. His face wore that expression when his
dry hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in
arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,
repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.

He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.

"I have had a proposition made me concerning you," he said with an
unnatural smile. "I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasili has not
come and brought his pupil with him" (for some reason Prince Bolkonski
referred to Anatole as a "pupil") "for the sake of my beautiful eyes.
Last night a proposition was made me on your account and, as you know my
principles, I refer it to you."

"How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess, growing pale
and then blushing.

"How understand me!" cried her father angrily. "Prince Vasili finds you
to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to you on his
pupil's behalf. That's how it's to be understood! 'How understand
it'!... And I ask you!"

"I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess.

"I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I'm not going to get
married. What about you? That's what I want to know."

The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with disapproval,
but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her fate would be
decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not to see the gaze
under which she felt that she could not think, but would only be able to
submit from habit, and she said: "I wish only to do your will, but if
I had to express my own desire..." She had no time to finish. The old
prince interrupted her.

"That's admirable!" he shouted. "He will take you with your dowry and
take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She'll be the wife, while
you..."

The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on his
daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.

"Now then, now then, I'm only joking!" he said. "Remember this,
Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to
choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life's happiness
depends on your decision. Never mind me!"

"But I do not know, Father!"

"There's no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry you or
anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room, think it over,
and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence: yes or no. I know
you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but you had better think
it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" he still shouted when the
princess, as if lost in a fog, had already staggered out of the study.

Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had said
about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be sure, but
still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of it. She was
going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing nor hearing
anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of Mademoiselle
Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps away saw
Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to her. With
a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole looked at Princess
Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the waist of Mademoiselle
Bourienne who had not yet seen her.

"Who's that? Why? Wait a moment!" Anatole's face seemed to say. Princess
Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand it. At last
Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole bowed to
Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in a laugh at
this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders went to the door
that led to his own apartments.

An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the old prince;
he added that Prince Vasili was also there. When Tikhon came to her
Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding the weeping
Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her hair. The
princess' beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance were
looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle Bourienne's
pretty face.

"No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said Mademoiselle
Bourienne.

"Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and I will try to
do all I can for your happiness."

"But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand being so
carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..."

"I quite understand," answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile. "Calm
yourself, my dear. I will go to my father," she said, and went out.

Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other and a snuffbox in
his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion on his face,
as if stirred to his heart's core and himself regretting and laughing
at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary entered. He hurriedly took a
pinch of snuff.

"Ah, my dear, my dear!" he began, rising and taking her by both hands.
Then, sighing, he added: "My son's fate is in your hands. Decide, my
dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a daughter!"

He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.

"Fr... fr..." snorted Prince Bolkonski. "The prince is making a
proposition to you in his pupil's--I mean, his son's--name. Do you
wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin's wife? Reply: yes or no," he
shouted, "and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion also.
Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion," added Prince Bolkonski, turning
to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look. "Yes, or no?"

"My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my life
from yours. I don't wish to marry," she answered positively, glancing at
Prince Vasili and at her father with her beautiful eyes.

"Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!" cried Prince Bolkonski,
frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss her, but only
bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and pressed her hand so
that she winced and uttered a cry.

Prince Vasili rose.

"My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never
forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching
this heart, so kind and generous? Say 'perhaps'... The future is so
long. Say 'perhaps.'"

"Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you for
the honor, but I shall never be your son's wife."

"Well, so that's finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have seen
you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!" said the old
prince. "Very, very glad to have seen you," repeated he, embracing
Prince Vasili.

"My vocation is a different one," thought Princess Mary. "My vocation
is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the happiness of love
and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will arrange poor Amelie's
happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so passionately repents. I
will do all I can to arrange the match between them. If he is not rich I
will give her the means; I will ask my father and Andrew. I shall be so
happy when she is his wife. She is so unfortunate, a stranger, alone,
helpless! And, oh God, how passionately she must love him if she could
so far forget herself! Perhaps I might have done the same!..." thought
Princess Mary.





CHAPTER VI


It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till
midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's
handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm and
haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read the
letter.

Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the house,
on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the room and
found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing at the same
time.

Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still
living with the Rostovs.

"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, prepared to
sympathize in any way.

The count sobbed yet more.

"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling boy...
the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How tell the
little countess!"

Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief wiped
the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried her
own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and till
teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's help,
would inform her.

At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war news and
about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been received from
him, though she knew that already, and remarked that they might very
likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each time that these hints
began to make the countess anxious and she glanced uneasily at the
count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very adroitly turned the
conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha, who, of the whole
family, was the most gifted with a capacity to feel any shades of
intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her ears from the beginning
of the meal and was certain that there was some secret between her
father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had something to do with her
brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was preparing them for it. Bold as
she was, Natasha, who knew how sensitive her mother was to anything
relating to Nikolenka, did not venture to ask any questions at dinner,
but she was too excited to eat anything and kept wriggling about on her
chair regardless of her governess' remarks. After dinner, she rushed
head long after Anna Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on
her neck as soon as she overtook her in the sitting room.

"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!"

"Nothing, my dear."

"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up--I know you know
something."

Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.

"You are a little slyboots," she said.

"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha, reading
confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face.

"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your mamma."

"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at
once."

Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the letter,
on condition that she should tell no one.

"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha, crossing herself, "I won't
tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya.

"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful triumph.

"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.

Natasha, seeing the impression the news of her brother's wound produced
on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.

She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.

"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
wrote himself," said she through her tears.

"There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked Petya,
pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very glad, very
glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself so. You are all
blubberers and understand nothing."

Natasha smiled through her tears.

"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya.

"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an officer."

"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived
you. Let us go to Mamma."

Petya paced the room in silence for a time.

"If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of those
Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have killed so
many that there'd have been a heap of them."

"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!"

"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya.

"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's silence.

Sonya smiled.

"Do I remember Nicholas?"

"No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him perfectly,
remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive gesture,
evidently wishing to give her words a very definite meaning. "I remember
Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said. "But I don't remember
Boris. I don't remember him a bit."

"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise.

"It's not that I don't remember--I know what he is like, but not as I
remember Nikolenka. Him--I just shut my eyes and remember, but Boris...
No!" (She shut her eyes.) "No! there's nothing at all."

"Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her
friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to
say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was
out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and,
whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him as
long as I live."

Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and said
nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there was such
love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt anything
like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.

"Shall you write to him?" she asked.

Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas, and
whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already an
officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of herself
and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on
himself?

"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said,
blushing.

"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?"

Sonya smiled.

"No."

"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to."

"Why should you be ashamed?"

"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed."

"And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's
previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in
spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new Count
Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant Natasha's
Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!"

"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha.

"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya, with
the air of an old brigadier.

The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at dinner.
On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her eyes fixed on a
miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a snuffbox, while the tears
kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna, with the letter, came on
tiptoe to the countess' door and paused.

"Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her. "Come
later." And she went in, closing the door behind her.

The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.

At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna
Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence,
then both voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps.
Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud expression of
a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation and admits the
public to appreciate his skill.

"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the
countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait and
in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her lips.

When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, embraced his
bald head, over which she again looked at the letter and the portrait,
and in order to press them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away
the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya now entered the room,
and the reading of the letter began. After a brief description of
the campaign and the two battles in which he had taken part, and his
promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his father's and mother's hands
asking for their blessing, and that he kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya.
Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss,
and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he
loved and thought of just the same as ever." When she heard this Sonya
blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks
turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at
full speed with her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and
smiling, plumped down on the floor. The countess was crying.

"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one should be
glad and not cry."

This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked
at her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the
countess.

Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she
did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses, and
Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter
each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh
proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary, how
joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of whose
tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom
she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that son who had
first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that this son should now
be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior
doing some kind of man's work of his own, without help or guidance.
The universal experience of ages, showing that children do grow
imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the
countess. Her son's growth toward manhood, at each of its stages,
had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the
millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty
years before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who lived
somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to
speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be
this strong, brave man, this model son and officer that, judging by this
letter, he now was.

"What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the
descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about
himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he himself,
I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about his
sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has remembered
everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was only so
high--I always said...."

For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of
letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied out,
while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of the
count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and equipment
of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna Mikhaylovna,
practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor with army
authorities to secure advantageous means of communication for herself
and her son. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand
Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostovs
supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite a definite address,
and that if a letter reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards
there was no reason why it should not reach the Pavlograd regiment,
which was presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood. And so it was
decided to send the letters and money by the Grand Duke's courier to
Boris and Boris was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were
from the old count, the countess, Petya, Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and
finally there were six thousand rubles for his outfit and various other
things the old count sent to his son.





CHAPTER VII


On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov's active army, in camp before
Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors--the
Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent
the night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to come straight
to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o'clock.

That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris, telling him that
the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles from Olmutz
and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money for him.
Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops, after
their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp swarmed
with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all sorts
of tempting wares. The Pavlograds held feast after feast, celebrating
awards they had received for the campaign, and made expeditions to
Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who had recently
opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses. Rostov, who had
just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought Denisov's horse,
Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and the sutlers. On
receiving Boris' letter he rode with a fellow officer to Olmutz, dined
there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set off alone to the Guards'
camp to find his old playmate. Rostov had not yet had time to get his
uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with a soldier's
cross, equally shabby cadet's riding breeches lined with worn leather,
and an officer's saber with a sword knot. The Don horse he was riding
was one he had bought from a Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a
crumpled hussar cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his head. As he
rode up to the camp he thought how he would impress Boris and all his
comrades of the Guards by his appearance--that of a fighting hussar who
had been under fire.

The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip, parading
their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy stages, their
knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian authorities had provided
excellent dinners for the officers at every halting place. The regiments
had entered and left the town with their bands playing, and by the Grand
Duke's orders the men had marched all the way in step (a practice on
which the Guards prided themselves), the officers on foot and at their
proper posts. Boris had been quartered, and had marched all the way,
with Berg who was already in command of a company. Berg, who had
obtained his captaincy during the campaign, had gained the confidence of
his superiors by his promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money
matters very satisfactorily. Boris, during the campaign, had made the
acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by
a letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become
acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom he hoped to obtain
a post on the commander in chief's staff. Berg and Boris, having rested
after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and neatly dressed, at a
round table in the clean quarters allotted to them, playing chess.
Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. Boris, in the accurate way
characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of chessmen with
his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg's move, and watched his
opponent's face, evidently thinking about the game as he always thought
only of whatever he was engaged on.

"Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked.

"We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing his
hand.

At that moment the door opened.

"Here he is at last!" shouted Rostov. "And Berg too! Oh, you
petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!" he exclaimed, imitating his Russian
nurse's French, at which he and Boris used to laugh long ago.

"Dear me, how you have changed!"

Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit to steady and
replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace his
friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of youth,
that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner
different from that of its elders which is often insincere, Nicholas
wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He wanted to pinch
him, push him, do anything but kiss him--a thing everybody did. But
notwithstanding this, Boris embraced him in a quiet, friendly way and
kissed him three times.

They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when young
men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense changes in
the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which they had taken
those first steps. Both had changed greatly since they last met and both
were in a hurry to show the changes that had taken place in them.

"Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete,
not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger
and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his own
mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's loud
voice, popped her head in at the door.

"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink.

"Why do you shout so? You'll frighten them!" said Boris. "I did not
expect you today," he added. "I only sent you the note yesterday by
Bolkonski--an adjutant of Kutuzov's, who's a friend of mine. I did not
think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you? Been
under fire already?" asked Boris.

Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier's Cross of St. George
fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,
glanced at Berg with a smile.

"As you see," he said.

"Indeed? Yes, yes!" said Boris, with a smile. "And we too have had a
splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode
with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and every
advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls!
I can't tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our
officers."

And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of his
hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the pleasures
and advantages of service under members of the Imperial family.

"Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some wine."

Boris made a grimace.

"If you really want it," said he.

He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and sent
for wine.

"Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he added.

Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both
arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he
glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind the
letter.

"Well, they've sent you a tidy sum," said Berg, eying the heavy purse
that sank into the sofa. "As for us, Count, we get along on our pay. I
can tell you for myself..."

"I say, Berg, my dear fellow," said Rostov, "when you get a letter from
home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk everything
over with, and I happen to be there, I'll go at once, to be out of
your way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!" he exclaimed, and
immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking amiably into his
face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his words, he added,
"Don't be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from my heart as to an
old acquaintance."

"Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg, getting up
and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.

"Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris.

Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of dust,
stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples
upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having
assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had been
noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.

"Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the letter.

"Why?"

"Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them such
a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!" he repeated, flushing suddenly. "Well,
have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let's have some!"

In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of recommendation
to Bagration which the old countess at Anna Mikhaylovna's advice had
obtained through an acquaintance and sent to her son, asking him to take
it to its destination and make use of it.

"What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the letter under
the table.

"Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris.

"It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want it
for!"

"Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading the
address. "This letter would be of great use to you."

"I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant."

"Why not?" inquired Boris.

"It's a lackey's job!"

"You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris, shaking his
head.

"And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the point...
Come, how are you?" asked Rostov.

"Well, as you see. So far everything's all right, but I confess I should
much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front."

"Why?"

"Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try to
make as successful a career of it as possible."

"Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else.

He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently
trying in vain to find the answer to some question.

Old Gabriel brought in the wine.

"Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would drink with you.
I can't."

"Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?" asked
Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.

"He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow," answered Boris.

Again Rostov looked intently into Boris' eyes and sighed. Berg returned,
and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three officers
became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and how they
had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They spoke of the
sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke, and told stories
of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual, kept silent when the
subject did not relate to himself, but in connection with the stories
of the Grand Duke's quick temper he related with gusto how in Galicia he
had managed to deal with the Grand Duke when the latter made a tour of
the regiments and was annoyed at the irregularity of a movement. With a
pleasant smile Berg related how the Grand Duke had ridden up to him in
a violent passion, shouting: "Arnauts!" ("Arnauts" was the Tsarevich's
favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for the company
commander.

"Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I knew
I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know the Army
Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do the Lord's
Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my company, and so
my conscience was at ease. I came forward...." (Berg stood up and showed
how he presented himself, with his hand to his cap, and really it
would have been difficult for a face to express greater respect and
self-complacency than his did.) "Well, he stormed at me, as the saying
is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It was not a matter of life but
rather of death, as the saying is. 'Albanians!' and 'devils!' and 'To
Siberia!'" said Berg with a sagacious smile. "I knew I was in the right
so I kept silent; was not that best, Count?... 'Hey, are you dumb?' he
shouted. Still I remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The
next day it was not even mentioned in the Orders of the Day. That's what
keeping one's head means. That's the way, Count," said Berg, lighting
his pipe and emitting rings of smoke.

"Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling.

But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and
skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and where
he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about it, and
as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of his Schon
Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a battle generally
do describe it, that is, as they would like it to have been, as they
have heard it described by others, and as sounds well, but not at all as
it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man and would on no
account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story meaning to tell
everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, involuntarily, and
inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told the truth to his
hearers--who like himself had often heard stories of attacks and had
formed a definite idea of what an attack was and were expecting to hear
just such a story--they would either not have believed him or, still
worse, would have thought that Rostov was himself to blame since what
generally happens to the narrators of cavalry attacks had not happened
to him. He could not tell them simply that everyone went at a trot and
that he fell off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran as hard as
he could from a Frenchman into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as
it really happened, it would have been necessary to make an effort of
will to tell only what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth,
and young people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story
of how beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like
a storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his
saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And so he
told them all that.

In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: "You cannot imagine
what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack," Prince Andrew,
whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince Andrew, who liked
to help young men, was flattered by being asked for his assistance and
being well disposed toward Boris, who had managed to please him the day
before, he wished to do what the young man wanted. Having been sent with
papers from Kutuzov to the Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris, hoping to
find him alone. When he came in and saw an hussar of the line recounting
his military exploits (Prince Andrew could not endure that sort of man),
he gave Boris a pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed eyes he
looked at Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly
on the sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company.
Rostov flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a mere
stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he too seemed ashamed
of the hussar of the line.

In spite of Prince Andrew's disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of
the contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of view,
regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the newcomer
was evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and became silent.
Boris inquired what news there might be on the staff, and what, without
indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.

"We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently reluctant to
say more in the presence of a stranger.

Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as was
rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies would be
doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that he could
give no opinion on such an important government order, and Berg laughed
gaily.

"As to your business," Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris, "we
will talk of it later" (and he looked round at Rostov). "Come to me
after the review and we will do what is possible."

And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to Rostov,
whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now changing to
anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: "I think you were
talking of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?"

"I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult the
aide-de-camp.

Bolkonski noticed the hussar's state of mind, and it amused him. With a
slightly contemptuous smile, he said: "Yes, there are many stories now
told about that affair!"

"Yes, stories!" repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes suddenly grown
furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski. "Yes, many stories! But our
stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy's fire! Our
stories have some weight, not like the stories of those fellows on the
staff who get rewards without doing anything!"

"Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a quiet and
particularly amiable smile.

A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this man's
self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul.

"I am not talking about you," he said, "I don't know you and, frankly, I
don't want to. I am speaking of the staff in general."

"And I will tell you this," Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of quiet
authority, "you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree with you that
it would be very easy to do so if you haven't sufficient self-respect,
but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen. In a day or two
we shall all have to take part in a greater and more serious duel, and
besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend of yours, is not at
all to blame that my face has the misfortune to displease you. However,"
he added rising, "you know my name and where to find me, but don't
forget that I do not regard either myself or you as having been at all
insulted, and as a man older than you, my advice is to let the matter
drop. Well then, on Friday after the review I shall expect you,
Drubetskoy. Au revoir!" exclaimed Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them
both he went out.

Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think of what he ought to
have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He
ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode
home. Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that affected
adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question that worried
him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he would have at
seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud man when covered by
his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of all the men he knew
there was none he would so much like to have for a friend as that very
adjutant whom he so hated.





CHAPTER VIII


The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was held of the
Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia
and those who had been campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors, the
Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the Archduke,
inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.

From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move, forming up
on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and bayonets
moved and halted at the officers' command, turned with banners flying,
formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other similar masses of
infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the rhythmic beat of
hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red, and green braided
uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front mounted on black, roan,
or gray horses; then again, spreading out with the brazen clatter of the
polished shining cannon that quivered on the gun carriages and with
the smell of linstocks, came the artillery which crawled between the
infantry and cavalry and took up its appointed position. Not only the
generals in full parade uniforms, with their thin or thick waists drawn
in to the utmost, their red necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and
wearing scarves and all their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded
officers, but every soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and
his weapons clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed
till its coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay
smooth--felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and
solemn affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own
insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and
yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that
enormous whole.

From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by ten
o'clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were drawn up on
the vast field. The whole army was extended in three lines: the cavalry
in front, behind it the artillery, and behind that again the infantry.

A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The
three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov's fighting
army (with the Pavlograds on the right flank of the front); those
recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the line;
and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines, under one
command, and in a like order.

Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: "They're coming! They're
coming!" Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final preparation
swept over all the troops.

From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen
approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light gust
of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on the
lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their staffs. It
looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was expressing its
joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard shouting: "Eyes
front!" Then, like the crowing of cocks at sunrise, this was repeated by
others from various sides and all became silent.

In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard. This
was the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank, and the
trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general march. It
seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as if the army
itself, rejoicing at the Emperors' approach, had naturally burst into
music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of the Emperor
Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of greeting, and the
first regiment roared "Hurrah!" so deafeningly, continuously, and
joyfully that the men themselves were awed by their multitude and the
immensity of the power they constituted.

Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov's army which the Tsar
approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in
that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of
might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this
triumph.

He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass (and he
himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and water,
commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and so he could
not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence of that word.

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" thundered from all sides, one regiment after
another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and then
"Hurrah!"... Then the general march, and again "Hurrah! Hurrah!" growing
ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening roar.

Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and immobility
seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it became alive,
its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along which he had
already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar of those voices,
amid the square masses of troops standing motionless as if turned to
stone, hundreds of riders composing the suites moved carelessly but
symmetrically and above all freely, and in front of them two men--the
Emperors. Upon them the undivided, tensely passionate attention of that
whole mass of men was concentrated.

The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse
Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his
pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone's
attention.

Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight had
recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within twenty
paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of his
handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling tenderness and
ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every
movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting.

Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in French
to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.

Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself and felt a still
stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show that love in
some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready to cry. The Tsar
called the colonel of the regiment and said a few words to him.

"Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?" thought
Rostov. "I should die of happiness!"

The Tsar addressed the officers also: "I thank you all, gentlemen, I
thank you with my whole heart." To Rostov every word sounded like a
voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!

"You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of them."

"Oh, to die, to die for him," thought Rostov.

The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the
soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!"

Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all his
might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, if
only to express his rapture fully.

The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if undecided.

"How can the Emperor be undecided?" thought Rostov, but then even this
indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like everything else
the Tsar did.

That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar's foot, in the narrow
pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the bobtailed bay
mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up the reins, and he
moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying sea of aides-de-camp.
Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at other regiments, till at
last only his white plumes were visible to Rostov from amid the suites
that surrounded the Emperors.

Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonski, sitting
his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their quarrel of
yesterday and the question presented itself whether he ought or ought
not to challenge Bolkonski. "Of course not!" he now thought. "Is it
worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment? At a time of such
love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do any of our quarrels
and affronts matter? I love and forgive everybody now."

When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops began
a ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently purchased
from Denisov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron--that is, alone
and in full view of the Emperor.

Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman, spurred
Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in which the
animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to his chest, his
tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the Emperor's eye
upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a high and graceful
action, as if flying through the air without touching the ground.

Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and feeling
himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a frowning but
blissful face "like a vewy devil," as Denisov expressed it.

"Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor.

"My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the fire
this instant!" thought Rostov.

When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also
Kutuzov's, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards, about
the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about Bonaparte,
and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if the Essen corps
arrived and Prussia took our side.

But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander. His
every word and movement was described with ecstasy.

They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against the
enemy under the Emperor's command. Commanded by the Emperor himself
they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: so thought
Rostov and most of the officers after the review.

All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two battles
would have made them.





CHAPTER IX


The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and with his
comrade Berg's best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see Bolkonski,
wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for himself the best
post he could--preferably that of adjutant to some important personage,
a position in the army which seemed to him most attractive. "It is all
very well for Rostov, whose father sends him ten thousand rubles at a
time, to talk about not wishing to cringe to anybody and not be anyone's
lackey, but I who have nothing but my brains have to make a career
and must not miss opportunities, but must avail myself of them!" he
reflected.

He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but the appearance of
the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were stationed
and the two Emperors were living with their suites, households, and
courts only strengthened his desire to belong to that higher world.

He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman's uniform, all these
exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages
with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military
men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the
Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be
aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief,
Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even the
orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a great
many officers like him were always coming there and that everybody was
heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather because of it, next
day, November 15, after dinner he again went to Olmutz and, entering the
house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and
Boris was shown into a large hall probably formerly used for dancing,
but in which five beds now stood, and furniture of various kinds: a
table, chairs, and a clavichord. One adjutant, nearest the door, was
sitting at the table in a Persian dressing gown, writing. Another,
the red, stout Nesvitski, lay on a bed with his arms under his head,
laughing with an officer who had sat down beside him. A third was
playing a Viennese waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on
the clavichord, sang the tune. Bolkonski was not there. None of these
gentlemen changed his position on seeing Boris. The one who was writing
and whom Boris addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkonski
was on duty and that he should go through the door on the left into the
reception room if he wished to see him. Boris thanked him and went to
the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.

When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously (with
that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says, "If it
were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment"), was listening
to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very erect, almost
on tiptoe, with a soldier's obsequious expression on his purple face,
reporting something.

"Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to the
general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he affected
when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris, Prince
Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him imploring
him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with a cheerful
smile.

At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised, that
in the army, besides the subordination and discipline prescribed in the
military code, which he and the others knew in the regiment, there was
another, more important, subordination, which made this tight-laced,
purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain Prince Andrew, for
his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant Drubetskoy. More than
ever was Boris resolved to serve in future not according to the written
code, but under this unwritten law. He felt now that merely by having
been recommended to Prince Andrew he had already risen above the general
who at the front had the power to annihilate him, a lieutenant of the
Guards. Prince Andrew came up to him and took his hand.

"I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about
with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions.
When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to it!"

Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to
as something generally known. But it was the first time he had heard
Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions."

"Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have been
thinking about you."

"Yes, I was thinking"--for some reason Boris could not help
blushing--"of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter from
Prince Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear the Guards
won't be in action," he added as if in apology.

"All right, all right. We'll talk it over," replied Prince Andrew.
"Only let me report this gentleman's business, and I shall be at your
disposal."

While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general, that
gentleman--evidently not sharing Boris' conception of the advantages
of the unwritten code of subordination--looked so fixedly at the
presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he had to
say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned away and
waited impatiently for Prince Andrew's return from the commander in
chief's room.

"You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you," said Prince
Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the clavichord was.
"It's no use your going to the commander in chief. He would say a lot of
pleasant things, ask you to dinner" ("That would not be bad as regards
the unwritten code," thought Boris), "but nothing more would come of it.
There will soon be a battalion of us aides-de-camp and adjutants! But
this is what we'll do: I have a good friend, an adjutant general and an
excellent fellow, Prince Dolgorukov; and though you may not know it, the
fact is that now Kutuzov with his staff and all of us count for
nothing. Everything is now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to
Dolgorukov; I have to go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him
about you. We shall see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find
a place for you somewhere nearer the sun."

Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a young
man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining help
of this kind for another, which from pride he would never accept for
himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers success and
which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris' cause and went with
him to Dolgorukov.

It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz
occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.

That same day a council of war had been held in which all the members of
the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that council, contrary
to the views of the old generals Kutuzov and Prince Schwartzenberg, it
had been decided to advance immediately and give battle to Bonaparte.
The council of war was just over when Prince Andrew accompanied by Boris
arrived at the palace to find Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was
still under the spell of the day's council, at which the party of the
young had triumphed. The voices of those who counseled delay and advised
waiting for something else before advancing had been so completely
silenced and their arguments confuted by such conclusive evidence of the
advantages of attacking that what had been discussed at the council--the
coming battle and the victory that would certainly result from it--no
longer seemed to be in the future but in the past. All the advantages
were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior to
Napoleon's, were concentrated in one place, the troops inspired by the
Emperors' presence were eager for action. The strategic position where
the operations would take place was familiar in all its details to
the Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had ordained that the
Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on the very fields where
the French had now to be fought; the adjacent locality was known and
shown in every detail on the maps, and Bonaparte, evidently weakened,
was undertaking nothing.

Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just returned
from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud of the victory
that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his protege, but Prince
Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand said nothing to Boris
and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts which were uppermost in
his mind at that moment, addressed Prince Andrew in French.

"Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that
the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However, dear
fellow," he said abruptly and eagerly, "I must confess to having been
unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother. What exactitude,
what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what foresight for
every eventuality, every possibility even to the smallest detail! No, my
dear fellow, no conditions better than our present ones could have been
devised. This combination of Austrian precision with Russian valor--what
more could be wished for?"

"So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski.

"And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte has
decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received from him
today for the Emperor." Dolgorukov smiled significantly.

"Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski.

"What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain time. I
tell you he is in our hands, that's certain! But what was most amusing,"
he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, "was that we could not
think how to address the reply! If not as 'Consul' and of course not as
'Emperor,' it seemed to me it should be to 'General Bonaparte.'"

"But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him General
Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski.

"That's just it," interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing. "You know
Bilibin--he's a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him as
'Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.'"

Dolgorukov laughed merrily.

"Only that?" said Bolkonski.

"All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the address.
He is a wise and clever fellow."

"What was it?"

"To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski.

"Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he's dined with him--the
present Emperor--more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met a
more cunning or subtle diplomatist--you know, a combination of French
adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale about him and
Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew how to handle him.
You know the story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!"

And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince
Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markov, our ambassador,
purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking at
Markov, probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how Markov
immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up without touching
Bonaparte's.

"Delightful!" said Bolkonski. "But I have come to you, Prince, as a
petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see..." but before Prince
Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon Dolgorukov to the
Emperor.

"Oh, what a nuisance," said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and
pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris. "You know I should be
very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young
man." Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of
good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. "But you see... another
time!"

Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher powers
as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious that here
he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the enormous
movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt himself a tiny,
obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince Dolgorukov out
into the corridor and met--coming out of the door of the Emperor's room
by which Dolgorukov had entered--a short man in civilian clothes with a
clever face and sharply projecting jaw which, without spoiling his face,
gave him a peculiar vivacity and shiftiness of expression. This short
man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an intimate friend and stared at Prince
Andrew with cool intensity, walking straight toward him and evidently
expecting him to bow or to step out of his way. Prince Andrew did
neither: a look of animosity appeared on his face and the other turned
away and went down the side of the corridor.

"Who was that?" asked Boris.

"He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men--the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski.... It is such men
as he who decide the fate of nations," added Bolkonski with a sigh he
could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.

Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle of
Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either Prince Andrew or Dolgorukov
again and remained for a while with the Ismaylov regiment.





CHAPTER X


At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov's squadron, in which
Nicholas Rostov served and which was in Prince Bagration's detachment,
moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into action
as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two thirds
of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw the Cossacks and then
the first and second squadrons of hussars and infantry battalions
and artillery pass by and go forward and then Generals Bagration and
Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants. All the fear before action
which he had experienced as previously, all the inner struggle to
conquer that fear, all his dreams of distinguishing himself as a true
hussar in this battle, had been wasted. Their squadron remained in
reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent that day in a dull and wretched mood.
At nine in the morning, he heard firing in front and shouts of hurrah,
and saw wounded being brought back (there were not many of them), and
at last he saw how a whole detachment of French cavalry was brought in,
convoyed by a sotnya of Cossacks. Evidently the affair was over and,
though not big, had been a successful engagement. The men and officers
returning spoke of a brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of
Wischau and the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was bright
and sunny after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful glitter of that
autumn day was in keeping with the news of victory which was conveyed,
not only by the tales of those who had taken part in it, but also by
the joyful expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and
adjutants, as they passed Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who had
vainly suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and had spent that
happy day in inactivity, was all the more depressed.

"Come here, Wostov. Let's dwink to dwown our gwief!" shouted Denisov,
who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some food.

The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking.

"There! They are bringing another!" cried one of the officers,
indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot by
two Cossacks.

One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he had
taken from the prisoner.

"Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks.

"If you like, your honor!"

The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner.
The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German
accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when
he heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,
addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been
taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to seize
some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were there. And at
every word he added: "But don't hurt my little horse!" and stroked the
animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where he was. Now
he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now, imagining
himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly discipline
and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our rearguard all the
freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which was so alien to us.

The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being the
richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought it.

"But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian good-naturedly to
Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar.

Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.

"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to make
him go on.

"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars.

All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up the road behind
him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment everyone
was in his place, waiting.

Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.
Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected mood
amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every thought of
himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his nearness to
the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made up to him for the
day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the longed-for moment of
meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and without looking round, he
was ecstatically conscious of his approach. He felt it not only from the
sound of the hoofs of the approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew
near everything grew brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more
festive around him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun shedding
beams of mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself
enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and
majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with
Rostov's feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard the
Emperor's voice.

"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired.

"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared to that
which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?"

The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander's face was
even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the review. It
shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that it suggested
the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was the face
of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the squadron, the
Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not more than two
seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going on in
Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he understood everything), at
any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two seconds into Rostov's
face. A gentle, mild light poured from them. Then all at once he
raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left foot, and
galloped on.

The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the
battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at twelve
o'clock left the third column with which he had been and galloped toward
the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars, several adjutants met
him with news of the successful result of the action.

This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron, was
represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the
Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over
the battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were
retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had
passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau
itself, a petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the
market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
Emperor's arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom there
had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his suite
of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a
different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and bending
to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes and looked
at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered head. The
wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his proximity
to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the Emperor's rather round
shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how his left
foot began convulsively tapping the horse's side with the spur, and how
the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did not stir. An
adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms to place him on
a stretcher that had been brought. The soldier groaned.

"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor
apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.

Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor's eyes and heard him, as he was
riding away, say to Czartoryski: "What a terrible thing war is: what a
terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!"

The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within sight
of the enemy's lines, which all day long had yielded ground to us at
the least firing. The Emperor's gratitude was announced to the vanguard,
rewards were promised, and the men received a double ration of vodka.
The campfires crackled and the soldiers' songs resounded even more
merrily than on the previous night. Denisov celebrated his promotion to
the rank of major, and Rostov, who had already drunk enough, at the end
of the feast proposed the Emperor's health. "Not 'our Sovereign, the
Emperor,' as they say at official dinners," said he, "but the health of
our Sovereign, that good, enchanting, and great man! Let us drink to his
health and to the certain defeat of the French!"

"If we fought before," he said, "not letting the French pass, as at
Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We will
all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not saying
it right, I have drunk a good deal--but that is how I feel, and so do
you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.

And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and no
less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov.

When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten filled
others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand to the
soldiers' bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white chest
showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the light
of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.

"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our
enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone.

The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.

Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand
patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.

"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen in love
with the Tsar," he said.

"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a lofty,
beautiful feeling, such a..."

"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..."

"No, you don't understand!"

And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of
what happiness it would be to die--not in saving the Emperor's life (he
did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his eyes.
He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian
arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to
experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle
of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in
love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the
Russian arms.





CHAPTER XI


The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his physician,
was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and among the troops
near by the news spread that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing and
had slept badly that night, those around him reported. The cause of this
indisposition was the strong impression made on his sensitive mind by
the sight of the killed and wounded.

At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with
a flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday
he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off with
Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.

It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander
a meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
actuated by a real desire for peace.

Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar, and
remained alone with him for a long time.

On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced two
days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange of shots
retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the nineteenth, a
great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning
of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.

Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity--the eager talk, running
to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants--was confined to the Emperor's
headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this activity reached
Kutuzov's headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns. By
evening, the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army,
and in the night from the nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole eighty
thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices,
and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles long.

The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's headquarters
in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed was like
the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One wheel
slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began
to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to work, chimes to
play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion
as a result of all that activity.

Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military
machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as
indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted
to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet
reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and
the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a
neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared
to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever
catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins
in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.

Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable
wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the
hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human
activities of 160,000 Russians and French--all their passions, desires,
remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and
enthusiasm--was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called
battle of the three Emperors--that is to say, a slow movement of the
hand on the dial of human history.

Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
commander in chief.

At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters and
after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.

Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and
dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters
everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something others do
not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.

"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was sitting
at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your old fellow?
Out of sorts?"

"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be heard."

"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he
talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte
fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."

"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is Bonaparte
like? How did he impress you?"

"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a
general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this general
conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with Napoleon.
"If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that interview? Why
negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat is so contrary
to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is afraid, afraid of a
general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"

"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.

"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him
'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me! That's
the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov, looking
round at Bilibin with a smile.

"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should be
a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a chance
to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in our hands!
No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule--not to put yourself in a
position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe me in war the
energy of young men often shows the way better than all the experience
of old Cunctators."

"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces are
situated," said Prince Andrew.

He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself
formed.

"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting up he
spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been foreseen. If he
is standing before Brunn..."

And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's
plan of a flanking movement.

Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might have
been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage that Weyrother's
had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began to demonstrate
the defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan, Prince
Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not at the
map, but at Prince Andrew's face.

"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you can
say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.

"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.

"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who, till
then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and now
was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings victory or
defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your Kutuzov,
there is not a single Russian in command of a column! The commanders
are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le Prince de
Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so on
like all those Polish names."

"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are now
two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a third,
Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."

"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew. "I
wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out after
shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.

On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutuzov,
who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow's
battle.

Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied: "I
think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy and asked
him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But, my dear
general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military matters
yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"





CHAPTER XII


Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his plans
to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held. All the
commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in chief's and with
the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to come, were all there
at the appointed time.

Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the dissatisfied
and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of chairman and
president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be
at the head of a movement that had already become unrestrainable. He was
like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he was
pulling it or being pushed by it he did not know, but rushed along at
headlong speed with no time to consider what this movement might lead
to. Weyrother had been twice that evening to the enemy's picket line to
reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and Austrian,
to report and explain, and to his headquarters where he had dictated
the dispositions in German, and now, much exhausted, he arrived at
Kutuzov's.

He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and indistinctly,
without looking at the man he was addressing, and did not reply to
questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had a pitiful,
weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was haughty and
self-confident.

Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions near
Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the commander in
chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself, Weyrother, and the members
of the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited Prince
Bagration to begin the council. At last Bagration's orderly came with
the news that the prince could not attend. Prince Andrew came in
to inform the commander in chief of this and, availing himself of
permission previously given him by Kutuzov to be present at the council,
he remained in the room.

"Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said Weyrother,
hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on which an
enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out.

Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over
his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low chair,
with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound
of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an effort.

"Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and nodding his
head he let it droop and again closed his eye.

If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was
pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading that
followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was absorbed
by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his contempt for
the dispositions or anything else--he was engaged in satisfying the
irresistible human need for sleep. He really was asleep. Weyrother, with
the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced at Kutuzov and,
having convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a paper and in
a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the dispositions for the
impending battle, under a heading which he also read out:

"Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz and
Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."

The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began as
follows:

"As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right extends
along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there, while we,
on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his right, it is
advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially if we occupy
the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can both fall on
his flank and pursue him over the plain between Schlappanitz and the
Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of Schlappanitz and Bellowitz
which cover the enemy's front. For this object it is necessary that...
The first column marches... The second column marches... The third
column marches..." and so on, read Weyrother.

The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult dispositions.
The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning his back against
the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and seemed not to listen
or even to wish to be thought to listen. Exactly opposite Weyrother,
with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon him and his mustache
twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Miloradovich in a military pose, his
elbows turned outwards, his hands on his knees, and his shoulders
raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at Weyrother's face, and
only turned away his eyes when the Austrian chief of staff finished
reading. Then Miloradovich looked round significantly at the other
generals. But one could not tell from that significant look whether he
agreed or disagreed and was satisfied or not with the arrangements. Next
to Weyrother sat Count Langeron who, with a subtle smile that never left
his typically southern French face during the whole time of the reading,
gazed at his delicate fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners
a gold snuffbox on which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the
longest sentences, he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised
his head, and with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his
thin lips interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the
Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his
elbows, as if to say: "You can tell me your views later, but now be so
good as to look at the map and listen." Langeron lifted his eyes with an
expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking an
explanation, but meeting the latter's impressive but meaningless gaze
drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.

"A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud enough to
be heard.

Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his
hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with
an assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar locality. He
asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not clearly heard
and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and Dohkturov
noted them down.

When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron again
brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or at
anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry out
such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known,
whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief
aim was to show General Weyrother--who had read his dispositions with as
much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children--that he
had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him something in
military matters.

When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov opened
his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel
is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, "So
you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed his eye again, and
let his head sink still lower.

Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's vanity
as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily
attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this
plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and
contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all objections
be they what they might.

"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he.

"So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron.

"He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the smile
of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of a
case.

"In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack," said
Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round for support
to Miloradovich who was near him.

But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
rather than of what the generals were disputing about.

"Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the battlefield."

Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it was
strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals and to
have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced himself of, but
had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.

"The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard from
his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is retreating, which
is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing his position." (He
smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up a position in the
Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of trouble and all our
arrangements to the minutest detail remain the same."

"How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting an
opportunity to express his doubts.

Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the generals.

"Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow--or rather for today, for it
is past midnight--cannot now be altered," said he. "You have heard them,
and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there is nothing more
important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep."

He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was past
midnight. Prince Andrew went out.


The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to
express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy
impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron, and
the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were right--he did
not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to state his views
plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account of court and
personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and my life, my
life," he thought, "must be risked?"

"Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he thought.
And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of most distant,
most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he remembered his last
parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the days when he
first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and
for himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out
of the hut in which he was billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up
and down before it.

The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed
mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow
everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more, none
of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even certainly,
I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall have to show all I
can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its loss, the concentration
of fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all the commanders. And
then that happy moment, that Toulon for which he had so long waited,
presents itself to him at last. He firmly and clearly expresses his
opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the Emperors. All are struck by
the justness of his views, but no one undertakes to carry them out, so
he takes a regiment, a division-stipulates that no one is to interfere
with his arrangements--leads his division to the decisive point, and
gains the victory alone. "But death and suffering?" suggested another
voice. Prince Andrew, however, did not answer that voice and went on
dreaming of his triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are
planned by him alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's
staff, but he does everything alone. The next battle is won by him
alone. Kutuzov is removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked
the other voice. "If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed,
or betrayed, well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered
himself, "I don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and
can't, but if I want this--want glory, want to be known to men, want to
be loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing
but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never
tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame
and men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family--I fear nothing. And
precious and dear as many persons are to me--father, sister, wife--those
dearest to me--yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would give them
all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of love from men
I don't know and never shall know, for the love of these men here," he
thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov's courtyard. The voices
were those of the orderlies who were packing up; one voice, probably a
coachman's, was teasing Kutuzov's old cook whom Prince Andrew knew, and
who was called Tit. He was saying, "Tit, I say, Tit!"

"Well?" returned the old man.

"Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag.

"Oh, go to the devil!" called out a voice, drowned by the laughter of
the orderlies and servants.

"All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I
value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in this
mist!"





CHAPTER XIII


That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front
of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the line
in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master the
sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with our army's
campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind him; in front
of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing, peer as he would
into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray, now there was
something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer where the enemy
ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in his own eyes.
His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared--now the Emperor, now
Denisov, and now Moscow memories--and he again hurriedly opened his eyes
and saw close before him the head and ears of the horse he was riding,
and sometimes, when he came within six paces of them, the black figures
of hussars, but in the distance was still the same misty darkness. "Why
not?... It might easily happen," thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will
meet me and give me an order as he would to any other officer; he'll
say: 'Go and find out what's there.' There are many stories of his
getting to know an officer in just such a chance way and attaching him
to himself! What if he gave me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard
him, how I would tell him the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!"
And in order to realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign,
Rostov pictured to himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would
not only kill with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before
the Emperor. Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened
his eyes.

"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and
watchword--shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in
reserve tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front, this
may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now before
I am off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back I'll go to the
general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the saddle and touched up
his horse to ride once more round his hussars. It seemed to him that it
was getting lighter. To the left he saw a sloping descent lit up, and
facing it a black knoll that seemed as steep as a wall. On this knoll
there was a white patch that Rostov could not at all make out: was it
a glade in the wood lit up by the moon, or some unmelted snow, or some
white houses? He even thought something moved on that white spot. "I
expect it's snow... that spot... a spot--une tache," he thought. "There
now... it's not a tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na...
tasha... (Won't she be surprised when I tell her how I've seen the
Emperor?) Natasha... take my sabretache..."--"Keep to the right, your
honor, there are bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom
Rostov was riding in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his
head that had sunk almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside
the hussar. He was succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish
drowsiness. "But what was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall
I speak to the Emperor? No, that's not it--that's tomorrow. Oh yes!
Natasha... sabretache... saber them... Whom? The hussars... Ah, the
hussars with mustaches. Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with
mustaches... I thought about him too, just opposite Guryev's house...
Old Guryev.... Oh, but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense.
The chief thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and
wished to say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not.
But that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important
thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! That's
right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck. All at once it
seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What? What?... Cut them
down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the moment he opened his eyes
he heard in front of him, where the enemy was, the long-drawn shouts
of thousands of voices. His horse and the horse of the hussar near him
pricked their ears at these shouts. Over there, where the shouting came
from, a fire flared up and went out again, then another, and all along
the French line on the hill fires flared up and the shouting grew louder
and louder. Rostov could hear the sound of French words but could not
distinguish them. The din of many voices was too great; all he could
hear was: "ahahah!" and "rrrr!"

"What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar beside
him. "That must be the enemy's camp!"

The hussar did not reply.

"Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a reply.

"Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly.

"From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov.

"It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's dark...
Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse.

Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,
pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting
grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army
of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and
farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no longer
wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy army had a
stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!" he now heard
distinctly.

"They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to the
hussar beside him.

The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The sound
of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars was
heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of hussars
suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.

"Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov.

Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode with
the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the line.
One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov with
their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the lights
and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration, reported to
him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the generals were
saying.

"Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is
nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to
kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us."

"Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if
they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too.... Officer!"
said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still there?"

"They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your excellency.
Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied Rostov.

Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face in
the mist.

"Well, go and see," he said, after a pause.

"Yes, sir."

Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other
hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the direction
from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and pleased to be
riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and dangerous misty
distance where no one had been before him. Bagration called to him from
the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov pretended not to hear
him and did not stop but rode on and on, continually mistaking bushes
for trees and gullies for men and continually discovering his mistakes.
Having descended the hill at a trot, he no longer saw either our own or
the enemy's fires, but heard the shouting of the French more loudly and
distinctly. In the valley he saw before him something like a river, but
when he reached it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road
he reined in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it
and ride over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which
gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it would be
easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!" said he, crossed the
road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the point where
the French pickets had been standing that evening.

"Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him. And
before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that had
suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a report,
and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive sound passed
out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in the pan.
Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more reports followed
at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the fog singing in
different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose spirits had risen,
like his own, at the firing, and went back at a footpace. "Well, some
more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in his soul. But no more
shots came.

Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop again,
and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.

Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had
only lit fires to deceive us.

"What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might
retreat and leave the pickets."

"It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said Bagration.
"Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything tomorrow."

"The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was
in the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at the
salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his ride
and especially by the sound of the bullets.

"Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer."

"Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?"

"What is it?"

"Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached to
the first squadron?"

"What's your name?"

"Count Rostov."

"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."

"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.

But Rostov did not reply.

"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"

"I will give the order."

"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the Emperor,"
thought Rostov.

"Thank God!"


The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the fact
that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops the
Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing him,
lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!"
Napoleon's proclamation was as follows:


Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the
Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at
Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position we
occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round me on
the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will myself direct
your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with your habitual valor
carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's ranks, but should victory
be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see your Emperor exposing
himself to the first blows of the enemy, for there must be no doubt of
victory, especially on this day when what is at stake is the honor of
the French infantry, so necessary to the honor of our nation.

Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let every
man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these hirelings
of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This victory will
conclude our campaign and we can return to winter quarters, where fresh
French troops who are being raised in France will join us, and the peace
I shall conclude will be worthy of my people, of you, and of myself.

NAPOLEON





CHAPTER XIV


At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the
center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved, but
on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, which
were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French right
flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to plan, were
already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into which they were
throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes smart. It was cold and
dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and breakfasting, the
soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to
warm themselves, gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the
remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they
did not want or could not carry away with them. Austrian column guides
were moving in and out among the Russian troops and served as heralds
of the advance. As soon as an Austrian officer showed himself near a
commanding officer's quarters, the regiment began to move: the soldiers
ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into their boots, their bags
into the carts, got their muskets ready, and formed rank. The officers
buttoned up their coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved
along the ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and
packed the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion
and regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final
instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who remained
behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet resounded. The
column moved forward without knowing where and unable, from the masses
around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see either the place
they were leaving or that to which they were going.

A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his regiment as
much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has walked, whatever
strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is
always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so
the soldier always has around him the same comrades, the same ranks,
the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the same company dog Jack, and the
same commanders. The sailor rarely cares to know the latitude in which
his ship is sailing, but on the day of battle--heaven knows how and
whence--a stern note of which all are conscious sounds in the moral
atmosphere of an army, announcing the approach of something decisive
and solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of
battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their
regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning
what is going on around them.

The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they could
not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and level
ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might
encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns advanced
for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and ascending hills,
avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and unknown ground, and
nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary, the soldiers became
aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, other Russian columns
were moving in the same direction. Every soldier felt glad to know that
to the unknown place where he was going, many more of our men were going
too.

"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the
ranks.

"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last
night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A regular
Moscow!"

Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or talked to
the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war, were out of
humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not exert themselves
to cheer the men but merely carried out the orders), yet the troops
marched gaily, as they always do when going into action, especially to
an attack. But when they had marched for about an hour in the dense fog,
the greater part of the men had to halt and an unpleasant consciousness
of some dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks. How such
a consciousness is communicated is very difficult to define, but it
certainly is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly,
and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been
alone without any allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before
this consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as
it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the stupid
Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had been
occasioned by the sausage eaters.

"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
against the French?"

"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."

"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in
the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned
Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"

"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up
behind. And now here we stand hungry."

"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking the
way," said an officer.

"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!" said
another.

"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up.

"The Eighteenth."

"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you won't
get there till evening."

"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are doing!"
said the officer and rode off.

Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.

"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a
soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them, the
scoundrels!"

"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't got
halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides.

And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to
turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the
Germans.

The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was
moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center
was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all
ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in
front of the infantry, who had to wait.

At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a
Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry should be
halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher command, was to
blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited. After
an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The fog that
was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where they were
descending. In front in the fog a shot was heard and then another, at
first irregularly at varying intervals--trata... tat--and then more and
more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.

Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading through
the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front or around
them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the enemy
lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders from
the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in those unknown
surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this way the action
began for the first, second, and third columns, which had gone down
into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov was, stood on the
Pratzen Heights.

Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; on the
higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was
going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed,
six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea of mist, no one
knew till after eight o'clock.

It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea down
below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon stood
with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was a clear
blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a huge hollow, crimson
float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. The whole French army,
and even Napoleon himself with his staff, were not on the far side of
the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we
intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were on this
side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could
distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak
which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab
horse a little in front of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills
which seemed to rise out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian
troops were moving in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of
firing in the valley. Not a single muscle of his face--which in those
days was still thin--moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one
spot. His predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force
had already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and
part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack
and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that in
a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one
direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into
the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from the
sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the night,
by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all
indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far away
in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted
the center of the Russian army, and that that center was already
sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still he did not
begin the engagement.

Today was a great day for him--the anniversary of his coronation. Before
dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and in good
spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in that happy
mood in which everything seems possible and everything succeeds. He sat
motionless, looking at the heights visible above the mist, and his cold
face wore that special look of confident, self-complacent happiness that
one sees on the face of a boy happily in love. The marshals stood
behind him not venturing to distract his attention. He looked now at the
Pratzen Heights, now at the sun floating up out of the mist.

When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and mist were
aglow with dazzling light--as if he had only awaited this to begin the
action--he drew the glove from his shapely white hand, made a sign
with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to begin. The marshals,
accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in different directions, and
a few minutes later the chief forces of the French army moved rapidly
toward those Pratzen Heights which were being more and more denuded by
Russian troops moving down the valley to their left.





CHAPTER XV


At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth
column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of
Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down into
the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and gave them
the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to lead that
column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen he halted.
Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number forming the commander
in chief's suite. He was in a state of suppressed excitement and
irritation, though controlledly calm as a man is at the approach of a
long-awaited moment. He was firmly convinced that this was the day of
his Toulon, or his bridge of Arcola. How it would come about he did not
know, but he felt sure it would do so. The locality and the position of
our troops were known to him as far as they could be known to anyone
in our army. His own strategic plan, which obviously could not now be
carried out, was forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince
Andrew considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as
might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.

To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen forces
could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight would
concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there," thought
he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there, standard in
hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of me."

He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.
Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with which
I shall lead the army."

In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights was
a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay like a
milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left into which
our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of firing.
Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the vast orb
of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that sea of mist,
some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there the enemy probably
was, for something could be descried. On the right the Guards were
entering the misty region with a sound of hoofs and wheels and now and
then a gleam of bayonets; to the left beyond the village similar masses
of cavalry came up and disappeared in the sea of mist. In front and
behind moved infantry. The commander in chief was standing at the end of
the village letting the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed
worn and irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt
without any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in
front.

"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the village!"
he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you understand,
your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile through narrow
village streets when we are marching against the enemy?"

"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,"
answered the general.

Kutuzov laughed bitterly.

"You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy! Very
fine!"

"The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the
dispositions..."

"The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you that?...
Kindly do as you are ordered."

"Yes, sir."

"My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man is
as surly as a dog."

An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his hat
galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the fourth
column advanced into action.

Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to fall upon
Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's malevolent and
caustic expression softened, as if admitting that what was being done
was not his adjutant's fault, and still not answering the Austrian
adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.

"Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed the
village. Tell it to stop and await my orders."

Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.

"And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What are
they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still not
replying to the Austrian.

Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.

Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped
the third division and convinced himself that there really were no
sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of the
regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief's order to throw
out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were other troops
in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six miles away.
There was really nothing to be seen in front except a barren descent
hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the commander in chief's
name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew galloped back. Kutuzov
still in the same place, his stout body resting heavily in the saddle
with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily with closed eyes. The
troops were no longer moving, but stood with the butts of their muskets
on the ground.

"All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a
general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all
the left-flank columns had already descended.

"Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst of a
yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated.

Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of regiments
saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole extended
line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person they were
greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the regiment in front
of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he rode a little to one
side and looked round with a frown. Along the road from Pratzen galloped
what looked like a squadron of horsemen in various uniforms. Two of them
rode side by side in front, at full gallop. One in a black uniform with
white plumes in his hat rode a bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who
was in a white uniform rode a black one. These were the two Emperors
followed by their suites. Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old
soldier at the front, gave the command "Attention!" and rode up to the
Emperors with a salute. His whole appearance and manner were suddenly
transformed. He put on the air of a subordinate who obeys without
reasoning. With an affectation of respect which evidently struck
Alexander unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.

This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy face
of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and vanished.
After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than on the field of
Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time abroad, but there
was still the same bewitching combination of majesty and mildness in his
fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the same capacity for varying
expression and the same prevalent appearance of goodhearted innocent
youth.

At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed
brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping two
miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked round
at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own. Czartoryski,
Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others, all richly
dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh, only slightly
heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had stopped behind the
Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced young man, sat very
erect on his handsome black horse, looking about him in a leisurely and
preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his white adjutants and asked
some question--"Most likely he is asking at what o'clock they started,"
thought Prince Andrew, watching his old acquaintance with a smile
he could not repress as he recalled his reception at Brunn. In the
Emperors' suite were the picked young orderly officers of the Guard and
line regiments, Russian and Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the
Tsar's beautiful relay horses covered with embroidered cloths.

As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields enters
a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and confidence of
success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the galloping advent of
all these brilliant young men.

"Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor
Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same time at
the Emperor Francis.

"I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward
respectfully.

The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had not
quite heard.

"Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that
Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word "waiting.")
"Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty."

The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his
rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as
if complaining of Kutuzov.

"You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not on the Empress' Field where
a parade does not begin till all the troops are assembled," said the
Tsar with another glance at the Emperor Francis, as if inviting him if
not to join in at least to listen to what he was saying. But the Emperor
Francis continued to look about him and did not listen.

"That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a resounding
voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not being heard, and
again something in his face twitched--"That is just why I do not begin,
sire, because we are not on parade and not on the Empress' Field," said
clearly and distinctly.

In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed
dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he
certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say.

The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye waiting to
hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov, with respectfully
bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence lasted for about a
minute.

"However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting his
head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning, but
submissive general.

He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander of
the column, gave him the order to advance.

The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod and
one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.

As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich,
without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous
tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners front
and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing salute reined
in his horse before the Emperor.

"God be with you, general!" said the Emperor.

"Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite, sire,"
* he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among the
gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French.


     * "Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to
     do, Sire."


Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a little
behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's presence,
passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk
pace.

"Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery
voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect
of battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades in
Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors, that
he forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first village
you've had to take," cried he.

"Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers.

The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had
carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the
field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot and
pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the
Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing, nor
of the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that was
being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.

The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a
remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.





CHAPTER XVI


Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind the
carabineers.

When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column he
stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been an
inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops were
marching along both.

The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly visible
about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down below, on
the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had stopped and was
speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who was a little behind
looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask him for a field glass.

"Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the
distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!"

The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass, trying
to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their faces
suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to be a
mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared just in
front of us.

"It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But how is
that?" said different voices.

With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not more
than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a dense French
column coming up to meet the Apsherons.

"Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come," thought
Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov.

"The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at that
very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was heard quite
close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two steps from Prince
Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at this as if at a command,
everyone began to run.

Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where five
minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would it
have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible not to
be carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to lose touch
with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp what was
happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face, red and unlike
himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not ride away at once
he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov remained in the same place
and without answering drew out a handkerchief. Blood was flowing from
his cheek. Prince Andrew forced his way to him.

"You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling of his
lower jaw.

"The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the
handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing soldiers.
"Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably realizing that
it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the right.

A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.

The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by
them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why
are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and fired
in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode. Having
by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of men, Kutuzov,
with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward a sound of
artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the crowd of
fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on the slope
of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was still firing and
Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some Russian infantry,
neither moving forward to protect the battery nor backward with the
fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself from the infantry and
approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four remained. They were all
pale and exchanged looks in silence.

"Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander,
pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to punish
him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment and across
Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds.

The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing
at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his leg;
several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding the
flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on the
muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing without
orders.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around....
"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness
of the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the
disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?"

But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of
shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and run to
the standard.

"Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's.

"Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and hearing
with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him. Several
soldiers fell.

"Hurrah!" shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the heavy
standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole battalion
would follow him.

And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then
another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting "Hurrah!" and
overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag
that was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew's hands, but he
was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,
dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw our
artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having abandoned
their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French infantry
soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning the guns
round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within twenty paces
of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above him unceasingly and
to right and left of him soldiers continually groaned and dropped. But
he did not look at them: he looked only at what was going on in front
of him--at the battery. He now saw clearly the figure of a red-haired
gunner with his shako knocked awry, pulling one end of a mop while
a French soldier tugged at the other. He could distinctly see the
distraught yet angry expression on the faces of these two men, who
evidently did not realize what they were doing.

"What are they about?" thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them. "Why
doesn't the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why doesn't the
Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the Frenchman remembers
his bayonet and stabs him...."

And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to
the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had
triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited him,
was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it ended. It
seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him on the head
with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but the worst of
it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his seeing what he had
been looking at.

"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and
fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of
the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner had
been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or saved.
But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the sky--the
lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds
gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all
as I ran," thought Prince Andrew--"not as we ran, shouting and fighting,
not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry
faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide
across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky
before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity,
all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but
that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace.
Thank God!..."





CHAPTER XVII


On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the battle
had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's demand to
commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility from himself,
Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to inquire of the
commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance between the two
flanks was more than six miles, even if the messenger were not killed
(which he very likely would be), and found the commander in chief
(which would be very difficult), he would not be able to get back before
evening.

Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his suite,
and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and hope, was the
first to catch his eye. He sent him.

"And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in chief,
your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap.

"You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov, hurriedly
interrupting Bagration.

On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few
hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute, with
elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and generally in that
state of mind which makes everything seem possible, pleasant, and easy.

All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be a
general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he was
orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going with a
message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself. The morning
was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart was full of
joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his horse the rein and
galloped along the line. At first he rode along the line of Bagration's
troops, which had not yet advanced into action but were standing
motionless; then he came to the region occupied by Uvarov's cavalry
and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation for battle; having
passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the sound of cannon and
musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder and louder.

In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket shots
at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two cannon shots,
but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the hill before
Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon that sometimes
several of them were not separated from one another but merged into a
general roar.

He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one another
down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling, spreading,
and mingling with one another. He could also, by the gleam of bayonets
visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of infantry and narrow
lines of artillery with green caissons.

Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was going
on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand or make
out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men of some sort
were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of troops; but why,
whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make out. These sights
and sounds had no depressing or intimidating effect on him; on the
contrary, they stimulated his energy and determination.

"Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,
and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther and
farther into the region where the army was already in action.

"How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought
Rostov.

After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part of the
line (the Guards) was already in action.

"So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought.

He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered
ranks were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way,
involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.

"That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many
hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at the
same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of the
horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their hoofs and
the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their figures, and
even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our Horse Guards,
advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming to meet them.

The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their horses.
Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command: "Charge!"
shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to full speed.
Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack on the French,
galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, but still was
not in time to avoid them.

The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned angrily
on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably collide.
This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his Bedouin over
(Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic men
and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to flourish his whip before
the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The heavy black horse, sixteen hands
high, shied, throwing back its ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove
his huge spurs in violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and
extending its neck, galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards
passed Rostov before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw
that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry
with red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for
immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke
enveloped everything.

At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, disappeared in
the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go where
he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that
amazed the French themselves. Rostov was horrified to hear later that
of all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those brilliant,
rich youths, officers and cadets, who had galloped past him on their
thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left after the charge.

"Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall see
the Emperor immediately!" thought Rostov and galloped on.

When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them and
around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so
much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on
the soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
officers.

Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he heard a
voice calling him by name.

"Rostov!"

"What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris.

"I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said Boris
with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been under
fire for the first time.

Rostov stopped.

"Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?"

"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing talkative. "Can
you imagine it?" and he began describing how the Guards, having taken
up their position and seeing troops before them, thought they were
Austrians, and all at once discovered from the cannon balls discharged
by those troops that they were themselves in the front line and had
unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov without hearing Boris to the end
spurred his horse.

"Where are you off to?" asked Boris.

"With a message to His Majesty."

"There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His Highness,"
and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high shoulders and frowning
brows stood a hundred paces away from them in his helmet and Horse
Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale, white uniformed Austrian
officer.

"But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse.

"Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager
as Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his
bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at the
front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family--the von
Bergs--have been knights!"

He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and rode
away.

Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to avoid
again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the Horse
Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round the place
where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. Suddenly he
heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind our troops,
where he could never have expected the enemy to be.

"What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army?
Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may,"
he reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish with
the rest."

The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more and
more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the village of
Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.

"What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is firing?"
Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian soldiers
running in confused crowds across his path.

"The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he
was told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
understood what was happening as little as he did.

"Kill the Germans!" shouted one.

"May the devil take them--the traitors!"

"Zum Henker diese Russen!" * muttered a German.


    * "Hang these Russians!"


Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse, screams,
and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing died down.
Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing
at one another.

"My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any
moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a handful
of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it can't be! Only
to get past them quicker, quicker!"

The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head. Though he
saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights just where he
had been ordered to look for the commander in chief, he could not, did
not wish to, believe that.





CHAPTER XVIII


Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the
village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all
sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
stationed on the Pratzen Heights.

"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking everyone he
could stop, but got no answer from anyone.

At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.

"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier, laughing
for some reason and shaking himself free.

Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the
horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
that he was dangerously wounded.

"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else."

"I saw him myself," replied the man with a self-confident smile of
derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've seen
him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in the
carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black horses fly!
Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the Imperial horses
and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone except the Tsar!"

Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded
officer passing by addressed him:

"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander in chief? He was killed
by a cannon ball--struck in the breast before our regiment."

"Not killed--wounded!" another officer corrected him.

"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.

"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name--well, never mind... there are not
many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders are
there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek, and he
walked on.

Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to
doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which
he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say
to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and unwounded?

"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a
soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!"

"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to go? That
way is nearer."

Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
would be killed.

"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to save
myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest number
of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not yet
occupied that region, and the Russians--the uninjured and slightly
wounded--had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of manure
on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded to each
couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes and one
could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes feigned--or
so it seemed to Rostov. He put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all
these suffering men, and he felt afraid--afraid not for his life, but
for the courage he needed and which he knew would not stand the sight of
these unfortunates.

The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant
riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots. The
sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around
him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of terror and pity for
himself. He remembered his mother's last letter. "What would she feel,"
thought he, "if she saw me here now on this field with the cannon aimed
at me?"

In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire
sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle
was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the Emperor
or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was wounded was
correct, others that it was not, and explained the false rumor that had
spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had really galloped from
the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal Count
Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in the
Emperor's suite. One officer told Rostov that he had seen someone from
headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither Rostov rode,
not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When he had
ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian troops, he
saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback
facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar to
Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov fancied he
had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse with his spurs,
and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a little earth crumbled
from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs. Turning the horse sharply,
he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially addressed the horseman with
the white plumes, evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The
rider, whose figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted
his attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand and
by that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented and adored
monarch.

"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!" thought
Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov saw the
beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The Emperor
was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm, the
mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was happy in the
assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded were false. He
was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and even ought to
go straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had ordered him to
deliver.

But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the
thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a
chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is
alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he had longed
for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach
the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be
inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.

"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of his
being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or
painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him
now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight of
him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor that
he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. Those speeches
were intended for quite other conditions, they were for the most part
to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, generally when he was
dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic deeds, and
while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.

"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right
flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost?
No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and with
a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at the Tsar,
who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.

While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.

"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly
restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.

His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was
the cause of his grief.

He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign. It
was a unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had not
made use of it.... "What have I done?" thought he. And he turned round
and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but there
was no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages were
passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that Kutuzov's staff were
not far off, in the village the vehicles were going to. Rostov
followed them. In front of him walked Kutuzov's groom leading horses
in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,
bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.

"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.

"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.

"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"

"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed in
silence, and then the same joke was repeated.


Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More
than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.

Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns
after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused
masses.

The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were crowding
around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of Augesd.

After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade
(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous
batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our
retreating forces.

In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept up
a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It
was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the
old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully
angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the
floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on that dam over which for
so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully
driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty
with flour whitening their carts--on that narrow dam amid the wagons and
the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and between the wagon wheels, men
disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one another,
dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to move on
a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way.

Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, or
a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
splashing with blood those near them.

Dolokhov--now an officer--wounded in the arm, and on foot, with the
regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the
crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in
on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had fallen under a
cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone
behind them, another fell in front and splashed Dolokhov with blood.
The crowd, pushing forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few
steps, and again stopped.

"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here another
two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one.

Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the edge of
the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto the slippery
ice that covered the millpool.

"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked under
him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It bears!..."

The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon even
under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to the
bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at the
entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to address
Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd that
everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general fell
from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or thought of
raising him.

"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go on!"
innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the
general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
shouting.

One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto the
ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen pond.
The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped
into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to his waist.
The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped his horse, but
from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why do you stop? Go
on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers
near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them turn and
move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had held under
those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty men who were on
it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning one another.

Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop onto the
ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd that covered
the dam, the pond, and the bank.





CHAPTER XIX


On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his
hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and unconsciously
uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.

Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not know
how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt that he was
alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.

"Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw
today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering
either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all till
now. But where am I?"

He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices
speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same lofty
sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, and
between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did not
see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had ridden up
and stopped near him.

It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding
over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the batteries
firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and wounded left
on the field.

"Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier,
who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened nape, lay on his
stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.

"The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your Majesty,"
said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were firing at
Augesd.

"Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone on
a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back with
the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had already
been taken by the French as a trophy.)

"That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.

Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was
Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he
heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only
did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at once
forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to death,
and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He knew it
was Napoleon--his hero--but at that moment Napoleon seemed to him such a
small, insignificant creature compared with what was passing now between
himself and that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over it. At
that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over him, or
what was said of him; he was only glad that people were standing near
him and only wished that they would help him and bring him back to
life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to
understand it so differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and
utter a sound. He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan
which aroused his own pity.

"Ah! He is alive," said Napoleon. "Lift this young man up and carry him
to the dressing station."

Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who, hat in
hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the victory.

Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from the
terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting while
being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing station.
He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when with other
wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the hospital.
During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was able to look
about him and even speak.

The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a French
convoy officer, who said rapidly: "We must halt here: the Emperor
will pass here immediately; it will please him to see these gentlemen
prisoners."

"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army, that
he is probably tired of them," said another officer.

"All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian officer in
the white uniform of the Horse Guards.

Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg
society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of
the Horse Guards.

Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.

"Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners.

They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.

"You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of Horse
Guards?" asked Napoleon.

"I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin.

"Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon.

"The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward," said
Repnin.

"I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young man
beside you?"

Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.

After looking at him Napoleon smiled.

"He's very young to come to meddle with us."

"Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a failing
voice.

"A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!"

Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the Emperor's
eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his
attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield
and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young man" that was
connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.

"Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?"

Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few
words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed
straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that moment
seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his
hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear,
compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he had seen and
understood, that he could not answer him.

Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the
stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,
suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of
greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and
the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one
alive could understand or explain.

The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to one of
the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to and taken
to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their wounds. Au revoir,
Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and galloped away.

His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.

The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the
little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother's neck, but
seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now hastened to
return the holy image.

Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the
little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his chest
outside his uniform.

"It would be good," thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon his
sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, "it
would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to
Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this life,
and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I
should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to whom
should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible,
which I not only cannot address but which I cannot even express in
words--the Great All or Nothing-" said he to himself, "or to that God
who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing certain,
nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and
the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important."

The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable pain;
his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his father,
wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt the night
before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little Napoleon, and
above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief subjects of his delirious
fancies.

The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented
itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that
little Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of
shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and torments
had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward morning
all these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness of
unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon's doctor,
Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in convalescence.

"He is a nervous, bilious subject," said Larrey, "and will not recover."

And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care of
the inhabitants of the district.





BOOK FOUR: 1806





CHAPTER I


Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave. Denisov
was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to travel with him
as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a comrade at the
last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had drunk three bottles
of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts across the snow-covered
road, did not once wake up on the way to Moscow, but lay at the bottom
of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew more and more impatient the nearer
they got to Moscow.

"How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,
shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov,
when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had
entered Moscow.

"Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with his
whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed of the
sleigh.

Denisov gave no answer.

"There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has his
stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And here's
the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you hurry up?
Now then!"

"Which house is it?" asked the driver.

"Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's our
house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov! We're
almost there!"

Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.

"Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are in our
house, aren't they?"

"Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study."

"Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now,
don't forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his new
mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake up,
Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again nodding.
"Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka--get on!" Rostov
shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his door. It seemed
to him the horses were not moving at all. At last the sleigh bore to the
right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw overhead the old familiar
cornice with a bit of plaster broken off, the porch, and the post by the
side of the pavement. He sprang out before the sleigh stopped, and ran
into the hall. The house stood cold and silent, as if quite regardless
of who had come to it. There was no one in the hall. "Oh God! Is
everyone all right?" he thought, stopping for a moment with a sinking
heart, and then immediately starting to run along the hall and up the
warped steps of the familiar staircase. The well-known old door handle,
which always angered the countess when it was not properly cleaned,
turned as loosely as ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the
anteroom.

Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was so
strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat
plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the opening
door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly changed to one
of delighted amazement.

"Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his
young master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with
excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order to
announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss the
young man's shoulder.

"All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.

"Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have a
look at you, your excellency."

"Is everything quite all right?"

"The Lord be thanked, yes!"

Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone to
forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the
large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card
tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had
already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the drawing
room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and began
hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the same
kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more kissing,
more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish which was
Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted, talked, and
kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not there, he noticed
that.

"And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..."

"Here he is... our own... Kolya, * dear fellow... How he has changed!...
Where are the candles?... Tea!..."


    * Nicholas.


"And me, kiss me!"

"Dearest... and me!"

Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count were
all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the room,
exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.

Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!"

Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his face
with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang away and
pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked piercingly.

All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all around
were lips seeking a kiss.

Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,
looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she
longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at
this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not taking
her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave her a
grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for someone. The old
countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard at the door, steps
so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's.

Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made since
he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her. When they
met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her face, but
only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket. Denisov,
who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there and wiped
his eyes at the sight.

"Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to the
count, who was looking inquiringly at him.

"You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing and
embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here is
Denisov!"

The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of Denisov.

"Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture,
springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled
and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it.

Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs all
gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.

The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every
moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every
movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully adoring
eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places nearest
to him and disputed with one another who should bring him his tea,
handkerchief, and pipe.

Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first
moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed
insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.

Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers slept
till ten o'clock.

In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,
satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly
cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The servants
were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving, and their
well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell of tobacco.

"Hallo, Gwiska--my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice. "Wostov,
get up!"

Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his
disheveled head from the hot pillow.

"Why, is it late?"

"Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A rustle of
starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of girls' voices
came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a crack and there was
a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black hair, and merry faces.
It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had come to see whether they were
getting up.

"Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door.

"Directly!"

Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer room,
with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder brother, and
forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see men undressed,
opened the bedroom door.

"Is this your saber?" he shouted.

The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the blanket,
looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door, having let
Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from behind it.

"Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice.

"Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said, addressing
the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.

Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing gown,
and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just getting
her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was twirling round and
was about to expand her dresses into a balloon and sit down. They were
dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and were both fresh, rosy, and
bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking her brother's arm, led him
into the sitting room, where they began talking. They hardly gave one
another time to ask questions and give replies concerning a thousand
little matters which could not interest anyone but themselves. Natasha
laughed at every word he said or that she said herself, not because what
they were saying was amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable
to control her joy which expressed itself by laughter.

"Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything.

Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that
childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he left
home now for the first time after eighteen months again brightened his
soul and his face.

"No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you? I'm
awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want to
know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?"

"Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov.

"Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to
her--thou or you?"

"As may happen," said Rostov.

"No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other time.
No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend. Such a friend
that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!"

She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her long,
slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is covered
even by a ball dress.

"I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in the
fire and pressed it there!"

Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what used
to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly bright eyes,
Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood which had no meaning
for anyone else, but gave him some of the best joys of his life; and the
burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of love did not seem to him
senseless, he understood and was not surprised at it.

"Well, and is that all?" he asked.

"We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does it
for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly."

"Well, what then?"

"Well, she loves me and you like that."

Natasha suddenly flushed.

"Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are to
forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him be
free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?" asked
Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what she
was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.

Rostov became thoughtful.

"I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so charming
that only a fool would renounce such happiness."

"No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over. We knew
you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say that--if you
consider yourself bound by your promise--it will seem as if she had not
meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were marrying her because you
must, and that wouldn't do at all."

Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had already
struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when he had caught
a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She was a charming girl
of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with him (he did not doubt
that for an instant). Why should he not love her now, and even marry
her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so many other pleasures
and interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a wise decision," he
thought, "I must remain free."

"Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later on.
Oh, how glad I am to have you!"

"Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued.

"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about him
or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind."

"Dear me! Then what are you up to now?"

"Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have you
seen Duport?"

"No."

"Not seen Duport--the famous dancer? Well then, you won't understand.
That's what I'm up to."

Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran back
a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.

"See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself on
her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry anyone,
but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone."

Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom, felt
envious and Natasha could not help joining in.

"No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating.

"Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?"

Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell him so
when I see him!"

"Dear me!" said Rostov.

"But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov nice?"
she asked.

"Yes, indeed!"

"Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible, Denisov?"

"Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow."

"You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?"

"Very."

"Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together."

And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how
to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not
be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was
looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave with
her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you--Sonya.
But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender kisses. Her looks
asked him to forgive her for having dared, by Natasha's intermediacy, to
remind him of his promise, and then thanked him for his love. His looks
thanked her for offering him his freedom and told her that one way or
another he would never cease to love her, for that would be impossible.

"How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were silent,
"that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet like
strangers."

Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like most of
her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not only Sonya,
Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who--dreading
this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a brilliant
match--blushed like a girl.

Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with pomaded
hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as he made
himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the ladies
and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.





CHAPTER II


On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was welcomed
by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling
Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and polite young
man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good
dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.

The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself
to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be
at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from
Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly--he now
recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.
Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected racing
men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one
of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka at
the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal Kamenski,
visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a colonel of
forty to whom Denisov had introduced him.

His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But still, as
he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke
about him and about his love for him, letting it be understood that he
had not told all and that there was something in his feelings for the
Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole soul he shared
the adoration then common in Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of
as the "angel incarnate."

During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he did
not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She was very
pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was at
the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no time
for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and prizes
his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he thought of
Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself, "Ah, there will
be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom I do not yet
know. There will be time enough to think about love when I want to, but
now I have no time." Besides, it seemed to him that the society of women
was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies'
society with an affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the
English Club, sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house--that
was another matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!

At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy arranging
a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club.

The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the Club's head
cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish
for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of
the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the
arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so
well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and
still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
their own resources what might be needed for the success of the fete.
The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders with
pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they
so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing
several thousand rubles.

"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!"

"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook.

The count considered.

"We can't have less--yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said he,
bending down a finger.

"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.

"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was
forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he
clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh,
Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum who
appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to set
the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must be
brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred pots here
on Friday."

Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his "little
countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of importance,
he returned again, called back the cook and the club steward, and again
began giving orders. A light footstep and the clinking of spurs were
heard at the door, and the young count, handsome, rosy, with a dark
little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by his easy life in
Moscow, entered the room.

"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile, as if
he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would only help
a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own orchestra, but
shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like that
sort of thing."

"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less before
the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with a smile.

The old count pretended to be angry.

"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"

And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful
expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and
son.

"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said he.
"Laughing at us old fellows!"

"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their
business!"

"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his son
by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and pair
at once, and go to Bezukhov's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has sent you
to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get them from
anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in and ask the
princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay--the coachman Ipatka
knows--and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who danced at Count
Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and bring him along to
me."

"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked Nicholas,
laughing. "Dear, dear!..."

At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,
preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna
Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count in his
dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her to
excuse his costume.

"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her eyes.
"But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now we shall
get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in any case.
He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is now on the
staff."

The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself one of
his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.

"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with him?"
he asked.

Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted
on her face.

"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what we hear
is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing when we
were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul as young
Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to give him what
consolation I can."

"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.

Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.

"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper, "has
compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited him to
his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and that daredevil
after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show her sympathy for
Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile betraying her
sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called Dolokhov. "They say Pierre
is quite broken by his misfortune."

"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club--it will all blow
over. It will be a tremendous banquet."

Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred and
fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting the
guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagration, to
dinner.

On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow had
been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to victories
that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not believe it,
while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so strange an
event. In the English Club, where all who were distinguished, important,
and well informed foregathered when the news began to arrive in
December, nothing was said about the war and the last battle, as
though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who set the tone in
conversation--Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count
Markov, and Prince Vyazemski--did not show themselves at the Club, but
met in private houses in intimate circles, and the Moscovites who took
their opinions from others--Ilya Rostov among them--remained for a
while without any definite opinion on the subject of the war and without
leaders. The Moscovites felt that something was wrong and that to
discuss the bad news was difficult, and so it was best to be silent.
But after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room, the bigwigs
who guided the Club's opinion reappeared, and everybody began speaking
clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the incredible,
unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat, everything became
clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things began to be
said. These reasons were the treachery of the Austrians, a defective
commissariat, the treachery of the Pole Przebyszewski and of the
Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's incapacity, and (it was whispered) the
youth and inexperience of the sovereign, who had trusted worthless and
insignificant people. But the army, the Russian army, everyone declared,
was extraordinary and had achieved miracles of valor. The soldiers,
officers, and generals were heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince
Bagration, distinguished by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat
from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and
had all day beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous as his own.
What also conduced to Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was
the fact that he had no connections in the city and was a stranger
there. In his person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian
soldier without connections and intrigues, and to one who was associated
by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov.
Moreover, paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing
disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov.

"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent
him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire. Kutuzov
no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers, calling him a
court weathercock and an old satyr.

All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on modeling
and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting consolation
for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the words of
Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to battle by
highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them that it
is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian soldiers
only need to be restrained and held back! On all sides, new and fresh
anecdotes were heard of individual examples of heroism shown by our
officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another had
killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon singlehanded. Berg
was mentioned, by those who did not know him, as having, when wounded
in the right hand, taken his sword in the left, and gone forward. Of
Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those who knew him intimately
regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife with his
eccentric father.





CHAPTER III


On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were filled
with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in springtime.
The members and guests of the Club wandered hither and thither, sat,
stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in evening dress,
and a few here and there with powdered hair and in Russian kaftans.
Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and smart stockings,
stood at every door anxiously noting visitors' every movement in order
to offer their services. Most of those present were elderly, respected
men with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures
and voices. This class of guests and members sat in certain habitual
places and met in certain habitual groups. A minority of those present
were casual guests--chiefly young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov,
and Dolokhov--who was now again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The
faces of these young people, especially those who were military men,
bore that expression of condescending respect for their elders which
seems to say to the older generation, "We are prepared to respect and
honor you, but all the same remember that the future belongs to us."

Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre, who at his
wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles, went
about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. Here, as
elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to his
wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he
treated them with absent-minded contempt.

By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his wealth
and connections he belonged to the groups old and honored guests, and
so he went from one group to another. Some of the most important old men
were the center of groups which even strangers approached respectfully
to hear the voices of well-known men. The largest circles formed round
Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how
the Russians had been overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to
force their way through them with bayonets.

Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from
Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.

In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply to
the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing close
by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently failed to
learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of crowing like a
cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the wit, making him
feel that in that place and on that day, it was improper to speak so of
Kutuzov.

Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft boots
between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the important and
unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all equals, while his
eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up young son, resting
on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov stood at a window with
Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made and highly valued. The
old count came up to them and pressed Dolokhov's hand.

"Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been together out
there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili Ignatovich... How d'ye do,
old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man who was passing, but before
he had finished his greeting there was a general stir, and a footman who
had run in announced, with a frightened face: "He's arrived!"

Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and--like rye shaken together
in a shovel--the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms
came together and crowded in the large drawing room by the door of the
ballroom.

Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or sword,
which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the hall
porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip
over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of the battle
of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign
Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast. Evidently just
before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and whiskers trimmed,
which changed his appearance for the worse. There was something naively
festive in his air, which, in conjunction with his firm and virile
features, gave him a rather comical expression. Bekleshev and Theodore
Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the doorway to allow him,
as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration was embarrassed, not
wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and this caused some delay
at the doors, but after all he did at last enter first. He walked shyly
and awkwardly over the parquet floor of the reception room, not knowing
what to do with his hands; he was more accustomed to walk over a plowed
field under fire, as he had done at the head of the Kursk regiment at
Schon Grabern--and he would have found that easier. The committeemen
met him at the first door and, expressing their delight at seeing such a
highly honored guest, took possession of him as it were, without waiting
for his reply, surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was
at first impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd of
members and guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at
Bagration over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare animal.
Count Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way, dear
boy! Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more energetically
than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and seated them on
the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the Club,
beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his way through the
crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a minute later with
another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver which he presented
to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some verses composed and printed
in the hero's honor. Bagration, on seeing the salver, glanced around
in dismay, as though seeking help. But all eyes demanded that he should
submit. Feeling himself in their power, he resolutely took the salver
with both hands and looked sternly and reproachfully at the count who
had presented it to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from Bagration
(or he would, it seemed, have held it till evening and have gone in to
dinner with it) and drew his attention to the verses.

"Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing
his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and serious
expression. But the author himself took the verses and began reading
them aloud. Bagration bowed his head and listened:

   Bring glory then to Alexander's reign
   And on the throne our Titus shield.
   A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man,
   A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field!
   E'en fortunate Napoleon
   Knows by experience, now, Bagration,
   And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...

But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo announced
that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the dining room came
the resounding strains of the polonaise:

   Conquest's joyful thunder waken,
   Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...

and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading his
verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was more
important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the rest,
went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between two
Alexanders--Bekleshev and Naryshkin--which was a significant allusion to
the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took their seats in the
dining room, according to their rank and importance: the more important
nearer to the honored guest, as naturally as water flows deepest where
the land lies lowest.

Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to Bagration,
who recognized him and said a few words to him, disjointed and awkward,
as were all the words he spoke that day, and Count Ilya looked joyfully
and proudly around while Bagration spoke to his son.

Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov, sat
almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre, beside Prince
Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of the committee sat
facing Bagration and, as the very personification of Moscow hospitality,
did the honors to the prince.

His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and the
other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till the
end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions to the
footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety. Everything
was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet (at sight of
which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious pleasure), the footmen
began popping corks and filling the champagne glasses. After the fish,
which made a certain sensation, the count exchanged glances with the
other committeemen. "There will be many toasts, it's time to begin," he
whispered, and taking up his glass, he rose. All were silent, waiting
for what he would say.

"To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at the same
moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and enthusiasm. The
band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful thunder waken..." All rose
and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and shouted "Hurrah!" in exactly
the same voice in which he had shouted it on the field at Schon Grabern.
Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could be heard above the three hundred
others. He nearly wept. "To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!"
he roared, "Hurrah!" and emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to
the floor. Many followed his example, and the loud shouting continued
for a long time. When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the
broken glass and everybody sat down again, smiling at the noise they had
made and exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a
note lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, "To the health of the
hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and again
his blue eyes grew moist. "Hurrah!" cried the three hundred voices
again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a cantata composed
by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:

   Russians! O'er all barriers on!
   Courage conquest guarantees;
   Have we not Bagration?
   He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.


As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was proposed
and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more glass was
smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshev,
Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the committee, to
all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and finally to Count
Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the banquet. At that
toast, the count took out his handkerchief and, covering his face, wept
outright.





CHAPTER IV


Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate and
drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed that
some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all through
dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed eyes and
a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge of his
nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and hear
nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by some
depressing and unsolved problem.

The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by the
princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy with his
wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that morning, which in
the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters said that he saw badly
through his spectacles, but that his wife's connection with Dolokhov was
a secret to no one but himself. Pierre absolutely disbelieved both the
princess' hints and the letter, but he feared now to look at Dolokhov,
who was sitting opposite him. Every time he chanced to meet Dolokhov's
handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt something terrible and monstrous
rising in his soul and turned quickly away. Involuntarily recalling his
wife's past and her relations with Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that
what was said in the letter might be true, or might at least seem to be
true had it not referred to his wife. He involuntarily remembered
how Dolokhov, who had fully recovered his former position after the
campaign, had returned to Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself
of his friendly relations with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov
had come straight to his house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him
money. Pierre recalled how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of
Dolokhov's living at their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised
his wife's beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had
not left them for a day.

"Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It would be
particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule me, just
because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended him, and helped
him. I know and understand what a spice that would add to the pleasure
of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it were true, but I
do not believe it. I have no right to, and can't, believe it." He
remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in his moments of
cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping them into
the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel without any reason,
or shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That expression was often
on Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes, he is a bully," thought
Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him. It must seem to him that
everyone is afraid of him, and that must please him. He must think that
I, too, am afraid of him--and in fact I am afraid of him," he thought,
and again he felt something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul.
Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were now sitting opposite Pierre and
seemed very gay. Rostov was talking merrily to his two friends, one of
whom was a dashing hussar and the other a notorious duelist and
rake, and every now and then he glanced ironically at Pierre, whose
preoccupied, absent-minded, and massive figure was a very noticeable one
at the dinner. Rostov looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre
appeared to his hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a
beauty, and in a word--an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his
preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had
not responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk,
Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.

"What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy of
exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's health?"

Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting till
all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov.

"Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise
engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!"

"Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov.

"Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov.

"One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.

Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were talking
about him. He reddened and turned away.

"Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with
a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his
mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.

"Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin--and their lovers!" he
added.

Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking at
Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing leaflets
with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of the principal
guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov, leaning across,
snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre looked at
Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and monstrous that
had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took possession of him. He
leaned his whole massive body across the table.

"How dare you take it?" he shouted.

Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski and the
neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov.

"Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened voices.

Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that
smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!"

"You shan't have it!" he said distinctly.

Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.

"You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and, pushing
back his chair, he rose from the table.

At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him the
whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative. He
hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's request
that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to be Dolokhov's
second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements for the duel with
Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home, but Rostov with Dolokhov
and Denisov stayed on at the Club till late, listening to the gypsies
and other singers.

"Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki," said Dolokhov, as he took leave
of Rostov in the Club porch.

"And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked.

Dolokhov paused.

"Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two
words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the firm
intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as possible, and
then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma used to tell
me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see one your fear's
all gone, and your only thought is not to let him get away!' And that's
how it is with me. A demain, mon cher." *


    * Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.


Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the
Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already there.
Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations which had no
connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face was yellow. He had
evidently not slept that night. He looked about distractedly and screwed
up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He was entirely absorbed by two
considerations: his wife's guilt, of which after his sleepless night he
had not the slightest doubt, and the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had
no reason to preserve the honor of a man who was nothing to him.... "I
should perhaps have done the same thing in his place," thought Pierre.
"It's even certain that I should have done the same, then why this duel,
this murder? Either I shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head,
or elbow, or knee. Can't I go away from here, run away, bury myself
somewhere?" passed through his mind. But just at moments when such
thoughts occurred to him, he would ask in a particularly calm and
absent-minded way, which inspired the respect of the onlookers, "Will it
be long? Are things ready?"

When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the barriers,
and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre.

"I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and
should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in
choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment I
did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient ground
for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were not right,
not quite in the right, you were impetuous..."

"Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre.

"Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your opponent
will accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others concerned in the
affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not yet believe that the
affair had come to an actual duel). "You know, Count, it is much more
honorable to admit one's mistake than to let matters become irreparable.
There was no insult on either side. Allow me to convey...."

"No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the same....
Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and where to
shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.

He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of the
trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand--a fact that he
did not wish to confess.

"Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he.

"No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on his
side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to the
appointed place.

The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,
where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine forest
covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up during the
last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at the farther
edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, left tracks in
the deep wet snow between the place where they had been standing and
Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck into the ground
ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and misty; at forty
paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three minutes all had been
ready, but they still delayed and all were silent.





CHAPTER V


"Well begin!" said Dolokhov.

"All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling of
dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly begun
could no longer be averted but was taking its course independently of
men's will.

Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies
have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols, and at
the word thwee begin to advance.

"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside.

The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and nearer to
one another, beginning to see one another through the mist. They had the
right to fire when they liked as they approached the barrier. Dolokhov
walked slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently with his
bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist's face. His mouth wore
its usual semblance of a smile.

"So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three," he
went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into
the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length,
apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held
carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it and
knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed off
the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then quickly
glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been shown, fired.
Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered at the sound and
then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The smoke, rendered
denser by the mist, prevented him from seeing anything for an instant,
but there was no second report as he had expected. He only heard
Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his figure came in view through the smoke.
He was pressing one hand to his left side, while the other clutched
his drooping pistol. His face was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said
something.

"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not over." And
after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the saber, he sank
on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he wiped it on his
coat and supported himself with it. His frowning face was pallid and
quivered.

"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.

"Please," he uttered with an effort.

Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov and
was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov cried:

"To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by his
saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to the
snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself, drew
in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked and
swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes, still smiling,
glittered with effort and exasperation as he mustered his remaining
strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.

"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski.

"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary.

Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski
closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and
Dolokhov's angry cry.

"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on the
snow.

Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:

"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face.

Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.

Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.

The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not answer
a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering Moscow he
suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort, took Rostov, who
was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was struck by the totally
altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on Dolokhov's
face.

"Well? How do you feel?" he asked.

"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping voice.
"Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have killed her,
killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...."

"Who?" asked Rostov.

"My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and Dolokhov
pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears.

When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that he was
living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive it.
He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.

Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate
of sons and brothers.





CHAPTER VI


Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and in
Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after the
duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his
father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.

He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that
had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not fall
asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace the
room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early days of
their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, passionate look on
her face, and then immediately he saw beside her Dolokhov's handsome,
insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen it at the banquet, and
then that same face pale, quivering, and suffering, as it had been when
he reeled and sank on the snow.

"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover, yes,
killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come to do
it?"--"Because you married her," answered an inner voice.

"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without loving
her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled that moment
after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words he had found
so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from that! Even then
I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not so, that I had no
right to do it. And so it turns out."

He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection of
how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into his
study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his head
steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and at
his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing respectful
understanding of his employer's happiness.

"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic beauty
and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in which she
received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and beauty. So
this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did not understand
her. How often when considering her character I have told myself that
I was to blame for not understanding her, for not understanding that
constant composure and complacency and lack of all interests or desires,
and the whole secret lies in the terrible truth that she is a depraved
woman. Now I have spoken that terrible word to myself all has become
clear.

"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss her
naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself be
kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she replied
with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous: 'Let him
do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked her if she
felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously and said she
was not a fool to want to have children, and that she was not going to
have any children by me."

Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the
vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had
been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.

"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous promener," *
she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with young and old men
and women Pierre could not understand why he did not love her.


    * "You clear out of this."


"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a depraved
woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And now there's
Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and perhaps dying,
while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"

Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of what
is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their troubles. He
digested his sufferings alone.

"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that? Why
did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime' * to her, which
was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must endure... what?
A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's nonsense," he
thought. "The slur on my name and honor--that's all apart from myself."


    * I love you.


"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a
criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view they
were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a martyr's
death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a despot.
Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive--live:
tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth
tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison
with eternity?"

But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such reflections,
she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments when he had
most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he felt the
blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move about and break
and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell her that 'Je vous
aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he had said it for the
tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diable alloit-il faire dans cette
galere?" occurred to him, and he began to laugh at himself.

In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to
Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He
resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his
intention to part from her forever.

Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee, Pierre
was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.

He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled expression,
unable to realize where he was.

"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at home,"
said the valet.

But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the countess
herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver and with
simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round her lovely head like
a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there was
a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent marble brow. With her
imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in front of the valet.
She knew of the duel and had come to speak about it. She waited till the
valet had set down the coffee things and left the room. Pierre looked
at her timidly over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded by hounds
who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless before her
enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless
and impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down
but looked at him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to
go.

"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should like to
know?" she asked sternly.

"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.

"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel about? What
is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."

Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, but
could not reply.

"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe
everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that Dolokhov
was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness of speech,
uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and you believed
it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel prove? That you're
a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew that. What will be the
result? That I shall be the laughingstock of all Moscow, that everyone
will say that you, drunk and not knowing what you were about, challenged
a man you are jealous of without cause." Helene raised her voice and
became more and more excited, "A man who's a better man than you in
every way..."

"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her, and not
moving a muscle.

"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like his
company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should prefer
yours."

"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.

"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you plainly
that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who would not
have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so," said she.

Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose strange
expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He was suffering
physically at that moment, there was a weight on his chest and he could
not breathe. He knew that he must do something to put an end to this
suffering, but what he wanted to do was too terrible.

"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.

"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said Helene.
"Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"

Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.

"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table
with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her
brandishing the slab.

Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His
father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and
delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down
on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a terrible
voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows what he would
have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the room.


A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his estates
in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property, and left
for Petersburg alone.





CHAPTER VII


Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz and
the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite of the
letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his body had
not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What was worst of
all for his relations was the fact that there was still a possibility of
his having been picked up on the battlefield by the people of the
place and that he might now be lying, recovering or dying, alone among
strangers and unable to send news of himself. The gazettes from which
the old prince first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz stated, as usual
very briefly and vaguely, that after brilliant engagements the Russians
had had to retreat and had made their withdrawal in perfect order. The
old prince understood from this official report that our army had been
defeated. A week after the gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz
came a letter from Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had
befallen his son.

"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his hand
and at the head of a regiment--he fell as a hero, worthy of his father
and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the whole army
it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort myself and
you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise he would have
been mentioned among the officers found on the field of battle, a list
of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."

After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone in his
study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next morning, but he
was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the architect, and though
he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.

When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at his
lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.

"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice, throwing
down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own impetus,
and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that wheel, which
merged in her memory with what followed.)

She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her.
Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad, not
crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging over
her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the worst
in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and
incomprehensible--the death of one she loved.

"Father! Andrew!"--said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such an
indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her father
could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.

"Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed! Kutuzov
writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to drive the
princess away by that scream... "Killed!"

The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but on
hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in her
beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy--a supreme joy apart from the
joys and sorrows of this world--overflowed the great grief within her.
She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took his hand, and
drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy neck.

"Father," she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together."

"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his face away
from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why? Go, go and
tell Lise."

The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father and
wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he took
leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw him tender
and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did he believe?
Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There in the realms
of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.

"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears.

"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and Russia's
glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell Lise. I
will follow."

When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy calm
peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did not see
Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at something
joyful and mysterious taking place within her.

"Mary," she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying back,
"give me your hand." She took her sister-in-law's hand and held it below
her waist.

Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained
lifted in childlike happiness.

Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of her
sister-in-law's dress.

"There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know, Mary,
I am going to love him very much," said Lise, looking with bright and
happy eyes at her sister-in-law.

Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.

"What is the matter, Mary?"

"Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping away
her tears on her sister-in-law's knee.

Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began trying to
prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry. Unobservant as
was the little princess, these tears, the cause of which she did not
understand, agitated her. She said nothing but looked about uneasily as
if in search of something. Before dinner the old prince, of whom she was
always afraid, came into her room with a peculiarly restless and malign
expression and went out again without saying a word. She looked at
Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a while with that expression of
attention to something within her that is only seen in pregnant women,
and suddenly began to cry.

"Has anything come from Andrew?" she asked.

"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I
feel afraid."

"So there's nothing?"

"Nothing," answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant eyes
at her sister-in-law.

She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to hide the
terrible news from her till after her confinement, which was expected
within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince each bore and hid
their grief in their own way. The old prince would not cherish any hope:
he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had been killed, and though he
sent an official to Austria to seek for traces of his son, he ordered a
monument from Moscow which he intended to erect in his own garden to his
memory, and he told everybody that his son had been killed. He tried not
to change his former way of life, but his strength failed him. He walked
less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary
hoped. She prayed for her brother as living and was always awaiting news
of his return.





CHAPTER VIII


"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning of
the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit, but
as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word, and even
every footstep in that house since the terrible news had come, so now
the smile of the little princess--influenced by the general mood though
without knowing its cause--was such as to remind one still more of the
general sorrow.

"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique *--as Foka the cook
calls it--has disagreed with me."


    * Fruhstuck: breakfast.


"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you
are very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,
ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.

"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said one
of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife from the
neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)

"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go. Courage,
my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.

"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on the
little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of inevitable pain
showed itself.

"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so,
Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like
a suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some
affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary Bogdanovna.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room.

The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small, plump
white hands with an air of calm importance.

"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary looking at
the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.

"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not
hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything about
it."

"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the
princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they had
sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at any
moment.)

"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna. "We'll
manage very well without a doctor."

Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy
being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the
large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On their
faces was a quiet and solemn look.

Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the
house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and watching
what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with quiet steps in
and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away. She did
not venture to ask any questions, and shut the door again, now sitting
down in her easy chair, now taking her prayer book, now kneeling before
the icon stand. To her surprise and distress she found that her prayers
did not calm her excitement. Suddenly her door opened softly and her old
nurse, Praskovya Savishna, who hardly ever came to that room as the old
prince had forbidden it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round
her head.

"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and here
I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his saint, my
angel," she said with a sigh.

"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"

"God is merciful, birdie."

The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by the door
with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began reading. Only
when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one another, the
princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging. Everyone in the
house was dominated by the same feeling that Princess Mary experienced
as she sat in her room. But owing to the superstition that the fewer
the people who know of it the less a woman in travail suffers, everyone
tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it, but apart from the
ordinary staid and respectful good manners habitual in the prince's
household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a
consciousness that something great and mysterious was being accomplished
at that moment made itself felt.

There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants'
hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs'
quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old
prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent
Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.--"Say only that 'the prince
told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."

"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna, giving
the messenger a significant look.

Tikhon went and told the prince.

"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon did
not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.

After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and, seeing
the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his perturbed
face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed him on the
shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles or saying why he
had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world continued its course.
Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of suspense and softening of
heart in the presence of the unfathomable did not lessen but increased.
No one slept.

It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume its
sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A relay
of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German doctor from
Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback with lanterns
were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the country road with its
hollows and snow-covered pools of water.

Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her
luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of which
she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from under the
kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.

Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely
hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds of
times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess Mary
in Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a
midwife.

"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she said.

Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the
window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of the
prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the larks
returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the damask
curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill, snowy draft.
Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the stocking she was
knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to catch the open
casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her kerchief and her loose
locks of gray hair.

"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue!" she said,
holding the casement and not closing it. "With lanterns. Most likely the
doctor."

"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I must go and meet him, he
does not know Russian."

Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the newcomer.
As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the window a carriage
with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On
a banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft. On
the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood looking scared and holding
another candle. Still lower, beyond the turn of the staircase, one
could hear the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice that
seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying something.

"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"

"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who was
downstairs.

Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in the
felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more rapidly.

"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be too
extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the face and
figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of which covered
with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman stood with the
candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed and strangely
softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up the stairs and
embraced his sister.

"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a
reply--which he would not have received, for the princess was unable to
speak--he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the doctor
who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last post
station), and again embraced his sister.

"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak and
felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment.





CHAPTER IX


The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on her
head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair lay round
her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy mouth with its
downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew entered
and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on which she was lying.
Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear and excitement, rested
on him without changing their expression. "I love you all and have done
no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!" her look seemed to
say. She saw her husband, but did not realize the significance of his
appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went round the sofa and kissed
her forehead.

"My darling!" he said--a word he had never used to her before. "God is
merciful...."

She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.

"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!" said
her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not realize
that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her sufferings or
with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary Bogdanovna advised
Prince Andrew to leave the room.

The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess Mary,
again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk broke
off at every moment. They waited and listened.

"Go, dear," said Princess Mary.

Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room next
to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and became
confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with his hands
and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal moans came
through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to the door, and tried to
open it. Someone was holding it shut.

"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified voice from within.

He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more seconds
went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek--it could not be hers, she
could not scream like that--came from the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to
the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.

"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in the
first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or is
the baby born?"

Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; tears
choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began to cry,
sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves
tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out
of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor gave him a
bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman rushed out and
seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He went into
his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the same position he had seen
her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor of
the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face with
its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.

"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done
to me?"--said her charming, pathetic, dead face.

In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and squealed
in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.


Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his father's
room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to
the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise
round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob like a child.


Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went
up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss.
And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah,
what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrew
felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin
he could neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep. The old man too
came up and kissed the waxen little hands that lay quietly crossed one
on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face seemed to say:
"Ah, what have you done to me, and why?" And at the sight the old man
turned angrily away.


Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas Andreevich
was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her chin,
while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red and
wrinkled soles and palms.

His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of dropping
him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and handed him over
to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat in another room,
faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in the font, and awaited
the termination of the ceremony. He looked up joyfully at the baby when
the nurse brought it to him and nodded approval when she told him that
the wax with the baby's hair had not sunk in the font but had floated.





CHAPTER X


Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the
efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks
as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of
Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of the
family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties. Dolokhov
recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during his
convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him
passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond of
Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about her
son.

"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for
our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like
a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it
honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him and
even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg when
they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it together?
And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to bear the whole
burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go through! It's true he
has been reinstated, but how could they fail to do that? I think there
were not many such gallant sons of the fatherland out there as he. And
now--this duel! Have these people no feeling, or honor? Knowing him to
be an only son, to challenge him and shoot so straight! It's well
God had mercy on us. And what was it for? Who doesn't have intrigues
nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I see things he should have
shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for months. And then to call him
out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting because he owed him money! What
baseness! What meanness! I know you understand Fedya, my dear count;
that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few people do understand
him. He is such a lofty, heavenly soul!"

Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way no
one would have expected of him.

"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't care
a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love so that
I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle if they
stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two or three
friends--you among them--and as for the rest I only care about them
in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them are harmful,
especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I have met loving,
noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any women--countesses
or cooks--who were not venal. I have not yet met that divine purity and
devotion I look for in women. If I found such a one I'd give my life for
her! But those!..." and he made a gesture of contempt. "And believe me,
if I still value my life it is only because I still hope to meet such
a divine creature, who will regenerate, purify, and elevate me. But you
don't understand it."

"Oh, yes, I quite understand," answered Rostov, who was under his new
friend's influence.

In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter
Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the
winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of the
happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas brought
many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl of
twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening flower;
Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly amusing, now
girlishly enchanting.

At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous atmosphere
characteristic of homes where there are very young and very
charming girls. Every young man who came to the house--seeing those
impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the fitful
bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly prattle of
young girls ready for anything and full of hope--experienced the
same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the Rostovs' household a
readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.

Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was Dolokhov,
whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She almost quarreled
with her brother about him. She insisted that he was a bad man, and
that in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right and Dolokhov wrong, and
further that he was disagreeable and unnatural.

"There's nothing for me to understand," she cried out with resolute
self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov
though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do
understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything is
calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..."

"Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that even
Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov--"you must understand what a
soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his mother. What a
heart!"

"Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And do
you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?"

"What nonsense..."

"I'm certain of it; you'll see."

Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care
for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the
question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon
settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never
have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time Dolokhov
appeared.

Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance at
which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people
which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya
and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha blushed
when they saw his looks.

It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the irresistible
influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.

Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but
he did not explain to himself what these new relations were. "They're
always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and Natasha. But he
was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as before and was less
frequently at home.

In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war with
Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders were
given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the regular army,
and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the militia. Everywhere
Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow nothing but the coming war
was talked of. For the Rostov family the whole interest of these
preparations for war lay in the fact that Nicholas would not hear of
remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the termination of Denisov's
furlough after Christmas to return with him to their regiment. His
approaching departure did not prevent his amusing himself, but rather
gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away
from home, at dinners, parties, and balls.





CHAPTER XI


On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing he had
rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he and Denisov
were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people
were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.

Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at this
holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That
is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing
we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.

Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without
visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been invited,
returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he noticed and
felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also noticed a
curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya, Dolokhov,
and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a lesser degree
Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have happened between
Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly sensitiveness
natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both at dinner. On
that same evening there was to be one of the balls that Iogel (the
dancing master) gave for his pupils during the holidays.

"Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He asked
you, and Vasili Dmitrich * is also going."


    * Denisov.


"Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who at
the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight. "I'm
even weady to dance the pas de chale."

"If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the Arkharovs; they
have a party."

"And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the question
he noticed that it should not have been put.

"Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya, and,
scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given Pierre at
the Club dinner.

"There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further confirmed
in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left immediately after
dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the matter.

"And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I told
you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He has
proposed to Sonya!"

Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late, something
seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a suitable and
in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless, orphan girl. From
the point of view of the old countess and of society it was out of the
question for her to refuse him. And therefore Nicholas' first feeling
on hearing the news was one of anger with Sonya.... He tried to say,
"That's capital; of course she'll forget her childish promises and
accept the offer," but before he had time to say it Natasha began again.

"And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a pause,
"she told him she loved another."

"Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas.

"Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change
once she has said..."

"And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully.

"Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas--don't be angry--but I know
you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know for certain
that you won't marry her."

"Now you don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to
her. What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile.

"Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you."

And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.

A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared look.
Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the first time
since his return that they had talked alone and about their love.

"Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more boldly,
"if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and advantageous
match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..."

Sonya interrupted him.

"I have already refused," she said hurriedly.

"If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..."

Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.

"Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said.

"No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to say
it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole truth. I
love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...."

"That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing.

"No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in
love again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,
confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does
not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider
Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with
difficulty.

"Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and
always shall, and I want nothing more."

"You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of misleading
you."

And Nicholas again kissed her hand.





CHAPTER XII


Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers as
they watched their young people executing their newly learned steps, and
so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they were
ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and women who came to
these balls with an air of condescension and found them most enjoyable.
That year two marriages had come of these balls. The two pretty young
Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and were married and so further
increased the fame of these dances. What distinguished them from others
was the absence of host or hostess and the presence of the good-natured
Iogel, flying about like a feather and bowing according to the rules of
his art, as he collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was
the fact that only those came who wished to dance and amuse themselves
as girls of thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for
the first time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to
be, pretty--so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes.
Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom Natasha, who was exceptionally
graceful, was first, even danced the pas de chale, but at this last ball
only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka, which was just coming
into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a ballroom in Bezukhov's
house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a great success. There were
many pretty girls and the Rostov girls were among the prettiest. They
were both particularly happy and gay. That evening, proud of Dolokhov's
proposal, her refusal, and her explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled
about before she left home so that the maid could hardly get her hair
plaited, and she was transparently radiant with impulsive joy.

Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real
ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with pink
ribbons.

Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She
was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever
person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.

"Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya.

Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
patronage at the dancers.

"How sweet she is--she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov.

"Who?"

"Countess Natasha," answered Denisov.

"And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause.

"Who are you talking about?"

"About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily.

Rostov smiled.

"My dear count, you were one of my best pupils--you must dance," said
little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young
ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a
former pupil of his.

"No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you
wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?"

"Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only
inattentive, but you had talent--oh yes, you had talent!"

 The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not
refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old
ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot, told
them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the young
people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best pupil, were
the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with his little feet
in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with Natasha, who, though
shy, went on carefully executing her steps. Denisov did not take
his eyes off her and beat time with his saber in a way that clearly
indicated that if he was not dancing it was because he would not and not
because he could not. In the middle of a figure he beckoned to Rostov
who was passing:

"This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish mazuwka is
this? But she does dance splendidly."

Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the masterly
way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to Natasha:

"Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said.

When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and,
tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran
timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was
looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing
though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.

"Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"

"Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied.

"Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas.

"They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly.

"I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha.

"Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he
unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his
partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,
waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was
Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow he
felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked sideways at
his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly stamped with one
foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew round the room taking
his partner with him. He glided silently on one foot half across the
room, and seeming not to notice the chairs was dashing straight at them,
when suddenly, clinking his spurs and spreading out his legs, he stopped
short on his heels, stood so a second, stamped on the spot clanking his
spurs, whirled rapidly round, and, striking his left heel against his
right, flew round again in a circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to
do, and abandoning herself to him followed his lead hardly knowing how.
First he spun her round, holding her now with his left, now with his
right hand, then falling on one knee he twirled her round him, and again
jumping up, dashed so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would
rush through the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then
he suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When at
last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair, he drew
up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not even make
him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement, smiling as if she
did not recognize him.

"What does this mean?" she brought out.

Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka, everyone
was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and again as a
partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about Poland and the
good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and mopping himself
with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not leave her for the
rest of the evening.





CHAPTER XIII


For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at
Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him:


As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know
of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell supper
tonight to my friends--come to the English Hotel.


About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the
theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once
shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening. Some
twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat between
two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper money, and he was
keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since his proposal and Sonya's
refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought of how they would meet.

Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the door,
as though he had long expected him.

"It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll just
finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus."

"I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening.

Dolokhov made no reply.

"You may punt," he said.

Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once had
with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov had then
said.

"Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if guessing
Rostov's thought.

Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the Club
dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he had felt
a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually cruel, action.

Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke
with which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought
of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and
deliberately so that everyone could hear:

"Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who trusts to
luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try."

"To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself.

"Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new pack
of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!"

Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his
side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him.

"Why don't you play?" he asked.

And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up a
card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.

"I have no money with me," he said.

"I'll trust you."

Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and again
lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's running.

"Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please
place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning."

One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.

"Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I
ask you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't stint
yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov.

The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.

All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles scored
up against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while the waiter
filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to his usual stake
of twenty rubles.

"Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking at
Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others but win
from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again.

Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a seven
of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the floor. He
well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts,
on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written "800 rubles" in clear
upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm champagne that was handed
him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with a sinking heart, waiting for
a seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's hands which held the pack. Much
depended on Rostov's winning or losing on that seven of hearts. On the
previous Sunday the old count had given his son two thousand rubles,
and though he always disliked speaking of money difficulties had told
Nicholas that this was all he could let him have till May, and asked him
to be more economical this time. Nicholas had replied that it would be
more than enough for him and that he gave his word of honor not to take
anything more till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left
of that money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the
loss of sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his
word. With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought,
"Now then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap
and drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will
certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life,
jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with his
father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the Povarskaya rose
before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm that it seemed as
if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss, long past. He could not
conceive that a stupid chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right
rather than to the left, might deprive him of all this happiness, newly
appreciated and newly illumined, and plunge him into the depths of
unknown and undefined misery. That could not be, yet he awaited with
a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's hands. Those broad, reddish
hands, with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt cuffs, laid down
the pack and took up a glass and a pipe that were handed him.

"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as if
about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in his
chair, and began deliberately with a smile:

"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow that
I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."

"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.

"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the cards with
a smile.

"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The seven
he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He had lost
more than he could pay.

"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at Rostov
as he continued to deal.





CHAPTER XIV


An hour and a half later most of the players were but little interested
in their own play.

The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen
hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,
which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely
supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already
exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer listening to
stories or telling them, but followed every movement of Rostov's hands
and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against him. He had decided
to play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He had fixed on
that number because forty-three was the sum of his and Sonya's joint
ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both hands, sat at the table which
was scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled wine, and littered
with cards. One tormenting impression did not leave him: that those
broad-boned reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt
sleeves, those hands which he loved and hated, held him in their power.

"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's
impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double
or quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov
pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to
accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at
one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the bridge
over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came first to hand
from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now counted the
cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried staking the
total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from the other
players, or peered at the now cold face of Dolokhov and tried to read
what was passing in his mind.

"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my ruin.
Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his fault.
What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault either,"
he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I killed anyone,
or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a terrible misfortune?
And when did it begin? Such a little while ago I came to this table with
the thought of winning a hundred rubles to buy that casket for Mamma's
name day and then going home. I was so happy, so free, so lighthearted!
And I did not realize how happy I was! When did that end and when did
this new, terrible state of things begin? What marked the change? I sat
all the time in this same place at this table, chose and placed cards,
and watched those broad-boned agile hands in the same way. When did it
happen and what has happened? I am well and strong and still the same
and in the same place. No, it can't be! Surely it will all end in
nothing!"

He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot.
His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless
efforts to seem calm.

The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand.
Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of which he meant
to double the three thousand just put down to his score, when Dolokhov,
slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began rapidly adding
up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the chalk as he marked the
figures in his clear, bold hand.

"Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!"

Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold outside
and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas understood that it
was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:

"Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it were
the fun of the game which interested him most.

"It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my
brain--that's all that's left me!" And at the same time he said in a
cheerful voice:

"Come now, just this one more little card!"

"All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All right!
Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one by which
the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three thousand; and taking up
a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov submissively unbent the corner of his
card and, instead of the six thousand he had intended, carefully wrote
twenty-one.

"It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether you will
let me win this ten, or beat it."

Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that moment
those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy wrists, which
held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.

"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching
himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so long," he
added.

"Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov.

Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to
jest.

"When am I to receive the money, Count?"

Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.

"I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said.

"I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas
straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at
cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know."

"Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power," thought
Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father and mother
by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be to escape
it all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him from all this
shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a cat does with a
mouse.

"Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted him.

"My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to mention
her!" he exclaimed fiercely.

"Then when am I to have it?"

"Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room.





CHAPTER XV


To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult, but to
go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father, confess
and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word of honor, was
terrible.

At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after returning
from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round the clavichord.
As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic atmosphere
of love which pervaded the Rostov household that winter and, now after
Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed to have grown thicker
round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sonya and
Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had worn at the theater, looking
pretty and conscious of it, were standing by the clavichord, happy and
smiling. Vera was playing chess with Shinshin in the drawing room. The
old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son, sat playing
patience with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov,
with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking
chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling
as he sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called
"Enchantress," which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit
music:

   Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
   What magic power is this recalls me still?
   What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
   What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?

He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his sparkling
black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.

"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse," she said,
without noticing Nicholas.

"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas, glancing into
the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother with the old lady.

"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.

"Is Papa at home?" he asked.

"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We are
enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my sake!
Did you know?"

"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.

"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old countess from
the drawing room.

Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently at her
table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the dancing
room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to persuade
Natasha to sing.

"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making excuses
now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla--I entweat you!"

The countess glanced at her silent son.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the same
question. "Will Papa be back soon?"

"I expect so."

"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it! Where am I
to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing room where the
clavichord stood.

Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to Denisov's
favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing. Denisov was looking
at her with enraptured eyes.

Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.

"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's nothing to
be happy about!" thought he.

Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.

"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my brain is
the only thing left me--not singing!" his thoughts ran on. "Go away? But
where to? It's one--let them sing!"

He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the girls
and avoiding their eyes.

"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to
ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.

Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct, had
instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed it,
she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from sorrow,
sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself as
young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by
sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to herself: "No,
I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as I am."

"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room, where she
considered the resonance was best.

Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet
dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes,
stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.

"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with which
Denisov followed her.

"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his
sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"

Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose,
her eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
produce at the same intervals and hold for the same time, but which
leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill
you and make you weep.

Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously,
mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang
as a child, there was no longer in her singing that comical, childish,
painstaking effect that had been in it before; but she did not yet sing
well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her said: "It is not trained,
but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained." Only they generally
said this some time after she had finished singing. While that untrained
voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was
sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in
it and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal
freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet untrained
velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of art in singing that
it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be altered without spoiling
it.

"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely opened
eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And suddenly
the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the next note, the
next phrase, and everything in the world was divided into three beats:
"Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one, two, three...
One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... One. "Oh, this
senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this misery, and money,
and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor--it's all nonsense... but this is
real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest! Now then, darling! How
will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank God!" And without noticing
that he was singing, to strengthen the si he sung a second, a third
below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did I really take it? How
fortunate!" he thought.

Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest
in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from everything else
in the world and above everything in the world. "What were losses, and
Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob
and yet be happy..."





CHAPTER XVI


It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he did
that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than
reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and went
downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count
came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing him
drive up, went to meet him.

"Well--had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and proudly
at his son.

Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into
sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's
condition.

"Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and last
time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him feel ashamed
of himself, he said, as if merely asking his father to let him have the
carriage to drive to town:

"Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. I
need some money."

"Dear me!" said his father, who was in a specially good humor. "I told
you it would not be enough. How much?"

"Very much," said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless smile,
for which he was long unable to forgive himself, "I have lost a little,
I mean a good deal, a great deal--forty three thousand."

"What! To whom?... Nonsense!" cried the count, suddenly reddening with
an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.

"I promised to pay tomorrow," said Nicholas.

"Well!..." said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking
helplessly on the sofa.

"It can't be helped It happens to everyone!" said the son, with a
bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a
worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He
longed to kiss his father's hands and kneel to beg his forgiveness, but
said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it happens to everyone!

The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son's words and began
bustlingly searching for something.

"Yes, yes," he muttered, "it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to
raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?"

And with a furtive glance at his son's face, the count went out of the
room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all
expected this.

"Papa! Pa-pa!" he called after him, sobbing, "forgive me!" And seizing
his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.

While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and
daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to her
mother, quite excited.

"Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..."

"Made what?"

"Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed.

The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To whom? To
this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing with dolls
and who was still having lessons.

"Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke.

"Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha indignantly.
"I come to ask you what to do, and you call it 'nonsense!'"

The countess shrugged her shoulders.

"If it is true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell him
he is a fool, that's all!"

"No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.

"Well then, what do you want? You're all in love nowadays. Well, if you
are in love, marry him!" said the countess, with a laugh of annoyance.
"Good luck to you!"

"No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him, I suppose I'm not in love with
him."

"Well then, tell him so."

"Mamma, are you cross? Don't be cross, dear! Is it my fault?"

"No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?" said
the countess smiling.

"No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very well
for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have
seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out
accidently."

"Well, all the same, you must refuse him."

"No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice."

"Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married,"
answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.

"No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say it."

"And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself," said
the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this little
Natasha as grown up.

"No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen at
the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing hall,
where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord with his
face in his hands.

He jumped up at the sound of her light step.

"Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my fate.
It is in your hands."

"Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so nice...
but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall always love you."

Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did not
understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this instant, they
heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She came up to them.

"Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an
embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov--"but my daughter
is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you would have
addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would not have obliged
me to give this refusal."

"Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He
tried to say more, but faltered.

Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She began to
sob aloud.

"Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice,
"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I
would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and seeing
her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing her
hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without looking at
Natasha.


Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He did not wish to stay another day in
Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell entertainment
at the gypsies', with the result that he had no recollection of how he
was put in the sleigh or of the first three stages of his journey.

After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow,
without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could
not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room.

Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she
wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her
love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of
her.

He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at last
sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and received his
receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking leave of any of
his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which was already in Poland.





BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07





CHAPTER I


After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.

"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
tea?" asked his valet.

Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
question--one so important that he took no notice of what went on around
him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to Petersburg
earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at this station,
but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it was a matter of
indifference whether he remained there for a few hours or for the rest
of his life.

The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling Torzhok
embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without changing
his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his spectacles unable
to understand what they wanted or how they could go on living without
having solved the problems that so absorbed him. He had been engrossed
by the same thoughts ever since the day he returned from Sokolniki after
the duel and had spent that first agonizing, sleepless night. But now,
in the solitude of the journey, they seized him with special force. No
matter what he thought about, he always returned to these same questions
which he could not solve and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was
as if the thread of the chief screw which held his life together were
stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out, but went on turning
uselessly in the same place.

The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his excellency to
wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let his excellency
have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted
to get more money from the traveler.

"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad
for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he needs
money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a thrashing
for letting a private traveler have the courier horses. But the officer
thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as possible. And I,"
continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I considered myself injured,
and Louis XVI was executed because they considered him a criminal, and
a year later they executed those who executed him--also for some reason.
What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does
one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What power
governs all?"

There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not
a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: "You'll
die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease asking." But
dying was also dreadful.

The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her
wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of
rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered
cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want the
money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to happiness or
peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me less a prey
to evil and death?--death which ends all and must come today or
tomorrow--at any rate, in an instant as compared with eternity." And
again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread, and again it turned
uselessly in the same place.

His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters, by
Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous
struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her
seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put into
her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife--as she once
was--did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has been found
out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself. "All we can know
is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom."

Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and
repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre
found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.

"I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this
gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another
traveler, also detained for lack of horses.

The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old
man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite
grayish color.

Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a bed that
had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the newcomer, who,
with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off his wraps with the
aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With a pair of felt boots
on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn, nankeen-covered, sheepskin
coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa, leaned back his big head with
its broad temples and close-cropped hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The
stern, shrewd, and penetrating expression of that look struck Pierre. He
felt a wish to speak to the stranger, but by the time he had made up his
mind to ask him a question about the roads, the traveler had closed his
eyes. His shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of
them Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a
death's head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as
it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant
was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,
evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never grown.
This active old servant was unpacking the traveler's canteen and
preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything was
ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled a
tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to whom
he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the
need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with this
stranger.

The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down, * with an
unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be
wanted.


    * To indicate he did not want more tea.


"No. Give me the book," said the stranger.

The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional work,
and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him. All at
once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and again,
leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his former
position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not time
to turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady and
severe gaze straight on Pierre's face.

Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright old
eyes attracted him irresistibly.





CHAPTER II


"I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not
mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.

Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.

"I have heard of you, my dear sir," continued the stranger, "and of your
misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to say--"Yes,
misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what happened to you in
Moscow was a misfortune."--"I regret it very much, my dear sir."

Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed, bent
forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.

"I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but for
greater reasons."

He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa by way
of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt reluctant
to enter into conversation with this old man, but, submitting to him
involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.

"You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are young
and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my power."

"Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful to you.
Where are you traveling from?"

The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but
in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were
irresistibly attractive to Pierre.

"But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said the old
man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an unexpected and
tenderly paternal way.

"Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your
acquaintance," said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger's hands,
he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull--a Masonic sign.

"Allow me to ask," he said, "are you a Mason?"

"Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons," said the stranger,
looking deeper and deeper into Pierre's eyes. "And in their name and my
own I hold out a brotherly hand to you."

"I am afraid," said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the confidence
the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his own habit
of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs--"I am afraid I am very far from
understanding--how am I to put it?--I am afraid my way of looking at the
world is so opposed to yours that we shall not understand one another."

"I know your outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you
mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,
is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit
of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if I
had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of life is a
regrettable delusion."

"Just as I may suppose you to be deluded," said Pierre, with a faint
smile.

"I should never dare to say that I know the truth," said the Mason,
whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision and firmness.
"No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone
with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our
forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a
worthy dwelling place of the Great God," he added, and closed his eyes.

"I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in God,"
said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to
speak the whole truth.

The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with
millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he, poor
man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.

"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the Mason. "You cannot
know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy."

"Yes, yes, I am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what am I to do?"

"You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You do not
know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He is in thee,
and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just uttered!" pronounced
the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.

He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.

"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and I would not be speaking
of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking? Whom hast thou
denied?" he suddenly asked with exulting austerity and authority in
his voice. "Who invented Him, if He did not exist? Whence came thy
conception of the existence of such an incomprehensible Being? didst
thou, and why did the whole world, conceive the idea of the existence
of such an incomprehensible Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal, and
infinite in all His attributes?..."

He stopped and remained silent for a long time.

Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.

"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason began again,
looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the leaves
of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could not keep
still. "If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I could bring
him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to thee. But how
can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence, His infinity, and
all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts his eyes that he may not
see or understand Him and may not see or understand his own vileness and
sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art thou? Thou dreamest that thou art
wise because thou couldst utter those blasphemous words," he went
on, with a somber and scornful smile. "And thou art more foolish and
unreasonable than a little child, who, playing with the parts of a
skillfully made watch, dares to say that, as he does not understand
its use, he does not believe in the master who made it. To know Him is
hard.... For ages, from our forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to
attain that knowledge and are still infinitely far from our aim; but
in our lack of understanding we see only our weakness and His
greatness...."

Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason's face with
shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but believing with
his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he accepted the wise
reasoning contained in the Mason's words, or believed as a child
believes, in the speaker's tone of conviction and earnestness, or the
tremor of the speaker's voice--which sometimes almost broke--or those
brilliant aged eyes grown old in this conviction, or the calm firmness
and certainty of his vocation, which radiated from his whole being (and
which struck Pierre especially by contrast with his own dejection and
hopelessness)--at any rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to believe
and he did believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort, regeneration,
and return to life.

"He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life," said the Mason.

"I do not understand," said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts
reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness, in
the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him.
"I don't understand," he said, "how it is that the mind of man cannot
attain the knowledge of which you speak."

The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.

"The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish to
imbibe," he said. "Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure vessel
and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of myself can I
retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive."

"Yes, yes, that is so," said Pierre joyfully.

"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those worldly
sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into which
intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The
highest wisdom has but one science--the science of the whole--the
science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. To receive
that science it is necessary to purify and renew one's inner self, and
so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to perfect one's
self. And to attain this end, we have the light called conscience that
God has implanted in our souls."

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

"Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask
thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained
relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich, you
are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all these
good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?"

"No, I hate my life," Pierre muttered, wincing.

"Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art
purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir.
How have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving
everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have become
the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you done
for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of thousands
of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally? No! You have
profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is what you have
done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of service to your
neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness. Then you married,
my dear sir--took on yourself responsibility for the guidance of a young
woman; and what have you done? You have not helped her to find the way
of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an abyss of deceit and
misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and you say you do not know
God and hate your life. There is nothing strange in that, my dear sir!"

After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse, again
leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Pierre
looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face and moved
his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, "Yes, a vile, idle,
vicious life!" but dared not break the silence.

The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called his
servant.

"How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre.

"The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will you
not rest here?"

"No, tell them to harness."

"Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me
all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with
downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at
the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a contemptible
and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not want to,"
thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he wished to,
could disclose it to me."

Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The
traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began
fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and
said in a tone of indifferent politeness:

"Where are you going to now, my dear sir?"

"I?... I'm going to Petersburg," answered Pierre, in a childlike,
hesitating voice. "I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But do
not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what you
would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it is
I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me, and
perhaps I may..."

Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.

The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.

"Help comes from God alone," he said, "but such measure of help as
our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to
Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski" (he took out his notebook and
wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four). "Allow me
to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital, first of all
devote some time to solitude and self-examination and do not resume your
former way of life. And now I wish you a good journey, my dear sir," he
added, seeing that his servant had entered... "and success."

The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the
postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons and
Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he had gone,
Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and down the room,
pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous sense of beginning
anew pictured to himself the blissful, irreproachable, virtuous future
that seemed to him so easy. It seemed to him that he had been vicious
only because he had somehow forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not
a trace of his former doubts remained in his soul. He firmly believed
in the possibility of the brotherhood of men united in the aim
of supporting one another in the path of virtue, and that is how
Freemasonry presented itself to him.





CHAPTER III


On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his arrival, he
went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a Kempis, whose book
had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing he continually realized
as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him, of believing
in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in the possibility of
active brotherly love among men, which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to
him. A week after his arrival, the young Polish count, Willarski, whom
Pierre had known slightly in Petersburg society, came into his room
one evening in the official and ceremonious manner in which Dolokhov's
second had called on him, and, having closed the door behind him and
satisfied himself that there was nobody else in the room, addressed
Pierre.

"I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said without
sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our Brotherhood has
made application for you to be received into our Order before the usual
term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I consider it a
sacred duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish to enter the
Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?"

The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always before met
at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most brilliant women,
surprised Pierre.

"Yes, I do wish it," said he.

Willarski bowed his head.

"One more question, Count," he said, "which I beg you to answer in
all sincerity--not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you
renounced your former convictions--do you believe in God?"

Pierre considered.

"Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said.

"In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.

"Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated.

"In that case we can go," said Willarski. "My carriage is at your
service."

Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre's inquiries as to
what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied that
brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had only to
tell the truth.

Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had its
headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a small
well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the aid of
a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in strange
attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him, said
something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to a small
wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never seen
before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski bound
Pierre's eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching some hairs
painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed him, and
taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the knot hurt
Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a shamefaced smile.
His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a puckered, though
smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain, timid steps.

Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.

"Whatever happens to you," he said, "you must bear it all manfully
if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood." (Pierre nodded
affirmatively.) "When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover
your eyes," added Willarski. "I wish you courage and success," and,
pressing Pierre's hand, he went out.

Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he
shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if wishing to take
it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his eyes
bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs almost gave
way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He experienced a variety of
most complex sensations. He felt afraid of what would happen to him and
still more afraid of showing his fear. He felt curious to know what was
going to happen and what would be revealed to him; but most of all, he
felt joyful that the moment had come when he would at last start on that
path of regeneration and on the actively virtuous life of which he had
been dreaming since he met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard at
the door. Pierre took the bandage off his eyes and glanced around him.
The room was in black darkness, only a small lamp was burning inside
something white. Pierre went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a
black table on which lay an open book. The book was the Gospel, and the
white thing with the lamp inside was a human skull with its cavities and
teeth. After reading the first words of the Gospel: "In the beginning
was the Word and the Word was with God," Pierre went round the table and
saw a large open box filled with something. It was a coffin with bones
inside. He was not at all surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on
an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he expected everything
to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was seeing. A skull, a
coffin, the Gospel--it seemed to him that he had expected all this and
even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around. "God,
death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself,
associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened and
someone came in.

By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed, he
saw rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the
darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the
table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.

This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his chest and
part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which rose a high
white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit up from
below.

"For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in Pierre's
direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have you, who do
not believe in the truth of the light and who have not seen the light,
come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue, enlightenment?"

At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre felt a
sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his boyhood at
confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially a complete
stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man. With bated
breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by which name the
brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the Brotherhood was
known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor a man he knew,
Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the newcomer was an
acquaintance--he wished him simply a brother and a virtuous instructor.
For a long time he could not utter a word, so that the Rhetor had to
repeat his question.

"Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with difficulty.

"Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any idea
of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach your aim?"
said he quietly and quickly.

"I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre,
with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his
excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in
Russian.

"What is your conception of Freemasonry?"

"I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men who
have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the inadequacy of
his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he spoke. "I imagine..."

"Good!" said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with this answer.
"Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?"

"No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it," said Pierre,
so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him what he was
saying. "I have been an atheist," answered Pierre.

"You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,
therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?" said the Rhetor,
after a moment's pause.

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his breast,
and began to speak.

"Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order," he said, "and
if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood with
profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation on which
it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the preservation and
handing on to posterity of a certain important mystery... which has come
down to us from the remotest ages, even from the first man--a mystery on
which perhaps the fate of mankind depends. But since this mystery is of
such a nature that nobody can know or use it unless he be prepared by
long and diligent self-purification, not everyone can hope to attain it
quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim, that of preparing our members as
much as possible to reform their hearts, to purify and enlighten their
minds, by means handed on to us by tradition from those who have striven
to attain this mystery, and thereby to render them capable of receiving
it.

"By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to improve
the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of piety
and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the evil which
sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you again."

"To combat the evil which sways the world..." Pierre repeated, and a
mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his mind.
He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and he
addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself
vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and deed,
imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the three
objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving mankind,
especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery mentioned by the
Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem to him essential,
and the second aim, that of purifying and regenerating himself, did not
much interest him because at that moment he felt with delight that he
was already perfectly cured of his former faults and was ready for all
that was good.

Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of the
seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's temple,
which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These virtues were:
1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order. 2. Obedience to
those of higher ranks in the Order.  3. Morality.  4. Love of mankind.
5. Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.

"In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death," the
Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but
as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue
from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense and
peace."

"Yes, that must be so," thought Pierre, when after these words the
Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. "It must be so,
but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which is only
now gradually opening before me." But five of the other virtues which
Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt already in his
soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind, and especially
obedience--which did not even seem to him a virtue, but a joy. (He now
felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to submit his will
to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot what the seventh
virtue was and could not recall it.

The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre
whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to
all that would be required of him.

"I am ready for everything," said Pierre.

"I must also inform you," said the Rhetor, "that our Order delivers its
teaching not in words only but also by other means, which may perhaps
have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after wisdom and virtue
than mere words. This chamber with what you see therein should already
have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere, more than words could
do. You will perhaps also see in your further initiation a like
method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the ancient societies that
explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A hieroglyph," said the
Rhetor, "is an emblem of something not cognizable by the senses but
which possesses qualities resembling those of the symbol."

Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He
listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his
ordeal was about to begin.

"If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation," said the Rhetor
coming closer to Pierre. "In token of generosity I ask you to give me
all your valuables."

"But I have nothing here," replied Pierre, supposing that he was asked
to give up all he possessed.

"What you have with you: watch, money, rings...."

Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage for
some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that had been
done, the Rhetor said:

"In token of obedience, I ask you to undress."

Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to the
Rhetor's instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre's left
breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his trousers to
above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his right boot also
and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save this stranger the
trouble, but the Mason told him that was not necessary and gave him
a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike smile of embarrassment,
doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on his face against his will,
Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and legs apart, before his
brother Rhetor, and awaited his further commands.

"And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief
passion," said the latter.

"My passion! I have had so many," replied Pierre.

"That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on the path
of virtue," said the Mason.

Pierre paused, seeking a reply.

"Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?" He
went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to give
the pre-eminence.

"Women," he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.

The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this
answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that lay
on the table, again bound his eyes.

"For the last time I say to you--turn all your attention upon yourself,
put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in passion but
in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not without us but
within...."

Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing source
of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.





CHAPTER IV


Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre, not
the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized by his
voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his resolution Pierre
replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming, childlike smile, his
fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and timidly in one slippered and
one booted foot, he advanced, while Willarski held a sword to his
bare chest. He was conducted from that room along passages that turned
backwards and forwards and was at last brought to the doors of the
Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was answered by the Masonic knock with
mallets, the doors opened before them. A bass voice (Pierre was still
blindfolded) questioned him as to who he was, when and where he was
born, and so on. Then he was again led somewhere still blindfolded,
and as they went along he was told allegories of the toils of his
pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of the Eternal Architect of the
universe, and of the courage with which he should endure toils and
dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre noticed that he was spoken of
now as the "Seeker," now as the "Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant,"
to the accompaniment of various knockings with mallets and swords. As he
was being led up to some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty
among his conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers
and one of them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet.
After that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told
him to hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand
and to repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the
laws of the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit
lighted, as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now
see the lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the
faint light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several
men standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding
swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man
whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved
forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce it.
But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once blindfolded
again.

"Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the candles
were relit and he was told that he would see the full light; the bandage
was again removed and more than ten voices said together: "Sic transit
gloria mundi."

Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the room
and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black sat some
twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some of them
Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair sat a
young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from his neck.
On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at Anna Pavlovna's
two years before. There were also present a very distinguished dignitary
and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the Kuragins'. All maintained
a solemn silence, listening to the words of the President, who held a
mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was a star-shaped light. At one
side of the table was a small carpet with various figures worked upon
it, at the other was something resembling an altar on which lay a
Testament and a skull. Round it stood seven large candlesticks like
those used in churches. Two of the brothers led Pierre up to the altar,
placed his feet at right angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he
must prostrate himself at the Gates of the Temple.

"He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers.

"Oh, hush, please!" said another.

Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without
obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. "Where am I? What am
I doing? Aren't they laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember
this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the
serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast
at his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,
prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the
feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before. When
he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white leather
apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a trowel
and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master addressed him. He
told him that he should try to do nothing to stain the whiteness of that
apron, which symbolized strength and purity; then of the unexplained
trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse his own heart from vice,
and indulgently to smooth with it the heart of his neighbor. As to the
first pair of gloves, a man's, he said that Pierre could not know their
meaning but must keep them. The second pair of man's gloves he was
to wear at the meetings, and finally of the third, a pair of women's
gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these woman's gloves are intended for
you too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most of all. This
gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to her whom you select to
be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But
beware, dear brother, that these gloves do not deck hands that are
unclean." While the Grand Master said these last words it seemed
to Pierre that he grew embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more
confused, blushed like a child till tears came to his eyes, began
looking about him uneasily, and an awkward pause followed.

This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to the
rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation of
all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a
trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows, and
so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs of
the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit down.
The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very long, and
Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a state to
understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the last words
of the statutes and these remained in his mind.

"In our temples we recognize no other distinctions," read the Grand
Master, "but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any
distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother's aid whoever
he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that falleth, never
bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and courteous.
Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy happiness with thy
neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that bliss. Forgive thy
enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him good. Thus fulfilling
the highest law thou shalt regain traces of the ancient dignity which
thou hast lost."

He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with tears
of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to answer the
congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met him on all
sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all these men only
brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work with them.

The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down in
their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the necessity of
humility.

The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed, and
the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of "Collector of Alms"
went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked to subscribe all
he had, but fearing that it might look like pride subscribed the same
amount as the others.

The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he had
returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of years, had
become completely changed, and had quite left behind his former habits
and way of life.





CHAPTER V


The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was sitting at
home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance of the Square,
one side of which symbolized God, another moral things, a third
physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now and then
his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he formed in
imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at the Lodge, he
had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the Emperor and that it
would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre proposed going to his
estates in the south and there attending to the welfare of his serfs. He
was joyfully planning this new life, when Prince Vasili suddenly entered
the room.

"My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said
Prince Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you
positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was before
the Jews."

Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him.

"And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I know
all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as becomes
a man who values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go into
that. But consider the position in which you are placing her and me
in the eyes of society, and even of the court," he added, lowering his
voice. "She is living in Moscow and you are here. Remember, dear boy,"
and he drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply a misunderstanding. I
expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her a letter at once, and
she'll come here and all will be explained, or else, my dear boy, let me
tell you it's quite likely you'll have to suffer for it."

Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.

"I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a keen
interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to Helene."

Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili did
not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to speak
in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he had firmly
resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words of the Masonic
statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him. He blinked, went
red, got up and sat down again, struggling with himself to do what was
for him the most difficult thing in life--to say an unpleasant thing
to a man's face, to say what the other, whoever he might be, did not
expect. He was so used to submitting to Prince Vasili's tone of careless
self-assurance that he felt he would be unable to withstand it now, but
he also felt that on what he said now his future depended--whether he
would follow the same old road, or that new path so attractively shown
him by the Masons, on which he firmly believed he would be reborn to a
new life.

"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and I'll
write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf."

But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre,
without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his
father, muttered in a whisper:

"Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up and
opened the door for him.

"Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of
confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face.

"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go without
receiving any explanation.

A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the Masons,
and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went away to his
estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and Odessa Masons
and promised to write to him and guide him in his new activity.





CHAPTER VI


The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite of the
Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the principals
nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the duel, confirmed
by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of society. Pierre
who had been regarded with patronizing condescension when he was an
illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was the best match
in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society after his
marriage--when the marriageable daughters and their mothers had nothing
to hope from him--especially as he did not know how, and did not wish,
to court society's favor. Now he alone was blamed for what had happened,
he was said to be insanely jealous and subject like his father to fits
of bloodthirsty rage. And when after Pierre's departure Helene returned
to Petersburg, she was received by all her acquaintances not only
cordially, but even with a shade of deference due to her misfortune.
When conversation turned on her husband Helene assumed a dignified
expression, which with characteristic tact she had acquired though she
did not understand its significance. This expression suggested that she
had resolved to endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her husband
was a cross laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion
more openly. He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was mentioned and,
pointing to his forehead, remarked:

"A bit touched--I always said so."

"I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre, "I
said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her priority)
"that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved ideas of
these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was in raptures
about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and when, if you
remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my soirees. And how has
it ended? I was against this marriage even then and foretold all that
has happened."

Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of
soirees as before--such as she alone had the gift of arranging--at which
was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom of the
intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it. Besides
this refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions were
also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new and
interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the state
of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court society so
dearly and distinctly indicated.

Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's
destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the surrender
of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when our troops
had already entered Prussia and our second war with Napoleon was
beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The "cream of really
good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene, forsaken by her
husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte who had just
returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a young man
referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit" (un homme de
beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor and her mother, and
several other less noteworthy persons.

The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening was
Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from the
Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.

The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company that
evening was this:

"Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to countenance
Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance and
mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not cease
to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say to the
King of Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as voulu,
George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!"

When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the drawing
room, almost all the company had assembled, and the conversation, guided
by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic relations with Austria and
the hope of an alliance with her.

Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and self-possessed,
entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the uniform of an
aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his respects to the aunt and
then brought back to the general circle.

Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him to
several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered description
of each.

"Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, M. Krug, the charge d'affaires from
Copenhagen--a profound intellect," and simply, "Mr. Shitov--a man of
great merit"--this of the man usually so described.

Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the
peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his
service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a
very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He had
become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which he had
been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign might rank
incomparably higher than a general, and according to which what was
needed for success in the service was not effort or work, or courage, or
perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to get on with those who can
grant rewards, and he was himself often surprised at the rapidity of his
success and at the inability of others to understand these things.
In consequence of this discovery his whole manner of life, all
his relations with old friends, all his plans for his future, were
completely altered. He was not rich, but would spend his last groat to
be better dressed than others, and would rather deprive himself of many
pleasures than allow himself to be seen in a shabby equipage or appear
in the streets of Petersburg in an old uniform. He made friends with
and sought the acquaintance of only those above him in position and
who could therefore be of use to him. He liked Petersburg and despised
Moscow. The remembrance of the Rostovs' house and of his childish love
for Natasha was unpleasant to him and he had not once been to see the
Rostovs since the day of his departure for the army. To be in Anna
Pavlovna's drawing room he considered an important step up in the
service, and he at once understood his role, letting his hostess make
use of whatever interest he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned
each face, appraising the possibilities of establishing intimacy with
each of those present, and the advantages that might accrue. He took the
seat indicated to him beside the fair Helene and listened to the general
conversation.

"Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable that
not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure them, and
she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the actual phrase
used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge d'affaires.

"The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect," with a
subtle smile.

"We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of
Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have thought
of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it."

"Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some
reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined French
pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing with a
Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere." *


    * "Europe will never be our sincere ally."


After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the King
of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation.

Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his turn,
but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his neighbor, the
beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those of the handsome
young aide-de-camp with a smile.

Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally asked
Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state he
found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told them in
pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies and the
court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of his own about
the facts he was recounting. For some time he engrossed the general
attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the novelty she had served up was
received with pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest attention
of all to Boris' narrative was shown by Helene. She asked him several
questions about his journey and seemed greatly interested in the state
of the Prussian army. As soon as he had finished she turned to him with
her usual smile.

"You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that implied
that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this was
absolutely necessary.

"On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure."

Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a conversation
with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the pretext that her
aunt wished to hear him.

"You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her eyes
and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is such an
unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before her--please
don't! It is too painful for her!"





CHAPTER VII


When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte had
the ear of the company.

Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and having
said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.

"Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again laughing, and
then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pavlovna waited
for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more she
began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the
sword of Frederick the Great.

"It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but
Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and
again, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and said no
more.

Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed him
firmly.

"Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?"

Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.

"Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a joke
he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that evening to
get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight pour le Roi de
Prusse!"

Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or
appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody
laughed.

"Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna,
shaking her little shriveled finger at him.

"We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right principles.
Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!" she said.

The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on the
political news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the
evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.

"You know N-- N-- received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?" said
"the man of profound intellect." "Why shouldn't S-- S-- get the same
distinction?"

"Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor's portrait is a reward but not a
distinction," said the diplomatist--"a gift, rather."

"There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg."

"It's impossible," replied another.

"Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...."

When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all
the evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing
significant command to come to her on Tuesday.

"It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile toward
Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile with which she
spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's wish.

It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening about the
Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see him. She
seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he came on
Tuesday.

But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon, Boris
received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for him to
come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to him, and
only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said unexpectedly and in a
whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face: "Come to dinner tomorrow... in
the evening. You must come.... Come!"

During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the
countess' house.





CHAPTER VIII


The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier. Everywhere
one heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind." Militiamen and
recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of
war came contradictory news, false as usual and therefore variously
interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski, Prince Andrew, and
Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.

In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief
then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout Russia.
Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly noticeable
since the time when he thought his son had been killed, he did not think
it right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the Emperor
himself, and this fresh opportunity for action gave him new energy
and strength. He was continually traveling through the three provinces
entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment of his duties, severe
to cruelty with his subordinates, and went into everything down to the
minutest details himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in
mathematics from her father, and when the old prince was at home went
to his study with the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his
grandfather called him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet
nurse and nurse Savishna in the late princess' rooms and Princess Mary
spent most of the day in the nursery, taking a mother's place to her
little nephew as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed
passionately fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself
to give her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel--as she
called her nephew--and playing with him.

Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the
tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble monument
brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread wings ready to
fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly raised as though
about to smile, and once on coming out of the chapel Prince Andrew and
Princess Mary admitted to one another that the angel's face reminded
them strangely of the little princess. But what was still stranger,
though of this Prince Andrew said nothing to his sister, was that in the
expression the sculptor had happened to give the angel's face, Prince
Andrew read the same mild reproach he had read on the face of his dead
wife: "Ah, why have you done this to me?"

Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him a
large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald Hills.
Partly because of the depressing memories associated with Bald Hills,
partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal to bearing with
his father's peculiarities, and partly because he needed solitude,
Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building and spent most of
his time there.

After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved not
to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced
and everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the
recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his son
seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old man,
roused by activity, expected the best results from the new campaign,
while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the war and
secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.

On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.
Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's
absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman who
had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and letters
for Prince Andrew.

Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the
letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there. He
was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.

"If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some papers,"
said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting on a child's
little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he poured drops
from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of water.

"What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking unintentionally,
he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the mixture onto the
floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought it.

There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a
table, a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew was
sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was burning on the
table, screened by a bound music book so that the light did not fall on
the cot.

"My dear," said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside the
cot where she was standing, "better wait a bit... later..."

"Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things
off--and this is what comes of it!" said Prince Andrew in an exasperated
whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.

"My dear, really... it's better not to wake him... he's asleep," said
the princess in a tone of entreaty.

Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed, wineglass
in hand.

"Perhaps we'd really better not wake him," he said hesitating.

"As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said
Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had
prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was calling
him in a whisper.

It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the boy
who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their household
doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town, they had
been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by sleeplessness
and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one another and
reproached and disputed with each other.

"Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the maid.

Prince Andrew went out.

"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal
instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his
father's letter, he returned to the nursery.

"Well?" he asked.

"Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says that
sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary with a
sigh.

Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.

"Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the drops
and again went up to the cot.

"Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary.

But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his eyes,
and stooped glass in hand over the infant.

"But I wish it," he said. "I beg you--give it him!"

Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively
and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed
hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and sat
down on a sofa in the next room.

He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them mechanically he
began reading. The old prince, now and then using abbreviations, wrote
in his large elongated hand on blue paper as follows:


Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful news--if
it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete victory
over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing, and
the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a German--I
congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at Korchevo--a
certain Khandrikov--is up to; till now the additional men and provisions
have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say I'll have his head
off if everything is not here in a week. Have received another letter
about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from Petenka--he took part in it--and
it's all true. When mischief-makers don't meddle even a German beats
Buonaparte. He is said to be fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop
off to Korchevo without delay and carry out instructions!


Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It was
a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded it up
without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with the
words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!"

"No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought he,
going to the door and looking into the nursery.

Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the baby.

"Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince
Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a victory
over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's always poking
fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading Bilibin's letter
which was written in French. He read without understanding half of it,
read only to forget, if but for a moment, what he had too long been
thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all else.





CHAPTER IX


Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and
though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms,
he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and
self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation of
diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in Prince
Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the bile he
had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the army.
The letter was old, having been written before the battle at
Preussisch-Eylau.

"Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote Bilibin,
"as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I have
certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for me; what
I have seen during these last three months is incredible.

"I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks the
Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only betrayed
us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it turns out
that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our fine speeches
and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the Prussians without
giving them time to finish the parade they had begun, and in two twists
of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and installs himself in the
palace at Potsdam.

"'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to Bonaparte,
'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my palace in a
manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as circumstances allowed, I
have hastened to take all steps to that end. May I have succeeded!' The
Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to the French and lay
down their arms at the first demand.

"The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the
King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... All
this is absolutely true.

"In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude, it
turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more, in
war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have
everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,
a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success
might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so
young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski
and Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,
Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy and
triumph.

"On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails
are taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything
himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those meant
for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters addressed
to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field marshal grows
impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters from the Emperor
to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts into one of his wild
furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes the letters, opens
them, and reads those from the Emperor addressed to others. 'Ah! So
that's the way they treat me! No confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep
an eye on me! Very well then! Get along with you!' So he writes the
famous order of the day to General Bennigsen:

'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the army.
You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it is exposed,
and without fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as you
yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must think of
retreating to our frontier--which do today.'

"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a saddle
sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents my
riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the command
to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden, having sent him my
whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising him if there is a lack
of bread, to move farther into the interior of Prussia, for only one
day's ration of bread remains, and in some regiments none at all, as
reported by the division commanders, Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and
all that the peasants had has been eaten up. I myself will remain in
hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly
submit my report, with the information that if the army remains in its
present bivouac another fortnight there will not be a healthy man left
in it by spring.

"'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is already
in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great and
glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most gracious
permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play the part of a
secretary rather than commander in the army. My removal from the army
does not produce the slightest stir--a blind man has left it. There are
thousands such as I in Russia.'

"The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,
isn't it logical?

"This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly
interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it
appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.
Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen does
not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who are
within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the opportunity to
fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He does so. This
is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great victory but in my
opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as you know, have a very
bad way of deciding whether a battle was won or lost. Those who retreat
after a battle have lost it is what we say; and according to that it is
we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In short, we retreat after the battle
but send a courier to Petersburg with news of a victory, and General
Bennigsen, hoping to receive from Petersburg the post of commander in
chief as a reward for his victory, does not give up the command of
the army to General Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a very
original and interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as
it should be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid
General Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So
energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an unfordable
river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our enemy, who at
the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General Buxhowden was all but
attacked and captured by a superior enemy force as a result of one of
these maneuvers that enabled us to escape him. Buxhowden pursues us--we
scuttle. He hardly crosses the river to our side before we recross to
the other. At last our enemy. Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both
generals are angry, and the result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part
and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the
courier who carried the news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg
returns bringing our appointment as commander in chief, and our first
foe, Buxhowden, is vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the
second, Bonaparte. But as it turns out, just at that moment a third
enemy rises before us--namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly
demanding bread, meat, biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are
empty, the roads impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way
of which our last campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form
bands and scour the countryside and put everything to fire and sword.
The inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with
sick, and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our
headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to
disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty
portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all
commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much fear
this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other."

At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while,
in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust
Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When he
had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away. It was
not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life out
there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his eyes,
rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what he
had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he
thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized with
alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he was
reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and opened it.

Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from him
with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the cot.

"My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind
him.

As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was
seized by an unreasoning panic--it occurred to him that the child was
dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.

"All is over," he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find it empty and
that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the curtain aside
and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could not find the baby.
At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about till he lay across the
bed with his head lower than the pillow, and was smacking his lips in
his sleep and breathing evenly.

Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had
already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught him,
tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The soft
forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand; even
the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was not dead,
but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent. Prince Andrew
longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart, this helpless
little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him, gazing at his
head and at the little arms and legs which showed under the blanket. He
heard a rustle behind him and a shadow appeared under the curtain of
the cot. He did not look round, but still gazing at the infant's face
listened to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was Princess Mary,
who had come up to the cot with noiseless steps, lifted the curtain,
and dropped it again behind her. Prince Andrew recognized her without
looking and held out his hand to her. She pressed it.

"He has perspired," said Prince Andrew.

"I was coming to tell you so."

The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his forehead
against the pillow.

Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain her
luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy that
were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him, slightly
catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a warning gesture
and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain as if not wishing
to leave that seclusion where they three were shut off from all the
world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away, ruffling his hair
against the muslin of the curtain.

"Yes, this is the one thing left me now," he said with a sigh.





CHAPTER X


Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went to the
Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs, taking with
him full directions which he had written down for his own guidance as to
what he should do on his estates.

When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office
and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that steps
would be taken immediately to free his serfs--and that till then they
were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies
were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs,
punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals,
asylums, and schools were to be established on all the estates. Some of
the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among them) listened with
alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young count was displeased
with their management and embezzlement of money, some after their first
fright were amused by Pierre's lisp and the new words they had not heard
before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the master talked, while the
cleverest among them, including the chief steward, understood from this
speech how they could best handle the master for their own ends.

The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions, but
remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go into the
general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.

Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into an
income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a year,
Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him
an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
following budget:

About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank, about
30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town house,
and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was given in
pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was sent to
the countess; about 70,000 went for interest on debts. The building of a
new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in each of the last
two years, and he did not know how the rest, about 100,000 rubles, was
spent, and almost every year he was obliged to borrow. Besides this the
chief steward wrote every year telling him of fires and bad harvests,
or of the necessity of rebuilding factories and workshops. So the first
task Pierre had to face was one for which he had very little aptitude or
inclination--practical business.

He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But
he felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these
consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with
them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the state
of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the necessity of
paying off the debts and undertaking new activities with serf labor,
to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand, Pierre demanded that
steps should be taken to liberate the serfs, which the steward met by
showing the necessity of first paying off the loans from the Land Bank,
and the consequent impossibility of a speedy emancipation.

The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested selling
the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down the river,
and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all of which
operations according to him were connected with such complicated
measures--the removal of injunctions, petitions, permits, and so
on--that Pierre became quite bewildered and only replied:

"Yes, yes, do so."

Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled him
to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only tried
to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The steward
for his part tried to pretend to the count that he considered these
consultations very valuable for the proprietor and troublesome to
himself.

In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened to make
his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer, the
largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's greatest
weakness--the one to which he had confessed when admitted to the
Lodge--were so strong that he could not resist them. Again whole days,
weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush and were as much
occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches, and balls, giving him
no time for reflection, as in Petersburg. Instead of the new life he had
hoped to lead he still lived the old life, only in new surroundings.

Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not
fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of moral
life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two--morality and the love
of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he fulfilled
another of the precepts--that of reforming the human race--and had other
virtues--love of his neighbor, and especially generosity.

In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way he
intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his orders
had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom God had
entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.

The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts almost
insane--unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the serfs--made
some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation of the serfs as
impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large buildings--schools,
hospitals, and asylums--on all the estates before the master arrived.
Everywhere preparations were made not for ceremonious welcomes (which
he knew Pierre would not like), but for just such gratefully religious
ones, with offerings of icons and the bread and salt of hospitality,
as, according to his understanding of his master, would touch and delude
him.

The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna
carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on
Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more picturesque
than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and touchingly
grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere were receptions,
which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a joyful feeling in the
depth of his heart. In one place the peasants presented him with bread
and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, asking permission,
as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits he had conferred on them,
to build a new chantry to the church at their own expense in honor
of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In another place the women with
infants in arms met him to thank him for releasing them from hard
work. On a third estate the priest, bearing a cross, came to meet
him surrounded by children whom, by the count's generosity, he was
instructing in reading, writing, and religion. On all his estates Pierre
saw with his own eyes brick buildings erected or in course of erection,
all on one plan, for hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon
to be opened. Everywhere he saw the stewards' accounts, according to
which the serfs' manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the
touching thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue
coats.

What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him
with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter and
Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter's day,
and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had begun
the chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in that
villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know that
since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his land, they
did still harder work on their own land. He did not know that the priest
who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by his exactions, and
that the pupils' parents wept at having to let him take their children
and secured their release by heavy payments. He did not know that the
brick buildings, built to plan, were being built by serfs whose manorial
labor was thus increased, though lessened on paper. He did not know that
where the steward had shown him in the accounts that the serfs' payments
had been diminished by a third, their obligatory manorial work had been
increased by a half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his
estates and quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left
Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his "brother-instructor"
as he called the Grand Master.

"How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,"
thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!"

He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at
receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do
for these simple, kindly people.

The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly
through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with
a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,
pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above all
the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it was.

Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be
difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would
happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though reluctantly,
on what he thought right. The steward promised to do all in his power
to carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly that not only would the
count never be able to find out whether all measures had been taken for
the sale of the land and forests and to release them from the Land Bank,
but would probably never even inquire and would never know that the
newly erected buildings were standing empty and that the serfs continued
to give in money and work all that other people's serfs gave--that is to
say, all that could be got out of them.





CHAPTER XI


Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest state
of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of visiting his
friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years.

Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among fields
and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The house lay
behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and with banks
still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that stretched
along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which were a few fir
trees.

The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, a
bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade
still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly laid
out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps and a
water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were straight,
the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore an impress of
tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in reply
to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a small newly
built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked after Prince
Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, said that the
prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little anteroom.

Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house after
the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend in
Petersburg.

He quickly entered the small reception room with its still-unplastered
wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone farther, but Anton
ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.

"Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice.

"A visitor," answered Anton.

"Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed back.

Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to
face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre
embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek
and looked at him closely.

"Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew.

Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with surprise. He
was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly and there was a
smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and lifeless and in
spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give them a joyous
and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner, paler, and more
manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre till he got used
to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow indicating prolonged
concentration on some one thought.

As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged separation,
it was long before their conversation could settle on anything. They
put questions and gave brief replies about things they knew ought to
be talked over at length. At last the conversation gradually settled on
some of the topics at first lightly touched on: their past life, plans
for the future, Pierre's journeys and occupations, the war, and so
on. The preoccupation and despondency which Pierre had noticed in his
friend's look was now still more clearly expressed in the smile with
which he listened to Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful
animation of the past or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would
have liked to sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not.
The latter began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his
enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince
Andrew's presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views,
which had been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour.
He checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible
desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite
different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.

"I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly
know myself again."

"Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince Andrew.

"Well, and you? What are your plans?"

"Plans!" repeated Prince Andrew ironically. "My plans?" he said, as if
astonished at the word. "Well, you see, I'm building. I mean to settle
here altogether next year...."

Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew's face, which
had grown much older.

"No, I meant to ask..." Pierre began, but Prince Andrew interrupted him.

"But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your travels and
all you have been doing on your estates."

Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as far
as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had been
made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre's story of what he had
been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he listened not
only without interest but even as if ashamed of what Pierre was telling
him.

Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend's company and
at last became silent.

"I'll tell you what, my dear fellow," said Prince Andrew, who evidently
also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, "I am only
bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am going back to
my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of course you know her
already," he said, evidently trying to entertain a visitor with whom he
now found nothing in common. "We will go after dinner. And would you now
like to look round my place?"

They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the political
news and common acquaintances like people who do not know each other
intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and interest only of
the new homestead he was constructing and its buildings, but even here,
while on the scaffolding, in the midst of a talk explaining the future
arrangements of the house, he interrupted himself:

"However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and then
we'll set off."

At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre's marriage.

"I was very much surprised when I heard of it," said Prince Andrew.

Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said
hurriedly: "I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you know
it is all over, and forever."

"Forever?" said Prince Andrew. "Nothing's forever."

"But you know how it all ended, don't you? You heard of the duel?"

"And so you had to go through that too!"

"One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man," said
Pierre.

"Why so?" asked Prince Andrew. "To kill a vicious dog is a very good
thing really."

"No, to kill a man is bad--wrong."

"Why is it wrong?" urged Prince Andrew. "It is not given to man to know
what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will err, and
in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong."

"What does harm to another is wrong," said Pierre, feeling with pleasure
that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was roused, had
begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought him to his present
state.

"And who has told you what is bad for another man?" he asked.

"Bad! Bad!" exclaimed Pierre. "We all know what is bad for ourselves."

"Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is
something I cannot inflict on others," said Prince Andrew, growing more
and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new outlook to
Pierre. He spoke in French. "I only know two very real evils in life:
remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of those evils. To
live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole philosophy now."

"And love of one's neighbor, and self-sacrifice?" began Pierre. "No, I
can't agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to
have to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself
and ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least trying"
(Pierre's modesty made him correct himself) "to live for others, only
now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall not agree
with you, and you do not really believe what you are saying." Prince
Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.

"When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you'll get on with her," he
said. "Perhaps you are right for yourself," he added after a short
pause, "but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for yourself and
say you nearly ruined your life and only found happiness when you
began living for others. I experienced just the reverse. I lived for
glory.--And after all what is glory? The same love of others, a desire
to do something for them, a desire for their approval.--So I lived for
others, and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I have become
calmer since I began to live only for myself."

"But what do you mean by living only for yourself?" asked Pierre,
growing excited. "What about your son, your sister, and your father?"

"But that's just the same as myself--they are not others," explained
Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and
Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil. Le
prochain--your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good."

And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He
evidently wished to draw him on.

"You are joking," replied Pierre, growing more and more excited. "What
error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even doing a
little--though I did very little and did it very badly? What evil can
there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people like ourselves,
were growing up and dying with no idea of God and truth beyond
ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed in a
comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying
of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be
rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum
for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a
peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
them rest and leisure?" said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. "And I have
done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done something
toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a good action,
and more than that, you can't make me believe that you do not think so
yourself. And the main thing is," he continued, "that I know, and know
for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is the only sure
happiness in life."

"Yes, if you put it like that it's quite a different matter," said
Prince Andrew. "I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build
hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what's
right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by
us. Well, you want an argument," he added, "come on then."

They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which served
as a veranda.

"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools," he
went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you want
to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his
cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while
it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and
that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him, but you
want to make him what I am, without giving him my means. Then you say,
'lighten his toil.' But as I see it, physical labor is as essential to
him, as much a condition of his existence, as mental activity is to you
or me. You can't help thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning,
thoughts come and I can't sleep but toss about till dawn, because I
think and can't help thinking, just as he can't help plowing and mowing;
if he didn't, he would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could
not stand his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so
he could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die.
The third thing--what else was it you talked about?" and Prince Andrew
crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit,
he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag
about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It
would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being born
and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if you
grudged losing a laborer--that's how I regard him--but you want to cure
him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides, what a
notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!" said he,
frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.

Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that it was
evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he spoke
readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long time. His
glance became more animated as his conclusions became more hopeless.

"Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!" said Pierre. "I don't understand how
one can live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long ago, in
Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so that I don't
live at all--everything seems hateful to me... myself most of all. Then
I don't eat, don't wash... and how is it with you?..."

"Why not wash? That is not cleanly," said Prince Andrew; "on the
contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm
alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best I can
without hurting others."

"But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would sit
without moving, undertaking nothing...."

"Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do nothing,
but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me the honor to
choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to get out of it.
They could not understand that I have not the necessary qualifications
for it--the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness necessary for the
position. Then there's this house, which must be built in order to
have a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And now there's this
recruiting."

"Why aren't you serving in the army?"

"After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very
much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active Russian
army. And I won't--not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk
threatening Bald Hills--even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian army!
Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his composure, "now
there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command of the Third
District, and my only way of avoiding active service is to serve under
him."

"Then you are serving?"

"I am."

He paused a little while.

"And why do you serve?"

"Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men of
his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he has too
energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited power that he is
terrible, and now he has this authority of a commander in chief of
the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had been two hours late
a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's clerk at Yukhnovna
hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I am serving because I
alone have any influence with my father, and now and then can save him
from actions which would torment him afterwards."

"Well, there you see!"

"Yes, but it is not as you imagine," Prince Andrew continued. "I did
not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who
had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been very
glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father--that again is for
myself."

Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered feverishly
while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there was no
desire to do good to his neighbor.

"There now, you wish to liberate your serfs," he continued; "that is a
very good thing, but not for you--I don't suppose you ever had anyone
flogged or sent to Siberia--and still less for your serfs. If they are
beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don't suppose they are any the
worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and the stripes on
their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it is a good thing
for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon themselves,
stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being able to
inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people I pity, and
for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You may not have
seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those traditions of
unlimited power, in time when they grow more irritable, become cruel and
harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot restrain themselves and grow more
and more miserable."

Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his father's
case.

He did not reply.

"So that's what I'm sorry for--human dignity, peace of mind, purity, and
not the serfs' backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you may,
always remain the same backs and foreheads."

"No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you," said
Pierre.





CHAPTER XII


In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and drove to
Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the silence now and
then with remarks which showed that he was in a good temper.

Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making in
his husbandry.

Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
apparently immersed in his own thoughts.

He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did not
see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid, enlighten, and
raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he should say, he felt that
Prince Andrew with one word, one argument, would upset all his teaching,
and he shrank from beginning, afraid of exposing to possible ridicule
what to him was precious and sacred.

"No, but why do you think so?" Pierre suddenly began, lowering his
head and looking like a bull about to charge, "why do you think so? You
should not think so."

"Think? What about?" asked Prince Andrew with surprise.

"About life, about man's destiny. It can't be so. I myself thought
like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don't smile.
Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it was:
Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal, aspects of
humanity."

And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince
Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed
from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality, brotherhood,
and love.

"Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the rest
is a dream," said Pierre. "Understand, my dear fellow, that outside this
union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree with you that
nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to live out
his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But make our
fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood, give yourself up
to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once feel yourself, as I
have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible chain the beginning of
which is hidden in heaven," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence to
Pierre's words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels prevented
his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it, and by the
peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew's eyes and by his silence,
Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that Prince Andrew would
not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.

They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they had to
cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed on it,
they also stepped on the raft.

Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed silently at
the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.

"Well, what do you think about it?" Pierre asked. "Why are you silent?"

"What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It's all very well....
You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of life, the
destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who are we?
Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see what you see?
You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I don't see it."

Pierre interrupted him.

"Do you believe in a future life?" he asked.

"A future life?" Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no time
to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as he knew
Prince Andrew's former atheistic convictions.

"You say you can't see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor could
I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the end
of everything. On earth, here on this earth" (Pierre pointed to the
fields), "there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the universe,
in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who are now
the children of earth are--eternally--children of the whole universe.
Don't I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast harmonious whole?
Don't I feel that I form one link, one step, between the lower and
higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of beings in whom the
Deity--the Supreme Power if you prefer the term--is manifest? If I see,
clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man, why should I suppose
it breaks off at me and does not go farther and farther? I feel that I
cannot vanish, since nothing vanishes in this world, but that I shall
always exist and always have existed. I feel that beyond me and above me
there are spirits, and that in this world there is truth."

"Yes, that is Herder's theory," said Prince Andrew, "but it is not that
which can convince me, dear friend--life and death are what convince.
What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound up with one's
own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped to make it right"
(Prince Andrew's voice trembled and he turned away), "and suddenly that
being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to exist.... Why? It
cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe there is.... That's
what convinces, that is what has convinced me," said Prince Andrew.

"Yes, yes, of course," said Pierre, "isn't that what I'm saying?"

"No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the
necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with
someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and
you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked
in...."

"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a
Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is--God."

Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long since been
taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The sun had sunk half
below the horizon and an evening frost was starring the puddles near
the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the astonishment of the footmen,
coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on the raft and talked.

"If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's
highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we
must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap
of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there, in the Whole,"
said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.

Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening to
Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the
sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness. Pierre
became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the waves of the
current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew felt as if the sound
of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre's words, whispering:

"It is true, believe it."

He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at
Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his superior
friend.

"Yes, if it only were so!" said Prince Andrew. "However, it is time to
get on," he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at the sky
to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz saw
that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on that battlefield;
and something that had long been slumbering, something that was best
within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his soul. It
vanished as soon as he returned to the customary conditions of his
life, but he knew that this feeling which he did not know how to develop
existed within him. His meeting with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince
Andrew's life. Though outwardly he continued to live in the same old
way, inwardly he began a new life.





CHAPTER XIII


It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the front
entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the house,
Prince Andrew with a smile drew Pierre's attention to a commotion going
on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on her back,
and a short, long-haired, young man in a black garment had rushed back
to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up. Two women ran out after
them, and all four, looking round at the carriage, ran in dismay up the
steps of the back porch.

"Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have mistaken
us for my father. This is the one matter in which she disobeys him. He
orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she receives them."

"But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.

Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet them,
and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was expected back
soon.

The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any minute.

Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always kept
in perfect order and readiness for him in his father's house; he himself
went to the nursery.

"Let us go and see my sister," he said to Pierre when he returned.
"I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her 'God's
folk.' It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you will see
her 'God's folk.' It's really very curious."

"What are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.

"Come, and you'll see for yourself."

Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her face
when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before the icon
stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk's
cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near them, in an
armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek expression on
her childlike face.

"Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild reproach,
as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her chickens.

"Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir," * she said
to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, and now
his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife, and above all
his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward him. She looked at
him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to say, "I like you very
much, but please don't laugh at my people." After exchanging the first
greetings, they sat down.


    * "Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you."


"Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a
smile at the young pilgrim.

"Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez que
c'est une femme," * said Prince Andrew to Pierre.

"Andrew, au nom de Dieu!" *(2) Princess Mary repeated.


     * "You must know that this is a woman."

     * (2) "For heaven's sake."


It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the pilgrims
and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were their
customary long-established relations on the matter.

"Mais, ma bonne amie," said Prince Andrew, "vous devriez au contraire
m'etre reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre intimite avec
ce jeune homme." *


     * "But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to
     me for explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young
     man."


"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and
seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him) into
Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about, looked
round at them all with crafty eyes.

Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite
unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman, lowering
her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had turned her cup
upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside it, and sat
quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered another cup of tea.
Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked with sly womanish eyes from
under her brows at the young men.

"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.

"I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime I
was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at the
shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a great
and wonderful blessing has been revealed."

"And was Ivanushka with you?"

"I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a bass
voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..."

Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell what
she had seen.

"In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed."

"What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew.

"Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him, Pelageya."

"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he is
one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles, I
remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of God's
own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are you not
going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a wonder-working icon of
the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On hearing those words I said
good-by to the holy folk and went."

All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,
drawing in her breath.

"So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing has been
revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed Mother, the
Holy Virgin Mother of God'...."

"All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess Mary,
flushing.

"Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the face like
the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek it drops and
drops...."

"But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who had
listened attentively to the pilgrim.

"Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya,
turning to Princess Mary for support.

"They impose on the people," he repeated.

"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing herself. "Oh,
don't speak so, master! There was a general who did not believe, and
said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said it he went blind. And
he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the Kiev catacombs came to him
and said, 'Believe in me and I will make you whole.' So he begged: 'Take
me to her, take me to her.' It's the real truth I'm telling you, I saw
it myself. So he was brought, quite blind, straight to her, and he goes
up to her and falls down and says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll
give thee what the Tsar bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the
star is fixed into the icon. Well, and what do you think? He received
his sight! It's a sin to speak so. God will punish you," she said
admonishingly, turning to Pierre.

"How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked.

"And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said Prince
Andrew, with a smile.

Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.

"Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began, her
pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you said? God
forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My dear, what
does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary. She got up
and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She evidently felt
frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a house where such
things could be said, and was at the same time sorry to have now to
forgo the charity of this house.

"Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come to
me?..."

"Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma parole,
je n'ai pas voulu l'offenser. * I did not mean anything, I was only
joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his offense. "It
was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking."


    * "Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her."


Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a look
of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now at her and
now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.





CHAPTER XIV


The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a
long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his
hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks
she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking
some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with the
saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to another.
I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and there was
such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want to come
out, even into the light of heaven again."

Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went
out of the room, and then, leaving "God's folk" to finish their tea,
Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.

"You are very kind," she said to him.

"Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them so
well and have the greatest respect for them."

Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.

"I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as of a
brother," she said. "How do you find Andrew?" she added hurriedly, not
giving him time to reply to her affectionate words. "I am very anxious
about him. His health was better in the winter, but last spring his
wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away for a cure. And
I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has not a character
like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our sorrows. He keeps
it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in good spirits, but that
is the effect of your visit--he is not often like that. If you could
persuade him to go abroad. He needs activity, and this quiet regular
life is very bad for him. Others don't notice it, but I see it."

Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door, hearing
the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching. Prince Andrew and
Pierre also went out into the porch.

"Who's that?" asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out of the
carriage.

"Ah! Very glad! Kiss me," he said, having learned who the young stranger
was.

The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.

Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study, found
him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining that a time
would come when there would be no more wars. The old prince disputed it
chaffingly, but without getting angry.

"Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then there
will be no more war! Old women's nonsense--old women's nonsense!" he
repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on the shoulder, and
then went up to the table where Prince Andrew, evidently not wishing
to join in the conversation, was looking over the papers his father
had brought from town. The old prince went up to him and began to talk
business.

"The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He
came to town and wanted to invite me to dinner--I gave him a pretty
dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince
went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A fine
fellow--your friend--I like him! He stirs me up. Another says clever
things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks rubbish yet
stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps I'll come and sit
with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make friends with my
little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after Pierre, through the door.

Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the
strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm was
not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his family
and with the household. With the stern old prince and the gentle, timid
Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre at once felt
like an old friend. They were all fond of him already. Not only Princess
Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the pilgrims, gave him her
most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old "Prince Nicholas" (as his
grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and let himself be taken in
his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him
with pleasant smiles when he talked to the old prince.

The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's
account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was
extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.

When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met together, they
began to express their opinions of him as people always do after a new
acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one said anything but
what was good of him.





CHAPTER XV


When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time, how
close was the bond that united him to Denisov and the whole regiment.

On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his home
in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned uniform of
his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and saw the
picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully shouted to his
master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been asleep on his
bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace him, and the
officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov experienced
the same feeling as when his mother, his father, and his sister had
embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not speak.
The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and precious as
his parents' house.

When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and had
been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had gone
out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little interests
of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and bound in one
narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense of peace, of
moral support, and the same sense of being at home here in his own
place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was none of
all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not know his right
place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya with whom he ought,
or ought not, to have an explanation; here was no possibility of going
there or not going there; here there were not twenty-four hours in the
day which could be spent in such a variety of ways; there was not that
innumerable crowd of people of whom not one was nearer to him or farther
from him than another; there were none of those uncertain and undefined
money relations with his father, and nothing to recall that terrible
loss to Dolokhov. Here, in the regiment, all was clear and simple.
The whole world was divided into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd
regiment; the other, all the rest. And the rest was no concern of
his. In the regiment, everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who
captain, who was a good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was
a comrade. The canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four
months, there was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do
nothing that was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when
given an order, to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely
ordered--and all would be well.

Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this regimental
life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on lying down to
rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was all the pleasanter
for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for which, in spite of all
his family's efforts to console him, he could not forgive himself), he
had made up his mind to atone for his fault by serving, not as he
had done before, but really well, and by being a perfectly first-rate
comrade and officer--in a word, a splendid man altogether, a thing which
seemed so difficult out in the world, but so possible in the regiment.

After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his parents
in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now resolved
to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the debt to his
parents.

Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at Pultusk
and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It was awaiting
the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new campaign.

The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had
served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in
Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of the
campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau and,
when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the campaign,
was attached to Platov's division.

Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several
times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the
enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal Oudinot's
carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed immovably for some
weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German village.

A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river broke,
and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the
men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no transports could
arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and deserted villages,
searching for potatoes, but found few even of these.

Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled--if any
remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be taken
from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead of taking
anything from them, often gave them the last of their rations.

The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but had
lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the hospitals,
death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling
that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and hardly able
to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the hospitals.
When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just showing out of the
ground that looked like asparagus, which, for some reason, they called
"Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter, but they wandered about the
fields seeking it and dug it out with their sabers and ate it, though
they were ordered not to do so, as it was a noxious plant. That spring a
new disease broke out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs,
and face, which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite
of all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on "Mashka's
sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of the
biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man and the
last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.

The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the thatched
roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with tufts of
felty winter hair.

Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living just
as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, the
hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed their
horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the thatched roofs in
place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the caldrons from which
they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food and their hunger. As
usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires, steamed themselves before
them naked; smoked, picked out and baked sprouting rotten potatoes, told
and listened to stories of Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to
legends of Alesha the Sly, or the priest's laborer Mikolka.

The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,
half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes and,
in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied themselves as
before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money, though there was
no food), some with more innocent games, such as quoits and skittles.
The general trend of the campaign was rarely spoken of, partly because
nothing certain was known about it, partly because there was a vague
feeling that in the main it was going badly.

Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they had
become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's family,
but by the tender friendship his commander showed him, Rostov felt
that the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a part in
strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to expose Rostov
to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action greeted his safe
return with evident joy. On one of his foraging expeditions, in
a deserted and ruined village to which he had come in search of
provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old Pole and his
daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad, hungry, too weak
to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a conveyance. Rostov
brought them to his quarters, placed them in his own lodging, and
kept them for some weeks while the old man was recovering. One of his
comrades, talking of women, began chaffing Rostov, saying that he was
more wily than any of them and that it would not be a bad thing if he
introduced to them the pretty Polish girl he had saved. Rostov took the
joke as an insult, flared up, and said such unpleasant things to the
officer that it was all Denisov could do to prevent a duel. When the
officer had gone away, Denisov, who did not himself know what Rostov's
relations with the Polish girl might be, began to upbraid him for his
quickness of temper, and Rostov replied:

"Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't tell you
how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...."

Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.

"Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov noticed
tears in his eyes.





CHAPTER XVI


In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival,
but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at
Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that
place.

They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth hut,
dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and turf. The
hut was made in the following manner, which had then come into vogue. A
trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet eight inches deep,
and eight feet long. At one end of the trench, steps were cut out and
these formed the entrance and vestibule. The trench itself was the room,
in which the lucky ones, such as the squadron commander, had a board,
lying on piles at the end opposite the entrance, to serve as a table. On
each side of the trench, the earth was cut out to a breadth of about two
and a half feet, and this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof
was so constructed that one could stand up in the middle of the trench
and could even sit up on the beds if one drew close to the table.
Denisov, who was living luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron
liked him, had also a board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece
of (broken but mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold,
embers from the soldiers' campfire were placed on a bent sheet of iron
on the steps in the "reception room"--as Denisov called that part of
the hut--and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were
always some with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.

In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and
eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers, changed
his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got warm,
then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner, and,
his face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on but his
shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his head. He was
pleasantly considering the probability of being promoted in a few days
for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was awaiting Denisov, who
had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a talk.

Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the hut,
evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he was
speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.

"I ordered you not to let them eat that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov was
shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some fwom
the fields."

"I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they don't
obey," answered the quartermaster.

Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let him fuss
and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down--capitally!" He could
hear that Lavrushka--that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's--was talking,
as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying something about
loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when he had gone out for
provisions.

Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.
"Saddle! Second platoon!"

"Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov.

Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy boots
on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things about, took
his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again. In answer
to Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered vaguely and crossly
that he had some business.

"Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov going
out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing through the
mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had gone. Having
got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not leave the hut till
toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The weather had cleared
up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet were playing svayka,
laughing as they threw their missiles which buried themselves in the
soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle of the game, the officers
saw some wagons approaching with fifteen hussars on their skinny horses
behind them. The wagons escorted by the hussars drew up to the picket
ropes and a crowd of hussars surrounded them.

"There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are the
provisions."

"So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!"

A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two infantry
officers with whom he was talking.

Rostov went to meet them.

"I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man, evidently
very angry, was saying.

"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.

"You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny--seizing the transport of
one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two days."

"And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov.

"It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry officer,
raising his voice.

"Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing his
temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not buzz
about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the officers.

"Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not riding
away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..."

"Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and Denisov
turned his horse on the officer.

"Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and turning
his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.

"A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov
after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a
mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.

"I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said. "After all,
can't let our men starve."

The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an
infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport
was unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The
soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared
them with the other squadrons.

The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and holding his
fingers spread out before his eyes said:

"This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and won't
begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff and settle
the business there in the commissariat department and if possible sign
a receipt for such and such stores received. If not, as the demand was
booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a row and the affair
may end badly."

From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the staff with
a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he came back to
his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen him in. Denisov
could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov asked what was the
matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and threats in a hoarse,
feeble voice.

Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should undress,
drink some water, and send for the doctor.

"Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but I'll
always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'... Ice..." he
muttered.

The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely necessary to
bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken from his hairy arm
and only then was he able to relate what had happened to him.

"I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's
quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden twenty
miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait. Announce me.'
Vewy well, so out comes their head chief--also took it into his head to
lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'--'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is not done by man who
seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him who takes them to
fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then he
says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the commissioner, but your affair will
be passed on to headquarters.' I go to the commissioner. I enter, and at
the table... who do you think? No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that's
starving us?" shouted Denisov, hitting the table with the fist of his
newly bled arm so violently that the table nearly broke down and
the tumblers on it jumped about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's
starving us to death! Is it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so
pat, stwaight on his snout... 'Ah, what a... what a...!' and I sta'ted
fwashing him... Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried
Denisov, gleeful and yet angry, his white teeth showing under his black
mustache. "I'd have killed him if they hadn't taken him away!"

"But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've set
your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again."

Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke calm and
cheerful.

But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and
Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully showed
them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental commander
in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence. The adjutant
told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad turn: that a
court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the severity with
which marauding and insubordination were now regarded, degradation to
the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.

The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after
seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the chief
quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief, threatened
to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the office and given
two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm of one of them.

In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing, that he
thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed up in it, but
that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not in the least fear
any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels dared attack him he
would give them an answer that they would not easily forget.

Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew him
too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart
he feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was
evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices
from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered to
hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before
the staff of his division to explain his violence at the commissariat
office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two Cossack
regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his wont, rode
out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A bullet fired by
a French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of his leg. Perhaps at
another time Denisov would not have left the regiment for so slight a
wound, but now he took advantage of it to excuse himself from appearing
at the staff and went into hospital.





CHAPTER XVII


In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the Pavlograds did
not take part, and after that an armistice was proclaimed. Rostov, who
felt his friend's absence very much, having no news of him since he
left and feeling very anxious about his wound and the progress of his
affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get leave to visit Denisov
in hospital.

The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice devastated
by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when it is so
beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a particularly
dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its foul streets,
tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken soldiers wandering about.

The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window frames and
panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a wooden fence
that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged soldiers, with pale
swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in the sunshine in the
yard.

Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of
putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army
doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian assistant.

"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to Makar
Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there."

The assistant asked some further questions.

"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed
Rostov coming upstairs.

"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The bullets
having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a pesthouse, sir."

"How so?" asked Rostov.

"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he
pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have
died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,"
said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been
invited here, but our allies don't like it at all."

Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars, who
was wounded.

"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in charge
of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's well that
the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of coffee and some
lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed. "Four hundred, sir,
and they're always sending me fresh ones. There are four hundred? Eh?"
he asked, turning to the assistant.

The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and impatient
for the talkative doctor to go.

"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten."

"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of
indifference.

The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.

"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.

Rostov described Denisov's appearance.

"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one is
dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list. Have you
got it, Makeev?"

"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if you'll
step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he added,
turning to Rostov.

"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to
stay here yourself."

But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the assistant to
show him the way.

"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him.

Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell was so
strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and collect
his strength before he could go on. A door opened to the right, and an
emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in underclothing, limped
out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked with glittering envious
eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at the door, Rostov saw that
the sick and wounded were lying on the floor on straw and overcoats.

"May I go in and look?"

"What is there to see?" said the assistant.

But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,
Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had already
begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It was a
little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where it
originated.

In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large windows,
the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to the walls, and
leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were unconscious and
paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were conscious raised
themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all looked intently at
Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief, reproach, and envy
of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of the room and looking
through the open doors into the two adjoining rooms saw the same thing
there. He stood still, looking silently around. He had not at all
expected such a sight. Just before him, almost across the middle of the
passage on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to judge
by the cut of his hair. The man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs
outstretched. His face was purple, his eyes were rolled back so that
only the whites were seen, and on his bare legs and arms which were
still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was knocking the back of
his head against the floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept
repeating. Rostov listened and made out the word. It was "drink, drink,
a drink!" Rostov glanced round, looking for someone who would put this
man back in his place and bring him water.

"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.

Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the
next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov.

"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and
evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.

"Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov, pointing to
the Cossack.

"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his
eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not
move.

"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov, lowering his
eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an intense look fixed
on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the corner, on an overcoat,
sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier as thin as a skeleton, with a
stern sallow face and eyes intently fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor
on one side whispered something to him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed
that the old man wanted to speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the
old man had only one leg bent under him, the other had been amputated
above the knee. His neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some
distance from him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with
a snub nose. His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were
rolled back. Rostov looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran
down his back.

"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant.

"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier, his
jaw quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men, not
dogs."

"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away--taken away at once,"
said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor."

"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes and
shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of reproachful
envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the room.





CHAPTER XVIII


Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the officers'
wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood open. There
were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers were lying or
sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in hospital dressing
gowns. The first person Rostov met in the officers' ward was a thin
little man with one arm, who was walking about the first room in a
nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with a pipe between his teeth.
Rostov looked at him, trying to remember where he had seen him before.

"See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin, don't
you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had a bit
cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the empty
sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich Denisov? My
neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted. "Here, here," and
Tushin led him into the next room, from whence came sounds of several
laughing voices.

"How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov, still
aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong in
the soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those envious
looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face of that
young soldier with eyes rolled back.

Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket, though it
was nearly noon.

"Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in the
same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under this
habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed
itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the intonations of his
voice.

His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six weeks
after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as the faces
of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that struck Rostov.
What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to see him, and
smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the regiment, nor about
the general state of affairs, and when Rostov spoke of these matters did
not listen.

Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of the
regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on
outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and
was only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On
Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced from
under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission and the
rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he began
reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the stinging
rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions, who had
gathered round Rostov--a fresh arrival from the world outside--gradually
began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his answer. Rostov
noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had already heard that
story more than once and were tired of it. Only the man who had the next
bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his bed, gloomily frowning and
smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin still listened, shaking his
head disapprovingly. In the middle of the reading, the Uhlan interrupted
Denisov.

"But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best
simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will
now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...."

"Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he
tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like an
expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber I would
ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging wobbers to book.
Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've served the Tsar and
my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I to be degwaded?...
Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is what I say: 'If I had
wobbed the Tweasuwy...'"

"It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the point,
Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to submit, and
Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told you it was a
bad business."

"Well, let it be bad," said Denisov.

"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and
you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he"
(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a
better opportunity."

"Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him, went
on reading his paper.

Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he instinctively
felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other officers was the
safest, and though he would have been glad to be of service to Denisov.
He knew his stubborn will and straightforward hasty temper.

When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than an
hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the day in
a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades, who had
gathered round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their
stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.

Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked Denisov
whether he had no commission for him.

"Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and
taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where he
had an inkpot, and sat down to write.

"It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he said,
coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it was
the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which Denisov,
without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat officials, simply
asked for pardon.

"Hand it in. It seems..."

He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.





CHAPTER XIX


Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state of
Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the Emperor.

On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in
Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom he
was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the stay at
Tilsit.

"I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon,
whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.

"You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling.

Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that he was
being tested.

"I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The
general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.

"You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.

Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two
Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw Napoleon
pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the river, saw the
pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in silence in a tavern
on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's arrival, saw both Emperors
get into boats, and saw how Napoleon--reaching the raft first--stepped
quickly forward to meet Alexander and held out his hand to him, and how
they both retired into the pavilion. Since he had begun to move in the
highest circles Boris had made it his habit to watch attentively all
that went on around him and to note it down. At the time of the meeting
at Tilsit he asked the names of those who had come with Napoleon and
about the uniforms they wore, and listened attentively to words spoken
by important personages. At the moment the Emperors went into the
pavilion he looked at his watch, and did not forget to look at it
again when Alexander came out. The interview had lasted an hour and
fifty-three minutes. He noted this down that same evening, among other
facts he felt to be of historic importance. As the Emperor's suite was
a very small one, it was a matter of great importance, for a man who
valued his success in the service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of
this interview between the two Emperors, and having succeeded in this,
Boris felt that henceforth his position was fully assured. He had not
only become known, but people had grown accustomed to him and accepted
him. Twice he had executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so
that the latter knew his face, and all those at court, far from
cold-shouldering him as at first when they considered him a newcomer,
would now have been surprised had he been absent.

Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski.
Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately
fond of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French
officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and
lunching with him and Boris.

On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski arranged a
supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an aide-de-camp of
Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of the Guard, and
a page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old aristocratic French
family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the darkness to avoid being
recognized in civilian dress, came to Tilsit and went to the lodging
occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.

Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far
from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and the
French--who from being foes had suddenly become friends--that had taken
place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte and the
French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger, contempt,
and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's Cossack officers,
Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken prisoner he would be
treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal. Quite lately, happening
to meet a wounded French colonel on the road, Rostov had maintained with
heat that peace was impossible between a legitimate sovereign and the
criminal Bonaparte. Rostov was therefore unpleasantly struck by the
presence of French officers in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he
had been accustomed to see from quite a different point of view from
the outposts of the flank. As soon as he noticed a French officer, who
thrust his head out of the door, that warlike feeling of hostility which
he always experienced at the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He
stopped at the threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived
there. Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet
him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face
on first recognizing Rostov.

"Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however,
coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first
impulse.

"I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have
business," he said coldly.

"No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment. Dans
un moment je suis a vous," * he said, answering someone who called him.


    * "In a minute I shall be at your disposal."


"I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated.

The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face: having
evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly took
both Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes, looking
serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by something, as if
screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it seemed to Rostov.

"Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris, and he
led him into the room where the supper table was laid and introduced
him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian, but an hussar
officer, and an old friend of his.

"Count Zhilinski--le Comte N. N.--le Capitaine S. S.," said he,
naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed
reluctantly, and remained silent.

Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very
willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not
appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the same
pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with which he
had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the Frenchmen,
with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen, addressed the
obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter had probably come to
Tilsit to see the Emperor.

"No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly.

Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look of
dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a bad
humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion and
that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he alone
took no part in the conversation which again became general. The looks
the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he sitting here
for?" He rose and went up to Boris.

"Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk over my
business and I'll go away."

"Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and lie
down in my room and have a rest."

"Yes, really..."

They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without
sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame
in some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether,
through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor on
Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he and Boris
were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not look Boris
in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one leg crossed
over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender fingers of
his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the report of a
subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight into Rostov's
eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this happened Rostov felt
uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.

"I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe
in such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the
Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in general,
I think..."

"So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost
shouted, not looking Boris in the face.

Boris smiled.

"On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..."

At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris.

"Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and
remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long
time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.





CHAPTER XX


Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on
Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance
as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do
so, and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the
following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were
signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the Cross
of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of the
First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening, given by
a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk battalion. The
Emperors were to be present at that banquet.

Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when the
latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and early next
morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian clothes and a
round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the French and their
uniforms and at the streets and houses where the Russian and French
Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables being set up and
preparations made for the dinner; he saw the Russian and French colors
draped from side to side of the streets, with huge monograms A and N. In
the windows of the houses also flags and bunting were displayed.

"Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's
settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave
here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not without
getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is here!" thought
Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house where Alexander
lodged.

Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were
assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.

"I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to hand
the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really arrest me
for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand on whose side
justice lies. He understands everything, knows everything. Who can be
more just, more magnanimous than he? And even if they did arrest me for
being here, what would it matter?" thought he, looking at an officer who
was entering the house the Emperor occupied. "After all, people do go
in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go in and hand the letter to the Emperor
myself so much the worse for Drubetskoy who drives me to it!" And
suddenly with a determination he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for
the letter in his pocket and went straight to the house.

"No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he
thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious of
the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall at his
feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will even
thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice is the
greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying. And passing
people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the porch of the
Emperor's house.

A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right he
saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading to the
lower floor.

"Whom do you want?" someone inquired.

"To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas, with a
tremor in his voice.

"A petition? This way, to the officer on duty" (he was shown the door
leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted."

On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he
was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so
fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run away,
but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and Rostov
entered.

A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high boots and
a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on, standing in that
room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of his breeches a
new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that, for some reason,
attracted Rostov's attention. This man was speaking to someone in the
adjoining room.

"A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing
Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.

"What is it? A petition?"

"What is it?" asked the person in the other room.

"Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces.

"Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go."

"Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..."

Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped
him.

"Whom have you come from? Who are you?"

"I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov.

"Are you an officer?"

"Lieutenant Count Rostov."

"What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with
you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed him.

Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there were
many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to pass.

Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding
himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to
shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety
of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was
making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a
familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.

"What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep voice.

It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special favor
during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the division in
which Rostov was serving.

Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the kindly,
jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an excited voice
told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for Denisov, whom the
general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the general shook his head
gravely.

"I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter."

Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining
Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were heard
on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the porch. The
gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and went to their
horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at Austerlitz, led up the
Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a footstep Rostov knew at once
was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the danger of being recognized,
Rostov went close to the porch, together with some inquisitive
civilians, and again, after two years, saw those features he adored:
that same face and same look and step, and the same union of majesty and
mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm and love for his sovereign
rose again in Rostov's soul in all its old force. In the uniform of
the Preobrazhensk regiment--white chamois-leather breeches and high
boots--and wearing a star Rostov did not know (it was that of the Legion
d'honneur), the monarch came out into the porch, putting on his gloves
and carrying his hat under his arm. He stopped and looked about him,
brightening everything around by his glance. He spoke a few words to
some of the generals, and, recognizing the former commander of Rostov's
division, smiled and beckoned to him.

All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for some time
to the Emperor.

The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his horse.
Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers (among whom
was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside his horse, with
his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the cavalry general and
said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be heard by all:

"I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than I,"
and he raised his foot to the stirrup.

The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and
rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm, Rostov
ran after him with the crowd.





CHAPTER XXI


The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a battalion
of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a battalion of the
French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.

As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which presented
arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the opposite flank, and
at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It could be no one else.
He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue uniform open over a
white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his shoulder. He was riding
a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse with a crimson gold-embroidered
saddlecloth. On approaching Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did
so, Rostov, with his cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that
Napoleon did not sit well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions
shouted "Hurrah!" and "Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said something to
Alexander, and both Emperors dismounted and took each other's hands.
Napoleon's face wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was
saying something affable to him.

In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which were
pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of
Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander
treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease with
the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday matter
to him.

Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites, approached
the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came straight up to
the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly found itself so close
to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the front row, was afraid he
might be recognized.

"Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the
bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating
every letter.

This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into
Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to him
and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.

"To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war," added
Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and assurance
exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian ranks drawn
up before him, who all presented arms with their eyes fixed on their
Emperor.

"Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said Alexander and
took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the commander of the
battalion.

Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,
tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him
rushed forward and picked it up.

"To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked Koslovski, in
Russian in a low voice.

"To whomever Your Majesty commands."

The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing back,
remarked:

"But we must give him an answer."

Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his
scrutiny.

"Can it be me?" thought Rostov.

"Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the first
soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.

"Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who did
not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look at his
colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to soldiers called
before the ranks.

Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out
behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing
at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed
something from one to another, and a page--the same one Rostov had seen
the previous evening at Boris'--ran forward and, bowing respectfully
over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a moment, laid
in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without looking, pressed two
fingers together and the badge was between them. Then he approached
Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently gazed at his own monarch),
looked round at the Emperor Alexander to imply that what he was now
doing was done for the sake of his ally, and the small white hand
holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's buttons. It was as if
Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his hand to deign to touch
that soldier's breast for the soldier to be forever happy, rewarded, and
distinguished from everyone else in the world. Napoleon merely laid
the cross on Lazarev's breast and, dropping his hand, turned toward
Alexander as though sure that the cross would adhere there. And it
really did.

Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross and
fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little man
with white hands who was doing something to him and, still standing
motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into Alexander's eyes,
as if asking whether he should stand there, or go away, or do something
else. But receiving no orders, he remained for some time in that rigid
position.

The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion,
breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the tables
prepared for them.

Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers embraced
him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of officers and
civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of Russian and French
voices and laughter filled the air round the tables in the square.
Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and happy, passed by
Rostov.

"What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them was
saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?"

"I have."

"Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner."

"Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension for
life."

"Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a shaggy
French cap.

"It's a fine thing! First-rate!"

"Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another.
"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure';
yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it
and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's
Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He must
respond in kind."

Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk
banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner of a
house.

"Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could
not refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and
troubled was Rostov's face.

"Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov.

"You'll call round?"

"Yes, I will."

Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from a
distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on which he could
not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul. Now he
remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his submission, and the
whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and its dirt and disease. So
vividly did he recall that hospital stench of dead flesh that he
looked round to see where the smell came from. Next he thought of that
self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white hand, who was now an
Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then why those severed
arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he thought of Lazarev
rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself
harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.

The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of
hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to
eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.
There he found so many people, among them officers who, like himself,
had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in getting a
dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The conversation
naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his comrades, like most of
the army, were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after the battle of
Friedland. They said that had we held out a little longer Napoleon would
have been done for, as his troops had neither provisions nor ammunition.
Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly the latter) in silence. He finished a
couple of bottles of wine by himself. The process in his mind went on
tormenting him without reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to
his thoughts, yet could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the
officers' saying that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov
began shouting with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to the
surprise of the officers:

"How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly rushing to
his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What right have
we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's aims or his
actions!"

"But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer,
justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except
on the supposition that he was drunk.

But Rostov did not listen to him.

"We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more," he
went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished, it
means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the Emperor
pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an alliance
with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If once we begin
judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred will be left! That
way we shall be saying there is no God--nothing!" shouted Nicholas,
banging the table--very little to the point as it seemed to his
listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own thoughts.

"Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's
all...." said he.

"And to drink," said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.

"Yes, and to drink," assented Nicholas. "Hullo there! Another bottle!"
he shouted.

In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview with
the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg there was
much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting.





CHAPTER XXII


In 1809 the intimacy between "the world's two arbiters," as Napoleon
and Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared war on
Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our
old enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and in
court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and one of
Alexander's sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations of
foreign policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time keenly
directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken in all the
departments of government.

Life meanwhile--real life, with its essential interests of health and
sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought,
science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions--went on
as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or enmity
with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all the schemes of reconstruction.





BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10





CHAPTER I


Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.

All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates--and constantly
changing from one thing to another had never accomplished--were carried
out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible difficulty.

He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre lacked,
and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.

On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and became
free agricultural laborers--this being one of the first examples of
the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory labor was
commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for Bogucharovo
at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and writing to
the children of the peasants and household serfs.

Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father and his
son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he spent in
"Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince Andrew's estate.
Despite the indifference to the affairs of the world he had expressed
to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received many books,
and to his surprise noticed that when he or his father had visitors
from Petersburg, the very vortex of life, these people lagged behind
himself--who never left the country--in knowledge of what was happening
in home and foreign affairs.

Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great variety of
books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a critical survey of
our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with drawing up a proposal for a
reform of the army rules and regulations.

In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which had been
inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.

Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the new
grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of white
spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not thinking of
anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from side to side.

They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year before.
They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and green
fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near the bridge,
uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past strips of
stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there, and into a
birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the forest it was
almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with their sticky green
leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers and the first blades
of green grass were pushing up and lifting last year's leaves. The
coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees scattered here and there
among the birches was an unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the
forest the horses began to snort and sweated visibly.

Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter assented.
But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for Peter, and he
turned on the box toward his master.

"How pleasant it is, your excellency!" he said with a respectful smile.

"What?"

"It's pleasant, your excellency!"

"What is he talking about?" thought Prince Andrew. "Oh, the spring,
I suppose," he thought as he turned round. "Yes, really everything is
green already.... How early! The birches and cherry and alders too are
coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, here is one oak!"

 At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of
the birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and twice
as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as great as a
man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its branches had been
broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling
unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an aged,
stern, and scornful monster among the smiling birch trees. Only the
dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about in the forest, and this oak,
refused to yield to the charm of spring or notice either the spring or
the sunshine.

"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not weary of
that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and
always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look at those
cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out my broken
and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether from my back or
my sides: as they have grown so I stand, and I do not believe in your
hopes and your lies."

As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to
look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,
too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid,
misshapen, and grim as ever.

"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince Andrew.
"Let others--the young--yield afresh to that fraud, but we know life,
our life is finished!"

A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant, rose
in his soul in connection with that tree. During this journey he, as
it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at his old conclusion,
restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for him to begin anything
anew--but that he must live out his life, content to do no harm, and not
disturbing himself or desiring anything.





CHAPTER II


Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the district
in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of which he was
trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the middle of May
Prince Andrew went to visit him.

It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already clothed in
green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water one longed to
bathe.

Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about which
he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the grounds
of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish cries behind
some trees on the right and saw a group of girls running to cross
the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran a
dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz dress, with
a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose locks of hair
escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing that he was a
stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.

Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so beautiful,
the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that slim pretty girl
did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and was contented and
cheerful in her own separate--probably foolish--but bright and happy
life. "What is she so glad about? What is she thinking of? Not of
the military regulations or of the arrangement of the Ryazan serfs'
quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so happy?" Prince Andrew
asked himself with instinctive curiosity.

In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done
in former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province with
hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince
Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his staying
the night.

During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by his
elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old count's
house was crowded on account of an approaching name day), Prince Andrew
repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among the younger
members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What is she
thinking about? Why is she so glad?"

That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to sleep. He
read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It was hot in the
room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He was cross with the
stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had made him stay by assuring
him that some necessary documents had not yet arrived from town, and he
was vexed with himself for having stayed.

He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened the
shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for this, burst
into the room. He opened the casement. The night was fresh, bright, and
very still. Just before the window was a row of pollard trees, looking
black on one side and with a silvery light on the other. Beneath the
trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy vegetation with silver-lit
leaves and stems here and there. Farther back beyond the dark trees a
roof glittered with dew, to the right was a leafy tree with brilliantly
white trunk and branches, and above it shone the moon, nearly at its
full, in a pale, almost starless, spring sky. Prince Andrew leaned his
elbows on the window ledge and his eyes rested on that sky.

His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were also
awake. He heard female voices overhead.

"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew
recognized at once.

"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice.

"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last time."

 Two girlish voices sang a musical passage--the end of some song.

"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it."

"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming nearer to
the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the rustle of her
dress and even her breathing could be heard. Everything was stone-still,
like the moon and its light and the shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared
not stir, for fear of betraying his unintentional presence.

"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you
sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,
Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never was
such a lovely night before!"

Sonya made some reluctant reply.

"Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come here....
Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like sitting down
on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this, straining tight,
as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...."

"Take care, you'll fall out."

He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice: "It's
past one o'clock."

"Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!"

Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting
there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh.

"O God, O God! What does it mean?" she suddenly exclaimed. "To bed then,
if it must be!" and she slammed the casement.

"For her I might as well not exist!" thought Prince Andrew while he
listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that she
might say something about him. "There she is again! As if it were on
purpose," thought he.

In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of youthful
thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his life, that unable
to explain his condition to himself he lay down and fell asleep at once.





CHAPTER III


Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not
waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.

It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he drove
into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so strange and
memorable an impression on him. In the forest the harness bells sounded
yet more muffled than they had done six weeks before, for now all was
thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs dotted about in the forest
did not jar on the general beauty but, lending themselves to the mood
around, were delicately green with fluffy young shoots.

The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but only
a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling the road
and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in the shade,
the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and scarcely
swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the nightingales
trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now far away.

"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed," thought
Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered, gazing at the left
side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with admiration
at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured, spreading
out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and slightly
trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled fingers nor
old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now.
Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were no twigs,
leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old veteran
could have produced.

"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he was
seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal. All the
best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz with
the lofty heavens, his wife's dead reproachful face, Pierre at the
ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night
itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly to his mind.

"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided
finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have in
me--everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted to
fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not be
lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so that
it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in harmony!"


On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that autumn
and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole series of
sensible and logical considerations showing it to be essential for him
to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the service, kept springing
up in his mind. He could not now understand how he could ever even have
doubted the necessity of taking an active share in life, just as a month
before he had not understood how the idea of leaving the quiet country
could ever enter his head. It now seemed clear to him that all his
experience of life must be senselessly wasted unless he applied it to
some kind of work and again played an active part in life. He did not
even remember how formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical
arguments, it had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if
he now, after the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe
in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness
or love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey
to Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer
interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,
went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he would
turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled a la
grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame. She
did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked simply,
merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing his
arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling, as
he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as a
crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with Pierre, with
fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's beauty and love.
And if anyone came into his room at such moments he was particularly
cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.

"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say, "little
Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold."

"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly
to his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he must
wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That is what
follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child who needs
fresh air should remain at home," he would add with extreme logic, as
if punishing someone for those secret illogical emotions that stirred
within him.

At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work dries
men up.





CHAPTER IV


Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time
when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his
reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That same
August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his leg, and
remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every day and no
one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being prepared that
so agitated society--abolishing court ranks and introducing
examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate Assessor and State
Councilor--and not merely these but a whole state constitution,
intended to change the existing order of government in Russia: legal,
administrative, and financial, from the Council of State down to the
district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams with which the
Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he had tried to put
into effect with the aid of his associates, Czartoryski, Novosiltsev,
Kochubey, and Strogonov--whom he himself in jest had called his Comite
de salut public--were taking shape and being realized.

Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side, and
Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew, as a
gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a levee. The
Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with a single word.
It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he was antipathetic
to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his face and personality
generally, and in the cold, repellent glance the Emperor gave him, he
now found further confirmation of this surmise. The courtiers explained
the Emperor's neglect of him by His Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonski's
not having served since 1805.

"I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and antipathies,"
thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present my proposal for
the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor personally, but the
project will speak for itself."

He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend of
his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him, received
him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few days later
Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see the Minister of
War, Count Arakcheev.


On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting
room at nine in the morning.

He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he had
heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.

"He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not
concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been commissioned
to consider my project, so he alone can get it adopted," thought Prince
Andrew as he waited among a number of important and unimportant people
in Count Arakcheev's waiting room.

During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen the
anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such rooms
were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a special
character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting their turn for
an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the faces of those of
higher rank expressed a common feeling of awkwardness, covered by a mask
of unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and the person
for whom they were waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down,
others whispered and laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname "Sila
Andreevich" and the words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in reference
to Count Arakcheev. One general (an important personage), evidently
feeling offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing
his legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.

But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all
faces--that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the
adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look and
was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others had
been shown in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on duty,
an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and frightened
air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer's audience lasted
a long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a harsh voice was heard
from the other side of the door, and the officer--with pale face and
trembling lips--came out and passed through the waiting room, clutching
his head.

After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer on
duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window."

Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man of
forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep wrinkles,
scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an overhanging red
nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without looking at him.

"What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev.

"I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew quietly.

Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him.

"Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?"

"I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has
deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..."

"You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted Arakcheev,
uttering only the first words amiably and then--again without looking
at Prince Andrew--relapsing gradually into a tone of grumbling contempt.
"You are proposing new military laws? There are many laws but no one to
carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody designs laws, it is easier
writing than doing."

"I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your excellency
how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have presented," said
Prince Andrew politely.

"I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to the
committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and taking a
paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to Prince Andrew.

Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,
misspelled, and without punctuation: "Unsoundly constructed because
resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the Articles
of War needlessly deviating."

"To what committee has the memorandum been referred?" inquired Prince
Andrew.

"To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that your
honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary."

Prince Andrew smiled.

"I don't want one."

"A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the honor...
Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing to Prince
Andrew.





CHAPTER V


While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the committee
Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances, particularly those he
knew to be in power and whose aid he might need. In Petersburg he now
experienced the same feeling he had had on the eve of a battle, when
troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly attracted to the ruling
circles where the future, on which the fate of millions depended, was
being shaped. From the irritation of the older men, the curiosity of the
uninitiated, the reserve of the initiated, the hurry and preoccupation
of everyone, and the innumerable committees and commissions of whose
existence he learned every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in
Petersburg a vast civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in
chief of which was a mysterious person he did not know, but who
was supposed to be a man of genius--Speranski. And this movement of
reconstruction of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski
its chief promoter, began to interest him so keenly that the question
of the army regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his
consciousness.

Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception in the
highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The reforming
party cordially welcomed and courted him, in the first place because
he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly because by
liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of being a liberal.
The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured the innovations,
turned to him expecting his sympathy in their disapproval of the
reforms, simply because he was the son of his father. The feminine
society world welcomed him gladly, because he was rich, distinguished, a
good match, and almost a newcomer, with a halo of romance on account
of his supposed death and the tragic loss of his wife. Besides this
the general opinion of all who had known him previously was that he had
greatly improved during these last five years, having softened and grown
more manly, lost his former affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony,
and acquired the serenity that comes with years. People talked about
him, were interested in him, and wanted to meet him.

The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew spent
the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his interview with
Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that nickname with the
same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the Minister of War's
anteroom).

"Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael Mikhaylovich
Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He has promised to
come this evening."

"What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince
Andrew.

Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's
simplicity.

"We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey continued,
"and about your freed plowmen."

"Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old man of
Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski.

"It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince
Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old man
uselessly.

"Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey.

"There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow the
land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult to
rule.... Just the same as now--I ask you, Count--who will be heads of
the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?"

"Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey, crossing
his legs and glancing round.

"Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a
priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?"

"Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general, but..."

Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the arm,
and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a large open
forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness, who was
just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with a cross
suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It was Speranski.
Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a throb within him, as
happens at critical moments of life. Whether it was from respect, envy,
or anticipation, he did not know. Speranski's whole figure was of a
peculiar type that made him easily recognizable. In the society in which
Prince Andrew lived he had never seen anyone who together with awkward
and clumsy gestures possessed such calmness and self-assurance; he
had never seen so resolute yet gentle an expression as that in those
half-closed, rather humid eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed
nothing; nor had he heard such a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all
he had never seen such delicate whiteness of face or hands--hands which
were broad, but very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness and softness
Prince Andrew had only seen on the faces of soldiers who had been long
in hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the
Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once met and
talked with Napoleon.

Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as people
involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no hurry to
speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be listened to, and
he looked only at the person with whom he was conversing.

Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with
particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men
who judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting
anyone new--especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by
reputation--expected to discover in him the perfection of human
qualities.

Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come sooner
as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that the Emperor
had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation of modesty.
When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly turned his eyes
to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at him in silence.

"I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as
everyone has," he said after a pause.

Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given
Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.

"The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and
syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused
at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to
co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable."

A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked
about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.

Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every movement
of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant divinity
student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands--those plump
white hands--the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the
extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered
the old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an
immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud, Speranski
smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or disadvantage of
what pleased the sovereign.

Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski rose
and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of the
room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest himself in
Bolkonski.

"I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated
conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said
with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile that he
and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the people with whom
he had just been talking. This flattered Prince Andrew. "I have known of
you for a long time: first from your action with regard to your serfs,
a first example, of which it is very desirable that there should be more
imitators; and secondly because you are one of those gentlemen of the
chamber who have not considered themselves offended by the new decree
concerning the ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much
gossip and tittle-tattle."

"No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take advantage
of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade."

"Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above our
contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely reestablishes
natural justice."

"I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground," returned
Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of which he began
to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in everything and
felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke easily and well,
he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now while talking with
Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing the famous man's
personality.

"Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly.

"And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew.

"What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes.

"I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his idea
that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait incontestable.
Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me paraissent etre des
moyens de soutenir ce sentiment." *


     * "The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me
     incontestable. Certain rights and privileges for the
     aristocracy appear to me a means of maintaining that
     sentiment."


The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much improved
by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested him.

"Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue," * he began,
pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower
than in Russian but quite calmly.


    * "If you regard the question from that point of view."


Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honeur, cannot be upheld by
privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either a
negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a source of
emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which recognize it.
His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.

"An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one similar
to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not harmful
but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class or court
privilege."

"I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court privileges
have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every courtier
considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily."

"Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince," said
Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably an
argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will do
me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will, after
talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you, and shall
also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you."

Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and
trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.





CHAPTER VI


During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew felt the
whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of seclusion quite
overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed him in that city.

On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook four
or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The mechanism
of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time everywhere,
absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did nothing, did
not even think or find time to think, but only talked, and talked
successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.

He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the same
remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy for
whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was thinking
of nothing.

As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski produced
a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when he
received him tete-a-tate at his own house and talked to him long and
confidentially.

To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and insignificant
creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the living ideal of that
perfection toward which he strove, that he readily believed that in
Speranski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous
man. Had Speranski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed
the same breeding and traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered
his weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and
logical turn of mind inspired him with respect all the more because he
did not quite understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he
appreciated the other's capacity or because he considered it necessary
to win him to his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness
before Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which
goes hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption
that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of
understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the reasonableness
and profundity of one's own ideas.

During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski more than
once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the common level of
rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the wolves to be fed
and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot understand this..." and
all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you and I, understand what they
are and who we are."

This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in Prince
Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first meeting.
He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast intellect who by
his energy and persistence had attained power, which he was using solely
for the welfare of Russia. In Prince Andrew's eyes Speranski was the man
he would himself have wished to be--one who explained all the facts of
life reasonably, considered important only what was rational, and was
capable of applying the standard of reason to everything. Everything
seemed so simple and clear in Speranski's exposition that Prince Andrew
involuntarily agreed with him about everything. If he replied and
argued, it was only because he wished to maintain his independence and
not submit to Speranski's opinions entirely. Everything was right and
everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince
Andrew. This was Speranski's cold, mirrorlike look, which did not allow
one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands, which Prince
Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the hands of those who
possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those delicate hands irritated
Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was unpleasantly struck, too, by the
excessive contempt for others that he observed in Speranski, and by the
diversity of lines of argument he used to support his opinions. He
made use of every kind of mental device, except analogy, and passed too
boldly, it seemed to Prince Andrew, from one to another. Now he would
take up the position of a practical man and condemn dreamers; now that
of a satirist, and laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely
logical, or suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last
resource was one he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a
question to metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time,
and thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again
descend to the level of the original discussion.

In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince Andrew
most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and authority
of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur to him
which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is after all
impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had never felt the
doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And it was just this
peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly attracted Prince
Andrew.

During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a
passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt for
Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village priest, and
that stupid people might meanly despise him on account of his humble
origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to cherish his
sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to strengthen it.

On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the
Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him
sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and fifty
years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that Rosenkampf
had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the different codes.

"And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent," said he.
"We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have no laws.
That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to serve in these
times!"

Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in jurisprudence was
needed which he did not possess.

"But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious circle
from which we must break a way out."

A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army
Regulations and--what he had not at all expected--was chairman of a
section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At Speranski's
request he took the first part of the Civil Code that was being drawn up
and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the Institutes of Justinian,
he worked at formulating the section on Personal Rights.





CHAPTER VII


Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to Petersburg
after visiting his estates had involuntarily found himself in a leading
position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He arranged dining and funeral
lodge meetings, enrolled new members, and busied himself uniting various
lodges and acquiring authentic charters. He gave money for the erection
of temples and supplemented as far as he could the collection of alms,
in regard to which the majority of members were stingy and irregular.
He supported almost singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in
Petersburg.

His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations and
dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he considered
it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations of the
bachelor circles in which he moved.

Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre at
the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to rest
upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under him.
At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under him the
closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had joined
the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who confidently
steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his foot down it
sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness of the ground, he put
his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in it, and
involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.

Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg--he had of late stood aside
from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost entirely in
Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew in ordinary
life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely as Brothers in
Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D., whom he knew in
society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under the Masonic aprons
and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at which they aimed in
ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and reckoning up twenty
to thirty rubles received for the most part in promises from a dozen
members, of whom half were as well able to pay as himself, Pierre
remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother promised to devote
all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on which he tried not to
dwell arose in his soul.

He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first he
put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the lodges
or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the mystical
science of the order: with questions of the threefold designation of
God, the three primordial elements--sulphur, mercury, and salt--or
the meaning of the square and all the various figures of the temple of
Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to which the elder ones
chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought, Joseph Alexeevich himself,
but he did not share their interests. His heart was not in the mystical
aspect of Freemasonry.

In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like him,
seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a straight
and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.

In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority) who saw
nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and ceremonies, and prized
the strict performance of these forms without troubling about their
purport or significance. Such were Willarski and even the Grand Master
of the principal lodge.

Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,
particularly those who had lately joined. These according to Pierre's
observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor desire for
anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate with the wealthy
young Brothers who were influential through their connections or rank,
and of whom there were very many in the lodge.

Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing. Freemasonry,
at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him based merely
on externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry itself, but
suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path and deviated
from its original principles. And so toward the end of the year he went
abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the order.

In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our Freemasons knew
from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov had obtained the
confidence of many highly placed persons, had been initiated into many
mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade, and was bringing back with
him much that might conduce to the advantage of the Masonic cause
in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons all came to see him, tried to
ingratiate themselves with him, and it seemed to them all that he was
preparing something for them and concealing it.

A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened, at
which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers what
he had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their order. The
meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre rose and began
his address.

"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written
speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries in
the seclusion of our lodge--we must act--act! We are drowsing, but we
must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.

"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph
of virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse
principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the
education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the
wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity, and
folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by unity
of purpose and possessed of authority and power.

"To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over vice
and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this world,
receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great endeavors we
are gravely hampered by the political institutions of today. What is
to be done in these circumstances? To favor revolutions, overthrow
everything, repel force by force?... No! We are very far from that.
Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy
evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no
violence.

"The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of preparing
men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of conviction--aiming
at the punishment of vice and folly, and patronizing talent and virtue:
raising worthy men from the dust and attaching them to our Brotherhood.
Only then will our order have the power unobtrusively to bind the hands
of the protectors of disorder and to control them without their being
aware of it. In a word, we must found a form of government holding
universal sway, which should be diffused over the whole world without
destroying the bonds of citizenship, and beside which all other
governments can continue in their customary course and do everything
except what impedes the great aim of our order, which is to obtain for
virtue the victory over vice. This aim was that of Christianity itself.
It taught men to be wise and good and for their own benefit to follow
the example and instruction of the best and wisest men.

"At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching alone
was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her with
special strength, but now we need much more powerful methods. It is
now necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in virtue
a charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate the
passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it is
therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his passions
within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means to that end.

"As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state,
each of them again training two others and all being closely united,
everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret
accomplished much for the welfare of mankind."

This speech not only made a strong impression, but created excitement in
the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it dangerous designs
of Illuminism, * met it with a coldness that surprised Pierre. The Grand
Master began answering him, and Pierre began developing his views with
more and more warmth. It was long since there had been so stormy a
meeting. Parties were formed, some accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others
supporting him. At that meeting he was struck for the first time by
the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever
presenting itself identically to two persons. Even those members
who seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way with
limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as what he always
wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as he himself
understood it.


     * The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for
     monarchical institutions.


At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will
reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue
alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.
Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would
be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for the
usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.





CHAPTER VIII


Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For three
days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a sofa at
home receiving no one and going nowhere.

It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who implored
him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and how she
wished to devote her whole life to him.

At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she would
return to Petersburg from abroad.

Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre respected
less than the others forced his way in to see him and, turning the
conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way of fraternal
advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his wife was wrong
and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of Freemasonry by not
forgiving the penitent.

At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to
him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a most
important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy against him and
that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and in the mood he then
was, this was not even unpleasant to him. Nothing mattered to him.
Nothing in life seemed to him of much importance, and under the
influence of the depression that possessed him he valued neither his
liberty nor his resolution to punish his wife.

"No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to blame," he
thought.

If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife, it
was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to take
any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned her away.
Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of indifference
whether he lived with his wife or not?

Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre late
one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see Joseph
Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary:


Moscow, 17th November

I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down what
I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has for three
years been suffering from a painful disease of the bladder. No one has
ever heard him utter a groan or a word of complaint. From morning till
late at night, except when he eats his very plain food, he is working
at science. He received me graciously and made me sit down on the bed
on which he lay. I made the sign of the Knights of the East and of
Jerusalem, and he responded in the same manner, asking me with a mild
smile what I had learned and gained in the Prussian and Scottish lodges.
I told him everything as best I could, and told him what I had proposed
to our Petersburg lodge, of the bad reception I had encountered, and of
my rupture with the Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich, having remained silent
and thoughtful for a good while, told me his view of the matter, which
at once lit up for me my whole past and the future path I should follow.
He surprised me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of
the order: (1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The
purification and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The
improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which
is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and
self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently
of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the
greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of
this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our
impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of
the human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and
profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is
attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground
Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in the
depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs he
said to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you, lies in
perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the difficulties
of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on the contrary,
my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares that we can attain
our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge--for man can only know himself
by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can only be attained by
conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief virtue--love of death.
Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its vanity and develop our
innate love of death or of rebirth to a new life." These words are all
the more remarkable because, in spite of his great physical sufferings,
Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of life though he loves death, for
which--in spite of the purity and loftiness of his inner man--he does
not yet feel himself sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained
to me fully the meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out
to me that the numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He
advised me not to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but
to take up only second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while
diverting the Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path
self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for
myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that end
he gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which I will
in future note down all my actions.


Petersburg, 23rd November

I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears and
said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her; that she
was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I knew that if
I once let myself see her I should not have strength to go on refusing
what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know whose aid and advice
to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would have told me what to do.
I went to my room and reread Joseph Alexeevich's letters and recalled
my conversations with him, and deduced from it all that I ought not
to refuse a suppliant, and ought to reach a helping hand to
everyone--especially to one so closely bound to me--and that I must bear
my cross. But if I forgive her for the sake of doing right, then let
union with her have only a spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and
what I wrote to Joseph Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her to
forget the past, to forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and
that I had nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need
not know how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on the
upper floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of
regeneration.





CHAPTER IX


At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at court
and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each with its
own particular tone. The largest of these was the French circle of the
Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev and Caulaincourt.
In this group Helene, as soon as she had settled in Petersburg with her
husband, took a very prominent place. She was visited by the members of
the French embassy and by many belonging to that circle and noted for
their intellect and polished manners.

Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the Emperors
and had brought from there these connections with the Napoleonic
notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant. Napoleon himself
had noticed her in the theater and said of her: "C'est un superbe
animal." * Her success as a beautiful and elegant woman did not surprise
Pierre, for she had become even handsomer than before. What did surprise
him was that during these last two years his wife had succeeded in
gaining the reputation "d' une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle que
belle." *(2) The distinguished Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page
letters. Bilibin saved up his epigrams to produce them in Countess
Bezukhova's presence. To be received in the Countess Bezukhova's salon
was regarded as a diploma of intellect. Young men read books before
attending Helene's evenings, to have something to say in her salon, and
secretaries of the embassy, and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic
secrets to her, so that in a way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew
she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of
perplexity and fear, her evenings and dinner parties, where politics,
poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At these parties his feelings
were like those of a conjuror who always expects his trick to be found
out at any moment. But whether because stupidity was just what was
needed to run such a salon, or because those who were deceived found
pleasure in the deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene
Bezukhova's reputation as a lovely and clever woman became so firmly
established that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and
everybody would go into raptures over every word of hers and look for a
profound meaning in it of which she herself had no conception.


     * "That's a superb animal."

     * (2) "Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely."


Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He was
that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no one's
way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general impression of the
drawing room, he served, by the contrast he presented to her, as an
advantageous background to his elegant and tactful wife. Pierre during
the last two years, as a result of his continual absorption in abstract
interests and his sincere contempt for all else, had acquired in his
wife's circle, which did not interest him, that air of unconcern,
indifference, and benevolence toward all, which cannot be acquired
artificially and therefore inspires involuntary respect. He entered
his wife's drawing room as one enters a theater, was acquainted with
everybody, equally pleased to see everyone, and equally indifferent to
them all. Sometimes he joined in a conversation which interested him
and, regardless of whether any "gentlemen of the embassy" were present
or not, lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all
in accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion
concerning the queer husband of "the most distinguished woman in
Petersburg" was so well established that no one took his freaks
seriously.

Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris
Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was
the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's return
from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated him like a
child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but sometimes
that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris behaved with a
particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of deference also
disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three years before
from the mortification to which his wife had subjected him that he now
protected himself from the danger of its repetition, first by not being
a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing himself to suspect.

"No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally renounced
her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has never been
an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs of the
heart"--a statement which, though gathered from an unknown source, he
believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence in his wife's
drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a physical effect upon
Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed the unconsciousness and
freedom of his movements.

"What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like him very
much."

In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather blind
and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who did
nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured fellow. But
a complex and difficult process of internal development was taking place
all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him and causing him
many spiritual doubts and joys.





CHAPTER X


Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it during
that time:


24th November

Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. (By Joseph
Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state and
served on one of the committees.) Returned home for dinner and dined
alone--the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and drank
moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the Brothers.
In the evening I went down to the countess and told a funny story about
B., and only remembered that I ought not to have done so when everybody
laughed loudly at it.

I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me to
walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and deliberation,
(2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion, (3) to withdraw
from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the state, (b) family
duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the management of my affairs.


27th November

I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,
help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the Scriptures,
but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we talked about
worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new projects. I began to
criticize them, but remembered my rules and my benefactor's words--that
a true Freemason should be a zealous worker for the state when his aid
is required and a quiet onlooker when not called on to assist. My tongue
is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O. visited me and we had a preliminary
talk about the reception of a new Brother. They laid on me the duty of
Rhetor. I feel myself weak and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the
interpretation of the seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven
sciences, the seven virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the
Holy Spirit. Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission
took place. The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the
magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was admitted.
I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling agitated me all
the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I caught myself
harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I vainly tried to
overcome. That is why I should really like to save him from evil and
lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of him did not leave
me. It seemed to me that his object in entering the Brotherhood was
merely to be intimate and in favor with members of our lodge. Apart
from the fact that he had asked me several times whether N. and S. were
members of our lodge (a question to which I could not reply) and that
according to my observation he is incapable of feeling respect for our
holy order and is too preoccupied and satisfied with the outer man to
desire spiritual improvement, I had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed
to me insincere, and all the time I stood alone with him in the dark
temple it seemed to me that he was smiling contemptuously at my words,
and I wished really to stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it.
I could not be eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the
Brothers and to the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to
find the true path out of the labyrinth of lies!


 After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then
the following was written:


I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who
advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was
revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim
is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name unutterable
which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen, refresh, and
support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt has no place.
The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane science and our
sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human sciences dissect
everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to examine it. In the
holy science of our order all is one, all is known in its entirety and
life. The Trinity--the three elements of matter--are sulphur, mercury,
and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and fiery nature; in combination with
salt by its fiery nature it arouses a desire in the latter by means
of which it attracts mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination
produces other bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence.
Christ, the Holy Spirit, Him!...


3rd December

Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went and
paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but instead my
imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago, when Dolokhov,
meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I was enjoying
perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At the time I gave
him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that meeting and in my
mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter replies. I recollected
myself and drove away that thought only when I found myself glowing with
anger, but I did not sufficiently repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy
came and began relating various adventures. His coming vexed me from the
first, and I said something disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared
up and said much that was unpleasant and even rude to him. He became
silent, and I recollected myself only when it was too late. My God, I
cannot get on with him at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set
myself above him and so become much worse than he, for he is lenient
to my rudeness while I on the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God,
grant that in his presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave
so that he too may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was
drowsing off I clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, "Thy day!"

I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded by
dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my left
thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it with
my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger one, began
biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the bigger and
heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking my arm, led
me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a narrow plank.
I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to clamber up a
fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After much effort I
dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one side and my body on
the other. I looked round and saw Brother A. standing on the fence and
pointing me to a broad avenue and garden, and in the garden was a large
and beautiful building. I woke up. O Lord, great Architect of Nature,
help me to tear from myself these dogs--my passions especially the last,
which unites in itself the strength of all the former ones, and aid me
to enter that temple of virtue to a vision of which I attained in my
dream.


7th December

I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I
was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered
incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this could
not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace him. But
as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and grown young,
and he was quietly telling me something about the teaching of our order,
but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it seemed that we all left
the room and something strange happened. We were sitting or lying on
the floor. He was telling me something, and I wished to show him my
sensibility, and not listening to what he was saying I began picturing
to myself the condition of my inner man and the grace of God sanctifying
me. And tears came into my eyes, and I was glad he noticed this. But he
looked at me with vexation and jumped up, breaking off his remarks. I
felt abashed and asked whether what he had been saying did not concern
me; but he did not reply, gave me a kind look, and then we suddenly
found ourselves in my bedroom where there is a double bed. He lay down
on the edge of it and I burned with longing to caress him and lie down
too. And he said, "Tell me frankly what is your chief temptation? Do
you know it? I think you know it already." Abashed by this question,
I replied that sloth was my chief temptation. He shook his head
incredulously; and even more abashed, I said that though I was living
with my wife as he advised, I was not living with her as her husband. To
this he replied that one should not deprive a wife of one's embraces and
gave me to understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should
be ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and
found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life was the light of
men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it
not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and bright. That day I
received a letter from my benefactor in which he wrote about "conjugal
duties."


9th December

I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw that
I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and Joseph
Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at once that
the process of regeneration had already taken place in him, and I rushed
to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands, and he said, "Hast
thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked at him, still holding
him in my arms, and saw that his face was young, but that he had no hair
on his head and his features were quite changed. And I said, "I should
have known you had I met you by chance," and I thought to myself, "Am I
telling the truth?" And suddenly I saw him lying like a dead body; then
he gradually recovered and went with me into my study carrying a large
book of sheets of drawing paper; I said, "I drew that," and he answered
by bowing his head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there
were excellent drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings
represented the love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on
its pages I saw a beautiful representation of a maiden in transparent
garments and with a transparent body, flying up to the clouds. And I
seemed to know that this maiden was nothing else than a representation
of the Song of Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt
that I was doing wrong, but could not tear myself away from them. Lord,
help me! My God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but
if I am myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of
my debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!





CHAPTER XI


The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two years they
had spent in the country.

Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was still
serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending comparatively little,
the way of life at Otradnoe--Mitenka's management of affairs, in
particular--was such that the debts inevitably increased every year. The
only resource obviously presenting itself to the old count was to apply
for an official post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one and
also, as he said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last time.

Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was
accepted.

Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without
themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of
acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they were
provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow without
inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.

The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in Moscow,
and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country neighbors from
Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters, Peronskaya a
maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their district postmaster
who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the men who very soon
became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in Petersburg were Boris,
Pierre whom the count had met in the street and dragged home with
him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs' and paid the eldest
daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young man pays when he intends
to propose.

Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at
Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He
narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air that
everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he had
obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.

In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had picked
up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp standing near
the commander in chief and had taken it to his commander. Just as he had
done after Austerlitz, he related this occurrence at such length and
so insistently that everyone again believed it had been necessary to do
this, and he received two decorations for the Finnish war also. In
1809 he was a captain in the Guards, wore medals, and held some special
lucrative posts in Petersburg.

Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not be
denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent terms
with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant career before
him and an assured position in society.

Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a Moscow
theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had said in
German, "das soll mein Weib werden," * and from that moment had made up
his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered the Rostovs'
position and his own, he decided that the time had come to propose.


    * "That girl shall be my wife."


Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not
flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an obscure
Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess Rostova; but
Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good natured egotism
that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it would be a good thing,
since he himself was so firmly convinced that it was good, indeed
excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were seriously embarrassed, as
the suitor could not but know; and above all, Vera was twenty-four, had
been taken out everywhere, and though she was certainly good-looking
and sensible, no one up to now had proposed to her. So they gave their
consent.

"You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only
because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered
it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if it
were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and mamma
are now provided for--I have arranged that rent for them in the Baltic
Provinces--and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with her fortune
and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not marrying for
money--I consider that dishonorable--but a wife should bring her
share and a husband his. I have my position in the service, she has
connections and some means. In our times that is worth something, isn't
it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable girl, and she loves
me..."

Berg blushed and smiled.

"And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good.
Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite
different--an unpleasant character and has not the same intelligence.
She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But my fiancee!... Well, you
will be coming," he was going to say, "to dine," but changed his mind
and said "to take tea with us," and quickly doubling up his tongue he
blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke, perfectly embodying his dream
of happiness.

After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by Berg's
proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times took
possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and insincere.
In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain awkwardness and
constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not having loved Vera
sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off their hands. The old
count felt this most. He would probably have been unable to state
the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from the state of his
affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what his debts amounted
to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his daughters were born
he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an estate with three
hundred serfs; but one of these estates had already been sold, and the
other was mortgaged and the interest so much in arrears that it would
have to be sold, so that it was impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had
he any money.

Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained before
the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own mind the
question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At one time the
count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of selling a forest, at
another time of borrowing money on a note of hand. A few days before
the wedding Berg entered the count's study early one morning and, with
a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his future father-in-law to let him
know what Vera's dowry would be. The count was so disconcerted by this
long-foreseen inquiry that without consideration he gave the first reply
that came into his head. "I like your being businesslike about it.... I
like it. You shall be satisfied...."

And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the
conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did not
know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at least
part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters off.

"Because, consider, Count--if I allowed myself to marry now without
having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be acting badly...."

The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and to
avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand
for eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on the
shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was impossible
for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty thousand in
ready money. "Or at least twenty thousand, Count," he added, "and then a
note of hand for only sixty thousand."

"Yes, yes, all right!" said the count hurriedly. "Only excuse me, my
dear fellow, I'll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for eighty
thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me."





CHAPTER XII


Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which she
had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four years
ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her mother, if
Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of that
episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not worth
mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question whether
her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding promise
tormented her.

Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had not seen the
Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed near
Otradnoe, but had never been to see them.

Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he did not wish to see her, and
this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders spoke
of him.

"Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say when
Boris was mentioned.

Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently, seemed
to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke rapturously
and gratefully of the merits of her son and the brilliant career on
which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to Petersburg Boris called
on them.

He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was his
most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of letting
her and her parents feel that the childish relations between himself and
Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He had a brilliant
position in society thanks to his intimacy with Countess Bezukhova,
a brilliant position in the service thanks to the patronage of an
important personage whose complete confidence he enjoyed, and he was
beginning to make plans for marrying one of the richest heiresses in
Petersburg, plans which might very easily be realized. When he entered
the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her own room. When she heard
of his arrival she almost ran into the drawing room, flushed and beaming
with a more than cordial smile.

Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining from
under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had known her
four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a different
Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This
expression on his face pleased Natasha.

"Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the
countess.

Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the
change in her.

"How handsome you have grown!"

"I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes.

"And is Papa older?" she asked.

Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with the
countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He felt
the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced at her
occasionally.

Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were all
comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at once.
He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess, arranging
with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his left hand
like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined compression of his
lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg society, recalling
with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow acquaintances. It was
not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded, when speaking of the
highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he had attended, and to
invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.

All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under her
brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He looked
round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he was saying.
He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and took his leave. The
same inquisitive, challenging, and rather mocking eyes still looked at
him. After his first visit Boris said to himself that Natasha attracted
him just as much as ever, but that he must not yield to that feeling,
because to marry her, a girl almost without fortune, would mean ruin to
his career, while to renew their former relations without intending to
marry her would be dishonorable. Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting
Natasha, but despite that resolution he called again a few days later
and began calling often and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It
seemed to him that he ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell
her that the old times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything...
she could not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never
let her marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about
entering on such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more
entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in love
with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him her
album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to the past,
letting it be understood how delightful was the present; and every day
he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and not
knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end. He
left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her every
day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.





CHAPTER XIII


One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,
without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing
under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and
bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also in
a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in
curlpapers, ran in. The countess--her prayerful mood dispelled--looked
round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be that
this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager, seeing
her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, and
unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing that
her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and, rapidly
slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her slippers and
jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might become her grave. This
couch was high, with a feather bed and five pillows each smaller than
the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank into the feather bed, rolled
over to the wall, and began snuggling up the bedclothes as she settled
down, raising her knees to her chin, kicking out and laughing almost
inaudibly, now covering herself up head and all, and now peeping at her
mother. The countess finished her prayers and came to the bed with a
stern face, but seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in
her kind, weak way.

"Now then, now then!" said she.

"Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on your
throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round the
neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her mother
Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that however
she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without hurting her
or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.

"Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her pillows
and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of times, had
settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her arms, and
assumed a serious expression.

These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from his
club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and daughter.

"What is it tonight?--But I have to tell you..."

Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth.

"About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have come
about. Don't say it--I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her hand.
"Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?"

"Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say Boris is
nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what then?...
What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his head, I can see
that...."

As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter. Natasha
was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the mahogany
sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the countess
only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her by its
peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.

Natasha was listening and considering.

"Well, what then?" said she.

"You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him? You
know you can't marry him."

"Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position.

"Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a relation...
and because you yourself don't love him."

"How do you know?"

"I know. It is not right, darling!"

 "But if I want to..." said Natasha.

"Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess.

"But if I want to..."

"Natasha, I am in earnest..."

Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to
her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned it
over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between the
knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February, March,
April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!" said she,
turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her daughter and in
that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she had wished to say.

"It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this friendship
dating from your childish days, and to see him so intimate with you may
injure you in the eyes of other young men who visit us, and above all
it torments him for nothing. He may already have found a suitable and
wealthy match, and now he's half crazy."

"Crazy?" repeated Natasha.

"I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..."

"I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old."

"He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have a
talk with Boris. He need not come so often...."

"Why not, if he likes to?"

"Because I know it will end in nothing...."

"How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!" said
Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well, I
won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it." Natasha
smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just so," she added.

"How so, my pet?"

"Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so."

"Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she
went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.

"Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed!
You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she
seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little finger,
saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the other
hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think? Was
anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very, very
nice. Only not quite my taste--he is so narrow, like the dining-room
clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know--gray, light gray..."

"What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess.

Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would
understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is
square."

"You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing.

"No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue and
red.... How can I explain it to you?"

"Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door.
"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers, and
ran barefoot to her own room.

It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no one
could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.

"Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little kitten
with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's virtuous. She
fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know anything more. Even
Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how clever I am and how...
charming she is," she went on, speaking of herself in the third person,
and imagining it was some very wise man--the wisest and best of
men--who was saying it of her. "There is everything, everything in her,"
continued this man. "She is unusually intelligent, charming... and
then she is pretty, uncommonly pretty, and agile--she swims and rides
splendidly... and her voice! One can really say it's a wonderful voice!"

She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw herself
on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would immediately
fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the candle, and before
Dunyasha had left the room had already passed into yet another happier
world of dreams, where everything was as light and beautiful as in
reality, and even more so because it was different.


Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him, after
which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'.





CHAPTER XIV


On the thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, 1809 - 10 an old
grandee of Catherine's day was giving a ball and midnight supper. The
diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present.

The grandee's well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered with
innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit entrance
which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but dozens of
police officers and even the police master himself stood at the porch.
Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving, with red-liveried
footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the carriages emerged men
wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while ladies in satin and ermine
cautiously descended the carriage steps which were let down for them
with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize
at the entrance.

Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through the
crowd and caps were doffed.

"The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don't you see
the plumes?..." was whispered among the crowd.

One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone and
mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.

A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who were
to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.

There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in the
Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive, that the
dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be arranged as
it should be.

Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at the
court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the
countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high society,
was to accompany them to the ball.

They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten
o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were not
yet dressed.

Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight that
morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all day. All
her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring that they
all--she herself, Mamma, and Sonya--should be as well dressed as
possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in her hands. The
countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and the two girls
white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their bodices and their
hair dressed a la grecque.

Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks, and
ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the openwork
silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the
hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing dressing and so was
the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about helping them all, was
behindhand. She was still sitting before a looking-glass with a dressing
jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in
the middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her
dainty finger, was fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went
through it.

"That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha turning
her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the maid who
was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not right. Come
here!"

Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.

"Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was holding
Natasha's hair.

"Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya."

"Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice.

"Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?"

"I have only my cap to pin on."

"Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right."

"But it's already ten."

They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had
still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.

When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under which
her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket, ran up to
Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother. Turning her mother's
head this way and that, she fastened on the cap and, hurriedly kissing
her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were turning up the hem of her
skirt.

The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long. Two
maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of
thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the
countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer garment
up high on one uplifted hand.

"Mavra, quicker, darling!"

"Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..."

"Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door. "Here
is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting."

"It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze dress
with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as if by
this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of what she
held.

Natasha began putting on the dress.

"In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her father
as he opened the door--speaking from under the filmy skirt which still
covered her whole face.

Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in. He was
wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and was perfumed
and his hair pomaded.

"Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood in
the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.

"If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was
pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of her
mouth to the other with her tongue.

"Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she
looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long."

Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress was
too long.

"Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling on her
knees after her young lady.

"Well, if it's too long we'll take it up... we'll tack it up in one
minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck on
the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set to
work once more.

At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in her cap
and velvet gown.

"Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than any of
you!"

He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside fearing to
be rumpled.

"Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange it,"
and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up her skirt
could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn off.

"Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!"

"Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha.

"What a beauty--a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the door.
"And Sonya! They are lovely!"

At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and started.
But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.

Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she had
gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less flurry--for
to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was washed,
perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed behind her
ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing room in her
yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her old lady's maid
was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs' servants had been.

She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet, and
at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they settled
themselves in their carriages and drove off.





CHAPTER XV


Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not once
had time to think of what lay before her.

In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage, she
for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her there at
the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms--with music, flowers, dances,
the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of Petersburg. The
prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it would come true,
so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness and closeness of the
carriage. She understood all that awaited her only when, after stepping
over the red baize at the entrance, she entered the hall, took off her
fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in front of her mother, mounted the
brightly illuminated stairs between the flowers. Only then did she
remember how she must behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic
air she considered indispensable for a girl on such an occasion. But,
fortunately for her, she felt her eyes growing misty, she saw nothing
clearly, her pulse beat a hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed
at her heart. She could not assume that pose, which would have made her
ridiculous, and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying
with all her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that
became her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering,
also talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the
landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with
diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.

Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her reflection
from the others. All was blended into one brilliant procession.
On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices, footsteps, and
greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter dazzled her still
more. The host and hostess, who had already been standing at the door
for half an hour repeating the same words to the various arrivals,
"Charme de vous voir," * greeted the Rostovs and Peronskaya in the same
manner.


    * "Delighted to see you."


The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her black
hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye involuntarily
rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and gave her alone
a special smile in addition to her usual smile as hostess. Looking at
her she may have recalled the golden, irrecoverable days of her own
girlhood and her own first ball. The host also followed Natasha with his
eyes and asked the count which was his daughter.

"Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.

In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting
the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front rows of
that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were asking about
her and looking at her. She realized that those noticing her liked her,
and this observation helped to calm her.

"There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought.

Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important people at
the ball.

"That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man," she
said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray curly hair,
who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he said.

"Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said
Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She
is quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay
court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince--is quite mad
about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even more
run after."

She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very plain
daughter.

"She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And look,
here come her suitors."

"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating a
handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head erect,
looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's handsome,
isn't he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl. But your cousin,
Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say she has millions. Oh
yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she replied to the countess'
inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he were a king! All the same,
the French are charming, very charming. No one more charming in society.
Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still the most beautiful of them all, our
Marya Antonovna! And how simply she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout
one in spectacles is the universal Freemason," she went on, indicating
Pierre. "Put him beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!"

Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the crowd
and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly as if he
were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through, evidently
looking for someone.

Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the buffoon,"
as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for them, and
for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and introduce
partners to her.

But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, dark
man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a window
talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at once
recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it was
Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger, happier, and
better-looking.

"There's someone else we know--Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said
Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a night
with us at Otradnoe."

"Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a
present la pluie et le beau temps. * He's too proud for anything. Takes
after his father. And he's hand in glove with Speranski, writing some
project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There's one
talking to him and he has turned away," she said, pointing at him. "I'd
give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies."


    * "He is all the rage just now."





CHAPTER XVI


Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and then
back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor entered to
the sounds of music that had immediately struck up. Behind him walked
his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing to right and left
as if anxious to get the first moments of the reception over. The band
played the polonaise in vogue at that time on account of the words that
had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander, Elisaveta, all our hearts you
ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on to the drawing room, the crowd
made a rush for the doors, and several persons with excited faces
hurried there and back again. Then the crowd hastily retired from
the drawing-room door, at which the Emperor reappeared talking to the
hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies,
asking them to move aside. Some ladies, with faces betraying complete
forgetfulness of all the rules of decorum, pushed forward to the
detriment of their toilets. The men began to choose partners and take
their places for the polonaise.

Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing
room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the
music. The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came
ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya diligently
named. More than half the ladies already had partners and were taking
up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the polonaise. Natasha
felt that she would be left with her mother and Sonya among a minority
of women who crowded near the wall, not having been invited to dance.
She stood with her slender arms hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom
rising and falling regularly, and with bated breath and glittering,
frightened eyes gazed straight before her, evidently prepared for the
height of joy or misery. She was not concerned about the Emperor or any
of those great people whom Peronskaya was pointing out--she had but one
thought: "Is it possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among
the first to dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will
notice me? They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as
if they were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth
looking at her!' No, it's impossible," she thought. "They must know
how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would enjoy
dancing with me."

The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable
time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears. She
wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the other end
of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by themselves
as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of strangers, with no one
interested in them and not wanted by anyone. Prince Andrew with a lady
passed by, evidently not recognizing them. The handsome Anatole was
smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and looked at Natasha as one
looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice and each time turned away. Berg
and his wife, who were not dancing, came up to them.

This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha--as if there were
nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did not
listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her own
green dress.

At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced
with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the
Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they
were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the
distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The Emperor
looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had yet begun
dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went up to Countess
Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly raised her hand and laid
it on his shoulder without looking at him. The aide-de-camp, an adept
in his art, grasping his partner firmly round her waist, with confident
deliberation started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of the
circle, then at the corner of the room he caught Helene's left hand
and turned her, the only sound audible, apart from the ever-quickening
music, being the rhythmic click of the spurs on his rapid, agile feet,
while at every third beat his partner's velvet dress spread out and
seemed to flash as she whirled round. Natasha gazed at them and was
ready to cry because it was not she who was dancing that first turn of
the waltz.

Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing
stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in the
front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff was
talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State to be
held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with Speranski
and participating in the work of the legislative commission, could give
reliable information about that sitting, concerning which various rumors
were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was saying, he was
gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men intending to dance who
had not yet gathered courage to enter the circle.

Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's presence,
and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to dance.

Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.

"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask her,"
he said.

"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to the
baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere--at a ball one
must dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated. The
despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his eye.
He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her debut,
remembered her conversation at the window, and with an expression of
pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.

"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess, with
heightened color.

"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess
remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite
belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching Natasha
he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed his
invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly
brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.

"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little girl
seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as she
raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the second couple
to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers of his
day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their white satin
dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly, and independently of
herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic happiness. Her slender bare
arms and neck were not beautiful--compared to Helene's her shoulders
looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But Helene seemed, as it were,
hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had scanned
her person, while Natasha was like a girl exposed for the first time,
who would have felt very much ashamed had she not been assured that this
was absolutely necessary.

Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as
possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed
to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he disliked,
caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had chosen Natasha
because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she was the first
pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he embraced that
slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close to him and smiling
so near him than the wine of her charm rose to his head, and he
felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after leaving her he stood
breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.





CHAPTER XVII


After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for a dance, and then
the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young men,
so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous partners to
Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She noticed and saw
nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did she fail to notice
that the Emperor talked a long time with the French ambassador, and how
particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or that Prince So-and-so
and So-and-so did and said this and that, and that Helene had great
success and was honored by the special attention of So-and-so, but she
did not even see the Emperor, and only noticed that he had gone because
the ball became livelier after his departure. For one of the merry
cotillions before supper Prince Andrew was again her partner. He
reminded her of their first encounter in the Otradnoe avenue, and how
she had been unable to sleep that moonlight night, and told her how he
had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha blushed at that recollection
and tried to excuse herself, as if there had been something to be
ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had overheard.

Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting
someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And such was
Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her
mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special care and
tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest and most
unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the middle of the
cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha, still out of
breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer chose her. She was
tired and panting and evidently thought of declining, but immediately
put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder, smiling at Prince Andrew.

"I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see how they
keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love everybody, and
you and I understand it all," and much, much more was said in her smile.
When her partner left her Natasha ran across the room to choose two
ladies for the figure.

"If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she will be
my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own surprise, as he
watched her. She did go first to her cousin.

"What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew, "but
what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original, that she
won't be dancing here a month before she will be married.... Such as
she are rare here," he thought, as Natasha, readjusting a rose that was
slipping on her bodice, settled herself beside him.

When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up to
the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and asked
his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not answer at
once but only looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: "How can
you ask such a question?"

"I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince
Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her
father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had
ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one becomes
completely kind and good and does not believe in the possibility of
evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.

At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the position
his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and absent-minded. A
deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing by a window he stared
over his spectacles seeing no one.

On her way to supper Natasha passed him.

Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of him.
She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of her own
happiness.

"How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?"

Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.

"Yes, I am very glad," he said.

"How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha.
"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes all
the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people,
loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another--and so
they ought all to be happy.





CHAPTER XVIII


Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not dwell
on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then... "Yes, that
little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh, original,
un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That was all he
thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea he set to
work.

But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for work
and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work, as he
often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.

The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented all
the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new ideas
and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger--one of those men
who choose their opinions like their clothes according to the fashion,
but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest partisans. Hardly
had he got rid of his hat before he ran into Prince Andrew's room with a
preoccupied air and at once began talking. He had just heard particulars
of that morning's sitting of the Council of State opened by the Emperor,
and he spoke of it enthusiastically. The Emperor's speech had been
extraordinary. It had been a speech such as only constitutional monarchs
deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said that the Council and Senate are
estates of the realm, he said that the government must rest not on
authority but on secure bases. The Emperor said that the fiscal system
must be reorganized and the accounts published," recounted Bitski,
emphasizing certain words and opening his eyes significantly.

"Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our
history," he concluded.

Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the Council of
State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which he had attached
such importance, and was surprised that this event, now that it had
taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite insignificant. He
listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic account of it. A very
simple thought occurred to him: "What does it matter to me or to Bitski
what the Emperor was pleased to say at the Council? Can all that make me
any happier or better?"

And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest Prince
Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to dine that
evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the host had said
when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the intimate home
circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested Prince
Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his domestic
surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.

At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house Speranski
owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room this small
house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a
monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly
gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already assembled at
five o'clock. There were no ladies present except Speranski's little
daughter (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The other
guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin. While still in the
anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato
laugh--a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone--it sounded like
Speranski--was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never
before heard Speranski's famous laugh, and this ringing, high pitched
laughter from a statesman made a strange impression on him.

He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing between two
windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres. Speranski, wearing
a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast, and evidently still
the same waistcoat and high white stock he had worn at the meeting of
the Council of State, stood at the table with a beaming countenance. His
guests surrounded him. Magnitski, addressing himself to Speranski, was
relating an anecdote, and Speranski was laughing in advance at what
Magnitski was going to say. When Prince Andrew entered the room
Magnitski's words were again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep
bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed
softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato
manner.

Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince Andrew.

"Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he went on,
turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have agreed that
this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about business!" and
turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.

Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment,
regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not
Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared
mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and
unattractive.

At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed to
consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before Magnitski
had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate something
still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the state
service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in this
company the insignificance of those people was so definitely accepted
that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good humored
ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning a deaf
dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so too.
Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable for the
stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering, broke into the
conversation and began excitedly talking of the abuses that existed
under the former order of things--threatening to give a serious turn
to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing Stolypin about his
vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and the talk reverted to its
former lively tone.

Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find amusement
in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his wish, tried
to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety seemed to Prince
Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's high-pitched voice struck
him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter grated on him like a false
note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and feared that he would be a damper
on the spirits of the company, but no one took any notice of his being
out of harmony with the general mood. They all seemed very gay.

He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his remarks were
tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the water, and he could
not jest with them.

There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was witty and
might have been funny, but it lacked just that something which is the
salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a thing existed.

After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He patted the
little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that gesture, too,
seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.

The men remained at table over their port--English fashion. In the midst
of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish affairs,
which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to express a
contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish to prevent
the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a story that had
no connection with the previous conversation. For a few moments all were
silent.

Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine and,
remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair," passed it
to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk loudly went
into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier were handed to
Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as he had left the room
the general merriment stopped and the guests began to converse sensibly
and quietly with one another.

"Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his study. "A
wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski immediately
assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses in French which
he had composed about various well-known Petersburg people. He was
interrupted several times by applause. When the verses were finished
Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his leave.

"Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski.

"I promised to go to a reception."

They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those mirrorlike,
impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of him to have
expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own activities
connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance to what
Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang in Prince
Andrew's ears long after he had left the house.

When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something new. He
recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of his project
of army reform, which had been accepted for consideration and which they
were trying to pass over in silence simply because another, a very poor
one, had already been prepared and submitted to the Emperor. He thought
of the meetings of a committee of which Berg was a member. He remembered
how carefully and at what length everything relating to form and
procedure was discussed at those meetings, and how sedulously and
promptly all that related to the gist of the business was evaded. He
recalled his labors on the Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had
translated the articles of the Roman and French codes into Russian,
and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself
Bogucharovo, his occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan;
he remembered the peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally
applying to them the Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he
felt astonished that he could have spent so much time on such useless
work.





CHAPTER XIX


Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited before,
and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed acquaintance
at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness which demanded the
call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl who had left such a
pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.

Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a dark-blue
house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier than in her
ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him as an old friend,
simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he had formerly judged
severely, now seemed to him to consist of excellent, simple, and kindly
people. The old count's hospitality and good nature, which struck one
especially in Petersburg as a pleasant surprise, were such that Prince
Andrew could not refuse to stay to dinner. "Yes," he thought, "they
are capital people, who of course have not the slightest idea what a
treasure they possess in Natasha; but they are kindly folk and form
the best possible setting for this strikingly poetic, charming girl,
overflowing with life!"

In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely
alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,
that in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had
already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no
longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered it
found in it a new enjoyment.

After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the clavichord
and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window talking to the ladies
and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he ceased speaking and
suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had thought impossible for
him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and something new and joyful
stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time sad. He had
absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What about?
His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments?... His hopes
for the future?... Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden, vivid
sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great and
illimitable within him and that limited and material something that he,
and even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while
she sang.

As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how he
liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling that
she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and said he
liked her singing as he liked everything she did.

Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to bed from
habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having lit his candle
he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again not at all troubled
by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and joyful as if he had
stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own fresh air. It did not enter
his head that he was in love with Natasha; he was not thinking about
her, but only picturing her to himself, and in consequence all life
appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive, why do I toil in this narrow,
confined frame, when life, all life with all its joys, is open to me?"
said he to himself. And for the first time for a very long while he
began making happy plans for the future. He decided that he must attend
to his son's education by finding a tutor and putting the boy in his
charge, then he ought to retire from the service and go abroad, and see
England, Switzerland and Italy. "I must use my freedom while I feel so
much strength and youth in me," he said to himself. "Pierre was right
when he said one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order
to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead,
but while one has life one must live and be happy!" thought he.





CHAPTER XX


One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an immaculate
brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed forward over his
temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.

"I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately she
could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more fortunate
with you," he said with a smile.

"What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service."

"I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this with
perfect conviction that this information could not but be agreeable),
"and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own and my wife's
friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished to ask the
countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to supper."

Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as the
Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an invitation.
Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at his house a small
but select company, and why this would give him pleasure, and why though
he grudged spending money on cards or anything harmful, he was prepared
to run into some expense for the sake of good society--that Pierre could
not refuse, and promised to come.

"But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten minutes to
eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is coming. He
is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you will do me the
favor."

Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at the
Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.

Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were ready
for their guests' arrival.

In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and pictures
and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely buttoned up in
his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to her that one always
could and should be acquainted with people above one, because only then
does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.

"You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years
but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only
waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to
her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how have I
obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my aquaintances. It
goes without saying that one must be conscientious and methodical."

Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and
paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak
woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity,
what it was ein Mann zu sein. * Vera at the same time smiling with a
sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the
same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did. Berg,
judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera, judging
only by her husband and generalizing from that observation, supposed
that all men, though they understand nothing and are conceited and
selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.


    * To be a man.


Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her lace
fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on the
lips.

"The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he continued,
following an unconscious sequence of ideas.

"Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for
society."

"Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg, pointing to
the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.

Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced at one
another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally claiming
the honor of this visit.

"This is what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances," thought Berg.
"This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself."

"But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests," said
Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say to
different people."

Berg smiled again.

"It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine conversation,"
said he.

They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it was
impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,
neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange that
Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an armchair
or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently painfully
undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor to settle
the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry by moving a
chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began their evening
party, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain their
guest.

Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be entertained
with conversation about the French embassy, at once began accordingly.
Berg, having decided that masculine conversation was required,
interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the question of the war
with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the general subject to
personal considerations as to the proposals made him to take part in the
Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had declined them. Though the
conversation was very incoherent and Vera was angry at the intrusion
of the masculine element, both husband and wife felt with satisfaction
that, even if only one guest was present, their evening had begun very
well and was as like as two peas to every other evening party with its
talk, tea, and lighted candles.

Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After
Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the
Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of
satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing room,
at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of dresses, and the
bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody always has it,
especially so the general, who admired the apartment, patted Berg on the
shoulder, and with parental authority superintended the setting out of
the table for boston. The general sat down by Count Ilya Rostov, who was
next to himself the most important guest. The old people sat with the
old, the young with the young, and the hostess at the tea table, on
which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a silver cake basket as
the Panins had at their party. Everything was just as it was everywhere
else.





CHAPTER XXI


Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston
with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table he
happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious
change that had come over her since the ball. She was silent, and not
only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from plainness by
her look of gentle indifference to everything around.

"What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She was
sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without looking
at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her. After playing
out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking five tricks,
Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who had entered the
room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again at Natasha.

"What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater
surprise.

Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her with a
look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was looking up
at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And
the bright glow of some inner fire that had been suppressed was again
alight in her. She was completely transformed and from a plain girl had
again become what she had been at the ball.

Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and
youthful expression in his friend's face.

Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now with
his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of the six
rubbers he watched her and his friend.

"Something very important is happening between them," thought Pierre,
and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him and made him
neglect the game.

After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use playing
like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was talking with
Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was saying something to
Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and, asking whether they
were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Vera, having noticed Prince
Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided that at a party, a real evening
party, subtle allusions to the tender passion were absolutely necessary
and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation
with him about feelings in general and about her sister. With so
intellectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt
that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.

When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried away
by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed, a
thing that rarely happened with him.

"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so
discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a
glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her
attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself), "love a
man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what I consider
true love. What do you think, Prince?"

"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a sarcastic
smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to be able to
solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed that the less
attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to be," he added,
and looked up at Pierre who was just approaching them.

"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera--mentioning
"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing,
imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of
"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times--"in our
days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted often
stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that Natalie is
very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie caused Prince
Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about to rise, but Vera
continued with a still more subtle smile:

"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but till
quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you know, Count,"
she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who, between ourselves,
was very far gone in the land of tenderness..." (alluding to a map of
love much in vogue at that time).

Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.

"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.

"Yes, I know him..."

"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"

"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew, blushing
unexpectedly.

"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le
cousinage est un dangereux voisinage. * Don't you think so?"


    * "Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."


"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very careful
with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these
jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.

"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with
surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.

"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You know
that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic gloves given
to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he loved.) "I...
but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange light in his
eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew approached
Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince Andrew asked her
something and how she flushed as she replied.

But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he
should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on
the affairs in Spain.

Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his face.
The party was very successful and quite like other parties he had seen.
Everything was similar: the ladies' subtle talk, the cards, the general
raising his voice at the card table, and the samovar and the tea cakes;
only one thing was lacking that he had always seen at the evening
parties he wished to imitate. They had not yet had a loud conversation
among the men and a dispute about something important and clever. Now
the general had begun such a discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.





CHAPTER XXII


Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with the
Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.

Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came, and
without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not only in
the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha, but in the
whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something important that was
bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and sternly serious eyes
at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and timidly started some
artificial conversation about trifles as soon as he looked her way.
Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid of being in the way when
she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a panic of expectation, when
she remained alone with him for a moment. Prince Andrew surprised her by
his timidity. She felt that he wanted to say something to her but could
not bring himself to do so.

In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to
Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"

"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't talk
about that," said Natasha.

But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now frightened,
lay a long time in her mother's bed gazing straight before her. She told
her how he had complimented her, how he told her he was going abroad,
asked her where they were going to spend the summer, and then how he had
asked her about Boris.

"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said. "Only I
feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm with him. What
does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real thing? Yes? Mamma, are
you asleep?"

"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now go!"

"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy! Mummy!
such a thing never happened to me before," she said, surprised and
alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And could we ever
have thought!..."

It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andrew
at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she feared
this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very man she had
then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and of finding
him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.

"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg while
we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that ball.
It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this! Already
then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."

"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..." said
her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andrew had
written in Natasha's album.

"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"

"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'" said her
mother.

"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha, shedding
tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.

At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and telling him
of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her his wife.

That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French
ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of
late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies and
gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the rooms and
struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and morose air.

Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous depression
and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the intimacy of
his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly been made a
gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had begun to feel
oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark thoughts of the vanity
of all things human came to him oftener than before. At the same time
the feeling he had noticed between his protegee Natasha and Prince
Andrew accentuated his gloom by the contrast between his own position
and his friend's. He tried equally to avoid thinking about his wife,
and about Natasha and Prince Andrew; and again everything seemed to him
insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the question: for what?
presented itself; and he forced himself to work day and night at Masonic
labors, hoping to drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward
midnight, after he had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting
upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction
of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy
with tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.

"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air. "And
I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book with that
air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at
their work.

Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life on
his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,
smiled at him with the egotism of joy.

"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it yesterday
and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything like it
before. I am in love, my friend!"

Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on
the sofa beside Prince Andrew.

"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.

"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,
but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and
suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in
the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live
without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why don't
you speak?"

"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and beginning
to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it.... That girl is
such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend, I entreat you,
don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry, marry.... And I am sure
there will not be a happier man than you."

"But what of her?"

"She loves you."

"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into
Pierre's eyes.

"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.

"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Do you
know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone."

"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his face really
changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince
Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a different, quite
a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for life, his
disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind
to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his soul. Now he
boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, said he could not
sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice, and spoke of how he
would either make his father consent to this marriage and love her, or
would do without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that had
mastered him as at something strange, apart from and independent of
himself.

"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of
such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feeling
that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into two
halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the
other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and
darkness...."

"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understand that."

"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very
happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake."

"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched and
sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot appeared to
him, the gloomier seemed his own.





CHAPTER XXIII


Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to obtain
this he started for the country next day.

His father received his son's communication with external composure, but
inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his
life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life was already
ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want to," thought
the old man, "then they might do as they please." With his son, however,
he employed the diplomacy he reserved for important occasions and,
adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole matter.

In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards
birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young
as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special stress
on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would
be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly and finally," the
father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg you to put it off for
a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as you wanted to for a German
tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your love or passion or obstinacy--as
you please--is still as great, marry! And that's my last word on it.
Mind, the last..." concluded the prince, in a tone which showed that
nothing would make him alter his decision.

Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his feelings, or
his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that he (the old
prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to conform to his
father's wish--to propose, and postpone the wedding for a year.

Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs, Prince
Andrew returned to Petersburg.


Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski all
day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the same.
Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that Prince Andrew
had gone to see his father, could not explain his absence to herself.

Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out anywhere
and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and listless; she
wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in the evenings. She
blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed to her that everybody
knew about her disappointment and was laughing at her and pitying her.
Strong as was her inward grief, this wound to her vanity intensified her
misery.

Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly began
to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not know why
it is being punished.

The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to her
mother's words, suddenly interrupted her:

"Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about it! He
just came and then left off, left off..."

Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and went
on quietly:

"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I have
now become quite calm, quite calm."

The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which
she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the
mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she had
abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went to
the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud resonance, and
began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished her first exercise
she stood still in the middle of the room and sang a musical phrase that
particularly pleased her. She listened joyfully (as though she had not
expected it) to the charm of the notes reverberating, filling the
whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying away; and all at once she felt
cheerful. "What's the good of making so much of it? Things are nice as
it is," she said to herself, and she began walking up and down the room,
not stepping simply on the resounding parquet but treading with each
step from the heel to the toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of
shoes) and listening to the regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe
as gladly as she had to the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror
she glanced into it. "There, that's me!" the expression of her face
seemed to say as she caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too!
I need nobody."

A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room but she
would not let him, and having closed the door behind him continued her
walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite mood--love of, and
delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha is!" she said again,
speaking as some third, collective, male person. "Pretty, a good voice,
young, and in nobody's way if only they leave her in peace." But
however much they left her in peace she could not now be at peace, and
immediately felt this.

In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and
then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but did
not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When she saw
herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for certain, though
she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.

Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.

"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is
unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..."

Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room with
an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his face
brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat down
beside the sofa.

"It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but Prince
Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question, obviously in
haste to say what he had to.

"I have not been to see you all this time because I have been at my
father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I only
got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to have a
talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause.

The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.

"I am at your disposal," she murmured.

Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:
something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared
straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.

"At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought.

Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she was not
mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be decided.

"Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper.

Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew and at
her mother and went out.

"I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said Prince
Andrew.

The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.

"Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent, looking
into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is agreeable to us,
and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband... I hope... but it
will depend on her...."

"I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it to me?"
said Prince Andrew.

"Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and with a
mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips to his
forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him as a
son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man. "I am
sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your father..."

"My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express
condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a
year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew.

"It is true that Natasha is still young, but--so long as that?..."

"It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh.

"I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room.

"Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter.

Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on
the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering
something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped
up and flew to her.

"Well, Mamma?... Well?..."

"Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess,
coldly it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and
reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.

Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When she came
in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger has now
become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately answered,
"Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than everything in the
world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast eyes.

"I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?"

He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned expression of
her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot but know?
Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?"

She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.

"Do you love me?"

"Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed loudly
and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

"Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent over
closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether she
might, and then kissed him.

Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find
in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly
changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of
desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, fear
at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful sense of
the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present feeling, though
not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger and more serious.

"Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked Prince
Andrew, still looking into her eyes.

"Is it possible that I--the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called me,"
thought Natasha--"is it possible that I am now to be the wife and the
equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father looks up to?
Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no more playing with
life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies a responsibility for
my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he ask me?"

"No," she replied, but she had not understood his question.

"Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already been
through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know
yourself."

Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing to take
in the meaning of his words.

"Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued Prince
Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask you to
make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall remain a
secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or should you come
to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural smile.

"Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that from the
very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she cried, quite
convinced that she spoke the truth.

"In a year you will learn to know yourself...."

"A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that
the marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a
year?..."

Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.
Natasha did not hear him.

"And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply, but
his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.

"It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and again
burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's impossible, it's
awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in it a look of
commiseration and perplexity.

"No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears. "I am
so happy."

The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed couple
their blessing.

From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as Natasha's
affianced lover.





CHAPTER XXIV


No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski
was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said that as he
was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole burden of it;
that he had given his word and bound himself forever, but that he did
not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom. If after six
months she felt that she did not love him she would have full right to
reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her parents wished to hear of
this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came every day to the Rostovs',
but did not behave to Natasha as an affianced lover: he did not use
the familiar thou, but said you to her, and kissed only her hand. After
their engagement, quite different, intimate, and natural relations
sprang up between them. It was as if they had not known each other till
now. Both liked to recall how they had regarded each other when as
yet they were nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite
different beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At
first the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew;
he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha trained
the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all that he only
appeared to be different, but was really just like all of them, and that
she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to be. After a few
days they grew accustomed to him, and without restraint in his presence
pursued their usual way of life, in which he took his part. He could
talk about rural economy with the count, fashions with the countess
and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork with Sonya. Sometimes the
household both among themselves and in his presence expressed their
wonder at how it had all happened, and at the evident omens there had
been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe and their coming to
Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and Prince Andrew which
her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and Andrew's encounter with
Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents betokening that it had to be.

In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always
accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting
together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and
go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely
spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which she
constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his son. Prince
Andrew blushed, as he often did now--Natasha particularly liked it in
him--and said that his son would not live with them.

"Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone.

"I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..."

"How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing his
thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding fault
with us."

Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask his
advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old countess
sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting frightened lest
she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for leaving them
alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew spoke (he
could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him with pride; when
she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed attentively and
scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in perplexity: "What does he
look for in me? He is trying to discover something by looking at me!
What if what he seeks in me is not there?" Sometimes she fell into one
of the mad, merry moods characteristic of her, and then she particularly
loved to hear and see how Prince Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but
when he did he abandoned himself entirely to his laughter, and after
such a laugh she always felt nearer to him. Natasha would have been
completely happy if the thought of the separation awaiting her and
drawing near had not terrified her, just as the mere thought of it made
him turn pale and cold.

On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought with
him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball. Pierre
seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the countess,
and Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya, thereby
inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.

"You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?"

"Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd."

And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of his
absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.

"Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known him from
childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie," Prince Andrew
said with sudden seriousness--"I am going away and heaven knows what may
happen. You may cease to... all right, I know I am not to say that. Only
this, then: whatever may happen to you when I am not here..."

"What can happen?"

"Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you,
Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for
advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but he
has a heart of gold."

Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew himself
could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would act on
Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that day,
dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not understanding
what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking leave, he kissed
her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a tone that made him
wonder whether he really ought not to stay and which he remembered long
afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone; but for several days she
sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in anything and only saying
now and then, "Oh, why did he go away?"

But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around
her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and became
her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, as a
child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of face.





CHAPTER XXV


During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's
health and temper became much worse. He grew still more irritable, and
it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of his frequent fits
of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out her tender spots so
as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible. Princess Mary had
two passions and consequently two joys--her nephew, little Nicholas, and
religion--and these were the favorite subjects of the prince's attacks
and ridicule. Whatever was spoken of he would bring round to the
superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting and spoiling of children.
"You want to make him"--little Nicholas--"into an old maid like
yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants a son and not an old maid," he
would say. Or, turning to Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in
Princess Mary's presence how she liked our village priests and icons and
would joke about them.

He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her, but it
cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame toward her, or
could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of it all, be unjust?
And what is justice? The princess never thought of that proud word
"justice." All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear
and simple law--the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who
lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to
do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and
love, and that she did.

During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had been gay,
gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known him for a
long time past. She felt that something had happened to him, but he said
nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a long talk with
his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed that before his
departure they were dissatisfied with one another.

Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend
Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls dream)
of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in mourning for her
own brother, killed in Turkey.


Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.

Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a
special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and your
excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone, can--I
will not say comfort us--but save us from despair. Religion alone can
explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend: why, for what
cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in life--not merely
harming no one but necessary to the happiness of others--are called away
to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons, or such as are a burden
to themselves and to others, are left living. The first death I saw,
and one I shall never forget--that of my dear sister-in-law--left that
impression on me. Just as you ask destiny why your splendid brother
had to die, so I asked why that angel Lise, who not only never wronged
anyone, but in whose soul there were never any unkind thoughts, had to
die. And what do you think, dear friend? Five years have passed since
then, and already I, with my petty understanding, begin to see clearly
why she had to die, and in what way that death was but an expression
of the infinite goodness of the Creator, whose every action, though
generally incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite
love for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically
innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother's duties. As a
young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been so
as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly Prince
Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably she will
there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not to speak of
her alone, that early and terrible death has had the most beneficent
influence on me and on my brother in spite of all our grief. Then, at
the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not occur to me; I should
then have dismissed them with horror, but now they are very clear and
certain. I write all this to you, dear friend, only to convince you
of the Gospel truth which has become for me a principle of life: not
a single hair of our heads will fall without His will. And His will is
governed only by infinite love for us, and so whatever befalls us is for
our good.

You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my
wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You will
be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte! The case
is this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he cannot stand
any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This irritability is, as
you know, chiefly directed to political questions. He cannot endure
the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal terms with all the
sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own, the grandson of the
Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite indifferent to politics, but
from my father's remarks and his talks with Michael Ivanovich I know all
that goes on in the world and especially about the honors conferred on
Buonaparte, who only at Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not
accepted as a great man, still less as Emperor of France. And my father
cannot stand this. It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his
political views that my father is reluctant to speak of going to
Moscow; for he foresees the encounters that would result from his way
of expressing his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might
derive from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the
disputes about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will
be decided very shortly.

Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother Andrew's
absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much of late. After
his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his spirits. He has again
become as I used to know him when a child: kind, affectionate, with that
heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has realized, it seems to me,
that life is not over for him. But together with this mental change
he has grown physically much weaker. He has become thinner and more
nervous. I am anxious about him and glad he is taking this trip abroad
which the doctors recommended long ago. I hope it will cure him. You
write that in Petersburg he is spoken of as one of the most active,
cultivated, and capable of the young men. Forgive my vanity as a
relation, but I never doubted it. The good he has done to everybody
here, from his peasants up to the gentry, is incalculable. On his
arrival in Petersburg he received only his due. I always wonder at the
way rumors fly from Petersburg to Moscow, especially such false ones as
that you write about--I mean the report of my brother's betrothal to
the little Rostova. I do not think my brother will ever marry again, and
certainly not her; and this is why: first, I know that though he rarely
speaks about the wife he has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too
deep in his heart for him ever to decide to give her a successor and our
little angel a stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl
is not the kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think
he would choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am
running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. Good-by,
my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My dear
friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.

MARY





CHAPTER XXVI


In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected letter
from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her strange and
surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to Natasha Rostova.
The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his betrothed and tender
and confiding affection for his sister. He wrote that he had never loved
as he did now and that only now did he understand and know what life
was. He asked his sister to forgive him for not having told her of his
resolve when he had last visited Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it
to his father. He had not done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her
father to give his consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt
of his displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides," he wrote,
"the matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father
then insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months, half of
that period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever. If the
doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in Russia, but
as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You know me
and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have been and
always shall be independent; but to go against his will and arouse his
anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a short time, would
destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him about the same
question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand him the letter
and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and whether there is
hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four months."

After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave the
letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her quietly:

"Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't be
long--I shall soon set him free."

The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her speak
and, raising his voice more and more, cried:

"Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich,
eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell
him that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little Nicholas'
stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He mustn't be
without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more women are wanted
in my house--let him marry and live by himself. Perhaps you will go and
live with him too?" he added, turning to Princess Mary. "Go in heavens
name! Go out into the frost... the frost... the frost!"

After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the matter.
But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior found
expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former pretexts
for irony a fresh one was now added--allusions to stepmothers and
amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a
splendid princess!"

And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary
noticed that her father was really associating more and more with the
Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his
letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to the
idea.

Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and religion were
Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that, since everyone
must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the profoundest depths of her
heart had a hidden dream and hope that supplied the chief consolation
of her life. This comforting dream and hope were given her by God's
folk--the half-witted and other pilgrims who visited her without the
prince's knowledge. The longer she lived, the more experience and
observation she had of life, the greater was her wonder at the
short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here on earth:
toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that
impossible, visionary, sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his
wife, she died, but that was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness
to another woman. Her father objected to this because he wanted a more
distinguished and wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled
and suffered and tormented one another and injured their souls, their
eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an
instant. Not only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God,
came down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is
a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it. "How
is it that no one realizes this?" thought Princess Mary. "No one except
these despised God's folk who, wallet on back, come to me by the back
door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear of ill-usage by
him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave family, home, and all
the cares of worldly welfare, in order without clinging to anything to
wander in hempen rags from place to place under an assumed name, doing
no one any harm but praying for all--for those who drive one away as
well as for those who protect one: higher than that life and truth there
is no life or truth!"

There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty called
Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot and worn
heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her. Once, when in
a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia was talking of
her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found the true path of
life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force that she resolved to
become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone to sleep Princess Mary
thought about this for a long time, and at last made up her mind that,
strange as it might seem, she must go on a pilgrimage. She disclosed
this thought to no one but to her confessor, Father Akinfi, the monk,
and he approved of her intention. Under guise of a present for the
pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's complete costume for
herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough coat, and a black kerchief.
Often, approaching the chest of drawers containing this secret treasure,
Princess Mary paused, uncertain whether the time had not already come to
put her project into execution.

Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by their
simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep meaning,
that several times she was on the point of abandoning everything and
running away from home. In imagination she already pictured herself by
Theodosia's side, dressed in coarse rags, walking with a staff, a wallet
on her back, along the dusty road, directing her wanderings from one
saint's shrine to another, free from envy, earthly love, or desire, and
reaching at last the place where there is no more sorrow or sighing, but
eternal joy and bliss.

"I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to get
used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on till
my legs fail, and I'll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at last
reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow nor
sighing..." thought Princess Mary.

But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko
(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that she
was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God.





BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11





CHAPTER I


The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor--idleness--was a
condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man has
retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not only
because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because
our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at ease. An
inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If man could
find a state in which he felt that though idle he was fulfilling his
duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man's primitive
blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness
is the lot of a whole class--the military. The chief attraction of
military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and
irreproachable idleness.

Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full when,
after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment, in which he
already commanded the squadron he had taken over from Denisov.

Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked
and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well
contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters from home
more frequent complaints from his mother that their affairs were falling
into greater and greater disorder, and that it was time for him to come
back to gladden and comfort his old parents.

Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to
take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the
entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt that
sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life, with
its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its accounts with
stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society, and with Sonya's
love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully difficult and
complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold, formal letters in
French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending: "Your obedient son,"
which said nothing of when he would return. In 1810 he received letters
from his parents, in which they told him of Natasha's engagement to
Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in a year's time because
the old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved and mortified
Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that Natasha, for whom he
cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be lost to the
home; and secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not to
have been there to show that fellow Bolkonski that connection with him
was no such great honor after all, and that if he loved Natasha he
might dispense with permission from his dotard father. For a moment he
hesitated whether he should not apply for leave in order to see Natasha
before she was married, but then came the maneuvers, and considerations
about Sonya and about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again
put it off. But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from
his mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that letter
persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take
matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and they
would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and trusted Mitenka
so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody took advantage of him
and things were going from bad to worse. "For God's sake, I implore
you, come at once if you do not wish to make me and the whole family
wretched," wrote the countess.

This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a
matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.

The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any rate
to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his
after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious
gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when
he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka
(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was going
home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would
go away without having heard from the staff--and this interested him
extremely--whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the
Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think
that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the Polish
Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had betted
he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it
seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had given
one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would take place
without him--he knew he must go away from this good, bright world to
somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he
obtained his leave. His hussar comrades--not only those of his own
regiment, but the whole brigade--gave Rostov a dinner to which the
subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two
bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with Major
Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostov; the
soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted "hurrah!"
and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the first
post station.

During the first half of the journey--from Kremenchug to Kiev--all
Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with the
squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget his
three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously
how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would find there. Thoughts
of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it--far stronger, as
though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which the force of
attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. At
the last post station before Otradnoe he gave the driver a three-ruble
tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of
his home.

After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of unsatisfied
expectation--the feeling that "everything is just the same, so why did I
hurry?"--Nicholas began to settle down in his old home world. His father
and mother were much the same, only a little older. What was new in them
was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there used not to
be, and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the bad state of
their affairs. Sonya was nearly twenty; she had stopped growing prettier
and promised nothing more than she was already, but that was enough.
She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas returned, and the
faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him.
Petya and Natasha surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome
boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was
already breaking. As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and
laughed whenever he looked at her.

"You're not the same at all," he said.

"How? Am I uglier?"

"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to her.

"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.

She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit to
Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.

"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy now."

"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And are
you very much in love?"

"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris, with
my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel at
peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and I am
calm and contented now. Not at all as before."

Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the marriage
for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving
to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing
to enter a family against the father's will, and that she herself wished
it so.

"You don't at all understand," she said.

Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.

Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at
all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was
even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed
Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship skeptically.
He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had
not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him that there was
something not quite right about this intended marriage.

"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had
touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise
and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too
had doubts about this marriage.

"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to
a daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come
before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His health
is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach importance to her
being so bright: that's because she's living through the last days of
her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we receive a letter
from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!" (She
always ended with these words.) "He is an excellent man!"





CHAPTER II


After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull. He was
worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid business
matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw off this
burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his arrival he
went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as to where he
was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of everything. But
what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew even less than the
frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation and the examination
of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long. The village elder,
a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting in the
passage, heard with fear and delight first the young count's voice
roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and then words of
abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.

"Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm not
my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on.

Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red in
the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff of
the neck and applied his foot and knee to his behind with great agility
at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off! Never let me
see your face here again, you villain!"

Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the
shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for culprits
at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the town, used to
hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe, hiding from Mitenka,
knew of its protective qualities.)

Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and frightened
faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar was boiling and
where the steward's high bedstead stood with its patchwork quilt.

The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by
with resolute strides and went into the house.

The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened at the
lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would certainly
improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect this
excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his door on
tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.

Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed
smile, said to him:

"But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has
told me all about it."

"I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything in
this crazy world."

"You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they were
carried forward--and you did not look at the other page."

"Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have
done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again."

"No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he had
mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his children,
but he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to attend to the
business. I am old. I..."

"No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I understand
it all less than you do."

"Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings forward
from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a 'corner'
and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to another page I
don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after that he did not
meddle in business affairs. But once the countess called her son and
informed him that she had a promissory note from Anna Mikhaylovna for
two thousand rubles, and asked him what he thought of doing with it.

"This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I don't like
Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were our friends and
poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and by so doing caused
the old countess to weep tears of joy. After that, young Rostov took
no further part in any business affairs, but devoted himself with
passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new pursuit--the chase--for
which his father kept a large establishment.





CHAPTER III


The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts congealed
an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened and its
bright green stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye
trodden down by the cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of the
spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the copses, which at the end of
August had still been green islands amid black fields and stubble, had
become golden and bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The
hares had already half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were
beginning to scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was
the best time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were
so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give them
a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go on
a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was an
undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.

All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the air was
sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began to thaw.
On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown, looked out of
the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it was
as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any wind.
The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, microscopic
particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung with
transparent drops which fell on the freshly fallen leaves. The earth in
the kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened like poppy seed
and at a short distance merged into the dull, moist veil of mist.
Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell of
decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch
with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing her master, stretched her
hind legs, lay down like a hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked
him right on his nose and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching
sight of his master from the garden path, arched his back and, rushing
headlong toward the porch with lifted tail, began rubbing himself
against his legs.

"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call which
unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round the corner
came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray, wrinkled old
man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, a
long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence and scorn of
everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his Circassian cap
to his master and looked at him scornfully. This scorn was not offensive
to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel, disdainful of everybody
and who considered himself above them, was all the same his serf and
huntsman.

"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the weather,
the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away by that
irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all his previous
resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his mistress.

"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep bass, deep
as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing--and two flashing black
eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who was silent. "Can you
resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.

"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked Nicholas,
scratching Milka behind the ears.

Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.

"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a minute's
pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure. They were
howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom they both
knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small place a
mile and a half from the house.)

"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me with
Uvarka."

"As you please."

"Then put off feeding them."

"Yes, sir."

Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas' big
study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was
like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and
surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual stood
just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for fear of
breaking something in the master's apartment, and he hastened to say all
that was necessary so as to get from under that ceiling, out into the
open under the sky once more.

Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion that
the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting), Nicholas
ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was about to
go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her hair or
finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped round her.
Petya ran in at the same time.

"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you
wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you couldn't
help going."

"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as he
intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and Petya.
"We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for you."

"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair; you
are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said nothing to
us about it."

"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'--we'll go!" shouted Petya.

"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.

"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively. "Daniel,
tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my dogs," she
added to the huntsman.

It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but to
have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. He
cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business,
careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on the young
lady.





CHAPTER IV


The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting establishment
but had now handed it all completely over to his son's care, being in
very good spirits on this fifteenth of September, prepared to go out
with the others.

In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch. Nicholas,
with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no time for
attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were trying to
tell him something. He had a look at all the details of the hunt, sent
a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the quarry, mounted his
chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of borzois, set off
across the threshing ground to a field leading to the Otradnoe wood.
The old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called Viflyanka, was led by the
groom in attendance on him, while the count himself was to drive in a
small trap straight to a spot reserved for him.

They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and
whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen
and more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash
belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and
thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.

Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his
business, his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the
fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,
along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.

The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and then
splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky still
seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the air
was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a huntsman,
the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a straggling
hound could be heard.

When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders with
dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In front rode a
fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray mustache.

"Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.

"That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was
a distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their
neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good
thing you're going. That's it! Come on!" (This was "Uncle's" favorite
expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins
are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll take
the cubs from under your very nose."

"That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked Nicholas.

The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas rode on
side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide her eager
face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed by Petya
who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and by a groom
appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing, whipped and pulled
at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on her black Arabchik
and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.

"Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not
like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.

"Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya.

"Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds," said
"Uncle" sternly.

"Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha,
referring to her favorite hound.

"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought
Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel the
distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha understood
it.

"You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said. "We'll go
to our places and won't budge."

"A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you don't
fall off your horse," he added, "because--that's it, come on!--you've
nothing to hold on to."

The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards off,
the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally settled
with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having shown
Natasha where she was to stand--a spot where nothing could possibly run
out--went round above the ravine.

"Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and
don't let her slip!"

"That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he shouted,
answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi. Karay was a
shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having tackled a big wolf
unaided. They all took up their places.

The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as not
to be late, and the huntsmen had not yet reached their places when Count
Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove up
with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for him,
where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and fastened
on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek, well-fed,
and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray, like himself.
His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov, though not at
heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well, and rode to
the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged his reins,
settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was ready, looked
about with a smile.

Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old horseman
now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three formidable
wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master and his horse.
Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred paces farther along
the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's other groom, a daring
horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the hunt, by old custom, the
count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled brandy, taken a snack, and
washed it down with half a bottle of his favorite Bordeaux.

He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were
rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his saddle,
wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out for an
outing.

The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready, kept
glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of terms for
thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in expected a pleasant
chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through the wood (it was
plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind the count. This
person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's cloak, with a tall
peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who went by a woman's name,
Nastasya Ivanovna.

"Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him. "If you
scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!"

"I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna.

"Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen the
young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?"

"With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered Simon,
smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting."

"And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the count.
"She's as good as many a man!"

"Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!"

"And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?"

"Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so well
that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well knowing
what would please his master.

"Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?"

"A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the
Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight
when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand rubles
and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search far to
find another as smart."

"To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not
said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his coat
to get at his snuffbox.

"The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael
Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had
distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three hounds
giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a warning
finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs..." he
whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands."

The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked into
the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space, holding
the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry of the hounds
came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's hunting horn; the
pack joined the first three hounds and they could be heard in full cry,
with that peculiar lift in the note that indicates that they are after
a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on the hounds, but changed to the
cry of ulyulyu, and above the others rose Daniel's voice, now a deep
bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice seemed to fill the whole wood and
carried far beyond out into the open field.

After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his attendant
convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into two packs: the
sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue, began to die away in
the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood past the count, and it
was with this that Daniel's voice was heard calling ulyulyu. The sounds
of both packs mingled and broke apart again, but both were becoming more
distant.

Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi had
entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in his hand,
opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a borzoi that was
pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and dropped the
snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up. The count and
Simon were looking at him.

Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly
approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were just
in front of them.

The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes
starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to the
other side.

"Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had long
fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he galloped
toward the count.

The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a
wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet
lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing.
The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the
horses' feet at the wolf.

The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs awkwardly,
like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly swaying
from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail
disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry
like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang
helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across
the field toward the very spot where the wolf had disappeared. The hazel
bushes parted behind the hounds and Daniel's chestnut horse appeared,
dark with sweat. On its long back sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless,
his disheveled gray hair hanging over his flushed, perspiring face.

"Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the count
his eyes flashed lightning.

"Blast you!" he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the count.

"You've let the wolf go!... What sportsmen!" and as if scorning to
say more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving
flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count
had aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a punished
schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon's sympathy for
his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was galloping round by the
bushes while the field was coming up on both sides, all trying to head
the wolf, but it vanished into the wood before they could do so.





CHAPTER V


Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the wolf. By
the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of the dogs
whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of the huntsmen
approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was happening at the
copse. He knew that young and old wolves were there, that the hounds had
separated into two packs, that somewhere a wolf was being chased, and
that something had gone wrong. He expected the wolf to come his way any
moment. He made thousands of different conjectures as to where and
from what side the beast would come and how he would set upon it. Hope
alternated with despair. Several times he addressed a prayer to God
that the wolf should come his way. He prayed with that passionate and
shamefaced feeling with which men pray at moments of great excitement
arising from trivial causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for
me?" he said to God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask
this of Thee, but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way and
let Karay spring at it--in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from over
there--and seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand times
during that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the
edge of the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen
undergrowth and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap
just visible above the bush on his right.

"No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it
be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am always
unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed rapidly and
clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get an old wolf, I
want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears and looking to the
left and then to the right and listening to the slightest variation of
note in the cries of the dogs.

Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him across
the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a deep
breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped for. The
height of happiness was reached--and so simply, without warning, or
noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his eyes and remained
in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and jumped heavily over
a gully that lay in her path. She was an old animal with a gray back and
big reddish belly. She ran without hurry, evidently feeling sure that
no one saw her. Rostov, holding his breath, looked round at the borzois.
They stood or lay not seeing the wolf or understanding the situation.
Old Karay had turned his head and was angrily searching for fleas,
baring his yellow teeth and snapping at his hind legs.

"Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped up,
jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay finished
scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up with quivering
tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.

"Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf
approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole
physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never
seen before--human eyes fixed upon her--and turning her head a little
toward Rostov, she paused.

"Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to say to
herself, and she moved forward without again looking round and with a
quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.

"Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own accord
his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies to head
off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still. Nicholas
did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping, nor see the
borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only the wolf, who,
increasing her speed, bounded on in the same direction along the hollow.
The first to come into view was Milka, with her black markings and
powerful quarters, gaining upon the wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she
was ahead of it; but the wolf turned its head to face her, and instead
of putting on speed as she usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail
and stiffened her forelegs.

"Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas.

The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang impetuously
at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but immediately jumped
aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her teeth, and again rose
and bounded forward, followed at the distance of a couple of feet by all
the borzois, who did not get any closer to her.

"She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still shouting
with a hoarse voice.

"Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi who
was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left him,
stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf, galloped heavily
aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the wolf's lope and the
borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay had miscalculated.
Nicholas could already see not far in front of him the wood where the
wolf would certainly escape should she reach it. But, coming toward
him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping almost straight at the wolf.
There was still hope. A long, yellowish young borzoi, one Nicholas did
not know, from another leash, rushed impetuously at the wolf from in
front and almost knocked her over. But the wolf jumped up more quickly
than anyone could have expected and, gnashing her teeth, flew at the
yellowish borzoi, which, with a piercing yelp, fell with its head on the
ground, bleeding from a gash in its side.

"Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas.

Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path, the old
dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within five paces of
it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her eyes on Karay, tucked
her tail yet further between her legs, and increased her speed. But
here Nicholas only saw that something happened to Karay--the borzoi was
suddenly on the wolf, and they rolled together down into a gully just in
front of them.

That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully
with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and
outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears
laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest moment
of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to dismount
and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up from among that
mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge of the gully. She
clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the throat), leaped with
a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and having disengaged
herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again, went forward. Karay,
his hair bristling, and probably bruised or wounded, climbed with
difficulty out of the gully.

"Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair.

"Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the wolf's
path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance. She was
again hemmed in.

Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were all
riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to
dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward
again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she
would be safe.

Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the ulyulyuing,
had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf, and checked
his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he saw that the
horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself and ran for
safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf but straight
toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the animal off. As a
result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just when she had been
stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois.

Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand and
thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as if
it were a flail.

Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut, breathing
heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body and saw Daniel
lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to seize her by the
ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf herself
that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed back her ears and
tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Daniel rose a little, took
a step, and with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, fell on
the wolf, seizing her by the ears. Nicholas was about to stab her, but
Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll gag her!" and, changing his position,
set his foot on the wolf's neck. A stick was thrust between her jaws
and she was fastened with a leash, as if bridled, her legs were bound
together, and Daniel rolled her over once or twice from side to side.

With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a shying
and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her, took her
to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had killed two of
the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with their booty
and their stories, and all came to look at the wolf, which, with her
broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten stick between her jaws,
gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd of dogs and men surrounding
her. When she was touched, she jerked her bound legs and looked wildly
yet simply at everybody. Old Count Rostov also rode up and touched the
wolf.

"Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he asked
Daniel, who was standing near.

"Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.

The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with
Daniel.

"Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count.

For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable
smile.





CHAPTER VI


The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return very
soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At midday
they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees.
Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his whips.

Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood alone
in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been loosed
before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at intervals;
other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving tongue. A
moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a fox had been
found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along the ravine
toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.

He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
at any moment on the ryefield opposite.

The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, and
Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going hard
across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew close
to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and sharper
curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed
in followed by a black one, and everything was in confusion; the borzois
formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying their bodies and with
tails turned away from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up
to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green coat.

"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He is not
'Uncle's' man."

The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without strapping
it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high saddles, stood
near them and there too the dogs were lying. The huntsmen waved their
arms and did something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound of
a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a fight.

"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said Nicholas'
groom.

Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode at a
footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds together.
Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.

Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden up,
stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out of
the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward
his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a
distance he took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was
pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes was black,
but he probably was not even aware of it.

"What has happened?" asked Nicholas.

"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray
bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the fox! I
gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste
of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably
imagining himself still speaking to his foe.

Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Petya to
wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's, Ilagin's, hunting
party was.

The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.

The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel and were
at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostovs, and
had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the Rostovs
were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had chased.

Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence
of moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He
rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and fully
prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish his
enemy.

Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman in
a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black horse,
accompanied by two hunt servants.

Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and courteous
gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young count's
acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised his beaver
cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and would have the man
punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted by someone else's
borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted with the count and invited
him to draw his covert.

Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had
followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging friendly
greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver cap still
higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that the young
countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as well as in her
beauty, of which he had heard much.

To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to come to
an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for himself and
which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the hunt, now
doubled, moved on.

The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt servants fell
into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov, and Ilagin kept
stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying not to be observed by
their companions and searching uneasily for rivals to their own borzois.

Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred,
red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with muscles like
steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of the
swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a rival
to his own Milka.

In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the year's
harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.

"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she swift?"

"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered
Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year
before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So in
your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he went on,
continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering it polite
to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his borzois
and picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her breadth. "That
black-spotted one of yours is fine--well shaped!" said he.

"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only a
full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort of
borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a ruble
to anyone who found a hare.

"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be so
jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I enjoy
riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he again
raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what one
takes, I don't care about that."

"Of course not!"

"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so,
Count? For I consider that..."

"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in, who
had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip aloft,
and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and the
uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)

"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we must
ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing in Erza
and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a chance of
pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo my Milka at
once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin toward the hare.

"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had
sighted the hare--and not without agitation he looked round and whistled
to Erza.

"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle."

The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.

"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your
borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours
against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"

"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily by
this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on this
red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly men and
her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by it.

The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the
gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off
on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but not the
gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.

"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces toward the
whip who had sighted the hare.

But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming
next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash rushed
downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the borzois that
were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt,
who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling in the hounds,
while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!" galloped across the field
setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin, Nicholas, Natasha,
and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they went, seeing only the
borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose sight even for an instant
of the chase. The hare they had started was a strong and swift one. When
he jumped up he did not run at once, but pricked his ears listening to
the shouting and trampling that resounded from all sides at once. He
took a dozen bounds, not very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him,
and, finally having chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid
back his ears and rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble,
but in front of him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft.
The two borzois of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the
nearest, were the first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far
before Ilagin's red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew
at the hare with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking
she had seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his
back and bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the
broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the
hare.

"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if Milka
would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and flew
past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached him, but
when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the distance, so as
not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind leg.

"Erza, darling!" Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did not
hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have seized her
prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between the winter rye
and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast, running like a pair
of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but it was easier
for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not overtake him so
quickly.

"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just then,
and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught up
with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of the
terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off the balk
onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously, sinking to
his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was how, muddying
his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of borzois surrounded
him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the crowd of dogs. Only
the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a pad, shaking the hare
for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round with restless
eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without himself knowing
whom to or what about. "That's it, come on! That's a dog!... There,
it has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble
borzois. That's it, come on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully
around as if he were abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies
and had insulted him, and only now had he at last succeeded in
justifying himself. "There are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it,
come on!..."

"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's muddy
pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"

"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"
said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of whether he
were heard or not.

"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's groom.

"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take it,"
Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop and his
excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing breath, screamed
joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set everyone's ear
tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the others expressed by all
talking at once, and it was so strange that she must herself have been
ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone else would have been amazed at it
at any other time. "Uncle" himself twisted up the hare, threw it neatly
and smartly across his horse's back as if by that gesture he meant to
rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not wishing to speak to anyone,
mounted his bay and rode off. The others all followed, dispirited and
shamefaced, and only much later were they able to regain their former
affectation of indifference. For a long time they continued to look at
red Rugay who, his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring
of his leash, walked along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene
air of a conqueror.

"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of
coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seemed to
Nicholas to be saying.

When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to him,
he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle" deigned to
speak to him.





CHAPTER VII


Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they were
so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the hunting party
should spend the night in his little village of Mikhaylovna.

"And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it,
come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could rest,
and the little countess could be driven home in a trap."

"Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for a
trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house.

Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the front
porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and young, as
well as children, popped out from the back entrance to have a look at
the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha--a woman, a lady,
and on horseback--raised the curiosity of the serfs to such a degree
that many of them came up to her, stared her in the face, and unabashed
by her presence made remarks about her as though she were some prodigy
on show and not a human being able to hear or understand what was said
about her.

"Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt
dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!"

"Goodness gracious! See her knife?..."

"Isn't she a Tartar!"

"How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all,
addressing Natasha directly.

"Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which
stood in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his
retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should take
themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made to
receive the guests and the visitors.

The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and taking
her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch. The house,
with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean--it did not seem
that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless--but neither was
it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of fresh apples,
and wolf and fox skins hung about.

"Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with a
folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a round
birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room where
there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of Suvorov, of
the host's father and mother, and of himself in military uniform. The
study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked his visitors
to sit down and make themselves at home, and then went out of the room.
Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and lay down on the
sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth. Leading from the study
was a passage in which a partition with ragged curtains could be seen.
From behind this came women's laughter and whispers. Natasha, Nicholas,
and Petya took off their wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning
on his elbow, fell asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent.
Their faces glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked
at one another (now that the hunt was over and they were in the house,
Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority
over his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long
from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a
pretext ready to account for it.

After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and
small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one she
had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the right
thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat. "Uncle"
too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the brother's
and sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that they might be
laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the merriment.

"That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw anyone
like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem and, with
a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another that had been
cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as fresh as ever!"

Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently from
the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking woman
of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered carrying a
large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality in her glance
and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and, with a pleasant
smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional stoutness, which
caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and throw back her head,
this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod very lightly. She went
to the table, set down the tray, and with her plump white hands deftly
took from it the bottles and various hors d'oeuvres and dishes and
arranged them on the table. When she had finished, she stepped aside and
stopped at the door with a smile on her face. "Here I am. I am she! Now
do you understand 'Uncle'?" her expression said to Rostov. How could one
help understanding? Not only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood
the meaning of his puckered brow and the happy complacent smile that
slightly puckered his lips when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray
was a bottle of herb wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms,
rye cakes made with buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and
sparkling mead, apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey
sweets. Afterwards she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves
made with honey, and preserves made with sugar.

All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping, gathered and
prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a smack of Anisya
Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness, cleanliness, whiteness, and
pleasant smiles.

"Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered
Natasha first one thing and then another.

Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten such
buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets, or such
a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room.

After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of
past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat
upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried several
times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only muttered
incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so lighthearted and
happy in these novel surroundings that she only feared the trap would
come for her too soon. After a casual pause, such as often occurs
when receiving friends for the first time in one's own house, "Uncle,"
answering a thought that was in his visitors' mind, said:

"This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come. That's
it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?"

"Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said this.
Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about him from
his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province "Uncle" had
the reputation of being the most honorable and disinterested of cranks.
They called him in to decide family disputes, chose him as executor,
confided secrets to him, elected him to be a justice and to other posts;
but he always persistently refused public appointments, passing the
autumn and spring in the fields on his bay gelding, sitting at home in
winter, and lying in his overgrown garden in summer.

"Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?"

"I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come on! I
can't make head or tail of it. That's for you--I haven't brains enough.
Now, hunting is another matter--that's it, come on! Open the door,
there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?"

The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as they
called the room for the hunt servants.

There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the
door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a
balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was
playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and
now went out into the passage to hear better.

"That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka. I'm fond
of it," said "Uncle."

It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the huntsmen's room
when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond of such music.

"How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some unintentional
superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the sounds pleased him
very much.

"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's tone.
"Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"

Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had seemed
to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that moment, seemed
to her the acme of musical delight.

"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the balalayka
ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the balalayka
to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle" sat
listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air was
repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several times and
the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did not grow weary
of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya Fedorovna came in
and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.

"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely like
"Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.

"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an
energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out--that's it, come
on!--ought to burst out."

"Do you play then?" asked Natasha.

"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.

"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I haven't
touched it for a long time. That's it--come on! I've given it up."

Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her
errand and brought back the guitar.

Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping the
case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in his
armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard, arching
his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at
Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous, and then
quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow time, not
My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the street. The
tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to thrill in the
hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the same kind of sober
mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole being. Anisya Fedorovna
flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went laughing out of
the room. "Uncle" continued to play correctly, carefully, with energetic
firmness, looking with a changed and inspired expression at the spot
where Anisya Fedorovna had just stood. Something seemed to be laughing
a little on one side of his face under his gray mustaches, especially as
the song grew brisker and the time quicker and when, here and there, as
he ran his fingers over the strings, something seemed to snap.

"Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he had
finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas, Nicholas!"
she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What is it moves me
so?"

Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle"
played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face reappeared
in the doorway and behind hers other faces...

    Fetching water clear and sweet,
    Stop, dear maiden, I entreat--

played "Uncle" once more, running his fingers skillfully over the
strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.

"Go on, Uncle dear," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her life
depended on it.

"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of them
smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow struck a
naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.

"Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had
just struck a chord.

Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to face
"Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with her
shoulders and struck an attitude.

Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree
French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that spirit
and obtained that manner which the pas de chale * would, one would have
supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the movements were
those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that "Uncle" had expected
of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and smiled triumphantly,
proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that had at first seized
Nicholas and the others that she might not do the right thing was at an
end, and they were already admiring her.


    * The French shawl dance.


She did the right thing with such precision, such complete precision,
that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the handkerchief she
needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she
watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in silks and velvets and so
different from herself, who yet was able to understand all that was in
Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother and aunt, and in every Russian
man and woman.

"Well, little countess; that's it--come on!" cried "Uncle," with a
joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine
young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it--come on!"

"He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling.

"Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha, who
nodded her head with a happy smile.

"And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new train
of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile mean
when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is as if he
thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our gaiety. But
he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought, and her face
suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second. "Don't dare
to think about it," she said to herself, and sat down again smilingly
beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more.

"Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he cleared
his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:

    As 'twas growing dark last night
    Fell the snow so soft and light...


"Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that the
whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune comes of
itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which exists
only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered
tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good. Natasha was in
ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to give up learning the
harp and to play only the guitar. She asked "Uncle" for his guitar and
at once found the chords of the song.

After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been sent
to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count and
countess did not know where they were and were very anxious, said one of
the men.

Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two
traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped
Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness. He
accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be crossed,
so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen to ride
in front with lanterns.

"Good-by, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness--not the
voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas
growing dark last night.

In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a
cheerful smell of smoke.

"What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto the
highroad.

"Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?"

"No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered
Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long
while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but
only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.

What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly caught
and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did they all
find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were nearing home she
suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark last night--the tune
of which she had all the way been trying to get and had at last caught.

"Got it?" said Nicholas.

"What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.

They were fond of asking one another that question.

"I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I thought
that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were a man he
would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then for his
manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?... Well, and
you?"

"I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving along
and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows where we are
really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive and suddenly find
that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I thought... No,
nothing else."

"I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as Natasha
knew by the sound of his voice.

"No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about Prince
Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would have liked
"Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How well Anisya
carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her spontaneous, happy,
ringing laughter. "And do you know," she suddenly said, "I know that I
shall never again be as happy and tranquil as I am now."

"Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought: "How
charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her and
never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive about
together!"

"What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.

"Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!" she said, pointing to
the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety
darkness of the night.





CHAPTER VIII


Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility
because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs did
not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their parents conferring
together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of selling the
fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near Moscow. It was not necessary
to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal, and life at
Otradnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the enormous house
and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty sat down to
table every day. These were all their own people who had settled down
in the house almost as members of the family, or persons who were, it
seemed, obliged to live in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the
musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova,
an old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many others such as
Petya's tutors, the girls' former governess, and other people who simply
found it preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house
than at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old
habits of life without which the count and countess could not
conceive of existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting
establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty horses
and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive presents and
dinner parties to the whole district on name days; there were still the
count's games of whist and boston, at which--spreading out his cards so
that everybody could see them--he let himself be plundered of hundreds
of rubles every day by his neighbors, who looked upon an opportunity to
play a rubber with Count Rostov as a most profitable source of income.

The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe
that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and
feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and
patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt
that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count's fault
for he could not help being what he was--that (though he tried to
hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and his
children's ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the position.
From her feminine point of view she could see only one solution, namely,
for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last
hope and that if Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she
would have to abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match
was with Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents,
a girl the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a
wealthy heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.

The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow suggesting a
marriage between their children and had received a favorable answer
from her. Karagina had replied that for her part she was agreeable, and
everything depend on her daughter's inclination. She invited Nicholas to
come to Moscow.

Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son that
now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid girl
and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.

At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to Moscow
during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his mother's
remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations induced
her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of getting
their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie Karagina.

"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you expect
me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of money?" he
asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question and only
wishing to show his noble-mindedness.

"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how to
justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your
happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.

"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I will
give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I would
sacrifice anything for you--even my feelings."

But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did not
want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a sacrifice
for him.

"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she
replied, wiping away her tears.

"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he thought,
"must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly
be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can always
sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to himself,
"but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is for me
stronger and higher than all else."

Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and sometimes
with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and
the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could
not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya, often pulling her
up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my dear," and using the
formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in speaking to her. The
kindhearted countess was the more vexed with Sonya because that poor,
dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so devotedly grateful to
her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and unselfishly in
love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for finding fault with
her.

Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter had
come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would have
been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly
reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return till
the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still as much in love with
her betrothed, found the same comfort in that love, and was still as
ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at
the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to have fits
of depression which she could not master. She felt sorry for herself:
sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of no use to
anyone--while she felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.

Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.





CHAPTER IX


Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and the
new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities, though
the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine by day,
and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some special
celebration of the season.

On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the
inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest time
of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that morning,
was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting in his
study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round table, copying a
design for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastasya
Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the window with two old
ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to Sonya, glanced at
what she was doing, and then went up to her mother and stood without
speaking.

"Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother. "What
do you want?"

"Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha, with
glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.

The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.

"Don't look at me, Mamma! Don't look; I shall cry directly."

"Sit down with me a little," said the countess.

"Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?"

Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned quickly to
hide them and left the room.

She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and then
went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumbling at a
young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold from
the serfs' quarters.

"Stop playing--there's a time for everything," said the old woman.

"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."

Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went
to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing
cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.

"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.

"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the yard
and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some oats."

"Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily.

"Go, go quickly," the old man urged him.

"And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk."

On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a samovar,
though it was not at all the time for tea.

Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house. Natasha
liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order and asked
whether the samovar was really wanted.

"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at Natasha.

No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as
Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send
them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of them would
get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one's orders so
readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can I go?" thought she,
as she went slowly along the passage.

"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked the
buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.

"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.

"O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am I
to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly upstairs
to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.

Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which were
plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing
whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha sat down,
listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got
up again.

"The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated,
articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame
Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.

Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him he
was preparing fireworks to let off that night.

"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."

Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her
arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.

"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off his
back she went downstairs.

Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made sure
that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull, Natasha
betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down in a dark
corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over the strings
in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled from an opera she had
heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew. What she drew from the guitar
would have had no meaning for other listeners, but in her imagination
a whole series of reminiscences arose from those sounds. She sat behind
the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light escaping from the
pantry door and listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for
brooding on the past.

Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced at
her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she
remembered the light falling through that crack once before and Sonya
passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the same," thought
Natasha.

"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.

"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and
listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of being
wrong.

"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling
timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in just
the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."

"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen!" and Natasha sang
the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where were you
going?" she asked.

"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."

"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And
where's Nicholas?"

"Asleep, I think."

"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come and
sing."

She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened
before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting
not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was
with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.

"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!
And, worst of all, I am growing old--that's the thing! There won't then
be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will come
immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing room.
Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose, put down
the guitar, and went to the drawing room.

All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were already
at the tea table. The servants stood round the table--but Prince Andrew
was not there and life was going on as before.

"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter. "Well,
sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced round as
if looking for something.

"Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,
quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.

She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the
elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my God!
The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the
same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion
rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the
same.

After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to
their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.





CHAPTER X


"Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when they
settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you to feel
as if there were nothing more to come--nothing; that everything good is
past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?"

"I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when everything
was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come into my
mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must all die.
Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where there was
music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..."

"Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I was
quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I was
punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing
in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for
everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was innocent--that was the
chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?"

"I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you
afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt ashamed
to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and wanted to give
it to you. Do you remember?"

"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how once,
long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into the
study--that was in the old house--and it was dark--we went in and
suddenly there stood..."

"A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course I
remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or if
we only dreamed it or were told about him."

"He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and looked at
us..."

"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas.

"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.

"You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said Natasha,
"and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you remember!"

"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them."

"How strange it is! It's as if it were a dream! I like that."

"And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom, and
suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was that real
or not? Do you remember what fun it was?"

"Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun in the
porch?"

So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad
memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones--those impressions of
one's most distant past in which dreams and realities blend--and they
laughed with quiet enjoyment.

Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they shared
the same reminiscences.

Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she
recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced. She
simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.

She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first arrival. She
told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because he had on a corded
jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too, would be sewn up with
cords.

"And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a
cabbage," said Natasha, "and I remember that I dared not disbelieve it
then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable."

While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other door of
the sitting room.

"They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper.

"It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied Natasha.

In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and
went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its cloth
covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.

"Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the old
countess' voice from the drawing room.

Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya,
remarked: "How quiet you young people are!"

"Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a moment
and then continuing the conversation. They were now discussing dreams.

Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the table,
took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself quietly
in her former place. It was dark in the room especially where they were
sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the silvery light of
the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished the piece but
still sat softly running his fingers over the strings, evidently
uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.

"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and
Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at last
begins to remember what happened before one was in the world..."

"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well, and
remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have lived
in animals, and will go back into animals again."

"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still in
a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we
were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we
remember...."

"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat down
by them.

"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas. "No,
that can't be!"

"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was before?"
Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal--well then, if I
shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity."

"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked Dimmler,
who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now
spoke as quietly and seriously as they.

"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now today,
and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and the
day before..."

"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the
countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"

"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same she
rose.

None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off
their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but Natasha
got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as usual in the
middle of the hall and choosing the place where the resonance was best,
Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.

She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had
sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The
count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her and,
like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in his talk
while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped, while Mitenka
stood in front of him also listening and smiling. Nicholas did not take
his eyes off his sister and drew breath in time with her. Sonya, as she
listened, thought of the immense difference there was between herself
and her friend, and how impossible it was for her to be anything like as
bewitching as her cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad
smile and with tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She
thought of Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something
unnatural and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince
Andrew.

Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with
closed eyes.

"Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she has
nothing to learn--what softness, tenderness, and strength...."

"Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess, not
realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her that
Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she would
not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing, fourteen-year-old
Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some mummers had arrived.

Natasha stopped abruptly.

"Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair, threw
herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop for a long
time.

"It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled me," she
said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs still choked
her.

The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
innkeepers, and ladies--frightening and funny--bringing in with them the
cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first timidly,
into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed into
the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily and
heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas games.
The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their
costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,
smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had
disappeared.

Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the
ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt--this was Nicholas. A Turkish
girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a
Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.

After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from those
who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided that their
costumes were so good that they ought to be shown elsewhere.

Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to take
them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them about a
dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."

"No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you
wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the
Melyukovs'."

Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.

"That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly aroused.
"I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette open her
eyes."

But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad leg all
these last days. It was decided that the count must not go, but that
if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies
might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and shy, more
urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.

Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows were
extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very handsome,
and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with her. Some
inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and
in her male attire she seemed quite a different person. Louisa Ivanovna
consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka sleighs with large and
small bells, their runners squeaking and whistling over the frozen snow,
drove up to the porch.

Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing
from one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax when they all
came out into the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to
one another, laughing, and shouting.

Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was
the old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse,
the fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.
Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his hussar
overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.

It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the metal
harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round in alarm
at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.

Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas' sleigh;
Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the rest of the
mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.

"You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman,
wishing for a chance to race past him.

The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its deep-toned
bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts of the
middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered like sugar,
and threw it up.

Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the others
moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove at a steady
trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the garden the shadows
of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant
moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain
bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering
like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows. Bang, bang! went the
first sleigh over a cradle hole in the snow of the road, and each of
the other sleighs jolted in the same way, and rudely breaking the
frost-bound stillness, the troykas began to speed along the road, one
after the other.

"A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice through the
frost-bound air.

"How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.

Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face closer.
Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches peeped up at
him from her sable furs--so close and yet so distant--in the moonlight.

"That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and
smiled.

"What is it, Nicholas?"

"Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses.

When they came out onto the beaten highroad--polished by sleigh runners
and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were visible in the
moonlight--the horses began to tug at the reins of their own accord and
increased their pace. The near side horse, arching his head and breaking
into a short canter, tugged at his traces. The shaft horse swayed from
side to side, moving his ears as if asking: "Isn't it time to begin
now?" In front, already far ahead the deep bell of the sleigh ringing
farther and farther off, the black horses driven by Zakhar could be
clearly seen against the white snow. From that sleigh one could hear the
shouts, laughter, and voices of the mummers.

"Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one side
and flourishing the whip.

It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given by the
side horses who pulled harder--ever increasing their gallop--that one
noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back. With
screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft horses
to gallop--the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung steadily
beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of slackening pace and
ready to put on speed when required.

Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and
coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.

"Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But
no--this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy
meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is
something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting
to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.

Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already
covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.

Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his arms,
clucked his tongue and let his horses go.

"Now, look out, master!" he cried.

Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the
feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead. Zakhar,
while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with the reins.

"No you won't, master!" he shouted.

Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The horses
showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh--beside
them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused glimpses of
swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they were passing.
The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the voices of girls
shrieking were heard from different sides.

Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were still
surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled with
stars.

"Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the
left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this
Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows what
is happening to us--but it is very strange and pleasant whatever it is."
And he looked round in the sleigh.

"Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the
strange, pretty, unfamiliar people--the one with fine eyebrows and
mustache.

"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was
Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the
mustache I don't know, but I love her."

"Aren't you cold?" he asked.

They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh behind
shouted something--probably something funny--but they could not make out
what he said.

"Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing.

"But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a glitter
of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver roofs of fairy
buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And if this is really
Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove heaven knows where and
have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas.

It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces came
running, out to the porch carrying candles.

"Who is it?" asked someone in the porch.

"The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some
voices.





CHAPTER XI


Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman wearing
spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress, surrounded by
her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling dull. They were
quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at the shadows the wax
figures would throw on the wall, when they heard the steps and voices of
new arrivals in the vestibule.

Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their
throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,
came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The
clown--Dimmler--and the lady--Nicholas--started a dance. Surrounded by
the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and disguising
their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged themselves about the
room.

"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she looks
like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler--isn't
he good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a
Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that?
Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya--clear away the tables!
And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar!
Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different
voices were saying.

Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into the
back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments
were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from
behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukovs joined the
mummers.

Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the
visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,
went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles, peering
into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any of
them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she failed to recognize,
she did not even recognize her own daughters, or her late husband's,
dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put on.

"And who is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face of her
own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one of the
Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?" she asked
Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she ordered the
butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden by his law."

Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by the
dancers, who--having decided once for all that being disguised, no one
would recognize them--were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna hid
her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with
irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.

"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.

After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna made
the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a string, and a
silver ruble were fetched and they all played games together.

In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The corked
eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring, flushed, and
merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the mummers, admired
their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly how they suited the
young ladies, and she thanked them all for having entertained her so
well. The visitors were invited to supper in the drawing room, and the
serfs had something served to them in the ballroom.

"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!" said
an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.

"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.

"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."

"I'll go," said Sonya.

"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov girl.

"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a cock,
laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After sitting a
while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh drives up with
harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in, just in the shape of a
man, like an officer--comes in and sits down to table with her."

"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.

"Yes? And how... did he speak?"

"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began persuading
her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow, but she got
frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her hands. Then he
caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just then..."

"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.

"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter.

"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.

"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on what
you hear; hammering and knocking--that's bad; but a sound of shifting
grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too."

"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."

Pelageya Danilovna smiled.

"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?"

"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya.

"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"

"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.

Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game or
talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at her
with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today, thanks
to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to know her. And
really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated, and prettier
than Nicholas had ever seen her before.

"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought gazing
at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous smile
dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.

"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She got
up.

They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and listen,
and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her head and
shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.

"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been
thinking of till now?"

Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went hastily
to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of people really
had made the house stuffy.

Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but even
brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow sparkled with
so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the sky and the real
stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, while the earth was
gay.

"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought Nicholas,
and running out from the porch he went round the corner of the house and
along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya would pass
that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and across and
along them a network of shadows from the bare old lime trees fell on the
snow and on the path. This path led to the barn. The log walls of the
barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked as if hewn out of some
precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A tree in the garden snapped
with the frost, and then all was again perfectly silent. His bosom
seemed to inhale not air but the strength of eternal youth and gladness.

From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the
bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he heard
the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight, along the
path, Miss. Only, don't look back."

"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward
Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her thin
shoes.

Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of paces
away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas she
had known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress, with
tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly toward him.

"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her
face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the cloak
that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and kissed her
on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt cork. Sonya
kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little hands pressed
them to his cheeks.

"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and
then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back porch.





CHAPTER XII


When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who always
saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss should
go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and the
maids.

On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing and
kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's face
and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his
present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again. He
looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new Sonya, and
being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss,
inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and, looking at the ground
flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself again in
fairyland.

"Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time.

"Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?"

When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and ran for
a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing.

"Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my mind
about Sonya?"

"Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with joy.

"Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...
Natasha--are you glad?"

"I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I did not
tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart she has,
Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy while
Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad! Well, run back to
her."

"No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering
into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and
bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. "Natasha, it's
magical, isn't it?"

"Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly."

"Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should long
ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me, and
all would have been well."

"So you are glad and I have done right?"

"Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.
Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! I
nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her."

"Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the expression
of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then he jumped down
and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his sleigh. The same
happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and beaming eyes looking up
from under a sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Circassian
was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his future happy and loving
wife.

When they reached home and had told their mother how they had spent the
evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their bedroom. When they
had undressed, but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a
long time talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live
when they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and how
happy they would be. On Natasha's table stood two looking glasses which
Dunyasha had prepared beforehand.

"Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too
good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses.

"Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya.

Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking glasses,
and sat down.

"I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face.

"You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha.

With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held into
the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious
expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the
receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting (from
tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that
last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was to take the
smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, she saw nothing.
She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the looking glasses.

"Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down now,
Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I feel so
frightened!"

Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
looking.

"Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha; "while
you do nothing but laugh."

Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper:

"I know she will. She saw something last year."

For about three minutes all were silent.

"Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish... suddenly
Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her eyes with
her hand.

"Oh, Natasha!" she cried.

"Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up the
looking glass.

Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to get
up when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not wish to
disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to sit still.
She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped her when she
covered her eyes.

"You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand.

"Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying, not yet
knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.

"But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who can
tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind.

"Yes, I saw him," she said.

"How? Standing or lying?"

"No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying down."

"Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes fixed on
her friend.

"No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he
turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really
seen what she described.

"Well, and then, Sonya?..."

"After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and
red..."

"Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how afraid
I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha began, and
without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into bed, and long
after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless, gazing at the
moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.





CHAPTER XIII


Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his love
for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who had
long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this
declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that he
might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father would
give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the first time,
felt that his mother was displeased with him and that, despite her love
for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without looking at her son,
she sent for her husband and, when he came, tried briefly and coldly to
inform him of the facts, in her son's presence, but unable to restrain
herself she burst into tears of vexation and left the room. The old
count began irresolutely to admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his
purpose. Nicholas replied that he could not go back on his word, and his
father, sighing and evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and
went in to the countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count
was always conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the
family fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to
marry an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he
was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had not
been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could have
been wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mitenka and
his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the family
finances.

The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son again,
but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a cruelty
neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to catch
Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with downcast eyes
to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what was required
of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her benefactors.
Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this case she could
not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She could not help
loving the countess and the whole Rostov family, but neither could she
help loving Nicholas and knowing that his happiness depended on that
love. She was silent and sad and did not reply. Nicholas felt the
situation to be intolerable and went to have an explanation with his
mother. He first implored her to forgive him and Sonya and consent to
their marriage, then he threatened that if she molested Sonya he would
at once marry her secretly.

The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her before,
replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying without his
father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she would never
receive that intriguer as her daughter.

Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told
his mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his
feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time.... But he
had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression of his face
caused his mother to await with terror, and which would perhaps have
forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had not time to say it,
for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the room from the door at
which she had been listening.

"Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I
tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.

"Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she
said to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of
a rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and
excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.

"Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling," said
Natasha.

Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which she
was aiming.

The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's breast,
while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.

Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded
that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not
be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything
without his parents' knowledge.

Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment,
to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,
sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,
passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his
regiment.

After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more
depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.

Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more so on
account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting toward
her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of his
affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house and
estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they had
to go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay their
departure from day to day.

Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her betrothed
lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and impatient every
day. The thought that her best days, which she would have employed
in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no advantage to anyone,
tormented her incessantly. His letters for the most part irritated her.
It hurt her to think that while she lived only in the thought of him, he
was living a real life, seeing new places and new people that interested
him. The more interesting his letters were the more vexed she felt.
Her letters to him, far from giving her any comfort, seemed to her a
wearisome and artificial obligation. She could not write, because she
could not conceive the possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter
even a thousandth part of what she expressed by voice, smile, and
glance. She wrote to him formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which
she attached no importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the
countess corrected her mistakes in spelling.

There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was
impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's
trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew
was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending the
winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.

So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya and
Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.





BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12





CHAPTER I


After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any apparent
cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before. Firmly
convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by his benefactor,
and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner man, to which he had
devoted himself with such ardor--all the zest of such a life vanished
after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and the death of Joseph
Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost at the same time.
Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a brilliant wife who now
enjoyed the favors of a very important personage, acquaintance with all
Petersburg, and his court service with its dull formalities. And this
life suddenly seemed to Pierre unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping
a diary, avoided the company of the Brothers, began going to the Club
again, drank a great deal, and came once more in touch with the bachelor
sets, leading such a life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary
to speak severely to him about it. Pierre felt that she was right, and
to avoid compromising her went away to Moscow.

In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded and
fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as soon as,
driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with innumerable
tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons, the Kremlin Square
with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers and hovels of
the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who desired nothing, hurried
nowhere, and were ending their days leisurely; when he saw those old
Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls, and the English Club, he felt himself
at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and
dirty as in an old dressing gown.

Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received Pierre
like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready awaiting him.
For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest, most intellectual,
merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless, genial nobleman of
the old Russian type. His purse was always empty because it was open to
everyone.

Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent societies,
gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees, Freemasons,
churches, and books--no one and nothing met with a refusal from him, and
had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large sums from him and
taken him under their protection, he would have given everything away.
There was never a dinner or soiree at the Club without him. As soon as
he sank into his place on the sofa after two bottles of Margaux he was
surrounded, and talking, disputing, and joking began. When there
were quarrels, his kindly smile and well-timed jests reconciled the
antagonists. The Masonic dinners were dull and dreary when he was not
there.

When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly smile,
yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive off somewhere
with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the young men.
At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies, married and
unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of them, he was
equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il est charmant; il
n'a pas de sexe," * they said of him.


    * "He is charming; he has no sex."


Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there were
hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.

How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first
arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him
to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally
predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in
his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one
time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia;
then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then
a strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the
possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the sinful
human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of perfection?
Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated his serfs?

But instead of all that--here he was, the wealthy husband of an
unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and
drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the government
a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal favorite in
Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile himself to the
idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow gentlemen-in-waiting
he had so despised seven years before.

Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only living
this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought of how
many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club temporarily,
with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it when not a single
tooth or hair remained.

In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to
him that he was quite different and distinct from those other retired
gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were empty, stupid,
contented fellows, satisfied with their position, "while I am still
discontented and want to do something for mankind. But perhaps all these
comrades of mine struggled just like me and sought something new, a
path in life of their own, and like me were brought by force of
circumstances, society, and race--by that elemental force against which
man is powerless--to the condition I am in," said he to himself in
moments of humility; and after living some time in Moscow he no longer
despised, but began to grow fond of, to respect, and to pity his
comrades in destiny, as he pitied himself.

Pierre no longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust
with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such
acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment.
"What for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself in
perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to reflect anew
on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by experience that
there were no answers to these questions he made haste to turn away
from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the Club or to Apollon
Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town.

"Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is one
of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded by
people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay homage
to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he was great,
but now that he has become a wretched comedian the Emperor Francis wants
to offer him his daughter in an illegal marriage. The Spaniards, through
the Catholic clergy, offer praise to God for their victory over the
French on the fourteenth of June, and the French, also through the
Catholic clergy, offer praise because on that same fourteenth of June
they defeated the Spaniards. My brother Masons swear by the blood that
they are ready to sacrifice everything for their neighbor, but they
do not give a ruble each to the collections for the poor, and they
intrigue, the Astraea Lodge against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an
authentic Scotch carpet and a charter that nobody needs, and the meaning
of which the very man who wrote it does not understand. We all profess
the Christian law of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors,
the law in honor of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty
churches--but yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister
of that same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a
cross to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of
this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to
it, astonished him each time as if it were something new. "I understand
the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I to tell them
all that I see? I have tried, and have always found that they too in the
depths of their souls understand it as I do, and only try not to see
it. So it appears that it must be so! But I--what is to become of
me?" thought he. He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially
Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness
and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly
to be able to take a serious part in it. Every sphere of work was
connected, in his eyes, with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to
be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and falsehood of it repulsed him
and blocked every path of activity. Yet he had to live and to find
occupation. It was too dreadful to be under the burden of these
insoluble problems, so he abandoned himself to any distraction in order
to forget them. He frequented every kind of society, drank much, bought
pictures, engaged in building, and above all--read.

He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home, while
his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book and
began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping to
gossip in drawing rooms of the Club, from gossip to carousals and women;
from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking became more
and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the doctors
warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for him, he
drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having poured several
glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he felt a pleasant
warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his fellows, and a
readiness to respond superficially to every idea without probing it
deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did he feel dimly that the
terribly tangled skein of life which previously had terrified him was
not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always conscious of some
aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his head after dinner or
supper he chatted or listened to conversation or read. But under the
influence of wine he said to himself: "It doesn't matter. I'll get it
unraveled. I have a solution ready, but have no time now--I'll think it
all out later on!" But the later on never came.

In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions appeared as
insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily picked up a book, and
if anyone came to see him he was glad.

Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when
entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try hard
to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre
all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in
ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in
toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine,
and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is trivial, and nothing is
important, it's all the same--only to save oneself from it as best one
can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it, that dreadful it!"





CHAPTER II


At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his daughter
moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor Alexander's
regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French tendency prevailed
there, and this, together with his past and his intellect and his
originality, at once made Prince Nicholas Bolkonski an object of
particular respect to the Moscovites and the center of the Moscow
opposition to the government.

The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of
senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent
events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which
he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of this
the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of respectful
veneration--especially of an evening when he came in to tea in his
old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone, told his
abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and scathing
criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned house with
its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered footmen, and
the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past century) with his
gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who were reverently devoted
to him presented a majestic and agreeable spectacle. But the visitors
did not reflect that besides the couple of hours during which they saw
their host, there were also twenty-two hours in the day during which the
private and intimate life of the house continued.

Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.
There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures--talks with
the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills--and she
had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not go
out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her go
anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going out
himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening parties. She
had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She saw the coldness
and malevolence with which the old prince received and dismissed the
young men, possible suitors, who sometimes appeared at their house. She
had no friends: during this visit to Moscow she had been disappointed in
the two who had been nearest to her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom
she had never been able to be quite frank, had now become unpleasant to
her, and for various reasons Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom
she had corresponded for the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved
to be quite alien to her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the
death of her brothers had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow,
was in the full whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young
men who, she fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth.
Julie was at that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels
that her last chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be
decided now or never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a
mournful smile that she now had no one to write to, since Julie--whose
presence gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like
the old emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his
evenings for years, she regretted Julie's presence and having no one to
write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one to whom
to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just then. The
time for Prince Andrew's return and marriage was approaching, but his
request to her to prepare his father for it had not been carried out; in
fact, it seemed as if matters were quite hopeless, for at every mention
of the young Countess Rostova the old prince (who apart from that was
usually in a bad temper) lost control of himself. Another lately added
sorrow arose from the lessons she gave her six year-old nephew. To her
consternation she detected in herself in relation to little Nicholas
some symptoms of her father's irritability. However often she told
herself that she must not get irritable when teaching her nephew, almost
every time that, pointer in hand, she sat down to show him the French
alphabet, she so longed to pour her own knowledge quickly and easily
into the child--who was already afraid that Auntie might at any moment
get angry--that at his slightest inattention she trembled, became
flustered and heated, raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the
arm and put him in the corner. Having put him in the corner she would
herself begin to cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas,
following her example, would sob, and without permission would leave his
corner, come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort
her. But what distressed the princess most of all was her father's
irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late
amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the
ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water, it
would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but this
loving despot--the more cruel because he loved her and for that reason
tormented himself and her--knew how not merely to hurt and humiliate
her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to blame for
everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that tormented Princess
Mary more than anything else; this was his ever-increasing intimacy with
Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at the first moment of receiving
the news of his son's intentions had occurred to him in jest--that
if Andrew got married he himself would marry Bourienne--had evidently
pleased him, and latterly he had persistently, and as it seemed to
Princess Mary merely to offend her, shown special endearments to
the companion and expressed his dissatisfaction with his daughter by
demonstrations of love of Bourienne.

One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her father
did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed Mademoiselle
Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her affectionately.
Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few minutes later
Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room smiling and making
cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess Mary hastily wiped
away her tears, went resolutely up to Mademoiselle Bourienne, and
evidently unconscious of what she was doing began shouting in angry
haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice breaking: "It's horrible, vile,
inhuman, to take advantage of the weakness..." She did not finish.
"Leave my room," she exclaimed, and burst into sobs.

Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she noticed
that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne should be
served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee and from
habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew furious,
threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to have him
conscripted for the army.

"He doesn't obey... I said it twice... and he doesn't obey! She is the
first person in this house; she's my best friend," cried the prince.
"And if you allow yourself," he screamed in a fury, addressing Princess
Mary for the first time, "to forget yourself again before her as you
dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this house. Go!
Don't let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!"

Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne's pardon, and also her
father's pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged
for her intervention.

At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in her
soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look for his
spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not seeing them, or
would forget something that had just occurred, or take a false step with
his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had noticed his feebleness,
or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no visitors to excite him
would suddenly fall asleep, letting his napkin drop and his shaking head
sink over his plate. "He is old and feeble, and I dare to condemn
him!" she thought at such moments, with a feeling of revulsion against
herself.





CHAPTER III


In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor--Metivier--who had
rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome, amiable
as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an extraordinarily clever
doctor. He was received in the best houses not merely as a doctor, but
as an equal.

Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on
Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him and
had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about twice
a week.

On December 6--St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day--all Moscow
came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit no one
and to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom he gave to
Princess Mary.

Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered
it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne, * as he told
Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on that
morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods. He had
been going about the house all the morning finding fault with everyone
and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not to be
understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet absorbed
querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage, and she
went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and loaded gun and
awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's arrival the morning
had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor, Princess Mary sat
down with a book in the drawing room near the door through which she
could hear all that passed in the study.


    * To force the guard.


At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then both
voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung open, and
on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the terrified Metivier
with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his dressing gown and
fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils of his eyes rolled
downwards.

"You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy, slave
of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..."

Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne who
at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.

"The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head.
Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his
fingers to his lips he hastened away.

Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:
"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my own
house!"

After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in, and
the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a spy
had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a list,
and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was that
scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he said, he
could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly.

"No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that, understand
it! I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the room. Then, as if
afraid she might find some means of consolation, he returned and trying
to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have said this in a moment of
anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and it will be carried
out--we must part; so find some place for yourself...." But he could not
restrain himself and with the virulence of which only one who loves
is capable, evidently suffering himself, he shook his fists at her and
screamed:

"If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door, sent for
Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.

At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.

These guests--the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with his
nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of the
younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy--awaited the prince in
the drawing room.

Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been
anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had contrived
to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his case made an
exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his house.

The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable
society, but his little circle--though not much talked about in
town--was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other.
Boris had realized this the week before when the commander in chief
in his presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and
Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:

"On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski."

"Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander in chief. "How is he?..."

The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty old-fashioned
drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn gathering of
a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low tones. Prince
Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary seemed even quieter
and more diffident than usual. The guests were reluctant to address her,
feeling that she was in no mood for their conversation. Count Rostopchin
alone kept the conversation going, now relating the latest town news,
and now the latest political gossip.

Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the conversation.
Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge receives a report, only
now and then, silently or by a brief word, showing that he took heed of
what was being reported to him. The tone of the conversation was such as
indicated that no one approved of what was being done in the political
world. Incidents were related evidently confirming the opinion that
everything was going from bad to worse, but whether telling a story or
giving an opinion the speaker always stopped, or was stopped, at the
point beyond which his criticism might touch the sovereign himself.

At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's
seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note,
hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.

"Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said Count
Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times before. "One
only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the crowned heads.
Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't scruple to depose the
head of the Catholic Church--yet all keep silent! Our sovereign alone
has protested against the seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory,
and even..." Count Rostopchin paused, feeling that he had reached the
limit beyond which censure was impossible.

"Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of
Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I might
move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan estates."

"The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength of
character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in respectfully.

He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the honor
of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at the young
man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his mind,
evidently considering him too young.

"I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was surprised
how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in the casual
tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.

Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not understanding
why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the Note.

"Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so long as
its substance is forcible?"

"My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should be easy
to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin.

Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording of
the Note.

"One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up," remarked
the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing--not notes
only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a whole volume
of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!" and he laughed
unnaturally.

There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general cleared
his throat to draw attention.

"Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The figure
cut by the new French ambassador."

"Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His Majesty's
presence."

"His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the march
past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador took no
notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no attention
to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply. At the next
review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to address him."

All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it was
impossible to pass any judgment.

"Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned him
out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him in spite of
my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing angrily
at his daughter.

And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and the
reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these reasons
were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.

After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to congratulate
the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.

He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled,
clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told her
that he had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision remained
in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his speaking of it
to her now.

When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the old
men sat together.

Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the
impending war.

He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long as we
sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into European
affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. "We ought
not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political interests are
all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only thing is to have
an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will never dare to cross the
Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!"

"How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can we
arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our youths,
look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our Kingdom of
Heaven."

He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.

"French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you turned
Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a Frenchman and a
scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their knees. I went to
a party last night, and there out of five ladies three were Roman
Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing woolwork on Sundays.
And they themselves sit there nearly naked, like the signboards at our
Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when one looks at our young people,
Prince, one would like to take Peter the Great's old cudgel out of the
museum and belabor them in the Russian way till all the nonsense jumps
out of them."

All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile and
wagged his head approvingly.

"Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin, getting up
with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to the prince.

"Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of
hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and offering
his cheek to be kissed.

Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose.





CHAPTER IV


Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and
faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only wondered
whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile attitude toward
her. She did not even notice the special attentions and amiabilities
shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who was visiting them for
the third time already.

Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to Pierre, who
hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of the guests to
approach her after the old prince had gone out and they were left alone
in the drawing room.

"May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink into
an armchair beside her.

"Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked.

Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight before
him and smiled quietly.

"Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked.

"Who?"

"Drubetskoy."

"No, not long..."

"Do you like him?"

"Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said
Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with her
father.

"Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from
Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an
heiress."

"You have observed that?" said Princess Mary.

"Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages
matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I
can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay siege
to--you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive to her."

"He visits them?"

"Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said Pierre
with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good humored
raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his diary.

"No," replied Princess Mary.

"To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very
melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre.

"Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and
still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she,
"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should like
to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would be a
relief. He would give me advice."

"Would you marry him?"

"Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!" she
cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice. "Ah, how
bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that..." she went
on in a trembling voice, "that you can do nothing for him but grieve
him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only one
thing left--to go away, but where could I go?"

"What is wrong? What is it, Princess?"

But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst into
tears.

"I don't know what is the matter with me today. Don't take any
notice--forget what I have said!"

Pierre's gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the
princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him; but
she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said, that
she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no trouble
except the one he knew of--that Prince Andrew's marriage threatened to
cause a rupture between father and son.

"Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the subject.
"I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting Andrew any day. I
should like them to meet here."

"And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring to the
old prince.

Princess Mary shook her head.

"What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The thing is
impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first moments. I
wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her. You have
known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me honestly the whole
truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you think of her?--The real
truth, because you know Andrew is risking so much doing this against his
father's will that I should like to know..."

An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and repeated
requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on the
princess' part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that he should
disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what he felt rather
than what he thought.

"I don't know how to answer your question," he said, blushing without
knowing why. "I really don't know what sort of girl she is; I can't
analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I don't
know. That is all one can say about her."

Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes, that's
what I expected and feared."

"Is she clever?" she asked.

Pierre considered.

"I think not," he said, "and yet--yes. She does not deign to be
clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all."

Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.

"Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do."

"I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre.

Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her future
sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to accustom the
old prince to her.





CHAPTER V


Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg, so with
the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered between the
two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though Princess Mary
despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than Julie, he,
without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to her. When they
had last met on the old prince's name day, she had answered at random
all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently not listening to what
he was saying.

Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a
manner peculiar to herself.

She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become
very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself not
merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She
was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a very
wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew the less
dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could associate
with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and the animated
company that assembled at her house, without incurring any obligation.
A man who would have been afraid ten years before of going every day
to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there, for fear of
compromising her and committing himself, would now go boldly every day
and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless acquaintance.

That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and hospitable
in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner parties, a large
company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day, supping at midnight
and staying till three in the morning. Julie never missed a ball, a
promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of the latest fashion.
But in spite of that she seemed to be disillusioned about everything and
told everyone that she did not believe either in friendship or in
love, or any of the joys of life, and expected peace only "yonder." She
adopted the tone of one who has suffered a great disappointment, like a
girl who has either lost the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by
him. Though nothing of the kind had happened to her she was regarded in
that light, and had even herself come to believe that she had suffered
much in life. This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing
herself, did not hinder the young people who came to her house from
passing the time pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid
his tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused
himself with society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts
rimes, which were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young
men, among them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and
with these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity
of all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with
mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.

To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship
as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him her
album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic trees,
your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."

On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:

    La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
    Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile. *


    * Death gives relief and death is peaceful.


Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.

Julie said this was charming

"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she said
to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a book.
"It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and
despair, showing the possibility of consolation."

In reply Boris wrote these lines:

    Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,
    Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
    Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,
    Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
    Et mele une douceur secrete
    A ces pleurs que je sens couler. *


      *Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
     Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
     Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
     Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
     And mingle a secret sweetness
     With these tears that I feel to be flowing.


For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris read
Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading
because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large gatherings
Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who understood
one another in a world of indifferent people.

Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing cards
with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry (she was to
have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests). Anna Mikhaylovna
regarded the refined sadness that united her son to the wealthy Julie
with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.

"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to
the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He has
suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to the
mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of Julie
latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving her? She is
an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"--she paused. "And how I pity her
mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and letters from
Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor thing, has no
one to help her, and they do cheat her so!"

Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. He
laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had
to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and
Nizhegorod estates.

Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy adorer and
was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of repulsion for her,
for her passionate desire to get married, for her artificiality, and
a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of real love still
restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He spent every day and whole
days at the Karagins', and every day on thinking the matter over told
himself that he would propose tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking
at her red face and chin (nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and
her expression of continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy
to an unnatural rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the
decisive words, though in imagination he had long regarded himself as
the possessor of those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned
the use of the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and
sometimes the thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but
her feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation,
and she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy,
however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris'
departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Boris' leave of
absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in Moscow, and
of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and Julie, suddenly abandoning
her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive to Kuragin.

"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable
source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him married
to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for her. What do
you think of it, my dear?"

The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that whole
month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing all the
revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally apportioned
and put to proper use fall into the hands of another, and especially
into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris. He drove to the
Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing. Julie met him in a gay,
careless manner, spoke casually of how she had enjoyed yesterday's ball,
and asked when he was leaving. Though Boris had come intentionally to
speak of his love and therefore meant to be tender, he began speaking
irritably of feminine inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from
sadness to joy, and how their moods depend solely on who happens to be
paying court to them. Julie was offended and replied that it was true
that a woman needs variety, and the same thing over and over again would
weary anyone.

"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but at
that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have to
leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly wasted
his efforts--which was a thing he never allowed to happen.

He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes to
avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and said:

"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..."

He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability had
suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were fixed on
him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as not to see her
often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and must be finished!"
He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and said:

"You know my feelings for you!"

There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and
self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on such
occasions--that he loved her and had never loved any other woman more
than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and Nizhegorod forests she
could demand this, and she received what she demanded.

The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom and
melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house in
Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.





CHAPTER VI


At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha and
Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it was
impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in
Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near
Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his
future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in Moscow
could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been heated that
winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the countess
was not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya Dmitrievna
Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality on them.

Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya Dmitrievna's
courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya Dmitrievna lived alone.
She had already married off her daughter, and her sons were all in the
service.

She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,
loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach
to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation--the possibility of
which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:
on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after
dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there
were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing meal
at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she played
a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a new book read
to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception and went out to
pay visits, and then only to the most important persons in the town.

She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the pulley of
the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the Rostovs and their
servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles hanging down on her nose
and her head flung back, stood in the hall doorway looking with a stern,
grim face at the new arrivals. One might have thought she was angry with
the travelers and would immediately turn them out, had she not at the
same time been giving careful instructions to the servants for the
accommodation of the visitors and their belongings.

"The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the
portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the
left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the
samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked,
drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by the
hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she shouted
to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half frozen,
I'm sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she added,
turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her slightly
contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.

When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things and
tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna kissed them
all in due order.

"I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was high
time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old man is here
and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his acquaintance.
But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at Sonya with a
look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her presence. "Now
listen," she said to the count. "What do you want tomorrow? Whom will
you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her fingers. "The sniveling
Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here with her son. The son is
getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is here too, with his wife. He
ran away from her and she came galloping after him. He dined with me on
Wednesday. As for them"--and she pointed to the girls--"tomorrow I'll
take them first to the Iberian shrine of the Mother of God, and then
we'll drive to the Super-Rogue's. I suppose you'll have everything new.
Don't judge by me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young
Princess Irina Vasilevna came to see me; she was an awful sight--looked
as if she had put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes
now without some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?" she
asked the count sternly.

"One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a
purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If you
will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just for a
day, and leave my lassies with you."

"All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in Chancery!
I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet them a
bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and favorite,
Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand.

Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian
shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so
afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at a
loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the
whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the room
except Natasha, and then called her pet to her armchair.

"Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed. You've
hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known him since
he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the ground.
Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now listen! You
know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's marrying. The old
fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a child and can shift
without him, but it's not nice to enter a family against a father's
will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly. You're a clever girl
and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use your wits. Then all will
be well."

Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but
really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her love
of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human affairs
that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince Andrew, he
loved her only, and was to come one of these days and take her. She
wanted nothing more.

"You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your
future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but this
one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two together.
Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice and
affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll find
you already know his sister and father and are liked by them. Am I right
or not? Won't that be best?"

"Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly.





CHAPTER VII


Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to
call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out cheerfully
on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well remembered the last
interview he had had with the old prince at the time of the enrollment,
when in reply to an invitation to dinner he had had to listen to an
angry reprimand for not having provided his full quota of men. Natasha,
on the other hand, having put on her best gown, was in the highest
spirits. "They can't help liking me," she thought. "Everybody always has
liked me, and I am so willing to do anything they wish, so ready to
be fond of him--for being his father--and of her--for being his
sister--that there is no reason for them not to like me..."

They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and entered
the vestibule.

"Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest, half
in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on entering
the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the prince and
princess were at home.

When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the
servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by
another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a
maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning
the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced
to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the princess
begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the visitors
was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and daughter with
special politeness and showed them to the princess' room. The princess,
looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in patches, ran in to meet
the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly trying to appear cordial and
at ease. From the first glance Princess Mary did not like Natasha. She
thought her too fashionably dressed, frivolously gay and vain. She did
not at all realize that before having seen her future sister-in-law she
was prejudiced against her by involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and
happiness, as well as by jealousy of her brother's love for her. Apart
from this insuperable antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just
then because on the Rostovs' being announced, the old prince had shouted
that he did not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do so if
she chose, but they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to
receive them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in
some freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit.

"There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said the
count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old prince
might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one another... very
sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few more commonplace
remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my Natasha in your
hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive round to see Anna
Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square, and then I'll come back
for her."

The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told his
daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk
to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of
encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention
this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness
and anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still
angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold and
defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of anybody. The
princess told the count that she would be delighted, and only begged him
to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he departed.

Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary--who wished to
have a tete-a-tete with Natasha--Mademoiselle Bourienne remained in
the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements and theaters.
Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had noticed in the anteroom,
by her father's nervousness, and by the unnatural manner of the princess
who--she thought--was making a favor of receiving her, and so everything
displeased her. She did not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very
plain, affected, and dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and
involuntarily assumed an offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still
more. After five minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they
heard the sound of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary
looked frightened.

The door opened and the old prince, in a dressing gown and a white
nightcap, came in.

"Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am
not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not know,
madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with a
visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg
you to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated,
stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that
Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at her
father or at Natasha.

Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.
Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.

"I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not know,"
muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from head to foot
he went out.

Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this
apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition. Natasha
and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the longer they
did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater grew their
antipathy to one another.

When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened
to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who
could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an
hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin
talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought Natasha.
The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. She knew what
she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been unable to say it
because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and because, without
knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of the marriage. When
the count was already leaving the room, Princess Mary went up hurriedly
to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with a deep sigh:

"Wait, I must..."

Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.

"Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am glad
my brother has found happiness...."

She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha noticed
this and guessed its reason.

"I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now," she said
with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears choking
her.

"What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she was
out of the room.

They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day. She sat
in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing. Sonya
stood beside her, kissing her hair.

"Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you? It
will all pass, Natasha."

"But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..."

"Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should you
mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.

Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed her
wet face against her.

"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha--"It's
my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he come?..."

She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew how
the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how upset
Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the count and
the other guests.





CHAPTER VIII


That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya Dmitrievna
had taken a box.

Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya Dmitrievna's kind
offer which was intended expressly for her. When she came ready dressed
into the ballroom to await her father, and looking in the large mirror
there saw that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more sad, but
it was a sweet, tender sadness.

"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those searching
inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me, and then I would
make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes--how I see those eyes!"
thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister matter to me? I
love him alone, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with his smile,
manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not think of him; not think
of him but forget him, quite forget him for the present. I can't bear
this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!" and she turned away from the
glass, making an effort not to cry. "And how can Sonya love Nicholas
so calmly and quietly and wait so long and so patiently?" thought she,
looking at Sonya, who also came in quite ready, with a fan in her hand.
"No, she's altogether different. I can't!"

Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words of
love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her
father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flickering on
the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in love, and forgot
where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into the line of
carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels
squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya, holding up their dresses,
jumped out quickly. The count got out helped by the footmen, and,
passing among men and women who were entering and the program sellers,
they all three went along the corridor to the first row of boxes.
Through the closed doors the music was already audible.

"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.

An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before
their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of feminine envy
at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the overture was being
played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with Sonya and sat down,
scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. A sensation she had not
experienced for a long time--that of hundreds of eyes looking at
her bare arms and neck--suddenly affected her both agreeably and
disagreeably and called up a whole crowd of memories, desires and
emotions associated with that feeling.

The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count Rostov
who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general
attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's engagement to
Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in the country ever
since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who was making one of
the best matches in Russia.

Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the country, and
that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly pretty. She
struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and beauty, combined
with her indifference to everything about her. Her black eyes looked at
the crowd without seeking anyone, and her delicate arm, bare to
above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the box, while, evidently
unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in time to the music,
crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina," said Sonya, "with her
mother, isn't it?"

"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked the
count.

"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna--what a headdress she has on!"

"The Karagins, Julie--and Boris with them. One can see at once that
they're engaged...."

"Drubetskoy has proposed?"

"Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the Rostovs' box.

Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were turned
and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on her face
and a string of pearls round her thick red neck--which Natasha knew was
covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning over with
an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome smoothly brushed head. He
looked at the Rostovs from under his brows and said something, smiling,
to his betrothed.

"They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And he
no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble themselves!
If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of them."

Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and with a
happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their box was
pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natasha knew so
well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly remembered all that
had been so humiliating in her morning's visit.

"What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh, better
not think of it--not till he comes back!" she told herself, and began
looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the stalls. In
the front, in the very center, leaning back against the orchestra rail,
stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair brushed up into a huge
shock. He stood in full view of the audience, well aware that he was
attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at ease as though he were
in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's most brilliant young men,
whom he evidently dominated.

The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her former
adorer.

"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?" he
asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?"

"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away from
there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling prince in
Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the Moscow ladies
are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does it! We never
hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him, they offer
him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov and Anatole
Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads."

A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string of
large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress
and took a long time settling into her place.

Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls
and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls.
While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time the lady
looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and smiled.
She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the count, who knew
everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.

"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll call
to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls with
me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used to
forget us. Is he here?"

"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively at
Natasha.

Count Rostov resumed his seat.

"Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha.

"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily fall in
love with."

Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the conductor
tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in the stalls,
and the curtain rose.

As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and
all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and all the
women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole attention with
eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look at it.





CHAPTER IX


The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides was
some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a cloth
stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls in red
bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk dress sat
apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of green cardboard
was glued. They all sang something. When they had finished their song
the girl in white went up to the prompter's box and a man with tight
silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding a plume and a dagger,
went up to her and began singing, waving his arms about.

First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, then they
both paused while the orchestra played and the man fingered the hand
of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to start singing with
her. They sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping
and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage--who represented
lovers--began smiling, spreading out their arms, and bowing.

After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, all this
seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow the opera
nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted cardboard and the
queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strangely in
that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to represent, but
it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed
for the actors and then amused at them. She looked at the faces of the
audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she
herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was happening
on the stage, and expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I
suppose it has to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in
turn at the rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the
seminude women in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box,
who--apparently quite unclothed--sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not
taking her eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded
the whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little
by little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she
was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought, the
strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through her
mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box and
singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to touch with
her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then to lean over to
Helene and tickle her.

At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, a door
leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box creaked, and
the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's Kuragin!" whispered
Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the newcomer, and
Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an exceptionally
handsome adjutant approaching their box with a self-assured yet
courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom she had seen and
noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was now in an adjutant's
uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. He moved with a restrained
swagger which would have been ridiculous had he not been so good-looking
and had his handsome face not worn such an expression of good-humored
complacency and gaiety. Though the performance was proceeding, he walked
deliberately down the carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly
jingling and his handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at
Natasha he approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge
of her box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a
motion toward Natasha.

"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did not
exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of his
lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and sat down
beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and offhand way
that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He winked at him gaily,
smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra screen.

"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And how
handsome they both are!"

Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some intrigue
of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just because he
had said she was "charmante."

The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about, going
out and coming in.

Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations very
simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile conveyed
to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding, and
went away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and
congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she
had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,
everything seemed simple and natural.

The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and Natasha
gave Boris a similar smile.

Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another
in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.

During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in front
of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha knew he
was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even turned so
that he should see her profile in what she thought was its most becoming
aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre appeared in the
stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their arrival. His face
looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since Natasha last saw him.
He passed up to the front rows, not noticing anyone. Anatole went up to
him and began speaking to him, looking at and indicating the Rostovs'
box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew animated and, hastily passing between
the rows, came toward their box. When he got there he leaned on his
elbows and, smiling, talked to her for a long time. While conversing
with Pierre, Natasha heard a man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and
something told her it was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met.
Almost smiling, he gazed straight into her eyes with such an enraptured
caressing look that it seemed strange to be so near him, to look at him
like that, to be so sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with
him.

In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there was a
round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were raised over
the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep notes while many
people appeared from right and left wearing black cloaks and holding
things like daggers in their hands. They began waving their arms. Then
some other people ran in and began dragging away the maiden who had been
in white and was now in light blue. They did not drag her away at once,
but sang with her for a long time and then at last dragged her off, and
behind the scenes something metallic was struck three times and
everyone knelt down and sang a prayer. All these things were repeatedly
interrupted by the enthusiastic shouts of the audience.

During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she saw
Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair, staring
at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her and it did
not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.

When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the
Rostovs' box--her whole bosom completely exposed--beckoned the old count
with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered
her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.

"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The
whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know then!"

Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so pleased
by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with pleasure.

"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it you're
not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"

Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a fascinating
woman. She could say what she did not think--especially what was
flattering--quite simply and naturally.

"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I am not
staying here long this time--nor are you--I will try to amuse them. I
have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get to know
you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely smile. "I had
heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard he is getting
married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski, Prince Andrew
Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis, implying that she knew of
his relation to Natasha. To get better acquainted she asked that one
of the young ladies should come into her box for the rest of the
performance, and Natasha moved over to it.

The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles
were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the
walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a queen. The
king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang something badly
and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had been first in white
and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and stood beside the
throne with her hair down. She sang something mournfully, addressing the
queen, but the king waved his arm severely, and men and women with bare
legs came in from both sides and began dancing all together. Then the
violins played very shrilly and merrily and one of the women with thick
bare legs and thin arms, separating from the others, went behind the
wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the middle of the stage, and
began jumping and striking one foot rapidly against the other. In the
stalls everyone clapped and shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went
into a corner of the stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra
struck up more loudly, and this man with bare legs jumped very high and
waved his feet about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty
thousand rubles a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes,
and galleries began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the
man stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men
and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the
sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm
came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the
orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number away,
and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise and
clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone began
shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought this
strange. She looked about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.

"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.

"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.





CHAPTER X


During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the
door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
against anyone.

"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting
uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.

Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young officer
and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome
at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he
had long wished to have this happiness--ever since the Naryshkins' ball
in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing her.
Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with women than among men.
He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha was strangely and agreeably
struck by the fact that there was nothing formidable in this man about
whom there was so much talk, but that on the contrary his smile was most
naive, cheerful, and good-natured.

Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.

"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as an
old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume tournament; you
ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet at the
Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said he.

While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face, her
neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was enraptured
by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel constrained and
oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt that he was looking
at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his eye so that he should
look into hers rather than this. But looking into his eyes she was
frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier of modesty she had
always felt between herself and other men. She did not know how it was
that within five minutes she had come to feel herself terribly near to
this man. When she turned away she feared he might seize her from behind
by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary
things, yet she felt that they were closer to one another than she had
ever been to any man. Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father,
as if asking what it all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation
with a general and did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said
nothing but what they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad
of it!"

During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's prominent
eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to break the
silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and
blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she was doing
something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.

"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant
ce sont les jolies femmes, * isn't that so? But now I like it very much
indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the
costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to her
bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the prettiest
there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as a pledge!"


    * Are the pretty women.


Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an improper
intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if she had
not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she felt that
he was there, behind, so close behind her.

"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked
herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the
good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just
as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt with
horror that no barrier lay between him and her.

The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. Natasha
went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive to the
world she found herself in. All that was going on before her now seemed
quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous thoughts of her
betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country did not once
recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote past.

In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his arm
about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he disappeared
down below. That was the only part of the fourth act that Natasha saw.
She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kuragin whom
she could not help watching. As they were leaving the theater Anatole
came up to them, called their carriage, and helped them in. As he was
putting Natasha in he pressed her arm above the elbow. Agitated and
flushed she turned round. He was looking at her with glittering eyes,
smiling tenderly.


Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think over
what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she
was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera, she
gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.

"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?" She sat
for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to realize
what had happened to her, but was unable either to understand what
had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure,
and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater where the
bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped about to the
music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the nearly naked
Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried "bravo!"--there in
the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear and simple; but now,
alone by herself, it was incomprehensible. "What is it? What was that
terror I felt of him? What is this gnawing of conscience I am feeling
now?" she thought.

Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all she
was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple views
would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such a
confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by herself.

"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with
soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen
to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all. Nobody
will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself. "So it is
plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to repent of, and
Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why isn't he here?"
Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some instinct told her
that though all this was true, and though nothing had happened, yet the
former purity of her love for Prince Andrew had perished. And again in
imagination she went over her whole conversation with Kuragin, and again
saw the face, gestures, and tender smile of that bold handsome man when
he pressed her arm.





CHAPTER XI


Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent him
away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand rubles
a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more, which his
creditors demanded from his father.

His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for the
last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as adjutant
to the commander in chief--a post his father had procured for him--and
would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to him
Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.

Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's house.
Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him after a
while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and gave him
money under the guise of loans.

As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had
turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that
he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French
actresses--with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to
be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at Danilov's
or other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through, outvying everyone
else, and was at all the balls and parties of the best society. There
was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, and he flirted with a
few of them at the balls. But he did not run after the unmarried girls,
especially the rich heiresses who were most of them plain. There was a
special reason for this, as he had got married two years before--a fact
known only to his most intimate friends. At that time while with his
regiment in Poland, a Polish landowner of small means had forced him to
marry his daughter. Anatole had very soon abandoned his wife and, for a
payment which he agreed to send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be
free to pass himself off as a bachelor.

Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with
others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that it was
impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had
never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of considering
how his actions might affect others or what the consequences of this or
that action of his might be. He was convinced that, as a duck is so made
that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he must spend
thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent position in
society. He believed this so firmly that others, looking at him, were
persuaded of it too and did not refuse him either a leading place
in society or money, which he borrowed from anyone and everyone and
evidently would not repay.

He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning. He was
not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still less could
he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed his father by
spoiling his own career, and he laughed at distinctions of all kinds. He
was not mean, and did not refuse anyone who asked of him. All he cared
about was gaiety and women, and as according to his ideas there
was nothing dishonorable in these tastes, and he was incapable of
considering what the gratification of his tastes entailed for others,
he honestly considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues
and bad people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.

Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence
similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of
forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all will
be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."

Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and
his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling, and
dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin and made
use of him for his own ends.

Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and audacity.
Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and connections
as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, made use of him
and amused himself at his expense without letting the other feel it.
Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole, the very process
of dominating another's will was in itself a pleasure, a habit, and a
necessity to Dolokhov.

Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after
the opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the
attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his
intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was incapable
of considering what might come of such love-making, as he never had any
notion of the outcome of any of his actions.

"She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied Dolokhov.

"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?"

"You'd better wait till she's married...."

"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once," pursued
Anatole.

"You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said Dolokhov
who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!"

"Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a good-humored
laugh.





CHAPTER XII


The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came to see
them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something which they
concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking about the old
prince and planning something, and this disquieted and offended her.
She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice that day sent a
manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he had come. He had
not arrived. She suffered more now than during her first days in Moscow.
To her impatience and pining for him were now added the unpleasant
recollection of her interview with Princess Mary and the old prince,
and a fear and anxiety of which she did not understand the cause. She
continually fancied that either he would never come or that something
would happen to her before he came. She could no longer think of him by
herself calmly and continuously as she had done before. As soon as she
began to think of him, the recollection of the old prince, of Princess
Mary, of the theater, and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The
question again presented itself whether she was not guilty, whether she
had not already broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found
herself recalling to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and
every shade in the play of expression on the face of the man who had
been able to arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying
feeling. To the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was
far less tranquil and happy than before.

On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at her
parish church--the Church of the Assumption built over the graves of
victims of the plague.

"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently priding
herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every where.
We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently and with
dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there in giving
concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just self-indulgence!"

Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her whole
house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church. At
her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had vodka
and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was the
holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern face, which
on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.

After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room
where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a servant
announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna rose with
a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid calls, and
announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas Bolkonski to have an
explanation with him about Natasha.

After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited
on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having shut
herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied herself trying
on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice without sleeves and
only tacked together, and was turning her head to see in the glass how
the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room the animated sounds of
her father's voice and another's--a woman's--that made her flush. It
was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off the bodice before the door
opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a purple velvet gown with
a high collar, came into the room beaming with good-humored amiable
smiles.

"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha. "Charming! No,
this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said she to Count Rostov
who had followed her in. "How can you live in Moscow and go nowhere? No,
I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George will recite at my house
tonight and there'll be some people, and if you don't bring your lovely
girls--who are prettier than Mademoiselle George--I won't know you! My
husband is away in Tver or I would send him to fetch you. You must come.
You positively must! Between eight and nine."

She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the
looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely. She
did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually praising
Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised them, as
well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze," which she had
received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one like it.

"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.

A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as if
she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess Bezukhova who
had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and important and was now
so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt almost in love with
this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind. Helene for her part was
sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to give her a good time.
Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha together, and she was
calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The idea of throwing her
brother and Natasha together amused her.

Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha for
drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her own way
heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs she called
her protegee aside.

"My brother dined with me yesterday--we nearly died of laughter--he ate
nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly, quite madly,
in love with you, my dear."

Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.

"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You must
certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a reason
to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your fiance
would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to death."

"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre--that good
Pierre--have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right." And
again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now seemed
simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind, and
evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought Natasha,
gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.

Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having
evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too
agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly. In
answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all right
and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of Countess
Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening, Marya Dmitrievna
remarked:

"I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise you
to; however, if you've promised--go. It will divert your thoughts," she
added, addressing Natasha.





CHAPTER XIII


Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a good
many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count Rostov was
displeased to see that the company consisted almost entirely of men and
women known for the freedom of their conduct. Mademoiselle George was
standing in a corner of the drawing room surrounded by young men. There
were several Frenchmen present, among them Metivier who from the time
Helene reached Moscow had been an intimate in her house. The count
decided not to sit down to cards or let his girls out of his sight and
to get away as soon as Mademoiselle George's performance was over.

Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.
Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and followed
her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same feeling she had
had at the opera--gratified vanity at his admiration of her and fear at
the absence of a moral barrier between them.

Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of her
beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George went
out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people began
arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a chair for
Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count, who never
lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down behind her.

Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red shawl
draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for her, and
assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was audible.

Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience and
began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for her
son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,
lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
sounds, rolling her eyes.

"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.

Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor
understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt herself
again completely borne away into this strange senseless world--so remote
from her old world--a world in which it was impossible to know what
was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat Anatole,
and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened sense of
expectancy.

After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.

"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had also
risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.

"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following Natasha.
He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him. "You are
enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never ceased..."

"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his
daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything
stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
eyes.

After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and Countess
Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.

The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil her
improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked Natasha for a
valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her she
was bewitching and that he loved her. During the ecossaise, which she
also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be by
themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha lifted her frightened eyes
to him, but there was such confident tenderness in his affectionate look
and smile that she could not, whilst looking at him, say what she had to
say. She lowered her eyes.

"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another," she said
rapidly.... She glanced at him.

Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.

"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I
am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."

Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and the
Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to remain.
Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt his eyes
upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her father to let her
go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that Helene had followed
her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love, and that she again met
Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene had disappeared leaving them
alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said in a tender voice:

"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never see
you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he
brought his face close to hers.

His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she saw
nothing but them.

"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being
painfully pressed. "Natalie?"

"I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.

Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she felt
herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her dress
were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then, red
and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved
toward the door.

"One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole.

She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to her what
had happened and to which she could find no answer.

"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not
knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.

Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went away
without staying for supper.

After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was tormented
by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or Prince Andrew.
She loved Prince Andrew--she remembered distinctly how deeply she loved
him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. "Else how
could all this have happened?" thought she. "If, after that, I could
return his smile when saying good-by, if I was able to let it come to
that, it means that I loved him from the first. It means that he is
kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not help loving him. What am I
to do if I love him and the other one too?" she asked herself, unable to
find an answer to these terrible questions.





CHAPTER XIV


Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to
move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna appeared,
and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking uneasily at
everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept every glance
directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual.

After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat down in
her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.

"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is
my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince
Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to
begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had
to say!"

"Well, and he?" asked the count.

"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use
of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya
Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home
to Otradnoe... and wait there."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.

"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your
betrothed comes here now--there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but alone
with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to you."

Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better to
visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding,
against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.

"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took her,"
said the old count.

"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But if he
won't--that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for something
in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there is nothing
to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after you. Though I don't
like letting you go, it is the best way. So go, with God's blessing!"

Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed it to
Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.

"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's
afraid you might think that she does not like you."

"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.

"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.

"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied Natasha
boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold and angry
resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her more intently and
to frown.

"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is true!
Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room to read
Princess Mary's letter.

Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding that
had occurred between them. Whatever her father's feelings might be, she
begged Natasha to believe that she could not help loving her as the one
chosen by her brother, for whose happiness she was ready to sacrifice
everything.

"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is ill-disposed
toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be forgiven; but
he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes his son happy."
Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time when she could see
her again.

After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to answer
it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and mechanically, and
then paused. What more could she write after all that had happened
the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has happened, and now all is
changed," she thought as she sat with the letter she had begun before
her. "Must I break off with him? Must I really? That's awful..." and to
escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to Sonya and began sorting
patterns with her.

After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess Mary's
letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it be
that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that went
before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its former
strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She vividly
pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of happiness
with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and at the
same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of yesterday's
interview with Anatole.

"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in complete
bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I have to
choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only," she thought,
"to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it from him are
both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is spoiled. But am
I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's love, in which I
have lived so long?"

"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a letter.

"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without
thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from
Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only that
it was a letter from him--from the man she loved. Yes, she loved him, or
else how could that have happened which had happened? And how could she
have a love letter from him in her hand?

With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter which
Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she found in it an
echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.

"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you or
to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he went
on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him--for this
there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her--but that if
she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power could
hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her away and
carry her off to the ends of the earth.

"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for the
twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of
it.

That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and proposed to
take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache, remained at home.





CHAPTER XV


On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and to
her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open on the
table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up and read it.

As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in her
face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find it. Her
face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep herself
from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat
down in an armchair and burst into tears.

"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she have
left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go to
such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What will
Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is
the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that
she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it was
from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a thing!"

Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning her
face.

"Natasha!" she said, just audibly.

Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.

"Ah, you're back?"

And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment
of awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.

"Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded.

"Yes," answered Sonya softly.

Natasha smiled rapturously.

"No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you
any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he writes...
Sonya..."

Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.

"And Bolkonski?" she asked.

"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You don't
know what love is...."

"But, Natasha, can that be all over?"

Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not grasp
the question.

"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.

"Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just listen!"
said Natasha, with momentary vexation.

"But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How is it
you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you have only
seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're joking! In
three days to forget everything and so..."

"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred
years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't
understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced and
kissed her.

"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it too,
but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as before.
As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his slave, and that
I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave! Whatever he orders I shall
do. You don't understand that. What can I do? What can I do, Sonya?"
cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened expression.

"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it like
this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so far?"
she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.

"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you
understand? I love him!"

"Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,
bursting into tears.

"What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!"
declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be
separated...."

When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity for
her friend.

"But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to
you? Why doesn't he come to the house?"

Natasha did not answer her questions.

"For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me," Natasha
entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such matters! I have
confided in you...."

"But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked Sonya.
"Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince Andrew gave
you complete freedom--if it is really so; but I don't believe it!
Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can be?"

Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question
presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know how
to answer it.

"I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!"

Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.

"If there were reasons..." she began.

But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.

"Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you
understand?" she cried.

"Does he love you?"

"Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her friend's
lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you have seen
him."

"But if he is dishonorable?"

"He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha.

"If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions or
cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to him,
and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely.

"But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha.

"Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think of your
father and of Nicholas."

"I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you say he
is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed Natasha. "Go
away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go, for God's sake
go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily, in a voice of
despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into sobs and ran from the
room.

Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote that
answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all
the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their
misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the
magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her
freedom, she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her
if she had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife.
At that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.


On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on Wednesday
the count went with the prospective purchaser to his estate near Moscow.

On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big
dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there. At
that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she spoke
to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through dinner she was
more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was the first to
begin the explanation Sonya expected.

"There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,"
Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to be
praised. "We have had an explanation today."

"Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're not
angry with me! Tell me everything--the whole truth. What did he say?"

Natasha became thoughtful.

"Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I had
promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him."

Sonya sighed sorrowfully.

"But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she.

"Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why do
you think so badly of me?"

"I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..."

"Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what a man
he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think badly of
anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?"

Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her. The
more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face became,
the more serious and stern grew Sonya's.

"Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I haven't
spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him, Natasha. Why
this secrecy?"

"Again, again!" interrupted Natasha.

"Natasha, I am afraid for you!"

"Afraid of what?"

"I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely, and was
herself horrified at what she had said.

Anger again showed in Natasha's face.

"And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not your
business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me alone, leave
me alone! I hate you!"

"Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast.

"I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran out
of the room.

Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the same
expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the house,
taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once abandoning them.

Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her out
of her sight.

The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha sat
by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting something and
that she made a sign to an officer who drove past, whom Sonya took to be
Anatole.

Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed that
at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and unnatural
state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she did not
finish, and laughed at everything.

After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly waiting
to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at the door
learned that another letter had been delivered.

Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some dreadful
plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did not let
her in.

"She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of
anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in her
face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya remembered.
"Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what am I to do?"
thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly indicated that Natasha
had some terrible intention. "The count is away. What am I to do? Write
to Kuragin demanding an explanation? But what is there to oblige him
to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me to in case of some
misfortune?... But perhaps she really has already refused Bolkonski--she
sent a letter to Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell
Marya Dmitrievna who had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible.
"Well, anyway," thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now or
never I must prove that I remember the family's goodness to me and that
I love Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for three nights I'll not leave
this passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the
family be disgraced," thought she.





CHAPTER XVI


Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie Rostova's
abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by Dolokhov a few
days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening at Natasha's
door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been put into execution.
Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the back porch at ten
that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka he would have
ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of Kamenka, where an
unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a marriage ceremony over
them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to wait which would take them to
the Warsaw highroad, and from there they would hasten abroad with post
horses.

Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand rubles
he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand borrowed with
Dolokhov's help.

Two witnesses for the mock marriage--Khvostikov, a retired petty
official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and
Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded
affection for Kuragin--were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's front room.

In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with
Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling cloak
and high boots, at an open desk on which lay abacus and some bundles of
paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to and fro from
the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the study to the room
behind, where his French valet and others were packing the last of his
things. Dolokhov was counting the money and noting something down.

"Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand."

"Give it to him, then," said Anatole.

"Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water for
you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said Dolokhov,
showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?"

"Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to Dolokhov
and looking straight before him with a smile that did not leave his
face.

Dolokhov banged down the lid of his desk and turned to Anatole with an
ironic smile:

"Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!"

"Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only knew... it's
the devil knows what!"

"No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously. It's
no joke, this plot you've hatched."

"What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a
grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left the
room.

Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole had gone
out.

"You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm talking
sense. Come here, come here!"

Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his
attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.

"Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why should
I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything for you? Who
found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the money? I did it
all."

"Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And Anatole
sighed and embraced Dolokhov.

"I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a
dangerous business, and if you think about it--a stupid business. Well,
you'll carry her off--all right! Will they let it stop at that? It
will come out that you're already married. Why, they'll have you in the
criminal court...."

"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a grimace.
"Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the partiality
dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have reached by their
own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already put to Dolokhov
a hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I have come to this
conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went on, crooking one
finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it is valid, no
matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it. Isn't that so? And
don't talk to me, don't, don't."

"Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a mess!"

"Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the room,
but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of Dolokhov
with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What? Feel how it
beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart. "What a foot,
my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in French. "What?"

Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes
looked at him--evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of him.

"Well and when the money's gone, what then?"

"What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a thought
of the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why talk
nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!"

Anatole went into the back room.

"Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the servants.

Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to bring
something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went into
the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.

Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and smiling
pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to himself.

"Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from the
other room.

"I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile.

"Come! Balaga is here."

Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous troyka
driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and had given
them good service with his troykas. More than once when Anatole's
regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in the
evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back again
the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape when
pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town with gypsies
and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than once in their
service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles in the streets
of Moscow and had always been protected from the consequences by "my
gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more than one horse in their
service. More than once they had beaten him, and more than once they
had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira, which he loved; and he knew
more than one thing about each of them which would long ago have sent an
ordinary man to Siberia. They often called Balaga into their orgies and
made him drink and dance at the gypsies', and more than one thousand
rubles of their money had passed through his hands. In their service he
risked his skin and his life twenty times a year, and in their service
had lost more horses than the money he had from them would buy. But
he liked them; liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked
upsetting a driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full
gallop through the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy
shouts behind him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was impossible to go any
faster. He liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant
who, more dead than alive, was already hurrying out of his way. "Real
gentlemen!" he considered them.

Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and
because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga bargained,
charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and rarely drove
himself, generally letting his young men do so. But with "his gentlemen"
he always drove himself and never demanded anything for his work. Only
a couple of times a year--when he knew from their valets that they had
money in hand--he would turn up of a morning quite sober and with a deep
bow would ask them to help him. The gentlemen always made him sit down.

"Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he would
say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go to the
fair."

And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a thousand
or a couple of thousand rubles.

Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about
twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck, glittering
little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine, dark-blue, silk-lined
cloth coat over a sheepskin.

On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the front
corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a small, black
hand.

"Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing.

"How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!"

"Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand to
Anatole who had just come in.

"I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's shoulders,
"do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service.... What horses
have you come with? Eh?"

"As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga.

"Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there in
three hours. Eh?"

"When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink.

"Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole,
suddenly rolling his eyes.

"Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my gentlemen
anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast we'll go!"

"Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down."

"Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov.

"I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych."

"Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large
glass of Madeira for him.

The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After refusing
it for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with a red silk
handkerchief he took out of his cap.

"And when are we to start, your excellency?"

"Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind,
Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?"

"That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be there
in time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven hours? I
think you remember that, your excellency?"

"Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole, smilingly
at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed rapturously at him
with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka, it took one's breath
away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of loaded sleighs and
drove right over two of them. Eh?"

"Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd harnessed
two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went on, turning
to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those animals flew
forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew numb in the sharp
frost so that I threw down the reins--'Catch hold yourself, your
excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom of the sleigh and
sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them on, there was no holding
them in till we reached the place. The devils took us there in three
hours! Only the near one died of it."





CHAPTER XVII


Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later wearing
a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily set on one
side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having looked in a mirror,
and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he had assumed before it,
he lifted a glass of wine.

"Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!" said
Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a moment
"...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the others.

Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to make
something touching and solemn out of this address to his comrades. He
spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest slightly swayed
one leg.

"All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my
youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when
shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time--now
farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying his
glass flung it on the floor.

"To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and wiped his
mouth with his handkerchief.

Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.

"Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!

"Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole.

Balaga was about to leave the room.

"No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down.
That's the way."

They shut the door and all sat down.

"Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising.

Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all
went out into the vestibule.

"And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to
Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what
elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll rush
out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if you delay
at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's frozen in
a minute and must go back--but you wrap the fur cloak round her first
thing and carry her to the sleigh."

The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak.

"Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he shouted so
that his voice rang far through the rooms.

A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black eyes
and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a sable
mantle on her arm.

"Here, I don't grudge it--take it!" she said, evidently afraid of her
master and yet regretful of her cloak.

Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over Matrena, and
wrapped her up in it.

"That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the collar
up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered. "And
then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to meet the
gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant smile was
seen.

"Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my revels here
are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-by, Matrena, wish
me luck!"

"Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her gypsy
accent.

Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers were
holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and holding
his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and Dolokhov
got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated themselves in
the other sleigh.

"Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga.

"Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka tore
down the Nikitski Boulevard.

"Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga
and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could
be heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage;
something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the
Arbat Street.

After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to
rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old Konyusheny
Street.

The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and Anatole
and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the gate
Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant ran out.

"Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out directly,"
said she.

Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the
courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.

He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman.

"Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass,
intercepting any retreat.

"To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless whisper.

"Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in."

"Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!"

Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and was
struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With a last
desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when Anatole ran
back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket, and ran back
with him to the troyka.





CHAPTER XVIII


Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made her
confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she read it and
went into Natasha's room with it in her hand.

"You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word."

Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but tearless
eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the yard porter to
admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but not to let them
out again, and having told the footman to bring them up to her, she
seated herself in the drawing room to await the abductors.

When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run
away again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced
through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward
midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket.
Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for God's
sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna unlocked
the door and went in without giving her an answer.... "Disgusting,
abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only sorry for her
father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath. "Hard as it may
be, I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and will hide it from the
count." She entered the room with resolute steps. Natasha lying on the
sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and she did not stir. She was in
just the same position in which Marya Dmitrievna had left her.

"A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings
with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I speak
to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when I speak!
You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd treat you
differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will conceal it."

Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved with
noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna glanced
round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.

"It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said in
her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added.

She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward her.
Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how Natasha
looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed, her
cheeks sunken.

"Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered,
wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious effort
and sinking down again into her former position.

"Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie still,
stay like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't tell you how
guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your father comes back
tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?"

Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.

"Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?"

"I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha.

"That's all the same," continued Marya Dmitrievna. "If they hear of
this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he
challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?"

"Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who asked
you to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and looking
malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.

"But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry again.
"Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to the house?
Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing girl?... Well, if he
had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't have found him?
Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a scoundrel, a
wretch--that's a fact!"

"He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If you
hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it? Sonya,
why?... Go away!"

And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which people
bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. Marya
Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out:

"Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw herself
back on the sofa.

Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on her
that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that nobody
would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would undertake
to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had happened.
Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she grew cold
and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under her head,
covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some lime-flower
water, but Natasha did not respond to her.

"Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went out of the room
supposing Natasha to be asleep.

But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open eyes she
looked straight before her. All that night she did not sleep or weep and
did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her several times.

Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time for
lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the affair with
the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was nothing to keep
him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess whom he missed. Marya
Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had been very unwell the
day before and that they had sent for the doctor, but that she was
better now. Natasha had not left her room that morning. With compressed
and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she sat at the window, uneasily
watching the people who drove past and hurriedly glancing round at
anyone who entered the room. She was evidently expecting news of him and
that he would come or would write to her.

When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the sound
of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and malevolent
expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What is the matter
with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count.

After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill."

In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so dejected
and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she assured him
that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry. Marya Dmitrievna
confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had happened. From
the pretense of illness, from his daughter's distress, and by the
embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly
that something had gone wrong during his absence, but it was so terrible
for him to think that anything disgraceful had happened to his beloved
daughter, and he so prized his own cheerful tranquillity, that he
avoided inquiries and tried to assure himself that nothing particularly
had happened; and he was only dissatisfied that her indisposition
delayed their return to the country.





CHAPTER XIX


From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to go
away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs came
to Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to carry out
his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's widow, who
had long since promised to hand over to him some papers of her deceased
husband's.

When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya
Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great
importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre had
been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her
was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's fiancee.
Yet some fate constantly threw them together.

"What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he
as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew would
hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the house.

On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.

"Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head. In
a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering the
dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin dashed
past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of military
dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver collar and his
head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his white-plumed hat,
tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded hair besprinkled
with powdery snow.

"Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees nothing
beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so he is
always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give to be like
him!" he thought enviously.

In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with his
fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.

When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the
window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at him,
frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.

"What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room.

"Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I lived
in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"

And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,
Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew
without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole
Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and with whom
Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in order to be
married secretly.

Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was told
him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince Andrew's
deeply loved affianced wife--the same Natasha Rostova who used to be so
charming--should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole who was already
secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in love with him as
to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre could not conceive
and could not imagine.

He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha, whom
he had known from a child, with this new conception of her baseness,
folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all alike!" he
said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man unfortunate
enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied Prince Andrew to
the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded pride, and the more
he pitied his friend the more did he think with contempt and even with
disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him in the ballroom with
such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that Natasha's soul was
overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was not
her fault that her face happened to assume an expression of calm dignity
and severity.

"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna. "He
could not marry--he is married!"

"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna. "A
nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him--expecting
him since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on
expecting him."

After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and giving
vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya Dmitrievna
told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that the count or
Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew of this affair
(which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge Anatole to a duel,
and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his brother-in-law in her name to
leave Moscow and not dare to let her set eyes on him again. Pierre--only
now realizing the danger to the old count, Nicholas, and Prince
Andrew--promised to do as she wished. Having briefly and exactly
explained her wishes to him, she let him go to the drawing room.

"Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing either,"
she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use expecting him! And
stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after Pierre.

Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning
Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski.

"Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What troubles
one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret having
come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she has broken
off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true this engagement
never was much to my liking. Of course he is an excellent man, but
still, with his father's disapproval they wouldn't have been happy, and
Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it has been going on so long, and
to take such a step without father's or mother's consent! And now she's
ill, and God knows what! It's hard, Count, hard to manage daughters in
their mother's absence...."

Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the
subject, but the count returned to his troubles.

Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.

"Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to see you.
Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come."

"Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to send
him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it all
was!"

And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the
room.

When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha
did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by Pierre
himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the corridor to
Natasha's room.

Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and her
eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look the
moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed fixedly at
him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or like the
others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he evidently did
not exist for her.

"He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre and
addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the truth."

Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded animal
looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.

"Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a feeling of
pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do, "whether it is
true or not should make no difference to you, because..."

"Then it is not true that he's married!"

"Yes, it is true."

"Has he been married long?" she asked. "On your honor?..."

Pierre gave his word of honor.

"Is he still here?" she asked, quickly.

"Yes, I have just seen him."

She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands that
they should leave her alone.





CHAPTER XX


Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at once.
He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the thought of
whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a difficulty in
breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the gypsies', nor at
Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all was going on as
usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were sitting about
in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town news. The footman
having greeted him, knowing his habits and his acquaintances, told him
there was a place left for him in the small dining room and that Prince
Michael Zakharych was in the library, but Paul Timofeevich had not yet
arrived. One of Pierre's acquaintances, while they were talking about
the weather, asked if he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova
which was talked of in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and
said it was nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked
everyone about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and
another that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this
calm, indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his
soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come, and
as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove home.

Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with Dolokhov,
consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate affair. It seemed to
him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he drove to his sister's
to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting. When Pierre returned home
after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his valet informed him that Prince
Anatole was with the countess. The countess' drawing room was full of
guests.

Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his
return--at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever--entered
the drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.

"Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You don't know
what a plight our Anatole..."

She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head, in his
glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of that
rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced after his
duel with Dolokhov.

"Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife.
"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French.

Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready to
follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward himself
and was leading him from the room.

"If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene, but
Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.

Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face betrayed
anxiety.

Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed Anatole
without looking at him.

"You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to elope with
her, is that so?"

"Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in French),
"I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to me in that
tone."

Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized Anatole
by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him from side
to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of terror.

"When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre.

"Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button of
his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.

"You're a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don't know what deprives
me from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!" said Pierre,
expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.

He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once put
it back in its place.

"Did you promise to marry her?"

"I... I didn't think of it. I never promised, because..."

Pierre interrupted him.

"Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?" he said, moving toward
Anatole.

Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his pocket
and drew out his pocketbook.

Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table
that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa.

"I shan't be violent, don't be afraid!" said Pierre in answer to a
frightened gesture of Anatole's. "First, the letters," said he, as if
repeating a lesson to himself. "Secondly," he continued after a short
pause, again rising and again pacing the room, "tomorrow you must get
out of Moscow."

"But how can I?..."

"Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must never
breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess Rostova.
I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of
conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence.

Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.

"After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there is such
a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you are ruining
a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse yourself with women
like my wife--with them you are within your rights, for they know what
you want of them. They are armed against you by the same experience
of debauchery; but to promise a maid to marry her... to deceive, to
kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is as mean as beating an old man
or a child?..."

Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with a
questioning look.

"I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more confident as
Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't want to," he
said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of his lower jaw,
"but you have used such words to me--'mean' and so on--which as a man of
honor I can't allow anyone to use."

Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he
wanted.

"Though it was tete-a-tete," Anatole continued, "still I can't..."

"Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically.

"You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do as
you wish, eh?"

"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to
forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if
you require money for your journey..."

Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile, which
Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.

"Oh, vile and heartless brood!" he exclaimed, and left the room.

Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.





CHAPTER XXI


Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of her
wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house was in
a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill, having, as Marya
Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the night after she had
been told that Anatole was married, with some arsenic she had stealthily
procured. After swallowing a little she had been so frightened that she
woke Sonya and told her what she had done. The necessary antidotes had
been administered in time and she was now out of danger, though still so
weak that it was out of the question to move her to the country, and
so the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and
Sonya, who had a tear-stained face, but he could not see Natasha.

Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip about
the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these
rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his
brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to
Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and re-establish
Natasha's reputation.

He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day to
the old prince's for news of him.

Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from
Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits than
usual and awaited his son with great impatience.

Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from Prince
Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come to see him.

As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his
father Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement
(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and given
it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of Natasha's
elopement, with additions.

Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see him next
morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost the same state
as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering the drawing room
to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated voice about some
intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's voice and another now
and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out to meet Pierre. She
sighed, looking toward the door of the room where Prince Andrew was,
evidently intending to express her sympathy with his sorrow, but Pierre
saw by her face that she was glad both at what had happened and at the
way her brother had taken the news of Natasha's faithlessness.

"He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not let
him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far better,
than I expected. Evidently it had to be...."

"But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre.

Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not understand
how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the study. Prince
Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health, but with a fresh
horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in civilian dress facing
his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly disputing and vigorously
gesticulating. The conversation was about Speranski--the news of whose
sudden exile and alleged treachery had just reached Moscow.

"Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about him
a month ago," Prince Andrew was saying, "and by those who were unable to
understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and to throw on
him all the blame of other men's mistakes is very easy, but I maintain
that if anything good has been accomplished in this reign it was done by
him, by him alone."

He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and immediately
assumed a vindictive expression.

"Posterity will do him justice," he concluded, and at once turned to
Pierre.

"Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?" he said with animation, but
the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. "Yes, I am well," he said in
answer to Pierre's question, and smiled.

To Pierre that smile said plainly: "I am well, but my health is now of
no use to anyone."

After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish
frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, and
about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his son's
tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation about
Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.

"If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,
they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I do
not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!"

Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only too
familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous matters
in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too intimate.
When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took Pierre's arm and
asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A bed had been made
up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks stood about. Prince
Andrew went to one and took out a small casket, from which he drew a
packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently and very quickly. He
stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his lips compressed.

"Forgive me for troubling you..."

Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his
broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated Prince
Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he continued:

"I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard reports
of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of that
kind. Is that true?"

"Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew interrupted him.

"Here are her letters and her portrait," said he.

He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.

"Give this to the countess... if you see her."

"She is very ill," said Pierre.

"Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince Kuragin?" he
added quickly.

"He left long ago. She has been at death's door."

"I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled like his
father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.

"So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his hand?"
said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.

"He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his father.

"And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said.

"He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre.

"Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess Rostova
that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all that is
good."

Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember whether
he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre would say
anything, looked fixedly at him.

"I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?" asked Pierre,
"about..."

"Yes," returned Prince Andrew hastily. "I said that a fallen woman
should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't."

"But can this be compared...?" said Pierre.

Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: "Yes, ask her hand
again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very noble, but
I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you wish to be
my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well, good-by. So
you'll give her the packet?"

Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.

The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same as
always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed her
satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at them
Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the
Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to mention
the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone else.

At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was becoming
evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with his father,
now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an unnatural animation,
the cause of which Pierre so well understood.





CHAPTER XXII


That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the commission
entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the Club, and Pierre,
after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya Dmitrievna who was
interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken the news. Ten minutes
later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.

"Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she.

"But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not been
tidied up."

"No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya.

Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.

"When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind, don't
tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the heart to scold
her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be pitied."

Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated, with
a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected to find
her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently undecided
whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.

Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as
usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her arms
hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she
went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different
expression of face.

"Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your
friend--is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that
everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once
to apply to you..."

Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then he had
reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he now felt so
sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for reproach.

"He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped and
breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.

"Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..."

He did not know what to say.

Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think she
had meant.

"No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never be.
I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only that I
beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...."

She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.

A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart.

"I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said Pierre.
"But... I should like to know one thing...."

"Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked.

"I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how to
refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him--"did you love that
bad man?"

"Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at
all...."

She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness, and love
welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his spectacles and
hoped they would not be noticed.

"We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his gentle,
cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha.

"We won't speak of it, my dear--I'll tell him everything; but one thing
I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help, advice, or
simply to open your heart to someone--not now, but when your mind is
clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it. "I shall be happy
if it's in my power..."

Pierre grew confused.

"Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed Natasha and
turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.

He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it he was
amazed at his own words.

"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her.

"Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and
self-abasement.

 "All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest,
cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment
ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"

For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and
tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.

Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom, restraining
tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without finding the
sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his sleigh.

"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman.

"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to the
Club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in comparison
with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in comparison
with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him through her
tears.

"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost Fahrenheit
he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and inhaled the
air with joy.

It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the
black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky
did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane
things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised.
At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark starry
sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the
Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars
but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white
light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant
comet of 1812--the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes
and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long
luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed
joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having
traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable
space, seemed suddenly--like an arrow piercing the earth--to remain
fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and
displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It
seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in
his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.





BOOK NINE: 1812





CHAPTER I


From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating of
the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces--millions
of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army--moved from
the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since 1811
Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth of June, 1812,
the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war
began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human
nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable
crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money,
burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not
recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which
those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The
historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs
inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental
System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the
mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,
Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have
taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to
have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I consent to restore
the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"--and there would have been no war.

We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries.
It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's
intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally
seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war
was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the
war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the
war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals
and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of
giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the
need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of
that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between
Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed
from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It
is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other
reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points
of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to
posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and
perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient.
To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and
tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander
was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of
Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances
have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the
Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed
and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried
away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event
with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present
themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of
them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears
to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance
compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence--apart
from the cooperation of all the other coincident causes--to occasion the
event. To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal to
serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon's refusal to
withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of
Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, a third,
and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have
been so many less men in Napoleon's army and the war could not have
occurred.

Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw
beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would
have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a second
term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there have been
a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of Oldenburg, and
had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been an autocratic
government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a subsequent
dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced the French
Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing could have
happened. So all these causes--myriads of causes--coincided to bring it
about. And so there was no one cause for that occurrence, but it had
to occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their human
feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows,
just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east
to the west, slaying their fellows.

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed
to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was
drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be
otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom
the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of
innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event
could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in
whose hands lay the real power--the soldiers who fired, or transported
provisions and guns--should consent to carry out the will of these weak
individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number
of diverse and complex causes.

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational
events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do
not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history
reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to
us.

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal
aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from
doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action
performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to
history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which
is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive
life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in
the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done
is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of
millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man
stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with
and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the
predestination and inevitability of his every action.

"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord."

A king is history's slave.

History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses
every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.

Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that
it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples
*--as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him--he had
never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him,
while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform
for the hive life--that is to say, for history--whatever had to be
performed.


    * "To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."


The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and
by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and
co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the
nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's
wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia--undertaken (as it seemed
to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace, the
French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his people's
inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations, and the
expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages
to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors he received
in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the opinion of
contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace,
but which only wounded the self-love of both sides, and millions of
other causes that adapted themselves to the event that was happening or
coincided with it.

When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its
attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried
by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or
because the boy standing below wants to eat it?

Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in
which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist
who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so
forth is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says
the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. Equally
right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he
wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction, and
he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because
the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic
events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and
like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.

Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is
in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of
history and predestined from eternity.





CHAPTER II


On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent
three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,
and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the
emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings
and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and diamonds
of his own--that is, which he had taken from other kings--to the Empress
of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us, tenderly embraced
the Empress Marie Louise--who regarded him as her husband, though he had
left another wife in Paris--left her grieved by the parting which
she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the diplomatists still firmly
believed in the possibility of peace and worked zealously to that end,
and though the Emperor Napoleon himself wrote a letter to Alexander,
calling him Monsieur mon frere, and sincerely assured him that he did
not want war and would always love and honor him--yet he set off to
join his army, and at every station gave fresh orders to accelerate the
movement of his troops from west to east. He went in a traveling coach
with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort,
along the road to Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these
towns thousands of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.

The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses carried
him in the same direction. On the tenth of June, * coming up with the
army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on the estate of
a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.


    * Old style.


Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the Niemen, and,
changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank in order to
select a place for the crossing.

Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the
wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of Moscow
(Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the Scythia
into which Alexander the Great had marched--Napoleon unexpectedly, and
contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic considerations, ordered an
advance, and the next day his army began to cross the Niemen.

Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,
which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and
looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out of
the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown across
the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence, were on the
lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in an overcoat
and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of his tent on
the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive l'Empereur!" and
one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of the vast forest
that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and on by the three
bridges to the other side.

"Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself, things
get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So these
are the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au revoir,
Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au revoir. Good
luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!... preur!--If
they make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you Minister of
Kashmir--that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! The
Cossacks--those rascals--see how they run! Vive l'Empereur! There he
is, do you see him? I've seen him twice, as I see you now. The little
corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the veterans.... Vive
l'Empereur!" came the voices of men, old and young, of most diverse
characters and social positions. On the faces of all was one common
expression of joy at the commencement of the long-expected campaign and
of rapture and devotion to the man in the gray coat who was standing on
the hill.

On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse was
brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one of the
bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant and rapturous
acclamations which he evidently endured only because it was impossible
to forbid the soldiers to express their love of him by such shouting,
but the shouting which accompanied him everywhere disturbed him and
distracted him from the military cares that had occupied him from the
time he joined the army. He rode across one of the swaying pontoon
bridges to the farther side, turned sharply to the left, and galloped in
the direction of Kovno, preceded by enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the
Guard who, breathless with delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for
him through the troops. On reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped
near a regiment of Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.

"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and
pressing against one another to see him.

Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a log
that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was handed
him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run up to him,
and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became absorbed in a map laid
out on the logs. Without lifting his head he said something, and two of
his aides-de-camp galloped off to the Polish Uhlans.

"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans
when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.

The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel of the
Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his speech
from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted
to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford. In evident
fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on a horse, he
begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the Emperor's
eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor would not be
displeased at this excess of zeal.

As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached officer,
with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted "Vivat!"
and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse and galloped
into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which had grown
restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading for the deepest
part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in after
him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in the middle of the
stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as they fell off their
horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some of the men; the others
tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some clinging to their horses'
manes. They tried to make their way forward to the opposite bank and,
though there was a ford one third of a mile away, were proud that they
were swimming and drowning in this river under the eyes of the man who
sat on the log and was not even looking at what they were doing. When
the aide-de-camp, having returned and choosing an opportune moment,
ventured to draw the Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles
to his person, the little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having
summoned Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving
him instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the
drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.

For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of
the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to
dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called for
his horse and rode to his quarters.

Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were sent to
their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from which
they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and with
difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they had
got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted "Vivat!"
and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been but where he
no longer was and at that moment considered themselves happy.

That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian paper
money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as quickly as
possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a letter
containing information about the orders to the French army had been
found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish colonel who
had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled in the Legion
d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.

Quos vult perdere dementat. *


    * Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.





CHAPTER III


The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than a
month, reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for the
war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor had come
from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The vacillation
between the various plans that were proposed had even increased after
the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each of the three
armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no supreme
commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume that
responsibility himself.

The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody--tired
of waiting--prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who surrounded
the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend his time
pleasantly and forget that war was impending.

In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by the
courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the Polish
aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be given for
the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly received.
The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected money by
subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to the
Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a
landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the fete,
and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner, regatta, and
fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat.

The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and
his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian frontier,
Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by his
aides-de-camp at Bennigsen's country house.

It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters declared
that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one place.
Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who had
followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the refined
Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of beauty. The
Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.

Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the
present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not an
aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris
was now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought
patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of his
own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen her for
a long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was enjoying
the favors of a very important personage and Boris had only recently
married, they met as good friends of long standing.

At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a suitable
partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris. They were the
third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling bare shoulders
which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze gown, talked to her
of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware of it himself and
unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased to observe the Emperor
who was in the same room. The Emperor was not dancing, he stood in the
doorway, stopping now one pair and now another with gracious words which
he alone knew how to utter.

As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev, one of
those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him and contrary
to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to a Polish
lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked inquiringly
at Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only acted thus because
there were important reasons for so doing, nodded slightly to the lady
and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to speak before a look of
amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He took Balashev by the arm
and crossed the room with him, unconsciously clearing a path seven
yards wide as the people on both sides made way for him. Boris noticed
Arakcheev's excited face when the sovereign went out with Balashev.
Arakcheev looked at the Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with
his red nose, stepped forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor
to address him. (Boris understood that Arakcheev envied Balashev and
was displeased that evidently important news had reached the Emperor
otherwise than through himself.)

But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated garden
without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and glancing
wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.

All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka, he was
worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and how he
could find it out before others. In the figure in which he had to choose
two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to choose Countess
Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the veranda, and glided over
the parquet to the door opening into the garden, where, seeing Balashev
and the Emperor returning to the veranda, he stood still. They were
moving toward the door. Boris, fluttering as if he had not had time to
withdraw, respectfully pressed close to the doorpost with bowed head.

The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally
affronted, was finishing with these words:

"To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as long as
a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to Boris that it
gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was satisfied with
the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but displeased that
Boris had overheard it.

"Let no one know of it!" the Emperor added with a frown.

Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his eyes,
slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and
remained there about another half-hour.

Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army had
crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain
important personages that much that was concealed from others was
usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their
estimation.


The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was
particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations, and at
a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of indignation
and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased him, fully
expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On returning home
at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary, Shishkov, and told
him to write an order to the troops and a rescript to Field Marshal
Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the words being inserted that
he would not make peace so long as a single armed Frenchman remained on
Russian soil.

Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:


Monsieur mon frere,

Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty with which I have kept
my engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian
frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in
which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression, that
Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with me
from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons on
which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him would
never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a pretext for
aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has declared, was
never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I was informed of
it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and ordered him to remain
at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend to shed the blood of our
peoples for such a misunderstanding, and consents to withdraw your
troops from Russian territory, I will regard what has passed as not
having occurred and an understanding between us will be possible. In
the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see myself forced to repel an
attack that nothing on my part has provoked. It still depends on Your
Majesty to preserve humanity from the calamity of another war. I am,
etc.,

(signed) Alexander.





CHAPTER IV


At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having
sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him to
take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When dispatching
Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he would not make
peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on Russian soil and told
him to transmit those words to Napoleon. Alexander did not insert them
in his letter to Napoleon, because with his characteristic tact he felt
it would be injudicious to use them at a moment when a last attempt at
reconciliation was being made, but he definitely instructed Balashev to
repeat them personally to Napoleon.

Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied by a
bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts at the
village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn. There he
was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.

A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform and a
shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt. Balashev did
not do so at once, but continued to advance along the road at a walking
pace.

The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,
advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his saber,
and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he deaf that
he did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was. The
noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about regimental
matters without looking at the Russian general.

After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after
conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in general
being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the service, Balashev
found it very strange here on Russian soil to encounter this hostile,
and still more this disrespectful, application of brute force to
himself.

The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air was
fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road from
the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one after
another, like bubbles rising in water.

Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer from the
village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French hussars looked
silently at one another from time to time.

A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed, came
riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse, accompanied
by two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their horses all looked
smart and well kept.

It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full
trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of
martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit
of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.

The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was polite and
evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past his soldiers
and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to be presented to
the Emperor would most likely be satisfied immediately, as the Emperor's
quarters were, he believed, not far off.

They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French hussar
horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and stared with
curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the other end of the
village. The colonel said that the commander of the division was a mile
and a quarter away and would receive Balashev and conduct him to his
destination.

The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.

They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a group
of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a black horse
with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall man with plumes
in his hat and black hair curling down to his shoulders. He wore a red
mantle, and stretched his long legs forward in French fashion. This man
rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his plumes flowing and his gems and
gold lace glittering in the bright June sunshine.

Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the
bracelets, plumes, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was galloping
toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when Julner, the
French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of Naples!" It was,
in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though it was quite
incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he was called so,
and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore assumed a more
solemn and important air than formerly. He was so sure that he really
was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of his departure from that
city, while walking through the streets with his wife, some Italians
called out to him: "Viva il re!" * he turned to his wife with a pensive
smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know that I am leaving them
tomorrow!"


    * "Long live the king."


But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and pitied
the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly, after he
had been ordered to return to military service--and especially since his
last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when his august brother-in-law
had told him: "I made you King that you should reign in my way, but not
in yours!"--he had cheerfully taken up his familiar business, and--like
a well-fed but not overfat horse that feels himself in harness and grows
skittish between the shafts--he dressed up in clothes as variegated
and expensive as possible, and gaily and contentedly galloped along the
roads of Poland, without himself knowing why or whither.

On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its long hair
curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner, and looked
inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully informed His
Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not pronounce.

"De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the
difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to
make your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly
condescension.

As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity
instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his
natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the
withers of Balashev's horse and said:

"Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a circumstance
of which he was unable to judge.

"Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does not
desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the words
Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation unavoidable in
frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a novelty.

Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to "Monsieur
de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige! * and he felt it incumbent on
him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs with Alexander's
envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving a few steps away
from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to pace up and down
with him, trying to speak significantly. He referred to the fact that
the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand that he should withdraw his
troops from Prussia, especially when that demand became generally known
and the dignity of France was thereby offended.


    * "Royalty has its obligations."


Balashev replied that there was "nothing offensive in the demand,
because..." but Murat interrupted him.

"Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he asked
unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.

Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of the
war.

"Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my heart I
wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and that the war
begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as possible!" said he,
in the tone of a servant who wants to remain good friends with another
despite a quarrel between their masters.

And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of his
health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had spent
with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal dignity,
Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which he had stood
at his coronation, and, waving his right arm, said:

"I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your mission,"
and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers, and his
glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were respectfully
awaiting him.

Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very soon
be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the next
village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him as
the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the corps
commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to Marshal
Davout.





CHAPTER V


Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexander--though not a
coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to
express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.

In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are
necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always
appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and their
proximity to the head of the government may be. This inevitability alone
can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore out a grenadier's mustache
with his own hands, whose weak nerves rendered him unable to face
danger, and who was neither an educated man nor a courtier, was able to
maintain his powerful position with Alexander, whose own character was
chivalrous, noble, and gentle.

Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a peasant's hut,
writing--he was auditing accounts. Better quarters could have been
found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who purposely put
themselves in most depressing conditions to have a justification for
being gloomy. For the same reason they are always hard at work and in a
hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of life when, as you see, I
am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty shed?" the expression of
his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure and necessity of such men,
when they encounter anyone who shows animation, is to flaunt their own
dreary, persistent activity. Davout allowed himself that pleasure when
Balashev was brought in. He became still more absorbed in his task when
the Russian general entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at
Balashev's face, which was animated by the beauty of the morning and
by his talk with Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still
more and sneered malevolently.

When he noticed in Balashev's face the disagreeable impression this
reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked what he
wanted.

Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because
Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor
Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to inform
him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation, Davout, after
hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.

"Where is your dispatch?" he inquired. "Give it to me. I will send it to
the Emperor."

Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to the
Emperor.

"Your Emperor's orders are obeyed in your army, but here," said Davout,
"you must do as you're told."

And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his
dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer
on duty.

Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor's letter and laid it
on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging on it, laid
across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the inscription.

"You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,"
protested Balashev, "but permit me to observe that I have the honor to
be adjutant general to His Majesty...."

Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the
signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashev's face.

"You will be treated as is fitting," said he and, putting the packet in
his pocket, left the shed.

A minute later the marshal's adjutant, de Castres, came in and conducted
Balashev to the quarters assigned him.

That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the barrels.

Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashev to come to
him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the
baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one
except Monsieur de Castres.

After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his impotence
and insignificance--particularly acute by contrast with the sphere of
power in which he had so lately moved--and after several marches with
the marshal's baggage and the French army, which occupied the
whole district, Balashev was brought to Vilna--now occupied by the
French--through the very gate by which he had left it four days
previously.

Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne, came
to Balashev and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon's wish to honor him
with an audience.

Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had stood in
front of the house to which Balashev was conducted, and now two French
grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front and with
shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and Uhlans and a
brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals, who were waiting
for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch, round his saddle
horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received Balashev in the very
house in Vilna from which Alexander had dispatched him on his mission.





CHAPTER VI


Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the luxury
and magnificence of Napoleon's court.

The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many
generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates--several of whom
Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia--were waiting.
Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before going
for his ride.

After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came into
the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashev to follow
him.

Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which led into a
study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had dispatched him
on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He heard hurried
footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened rapidly; all
was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of other steps,
firm and resolute--they were those of Napoleon. He had just finished
dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform, opening in front over
a white waistcoat so long that it covered his rotund stomach, white
leather breeches tightly fitting the fat thighs of his short legs, and
Hessian boots. His short hair had evidently just been brushed, but one
lock hung down in the middle of his broad forehead. His plump white neck
stood out sharply above the black collar of his uniform, and he smelled
of Eau de Cologne. His full face, rather young-looking, with its
prominent chin, wore a gracious and majestic expression of imperial
welcome.

He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head slightly
thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad thick
shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had that
imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live in
comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits that
day.

He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow, and coming up
to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of his
time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but is sure
he will always say the right thing and say it well.

"Good day, General!" said he. "I have received the letter you brought
from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you." He glanced with
his large eyes into Balashav's face and immediately looked past him.

It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest him at all.
Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested him.
Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because everything
in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his will.

"I do not, and did not, desire war," he continued, "but it has been
forced on me. Even now" (he emphasized the word) "I am ready to receive
any explanations you can give me."

And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for
dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly
moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashev
was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter into
negotiations.

When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the
Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he had prepared long before:
"Sire! The Emperor, my master..." but the sight of the Emperor's eyes
bent on him confused him. "You are flurried--compose yourself!" Napoleon
seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked at
Balashev's uniform and sword.

Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the
Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his passports a
sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on his own initiative
and without his sovereign's assent, that the Emperor Alexander did not
desire war, and had no relations with England.

"Not yet!" interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to his
feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashev might
proceed.

After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev added that
the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter into
negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashev hesitated:
he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his
letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov and had
told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered these words,
"So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil," but some
complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though he
wished to do so. He grew confused and said: "On condition that the
French army retires beyond the Niemen."

Napoleon noticed Balashev's embarrassment when uttering these last
words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to quiver
rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began speaking in
a louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the speech that
followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his eyes, involuntarily
noticed the quivering of Napoleon's left leg which increased the more
Napoleon raised his voice.

"I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander," he began. "Have
I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it? I
have waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to begin
negotiations, what is demanded of me?" he said, frowning and making an
energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump hand.

"The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire," replied Balashev.

"The Niemen?" repeated Napoleon. "So now you want me to retire beyond
the Niemen--only the Niemen?" repeated Napoleon, looking straight at
Balashev.

The latter bowed his head respectfully.

Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from Pomerania,
only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded. Napoleon turned
quickly and began to pace the room.

"You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen
before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months ago
the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the Oder,
and yet you are willing to negotiate."

He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and again
stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that his left leg was
quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in its stern
expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing Napoleon was
conscious of. "The vibration of my left calf is a great sign with me,"
he remarked at a later date.

"Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be made to a
Prince of Baden, but not to me!" Napoleon almost screamed, quite to his
own surprise. "If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I could not accept
such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But who first joined his
army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer me negotiations when I
have expended millions, when you are in alliance with England, and when
your position is a bad one. You offer me negotiations! But what is the
aim of your alliance with England? What has she given you?" he continued
hurriedly, evidently no longer trying to show the advantages of peace
and discuss its possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and
power and Alexander's errors and duplicity.

The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the
intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and showing
that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had begun talking,
and the more he talked the less could he control his words.

The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt himself and
insult Alexander--just what he had least desired at the commencement of
the interview.

"I hear you have made peace with Turkey?"

Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.

"Peace has been concluded..." he began.

But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all the
talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of eloquence and
unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so prone.

"Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining
Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those
provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes," he went on, "I promised and would
have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now he
won't have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united them to
his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia from the
Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the Great could
not have done more," said Napoleon, growing more and more excited as he
paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashev almost the very words
he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. "All that, he would have
owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!" he repeated several
times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold snuffbox, lifted it to
his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.

"What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander's might have been!"

He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as the latter tried
to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.

"What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained
through my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders
in perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to surround himself with
my enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and
Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;
Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French
subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but all
the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807 and who
should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander's mind....
Granted that were they competent they might be made use of," continued
Napoleon--hardly able to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts
that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and strong he was (in his
perception the two were one and the same)--"but they are not even that!
They are neither fit for war nor peace! Barclay is said to be the
most capable of them all, but I cannot say so, judging by his first
movements. And what are they doing, all these courtiers? Pfuel proposes,
Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and Barclay, called on to act,
does not know what to decide on, and time passes bringing no result.
Bagration alone is a military man. He's stupid, but he has experience,
a quick eye, and resolution.... And what role is your young monarch
playing in that monstrous crowd? They compromise him and throw on him
the responsibility for all that happens. A sovereign should not be with
the army unless he is a general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering
these words as a direct challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander
desired to be a military commander.

"The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven't even been able to
defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of the Polish
provinces. Your army is grumbling."

"On the contrary, Your Majesty," said Balashev, hardly able to remember
what had been said to him and following these verbal fireworks with
difficulty, "the troops are burning with eagerness..."

"I know everything!" Napoleon interrupted him. "I know everything. I
know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You have
not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number. I give
you my word of honor," said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of honor
could carry no weight--"I give you my word of honor that I have five
hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the Vistula. The Turks will
be of no use to you; they are worth nothing and have shown it by making
peace with you. As for the Swedes--it is their fate to be governed
by mad kings. Their king was insane and they changed him for
another--Bernadotte, who promptly went mad--for no Swede would ally
himself with Russia unless he were mad."

Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his nose.

Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon's remarks, and would
have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing to say
something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the alleged insanity
of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when Russia is on her side
Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon gave an angry exclamation
to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that state of irritability in which
a man has to talk, talk, and talk, merely to convince himself that he is
in the right. Balashev began to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared
to demean his dignity and felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man,
he shrank before the transport of groundless wrath that had evidently
seized Napoleon. He knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon
had any significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them
when he came to his senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking
at the movements of Napoleon's stout legs and trying to avoid meeting
his eyes.

"But what do I care about your allies?" said Napoleon. "I have
allies--the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight like
lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them."

And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered this
obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still stood silently before him in
the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon abruptly turned
round, drew close to Balashev's face, and, gesticulating rapidly and
energetically with his white hands, almost shouted:

"Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I'll wipe it off the map
of Europe!" he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and he
struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. "Yes, I
will throw you back beyond the Dvina and beyond the Dnieper, and will
re-erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind of
Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to you.
That is what you have gained by alienating me!" And he walked silently
several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders twitching.

He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again, lifted
it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashev. He
paused, looked ironically straight into Balashev's eyes, and said in a
quiet voice:

"And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!"

Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the
Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon was
silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not listening to
him. Balashev said that in Russia the best results were expected from
the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to say, "I know it's
your duty to say that, but you don't believe it yourself. I have
convinced you."

When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox, sniffed
at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal. The door
opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully, handed the Emperor
his hat and gloves; another brought him a pocket handkerchief. Napoleon,
without giving them a glance, turned to Balashev:

"Assure the Emperor Alexander from me," said he, taking his hat, "that
I am as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very highly
esteem his lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer, General; you
shall receive my letter to the Emperor."

And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception room
rushed forward and descended the staircase.





CHAPTER VII


After all that Napoleon had said to him--those bursts of anger and the
last dryly spoken words: "I will detain you no longer, General; you
shall receive my letter," Balashev felt convinced that Napoleon would
not wish to see him, and would even avoid another meeting with him--an
insulted envoy--especially as he had witnessed his unseemly anger. But,
to his surprise, Balashev received, through Duroc, an invitation to dine
with the Emperor that day.

Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.

Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed no sign
of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that morning,
but, on the contrary, tried to reassure Balashev. It was evident that
he had long been convinced that it was impossible for him to make a
mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was right, not
because it harmonized with any idea of right and wrong, but because he
did it.

The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vilna, where
crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him. From all
the windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs, flags, and his
monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies, welcoming him, waved
their handkerchiefs to him.

At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him, Napoleon not only treated
him amiably but behaved as if Balashev were one of his own courtiers,
one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to rejoice at
his success. In the course of conversation he mentioned Moscow and
questioned Balashev about the Russian capital, not merely as an
interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit, but as
if convinced that Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered by his
curiosity.

"How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it true
that Moscow is called 'Holy Moscow'? How many churches are there in
Moscow?" he asked.

And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred churches,
he remarked:

"Why such a quantity of churches?"

"The Russians are very devout," replied Balashev.

"But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the
backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for
appreciation of this remark.

Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.

"Every country has its own character," said he.

"But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that," said Napoleon.

"I beg your Majesty's pardon," returned Balashev, "besides Russia there
is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries."

This reply of Balashev's, which hinted at the recent defeats of the
French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at Alexander's
court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon's dinner, where it
passed unnoticed.

The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that they
were puzzled as to what Balashev's tone suggested. "If there is a point
we don't see it, or it is not at all witty," their expressions seemed
to say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon did not
notice it at all and naively asked Balashev through what towns the
direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on the alert
all through the dinner, replied that just as "all roads lead to Rome,"
so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and "among them the
road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose." Balashev involuntarily
flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this reply, but hardly had
he uttered the word Poltava before Caulaincourt began speaking of the
badness of the road from Petersburg to Moscow and of his Petersburg
reminiscences.

After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which four
days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat
down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned Balashev to a
chair beside him.

Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than
any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to
consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was surrounded
by men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after his dinner,
Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned to him with a
pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.

"They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied? Strange,
isn't it, General?" he said, evidently not doubting that this remark
would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his, Napoleon's,
superiority to Alexander.

Balashev made no reply and bowed his head in silence.

"Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were
deliberating," continued Napoleon with the same derisive and
self-confident smile. "What I can't understand," he went on, "is that
the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal enemies.
That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may do the same?"
and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this thought turned
him back on to the track of his morning's anger, which was still fresh
in him.

"And let him know that I will do so!" said Napoleon, rising and pushing
his cup away with his hand. "I'll drive all his Wurttemberg, Baden, and
Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I'll drive them out. Let him
prepare an asylum for them in Russia!"

Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to
make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help
hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression;
he treated Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man
now fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master's
humiliation.

"And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What is
the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to reign
and not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a
responsibility?"

Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up and down
the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, went up to
Balashev and with a slight smile, as confidently, quickly, and simply
as if he were doing something not merely important but pleasing to
Balashev, he raised his hand to the forty-year-old Russian general's
face and, taking him by the ear, pulled it gently, smiling with his lips
only.

To have one's ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the greatest
honor and mark of favor at the French court.

"Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don't you say
anything?" said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to be the
adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. "Are the horses
ready for the general?" he added, with a slight inclination of his head
in reply to Balashev's bow. "Let him have mine, he has a long way to
go!"

The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent to Alexander.
Every detail of the interview was communicated to the Russian monarch,
and the war began...





CHAPTER VIII


After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to
Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet
Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching
Petersburg he inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the
city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on
his track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment from
the Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in
Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who was
always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov suggested that he should
accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general had
been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having received an
appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.

Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge Kuragin.
He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause it might
compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to meet Kuragin
personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But he again
failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince Andrew arrived,
the latter returned to Russia. In a new country, amid new conditions,
Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After his betrothed had broken
faith with him--which he felt the more acutely the more he tried to
conceal its effects--the surroundings in which he had been happy became
trying to him, and the freedom and independence he had once prized
so highly were still more so. Not only could he no longer think the
thoughts that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on the
field of Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with Pierre, and which
had filled his solitude at Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome,
but he even dreaded to recall them and the bright and boundless horizons
they had revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical
matters unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more
eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if
that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him
had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down, in
which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.

Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was the
simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutuzov's staff,
he applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and surprised
Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not having found
Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it necessary to rush back
to Russia after him, but all the same he knew that however long it might
be before he met Kuragin, despite his contempt for him and despite all
the proofs he deduced to convince himself that it was not worth stooping
to a conflict with him--he knew that when he did meet him he would not
be able to resist calling him out, any more than a ravenous man can help
snatching at food. And the consciousness that the insult was not yet
avenged, that his rancor was still unspent, weighed on his heart and
poisoned the artificial tranquillity which he managed to obtain in
Turkey by means of restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and
ambitious activity.

In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached
Bucharest--where Kutuzov had been living for two months, passing his
days and nights with a Wallachian woman--Prince Andrew asked Kutuzov
to transfer him to the Western Army. Kutuzov, who was already weary of
Bolkonski's activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very
readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.

Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped at
Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on his way,
being only two miles off the Smolensk highroad. During the last three
years there had been so many changes in his life, he had thought, felt,
and seen so much (having traveled both in the east and the west), that
on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange and unexpected to find
the way of life there unchanged and still the same in every detail.
He entered through the gates with their stone pillars and drove up
the avenue leading to the house as if he were entering an enchanted,
sleeping castle. The same old stateliness, the same cleanliness, the
same stillness reigned there, and inside there was the same furniture,
the same walls, sounds, and smell, and the same timid faces, only
somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the same timid, plain maiden
getting on in years, uselessly and joylessly passing the best years of
her life in fear and constant suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was
the same coquettish, self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her
existence and full of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become
more self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had
brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and
talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same narrowly
intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old prince
had changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which left a
noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was the same as
ever, only showing still more irritability and skepticism as to what was
happening in the world. Little Nicholas alone had changed. He had grown,
become rosier, had curly dark hair, and, when merry and laughing, quite
unconsciously lifted the upper lip of his pretty little mouth just
as the little princess used to do. He alone did not obey the law of
immutability in the enchanted, sleeping castle. But though externally
all remained as of old, the inner relations of all these people had
changed since Prince Andrew had seen them last. The household was
divided into two alien and hostile camps, who changed their habits for
his sake and only met because he was there. To the one camp belonged
the old prince, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other
Princess Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and
maids.

During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but they
were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for whose
sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them all
feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first day, he
was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became morosely dumb
and retired to his apartments directly after dinner. In the evening,
when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse him, began to
tell him of the young Count Kamensky's campaign, the old prince
began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for her
superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he said,
was the only person really attached to him.

The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of Princess
Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and that by
indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince Nicholas. The
old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter and that her
life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not help tormenting
her and that she deserved it. "Why does Prince Andrew, who sees this,
say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me a scoundrel, or an
old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own daughter at a distance
and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He doesn't understand, so I
must explain it, and he must hear me out," thought the old prince.
And he began explaining why he could not put up with his daughter's
unreasonable character.

"If you ask me," said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was
censuring his father for the first time in his life), "I did not wish to
speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank opinion. If
there is any misunderstanding and discord between you and Mary, I can't
blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and respects you. Since
you ask me," continued Prince Andrew, becoming irritable--as he was
always liable to do of late--"I can only say that if there are any
misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless woman, who is not
fit to be my sister's companion."

The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural smile
disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew could
not get accustomed.

"What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You've already been talking it over!
Eh?"

"Father, I did not want to judge," said Prince Andrew, in a hard and
bitter tone, "but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall
say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame--the one to blame--is
that Frenchwoman."

"Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!" said the old man in a
low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some embarrassment,
but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: "Be off, be off! Let not a
trace of you remain here!..."


Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded him
to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did not
leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne and
Tikhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next day,
before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son's rooms. The boy,
curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee,
and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell
into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this
pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He
sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or regret
at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms with him,
and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more to him was that
he sought and did not find in himself the former tenderness for his son
which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the boy and taking him on
his knee.

"Well, go on!" said his son.

Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went out
of the room.

As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and
especially on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he had
been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former intensity,
and he hastened to escape from these memories and to find some work as
soon as possible.

"So you've decided to go, Andrew?" asked his sister.

"Thank God that I can," replied Prince Andrew. "I am very sorry you
can't."

"Why do you say that?" replied Princess Mary. "Why do you say that,
when you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old? Mademoiselle
Bourienne says he has been asking about you...."

As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her tears
began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the room.

"Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what--what trash--can cause
people misery!" he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess Mary.

She understood that when speaking of "trash" he referred not only to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man who
had ruined his own happiness.

"Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!" she said, touching his
elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears. "I
understand you" (she looked down). "Don't imagine that sorrow is the
work of men. Men are His tools." She looked a little above Prince
Andrew's head with the confident, accustomed look with which one looks
at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. "Sorrow is sent by Him,
not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to blame. If you think
someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We have no right to
punish. And then you will know the happiness of forgiving."

"If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman's virtue. But
a man should not and cannot forgive and forget," he replied, and though
till that moment he had not been thinking of Kuragin, all his unexpended
anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.

"If Mary is already persuading me forgive, it means that I ought long
ago to have punished him," he thought. And giving her no further reply,
he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he would meet
Kuragin who he knew was now in the army.

Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she knew how
unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being reconciled to
him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably soon be back again
from the army and would certainly write to his father, but that the
longer he stayed now the more embittered their differences would become.

"Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men are
never to blame," were the last words he heard from his sister when he
took leave of her.

"Then it must be so!" thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the
avenue from the house at Bald Hills. "She, poor innocent creature, is
left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits. The old
man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up
and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he will deceive or be
deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself don't know. I want
to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give him a chance to kill and
laugh at me!"

These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they were
all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only senseless
things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after another to
Prince Andrew's mind.





CHAPTER IX


Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the end of
June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied the fortified
camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying to effect a
junction with the first one from which it was said to be cut off by
large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the general course
of affairs in the Russian army, but no one anticipated any danger of
invasion of the Russian provinces, and no one thought the war would
extend farther than the western, the Polish, provinces.

Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been assigned, on
the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or large
village in the vicinity of the camp, the immense number of generals and
courtiers accompanying the army were living in the best houses of the
villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of six miles. Barclay
de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from the Emperor. He received
Bolkonski stiffly and coldly and told him in his foreign accent that he
would mention him to the Emperor for a decision as to his employment,
but asked him meanwhile to remain on his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom
Prince Andrew had hoped to find with the army, was not there. He had
gone to Petersburg, but Prince Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind
was occupied by the interests of the center that was conducting
a gigantic war, and he was glad to be free for a while from the
distraction caused by the thought of Kuragin. During the first four
days, while no duties were required of him, Prince Andrew rode round the
whole fortified camp and, by the aid of his own knowledge and by
talks with experts, tried to form a definite opinion about it. But the
question whether the camp was advantageous or disadvantageous remained
for him undecided. Already from his military experience and what he had
seen in the Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in
war the most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all
depends on the way unexpected movements of the enemy--that cannot be
foreseen--are met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled.
To clear up this last point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his
position and acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the control
of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he deduced for
himself the following of the state of affairs.

While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces had been divided
into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly, secondly, the
army under Bagration, and thirdly, the one commanded by Tormasov. The
Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander in chief. In the
orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor would take command,
but only that he would be with the army. The Emperor, moreover, had
with him not a commander in chief's staff but the imperial headquarters
staff. In attendance on him was the head of the imperial staff,
Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well as generals, imperial
aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large number of foreigners,
but not the army staff. Besides these, there were in attendance on the
Emperor without any definite appointments: Arakcheev, the ex-Minister
of War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general in rank; the Grand Duke
Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich; Count Rumyantsev, the Chancellor;
Stein, a former Prussian minister; Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel,
the chief author of the plan of campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general
and Sardinian emigre; Wolzogen--and many others. Though these men had
no military appointment in the army, their position gave them influence,
and often a corps commander, or even the commander in chief, did not
know in what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke,
Arakcheev, or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that advice and did
not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice emanated
from the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it had to be
executed or not. But this was only the external condition; the essential
significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all these people,
from a courtier's point of view (and in an Emperor's vicinity all became
courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this: the Emperor did not
assume the title of commander in chief, but disposed of all the armies;
the men around him were his assistants. Arakcheev was a faithful
custodian to enforce order and acted as the sovereign's bodyguard.
Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vilna province who appeared to be doing
the honors of the district, but was in reality a good general, useful
as an adviser and ready at hand to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke
was there because it suited him to be. The ex-Minister Stein was there
because his advice was useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high
esteem personally. Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a general
full of self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander.
Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in speech. The
adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the
Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn up
the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander to
believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole business
of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel's thoughts in
a more comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a harsh, bookish
theorist, self-confident to the point of despising everyone else) was
able to do.

Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and unexpected
ideas every day--especially the foreigners, who did so with a boldness
characteristic of people employed in a country not their own--there were
many secondary personages accompanying the army because their principals
were there.

Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless, brilliant,
and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following sharply defined
subdivisions of tendencies and parties:

The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents--military theorists
who believed in a science of war with immutable laws--laws of oblique
movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his adherents demanded
a retirement into the depths of the country in accordance with precise
laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and they saw only barbarism,
ignorance, or evil intention in every deviation from that theory. To
this party belonged the foreign nobles, Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and
others, chiefly Germans.

The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme, as
always happens, was met by representatives of the other. The members of
this party were those who had demanded an advance from Vilna into Poland
and freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides being advocates of bold
action, this section also represented nationalism, which made them still
more one-sided in the dispute. They were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov
(who was beginning to come to the front), and others. At that time a
famous joke of Ermolov's was being circulated, that as a great favor he
had petitioned the Emperor to make him a German. The men of that party,
remembering Suvorov, said that what one had to do was not to reason,
or stick pins into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep him out of
Russia, and not let the army get discouraged.

To the third party--in which the Emperor had most confidence--belonged
the courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the other two.
The members of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom Arakcheev
belonged, thought and said what men who have no convictions but wish
to seem to have some generally say. They said that undoubtedly war,
particularly against such a genius as Bonaparte (they called him
Bonaparte now), needs most deeply devised plans and profound scientific
knowledge and in that respect Pfuel was a genius, but at the same time
it had to be acknowledged that the theorists are often one sided, and
therefore one should not trust them absolutely, but should also listen
to what Pfuel's opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had
to say, and then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention
of the camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel's plan, but on changing the
movements of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim
nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents of
this third party.

Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the
Tsarevich, who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz, where
he had ridden out at the head of the Guards, in his casque and cavalry
uniform as to a review, expecting to crush the French gallantly; but
unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had narrowly escaped amid
the general confusion. The men of this party had both the quality
and the defect of frankness in their opinions. They feared Napoleon,
recognized his strength and their own weakness, and frankly said so.
They said: "Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin will come of all this!
We have abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk and shall abandon Drissa. The only
reasonable thing left to do is to conclude peace as soon as possible,
before we are turned out of Petersburg."

This view was very general in the upper army circles and found support
also in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyantsev, who, for other
reasons of state, was in favor of peace.

The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay de
Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of war and commander in
chief. "Be he what he may" (they always began like that), "he is an
honest, practical man and we have nobody better. Give him real power,
for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of command, and
he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If our army is well
organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa without suffering
any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If Barclay is now to
be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for Bennigsen showed his
incapacity already in 1807."

The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at any
rate there was no one more active and experienced than Bennigsen: "and
twist about as you may, you will have to come to Bennigsen eventually.
Let the others make mistakes now!" said they, arguing that our
retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse and an unbroken series
of blunders. "The more mistakes that are made the better. It will at any
rate be understood all the sooner that things cannot go on like this.
What is wanted is not some Barclay or other, but a man like Bennigsen,
who made his mark in 1807, and to whom Napoleon himself did justice--a
man whose authority would be willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the
only such man."

The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always to
be found, especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there were
particularly many round Alexander--generals and imperial aides-de-camp
passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a monarch but as a
man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as Rostov had done
in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues but all human
capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with the sovereign
for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for such excessive
modesty, and only desired and insisted that their adored sovereign
should abandon his diffidence and openly announce that he would place
himself at the head of the army, gather round him a commander in chief's
staff, and, consulting experienced theoreticians and practical men where
necessary, would himself lead the troops, whose spirits would thereby be
raised to the highest pitch.

The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to the
others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither
peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa
or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor
Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing--as much advantage
and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of
conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied about the Emperor's
headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at
other times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative post would
today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the day after,
merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor, would declare
that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who wished to
gain some advantage would attract the Emperor's attention by loudly
advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day before,
and would dispute and shout at the council, beating his breast and
challenging those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby proving
that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good. A third,
in the absence of opponents, between two councils would simply solicit
a special gratuity for his faithful services, well knowing that at that
moment people would be too busy to refuse him. A fourth while seemingly
overwhelmed with work would often come accidentally under the Emperor's
eye. A fifth, to achieve his long-cherished aim of dining with the
Emperor, would stubbornly insist on the correctness or falsity of some
newly emerging opinion and for this object would produce arguments more
or less forcible and correct.

All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations, and
promotions, and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of imperial
favor, and directly they noticed it turning in any direction, this whole
drone population of the army began blowing hard that way, so that it
was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere. Amid the
uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious danger giving
a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid this vortex of
intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity
of race among these people--this eighth and largest party of those
preoccupied with personal interests imparted great confusion and
obscurity to the common task. Whatever question arose, a swarm of these
drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew
over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of
those who were disputing honestly.

From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached
the army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning
to raise its voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men
experienced and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any of
those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of what
was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means of
escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.

The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong resulted
chiefly from the Emperor's presence in the army with his military court
and from the consequent presence there of an indefinite, conditional,
and unsteady fluctuation of relations, which is in place at court but
harmful in an army; that a sovereign should reign but not command the
army, and that the only way out of the position would be for the Emperor
and his court to leave the army; that the mere presence of the Emperor
paralyzed the action of fifty thousand men required to secure his
personal safety, and that the worst commander in chief if independent
would be better than the very best one trammeled by the presence and
authority of the monarch.

Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa,
Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the chief representatives of
this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which Arakcheev and Balashev
agreed to sign. In this letter, availing himself of permission given him
by the Emperor to discuss the general course of affairs, he respectfully
suggested--on the plea that it was necessary for the sovereign to arouse
a warlike spirit in the people of the capital--that the Emperor should
leave the army.

That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to them to
defend their country--the very incitement which was the chief cause of
Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the Tsar's personal
presence in Moscow--was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him,
as a pretext for quitting the army.





CHAPTER X


This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when Barclay, one
day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that the sovereign wished to see him
personally, to question him about Turkey, and that Prince Andrew was to
present himself at Bennigsen's quarters at six that evening.

News was received at the Emperor's quarters that very day of a fresh
movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army--news subsequently
found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had ridden round the
Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out to him that
this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and till then considered
a chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which would ensure Napoleon's
destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the destruction of the
Russian army.

Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen's quarters--a country gentleman's
house of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river. Neither
Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the Emperor's
aide-de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the Emperor,
accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had gone a second
time that day to inspect the fortifications of the Drissa camp, of the
suitability of which serious doubts were beginning to be felt.

Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French novel
in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was still
an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one corner stood
the folding bedstead of Bennigsen's adjutant. This adjutant was also
there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding, evidently exhausted by
work or by feasting. Two doors led from the room, one straight on into
what had been the drawing room, and another, on the right, to the study.
Through the first door came the sound of voices conversing in German
and occasionally in French. In that drawing room were gathered, by
the Emperor's wish, not a military council (the Emperor preferred
indefiniteness), but certain persons whose opinions he wished to know in
view of the impending difficulties. It was not a council of war, but,
as it were, a council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor
personally. To this semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General
Armfeldt, Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had
referred to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein
who was not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince
Andrew had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew
had an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon
after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a
minute to speak to Chernyshev.

At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general,
which fitted him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince
Andrew, though he saw him now for the first time. There was about
him something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German
theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more
typical than any of them. Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German
theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united to
such an extent.

Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust build,
broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face was
much wrinkled and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been hastily
brushed smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in quaint
little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly and angrily
around, as if afraid of everything in that large apartment. Awkwardly
holding up his sword, he addressed Chernyshev and asked in German where
the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass through the rooms
as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and greetings, and sit down
to business in front of a map, where he would feel at home. He nodded
hurriedly in reply to Chernyshev, and smiled ironically on hearing that
the sovereign was inspecting the fortifications that he, Pfuel, had
planned in accord with his theory. He muttered something to himself
abruptly and in a bass voice, as self-assured Germans do--it might
have been "stupid fellow"... or "the whole affair will be ruined," or
"something absurd will come of it."... Prince Andrew did not catch
what he said and would have passed on, but Chernyshev introduced him to
Pfuel, remarking that Prince Andrew was just back from Turkey where the
war had terminated so fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced--not so much at
Prince Andrew as past him--and said, with a laugh: "That must have been
a fine tactical war"; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the
room from which the sound of voices was heard.

Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly
disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to inspect
and criticize his camp in his absence. From this short interview with
Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz experiences, was able to
form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was one of those hopelessly
and immutably self-confident men, self-confident to the point of
martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-confident
on the basis of an abstract notion--science, that is, the supposed
knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he
regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly
attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a
citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an
Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as
an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because
he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian
is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know
anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The
German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more
repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the
truth--science--which he himself has invented but which is for him the
absolute truth.

Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science--the theory of
oblique movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the
Great's wars, and all he came across in the history of more recent
warfare seemed to him absurd and barbarous--monstrous collisions in
which so many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars
could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and
therefore could not serve as material for science.

In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of
campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he did not see the least
proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of that war. On
the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were, in his opinion,
the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with characteristically
gleeful sarcasm he would remark, "There, I said the whole affair would
go to the devil!" Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love
their theory that they lose sight of the theory's object--its practical
application. His love of theory made him hate everything practical, and
he would not listen to it. He was even pleased by failures, for failures
resulting from deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him
the accuracy of his theory.

He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev about the present
war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all will go wrong,
and who is not displeased that it should be so. The unbrushed tufts
of hair sticking up behind and the hastily brushed hair on his temples
expressed this most eloquently.

He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of his
voice were at once heard from there.





CHAPTER XI


Prince Andrew's eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when
Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkonski, but not
pausing, went into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as he
went. The Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened on
to make some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign.
Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch, where the Emperor,
who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was talking to
him with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head bent to the
left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor moved forward
evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the flushed and excited
Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and continued to speak.

"And as for the man who advised forming this camp--the Drissa camp,"
said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince
Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..."
continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain himself,
"the man who advised the Drissa camp--I see no alternative but the
lunatic asylum or the gallows!"

Without heeding the end of the Italian's remarks, and as though
not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkonski, addressed him
graciously.

"I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting, and wait
for me."

The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter
Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind them.
Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor's permission, accompanied
Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing room where the
council was assembled.

Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the position, as it were,
of chief of the Emperor's staff. He came out of the study into the
drawing room with some maps which he spread on a table, and put
questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen
present. What had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to be
false) had been received during the night of a movement by the French to
outflank the Drissa camp.

The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the difficulty that
presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly new position
away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for this was
inexplicable (unless he wished to show that he, too, could have an
opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should unite and
there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had thought out that
plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to answer the questions
put--which, in fact, his plan did not answer--as to avail himself of the
opportunity to air it. It was one of the millions of proposals, one as
good as another, that could be made as long as it was quite unknown
what character the war would take. Some disputed his arguments, others
defended them. Young Count Toll objected to the Swedish general's views
more warmly than anyone else, and in the course of the dispute drew from
his side pocket a well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to
read to them. In these voluminous notes Toll suggested another scheme,
totally different from Armfeldt's or Pfuel's plan of campaign. In answer
to Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack, which, he urged,
could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the trap
(as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.

During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen
(his "bridge" in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted
contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean
himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when
Prince Volkonski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his
opinion, he merely said:

"Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position with an
exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman's attack--very fine, or
a retreat, also good! Why ask me?" said he. "Why, you yourselves know
everything better than I do."

But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in the Emperor's name
that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly growing animated,
began to speak:

"Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody thought they
knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How mend matters? There
is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me must be strictly
adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with his bony fingers. "What
is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!"

He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no
eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that
everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really going to
outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed.

Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in French.
Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French badly,
and began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with Pfuel, who
was rapidly demonstrating that not only all that had happened, but all
that could happen, had been foreseen in his scheme, and that if there
were now any difficulties the whole fault lay in the fact that his plan
had not been precisely executed. He kept laughing sarcastically, he
demonstrated, and at last contemptuously ceased to demonstrate, like
a mathematician who ceases to prove in various ways the accuracy of
a problem that has already been proved. Wolzogen took his place and
continued to explain his views in French, every now and then turning to
Pfuel and saying, "Is it not so, your excellency?" But Pfuel, like a man
heated in a fight who strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at
his own supporter, Wolzogen:

"Well, of course, what more is there to explain?"

Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in French.
Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to Volkonski in
Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.

Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry,
determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those present,
evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself, nursed no
hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan, formed on a
theory arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out. He was
ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired involuntary
respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides this, the remarks
of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had not been noticeable
at the council of war in 1805: there was now a panic fear of Napoleon's
genius, which, though concealed, was noticeable in every rejoinder.
Everything was assumed to be possible for Napoleon, they expected him
from every side, and invoked his terrible name to shatter each other's
proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to consider Napoleon a barbarian like
everyone else who opposed his theory. But besides this feeling of
respect, Pfuel evoked pity in Prince Andrew. From the tone in which
the courtiers addressed him and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to
speak of him to the Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation
in Pfuel's own expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel
himself felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence
and grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly
brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he
concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was
evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his
theory by a huge experiment and proving its soundness to the whole world
was slipping away from him.

The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted
the more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and
personalities, and the less was it possible to arrive at any general
conclusion from all that had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to this
polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and shouts,
felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought that had
long since and often occurred to him during his military activities--the
idea that there is not and cannot be any science of war, and that
therefore there can be no such thing as a military genius--now appeared
to him an obvious truth. "What theory and science is possible about a
matter the conditions and circumstances of which are unknown and cannot
be defined, especially when the strength of the acting forces cannot be
ascertained? No one was or is able to foresee in what condition our or
the enemy's armies will be in a day's time, and no one can gauge the
force of this or that detachment. Sometimes--when there is not a coward
at the front to shout, 'We are cut off!' and start running, but a brave
and jolly lad who shouts, 'Hurrah!'--a detachment of five thousand
is worth thirty thousand, as at Schon Grabern, while at times fifty
thousand run from eight thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can
there be in a matter in which, as in all practical matters, nothing
can be defined and everything depends on innumerable conditions, the
significance of which is determined at a particular moment which arrives
no one knows when? Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci
says we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud says that
the worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it,
and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes
one plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and the
advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial.
And why do they all speak of a 'military genius'? Is a man a genius who
can order bread to be brought up at the right time and say who is to go
to the right and who to the left? It is only because military men are
invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter power,
attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess. The best
generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or absent-minded
men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted that. And of
Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied face on the
field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander not need any
special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest
and best human attributes--love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic
inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he
is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient
patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he
should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just
and unjust. It is understandable that a theory of their 'genius' was
invented for them long ago because they have power! The success of a
military action depends not on them, but on the man in the ranks who
shouts, 'We are lost!' or who shouts, 'Hurrah!' And only in the ranks
can one serve with assurance of being useful."

So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he roused
himself only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving.

At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he would
like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court circles
forever by not asking to remain attached to the sovereign's person, but
for permission to serve in the army.





CHAPTER XII


Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had received a letter from
his parents in which they told him briefly of Natasha's illness and the
breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they explained by
Natasha's having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas to retire from
the army and return home. On receiving this letter, Nicholas did not
even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to retire from the
army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry Natasha was ill and her
engagement broken off, and that he would do all he could to meet their
wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately.

"Adored friend of my soul!" he wrote. "Nothing but honor could keep
me from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of the
campaign, I should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades' eyes but
in my own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and duty to the
Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation. Believe me, directly
the war is over, if I am still alive and still loved by you, I will
throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever to my ardent
breast."

It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that prevented
Rostov from returning home as he had promised and marrying Sonya. The
autumn in Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with the Christmas
holidays and Sonya's love, had opened out to him a vista of tranquil
rural joys and peace such as he had never known before, and which now
allured him. "A splendid wife, children, a good pack of hounds, a
dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors, service by
election..." thought he. But now the campaign was beginning, and he had
to remain with his regiment. And since it had to be so, Nicholas Rostov,
as was natural to him, felt contented with the life he led in the
regiment and was able to find pleasure in that life.

On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully welcomed
by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back from the
Ukraine excellent horses which pleased him and earned him commendation
from his commanders. During his absence he had been promoted captain,
and when the regiment was put on war footing with an increase in
numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron.

The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double pay,
new officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody was
infected with the merrily excited mood that goes with the commencement
of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous position in the
regiment, devoted himself entirely to the pleasures and interests of
military service, though he knew that sooner or later he would have to
relinquish them.

The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated reasons of state,
political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was accompanied by
a complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and passions at
headquarters. For the Pavlograd hussars, however, the whole of this
retreat during the finest period of summer and with sufficient supplies
was a very simple and agreeable business.

It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness, and
intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves where
they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat, it was only
because they had to leave billets they had grown accustomed to, or some
pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that things looked bad chanced
to enter anyone's head, he tried to be as cheerful as befits a good
soldier and not to think of the general trend of affairs, but only of
the task nearest to hand. First they camped gaily before Vilna, making
acquaintance with the Polish landowners, preparing for reviews and being
reviewed by the Emperor and other high commanders. Then came an order
to retreat to Sventsyani and destroy any provisions they could not carry
away with them. Sventsyani was remembered by the hussars only as the
drunken camp, a name the whole army gave to their encampment there,
and because many complaints were made against the troops, who, taking
advantage of the order to collect provisions, took also horses,
carriages, and carpets from the Polish proprietors. Rostov remembered
Sventsyani, because on the first day of their arrival at that small town
he changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the drunken
men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five barrels
of old beer. From Sventsyani they retired farther and farther to Drissa,
and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier of Russia
proper.

On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a serious action
for the first time.

On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy
storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 1812 was remarkable
for its storms.

The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye, which
was already in ear but had been completely trodden down by cattle and
horses. The rain was descending in torrents, and Rostov, with a young
officer named Ilyin, his protege, was sitting in a hastily constructed
shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long mustaches extending
onto his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had been overtaken by the
rain, entered Rostov's shelter.

"I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raevski's
exploit?"

And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle, which he had
heard at the staff.

Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water
trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional
glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close to him. This officer, a lad
of sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same
relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denisov seven years
before. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and adored him as a
girl might have done.

Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke grandiloquently of
the Saltanov dam being "a Russian Thermopylae," and of how a deed worthy
of antiquity had been performed by General Raevski. He recounted how
Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific fire and had
charged with them beside him. Rostov heard the story and not only said
nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski's enthusiasm but, on the contrary,
looked like a man ashamed of what he was hearing, though with no
intention of contradicting it. Since the campaigns of Austerlitz and
of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that men always lie when describing
military exploits, as he himself had done when recounting them; besides
that, he had experience enough to know that nothing happens in war at
all as we can imagine or relate it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski's
tale, nor did he like Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches
extending over his cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was
his habit, and crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at him
in silence. "In the first place, there must have been such a confusion
and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raevski did lead
his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on some dozen
men nearest to him," thought he, "the rest could not have seen how or
with whom Raevski came onto the dam. And even those who did see it
would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had they to do with
Raevski's tender paternal feelings when their own skins were in danger?
And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did not depend on whether
they took the Saltanov dam or not, as we are told was the case at
Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a sacrifice? And why expose
his own children in the battle? I would not have taken my brother Petya
there, or even Ilyin, who's a stranger to me but a nice lad, but would
have tried to put them somewhere under cover," Nicholas continued
to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But he did not express his
thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had gained experience. He knew
that this tale redounded to the glory of our arms and so one had to
pretend not to doubt it. And he acted accordingly.

"I can't stand this any more," said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov did not
relish Zdrzhinski's conversation. "My stockings and shirt... and the
water is running on my seat! I'll go and look for shelter. The rain
seems less heavy."

Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.

Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud, came running back
to the shanty.

"Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I've found it! About two hundred yards away
there's a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can at least get
dry there, and Mary Hendrikhovna's there."

Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty young
German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether from lack
of means or because he did not like to part from his young wife in
the early days of their marriage, took her about with him wherever the
hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a standing joke among
the hussar officers.

Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to
follow with the things, and--now slipping in the mud, now splashing
right through it--set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the
darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.

"Rostov, where are you?"

"Here. What lightning!" they called to one another.





CHAPTER XIII


In the tavern, before which stood the doctor's covered cart, there were
already some five officers. Mary Hendrikhovna, a plump little blonde
German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a broad bench
in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep behind her.
Rostov and Ilyin, on entering the room, were welcomed with merry shouts
and laughter.

"Dear me, how jolly we are!" said Rostov laughing.

"And why do you stand there gaping?"

"What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don't make our
drawing room so wet."

"Don't mess Mary Hendrikhovna's dress!" cried other voices.

Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they could change into
dry clothes without offending Mary Hendrikhovna's modesty. They were
going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but found it
completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards by the light
of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these officers would on no
account yield their position. Mary Hendrikhovna obliged them with the
loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and behind that screen
Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had brought their kits,
changed their wet things for dry ones.

A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was found,
fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small samovar was
produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and having asked Mary
Hendrikhovna to preside, they all crowded round her. One offered her a
clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands, another spread a jacket
under her little feet to keep them from the damp, another hung his coat
over the window to keep out the draft, and yet another waved the flies
off her husband's face, lest he should wake up.

"Leave him alone," said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling timidly and happily.
"He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night."

"Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna," replied the officer, "one must look after
the doctor. Perhaps he'll take pity on me someday, when it comes to
cutting off a leg or an arm for me."

There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one could
not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar held
only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter to
take turns in order of seniority to receive one's tumbler from Mary
Hendrikhovna's plump little hands with their short and not overclean
nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love with
her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition soon
left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the general
mood of courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself surrounded by
such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with satisfaction, try as
she might to hide it, and perturbed as she evidently was each time her
husband moved in his sleep behind her.

There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything
else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary
Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostov received
his tumbler, and adding some rum to it asked Mary Hendrikhovna to stir
it.

"But you take it without sugar?" she said, smiling all the time, as if
everything she said and everything the others said was very amusing and
had a double meaning.

"It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should stir
my tea."

Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which someone
meanwhile had pounced on.

"Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still nicer," said
Rostov.

"Too hot!" she replied, blushing with pleasure.

Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it to
Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.

"This is my cup," said he. "Only dip your finger in it and I'll drink it
all up."

When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a pack of cards and
proposed that they should play "Kings" with Mary Hendrikhovna. They drew
lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostov's suggestion it
was agreed that whoever became "King" should have the right to kiss Mary
Hendrikhovna's hand, and that the "Booby" should go to refill and reheat
the samovar for the doctor when the latter awoke.

"Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is 'King'?" asked Ilyin.

"As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!"

They had hardly begun to play before the doctor's disheveled head
suddenly appeared from behind Mary Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for
some time, listening to what was being said, and evidently found nothing
entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad and
depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched himself and asked
to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon as he
had left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter and Mary
Hendrikhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears and thereby became
still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard, the doctor
told his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and looked at him in
alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had ceased and they must go
to sleep in their covered cart, or everything in it would be stolen.

"But I'll send an orderly.... Two of them!" said Rostov. "What an idea,
doctor!"

"I'll stand guard on it myself!" said Ilyin.

"No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for two
nights," replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his wife,
waiting for the game to end.

Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers grew
still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from laughter, for
which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When he had gone, taking
his wife with him, and had settled down with her in their covered cart,
the officers lay down in the tavern, covering themselves with their
wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long time; now they exchanged
remarks, recalling the doctor's uneasiness and his wife's delight, now
they ran out into the porch and reported what was taking place in the
covered trap. Several times Rostov, covering his head, tried to go
to sleep, but some remark would arouse him and conversation would be
resumed, to the accompaniment of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.





CHAPTER XIV


It was nearly three o'clock but no one was yet asleep, when the
quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the little town
of Ostrovna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began hurriedly
getting ready and again boiled some muddy water in the samovar. But
Rostov went off to his squadron without waiting for tea. Day was
breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were dispersing. It felt
damp and cold, especially in clothes that were still moist. As they left
the tavern in the twilight of the dawn, Rostov and Ilyin both glanced
under the wet and glistening leather hood of the doctor's cart, from
under the apron of which his feet were sticking out, and in the middle
of which his wife's nightcap was visible and her sleepy breathing
audible.

"She really is a dear little thing," said Rostov to Ilyin, who was
following him.

"A charming woman!" said Ilyin, with all the gravity of a boy of
sixteen.

Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The command
was heard to "mount" and the soldiers crossed themselves and mounted.
Rostov riding in front gave the order "Forward!" and the hussars, with
clanking sabers and subdued talk, their horses' hoofs splashing in the
mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad road planted with birch
trees on each side, following the infantry and a battery that had gone
on in front.

Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding
before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly grass
which always grows by country roadsides became clearly visible, still
wet with the night's rain; the drooping branches of the birches, also
wet, swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of water to one
side. The soldiers' faces were more and more clearly visible. Rostov,
always closely followed by Ilyin, rode along the side of the road
between two rows of birch trees.

When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding not
a regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a sportsman,
he had lately procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome, Donets horse,
dun-colored, with light mane and tail, and when he rode it no one could
outgallop him. To ride this horse was a pleasure to him, and he thought
of the horse, of the morning, of the doctor's wife, but not once of the
impending danger.

Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt afraid; now he had
not the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had grown
used to being under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but because
he had learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He had grown
accustomed when going into action to think about anything but what would
seem most likely to interest him--the impending danger. During the
first period of his service, hard as he tried and much as he reproached
himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this, but with time
it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under the birch trees,
occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met his hand, sometimes
touching his horse's side with his foot, or, without turning round,
handing a pipe he had finished to an hussar riding behind him, with as
calm and careless an air as though he were merely out for a ride. He
glanced with pity at the excited face of Ilyin, who talked much and in
great agitation. He knew from experience the tormenting expectation of
terror and death the cornet was suffering and knew that only time could
help him.

As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the clouds,
the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the summer morning
after the storm; drops still continued to fall, but vertically now, and
all was still. The whole sun appeared on the horizon and disappeared
behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it. A few minutes later it
reappeared brighter still from behind the top of the cloud, tearing its
edge. Everything grew bright and glittered. And with that light, and as
if in reply to it, came the sound of guns ahead of them.

Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine the distance of
that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy's adjutant came galloping from
Vitebsk with orders to advance at a trot along the road.

The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery--which
had also quickened their pace--rode down a hill, and passing through an
empty and deserted village again ascended. The horses began to lather
and the men to flush.

"Halt! Dress your ranks!" the order of the regimental commander was
heard ahead. "Forward by the left. Walk, march!" came the order from in
front.

And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left flank of
our position, halted behind our Uhlans who were in the front line. To
the right stood our infantry in a dense column: they were the reserve.
Higher up the hill, on the very horizon, our guns were visible through
the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated by slanting morning
sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be seen the enemy's
columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in action, could be heard
briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in the dale.

At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov's spirits rose, as at the strains
of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots, now together,
now several quickly one after another. Again all was silent and then
again it sounded as if someone were walking on detonators and exploding
them.

The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A cannonade
began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the squadron,
halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode up the hill to
the guns.

After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the Uhlans.

"Form column! Prepare to charge!"

The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the cavalry
to pass. The Uhlans started, the streamers on their spears fluttering,
and trotted downhill toward the French cavalry which was seen below to
the left.

As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered up
the hill to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by the
Uhlans, bullets came from the front, whining and whistling, but fell
spent without taking effect.

The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more
pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov than the previous sounds
of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening out
before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the movement
of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French dragoons, something
confused happened there amid the smoke, and five minutes later our
Uhlans were galloping back, not to the place they had occupied but more
to the left, and among the orange-colored Uhlans on chestnut horses and
behind them, in a large group, blue French dragoons on gray horses could
be seen.





CHAPTER XV


Rostov, with his keen sportsman's eye, was one of the first to catch
sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our Uhlans. Nearer and
nearer in disorderly crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons
pursuing them. He could already see how these men, who looked so small
at the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving their
arms and their sabers in the air.

Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He felt
instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons now, the
latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be made it must
be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too late. He looked
around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing like himself with
eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.

"Andrew Sevastyanych!" said Rostov. "You know, we could crush them...."

"A fine thing too!" replied the captain, "and really..."

Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped to
the front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish giving the
word of command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling, was following
him. Rostov himself did not know how or why he did it. He acted as he
did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He saw the dragoons
near and that they were galloping in disorder; he knew they could not
withstand an attack--knew there was only that moment and that if he let
it slip it would not return. The bullets were whining and whistling so
stimulatingly around him and his horse was so eager to go that he could
not restrain himself. He touched his horse, gave the word of command,
and immediately, hearing behind him the tramp of the horses of his
deployed squadron, rode at full trot downhill toward the dragoons.
Hardly had they reached the bottom of the hill before their pace
instinctively changed to a gallop, which grew faster and faster as they
drew nearer to our Uhlans and the French dragoons who galloped after
them. The dragoons were now close at hand. On seeing the hussars, the
foremost began to turn, while those behind began to halt. With the same
feeling with which he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov
gave rein to his Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path of the
dragoons' disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot
flung himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless
horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were
galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed after
him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared it, and
almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that he would
immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That Frenchman, by his
uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching on his gray horse
and urging it on with his saber. In another moment Rostov's horse dashed
its breast against the hindquarters of the officer's horse, almost
knocking it over, and at the same instant Rostov, without knowing why,
raised his saber and struck the Frenchman with it.

The instant he had done this, all Rostov's animation vanished. The
officer fell, not so much from the blow--which had but slightly cut his
arm above the elbow--as from the shock to his horse and from fright.
Rostov reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see whom he
had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with one foot on
the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His eyes, screwed
up with fear as if he every moment expected another blow, gazed up at
Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale and mud-stained face--fair and
young, with a dimple in the chin and light-blue eyes--was not an enemy's
face at all suited to a battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face.
Before Rostov had decided what to do with him, the officer cried, "I
surrender!" He hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the
stirrup and did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostov's face.
Some hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the
saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was
wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his
horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round him;
a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In front, the
French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars galloped hastily
back with their prisoners. Rostov galloped back with the rest, aware of
an unpleasant feeling of depression in his heart. Something vague and
confused, which he could not at all account for, had come over him with
the capture of that officer and the blow he had dealt him.

Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars, sent for Rostov,
thanked him, and said he would report his gallant deed to the Emperor
and would recommend him for a St. George's Cross. When sent for by Count
Ostermann, Rostov, remembering that he had charged without orders,
felt sure his commander was sending for him to punish him for breach of
discipline. Ostermann's flattering words and promise of a reward should
therefore have struck him all the more pleasantly, but he still felt
that same vaguely disagreeable feeling of moral nausea. "But what
on earth is worrying me?" he asked himself as he rode back from the
general. "Ilyin? No, he's safe. Have I disgraced myself in any way? No,
that's not it." Something else, resembling remorse, tormented him. "Yes,
oh yes, that French officer with the dimple. And I remember how my arm
paused when I raised it."

Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to have
a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was sitting in
his foreign uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked anxiously about
him; The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called a wound. He
glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his hand in greeting.
Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as of shame.

All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that Rostov,
without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and preoccupied.
He drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept turning something
over in his mind.

Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his, which to
his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and even given him
a reputation for bravery, and there was something he could not at all
understand. "So others are even more afraid than I am!" he thought. "So
that's all there is in what is called heroism! And did I do it for my
country's sake? And how was he to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes?
And how frightened he was! He thought that I should kill him. Why should
I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me a St. George's
Cross.... I can't make it out at all."

But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could reach
no clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune in the
service, as often happens, turned in his favor. After the affair at
Ostrovna he was brought into notice, received command of an hussar
battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he was chosen.





CHAPTER XVI


On receiving news of Natasha's illness, the countess, though not quite
well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Petya and the rest of the
household, and the whole family moved from Marya Dmitrievna's house to
their own and settled down in town.

Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for
her parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness,
her conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the
background. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider
in how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat
or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them
feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how to help
her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in
French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great
variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple
idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease
Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be
known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always
has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to
medicine--not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and
so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the
innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple
thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard
that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their
lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best
years of their lives on that business. But, above all, that thought
was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were
really useful, as in fact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their
usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow substances for
the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they
were given in small doses), but they were useful, necessary, and
indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and
of those who loved her--and that is why there are, and always will be,
pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied
that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that
something should be done, which is felt by those who are suffering. They
satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form in a child, when it
wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A child knocks itself
and runs at once to the arms of its mother or nurse to have the aching
spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better when this is done. The child
cannot believe that the strongest and wisest of its people have no
remedy for its pain, and the hope of relief and the expression of its
mother's sympathy while she rubs the bump comforts it. The doctors were
of use to Natasha because they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her
that it would soon pass if only the coachman went to the chemist's in
the Arbat and got a powder and some pills in a pretty box for a ruble
and seventy kopeks, and if she took those powders in boiled water at
intervals of precisely two hours, neither more nor less.

What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how would they
have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been those pills
to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken cutlets, and all the
other details of life ordered by the doctors, the carrying out of which
supplied an occupation and consolation to the family circle? How would
the count have borne his dearly loved daughter's illness had he not
known that it was costing him a thousand rubles, and that he would not
grudge thousands more to benefit her, or had he not known that if her
illness continued he would not grudge yet other thousands and would take
her abroad for consultations there, and had he not been able to explain
the details of how Metivier and Feller had not understood the symptoms,
but Frise had, and Mudrov had diagnosed them even better? What would the
countess have done had she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid
for not strictly obeying the doctor's orders?

"You'll never get well like that," she would say, forgetting her grief
in her vexation, "if you won't obey the doctor and take your medicine at
the right time! You mustn't trifle with it, you know, or it may turn to
pneumonia," she would go on, deriving much comfort from the utterance of
that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as well as to herself.

What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she had
not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be ready to
carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, and that she
still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time when the
slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be administered?
Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so many sacrifices
were being made for her sake, and to know that she had to take medicine
at certain hours, though she declared that no medicine would cure her
and that it was all nonsense. And it was even pleasant to be able to
show, by disregarding the orders, that she did not believe in medical
treatment and did not value her life.

The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and
regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he had
gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followed him, he
assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said that though
there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this last medicine and
one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly mental, but... And
the countess, trying to conceal the action from herself and from him,
slipped a gold coin into his hand and always returned to the patient
with a more tranquil mind.

The symptoms of Natasha's illness were that she ate little, slept
little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that
she could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in the
stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move to the
country that summer of 1812.

In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders out
of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was fond of
such things made a large collection, and in spite of being deprived of
the country life to which she was accustomed, youth prevailed. Natasha's
grief began to be overlaid by the impressions of daily life, it ceased
to press so painfully on her heart, it gradually faded into the past,
and she began to recover physically.





CHAPTER XVII


Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all external
forms of pleasure--balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters--but she
never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She could not
sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by herself, tears
choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection of those pure
times which could never return, tears of vexation that she should so
uselessly have ruined her young life which might have been so happy.
Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a blasphemy,
in face of her sorrow. Without any need of self-restraint, no wish to
coquet ever entered her head. She said and felt at that time that no
man was more to her than Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood
sentinel within her and forbade her every joy. Besides, she had lost all
the old interests of her carefree girlish life that had been so full
of hope. The previous autumn, the hunting, "Uncle," and the Christmas
holidays spent with Nicholas at Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest
and most painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a
single day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at
the time had not deceived her--that that state of freedom and readiness
for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live
on.

It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had formerly
imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world. But
this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself, "What next?"
But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was
passing. Natasha apparently tried not to be a burden or a hindrance to
anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She kept away from everyone in
the house and felt at ease only with her brother Petya. She liked to
be with him better than with the others, and when alone with him she
sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left the house and of those who came
to see them was glad to see only one person, Pierre. It would have been
impossible to treat her with more delicacy, greater care, and at the
same time more seriously than did Count Bezukhov. Natasha unconsciously
felt this delicacy and so found great pleasure in his society. But
she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part
seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind
to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natasha
noticed embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,
especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared that
something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her. She
noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and shyness,
which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was to her.
After those involuntary words--that if he were free he would have asked
on his knees for her hand and her love--uttered at a moment when she was
so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natasha of his feelings;
and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had then so comforted
her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words are spoken to comfort
a crying child. It was not because Pierre was a married man, but because
Natasha felt very strongly with him that moral barrier the absence of
which she had experienced with Kuragin that it never entered her head
that the relations between him and herself could lead to love on her
part, still less on his, or even to the kind of tender, self-conscious,
romantic friendship between a man and a woman of which she had known
several instances.

Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna Belova, a
country neighbor of the Rostovs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions at
the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natasha should fast
and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha gladly welcomed the idea.
Despite the doctor's orders that she should not go out early in the
morning, Natasha insisted on fasting and preparing for the sacrament,
not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostov family by attending
three services in their own house, but as Agrafena Ivanovna did, by
going to church every day for a week and not once missing Vespers,
Matins, or Mass.

The countess was pleased with Natasha's zeal; after the poor results of
the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that prayer
might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not without
fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to Natasha's wish and
entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna used to come to wake Natasha
at three in the morning, but generally found her already awake. She was
afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily washing, and meekly putting on
her shabbiest dress and an old mantilla, Natasha, shivering in the fresh
air, went out into the deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn.
By Agrafena Ivanovna's advice Natasha prepared herself not in their
own parish, but at a church where, according to the devout Agrafena
Ivanovna, the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were
never many people in the church; Natasha always stood beside Belova in
the customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the
screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her, of
humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her when
at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the Virgin
illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning light
falling from the window, she listened to the words of the service which
she tried to follow with understanding. When she understood them her
personal feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of its
own. When she did not understand, it was sweeter still to think that
the wish to understand everything is pride, that it is impossible to
understand all, that it is only necessary to believe and to commit
oneself to God, whom she felt guiding her soul at those moments. She
crossed herself, bowed low, and when she did not understand, in horror
at her own vileness, simply asked God to forgive her everything,
everything, to have mercy upon her. The prayers to which she surrendered
herself most of all were those of repentance. On her way home at an
early hour when she met no one but bricklayers going to work or men
sweeping the street, and everybody within the houses was still asleep,
Natasha experienced a feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility
of correcting her faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of
happiness.

During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every
day. And the happiness of taking communion, or "communing" as Agrafena
Ivanovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natasha
so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.

But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when, dressed in
white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the first time for
many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the thought of the life
that lay before her.

The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue the
powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.

"She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening," said
he, evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. "Only, please be
particular about it.

"Be quite easy," he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the gold
coin in his palm. "She will soon be singing and frolicking about. The
last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has freshened
up very much."

The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at her
nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing room.





CHAPTER XVIII


At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the war
began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the Emperor to
the people, and of his coming himself from the army to Moscow. And as
up to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had been received,
exaggerated reports became current about them and about the position of
Russia. It was said that the Emperor was leaving the army because it was
in danger, it was said that Smolensk had surrendered, that Napoleon had
an army of a million and only a miracle could save Russia.

On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was received
but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the Rostovs', promised
to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a copy of the manifesto
and appeal, which he would obtain from Count Rostopchin.

That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis' private chapel
as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o'clock, when the Rostovs
got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of
hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the crowd, the dusty leaves
of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of the band and the white
trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the rattling of wheels on
the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot sunshine were all full of that
summer languor, that content and discontent with the present, which
is most strongly felt on a bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow
notabilities, all the Rostovs' acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis'
chapel, for, as if expecting something to happen, many wealthy families
who usually left town for their country estates had not gone away that
summer. As Natasha, at her mother's side, passed through the crowd
behind a liveried footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a
young man speaking about her in too loud a whisper.

"That's Rostova, the one who..."

"She's much thinner, but all the same she's pretty!"

She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonski. But
she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that everyone
who looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to her. With a
sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she found herself
in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace
walked--as women can walk--with the more repose and stateliness the
greater the pain and shame in her soul. She knew for certain that she
was pretty, but this no longer gave her satisfaction as it used to.
On the contrary it tormented her more than anything else of late, and
particularly so on this bright, hot summer day in town. "It's Sunday
again--another week past," she thought, recalling that she had been here
the Sunday before, "and always the same life that is no life, and the
same surroundings in which it used to be so easy to live. I'm pretty,
I'm young, and I know that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I
know I am good," she thought, "but yet my best years are slipping by
and are no good to anyone." She stood by her mother's side and exchanged
nods with acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies'
dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not
crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she thought
with vexation that she was herself being judged and was judging others,
and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt horrified at her own
vileness, horrified that the former purity of her soul was again lost to
her.

A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that
mild solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the
souls of the worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were closed,
the curtain was slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft mysterious voice
pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which she herself did not
understand, made Natasha's breast heave, and a joyous but oppressive
feeling agitated her.

"Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good
forever, forever!" she pleaded.

The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen and,
holding his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his dalmatic
and, making the sign of the cross on his breast, began in a loud and
solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer...

"In peace let us pray unto the Lord."

"As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity, united
by brotherly love--let us pray!" thought Natasha.

"For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our souls."

"For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us," prayed
Natasha.

When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and
Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she
remembered Prince Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her
all the wrongs she had done him. When they prayed for those who love us,
she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and mother and
Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had acted toward
them, and feeling all the strength of her love for them. When they
prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of her enemies and
people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She included among her
enemies the creditors and all who had business dealings with her
father, and always at the thought of enemies and those who hated her she
remembered Anatole who had done her so much harm--and though he did not
hate her she gladly prayed for him as for an enemy. Only at prayer did
she feel able to think clearly and calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole,
as men for whom her feelings were as nothing compared with her awe and
devotion to God. When they prayed for the Imperial family and the Synod,
she bowed very low and made the sign of the cross, saying to herself
that even if she did not understand, still she could not doubt, and at
any rate loved the governing Synod and prayed for it.

When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over his
breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to Christ
the Lord!"

"Commit ourselves to God," Natasha inwardly repeated. "Lord God, I
submit myself to Thy will!" she thought. "I want nothing, wish for
nothing; teach me what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take
me!" prayed Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing
herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if expecting some
invisible power at any moment to take her and deliver her from herself,
from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.

The countess looked round several times at her daughter's softened face
and shining eyes and prayed God to help her.

Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual order
Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool, the one he
knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it before the doors
of the sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his purple velvet
biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down with an effort.
Everybody followed his example and they looked at one another in
surprise. Then came the prayer just received from the Synod--a prayer
for the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.

"Lord God of might, God of our salvation!" began the priest in that
voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the Slav clergy
read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.

"Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and
blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and
have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay
waste the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are gathered
together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear Jerusalem, Thy
beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow Thine altars, and to
desecrate our holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how long shall the wicked
triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful power?

"Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might
our most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich; be
mindful of his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to his
righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless his
counsels, his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom by
Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy, even as Thou
gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and David over
Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the hands of those who
have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins with strength
for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to help us;
confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against us, may
they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust before the
wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and put them to flight; may
they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the plots they have laid
in secret be turned against them; let them fall before Thy servants'
feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art able to save both
great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot prevail against Thee!

"God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and loving-kindness
which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us, but be gracious to our
unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy many mercies regard not
our transgressions and iniquities! Create in us a clean heart and renew
a right spirit within us, strengthen us all in Thy faith, fortify our
hope, inspire us with true love one for another, arm us with unity of
spirit in the righteous defense of the heritage Thou gavest to us and
to our fathers, and let not the scepter of the wicked be exalted against
the destiny of those Thou hast sanctified.

"O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust, let us
not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token of Thy
blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see it and
be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know that Thou art
the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this day, O Lord,
and grant us Thy salvation; make the hearts of Thy servants to rejoice
in Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy them swiftly beneath
the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou art the defense, the succor,
and the victory of them that put their trust in Thee, and to Thee be all
glory, to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, now and forever, world without
end. Amen."

In Natasha's receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her
strongly. She listened to every word about the victory of Moses over
Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about
the destruction of "Thy Jerusalem," and she prayed to God with the
tenderness and emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but without
fully understanding what she was asking of God in that prayer. She
shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of righteousness,
for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope, and its animation
by love. But she could not pray that her enemies might be trampled under
foot when but a few minutes before she had been wishing she had more
of them that she might pray for them. But neither could she doubt the
righteousness of the prayer that was being read on bended knees. She
felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe at the thought of the
punishment that overtakes men for their sins, and especially of her own
sins, and she prayed to God to forgive them all, and her too, and to
give them all, and her too, peace and happiness. And it seemed to her
that God heard her prayer.





CHAPTER XIX


From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with Natasha's
grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that seemed to
be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own
horizon--from that day the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all
earthly things, that had incessantly tormented him, no longer presented
itself. That terrible question "Why?" "Wherefore?" which had come to him
amid every occupation, was now replaced, not by another question or by a
reply to the former question, but by her image. When he listened to, or
himself took part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of
human baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did
not ask himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so
transient and incomprehensible--but he remembered her as he had last
seen her, and all his doubts vanished--not because she had answered
the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of her
transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of spiritual
activity in which no one could be justified or guilty--a realm of
beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever worldly baseness
presented itself to him, he said to himself:

"Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the Tsar, and the
country and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter? She
smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her, and
no one will ever know it." And his soul felt calm and peaceful.

Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same idle
and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the Rostovs'
there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the habits and
acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that bore him along
irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more disquieting reports came
from the seat of war and Natasha's health began to improve and she
no longer aroused in him the former feeling of careful pity, an
ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not explain, took
possession of him. He felt that the condition he was in could not
continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which would change his
whole life, and he impatiently sought everywhere for signs of that
approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons had revealed to
Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon, drawn from the
Revelation of St. John.

In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:


Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of
the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred
threescore and six.

And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:


And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and
blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two
months.


The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as the
Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the others
tens, will have the following significance:

      a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   k
      1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10
       l    m    n    o    p    q    r    s
      20   30   40   50   60   70   80   90
             t    u    v    w    x    y
            100  110  120  130  140  150
                        z
                       160


Writing the words L'Empereur Napoleon in numbers, it appears that the
sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon was therefore the beast foretold
in the Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the words
quarante-deux, * which was the term allowed to the beast that "spoke
great things and blasphemies," the same number 666 was obtained; from
which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon's power had come
in the year 1812 when the French emperor was forty-two. This prophecy
pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what would put an
end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon, and tried by the
same system of using letters as numbers and adding them up, to find an
answer to the question that engrossed him. He wrote the words L'Empereur
Alexandre, La nation russe and added up their numbers, but the sums
were either more or less than 666. Once when making such calculations he
wrote down his own name in French, Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the
sum of the numbers did not come right. Then he changed the spelling,
substituting a z for the s and adding de and the article le, still
without obtaining the desired result. Then it occurred to him: if the
answer to the question were contained in his name, his nationality would
also be given in the answer. So he wrote Le russe Besuhof and adding
up the numbers got 671. This was only five too much, and five was
represented by e, the very letter elided from the article le before the
word Empereur. By omitting the e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the
answer he sought. L'russe Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him.
How, or by what means, he was connected with the great event foretold in
the Apocalypse he did not know, but he did not doubt that connection for
a moment. His love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the
comet, 666, L'Empereur Napoleon, and L'russe Besuhof--all this had to
mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound, petty sphere
of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held captive and lead him to a
great achievement and great happiness.


    * Forty-two.


On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre had
promised the Rostovs to bring them, from Count Rostopchin whom he knew
well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the army. In the
morning, when he went to call at Rostopchin's he met there a courier
fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who often danced at
Moscow balls.

"Do, please, for heaven's sake, relieve me of something!" said the
courier. "I have a sackful of letters to parents."

Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his father. Pierre
took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him the Emperor's appeal to
Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders, and his own
most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders, Pierre found in
one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and rewarded, the name of
Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George's Cross of the Fourth Class for
courage shown in the Ostrovna affair, and in the same order the name
of Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the command of a regiment of
Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind the Rostovs of Bolkonski,
Pierre could not refrain from making them happy by the news of their
son's having received a decoration, so he sent that printed army order
and Nicholas' letter to the Rostovs, keeping the appeal, the bulletin,
and the other orders to take with him when he went to dinner.

His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter's tone of anxious
hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how badly
things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of spies in
Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that Napoleon promised
to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn, and the talk of the
Emperor's being expected to arrive next day--all aroused with fresh
force that feeling of agitation and expectation in Pierre which he had
been conscious of ever since the appearance of the comet, and especially
since the beginning of the war.

He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done so
had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society of
Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached perpetual
peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact that when he
saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform and were talking
patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step. But the chief
reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the army lay in the
vague idea that he was L'russe Besuhof who had the number of the beast,
666; that his part in the great affair of setting a limit to the
power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous things had been
predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought not to undertake
anything, but wait for what was bound to come to pass.





CHAPTER XX


A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that day, as usual
on Sundays.

Pierre came early so as to find them alone.

He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had he
not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried his
bulk with evident ease.

He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman did
not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his master was
at the Rostovs' he stayed till midnight. The Rostovs' footman rushed
eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take his hat and
stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and stick in the
anteroom.

The first person he saw in the house was Natasha. Even before he saw
her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing solfa
exercises in the music room. He knew that she had not sung since her
illness, and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted him. He
opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had worn at
church, walking about the room singing. She had her back to him when he
opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his broad, surprised
face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him.

"I want to try to sing again," she said, adding as if by way of excuse,
"it is, at least, something to do."

"That's capital!"

"How glad I am you've come! I am so happy today," she said, with the old
animation Pierre had not seen in her for along time. "You know Nicholas
has received a St. George's Cross? I am so proud of him."

"Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don't want to interrupt you,"
he added, and was about to go to the drawing room.

Natasha stopped him.

"Count, is it wrong of me to sing?" she said blushing, and fixing her
eyes inquiringly on him.

"No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?"

"I don't know myself," Natasha answered quickly, "but I should not like
to do anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely. You
don't know how important you are to me, how much you've done for me...."
She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her words. "I
saw in that same army order that he, Bolkonski" (she whispered the name
hastily), "is in Russia, and in the army again. What do you think?"--she
was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid her strength might fail
her--"Will he ever forgive me? Will he not always have a bitter feeling
toward me? What do you think? What do you think?"

"I think..." Pierre replied, "that he has nothing to forgive.... If I
were in his place..."

By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the day
when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not himself but
the best man in the world and free, he would ask on his knees for her
hand; and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love took possession
of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she did not give him
time to say them.

"Yes, you... you..." she said, uttering the word you
rapturously--"that's a different thing. I know no one kinder, more
generous, or better than you; nobody could be! Had you not been
there then, and now too, I don't know what would have become of me,
because..."

Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music
before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and
down the room.

Just then Petya came running in from the drawing room.

Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips and
resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter the university, but he and
his friend Obolenski had lately, in secret, agreed to join the hussars.

Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this affair.
He had asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted in the
hussars.

Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what Petya
was saying.

Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.

"Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for heaven's sake! You are my
only hope," said Petya.

"Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I'll mention it, I'll bring it
all up today."

"Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?" asked the old count. "The
countess has been to Mass at the Razumovskis' and heard the new prayer.
She says it's very fine."

"Yes, I've got it," said Pierre. "The Emperor is to be here tomorrow...
there's to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility, and they are
talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me congratulate
you!"

"Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?"

"We are again retreating. They say we're already near Smolensk," replied
Pierre.

"O Lord, O Lord!" exclaimed the count. "Where is the manifesto?"

"The Emperor's appeal? Oh yes!"

Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not find
them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the countess
who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently expecting
Natasha, who had left off singing but had not yet come into the drawing
room.

"On my word, I don't know what I've done with it," he said.

"There he is, always losing everything!" remarked the countess.

Natasha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face and
sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered, Pierre's
features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and while still
searching for the papers he glanced at her several times.

"No, really! I'll drive home, I must have left them there. I'll
certainly..."

"But you'll be late for dinner."

"Oh! And my coachman has gone."

But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom, had
found them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully tucked them under the
lining. Pierre was about to begin reading.

"No, after dinner," said the old count, evidently expecting much
enjoyment from that reading.

At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new
chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the town news, of the
illness of the old Georgian princess, of Metivier's disappearance from
Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin
and accused of being a French "spyer" (so Count Rostopchin had told the
story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured the people that he was
"not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin."

"People are being arrested..." said the count. "I've told the countess
she should not speak French so much. It's not the time for it now."

"And have you heard?" Shinshin asked. "Prince Golitsyn has engaged a
master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak French in
the streets."

"And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call up the militia,
you too will have to mount a horse," remarked the old count, addressing
Pierre.

Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming not
to grasp what was said. He looked at the count.

"Oh yes, the war," he said. "No! What sort of warrior should I make? And
yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can't make it out. I don't
know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these times no
one can answer for himself."

After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy chair and
with a serious face asked Sonya, who was considered an excellent reader,
to read the appeal.


"To Moscow, our ancient Capital!

"The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He
comes to despoil our beloved country."


Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count listened
with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.

Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father and
now at Pierre.

Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess
shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn expression
in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that the danger
threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshin, with a sarcastic
smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that
gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any remark of the count's, or
even the manifesto itself should no better pretext present itself.

After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes the
Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious nobility,
Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the attention that was
being paid to her, read the last words:


"We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that Capital
and in other parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction
of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path and those
freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the ruin he
hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may Europe delivered
from bondage glorify the name of Russia!"


"Yes, that's it!" cried the count, opening his moist eyes and sniffing
repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his nose; and he
added, "Let the Emperor but say the word and we'll sacrifice everything
and begrudge nothing."

Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the
count's patriotism, Natasha jumped up from her place and ran to her
father.

"What a darling our Papa is!" she cried, kissing him, and she again
looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned to her
with her better spirits.

"There! Here's a patriot for you!" said Shinshin.

"Not a patriot at all, but simply..." Natasha replied in an injured
tone. "Everything seems funny to you, but this isn't at all a joke...."

"A joke indeed!" put in the count. "Let him but say the word and we'll
all go.... We're not Germans!"

"But did you notice, it says, 'for consultation'?" said Pierre.

"Never mind what it's for...."

At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came up
to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking voice
that was now deep and now shrill:

"Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it's as you please,
but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army, because I
can't... that's all...."

The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and
turned angrily to her husband.

"That comes of your talking!" said she.

But the count had already recovered from his excitement.

"Come, come!" said he. "Here's a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You must
study."

"It's not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger than I, and he's
going too. Besides, all the same I can't study now when..." Petya
stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words,
"when our Fatherland is in danger."

"That'll do, that'll do--nonsense...."

"But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything."

"Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!" cried the count, with a glance at his
wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.

"And I tell you--Peter Kirilych here will also tell you..."

"Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother's milk has hardly dried on your lips
and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you," and the
count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably to reread
them in his study before having a nap.

"Well, Peter Kirilych, let's go and have a smoke," he said.

Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha's unwontedly brilliant eyes,
continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had reduced
him to this condition.

"No, I think I'll go home."

"Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don't
often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine," said the count
good-naturedly, pointing to Natasha, "only brightens up when you're
here."

"Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business..." said
Pierre hurriedly.

"Well, then, au revoir!" said the count, and went out of the room.

"Why are you going? Why are you upset?" asked Natasha, and she looked
challengingly into Pierre's eyes.

"Because I love you!" was what he wanted to say, but he did not say it,
and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.

"Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No, simply
I have business...."

"Why? No, tell me!" Natasha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.

They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He tried
to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he silently
kissed her hand and went out.

Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs' any more.





CHAPTER XXI


After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went to his room
and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea,
silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to
notice anything.

Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the Rostovs'
domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him. That
morning Petya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and
collar to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking glass,
gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without saying a word
to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back door, trying to
avoid notice. Petya decided to go straight to where the Emperor was and
to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting (he imagined the Emperor
to be always surrounded by gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostov,
in spite of his youth wished to serve his country; that youth could be
no hindrance to loyalty, and that he was ready to... While
dressing, Petya had prepared many fine things he meant to say to the
gentleman-in-waiting.

It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya counted for success
in reaching the Emperor--he even thought how surprised everyone would be
at his youthfulness--and yet in the arrangement of his collar and hair
and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to appear a grown-up man.
But the farther he went and the more his attention was diverted by the
ever-increasing crowds moving toward the Kremlin, the less he remembered
to walk with the sedateness and deliberation of a man. As he approached
the Kremlin he even began to avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck
out his elbows in a menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he
was so pressed to the wall by people who probably were unaware of the
patriotic intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his
determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in,
rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a
footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing some
time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front of the others
without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began resolutely
working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in front of him, who
was the first against whom he directed his efforts, angrily shouted at
him:

"What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don't you see we're all
standing still? Then why push?"

"Anybody can shove," said the footman, and also began working his elbows
to such effect that he pushed Petya into a very filthy corner of the
gateway.

Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the damp
collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a man's.

He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if he were
now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he would not be
admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten oneself up
or move to another place, because of the crowd. One of the generals who
drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostovs', and Petya thought of
asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that would not be a
manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed in, the crowd,
carrying Petya with it, streamed forward into the Kremlin Square which
was already full of people. There were people not only in the square,
but everywhere--on the slopes and on the roofs. As soon as Petya found
himself in the square he clearly heard the sound of bells and the joyous
voices of the crowd that filled the whole Kremlin.

For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were bared,
and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Petya was being pressed so
that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted, "Hurrah! hurrah!
hurrah!" Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and pinched, but could see
nothing except the people about him.

All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm. A
tradesman's wife standing beside Petya sobbed, and the tears ran down
her cheeks.

"Father! Angel! Dear one!" she kept repeating, wiping away her tears
with her fingers.

"Hurrah!" was heard on all sides.

For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush
forward.

Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and rolling his eyes
ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting "hurrah!" as
if he were prepared that instant to kill himself and everyone else, but
on both sides of him other people with similarly ferocious faces pushed
forward and everybody shouted "hurrah!"

"So this is what the Emperor is!" thought Petya. "No, I can't petition
him myself--that would be too bold." But in spite of this he continued
to struggle desperately forward, and from between the backs of those
in front he caught glimpses of an open space with a strip of red cloth
spread out on it; but just then the crowd swayed back--the police
in front were pushing back those who had pressed too close to the
procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace to the Cathedral of
the Assumption--and Petya unexpectedly received such a blow on his side
and ribs and was squeezed so hard that suddenly everything grew dim
before his eyes and he lost consciousness. When he came to himself, a
man of clerical appearance with a tuft of gray hair at the back of his
head and wearing a shabby blue cassock--probably a church clerk and
chanter--was holding him under the arm with one hand while warding off
the pressure of the crowd with the other.

"You've crushed the young gentleman!" said the clerk. "What are you up
to? Gently!... They've crushed him, crushed him!"

The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd spread
out again more evenly, and the clerk led Petya--pale and breathless--to
the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Petya, and suddenly a
crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those who stood nearest
him attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him on the raised
platform of the cannon, and reproached those others (whoever they might
be) who had crushed him.

"One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it? Killing
people! Poor dear, he's as white as a sheet!"--various voices were heard
saying.

Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain had
passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had obtained
a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the Emperor who
would be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of presenting his
petition. If he could only see the Emperor he would be happy!

While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption--it
was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor's
arrival and of thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the
Turks--the crowd outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling kvas,
gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was particularly
fond), and ordinary conversation could again be heard. A tradesman's
wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how much the shawl had
cost; another was saying that all silk goods had now got dear. The clerk
who had rescued Petya was talking to a functionary about the priests who
were officiating that day with the bishop. The clerk several times used
the word "plenary" (of the service), a word Petya did not understand.
Two young citizens were joking with some serf girls who were cracking
nuts. All these conversations, especially the joking with the girls,
were such as might have had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but
they did not interest him now. He sat on his elevation--the pedestal of
the cannon--still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and
by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced
when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still further
intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.

Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the embankment,
to celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and the crowd rushed
impetuously toward the embankment to watch the firing. Petya too would
have run there, but the clerk who had taken the young gentleman under
his protection stopped him. The firing was still proceeding when
officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting came running out of the
cathedral, and after them others in a more leisurely manner: caps were
again raised, and those who had run to look at the cannon ran back
again. At last four men in uniforms and sashes emerged from the
cathedral doors. "Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the crowd again.

"Which is he? Which?" asked Petya in a tearful voice, of those around
him, but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and Petya,
fixing on one of those four men, whom he could not clearly see for the
tears of joy that filled his eyes, concentrated all his enthusiasm
on him--though it happened not to be the Emperor--frantically shouted
"Hurrah!" and resolved that tomorrow, come what might, he would join the
army.

The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and began
to disperse. It was already late, and Petya had not eaten anything and
was drenched with perspiration, yet he did not go home but stood with
that diminishing, but still considerable, crowd before the palace while
the Emperor dined--looking in at the palace windows, expecting he knew
not what, and envying alike the notables he saw arriving at the entrance
to dine with the Emperor and the court footmen who served at table,
glimpses of whom could be seen through the windows.

While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of the window, said:

"The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again."

The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit, rose
and went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya among them, rushed
toward the balcony.

"Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!..." cried the crowd, and Petya with
it, and again the women and men of weaker mold, Petya among them, wept
with joy.

A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand broke
off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A coachman in
a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched it up. Several
people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this the Emperor had
a plateful of biscuits brought him and began throwing them down from
the balcony. Petya's eyes grew bloodshot, and still more excited by the
danger of being crushed, he rushed at the biscuits. He did not know why,
but he had to have a biscuit from the Tsar's hand and he felt that he
must not give way. He sprang forward and upset an old woman who was
catching at a biscuit; the old woman did not consider herself defeated
though she was lying on the ground--she grabbed at some biscuits but
her hand did not reach them. Petya pushed her hand away with his knee,
seized a biscuit, and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted
"Hurrah!" with a voice already hoarse.

The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd began
to disperse.

"There! I said if only we waited--and so it was!" was being joyfully
said by various people.

Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that all
the enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home from
the Kremlin, but called on his friend Obolenski, who was fifteen and was
also entering the regiment. On returning home Petya announced resolutely
and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter the service he would
run away. And next day, Count Ilya Rostov--though he had not yet quite
yielded--went to inquire how he could arrange for Petya to serve where
there would be least danger.





CHAPTER XXII


Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of carriages
were standing outside the Sloboda Palace.

The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry in
their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted coats
of blue cloth and wearing medals. In the noblemen's hall there was
an incessant movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat on
high-backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of the Emperor,
but most of the gentry were strolling about the room.

All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the Club or in their own
houses, were in uniform--some in that of Catherine's day, others in that
of Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of Alexander's time or
the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the general characteristic
of being in uniform imparted something strange and fantastic to these
diverse and familiar personalities, both old and young. The old men,
dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow, and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled,
were especially striking. For the most part they sat quietly in their
places and were silent, or, if they walked about and talked, attached
themselves to someone younger. On all these faces, as on the faces
of the crowd Petya had seen in the Square, there was a striking
contradiction: the general expectation of a solemn event, and at the
same time the everyday interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook,
Zinaida Dmitrievna's health, and so on.

Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a nobleman's
uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated;
this extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the
merchant-class--les etats generaux (States-General)--evoked in him
a whole series of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply
graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat social and the French
Revolution. The words that had struck him in the Emperor's appeal--that
the sovereign was coming to the capital for consultation with his
people--strengthened this idea. And imagining that in this direction
something important which he had long awaited was drawing near, he
strolled about watching and listening to conversations, but nowhere
finding any confirmation of the ideas that occupied him.

The Emperor's manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all moved
about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of conversation, Pierre
heard questions of where the marshals of the nobility were to stand when
the Emperor entered, when a ball should be given in the Emperor's
honor, whether they should group themselves by districts or by whole
provinces... and so on; but as soon as the war was touched on, or
what the nobility had been convened for, the talk became undecided and
indefinite. Then all preferred listening to speaking.

A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a retired
naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small crowd was
pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had formed round
the speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a military uniform of
Catherine's time, was sauntering with a pleasant smile among the crowd,
with all of whom he was acquainted. He too approached that group and
listened with a kindly smile and nods of approval, as he always did,
to what the speaker was saying. The retired naval man was speaking very
boldly, as was evident from the expression on the faces of the listeners
and from the fact that some people Pierre knew as the meekest and
quietest of men walked away disapprovingly or expressed disagreement
with him. Pierre pushed his way into the middle of the group, listened,
and convinced himself that the man was indeed a liberal, but of views
quite different from his own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly
sonorous, musical, and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly
swallowing his r's and generally slurring his consonants: the voice of
a man calling out to his servant, "Heah! Bwing me my pipe!" It was
indicative of dissipation and the exercise of authority.

"What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise militia for the
Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our patte'n? If the noble awistocwacy
of the pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its loyalty to our
sov'weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we fo'gotten the waising of
the militia in the yeah 'seven? All that did was to enwich the pwiests'
sons and thieves and wobbahs...."

Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded approval.

"And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only wuined
our farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o' ou' men will wetu'n
neithah soldiers no' peasants, and we'll get only depwavity fwom them.
The nobility don't gwudge theah lives--evewy one of us will go and bwing
in more wecwuits, and the sov'weign" (that was the way he referred to
the Emperor) "need only say the word and we'll all die fo' him!" added
the orator with animation.

Count Rostov's mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but
Pierre wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred,
but not yet sure what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had he
opened his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in his
head, with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the first
speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to managing debates and
to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct tones:

"I imagine, sir," said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth, "that we
have been summoned here not to discuss whether it's best for the empire
at the present moment to adopt conscription or to call out the militia.
We have been summoned to reply to the appeal with which our sovereign
the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what is best--conscription or
the militia--we can leave to the supreme authority...."

Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his heart
against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow attitude
into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and
interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would say, but he
began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French or expressing
himself in bookish Russian.

"Excuse me, your excellency," he began. (He was well acquainted with
the senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address him
formally.) "Though I don't agree with the gentleman..." (he hesitated:
he wished to say, "Mon tres honorable preopinant"--"My very honorable
opponent") "with the gentleman... whom I have not the honor of knowing,
I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not merely to express
their sympathy and enthusiasm but also to consider the means by which
we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine," he went on, warming to his
subject, "that the Emperor himself would not be satisfied to find in us
merely owners of serfs whom we are willing to devote to his service,
and chair a canon * we are ready to make of ourselves--and not to obtain
from us any co-co-counsel."


    * "Food for cannon."


Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator's sarcastic
smile and the freedom of Pierre's remarks. Only Count Rostov was pleased
with them as he had been pleased with those of the naval officer, the
senator, and in general with whatever speech he had last heard.

"I think that before discussing these questions," Pierre continued, "we
should ask the Emperor--most respectfully ask His Majesty--to let us
know the number of our troops and the position in which our army and our
forces now are, and then..."

But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked from
three sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old acquaintance,
a boston player who had always been well disposed toward him, Stepan
Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and whether as a result
of the uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw before him quite a
different man. With a sudden expression of malevolence on his aged face,
Adraksin shouted at Pierre:

"In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the Emperor
about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that right, the
Emperor could not answer such a question. The troops are moved
according to the enemy's movements and the number of men increases and
decreases..."

Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty years
of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies' and knew as a bad
cardplayer, and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to Pierre,
interrupted Adraksin.

"Yes, and this is not a time for discussing," he continued, "but for
acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy
Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our wives
and children." The nobleman smote his breast. "We will all arise, every
one of us will go, for our father the Tsar!" he shouted, rolling his
bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were heard in the crowd. "We
are Russians and will not grudge our blood in defense of our faith, the
throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease raving if we are sons of
our Fatherland! We will show Europe how Russia rises to the defense of
Russia!"

Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that his
words, apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible than the
sound of his opponent's voice.

Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing approval; several
persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end of a
phrase, said:

"That's right, quite right! Just so!"

Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his
serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in
order to be able to improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many voices
shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostov had not time
to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased, dispersed,
re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the largest hall and
to the big table. Not only was Pierre's attempt to speak unsuccessful,
but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and people turned away
from him as from a common enemy. This happened not because they were
displeased by the substance of his speech, which had even been forgotten
after the many subsequent speeches, but to animate it the crowd needed a
tangible object to love and a tangible object to hate. Pierre became the
latter. Many other orators spoke after the excited nobleman, and all in
the same tone. Many spoke eloquently and with originality.

Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized (cries
of "author! author!" were heard in the crowd), said that "hell must be
repulsed by hell," and that he had seen a child smiling at lightning
flashes and thunderclaps, but "we will not be that child."

"Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!" was repeated approvingly in the back rows
of the crowd.

The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or bald
seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of whom
Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or playing
boston at the clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd advanced
to the table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of the
chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes two together.
Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to say and hastened
to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked their brains to find
some thought and hastened to utter it. The old magnates, whom Pierre
knew, sat and turned to look first at one and then at another, and their
faces for the most part only expressed the fact that they found it very
hot. Pierre, however, felt excited, and the general desire to show that
they were ready to go to all lengths--which found expression in the
tones and looks more than in the substance of the speeches--infected him
too. He did not renounce his opinions, but felt himself in some way to
blame and wished to justify himself.

"I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices
when we know what is needed!" said he, trying to be heard above the
other voices.

One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his attention was
immediately diverted by an exclamation at the other side of the table.

"Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!" shouted
one man.

"He is the enemy of mankind!" cried another. "Allow me to speak...."
"Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..."





CHAPTER XXIII


At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding chin and alert eyes,
wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder, entered
the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of gentry.

"Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment," said Rostopchin.
"I am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are in, I think
there is little need for discussion. The Emperor has deigned to summon
us and the merchants. Millions will pour forth from there"--he pointed
to the merchants' hall--"but our business is to supply men and not spare
ourselves... That is the least we can do!"

A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the table.
The whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all the preceding
noise the sound of their old voices saying one after another, "I
agree," or for variety, "I too am of that opinion," and so on had even a
mournful effect.

The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow
nobility and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully equipped,
out of every thousand serfs, as the Smolensk gentry had done. Their
chairs made a scraping noise as the gentlemen who had conferred rose
with apparent relief, and began walking up and down, arm in arm, to
stretch their legs and converse in couples.

"The Emperor! The Emperor!" a sudden cry resounded through the halls and
the whole throng hurried to the entrance.

The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two lines of
nobles. Every face expressed respectful, awe-struck curiosity. Pierre
stood rather far off and could not hear all that the Emperor said. From
what he did hear he understood that the Emperor spoke of the danger
threatening the empire and of the hopes he placed on the Moscow
nobility. He was answered by a voice which informed him of the
resolution just arrived at.

"Gentlemen!" said the Emperor with a quivering voice.

There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so that
Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly human voice of the Emperor saying
with emotion:

"I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but today it has
surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the name of the Fatherland!
Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most precious..."

The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing round him, and
rapturous exclamations were heard from all sides.

"Yes, most precious... a royal word," said Count Rostov, with a sob. He
stood at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything, understood
everything in his own way.

From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the merchants.
There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those who saw him
come out from the merchants' hall with tears of emotion in his eyes.
As became known later, he had scarcely begun to address the merchants
before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded in a trembling
voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he was coming out accompanied by two
merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat otkupshchik. The other was
the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face and narrow beard. Both were
weeping. Tears filled the thin man's eyes, and the fat otkupshchik
sobbed outright like a child and kept repeating:

"Our lives and property--take them, Your Majesty!"

Pierre's one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he was
ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice everything. He now
felt ashamed of his speech with its constitutional tendency and sought
an opportunity of effacing it. Having heard that Count Mamonov was
furnishing a regiment, Bezukhov at once informed Rostopchin that he
would give a thousand men and their maintenance.

Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears, and
at once consented to Petya's request and went himself to enter his name.

Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles all took off
their uniforms and settled down again in their homes and clubs, and not
without some groans gave orders to their stewards about the enrollment,
feeling amazed themselves at what they had done.





BOOK TEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going
to Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he
received, could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to the
stimulating influence of a June morning, and could not refrain from
bursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashev.

Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be personally
insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the best
way, because he wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a great
commander. Rostov charged the French because he could not restrain
his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same way the
innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord with their
personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and aims. They were
moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining
that they knew what they were doing and did it of their own free will,
but they all were involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work
concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable
fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy
the less are they free.

The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal
interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of that
time but its historic results.

Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal aims, to
further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of them at all
expected--neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still less any of those
who did the actual fighting.

The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear to us
now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand, its advance
into the heart of Russia late in the season without any preparation for
a winter campaign and, on the other, the character given to the war
by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the foe this aroused
among the Russian people. But no one at the time foresaw (what now seems
so evident) that this was the only way an army of eight hundred thousand
men--the best in the world and led by the best general--could be
destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half its numerical strength,
and led by inexperienced commanders as the Russian army was. Not only
did no one see this, but on the Russian side every effort was made to
hinder the only thing that could save Russia, while on the French side,
despite Napoleon's experience and so-called military genius, every
effort was directed to pushing on to Moscow at the end of the summer,
that is, to doing the very thing that was bound to lead to destruction.

In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of
saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he
sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolensk,
and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the campaign
was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of telling
us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war plan was
adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and this plan some
of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain Frenchman, others
to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself--pointing to notes,
projects, and letters which contain hints of such a line of action.
But all these hints at what happened, both from the French side and the
Russian, are advanced only because they fit in with the event. Had that
event not occurred these hints would have been forgotten, as we have
forgotten the thousands and millions of hints and expectations to the
contrary which were current then but have now been forgotten because
the event falsified them. There are always so many conjectures as to the
issue of any event that however it may end there will always be people
to say: "I said then that it would be so," quite forgetting that amid
their innumerable conjectures many were to quite the contrary effect.

Conjectures as to Napoleon's awareness of the danger of extending his
line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the depths
of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much straining can
historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and his marshals,
or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts are in flat
contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period of the war
not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw the French
into the heart of the country, but from their first entry into Russia
everything was done to stop them. And not only was Napoleon not afraid
to extend his line, but he welcomed every step forward as a triumph and
did not seek battle as eagerly as in former campaigns, but very lazily.

At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our sole
aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage if we
meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the country. Our
Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every inch of Russian
soil and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp was formed on Pfuel's
plan, and there was no intention of retiring farther. The Emperor
reproached the commanders in chief for every step they retired. He could
not bear the idea of letting the enemy even reach Smolensk, still less
could he contemplate the burning of Moscow, and when our armies did
unite he was displeased that Smolensk was abandoned and burned without a
general engagement having been fought under its walls.

So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were still
more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating into the
depths of the country.

Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country and
missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he was at
Smolensk and thought only of how to advance farther, though as we now
see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.

The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of the
advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders then
think of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring of
Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result of any plan,
for no one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most complex
interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those who took part in
the war and had no perception whatever of the inevitable, or of the one
way of saving Russia. Everything came about fortuitously. The armies
were divided at the commencement of the campaign. We tried to unite
them, with the evident intention of giving battle and checking the
enemy's advance, and by this effort to unite them while avoiding battle
with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily withdrawing the armies at
an acute angle--we led the French on to Smolensk. But we withdrew at an
acute angle not only because the French advanced between our two armies;
the angle became still more acute and we withdrew still farther, because
Barclay de Tolly was an unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration (who
would come under his command), and Bagration--being in command of the
second army--tried to postpone joining up and coming under Barclay's
command as long as he could. Bagration was slow in effecting the
junction--though that was the chief aim of all at headquarters--because,
as he alleged, he exposed his army to danger on this march, and it was
best for him to retire more to the left and more to the south, worrying
the enemy from flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for
his army; and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under
the command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior
to his own.

The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence and
ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of advisers and
plans, destroyed the first army's energy and it retired.

The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but Paulucci,
aiming at becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed his energy
to influence Alexander, and Pfuel's whole plan was abandoned and the
command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not inspire confidence
his power was limited. The armies were divided, there was no unity of
command, and Barclay was unpopular; but from this confusion, division,
and the unpopularity of the foreign commander in chief, there resulted
on the one hand indecision and the avoidance of a battle (which we could
not have refrained from had the armies been united and had someone else,
instead of Barclay, been in command) and on the other an ever-increasing
indignation against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal.

At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and indeed
the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was necessary
for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the nation in
general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor to Moscow
the strength of the Russian army was trebled.

He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief's undivided
control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action would then
be taken, but the command of the armies became still more confused and
enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of adjutants general
remained with the army to keep the commander in chief under observation
and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling less free than ever under
the observation of all these "eyes of the Emperor," became still more
cautious of undertaking any decisive action and avoided giving battle.

Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at treachery and
demanded a general engagement. Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the
others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under
pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish
adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with
Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.

At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagration disliked it.

Bagration drove up in a carriage to the house occupied by Barclay.
Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet and report to his senior
officer Bagration.

Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest of magnanimity,
took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted, agreed with him
less than ever. By the Emperor's orders Bagration reported direct to
him. He wrote to Arakcheev, the Emperor's confidant: "It must be as
my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with the Minister (meaning
Barclay). For God's sake send me somewhere else if only in command of
a regiment. I cannot stand it here. Headquarters are so full of Germans
that a Russian cannot exist and there is no sense in anything. I thought
I was really serving my sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out
that I am serving Barclay. I confess I do not want to."

The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still further
embittered the relations between the commanders in chief, and even
less unity resulted. Preparations were made to fight the French before
Smolensk. A general was sent to survey the position. This general,
hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a corps commander,
and, having spent the day with him, returned to Barclay and condemned,
as unsuitable from every point of view, the battleground he had not
seen.

While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of
battle, and while we were looking for the French--having lost touch with
them--the French stumbled upon Neverovski's division and reached the
walls of Smolensk.

It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolensk to save our
lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were killed
on both sides.

Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and of the
whole people. But Smolensk was burned by its own inhabitants-who had
been misled by their governor. And these ruined inhabitants, setting
an example to other Russians, went to Moscow thinking only of their own
losses but kindling hatred of the foe. Napoleon advanced farther and we
retired, thus arriving at the very result which caused his destruction.





CHAPTER II


The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess Mary
to come to his study.

"Well? Are you satisfied now?" said he. "You've made me quarrel with my
son! Satisfied, are you? That's all you wanted! Satisfied?... It hurts
me, it hurts. I'm old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well then,
gloat over it! Gloat over it!"

After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He was
ill and did not leave his study.

Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the
old prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not admit
Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon alone attended him.

At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his former way
of life, devoting himself with special activity to building operations
and the arrangement of the gardens and completely breaking off his
relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks and cold tone to his
daughter seemed to say: "There, you see? You plotted against me, you
lied to Prince Andrew about my relations with that Frenchwoman and made
me quarrel with him, but you see I need neither her nor you!"

Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching
his lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to
Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her books, with her old
nurse, or with "God's folk" who sometimes came by the back door to see
her.

Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She
feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at
the strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another, but she did not
understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her like all
previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this war, though
Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was passionately interested
in its progress and tried to explain his own conception of it to her,
and though the "God's folk" who came to see her reported, in their own
way, the rumors current among the people of an invasion by Antichrist,
and though Julie (now Princess Drubetskaya), who had resumed
correspondence with her, wrote patriotic letters from Moscow.

"I write you in Russian, my good friend," wrote Julie in her Frenchified
Russian, "because I have a detestation for all the French, and the
same for their language which I cannot support to hear spoken.... We in
Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored Emperor.

"My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but the
news which I have inspires me yet more.

"You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski, embracing his two
sons and saying: 'I will perish with them but we will not be shaken!'
And truly though the enemy was twice stronger than we, we were
unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The
princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy
widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our charpie, only
you, my friend, are missing..." and so on.

The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance of
this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not recognize
it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner.
The prince's tone was so calm and confident that Princess Mary
unhesitatingly believed him.

All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even animated.
He planned another garden and began a new building for the domestic
serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about him was that
he slept very little and, instead of sleeping in his study as usual,
changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would order his camp
bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he remained on the
couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and dozed there without
undressing, while--instead of Mademoiselle Bourienne--a serf boy read to
him. Then again he would spend a night in the dining room.

On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his
first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had
dutifully asked his father's forgiveness for what he had allowed himself
to say and begged to be restored to his favor. To this letter the old
prince had replied affectionately, and from that time had kept the
Frenchwoman at a distance. Prince Andrew's second letter, written near
Vitebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave a brief account of
the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had drawn and forecasts
as to the further progress of the war. In this letter Prince Andrew
pointed out to his father the danger of staying at Bald Hills, so near
the theater of war and on the army's direct line of march, and advised
him to move to Moscow.

At dinner that day, on Dessalles' mentioning that the French were said
to have already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered his son's
letter.

"There was a letter from Prince Andrew today," he said to Princess
Mary--"Haven't you read it?"

"No, Father," she replied in a frightened voice.

She could not have read the letter as she did not even know it had
arrived.

"He writes about this war," said the prince, with the ironic smile that
had become habitual to him in speaking of the present war.

"That must be very interesting," said Dessalles. "Prince Andrew is in a
position to know..."

"Oh, very interesting!" said Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"Go and get it for me," said the old prince to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
"You know--under the paperweight on the little table."

Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.

"No, don't!" he exclaimed with a frown. "You go, Michael Ivanovich."

Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he had left
the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down his napkin
and went himself.

"They can't do anything... always make some muddle," he muttered.

While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and
even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The old prince returned
with quick steps, accompanied by Michael Ivanovich, bringing the letter
and a plan. These he put down beside him--not letting anyone read them
at dinner.

On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess Mary and,
spreading out before him the plan of the new building and fixing his
eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she had done so
Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was examining the
plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.

"What do you think of it, Prince?" Dessalles ventured to ask.

"I? I?..." said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not taking
his eyes from the plan of the building.

"Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that..."

"Ha ha ha! The theater of war!" said the prince. "I have said and still
say that the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never get
beyond the Niemen."

Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of the
Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess Mary,
forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought that what
her father was saying was correct.

"When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they
could fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently thinking of the
campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. "Bennigsen should have
advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different
turn..."

"But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the letter mentions
Vitebsk...."

"Ah, the letter? Yes..." replied the prince peevishly. "Yes... yes..."
His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused. "Yes, he
writes that the French were beaten at... at... what river is it?"

Dessalles dropped his eyes.

"The prince says nothing about that," he remarked gently.

"Doesn't he? But I didn't invent it myself."

No one spoke for a long time.

"Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich," he suddenly went on, raising
his head and pointing to the plan of the building, "tell me how you mean
to alter it...."

Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking to
him about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and Dessalles and
went to his own room.

Princess Mary saw Dessalles' embarrassed and astonished look fixed on
her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that her
father had forgotten his son's letter on the drawing-room table; but she
was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the reason of his
confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think about it.

In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince, came to Princess
Mary for Prince Andrew's letter which had been forgotten in the drawing
room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to her to do so,
ventured to ask him what her father was doing.

"Always busy," replied Michael Ivanovich with a respectfully ironic
smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. "He's worrying very much
about the new building. He has been reading a little, but now"--Michael
Ivanovich went on, lowering his voice--"now he's at his desk, busy with
his will, I expect." (One of the prince's favorite occupations of late
had been the preparation of some papers he meant to leave at his death
and which he called his "will.")

"And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?" asked Princess Mary.

"Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time."





CHAPTER III


When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the letter, the old
prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was sitting at his
open bureau with screened candles, holding a paper in his
outstretched hand, and in a somewhat dramatic attitude was reading his
manuscript--his "Remarks" as he termed it--which was to be transmitted
to the Emperor after his death.

When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in the prince's eyes
evoked by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had
been written. He took the letter from Michael Ivanovich's hand, put it
in his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who had long
been waiting.

The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolensk and, walking
up and down the room past Alpatych who stood by the door, he gave his
instructions.

"First, notepaper--do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample,
gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing wax,
as in Michael Ivanovich's list."

He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes.

"Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed."

Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to be
of a special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather case
had to be ordered to keep the "will" in.

The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and still the prince
did not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed his eyes, and
dozed off. Alpatych made a slight movement.

"Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I'll send after you."

Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into it,
fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at the table
to write to the governor.

It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished
to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing
thoughts came to him in bed. So he called Tikhon and went through the
rooms with him to show him where to set up the bed for that night.

He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed
unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study.
That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive
thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory everywhere,
but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was better than
other places: he had never slept there yet.

With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the bedstead and began
putting it up.

"That's not right! That's not right!" cried the prince, and himself
pushed it a few inches from the corner and then closer in again.

"Well, at last I've finished, now I'll rest," thought the prince, and
let Tikhon undress him.

Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself of his
coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on the
bed, and appeared to be meditating as he looked contemptuously at his
withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only deferring the
moment of making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on the
bed. "Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and you would
release me!" thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that effort
for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had he done so
before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards beneath him as if
it were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened to him almost every
night. He opened his eyes as they were closing.

"No peace, damn them!" he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. "Ah
yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was
keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them.
No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary
talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something. Something in
my pocket--can't remember..."

"Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?"

"About Prince Michael..."

"Be quiet, quiet!" The prince slapped his hand on the table. "Yes, I
know, Prince Andrew's letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said
something about Vitebsk. Now I'll read it."

He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table--on which stood a
glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle--moved close to the bed, and
putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in the stillness of
the night, reading it by the faint light under the green shade, did he
grasp its meaning for a moment.

"The French at Vitebsk, in four days' march they may be at Smolensk;
perhaps are already there! Tikhon!" Tikhon jumped up. "No, no, I don't
want anything!" he shouted.

He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And there
rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian
camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face,
vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin's gaily colored tent, and a
burning sense of jealousy of "the favorite" agitated him now as strongly
as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that
first meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather
sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile
and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that same
face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zubov over her
coffin about his right to kiss her hand.

"Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with all
the present! Quicker, quicker--and that they should leave me in peace!"





CHAPTER IV


Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's estate, lay forty miles east
from Smolensk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.

The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to Alpatych,
Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that, as the
prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure his safety,
though from Prince Andrew's letter it was evident that to remain at Bald
Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised her to send a letter
by Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at Smolensk, asking him to let
her know the state of affairs and the extent of the danger to which
Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles wrote this letter to the Governor
for Princess Mary, she signed it, and it was given to Alpatych with
instructions to hand it to the Governor and to come back as quickly as
possible if there was danger.

Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a white beaver hat--a
present from the prince--and carrying a stick as the prince did,
went out accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready
harnessed to a small conveyance with a leather hood.

The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness stuffed
with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive with
ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpatych liked to have them. His
satellites--the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery maid,
a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and various
domestic serfs--were seeing him off.

His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on and
behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle, and one
of the coachmen helped him into the vehicle.

"There! There! Women's fuss! Women, women!" said Alpatych, puffing and
speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the trap.

After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpatych, not
trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald head and
crossed himself three times.

"If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych! For Christ's sake
think of us!" cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war and the
enemy.

"Women, women! Women's fuss!" muttered Alpatych to himself and started
on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye and the
still-green, thickly growing oats, and at other quite black fields just
being plowed a second time.

As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year's splendid crop
of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there were
already being reaped, made his calculations as to the sowing and the
harvest, and asked himself whether he had not forgotten any of the
prince's orders.

Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town toward
evening on the fourth of August.

Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on the
road. As he approached Smolensk he heard the sounds of distant firing,
but these did not impress him. What struck him most was the sight of a
splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched and which
was being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder. This fact
impressed Alpatych, but in thinking about his own business he soon
forgot it.

All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been
bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went beyond that limit.
Everything not connected with the execution of the prince's orders did
not interest and did not even exist for Alpatych.

On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of August he put up
in the Gachina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by Ferapontov,
where he had been in the habit of putting up for the last thirty years.
Some thirty years ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych's advice, had bought a
wood from the prince, had begun to trade, and now had a house, an
inn, and a corn dealer's shop in that province. He was a stout, dark,
red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a broad knob of a
nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and a round belly.

Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov was standing
before his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpatych he went
up to him.

"You're welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving the town, but you
have come to it," said he.

"Why are they leaving the town?" asked Alpatych.

"That's what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French."

"Women's fuss, women's fuss!" said Alpatych.

"Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is: orders have been
given not to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants are
asking three rubles for carting--it isn't Christian!"

Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for hay
for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed.

All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning Alpatych
donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on business. It was a
sunny morning and by eight o'clock it was already hot. "A good day for
harvesting," thought Alpatych.

From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At eight
o'clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of musketry. Many
people were hurrying through the streets and there were many soldiers,
but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at their shops, and
service was being held in the churches as usual. Alpatych went to the
shops, to government offices, to the post office, and to the Governor's.
In the offices and shops and at the post office everyone was talking
about the army and about the enemy who was already attacking the town,
everybody was asking what should be done, and all were trying to calm
one another.

In front of the Governor's house Alpatych found a large number of
people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor's. At the
porch he met two of the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This man, an
ex-captain of police, was saying angrily:

"It's no joke, you know! It's all very well if you're single. 'One man
though undone is but one,' as the proverb says, but with thirteen in
your family and all the property... They've brought us to utter ruin!
What sort of governors are they to do that? They ought to be hanged--the
brigands!..."

"Oh come, that's enough!" said the other.

"What do I care? Let him hear! We're not dogs," said the ex-captain of
police, and looking round he noticed Alpatych.

"Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?"

"To see the Governor by his excellency's order," answered Alpatych,
lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the bosom of his
coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince.... "He has ordered
me to inquire into the position of affairs," he added.

"Yes, go and find out!" shouted the angry gentleman. "They've brought
things to such a pass that there are no carts or anything!... There it
is again, do you hear?" said he, pointing in the direction whence came
the sounds of firing.

"They've brought us all to ruin... the brigands!" he repeated, and
descended the porch steps.

Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were
tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another. The
door of the Governor's room opened and they all rose and moved forward.
An official ran out, said some words to a merchant, called a stout
official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and vanished
again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and questions
addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time the official came
out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of his buttoned coat,
and handed him two letters.

"To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkonski," he
announced with such solemnity and significance that the official turned
to him and took the letters.

A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych and hurriedly said to
him:

"Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on the
highest instructions--here..." and he handed a paper to Alpatych.
"Still, as the prince is unwell my advice is that they should go to
Moscow. I am just starting myself. Inform them..."

But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into the
room and began to say something in French. The Governor's face expressed
terror.

"Go," he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began questioning the
officer.

Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpatych when he came
out of the Governor's room. Involuntarily listening now to the firing,
which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength, Alpatych hurried
to his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor said this:


"I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the slightest danger
as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with any. I from
the one side and Prince Bagration from the other are marching to unite
our forces before Smolensk, which junction will be effected on the
22nd instant, and both armies with their united forces will defend our
compatriots of the province entrusted to your care till our efforts
shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland, or till the last
warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From this you will see that
you have a perfect right to reassure the inhabitants of Smolensk, for
those defended by two such brave armies may feel assured of victory."
(Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to Baron Asch, the civil governor of
Smolensk, 1812.)


People were anxiously roaming about the streets.

Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept
emerging from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets.
Loaded carts stood at the house next to Ferapontov's and women were
wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round
barking in front of the harnessed horses.

Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went
straight to the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman was
asleep. He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the passage.
From the host's room came the sounds of a child crying, the despairing
sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of Ferapontov. The cook
began running hither and thither in the passage like a frightened hen,
just as Alpatych entered.

"He's done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged her
about so!..."

"What for?" asked Alpatych.

"She kept begging to go away. She's a woman! 'Take me away,' says she,
'don't let me perish with my little children! Folks,' she says, 'are all
gone, so why,' she says, 'don't we go?' And he began beating and pulling
her about so!"

At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to
hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper's, where
he had left his purchases.

"You brute, you murderer!" screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a baby
in her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through the door
at that moment and down the steps into the yard.

Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych adjusted his
waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the
opposite room.

"Going already?" said he.

Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his packages
and asked how much he owed.

"We'll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor's?" asked
Ferapontov. "What has been decided?"

Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him anything definite.

"With our business, how can we get away?" said Ferapontov. "We'd have
to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh and I tell them they're
not Christians to ask it! Selivanov, now, did a good stroke last
Thursday--sold flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will you have
some tea?" he added.

While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and Ferapontov over their
tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather for
harvesting.

"Well, it seems to be getting quieter," remarked Ferapontov, finishing
his third cup of tea and getting up. "Ours must have got the best of it.
The orders were not to let them in. So we're in force, it seems....
They say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove them into the river
Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one day."

Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who had come
in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels, hoofs, and
bells was heard from the gateway as a little trap passed out.

It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in shadow, the
other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych looked out of the window
and went to the door. Suddenly the strange sound of a far-off whistling
and thud was heard, followed by a boom of cannon blending into a dull
roar that set the windows rattling.

He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the
bridge. From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of
cannon balls and bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds
were hardly heard in comparison with the noise of the firing outside the
town and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town was
being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which Napoleon had ordered
up after four o'clock. The people did not at once realize the meaning of
this bombardment.

At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused
curiosity. Ferapontov's wife, who till then had not ceased wailing under
the shed, became quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the gate,
listening to the sounds and looking in silence at the people.

The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively curiosity
everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they flew over
their heads. Several people came round the corner talking eagerly.

"What force!" remarked one. "Knocked the roof and ceiling all to
splinters!"

"Routed up the earth like a pig," said another.

"That's grand, it bucks one up!" laughed the first. "Lucky you jumped
aside, or it would have wiped you out!"

Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had fallen
on a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now with
the swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the agreeable
intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people's heads incessantly,
but not one fell close by, they all flew over. Alpatych was getting into
his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.

"What are you staring at?" he shouted to the cook, who in her red skirt,
with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped to the
corner to listen to what was being said.

"What marvels!" she exclaimed, but hearing her master's voice she turned
back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.

Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping
downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the
street, something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke.

"Scoundrel, what are you doing?" shouted the innkeeper, rushing to the
cook.

At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different
sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently
with pale faces round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was her
wailing.

"Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don't let me die! My good
souls!..."

Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her
thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen.
Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov's wife and children and the house
porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns, the
whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook, which
rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The mistress
rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the cellar asked
in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband who had remained
in the street. A shopman who entered told her that her husband had
gone with others to the cathedral, whence they were fetching the
wonder-working icon of Smolensk.

Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych left the cellar
and stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was
clouded with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon
shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a hush
seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of footsteps,
the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle of fires which seemed
widespread everywhere. The cook's moans had now subsided. On two sides
black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the fires. Through
the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or ran confusedly in
different directions like ants from a ruined ant-hill. Several of them
ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's eyes. Alpatych went out
to the gate. A retreating regiment, thronging and hurrying, blocked the
street.

Noticing him, an officer said: "The town is being abandoned. Get away,
get away!" and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted:

"I'll teach you to run into the yards!"

Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him to
set off. Ferapontov's whole household came out too, following Alpatych
and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then, suddenly
began to wail as they looked at the fires--the smoke and even the flames
of which could be seen in the failing twilight--and as if in reply
the same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts of the street.
Inside the shed Alpatych and the coachman arranged the tangled reins and
traces of their horses with trembling hands.

As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers in
Ferapontov's open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and
knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapontov returned
and entered his shop. On seeing the soldiers he was about to shout at
them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair, burst into sobs
and laughter:

"Loot everything, lads! Don't let those devils get it!" he cried, taking
some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.

Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on
filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him:

"Russia is done for!" he cried. "Alpatych, I'll set the place on fire
myself. We're done for!..." and Ferapontov ran into the yard.

Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking
it completely, so that Alpatych could not pass out and had to wait.
Ferapontov's wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting till
it was possible to drive out.

Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone out
amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the Dnieper
Alpatych's cart and that of the innkeeper's wife, which were slowly
moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had to stop.
In a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had stopped, a
house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already burning itself
out. The flames now died down and were lost in the black smoke, now
suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with strange distinctness
the faces of the people crowding at the crossroads. Black figures
flitted about before the fire, and through the incessant crackling of
the flames talking and shouting could be heard. Seeing that his trap
would not be able to move on for some time, Alpatych got down and turned
into the side street to look at the fire. Soldiers were continually
rushing backwards and forwards near it, and he saw two of them and a
man in a frieze coat dragging burning beams into another yard across the
street, while others carried bundles of hay.

Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn which was
blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back wall had fallen
in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters were alight. The
crowd was evidently watching for the roof to fall in, and Alpatych
watched for it too.

"Alpatych!" a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.

"Mercy on us! Your excellency!" answered Alpatych, immediately
recognizing the voice of his young prince.

Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was looking
at Alpatych from the back of the crowd.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"Your... your excellency," stammered Alpatych and broke into sobs. "Are
we really lost? Master!..."

"Why are you here?" Prince Andrew repeated.

At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master's pale
worn face. Alpatych told how he had been sent there and how difficult it
was to get away.

"Are we really quite lost, your excellency?" he asked again.

Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his knee
began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his sister:


"Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the enemy
within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at once when
you will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyazh."


Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych, he told him how
to arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the
boy's tutor, and how and where to let him know immediately. Before
he had had time to finish giving these instructions, a chief of staff
followed by a suite galloped up to him.

"You are a colonel?" shouted the chief of staff with a German accent,
in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. "Houses are set on fire in your
presence and you stand by! What does this mean? You will answer for
it!" shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the chief of staff of the
commander of the left flank of the infantry of the first army, a place,
as Berg said, "very agreeable and well en evidence."

Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to
Alpatych.

"So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by the
tenth I don't receive news that they have all got away I shall have to
throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills."

"Prince," said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, "I only spoke because
I have to obey orders, because I always do obey exactly.... You must
please excuse me," he went on apologetically.

Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for a moment and
wreaths of black smoke rolled from under the roof. There was another
terrible crash and something huge collapsed.

"Ou-rou-rou!" yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the collapsing roof
of the barn, the burning grain in which diffused a cakelike aroma all
around. The flames flared up again, lighting the animated, delighted,
exhausted faces of the spectators.

The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:

"It's fine, lads! Now it's raging... It's fine!"

"That's the owner himself," cried several voices.

"Well then," continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, "report to them as I
have told you"; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute beside
him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street.





CHAPTER V


From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the enemy.
On the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was marching
along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills. Heat and
drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day fleecy clouds
floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the sun, but toward
evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in reddish-brown mist.
Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The unreaped corn was
scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up. The cattle lowed from
hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched meadows. Only at night and
in the forests while the dew lasted was there any freshness. But on the
road, the highroad along which the troops marched, there was no such
freshness even at night or when the road passed through the forest; the
dew was imperceptible on the sandy dust churned up more than six inches
deep. As soon as day dawned the march began. The artillery and baggage
wagons moved noiselessly through the deep dust that rose to the very
hubs of the wheels, and the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft,
choking, hot dust that never cooled even at night. Some of this dust
was kneaded by the feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a
cloud over the troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and
worst of all in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that
road. The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and
through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked
eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded
sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless
atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses and
mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to the wells
and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.

Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of that
regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving
and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolensk and its
abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger against
the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely devoted to the
affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to his men and
officers. In the regiment they called him "our prince," were proud
of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to those of his
regiment, to Timokhin and the like--people quite new to him, belonging
to a different world and who could not know and understand his past. As
soon as he came across a former acquaintance or anyone from the
staff, he bristled up immediately and grew spiteful, ironical, and
contemptuous. Everything that reminded him of his past was repugnant to
him, and so in his relations with that former circle he confined himself
to trying to do his duty and not to be unfair.

In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to
Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolensk on the sixth
of August (he considered that it could and should have been defended)
and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow, abandoning to
pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built and peopled.
But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew had something to
think about entirely apart from general questions. Two days previously
he had received news that his father, son, and sister had left for
Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do at Bald Hills, Prince
Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment his own grief decided that
he must ride there.

He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on the
march, rode to his father's estate where he had been born and spent his
childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to be dozens
of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden
beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul about and that
the little washing wharf, torn from its place and half submerged, was
floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He rode to the keeper's
lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of the drive and the door
stood open. Grass had already begun to grow on the garden paths, and
horses and calves were straying in the English park. Prince Andrew rode
up to the hothouse; some of the glass panes were broken, and of the
trees in tubs some were overturned and others dried up. He called for
Taras the gardener, but no one replied. Having gone round the corner
of the hothouse to the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden
fence was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn off with
the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in his childhood had often
seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast
shoe.

He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting on
the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him strips of
bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a magnolia.

Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old garden had
been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were wandering in front of
the house among the rosebushes. The shutters were all closed, except at
one window which was open. A little serf boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran
into the house. Alpatych, having sent his family away, was alone at
Bald Hills and was sitting indoors reading the Lives of the Saints. On
hearing that Prince Andrew had come, he went out with his spectacles on
his nose, buttoning his coat, and, hastily stepping up, without a word
began weeping and kissing Prince Andrew's knee.

Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to report
on the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable had been
removed to Bogucharovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also been carted
away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpatych said there had been
a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered by the troops and
mown down while still green. The peasants were ruined; some of them too
had gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained.

Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:

"When did my father and sister leave?" meaning when did they leave for
Moscow.

Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for
Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again went
into details concerning the estate management, asking for instructions.

"Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for them?
We have still six hundred quarters left," he inquired.

"What am I to say to him?" thought Prince Andrew, looking down on the
old man's bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the expression on
his face that the old man himself understood how untimely such questions
were and only asked them to allay his grief.

"Yes, let them have it," replied Prince Andrew.

"If you noticed some disorder in the garden," said Alpatych, "it was
impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent
the night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their
commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it."

"Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy
occupies the place?" asked Prince Andrew.

Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and suddenly
with a solemn gesture raised his arm.

"He is my refuge! His will be done!" he exclaimed.

A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow toward
the prince.

"Well, good-by!" said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpatych. "You
must go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go to the
Ryazan estate or to the one near Moscow."

Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew's leg and burst into sobs. Gently
disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the
avenue at a gallop.

The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly
impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last on
which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running out
from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked from
the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young master,
the elder one with frightened look clutched her younger companion by the
hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick up some
green plums they had dropped.

Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them
see that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty frightened
little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt an irresistible
desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief came over him
when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of other human
interests entirely aloof from his own and just as legitimate as those
that occupied him. Evidently these girls passionately desired one
thing--to carry away and eat those green plums without being caught--and
Prince Andrew shared their wish for the success of their enterprise. He
could not resist looking at them once more. Believing their danger past,
they sprang from their ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill
little voices and holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned
feet scampered merrily and quickly across the meadow grass.

Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the dusty
highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from Bald Hills
he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment at its halting
place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one o'clock. The sun,
a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his back intolerably
through his black coat. The dust always hung motionless above the buzz
of talk that came from the resting troops. There was no wind. As he
crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the ooze and freshness of the
pond. He longed to get into that water, however dirty it might be, and
he glanced round at the pool from whence came sounds of shrieks and
laughter. The small, muddy, green pond had risen visibly more than a
foot, flooding the dam, because it was full of the naked white bodies
of soldiers with brick-red hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing
about in it. All this naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking,
floundered about in that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering
can, and the suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered
it specially pathetic.

One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince Andrew
knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed himself,
stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water; another,
a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood up to his
waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure and snorted
with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head with hands
blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men slapping one another,
yelling, and puffing.

Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was healthy,
white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timokhin, with his red little nose,
standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt confused at seeing
the prince, but made up his mind to address him nevertheless.

"It's very nice, your excellency! Wouldn't you like to?" said he.

"It's dirty," replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.

"We'll clear it out for you in a minute," said Timokhin, and, still
undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond.

"The prince wants to bathe."

"What prince? Ours?" said many voices, and the men were in such haste
to clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He decided that he
would rather wash himself with water in the barn.

"Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!" he thought, and he looked at his own
naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust
and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that
immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.


On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as follows from his
quarters at Mikhaylovna on the Smolensk road:


Dear Count Alexis Andreevich--(He was writing to Arakcheev but knew that
his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore weighed every
word in it to the best of his ability.)

I expect the Minister (Barclay de Tolly) has already reported the
abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and
the whole army is in despair that this most important place has been
wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most urgently
and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to consent. I swear
to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as never before and
might have lost half his army but could not have taken Smolensk. Our
troops fought, and are fighting, as never before. With fifteen thousand
men I held the enemy at bay for thirty-five hours and beat him; but he
would not hold out even for fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain
on our army, and as for him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If
he reports that our losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about
four thousand, not more, and not even that; but even were they ten
thousand, that's war! But the enemy has lost masses...

What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They would
have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water for men
or horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but suddenly sent
instructions that he was retiring that night. We cannot fight in this
way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow...

There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you
should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats! You
would set all Russia against you and every one of us would feel ashamed
to wear the uniform. If it has come to this--we must fight as long as
Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand...

One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may perhaps
be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad but
execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole country.... I
am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing boldly. It is clear
that the man who advocates the conclusion of a peace, and that the
Minister should command the army, does not love our sovereign and
desires the ruin of us all. So I write you frankly: call out the
militia. For the Minister is leading these visitors after him to Moscow
in a most masterly way. The whole army feels great suspicion of the
Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is said to be more Napoleon's man
than ours, and he is always advising the Minister. I am not merely civil
to him but obey him like a corporal, though I am his senior. This is
painful, but, loving my benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am
sorry for the Emperor that he entrusts our fine army to such as he.
Consider that on our retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the
hospital more than fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would
not have happened. Tell me, for God's sake, what will Russia, our mother
Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning our
good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings of
hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and of whom
are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is vacillating,
a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The whole army
bewails it and calls down curses upon him...





CHAPTER VI


Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of human
life one may discriminate between those in which substance prevails
and those in which form prevails. To the latter--as distinguished
from village, country, provincial, or even Moscow life--we may allot
Petersburg life, and especially the life of its salons. That life of
the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805 we had made peace and had
again quarreled with Bonaparte and had made constitutions and unmade
them again, but the salons of Anna Pavlovna and Helene remained just as
they had been--the one seven and the other five years before. At Anna
Pavlovna's they talked with perplexity of Bonaparte's successes just
as before and saw in them and in the subservience shown to him by the
European sovereigns a malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was
to cause unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna
Pavlovna was the representative. And in Helene's salon, which Rumyantsev
himself honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a remarkably
intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in 1812 as in 1808
of the "great nation" and the "great man," and regretted our rupture
with France, a rupture which, according to them, ought to be promptly
terminated by peace.

Of late, since the Emperor's return from the army, there had been some
excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some demonstrations
of hostility to one another, but each camp retained its own tendency.
In Anna Pavlovna's circle only those Frenchmen were admitted who were
deep-rooted legitimists, and patriotic views were expressed to the
effect that one ought not to go to the French theater and that to
maintain the French troupe was costing the government as much as a whole
army corps. The progress of the war was eagerly followed, and only
the reports most flattering to our army were circulated. In the French
circle of Helene and Rumyantsev the reports of the cruelty of the
enemy and of the war were contradicted and all Napoleon's attempts at
conciliation were discussed. In that circle they discountenanced those
who advised hurried preparations for a removal to Kazan of the court and
the girls' educational establishments under the patronage of the Dowager
Empress. In Helene's circle the war in general was regarded as a series
of formal demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the
view prevailed expressed by Bilibin--who now in Petersburg was quite
at home in Helene's house, which every clever man was obliged to
visit--that not by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters
be settled. In that circle the Moscow enthusiasm--news of which had
reached Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor's return--was
ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly, though with much caution.

Anna Pavlovna's circle on the contrary was enraptured by this enthusiasm
and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the ancients.
Prince Vasili, who still occupied his former important posts, formed a
connecting link between these two circles. He visited his "good friend
Anna Pavlovna" as well as his daughter's "diplomatic salon," and often
in his constant comings and goings between the two camps became confused
and said at Helene's what he should have said at Anna Pavlovna's and
vice versa.

Soon after the Emperor's return Prince Vasili in a conversation about
the war at Anna Pavlovna's severely condemned Barclay de Tolly, but was
undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander in chief. One of the
visitors, usually spoken of as "a man of great merit," having described
how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly chosen chief of the
Petersburg militia, presiding over the enrollment of recruits at the
Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest that Kutuzov would be the man
to satisfy all requirements.

Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutuzov had done
nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.

"I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility," Prince
Vasili interrupted, "but they did not listen to me. I told them his
election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They did
not listen to me.

"It's all this mania for opposition," he went on. "And who for? It is
all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those Muscovites,"
Prince Vasili continued, forgetting for a moment that though at Helene's
one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at Anna Pavlovna's one had to
be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved his mistake at once. "Now, is
it suitable that Count Kutuzov, the oldest general in Russia, should
preside at that tribunal? He will get nothing for his pains! How could
they make a man commander in chief who cannot mount a horse, who drops
asleep at a council, and has the very worst morals! A good reputation
he made for himself at Bucharest! I don't speak of his capacity as a
general, but at a time like this how they appoint a decrepit, blind old
man, positively blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see
anything. To play blindman's bluff? He can't see at all!"

No one replied to his remarks.

This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the
twenty-ninth of July Kutuzov received the title of Prince. This might
indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasili's opinion
continued to be correct though he was not now in any hurry to express
it. But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting of Field Marshal
Saltykov, Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin, and Kochubey met to consider
the progress of the war. This committee came to the conclusion that
our failures were due to a want of unity in the command and though the
members of the committee were aware of the Emperor's dislike of Kutuzov,
after a short deliberation they agreed to advise his appointment as
commander in chief. That same day Kutuzov was appointed commander
in chief with full powers over the armies and over the whole region
occupied by them.

On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna Pavlovna's again met the
"man of great merit." The latter was very attentive to Anna Pavlovna
because he wanted to be appointed director of one of the educational
establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasili entered the room with the
air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object of his desires.

"Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is field marshal!
All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At last
we have a man!" said he, glancing sternly and significantly round at
everyone in the drawing room.

The "man of great merit," despite his desire to obtain the post of
director, could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasili of his former
opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasili in Anna Pavlovna's
drawing room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself who had received the
news with delight, he could not resist the temptation.

"But, Prince, they say he is blind!" said he, reminding Prince Vasili of
his own words.

"Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough," said Prince Vasili rapidly, in a
deep voice and with a slight cough--the voice and cough with which he
was wont to dispose of all difficulties.

"He sees well enough," he added. "And what I am so pleased about," he
went on, "is that our sovereign has given him full powers over all
the armies and the whole region--powers no commander in chief ever had
before. He is a second autocrat," he concluded with a victorious smile.

"God grant it! God grant it!" said Anna Pavlovna.

The "man of great merit," who was still a novice in court circles,
wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by defending her former position on
this question, observed:

"It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutuzov those powers.
They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read, when he said to
Kutuzov: 'Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you this honor.'"

"Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech," said Anna Pavlovna.

"Oh, no, no!" warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who would not now yield
Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutuzov was not only admirable
himself, but was adored by everybody. "No, that's impossible," said he,
"for our sovereign appreciated him so highly before."

"God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real power and does not
allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel," observed Anna Pavlovna.

Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasili said in a
whisper:

"I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute condition that the
Tsarevich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to the
Emperor?"

And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by
Kutuzov to the Emperor. "I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor
reward him if he does right."

"Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known him a long time!"

"They even say," remarked the "man of great merit" who did not yet
possess courtly tact, "that his excellency made it an express condition
that the sovereign himself should not be with the army."

As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna Pavlovna turned away
from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at his naivete.





CHAPTER VII


While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already passed
Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon's
historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to justify his
hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He
is as right as other historians who look for the explanation of historic
events in the will of one man; he is as right as the Russian historians
who maintain that Napoleon was drawn to Moscow by the skill of the
Russian commanders. Here besides the law of retrospection, which regards
all the past as a preparation for events that subsequently occur,
the law of reciprocity comes in, confusing the whole matter. A good
chessplayer having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss
resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the
opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar
mistakes and that none of his moves were perfect. He only notices the
mistake to which he pays attention, because his opponent took advantage
of it. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which
occurs under certain limits of time, and where it is not one will that
manipulates lifeless objects, but everything results from innumerable
conflicts of various wills!

After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma, and
then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that owing to a conjunction
of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give battle till
they reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From Vyazma Napoleon
ordered a direct advance on Moscow.

Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree des
peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme de
pagodes chinoises, * this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no rest.
On the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light bay
bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his pages,
and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind to
question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by
Lelorgne d'Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a gallop
and reined in his horse with an amused expression.


     * "Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the
     sacred city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its
     innumerable churches shaped like Chinese pagodas."


"Well?" asked Napoleon.

"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up with
the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in chief. He
is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."

Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the
man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped
off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov had handed over
to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's jacket and on a French
cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face. Napoleon told him to ride
by his side and began questioning him.

"You are a Cossack?"

"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."

"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's plain
appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental mind
the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the
incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In
reality Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master
dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of
chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him prisoner.
Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who have seen all
sorts of things, consider it necessary to do everything in a mean and
cunning way, are ready to render any sort of service to their master,
and are keen at guessing their master's baser impulses, especially those
prompted by vanity and pettiness.

Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had easily
and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed but merely
did his utmost to gain his new master's favor.

He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence could
no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with the
rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant major
or Napoleon could deprive him of.

So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the
orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the
Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed up
his eyes and considered.

In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see cunning
in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.

"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon, yours
will win. That's right. But if three days pass, then after that, well,
then that same battle will not soon be over."

Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon thus:
"If a battle takes place within the next three days the French will
win, but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did not smile,
though he was evidently in high good humor, and he ordered these words
to be repeated.

Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending not to
know who Napoleon was, added:

"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in
the world, but we are a different matter..."--without knowing why or how
this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.

The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase, and
Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty interlocutor
smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence, Napoleon
turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news that he was
talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who had written his
immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would affect this enfant du
Don. *


    * "Child of the Don."


The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.

Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and that
Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new masters
promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his eyes
wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken to be
whipped. "As soon as Napoleon's interpreter had spoken," says Thiers,
"the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word, but rode
on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached him across
the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly arrested and
replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration. Napoleon, after
making the Cossack a present, had him set free like a bird restored to
its native fields."

Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his
imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped to
our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but that
he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place he did
not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth telling. He
found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating with Platov's
detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas Rostov, quartered
at Yankovo. Rostov was just mounting to go for a ride round the
neighboring villages with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka have another horse and
took him along with him.





CHAPTER VIII


Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as Prince Andrew
supposed.

After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old prince suddenly
seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be called
up from the villages and armed, and wrote a letter to the commander in
chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at Bald Hills to the
last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the commander in chief's
discretion to take measures or not for the defense of Bald Hills, where
one of Russia's oldest generals would be captured or killed, and he
announced to his household that he would remain at Bald Hills.

But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for the departure of
the princess and Dessalles with the little prince to Bogucharovo and
thence to Moscow. Princess Mary, alarmed by her father's feverish and
sleepless activity after his previous apathy, could not bring herself to
leave him alone and for the first time in her life ventured to disobey
him. She refused to go away and her father's fury broke over her in a
terrible storm. He repeated every injustice he had ever inflicted on
her. Trying to convict her, he told her she had worn him out, had caused
his quarrel with his son, had harbored nasty suspicions of him, making
it the object of her life to poison his existence, and he drove her from
his study telling her that if she did not go away it was all the same
to him. He declared that he did not wish to remember her existence and
warned her not to dare to let him see her. The fact that he did not, as
she had feared, order her to be carried away by force but only told her
not to let him see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof
that in the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home and
had not gone away.

The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old prince donned his
full uniform and prepared to visit the commander in chief. His caleche
was already at the door. Princess Mary saw him walk out of the house in
his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden to review his
armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by the window listening to
his voice which reached her from the garden. Suddenly several men came
running up the avenue with frightened faces.

Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path, and
into the avenue. A large crowd of militiamen and domestics were moving
toward her, and in their midst several men were supporting by
the armpits and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and
decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that
fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree avenue,
could not be sure what change there was in his face. All she could see
was that his former stern and determined expression had altered to one
of timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he moved his helpless
lips and made a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out what he
wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on the very
couch he had so feared of late.

The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him and said that the
prince had had a seizure paralyzing his right side.

It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and
next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying
him.

By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and the little prince
had already left for Moscow.

For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis in the new
house Prince Andrew had built at Bogucharovo, ever in the same state,
getting neither better nor worse. He was unconscious and lay like
a distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and lips
twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood what was
going on around him or not. One thing was certain--that he was suffering
and wished to say something. But what it was, no one could tell: it
might be some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man, or it might relate
to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns.

The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was due
to physical causes; but Princess Mary thought he wished to tell
her something, and the fact that her presence always increased his
restlessness confirmed her opinion.

He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally. There was no
hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to travel, it would not do
to let him die on the road. "Would it not be better if the end did come,
the very end?" Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night and day, hardly
sleeping at all, she watched him and, terrible to say, often watched
him not with hope of finding signs of improvement but wishing to find
symptoms of the approach of the end.

Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet
there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that since
her father's illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed with
him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires and hopes
that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened. Thoughts
that had not entered her mind for years--thoughts of a life free from
the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and of family
happiness--floated continually in her imagination like temptations
of the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions continually
recurred to her as to how she would order her life now, after that.
These were temptations of the devil and Princess Mary knew it. She knew
that the sole weapon against him was prayer, and she tried to pray. She
assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons, repeated the words
of a prayer, but she could not pray. She felt that a different world had
now taken possession of her--the life of a world of strenuous and free
activity, quite opposed to the spiritual world in which till now she
had been confined and in which her greatest comfort had been prayer.
She could not pray, could not weep, and worldly cares took possession of
her.

It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo. News of the approach
of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten miles from
Bogucharovo, a homestead had been looted by French marauders.

The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince; the
provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary
to persuade her to get away as quickly as possible, and the head of the
rural police having come to Bogucharovo urged the same thing, saying
that the French were only some twenty-five miles away, that French
proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the princess
did not take her father away before the fifteenth, he could not answer
for the consequences.

The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares of preparation
and giving orders, for which everyone came to her, occupied her all day.
She spent the night of the fourteenth as usual, without undressing, in
the room next to the one where the prince lay. Several times, waking up,
she heard his groans and muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps
of Tikhon and the doctor when they turned him over. Several times she
listened at the door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were
louder than usual and that they turned him over oftener. She could not
sleep and several times went to the door and listened, wishing to enter
but not deciding to do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw
and knew how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to him.
She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned from the look she
sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She knew that her going in during
the night at an unusual hour would irritate him.

But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much afraid of losing
him. She recalled all her life with him and in every word and act of his
found an expression of his love of her. Occasionally amid these memories
temptations of the devil would surge into her imagination: thoughts of
how things would be after his death, and how her new, liberated life
would be ordered. But she drove these thoughts away with disgust. Toward
morning he became quiet and she fell asleep.

She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with waking showed her
clearly what chiefly concerned her about her father's illness. On waking
she listened to what was going on behind the door and, hearing him
groan, said to herself with a sigh that things were still the same.

"But what could have happened? What did I want? I want his death!" she
cried with a feeling of loathing for herself.

She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to the porch. In
front of it stood carriages without horses and things were being packed
into the vehicles.

It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at the porch, still
horrified by her spiritual baseness and trying to arrange her thoughts
before going to her father. The doctor came downstairs and went out to
her.

"He is a little better today," said he. "I was looking for you. One can
make out something of what he is saying. His head is clearer. Come in,
he is asking for you..."

Princess Mary's heart beat so violently at this news that she grew pale
and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. To see him, talk to
him, feel his eyes on her now that her whole soul was overflowing with
those dreadful, wicked temptations, was a torment of joy and terror.

"Come," said the doctor.

Princess Mary entered her father's room and went up to his bed. He was
lying on his back propped up high, and his small bony hands with
their knotted purple veins were lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed
straight before him, his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips
motionless. He seemed altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His face
seemed to have shriveled or melted; his features had grown smaller.
Princess Mary went up and kissed his hand. His left hand pressed hers
so that she understood that he had long been waiting for her to come. He
twitched her hand, and his brows and lips quivered angrily.

She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he wanted of her. When
she changed her position so that his left eye could see her face he
calmed down, not taking his eyes off her for some seconds. Then his lips
and tongue moved, sounds came, and he began to speak, gazing timidly and
imploringly at her, evidently afraid that she might not understand.

Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him. The comic
efforts with which he moved his tongue made her drop her eyes and with
difficulty repress the sobs that rose to her throat. He said something,
repeating the same words several times. She could not understand them,
but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly repeated the words
he uttered.

"Mmm...ar...ate...ate..." he repeated several times.

It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The doctor thought
he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: "Mary, are you afraid?"
The prince shook his head, again repeated the same sounds.

"My mind, my mind aches?" questioned Princess Mary.

He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took her hand, and
began pressing it to different parts of his breast as if trying to find
the right place for it.

"Always thoughts... about you... thoughts..." he then uttered much
more clearly than he had done before, now that he was sure of being
understood.

Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide her sobs
and tears.

He moved his hand over her hair.

"I have been calling you all night..." he brought out.

"If only I had known..." she said through her tears. "I was afraid to
come in."

He pressed her hand.

"Weren't you asleep?"

"No, I did not sleep," said Princess Mary, shaking her head.

Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself as
he did, as much as possible by signs, and her tongue too seemed to move
with difficulty.

"Dear one... Dearest..." Princess Mary could not quite make out what he
had said, but from his look it was clear that he had uttered a tender
caressing word such as he had never used to her before. "Why didn't you
come in?"

"And I was wishing for his death!" thought Princess Mary.

He was silent awhile.

"Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!... thank
you!... forgive!... thank you!..." and tears began to flow from his
eyes. "Call Andrew!" he said suddenly, and a childish, timid expression
of doubt showed itself on his face as he spoke.

He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least it
seemed to Princess Mary.

"I have a letter from him," she replied.

He glanced at her with timid surprise.

"Where is he?"

"He's with the army, Father, at Smolensk."

He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in
answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood and
remembered everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes.

"Yes," he said, softly and distinctly. "Russia has perished. They've
destroyed her."

And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes. Princess Mary
could no longer restrain herself and wept while she gazed at his face.

Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes, and
Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears.

Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them could
understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and repeated
it. Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in the mood in
which he had just been speaking. She thought he was speaking of Russia,
or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson, or of his own death, and
so she could not guess his words.

"Put on your white dress. I like it," was what he said.

Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the doctor
taking her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and trying to
persuade her to prepare for her journey. When she had left the room the
prince again began speaking about his son, about the war, and about the
Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his hoarse voice, and
then he had a second and final stroke.

Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot and
sunny. She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel nothing,
except passionate love for her father, love such as she thought she had
never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing into the garden and as
far as the pond, along the avenues of young lime trees Prince Andrew had
planted.

"Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end
quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me? What
use will peace be when he is no longer here?" Princess Mary murmured,
pacing the garden with hurried steps and pressing her hands to her bosom
which heaved with convulsive sobs.

When she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her again
to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne--who had remained at
Bogucharovo and did not wish to leave it--coming toward her with a
stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district, who
had come personally to point out to the princess the necessity for her
prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding him; she
led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with him. Then,
excusing herself, she went to the door of the old prince's room. The
doctor came out with an agitated face and said she could not enter.

"Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!"

She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot of the
slope by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know how
long she had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a woman's
footsteps running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha her maid,
who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped suddenly as if in
alarm on seeing her mistress.

"Please come, Princess... The Prince," said Dunyasha in a breaking
voice.

"Immediately, I'm coming, I'm coming!" replied the princess hurriedly,
not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she was saying, and trying to
avoid seeing the girl she ran toward the house.

"Princess, it's God's will! You must be prepared for everything," said
the Marshal, meeting her at the house door.

"Let me alone; it's not true!" she cried angrily to him.

The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her
father's door. "Why are these people with frightened faces stopping me?
I don't want any of them! And what are they doing here?" she thought.
She opened the door and the bright daylight in that previously darkened
room startled her. In the room were her nurse and other women. They all
drew back from the bed, making way for her. He was still lying on the
bed as before, but the stern expression of his quiet face made Princess
Mary stop short on the threshold.

"No, he's not dead--it's impossible!" she told herself and approached
him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed her lips
to his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force of the
tenderness she had been feeling for him vanished instantly and was
replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before her. "No, he
is no more! He is not, but here where he was is something unfamiliar and
hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent mystery!" And hiding
her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into the arms of the doctor,
who held her up.


In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had been
the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth should
not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied together the
legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed him in uniform
with his decorations and placed his shriveled little body on a table.
Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but it all got done
as if of its own accord. Toward night candles were burning round his
coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was strewn with sprays of
juniper, a printed band was tucked in under his shriveled head, and in a
corner of the room sat a chanter reading the psalms.

Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the
inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round
the coffin--the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women--and all with
fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and kissed the old
prince's cold and stiffened hand.





CHAPTER IX


Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners had always been
absentees, and its peasants were of quite a different character from
those of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress, and
disposition. They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used to
approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to Bald Hills
to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches, but he disliked
them for their boorishness.

Prince Andrew's last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced hospitals
and schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to pay, had not
softened their disposition but had on the contrary strengthened in
them the traits of character the old prince called boorishness. Various
obscure rumors were always current among them: at one time a rumor that
they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at another of a new religion to
which they were all to be converted; then of some proclamation of the
Tsar's and of an oath to the Tsar Paul in 1797 (in connection with which
it was rumored that freedom had been granted them but the landowners had
stopped it), then of Peter Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven
years' time, when everything would be made free and so "simple" that
there would be no restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and
his invasion were connected in their minds with the same sort of vague
notions of Antichrist, the end of the world, and "pure freedom."

In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to the
crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work where they
pleased. There were very few resident landlords in the neighborhood
and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in the lives of the
peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents in the life of
the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are so baffling to
contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly noticeable than among
others. One instance, which had occurred some twenty years before, was
a movement among the peasants to emigrate to some unknown "warm rivers."
Hundreds of peasants, among them the Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began
selling their cattle and moving in whole families toward the southeast.
As birds migrate to somewhere beyond the sea, so these men with their
wives and children streamed to the southeast, to parts where none of
them had ever been. They set off in caravans, bought their freedom one
by one or ran away, and drove or walked toward the "warm rivers." Many
of them were punished, some sent to Siberia, many died of cold and
hunger on the road, many returned of their own accord, and the movement
died down of itself just as it had sprung up, without apparent reason.
But such undercurrents still existed among the people and gathered new
forces ready to manifest themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and
at the same time simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone
living in close touch with these people it was apparent that these
undercurrents were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.

Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old prince's
death, noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that contrary to
what was happening in the Bald Hills district, where over a radius of
forty miles all the peasants were moving away and leaving their villages
to be devastated by the Cossacks, the peasants in the steppe region
round Bogucharovo were, it was rumored, in touch with the French,
received leaflets from them that passed from hand to hand, and did not
migrate. He learned from domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant
Karp, who possessed great influence in the village commune and had
recently been away driving a government transport, had returned with
news that the Cossacks were destroying deserted villages, but that the
French did not harm them. Alpatych also knew that on the previous day
another peasant had even brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which
was occupied by the French, a proclamation by a French general that no
harm would be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would
be paid for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant had
brought from Visloukhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that
they were false) paid to him in advance for hay.

More important still, Alpatych learned that on the morning of the
very day he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the
princess' luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting at
which it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no
time to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince's death,
the Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary's leaving at once, as it was
becoming dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he could
not be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of the day the
old prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return next day for
the funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he received tidings that
the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had barely time to remove his
own family and valuables from his estate.

For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed by the village Elder,
Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive "Dronushka."

Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants who grow
big beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged till they
are sixty or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a tooth, as
straight and strong at sixty as at thirty.

Soon after the migration to the "warm rivers," in which he had taken
part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder and overseer of
Bogucharovo, and had since filled that post irreproachably for
twenty-three years. The peasants feared him more than they did their
master. The masters, both the old prince and the young, and the steward
respected him and jestingly called him "the Minister." During the
whole time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill, never after
sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the least fatigue,
and though he could not read he had never forgotten a single money
account or the number of quarters of flour in any of the endless
cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock of the whole corn
crop on any single acre of the Bogucharovo fields.

Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate, sent for his
Dron on the day of the prince's funeral and told him to have twelve
horses got ready for the princess' carriages and eighteen carts for
the things to be removed from Bogucharovo. Though the peasants paid
quitrent, Alpatych thought no difficulty would be made about complying
with this order, for there were two hundred and thirty households at
work in Bogucharovo and the peasants were well to do. But on hearing the
order Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent. Alpatych named certain
peasants he knew, from whom he told him to take the carts.

Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away carting.
Alpatych named others, but they too, according to Dron, had no horses
available: some horses were carting for the government, others were too
weak, and others had died for want of fodder. It seemed that no horses
could be had even for the carriages, much less for the carting.

Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a model
village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince's estates for
twenty years in vain. He was a model steward, possessing in the highest
degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts of those he dealt
with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood that his answers did
not express his personal views but the general mood of the Bogucharovo
commune, by which the Elder had already been carried away. But he also
knew that Dron, who had acquired property and was hated by the commune,
must be hesitating between the two camps: the masters' and the serfs'.
He noticed this hesitation in Dron's look and therefore frowned and
moved closer up to him.

"Now just listen, Dronushka," said he. "Don't talk nonsense to me. His
excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the people
away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order from the
Tsar about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar. Do you
hear?"

"I hear," Dron answered without lifting his eyes.

Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply.

"Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!" he said, shaking his head.

"The power is in your hands," Dron rejoined sadly.

"Eh, Dron, drop it!" Alpatych repeated, withdrawing his hand from his
bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor at Dron's feet. "I can see
through you and three yards into the ground under you," he continued,
gazing at the floor in front of Dron.

Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych and again lowered
his eyes.

"You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave their
homes and go to Moscow and to get carts ready for tomorrow morning
for the princess' things. And don't go to any meeting yourself, do you
hear?"

Dron suddenly fell on his knees.

"Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge me,
for Christ's sake!"

"Stop that!" cried Alpatych sternly. "I see through you and three yards
under you," he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping, his
knowledge of the right time to sow the oats, and the fact that he had
been able to retain the old prince's favor for twenty years had long
since gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the power of
seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute of wizards.

Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted
him.

"What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are you thinking
of, eh?"

"What am I to do with the people?" said Dron. "They're quite beside
themselves; I have already told them..."

"'Told them,' I dare say!" said Alpatych. "Are they drinking?" he asked
abruptly.

"Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they've fetched another
barrel."

"Well, then, listen! I'll go to the police officer, and you tell them
so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got ready."

"I understand."

Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long time
and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no suspicion
that they can possibly disobey. Having wrung a submissive "I understand"
from Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he not only
doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of troops the
carts would not be forthcoming.

And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been provided. In the
village, outside the drink shop, another meeting was being held, which
decided that the horses should be driven out into the woods and the
carts should not be provided. Without saying anything of this to the
princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out of the carts which
had arrived from Bald Hills and had those horses got ready for
the princess' carriages. Meanwhile he went himself to the police
authorities.





CHAPTER X


After her father's funeral Princess Mary shut herself up in her room and
did not admit anyone. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatych was
asking for orders about their departure. (This was before his talk with
Dron.) Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she had been
lying and replied through the closed door that she did not mean to go
away and begged to be left in peace.

The windows of the room in which she was lying looked westward. She
lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons of the
leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her confused
thoughts were centered on one subject--the irrevocability of death and
her own spiritual baseness, which she had not suspected, but which had
shown itself during her father's illness. She wished to pray but did not
dare to, dared not in her present state of mind address herself to God.
She lay for a long time in that position.

The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its slanting rays
shone into the open window, lighting up the room and part of the morocco
cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of her thoughts
suddenly stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed her hair, got up,
and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the freshness of the
clear but windy evening.

"Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and no one will
hinder you," she said to herself, and sinking into a chair she let her
head fall on the window sill.

Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden and
kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a black
dress and weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary, sighed, kissed
her, and immediately began to cry. The princess looked up at her. All
their former disharmony and her own jealousy recurred to her mind.
But she remembered too how he had changed of late toward Mademoiselle
Bourienne and could not bear to see her, thereby showing how unjust were
the reproaches Princess Mary had mentally addressed to her. "Besides,
is it for me, for me who desired his death, to condemn anyone?" she
thought.

Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of Mademoiselle
Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a distance, but who yet was
dependent on her and living in her house. She felt sorry for her
and held out her hand with a glance of gentle inquiry. Mademoiselle
Bourienne at once began crying again and kissed that hand, speaking of
the princess' sorrow and making herself a partner in it. She said her
only consolation was the fact that the princess allowed her to share her
sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings should sink into nothing but
this great grief; that she felt herself blameless in regard to everyone,
and that he, from above, saw her affection and gratitude. The princess
heard her, not heeding her words but occasionally looking up at her and
listening to the sound of her voice.

"Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess," said Mademoiselle
Bourienne after a pause. "I understand that you could not, and cannot,
think of yourself, but with my love for you I must do so.... Has
Alpatych been to you? Has he spoken to you of going away?" she asked.

Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand who was to go or
where to. "Is it possible to plan or think of anything now? Is it not
all the same?" she thought, and did not reply.

"You know, chere Marie," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "that we are in
danger--are surrounded by the French. It would be dangerous to move now.
If we go we are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God knows..."

Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she was
talking about.

"Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me now," she said.
"Of course I would on no account wish to go away from him.... Alpatych
did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do nothing,
nothing, and don't want to...."

"I've spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to get away tomorrow,
but I think it would now be better to stay here," said Mademoiselle
Bourienne. "Because, you will agree, chere Marie, to fall into the hands
of the soldiers or of riotous peasants would be terrible."

Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not
printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau's, telling people
not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would afford
them proper protection. She handed this to the princess.

"I think it would be best to appeal to that general," she continued,
"and I am sure that all due respect would be shown you."

Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to quiver with stifled
sobs.

"From whom did you get this?" she asked.

"They probably recognized that I am French, by my name," replied
Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.

Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the window and with
a pale face went out of the room and into what had been Prince Andrew's
study.

"Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or somebody to me!" she said,
"and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to come to me," she added, hearing
Mademoiselle Bourienne's voice. "We must go at once, at once!" she said,
appalled at the thought of being left in the hands of the French.

"If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the French! That
I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, asked General Rameau for
protection and accepted his favor!" This idea horrified her, made her
shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and pride as she had never
experienced before. All that was distressing, and especially all that
was humiliating, in her position rose vividly to her mind. "They, the
French, would settle in this house: M. le General Rameau would occupy
Prince Andrew's study and amuse himself by looking through and reading
his letters and papers. Mademoiselle Bourienne would do the honors of
Bogucharovo for him. I should be given a small room as a favor, the
soldiers would violate my father's newly dug grave to steal his crosses
and stars, they would tell me of their victories over the Russians, and
would pretend to sympathize with my sorrow..." thought Princess Mary,
not thinking her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father
and her brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what
happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead
father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their thoughts
and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what they would
have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into Prince Andrew's
study, trying to enter completely into his ideas, and considered her
position.

The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her father's
death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously unknown force
and took possession of her.

Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now for Michael
Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron. Dunyasha, the nurse, and the other
maids could not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne's statement was
correct. Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the police. Neither
could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on being sent for came in
with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With just the same smile
of agreement with which for fifteen years he had been accustomed to
answer the old prince without expressing views of his own, he now
replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite could be got from his
answers. The old valet Tikhon, with sunken, emaciated face that bore the
stamp of inconsolable grief, replied: "Yes, Princess" to all Princess
Mary's questions and hardly refrained from sobbing as he looked at her.

At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and with a deep bow
to Princess Mary came to a halt by the doorpost.

Princess Mary walked up and down the room and stopped in front of him.

"Dronushka," she said, regarding as a sure friend this Dronushka who
always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to the
fair at Vyazma every year and smilingly offer it to her, "Dronushka, now
since our misfortune..." she began, but could not go on.

"We are all in God's hands," said he, with a sigh.

They were silent for a while.

"Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to turn
to. Is it true, as they tell me, that I can't even go away?"

"Why shouldn't you go away, your excellency? You can go," said Dron.

"I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy. Dear friend, I
can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have nobody! I want to go away
tonight or early tomorrow morning."

Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and said: "There are no
horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so."

"Why are there none?" asked the princess.

"It's all God's scourge," said Dron. "What horses we had have been
taken for the army or have died--this is such a year! It's not a case of
feeding horses--we may die of hunger ourselves! As it is, some go three
days without eating. We've nothing, we've been ruined."

Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.

"The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?" she asked.

"They're dying of hunger," said Dron. "It's not a case of carting."

"But why didn't you tell me, Dronushka? Isn't it possible to help them?
I'll do all I can...."

To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such sorrow
was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor, and the rich
could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard vaguely that there
was such a thing as "landlord's corn" which was sometimes given to the
peasants. She also knew that neither her father nor her brother would
refuse to help the peasants in need, she only feared to make some
mistake in speaking about the distribution of the grain she wished to
give. She was glad such cares presented themselves, enabling her
without scruple to forget her own grief. She began asking Dron about the
peasants' needs and what there was in Bogucharovo that belonged to the
landlord.

"But we have grain belonging to my brother?" she said.

"The landlord's grain is all safe," replied Dron proudly. "Our prince
did not order it to be sold."

"Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you leave
in my brother's name," said she.

Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.

"Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute it all. I
give this order in my brother's name; and tell them that what is ours is
theirs. We do not grudge them anything. Tell them so."

Dron looked intently at the princess while she was speaking.

"Discharge me, little mother, for God's sake! Order the keys to be taken
from me," said he. "I have served twenty-three years and have done no
wrong. Discharge me, for God's sake!"

Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her or why he was
asking to be discharged. She replied that she had never doubted his
devotion and that she was ready to do anything for him and for the
peasants.





CHAPTER XI


An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that Dron had come, and
all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess' order and
wished to have word with their mistress.

"But I never told them to come," said Princess Mary. "I only told Dron
to let them have the grain."

"Only, for God's sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and don't go
out to them. It's all a trick," said Dunyasha, "and when Yakov Alpatych
returns let us get away... and please don't..."

"What is a trick?" asked Princess Mary in surprise.

"I know it is, only listen to me for God's sake! Ask nurse too. They say
they don't agree to leave Bogucharovo as you ordered."

"You're making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away," said
Princess Mary. "Call Dronushka."

Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha's words; the peasants had come by the
princess' order.

"But I never sent for them," declared the princess. "You must have given
my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the grain."

Dron only sighed in reply.

"If you order it they will go away," said he.

"No, no. I'll go out to them," said Princess Mary, and in spite of
the nurse's and Dunyasha's protests she went out into the porch; Dron,
Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael Ivanovich following her.

"They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to
remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the
French," thought Princess Mary. "I will offer them monthly rations and
housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in
my place," she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the crowd
standing on the pasture by the barn.

The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their
hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt, came
close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were fixed
on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could not
distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them all
at once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she
represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she boldly
began her speech.

"I am very glad you have come," she said without raising her eyes, and
feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. "Dronushka tells me
that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune, and I
shall grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because it
is dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving you
everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all our grain,
so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been told that I
am giving you the grain to keep you here--that is not true. On the
contrary, I ask you to go with all your belongings to our estate near
Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there you shall want for
nothing. You shall be given food and lodging."

The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd.

"I am not doing this on my own account," she continued, "I do it in the
name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and of my brother
and his son."

Again she paused. No one broke the silence.

"Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that is
mine is yours," she concluded, scanning the faces before her.

All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She
could not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or
apprehension and distrust--but the expression on all the faces was
identical.

"We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won't do for us to
take the landlord's grain," said a voice at the back of the crowd.

"But why not?" asked the princess.

No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the crowd, found that
every eye she met now was immediately dropped.

"But why don't you want to take it?" she asked again.

No one answered.

The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to catch
someone's eye.

"Why don't you speak?" she inquired of a very old man who stood just
in front of her leaning on his stick. "If you think something more is
wanted, tell me! I will do anything," said she, catching his eye.

But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and muttered:

"Why should we agree? We don't want the grain."

"Why should we give up everything? We don't agree. Don't agree.... We
are sorry for you, but we're not willing. Go away yourself, alone..."
came from various sides of the crowd.

And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical expression,
though now it was certainly not an expression of curiosity or gratitude,
but of angry resolve.

"But you can't have understood me," said Princess Mary with a sad smile.
"Why don't you want to go? I promise to house and feed you, while here
the enemy would ruin you..."

But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.

"We're not willing. Let them ruin us! We won't take your grain. We don't
agree."

Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone's eye, but not a single eye
in the crowd was turned to her; evidently they were all trying to avoid
her look. She felt strange and awkward.

"Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down your houses
and go into bondage! I dare say! 'I'll give you grain, indeed!' she
says," voices in the crowd were heard saying.

With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and went back to the
house. Having repeated her order to Dron to have horses ready for her
departure next morning, she went to her room and remained alone with her
own thoughts.





CHAPTER XII


For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of her
room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached her from
the village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt that she
could not understand them however much she might think about them. She
thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after the break caused
by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to the past. Now she
could remember it and weep or pray.

After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh. Toward
midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full moon began
to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to
rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.

Pictures of the near past--her father's illness and last moments--rose
one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now lingered
over these images, repelling with horror only the last one, the
picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate even in
imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And these pictures
presented themselves to her so clearly and in such detail that they
seemed now present, now past, and now future.

She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was
being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills,
muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray
eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.

"Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died," she
thought. "He had always thought what he said then." And she recalled in
all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the last stroke,
when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at home against his
will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs on tiptoe, and going
to the door of the conservatory where he slept that night had listened
at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he was saying something to
Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm nights and of the Empress.
Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why didn't he call me? Why didn't
he let me be there instead of Tikhon?" Princess Mary had thought and
thought again now. "Now he will never tell anyone what he had in his
soul. Never will that moment return for him or for me when he might have
said all he longed to say, and not Tikhon but I might have heard and
understood him. Why didn't I enter the room?" she thought. "Perhaps he
would then have said to me what he said the day he died. While talking
to Tikhon he asked about me twice. He wanted to see me, and I was
standing close by, outside the door. It was sad and painful for him
to talk to Tikhon who did not understand him. I remember how he began
speaking to him about Lise as if she were alive--he had forgotten she
was dead--and Tikhon reminded him that she was no more, and he shouted,
'Fool!' He was greatly depressed. From behind the door I heard how he
lay down on his bed groaning and loudly exclaimed, 'My God!' Why didn't
I go in then? What could he have done to me? What could I have lost? And
perhaps he would then have been comforted and would have said that word
to me." And Princess Mary uttered aloud the caressing word he had said
to her on the day of his death. "Dear-est!" she repeated, and began
sobbing, with tears that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before
her. And not the face she had known ever since she could remember and
had always seen at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen
for the first time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details,
when she stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.

"Dear-est!" she repeated again.

"What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking
now?" This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer she
saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as he lay
in his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief. And the
horror that had seized her when she touched him and convinced herself
that that was not he, but something mysterious and horrible, seized her
again. She tried to think of something else and to pray, but could do
neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the moonlight and the shadows,
expecting every moment to see his dead face, and she felt that the
silence brooding over the house and within it held her fast.

"Dunyasha," she whispered. "Dunyasha!" she screamed wildly, and tearing
herself out of this silence she ran to the servants' quarters to meet
her old nurse and the maidservants who came running toward her.





CHAPTER XIII


On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by Lavrushka
who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar orderly, left
their quarters at Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo, and went for a
ride--to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and to find out whether there
was any hay to be had in the villages.

For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between the two hostile
armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to it as
for the French vanguard; Rostov, as a careful squadron commander, wished
to take such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo before the French
could get them.

Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the way to
Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where
they hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they questioned
Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and raced one
another to try Ilyin's horse.

Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering was the property of
that very Bolkonski who had been engaged to his sister.

Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race along the
incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin, was
the first to gallop into the village street.

"You're first!" cried Ilyin, flushed.

"Yes, always first both on the grassland and here," answered Rostov,
stroking his heated Donets horse.

"And I'd have won on my Frenchy, your excellency," said Lavrushka
from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, "only I didn't wish to
mortify you."

They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants was
standing.

Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals
without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled faces
and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling, staggering, and
singing some incoherent song, and approached the officers.

"Fine fellows!" said Rostov laughing. "Is there any hay here?"

"And how like one another," said Ilyin.

"A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!" sang one of the peasants with a
blissful smile.

One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostov.

"Who do you belong to?" he asked.

"The French," replied Ilyin jestingly, "and here is Napoleon
himself"--and he pointed to Lavrushka.

"Then you are Russians?" the peasant asked again.

"And is there a large force of you here?" said another, a short man,
coming up.

"Very large," answered Rostov. "But why have you collected here?" he
added. "Is it a holiday?"

"The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune," replied
the peasant, moving away.

At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women and a
man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.

"The one in pink is mine, so keep off!" said Ilyin on seeing Dunyasha
running resolutely toward him.

"She'll be ours!" said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking.

"What do you want, my pretty?" said Ilyin with a smile.

"The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name."

"This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am your humble
servant."

"Co-o-om-pa-ny!" roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as
he looked at Ilyin talking to the girl. Following Dunyasha, Alpatych
advanced to Rostov, having bared his head while still at a distance.

"May I make bold to trouble your honor?" said he respectfully, but with
a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with a hand
thrust into his bosom. "My mistress, daughter of General in Chief Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this month, finding
herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of these people"--he
pointed to the peasants--"asks you to come up to the house.... Won't
you, please, ride on a little farther," said Alpatych with a melancholy
smile, "as it is not convenient in the presence of...?" He pointed to
the two peasants who kept as close to him as horseflies to a horse.

"Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand! Forgive us for Christ's
sake, eh?" said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.

Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.

"Or perhaps they amuse your honor?" remarked Alpatych with a staid air,
as he pointed at the old men with his free hand.

"No, there's not much to be amused at here," said Rostov, and rode on a
little way. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here don't
wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to unharness her
horses, so that though everything has been packed up since morning, her
excellency cannot get away."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Rostov.

"I have the honor to report to you the actual truth," said Alpatych.

Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed Alpatych
to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs. It appeared
that the princess' offer of corn to the peasants the previous day, and
her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had actually had so bad an effect
that Dron had finally given up the keys and joined the peasants and had
not appeared when Alpatych sent for him; and that in the morning when
the princess gave orders to harness for her journey, the peasants had
come in a large crowd to the barn and sent word that they would not let
her leave the village: that there was an order not to move, and that
they would unharness the horses. Alpatych had gone out to admonish them,
but was told (it was chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing
himself in the crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that
there was an order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would
serve her as before and obey her in everything.

At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the road,
Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpatych, her nurse, and the
maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the
cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran
away, and the women in the house began to wail.

"Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!" exclaimed deeply moved voices as
Rostov passed through the anteroom.

Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large sitting
room, when Rostov was shown in. She could not grasp who he was and why
he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his Russian
face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered recognized him as a
man of her own class, she glanced at him with her deep radiant look and
began speaking in a voice that faltered and trembled with emotion. This
meeting immediately struck Rostov as a romantic event. "A helpless girl
overwhelmed with grief, left to the mercy of coarse, rioting peasants!
And what a strange fate sent me here! What gentleness and nobility there
are in her features and expression!" thought he as he looked at her and
listened to her timid story.

When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day after her
father's funeral, her voiced trembled. She turned away, and then, as if
fearing he might take her words as meant to move him to pity, looked at
him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There were tears in Rostov's
eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced gratefully at him with that
radiant look which caused the plainness of her face to be forgotten.

"I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride here
and am able to show my readiness to serve you," said Rostov, rising. "Go
when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no one shall dare
to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act as your escort."
And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal blood, he moved toward
the door.

Rostov's deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would
consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to
take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.

Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.

"I am very, very grateful to you," she said in French, "but I hope it
was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it." She
suddenly began to cry.

"Excuse me!" she said.

Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.





CHAPTER XIV


"Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend--my pink one is delicious; her name is
Dunyasha...."

But on glancing at Rostov's face Ilyin stopped short. He saw that his
hero and commander was following quite a different train of thought.

Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying strode off with
rapid steps to the village.

"I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!" said he to
himself.

Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up with
him with difficulty.

"What decision have you been pleased to come to?" said he.

Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned on
Alpatych.

"Decision? What decision? Old dotard!..." cried he. "What have you been
about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can't manage them? You're
a traitor yourself! I know you. I'll flay you all alive!..." And as if
afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpatych and went rapidly
forward. Alpatych, mastering his offended feelings, kept pace with
Rostov at a gliding gait and continued to impart his views. He said
the peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it would be
imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed force, and would it not
be better first to send for the military?

"I'll give them armed force... I'll 'overresist' them!" uttered Rostov
meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the need to
vent it.

Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with quick,
resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it the more
Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action might produce good results.
The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed when they saw
Rostov's rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.

After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had gone to see the
princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among the crowd.
Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were Russians and
might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained. Dron was of
this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and others attacked
their ex-Elder.

"How many years have you been fattening on the commune?" Karp shouted at
him. "It's all one to you! You'll dig up your pot of money and take
it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether our homes are
ruined or not?"

"We've been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their homes
or take away a single grain, and that's all about it!" cried another.

"It was your son's turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You begrudged
your lump of a son," a little old man suddenly began attacking
Dron--"and so they took my Vanka to be shaved for a soldier! But we all
have to die."

"To be sure, we all have to die. I'm not against the commune," said
Dron.

"That's it--not against it! You've filled your belly...."

The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov, followed by
Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp, thrusting
his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to the front.
Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew closer
together.

"Who is your Elder here? Hey?" shouted Rostov, coming up to the crowd
with quick steps.

"The Elder? What do you want with him?..." asked Karp.

But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off and a
fierce blow jerked his head to one side.

"Caps off, traitors!" shouted Rostov in a wrathful voice. "Where's the
Elder?" he cried furiously.

"The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych, you!" meek and
flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to
come off their heads.

"We don't riot, we're following the orders," declared Karp, and at that
moment several voices began speaking together.

"It's as the old men have decided--there's too many of you giving
orders."

"Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!" cried Rostov unmeaningly in a
voice not his own, gripping Karp by the collar. "Bind him, bind him!" he
shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka and Alpatych.

Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms from
behind.

"Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?" he called out.

Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to come
and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the crowd and began taking
off their belts.

"Where's the Elder?" demanded Rostov in a loud voice.

With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.

"Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!" shouted Rostov, as if that
order, too, could not possibly meet with any opposition.

And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his own
belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.

"And you all listen to me!" said Rostov to the peasants. "Be off to your
houses at once, and don't let one of your voices be heard!"

"Why, we've not done any harm! We did it just out of foolishness. It's
all nonsense... I said then that it was not in order," voices were heard
bickering with one another.

"There! What did I say?" said Alpatych, coming into his own again. "It's
wrong, lads!"

 "All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych," came the answers, and the
crowd began at once to disperse through the village.

The two bound men were led off to the master's house. The two drunken
peasants followed them.

"Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to Karp.

"How can one talk to the masters like that? What were you thinking of,
you fool?" added the other--"A real fool!"

Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the
Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the
proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron, liberated at
Princess Mary's wish from the cupboard where he had been confined, was
standing in the yard directing the men.

"Don't put it in so carelessly," said one of the peasants, a man with a
round smiling face, taking a casket from a housemaid. "You know it has
cost money! How can you chuck it in like that or shove it under the cord
where it'll get rubbed? I don't like that way of doing things. Let it
all be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put it under the
bast matting and cover it with hay--that's the way!"

"Eh, books, books!" said another peasant, bringing out Prince Andrew's
library cupboards. "Don't catch up against it! It's heavy, lads--solid
books."

"Yes, they worked all day and didn't play!" remarked the tall,
round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the
dictionaries that were on the top.


Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov did not go back to
the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure. When her
carriage drove out of the house, he mounted and accompanied her eight
miles from Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our troops. At
the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave of her, for the first time
permitting himself to kiss her hand.

"How can you speak so!" he blushingly replied to Princess Mary's
expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had
occurred. "Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had
only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far,"
said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I
am only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance.
Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to meet
you again in happier circumstances. If you don't want to make me blush,
please don't thank me!"

But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words, thanked
him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude and
tenderness. She could not believe that there was nothing to thank him
for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he not been
there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers and of the
French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and obvious danger
to save her, and even more certain was it that he was a man of lofty and
noble soul, able to understand her position and her sorrow. His kind,
honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when she herself had begun to
cry as she spoke of her loss, did not leave her memory.

When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt
her eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time the strange
question presented itself to her: did she love him?

On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess' position was not
a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with her in the carriage, more than
once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window and smiled at
something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.

"Well, supposing I do love him?" thought Princess Mary.

Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen in
love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she comforted herself
with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she would not
be to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she continued to
the end of her life to love the man with whom she had fallen in love for
the first and last time in her life.

Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his words,
happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those moments that
Dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the carriage window.

"Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and at that very
moment?" thought Princess Mary. "And that caused his sister to refuse my
brother?" And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of Providence.

The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very agreeable one. To
remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of his
adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for hay
and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he grew
angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the gentle
Princess Mary, who was attractive to him and had an enormous fortune,
had against his will more than once entered his head. For himself
personally Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by marrying her
he would make the countess his mother happy, would be able to put his
father's affairs in order, and would even--he felt it--ensure Princess
Mary's happiness.

But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov grew angry when he
was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya.





CHAPTER XV


On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov remembered Prince Andrew and
sent an order for him to report at headquarters.

Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at the
very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing the troops for the first time. He
stopped in the village at the priest's house in front of which stood the
commander in chief's carriage, and he sat down on the bench at the gate
awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now called Kutuzov. From the
field beyond the village came now sounds of regimental music and now the
roar of many voices shouting "Hurrah!" to the new commander in chief.
Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo, stood near by, some ten paces
from Prince Andrew, availing themselves of Kutuzov's absence and of the
fine weather. A short, swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick
mustaches and whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince
Andrew, inquired whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and
whether he would soon be back.

Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene Highness' staff
but was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned to a smart
orderly, who, with the peculiar contempt with which a commander in
chief's orderly speaks to officers, replied:

"What? His Serene Highness? I expect he'll be here soon. What do you
want?"

The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the
orderly's tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a dispatch runner, and
approached Bolkonski with a slight bow. Bolkonski made room for him on
the bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.

"You're also waiting for the commander in chief?" said he. "They say he
weceives evewyone, thank God!... It's awful with those sausage eaters!
Ermolov had weason to ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now p'waps
Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows what was
happening. We kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in the
campaign?" he asked.

"I had the pleasure," replied Prince Andrew, "not only of taking part
in the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I held dear--not to
mention the estate and home of my birth--my father, who died of grief. I
belong to the province of Smolensk."

"Ah? You're Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance! I'm
Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known as 'Vaska,'" said Denisov,
pressing Prince Andrew's hand and looking into his face with a
particularly kindly attention. "Yes, I heard," said he sympathetically,
and after a short pause added: "Yes, it's Scythian warfare. It's all
vewy well--only not for those who get it in the neck. So you are Pwince
Andwew Bolkonski?" He swayed his head. "Vewy pleased, Pwince, to make
your acquaintance!" he repeated again, smiling sadly, and he again
pressed Prince Andrew's hand.

Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had told him of her first
suitor. This memory carried him sadly and sweetly back to those painful
feelings of which he had not thought lately, but which still found
place in his soul. Of late he had received so many new and very serious
impressions--such as the retreat from Smolensk, his visit to Bald Hills,
and the recent news of his father's death--and had experienced so many
emotions, that for a long time past those memories had not entered his
mind, and now that they did, they did not act on him with nearly their
former strength. For Denisov, too, the memories awakened by the name of
Bolkonski belonged to a distant, romantic past, when after supper and
after Natasha's singing he had proposed to a little girl of fifteen
without realizing what he was doing. He smiled at the recollection of
that time and of his love for Natasha, and passed at once to what now
interested him passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign
he had devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had
proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to propose it
to Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line
of operation was too extended, and it proposed that instead of, or
concurrently with, action on the front to bar the advance of the French,
we should attack their line of communication. He began explaining his
plan to Prince Andrew.

"They can't hold all that line. It's impossible. I will undertake to
bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men and I will bweak the line,
that's certain! There's only one way--guewilla warfare!"

Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to
Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation shouts were heard from the
army, growing more incoherent and more diffused, mingling with music
and songs and coming from the field where the review was held. Sounds of
hoofs and shouts were nearing the village.

"He's coming! He's coming!" shouted a Cossack standing at the gate.

Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers
(a guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutuzov coming down the
street mounted on a rather small sorrel horse. A huge suite of generals
rode behind him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and a crowd of
officers ran after and around them shouting, "Hurrah!"

His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutuzov was impatiently
urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly under his weight, and he
raised his hand to his white Horse Guard's cap with a red band and no
peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to the guard of
honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly wearing decorations, who were
giving him the salute, he looked at them silently and attentively for
nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a commander and then turned to
the crowd of generals and officers surrounding him. Suddenly his face
assumed a subtle expression, he shrugged his shoulders with an air of
perplexity.

"And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well, good-by,
General," he added, and rode into the yard past Prince Andrew and
Denisov.

"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" shouted those behind him.

Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had grown still more
corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached eyeball, the scar, and the
familiar weariness of his expression were still the same. He was wearing
the white Horse Guard's cap and a military overcoat with a whip hanging
over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and swayed limply on
his brisk little horse.

"Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled just audibly as he rode into the
yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed strain felt by a man who
means to rest after a ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the stirrup
and, lurching with his whole body and puckering his face with the
effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned on his knee,
groaned, and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks and adjutants
who stood ready to assist him.

He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up his eyes, glanced
at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved with his
waddling gait to the porch. "Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled, and
again glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old men, it was
only after some seconds that the impression produced by Prince Andrew's
face linked itself up with Kutuzov's remembrance of his personality.

"Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my dear boy? Come
along..." said he, glancing wearily round, and he stepped onto the porch
which creaked under his weight.

He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch.

"And how's your father?"

"I received news of his death, yesterday," replied Prince Andrew
abruptly.

Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay and then took off
his cap and crossed himself:

"May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God's will be done to us all!" He
sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was silent for a while. "I
loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my heart."

He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat breast, and for some
time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw that
Kutuzov's flabby lips were trembling and that tears were in his eyes. He
sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise himself.

"Come! Come with me, we'll have a talk," said he.

But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by his superiors than by
the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the steps of the porch, despite
the angry whispers of the adjutants who tried to stop him. Kutuzov, his
hands still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly. Denisov, having
given his name, announced that he had to communicate to his Serene
Highness a matter of great importance for their country's welfare.
Kutuzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his hands with a gesture of
annoyance, folded them across his stomach, repeating the words: "For our
country's welfare? Well, what is it? Speak!" Denisov blushed like a
girl (it was strange to see the color rise in that shaggy, bibulous,
time-worn face) and boldly began to expound his plan of cutting the
enemy's lines of communication between Smolensk and Vyazma. Denisov came
from those parts and knew the country well. His plan seemed decidedly
a good one, especially from the strength of conviction with which he
spoke. Kutuzov looked down at his own legs, occasionally glancing at the
door of the adjoining hut as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge
from it. And from that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general with a
portfolio under his arm really did appear.

"What?" said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov's explanations, "are you
ready so soon?"

"Ready, your Serene Highness," replied the general.

Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: "How is one man to deal with
it all?" and again listened to Denisov.

"I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer," said Denisov, "that I
can bweak Napoleon's line of communication!"

"What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril Andreevich Denisov?"
asked Kutuzov, interrupting him.

"He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness."

"Ah, we were friends," said Kutuzov cheerfully. "All right, all right,
friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we'll have a talk."

With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his hand for the papers
Konovnitsyn had brought him.

"Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?" said the general
on duty in a discontented voice, "the plans must be examined and several
papers have to be signed."

An adjutant came out and announced that everything was in readiness
within. But Kutuzov evidently did not wish to enter that room till he
was disengaged. He made a grimace...

"No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy. I'll look
at them here," said he. "Don't go away," he added, turning to Prince
Andrew, who remained in the porch and listened to the general's report.

While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the whisper of a woman's
voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door. Several times on
glancing that way he noticed behind that door a plump, rosy, handsome
woman in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief on her head, holding
a dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the commander in chief.
Kutuzov's adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew that this was the wife of
the priest whose home it was, and that she intended to offer his Serene
Highness bread and salt. "Her husband has welcomed his Serene Highness
with the cross at the church, and she intends to welcome him in the
house.... She's very pretty," added the adjutant with a smile. At
those words Kutuzov looked round. He was listening to the general's
report--which consisted chiefly of a criticism of the position at
Tsarevo-Zaymishche--as he had listened to Denisov, and seven years
previously had listened to the discussion at the Austerlitz council of
war. He evidently listened only because he had ears which, though there
was a piece of tow in one of them, could not help hearing; but it
was evident that nothing the general could say would surprise or even
interest him, that he knew all that would be said beforehand, and heard
it all only because he had to, as one has to listen to the chanting of
a service of prayer. All that Denisov had said was clever and to the
point. What the general was saying was even more clever and to
the point, but it was evident that Kutuzov despised knowledge
and cleverness, and knew of something else that would decide the
matter--something independent of cleverness and knowledge. Prince
Andrew watched the commander in chief's face attentively, and the only
expression he could see there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the
meaning of the feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to
observe propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov despised cleverness and
learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denisov, but despised
them not because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledge--he did
not try to display any of these--but because of something else. He
despised them because of his old age and experience of life. The only
instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord during that report referred
to looting by the Russian troops. At the end of the report the general
put before him for signature a paper relating to the recovery of payment
from army commanders for green oats mown down by the soldiers, when
landowners lodged petitions for compensation.

After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips together and shook
his head.

"Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all, my
dear fellow," said he, "into the fire with all such things! Let them cut
the crops and burn wood to their hearts' content. I don't order it
or allow it, but I don't exact compensation either. One can't get on
without it. 'When wood is chopped the chips will fly.'" He looked at the
paper again. "Oh, this German precision!" he muttered, shaking his head.





CHAPTER XVI


"Well, that's all!" said Kutuzov as he signed the last of the documents,
and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat white neck he
moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression.

The priest's wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had after
all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had so long
been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to Kutuzov.

He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and said:

"Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!"

He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the
dish for her. "Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?" he asked,
moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest's wife
smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the room.
The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to lunch with
him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to Kutuzov.
He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same unbuttoned
overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he closed as Prince
Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife. Prince Andrew saw by the
cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.

"Well, sit down, sit down here. Let's have a talk," said Kutuzov. "It's
sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a father to you,
a second father...."

Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father's death, and what
he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it.

"What... what they have brought us to!" Kutuzov suddenly cried in an
agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince
Andrew's story the condition Russia was in. "But give me time, give me
time!" he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue this
agitating conversation, and added: "I sent for you to keep you with me."

"I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am no longer fit for the
staff," replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutuzov noticed.

Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him.

"But above all," added Prince Andrew, "I have grown used to my regiment,
am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I should be
sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being with you,
believe me..."

A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutuzov's podgy
face. He cut Bolkonski short.

"I am sorry, for I need you. But you're right, you're right! It's not
here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men are
not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be advisers
served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I remember,
yes, I remember you with the standard!" said Kutuzov, and a flush of
pleasure suffused Prince Andrew's face at this recollection.

Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutuzov offered his cheek to
be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man's eyes.
Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutuzov's tears came easily, and that he
was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a wish to
show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz was both
pleasant and flattering to him.

"Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of
honor!" He paused. "I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to
send." And changing the subject, Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish
war and the peace that had been concluded. "Yes, I have been much
blamed," he said, "both for that war and the peace... but everything
came at the right time. Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre. *
And there were as many advisers there as here..." he went on, returning
to the subject of "advisers" which evidently occupied him. "Ah, those
advisers!" said he. "If we had listened to them all we should not have
made peace with Turkey and should not have been through with that war.
Everything in haste, but more haste, less speed. Kamenski would have
been lost if he had not died. He stormed fortresses with thirty thousand
men. It is not difficult to capture a fortress but it is difficult to
win a campaign. For that, not storming and attacking but patience and
time are wanted. Kamenski sent soldiers to Rustchuk, but I only employed
these two things and took more fortresses than Kamenski and made them
Turks eat horseflesh!" He swayed his head. "And the French shall too,
believe me," he went on, growing warmer and beating his chest, "I'll
make them eat horseflesh!" And tears again dimmed his eyes.


    * "Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait."


"But shan't we have to accept battle?" remarked Prince Andrew.

"We shall if everybody wants it; it can't be helped.... But believe
me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and
time, they will do it all. But the advisers n'entendent pas de cette
oreille, voila le mal. * Some want a thing--others don't. What's one to
do?" he asked, evidently expecting an answer. "Well, what do you want
us to do?" he repeated and his eye shone with a deep, shrewd look.
"I'll tell you what to do," he continued, as Prince Andrew still did not
reply: "I will tell you what to do, and what I do. Dans le doute, mon
cher," he paused, "abstiens-toi" *(2)--he articulated the French proverb
deliberately.


     * "Don't see it that way, that's the trouble."

     * (2) "When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing."


"Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I share
your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor a prince,
nor a commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything come
straight to me. Good-by, my dear boy."

Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter
had left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his
unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.

Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but after that
interview with Kutuzov he went back to his regiment reassured as to
the general course of affairs and as to the man to whom it had been
entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all personal motive in
that old man--in whom there seemed to remain only the habit of passions,
and in place of an intellect (grouping events and drawing conclusions)
only the capacity calmly to contemplate the course of events--the more
reassured he was that everything would be as it should. "He will not
bring in any plan of his own. He will not devise or undertake
anything," thought Prince Andrew, "but he will hear everything, remember
everything, and put everything in its place. He will not hinder
anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He understands that there is
something stronger and more important than his own will--the inevitable
course of events, and he can see them and grasp their significance,
and seeing that significance can refrain from meddling and renounce his
personal wish directed to something else. And above all," thought Prince
Andrew, "one believes in him because he's Russian, despite the novel
by Genlis and the French proverbs, and because his voice shook when he
said: 'What they have brought us to!' and had a sob in it when he said
he would 'make them eat horseflesh!'"

On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity and
general approval were founded with which, despite court influences, the
popular choice of Kutuzov as commander in chief was received.





CHAPTER XVII


After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual
course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to
remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to believe
that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the English
Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice everything
for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor everyone had
displayed during the Emperor's stay was the call for contributions of
men and money, a necessity that as soon as the promises had been made
assumed a legal, official form and became unavoidable.

With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Moscovites' view of their
situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even
more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger
approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that
speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a
man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it;
the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and
painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man's power to
foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is
therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to
think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to
the first voice, but in society to the second. So it was now with the
inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in
Moscow as that year.

Rostopchin's broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a potman,
and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin, "who--having been
a militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub--heard that
Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the French in very
bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under the sign of the
eagle, began to address the assembled people," were read and discussed,
together with the latest of Vasili Lvovich Pushkin's bouts rimes.

In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these
broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpushka jeered at the French,
saying: "They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our
buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are all
dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a hayfork."
Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and vulgar. It was
said that Rostopchin had expelled all Frenchmen and even all foreigners
from Moscow, and that there had been some spies and agents of Napoleon
among them; but this was told chiefly to introduce Rostopchin's witty
remark on that occasion. The foreigners were deported to Nizhni by boat,
and Rostopchin had said to them in French: "Rentrez en vousmemes; entrez
dans la barque, et n'en faites pas une barque de Charon." * There was
talk of all the government offices having been already removed from
Moscow, and to this Shinshin's witticism was added--that for that alone
Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamonov's
regiment would cost him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov
had spent even more on his, but that the best thing about Bezukhov's
action was that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the
head of his regiment without charging anything for the show.


     * "Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to
     make it a barque of Charon."


"You don't spare anyone," said Julie Drubetskaya as she collected
and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed
fingers.

Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a farewell
soiree.

"Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What
pleasure is there to be so caustique?"

"A forfeit!" cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie called "mon
chevalier," and who was going with her to Nizhni.

In Julie's set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been agreed
that they would speak nothing but Russian and that those who made a
slip and spoke French should pay fines to the Committee of Voluntary
Contributions.

"Another forfeit for a Gallicism," said a Russian writer who was
present. "'What pleasure is there to be' is not Russian!"

"You spare no one," continued Julie to the young man without heeding the
author's remark.

"For caustique--I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay again
for the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I won't be
responsible," she remarked, turning to the author: "I have neither the
money nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a master to teach me
Russian!"

"Ah, here he is!" she added. "Quand on... No, no," she said to the
militia officer, "you won't catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its
rays!" and she smiled amiably at Pierre. "We were just talking of you,"
she said with the facility in lying natural to a society woman. "We were
saying that your regiment would be sure to be better than Mamonov's."

"Oh, don't talk to me of my regiment," replied Pierre, kissing his
hostess' hand and taking a seat beside her. "I am so sick of it."

"You will, of course, command it yourself?" said Julie, directing a sly,
sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.

The latter in Pierre's presence had ceased to be caustic, and his face
expressed perplexity as to what Julie's smile might mean. In spite of
his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre's personality immediately
checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face.

"No," said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. "I
should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I
should hardly be able to climb onto a horse."

Among those whom Julie's guests happened to choose to gossip about were
the Rostovs.

"I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way," said Julie. "And he
is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The Razumovskis wanted
to buy his house and his estate near Moscow, but it drags on and on. He
asks too much."

"No, I think the sale will come off in a few days," said someone.
"Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now."

"Why?" asked Julie. "You don't think Moscow is in danger?"

"Then why are you leaving?"

"I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is
going: and besides--I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon."

"Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen."

"If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off all his
debts," said the militia officer, speaking of Rostov.

"A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so long in
Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago. Natalie is quite
well again now, isn't she?" Julie asked Pierre with a knowing smile.

"They are waiting for their younger son," Pierre replied. "He joined
Obolenski's Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov where the regiment is
being formed. But now they have had him transferred to my regiment and
are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave long ago, but the
countess won't on any account leave Moscow till her son returns."

"I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'. Natalie has
recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily some
people get over everything!"

"Get over what?" inquired Pierre, looking displeased.

Julie smiled.

"You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de
Souza's novels."

"What knights? What do you mean?" demanded Pierre, blushing.

"Oh, come, my dear count! C'est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous admire,
ma parole d'honneur!" *


    * "It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!"


"Forfeit, forfeit!" cried the militia officer.

"All right, one can't talk--how tiresome!"

"What is 'the talk of all Moscow'?" Pierre asked angrily, rising to his
feet.

"Come now, Count, you know!"

"I don't know anything about it," said Pierre.

"I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was always more
friendly with Vera--that dear Vera."

"No, madame!" Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, "I have not
taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostova's knight at all, and have
not been to their house for nearly a month. But I cannot understand the
cruelty..."

"Qui s'excuse s'accuse," * said Julie, smiling and waving the lint
triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the
subject. "Do you know what I heard today? Poor Mary Bolkonskaya arrived
in Moscow yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her father?"


    * "Who excuses himself, accuses himself."


"Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her," said Pierre.

"I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their estate
near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew."

"Well, and how is she?" asked Pierre.

"She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is quite a
romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded, and they wanted to kill
her and had wounded some of her people. He rushed in and saved her...."

"Another romance," said the militia officer. "Really, this general
flight has been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche
is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another."

"Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu amoureuse du jeune
homme." *


    * "A little bit in love with the young man."


"Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!"

"But how could one say that in Russian?"





CHAPTER XVIII


When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchin's broadsheets
that had been brought that day.

The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin had forbidden
people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was glad that
ladies and tradesmen's wives were leaving the city. "There will be less
panic and less gossip," ran the broadsheet "but I will stake my life
on it that scoundrel will not enter Moscow." These words showed Pierre
clearly for the first time that the French would enter Moscow. The
second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at Vyazma, that
Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as many of the
inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were ready for them
at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which could be had at a low
price. The tone of the proclamation was not as jocose as in the former
Chigirin talks. Pierre pondered over these broadsheets. Evidently the
terrible stormcloud he had desired with the whole strength of his soul
but which yet aroused involuntary horror in him was drawing near.

"Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?" he asked himself
for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on the table
and began to lay them out for a game of patience.

"If this patience comes out," he said to himself after shuffling the
cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, "if it comes out,
it means... what does it mean?"

He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of the
eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in.

"Then it will mean that I must go to the army," said Pierre to himself.
"Come in, come in!" he added to the princess.

Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long waist,
was still living in Pierre's house. The two younger ones had both
married.

"Excuse my coming to you, cousin," she said in a reproachful and
agitated voice. "You know some decision must be come to. What is going
to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is
it that we are staying on?"

"On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine," said Pierre
in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling
uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor.

"Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivanovna told me today
how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly does them
credit! And the people too are quite mutinous--they no longer obey,
even my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they will soon begin
beating us. One can't walk in the streets. But, above all, the French
will be here any day now, so what are we waiting for? I ask just one
thing of you, cousin," she went on, "arrange for me to be taken to
Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can't live under Bonaparte's rule."

"Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On the
contrary..."

"I won't submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If you
don't want to do this..."

"But I will, I'll give the order at once."

The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry with.
Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair.

"But you have been misinformed," said Pierre. "Everything is quiet in
the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I've just been
reading..." He showed her the broadsheet. "Count Rostopchin writes that
he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter Moscow."

"Oh, that count of yours!" said the princess malevolently. "He is a
hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot. Didn't
he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, 'whoever it might be,
should be dragged to the lockup by his hair'? (How silly!) 'And honor
and glory to whoever captures him,' he says. This is what his cajolery
has brought us to! Barbara Ivanovna told me the mob near killed her
because she said something in French."

"Oh, but it's so... You take everything so to heart," said Pierre, and
began laying out his cards for patience.

Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army,
but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation,
irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting
something terrible.

Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre's head steward
came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment of his
regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates. In
general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of raising
a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely able to
repress a smile.

"Well then, sell it," said he. "What's to be done? I can't draw back
now!"

The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the better
was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the catastrophe he
expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was left in town. Julie
had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his intimate friends only the
Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see them.

To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of Vorontsovo
to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to destroy the foe,
and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The balloon was not yet
ready, but Pierre learned that it was being constructed by the Emperor's
desire. The Emperor had written to Count Rostopchin as follows:


As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and
intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutuzov to let
him know. I have informed him of the matter.

Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for
the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the enemy's
hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with those of
the commander in chief.


On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing the Bolotnoe Place
Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lobnoe Place, stopped and got out
of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being flogged. The
flogging was only just over, and the executioner was releasing from the
flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in blue stockings and
a green jacket, who was moaning piteously. Another criminal, thin and
pale, stood near. Judging by their faces they were both Frenchmen. With
a frightened and suffering look resembling that on the thin Frenchman's
face, Pierre pushed his way in through the crowd.

"What is it? Who is it? What is it for?" he kept asking.

But the attention of the crowd--officials, burghers, shopkeepers,
peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses--was so eagerly centered
on what was passing in Lobnoe Place that no one answered him. The stout
man rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently trying to
appear firm began to pull on his jacket without looking about him, but
suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry, in the way full-blooded
grown-up men cry, though angry with himself for doing so. In the crowd
people began talking loudly, to stifle their feelings of pity as it
seemed to Pierre.

"He's cook to some prince."

"Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets his
teeth on edge!" said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind Pierre,
when the Frenchman began to cry.

The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be
appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch in
dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.

Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went back
to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took his
seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times so
audibly that the coachman asked him:

"What is your pleasure?"

"Where are you going?" shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to
Lubyanka Street.

"To the Governor's, as you ordered," answered the coachman.

"Fool! Idiot!" shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman--a thing he rarely
did. "Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!" "I must get away
this very day," he murmured to himself.

At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the
Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he could no
longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that very day that
it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman this or that the
man ought to have known it for himself.

On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey--his head coachman who
knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow--that
he would leave that night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that his saddle
horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day,
so on Evstafey's representation Pierre had to put off his departure till
next day to allow time for the relay horses to be sent on in advance.

On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain, and
after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night
in Perkhushkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that
evening. (This was the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there in
Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could answer
his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was approaching
Mozhaysk.

Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the hostel
where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no room to be
had. It was full of officers.

Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on the
march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and cannon
were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the
farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea
of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and a new and
joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling akin to
what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the Emperor's visit--a
sense of the necessity of undertaking something and sacrificing
something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that everything that
constitutes men's happiness--the comforts of life, wealth, even
life itself--is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with
something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did not try to
determine for whom and for what he felt such particular delight in
sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the question of what to
sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself afforded him a new and
joyous sensation.





CHAPTER XIX


On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevardino Redoubt was
fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either side, and on
the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodino itself took place.

Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given and
accepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the least
sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate result
for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought nearer
to the destruction of Moscow--which we feared more than anything in
the world; and for the French its immediate result was that they were
brought nearer to the destruction of their whole army--which they feared
more than anything in the world. What the result must be was quite
obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov accepted that battle.

If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it must
have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen hundred miles
and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter of his army,
he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have been equally
clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking the loss of a
quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For Kutuzov this was
mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing draughts I have one
man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly lose, and therefore
should not exchange. When my opponent has sixteen men and I have
fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than he, but when I have exchanged
thirteen more men he will be three times as strong as I am.

Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the French
was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little more than
one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a hundred and
twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty thousand against a
hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced Kutuzov accepted the
battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a commander of genius,
gave it, losing a quarter of his army and lengthening his lines of
communication still more. If it is said that he expected to end the
campaign by occupying Moscow as he had ended a previous campaign by
occupying Vienna, there is much evidence to the contrary. Napoleon's
historians themselves tell us that from Smolensk onwards he wished
to stop, knew the danger of his extended position, and knew that the
occupation of Moscow would not be the end of the campaign, for he had
seen at Smolensk the state in which Russian towns were left to him, and
had not received a single reply to his repeated announcements of his
wish to negotiate.

In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov acted involuntarily
and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had occurred, the historians
provided cunningly devised evidence of the foresight and genius of the
generals who, of all the blind tools of history were the most enslaved
and involuntary.

The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes furnish
the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to accustom
ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that kind are
meaningless.

On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the preceding
battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists a definite and
well-known, but quite false, conception. All the historians describe the
affair as follows:

The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought out
for itself the best position for a general engagement and found such a
position at Borodino.

The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the left
of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a right angle
to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the battle was
fought.

In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set up on
the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth, we
are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on the
twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in position on
the field of Borodino.

So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares to
look into the matter can easily convince himself.

The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the contrary,
during the retreat passed many positions better than Borodino. They did
not stop at any one of these positions because Kutuzov did not wish to
occupy a position he had not himself chosen, because the popular demand
for a battle had not yet expressed itself strongly enough, and because
Miloradovich had not yet arrived with the militia, and for many other
reasons. The fact is that other positions they had passed were stronger,
and that the position at Borodino (the one where the battle was fought),
far from being strong, was no more a position than any other spot one
might find in the Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at
hazard.

Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of
Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that
is, the position on which the battle took place), but never till the
twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be
fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no
entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the
twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the
position of the Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless
in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it
more strongly fortified than any other post? And why were all efforts
exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till late at
night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have sufficed to
observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position on which the
battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the Shevardino Redoubt
was not an advanced post of that position, we have the fact that up to
the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and Bagration were convinced that the
Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of the position, and that Kutuzov
himself in his report, written in hot haste after the battle, speaks of
the Shevardino Redoubt as the left flank of the position. It was much
later, when reports on the battle of Borodino were written at leisure,
that the incorrect and extraordinary statement was invented (probably to
justify the mistakes of a commander in chief who had to be represented
as infallible) that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post--whereas
in reality it was simply a fortified point on the left flank--and
that the battle of Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position
previously selected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected spot
which was almost unentrenched.

The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river
Kolocha--which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an acute
angle--so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flank near
the village of Novoe, and the center at Borodino at the confluence of
the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.

To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how
the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the river
Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was to
prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.

Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as the
history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsa
to Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did not
exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while
pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the
Russian position--at the Shevardino Redoubt--and unexpectedly for the
Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians, not having
time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left wing from the
position they had intended to occupy and took up a new position which
had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By crossing to the other
side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad, Napoleon shifted the
whole forthcoming battle from right to left (looking from the Russian
side) and transferred it to the plain between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and
Borodino--a plain no more advantageous as a position than any other
plain in Russia--and there the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of
August took place.

Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to the
Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the redoubt
but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have doubted that
the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our position, and the
battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case
we should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt--our left
flank--still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the
center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on the
twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But as the
attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the retreat of
our rear guard (that is, immediately after the fight at Gridneva), and
as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not in time, to begin a
general engagement then on the evening of the twenty-fourth, the first
and chief action of the battle of Borodino was already lost on the
twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the
twenty-sixth.

After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves on the
morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank, and
were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it chanced to
be.

Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by weak,
unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that position was
increased by the fact that the Russian commanders--not having fully
realized what had happened, namely the loss of our position on the left
flank and the shifting of the whole field of the forthcoming battle from
right to left--maintained their extended position from the village of
Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently had to move their forces from right to
left during the battle. So it happened that throughout the whole battle
the Russians opposed the entire French army launched against our left
flank with but half as many men. (Poniatowski's action against Utitsa,
and Uvarov's on the right flank against the French, were actions
distinct from the main course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino
did not take place at all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders'
mistakes even at the cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian
army and people) it has been described. The battle of Borodino was not
fought on a chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly
weaker than those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the
Shevardino Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodino on an
open and almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous
as the French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not
merely unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive
result, but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete
disintegration and flight.





CHAPTER XX


On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozhaysk. At the
descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led out of the
town past the cathedral on the right, where a service was being held and
the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle and proceeded on
foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down the hill preceded by
its singers. Coming up toward him was a train of carts carrying men who
had been wounded in the engagement the day before. The peasant drivers,
shouting and lashing their horses, kept crossing from side to side. The
carts, in each of which three or four wounded soldiers were lying
or sitting, jolted over the stones that had been thrown on the steep
incline to make it something like a road. The wounded, bandaged with
rags, with pale cheeks, compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to
the sides of the carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost
all of them stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre's white hat
and green swallow-tail coat.

Pierre's coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep to
one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the hill
with its singers, surrounded Pierre's carriage and blocked the road.
Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in which
the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not penetrate into
the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above Pierre's head was
the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded merrily. One of the
carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road close to Pierre. The
driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it, placed a stone under one
of its tireless hind wheels, and began arranging the breech-band on his
little horse.

One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was following
the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand and turned to
look at Pierre.

"I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us on to
Moscow?" he asked.

Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question. He was
looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy of wounded,
now at the cart by which he was standing, in which two wounded men
were sitting and one was lying. One of those sitting up in the cart had
probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was wrapped in rags
and one cheek was swollen to the size of a baby's head. His nose
and mouth were twisted to one side. This soldier was looking at the
cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a fair-haired
recruit as white as though there was no blood in his thin face, looked
at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third lay prone so that his
face was not visible. The cavalry singers were passing close by:

   Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,
   Living in a foreign land.

they sang their soldiers' dance song.

As if responding to them but with a different sort of merriment, the
metallic sound of the bells reverberated high above and the hot rays of
the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with yet another sort of
merriment. But beneath the slope, by the cart with the wounded near the
panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp, somber, and sad.

The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the cavalry
singers.

"Oh, the coxcombs!" he muttered reproachfully.

"It's not the soldiers only, but I've seen peasants today, too....
The peasants--even they have to go," said the soldier behind the cart,
addressing Pierre with a sad smile. "No distinctions made nowadays....
They want the whole nation to fall on them--in a word, it's Moscow! They
want to make an end of it."

In spite of the obscurity of the soldier's words Pierre understood what
he wanted to say and nodded approval.

The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and drove on.

He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar faces, but only
saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of various military men of different
branches of the service, who all looked with astonishment at his white
hat and green tail coat.

Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an acquaintance and
eagerly addressed him. This was one of the head army doctors. He was
driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young surgeon,
and on recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied the driver's
seat to pull up.

"Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?" asked the doctor.

"Well, you know, I wanted to see..."

"Yes, yes, there will be something to see...."

Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of
taking part in a battle.

The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov.

"Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?" he
said, exchanging glances with his young companion. "Anyhow his Serene
Highness knows you and will receive you graciously. That's what you must
do."

The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.

"You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our position is
exactly?" said Pierre.

"The position?" repeated the doctor. "Well, that's not my line. Drive
past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going on there. Go up the hillock
and you'll see."

"Can one see from there?... If you would..."

But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his gig.

"I would go with you but on my honor I'm up to here"--and he pointed to
his throat. "I'm galloping to the commander of the corps. How do matters
stand?... You know, Count, there'll be a battle tomorrow. Out of an army
of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty thousand wounded,
and we haven't stretchers, or bunks, or dressers, or doctors enough for
six thousand. We have ten thousand carts, but we need other things as
well--we must manage as best we can!"

The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young and old, who
had stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had
noticed), twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death
amazed Pierre.

"They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but death?"
And by some latent sequence of thought the descent of the Mozhaysk hill,
the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the slanting rays of the
sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly recurred to his mind.

"The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a moment
think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded. Yet from
among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they wonder at my
hat! Strange!" thought Pierre, continuing his way to Tatarinova.

In front of a landowner's house to the left of the road stood carriages,
wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The commander in chief
was putting up there, but just when Pierre arrived he was not in and
hardly any of the staff were there--they had gone to the church service.
Pierre drove on toward Gorki.

When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street, he
saw for the first time peasant militiamen in their white shirts and with
crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated and
perspiring, were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to the
right of the road.

Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth
along planks, while others stood about doing nothing.

Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the men. On seeing
these peasants, who were evidently still amused by the novelty of their
position as soldiers, Pierre once more thought of the wounded men at
Mozhaysk and understood what the soldier had meant when he said: "They
want the whole nation to fall on them." The sight of these bearded
peasants at work on the battlefield, with their queer, clumsy boots
and perspiring necks, and their shirts opening from the left toward
the middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned collarbones, impressed
Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and importance of the moment
than anything he had yet seen or heard.





CHAPTER XXI


Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling militiamen,
ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor, the battlefield
could be seen.

It was about eleven o'clock. The sun shone somewhat to the left and
behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising like
an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied atmosphere.

From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the Smolensk
highroad, passing through a village with a white church some five
hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was Borodino.
Below the village the road crossed the river by a bridge and, winding
down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of Valuevo visible
about four miles away, where Napoleon was then stationed. Beyond Valuevo
the road disappeared into a yellowing forest on the horizon. Far in
the distance in that birch and fir forest to the right of the road, the
cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery gleamed in the sun. Here and
there over the whole of that blue expanse, to right and left of the
forest and the road, smoking campfires could be seen and indefinite
masses of troops--ours and the enemy's. The ground to the right--along
the course of the Kolocha and Moskva rivers--was broken and hilly.
Between the hollows the villages of Bezubova and Zakharino showed in the
distance. On the left the ground was more level; there were fields of
grain, and the smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been burned down,
could be seen.

All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left nor the
right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations. Nowhere
could he see the battlefield he had expected to find, but only fields,
meadows, troops, woods, the smoke of campfires, villages, mounds, and
streams; and try as he would he could descry no military "position" in
this place which teemed with life, nor could he even distinguish our
troops from the enemy's.

"I must ask someone who knows," he thought, and addressed an officer who
was looking with curiosity at his huge unmilitary figure.

"May I ask you," said Pierre, "what village that is in front?"

"Burdino, isn't it?" said the officer, turning to his companion.

"Borodino," the other corrected him.

The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk, moved up to
Pierre.

"Are those our men there?" Pierre inquired.

"Yes, and there, further on, are the French," said the officer. "There
they are, there... you can see them."

"Where? Where?" asked Pierre.

"One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!"

The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible on the left
beyond the river, and the same stern and serious expression that Pierre
had noticed on many of the faces he had met came into his face.

"Ah, those are the French! And over there?..." Pierre pointed to a knoll
on the left, near which some troops could be seen.

"Those are ours."

"Ah, ours! And there?..." Pierre pointed to another knoll in the
distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay in a hollow
where also some campfires were smoking and something black was visible.

"That's his again," said the officer. (It was the Shevardino Redoubt.)
"It was ours yesterday, but now it is his."

"Then how about our position?"

"Our position?" replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. "I
can tell you quite clearly, because I constructed nearly all our
entrenchments. There, you see? There's our center, at Borodino, just
there," and he pointed to the village in front of them with the white
church. "That's where one crosses the Kolocha. You see down there where
the rows of hay are lying in the hollow, there's the bridge. That's our
center. Our right flank is over there"--he pointed sharply to the right,
far away in the broken ground--"That's where the Moskva River is, and
we have thrown up three redoubts there, very strong ones. The left
flank..." here the officer paused. "Well, you see, that's difficult to
explain.... Yesterday our left flank was there at Shevardino, you see,
where the oak is, but now we have withdrawn our left wing--now it is
over there, do you see that village and the smoke? That's Semenovsk,
yes, there," he pointed to Raevski's knoll. "But the battle will hardly
be there. His having moved his troops there is only a ruse; he will
probably pass round to the right of the Moskva. But wherever it may be,
many a man will be missing tomorrow!" he remarked.

An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while he was giving
these explanations had waited in silence for him to finish speaking, but
at this point, evidently not liking the officer's remark, interrupted
him.

"Gabions must be sent for," said he sternly.

The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood that one might
think of how many men would be missing tomorrow but ought not to speak
of it.

"Well, send number three company again," the officer replied hurriedly.

"And you, are you one of the doctors?"

"No, I've come on my own," answered Pierre, and he went down the hill
again, passing the militiamen.

"Oh, those damned fellows!" muttered the officer who followed him,
holding his nose as he ran past the men at work.

"There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are... They'll be
here in a minute..." voices were suddenly heard saying; and officers,
soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the road.

A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. First along
the dusty road came the infantry in ranks, bareheaded and with arms
reversed. From behind them came the sound of church singing.

Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the
procession.

"They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian Mother of God!"
someone cried.

"The Smolensk Mother of God," another corrected him.

The militiamen, both those who had been in the village and those who had
been at work on the battery, threw down their spades and ran to meet the
church procession. Following the battalion that marched along the dusty
road came priests in their vestments--one little old man in a hood with
attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and officers bore a large,
dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover. This was the icon that had
been brought from Smolensk and had since accompanied the army. Behind,
before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with bared heads walked,
ran, and bowed to the ground.

At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the men who had
been holding it up by the linen bands attached to it were relieved by
others, the chanters relit their censers, and service began. The hot
rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind played with
the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons decorating the icon.
The singing did not sound loud under the open sky. An immense crowd
of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen surrounded the icon.
Behind the priest and a chanter stood the notabilities on a spot
reserved for them. A bald general with a St. George's Cross on his neck
stood just behind the priest's back, and without crossing himself (he
was evidently a German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which
he considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to arouse the
patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial
pose, crossing himself by shaking his hand in front of his chest
while looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre
recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not
look at them--his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious
expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who were
all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters, who were
singing the service for the twentieth time that day, began lazily and
mechanically to sing: "Save from calamity Thy servants, O Mother of
God," and the priest and deacon chimed in: "For to Thee under God we all
flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection," there again kindled in
all those faces the same expression of consciousness of the solemnity
of the impending moment that Pierre had seen on the faces at the foot of
the hill at Mozhaysk and momentarily on many and many faces he had met
that morning; and heads were bowed more frequently and hair tossed back,
and sighs and the sound men made as they crossed themselves were heard.

The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre.
Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which way
was made for him, was approaching the icon.

It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the position and on his way
back to Tatarinova had stopped where the service was being held. Pierre
recognized him at once by his peculiar figure, which distinguished him
from everybody else.

With a long overcoat on his exceedingly stout, round-shouldered body,
with uncovered white head and puffy face showing the white ball of the
eye he had lost, Kutuzov walked with plunging, swaying gait into
the crowd and stopped behind the priest. He crossed himself with an
accustomed movement, bent till he touched the ground with his hand, and
bowed his white head with a deep sigh. Behind Kutuzov was Bennigsen and
the suite. Despite the presence of the commander in chief, who attracted
the attention of all the superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers
continued their prayers without looking at him.

When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank heavily
to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried vainly to
rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and weight. His
white head twitched with the effort. At last he rose, kissed the icon as
a child does with naively pouting lips, and again bowed till he touched
the ground with his hand. The other generals followed his example,
then the officers, and after them with excited faces, pressing on one
another, crowding, panting, and pushing, scrambled the soldiers and
militiamen.





CHAPTER XXII


Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.

"Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?" said a voice.

Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his knees with his hand
(he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the icon),
came up to him smiling. Boris was elegantly dressed, with a slightly
martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long coat and like
Kutuzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.

Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated himself in the
shade of the nearest house, on a bench which one Cossack had run
to fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and
brilliant suite surrounded him.

The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng. Pierre stopped
some thirty paces from Kutuzov, talking to Boris.

He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the
position.

"This is what you must do," said Boris. "I will do the honors of the
camp to you. You will see everything best from where Count Bennigsen
will be. I am in attendance on him, you know; I'll mention it to him.
But if you want to ride round the position, come along with us. We are
just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend the night
with me and we'll arrange a game of cards. Of course you know Dmitri
Sergeevich? Those are his quarters," and he pointed to the third house
in the village of Gorki.

"But I should like to see the right flank. They say it's very strong,"
said Pierre. "I should like to start from the Moskva River and ride
round the whole position."

"Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left flank."

"Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski's regiment? Can you point it
out to me?"

"Prince Andrew's? We shall pass it and I'll take you to him."

"What about the left flank?" asked Pierre

"To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only knows what state our
left flank is in," said Boris confidentially lowering his voice. "It is
not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify that knoll
quite differently, but..." Boris shrugged his shoulders, "his Serene
Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him. You see..." but
Boris did not finish, for at that moment Kaysarov, Kutuzov's adjutant,
came up to Pierre. "Ah, Kaysarov!" said Boris, addressing him with an
unembarrassed smile, "I was just trying to explain our position to
the count. It is amazing how his Serene Highness could so foresee the
intentions of the French!"

"You mean the left flank?" asked Kaysarov.

"Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong."

Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff, Boris
had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He had
established himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom Boris
had been in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskoy an invaluable
man.

In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties: Kutuzov's
party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Boris belonged to the
latter and no one else, while showing servile respect to Kutuzov, could
so create an impression that the old fellow was not much good and that
Bennigsen managed everything. Now the decisive moment of battle had come
when Kutuzov would be destroyed and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even
if Kutuzov won the battle it would be felt that everything was done by
Bennigsen. In any case many great rewards would have to be given for
tomorrow's action, and new men would come to the front. So Boris was
full of nervous vivacity all day.

After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to him, and he had not
time to reply to all the questions about Moscow that were showered upon
him, or to listen to all that was told him. The faces all expressed
animation and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the cause of
the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in questions
of personal success; his mind, however, was occupied by the different
expression he saw on other faces--an expression that spoke not of
personal matters but of the universal questions of life and death.
Kutuzov noticed Pierre's figure and the group gathered round him.

"Call him to me," said Kutuzov.

An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness' wish, and Pierre went
toward Kutuzov's bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It was
Dolokhov.

"How did that fellow get here?" asked Pierre.

"He's a creature that wriggles in anywhere!" was the answer. "He
has been degraded, you know. Now he wants to bob up again. He's been
proposing some scheme or other and has crawled into the enemy's picket
line at night.... He's a brave fellow."

Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutuzov.

"I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness you might send
me away or say that you knew what I was reporting, but then I shouldn't
lose anything..." Dolokhov was saying.

"Yes, yes."

"But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my Fatherland
for which I am ready to die."

"Yes, yes."

"And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare his
skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your Serene
Highness."

"Yes... Yes..." Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more and
more as he looked at Pierre.

Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to
Pierre's side near Kutuzov and in a most natural manner, without
raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted
conversation:

"The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What
heroism, Count!"

Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by his
Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov's attention would be caught by those
words, and so it was.

"What are you saying about the militia?" he asked Boris.

"Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness--for death--they have put
on clean shirts."

"Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!" said Kutuzov; and he closed his
eyes and swayed his head. "A matchless people!" he repeated with a sigh.

"So you want to smell gunpowder?" he said to Pierre. "Yes, it's a
pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife's adorers. Is
she well? My quarters are at your service."

And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began looking about
absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.

Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew
Kaysarov, his adjutant's brother.

"Those verses... those verses of Marin's... how do they go, eh? Those he
wrote about Gerakov: 'Lectures for the corps inditing'... Recite them,
recite them!" said he, evidently preparing to laugh.

Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm of
the verses.

When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to him and took his hand.

"I am very glad to meet you here, Count," he said aloud, regardless
of the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute and solemn
tone. "On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us is fated to
survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that I regret the
misunderstandings that occurred between us and should wish you not to
have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me."

Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to him.
With tears in his eyes Dolokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.

Boris said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to
Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line.

"It will interest you," said he.

"Yes, very much," replied Pierre.

Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and his
suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the line.





CHAPTER XXIII


From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which, when
they had looked at it from the hill, the officer had pointed out as
being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant new-mown hay
lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into the village of
Borodino and thence turned to the left, passing an enormous number of
troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where militiamen were digging.
This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which afterwards became known as
the Raevski Redoubt, or the Knoll Battery, but Pierre paid no special
attention to it. He did not know that it would become more memorable to
him than any other spot on the plain of Borodino.

They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the soldiers were
dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode
downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if by
hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the furrows
of the plowed land, and reached some fleches * which were still being
dug.


    * A kind of entrenchment.


At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevardino
Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several
horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon or
Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of
horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the
scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men
rode away from the mound and disappeared.

Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began explaining
the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him, straining each
faculty to understand the essential points of the impending battle, but
was mortified to feel that his mental capacity was inadequate for the
task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen stopped speaking and,
noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly said to him:

"I don't think this interests you?"

"On the contrary it's very interesting!" replied Pierre not quite
truthfully.

From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along a road
winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of the
wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the tramp of
the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the road in front
of them for some time, arousing general attention and laughter, and only
when several voices shouted at it did it dart to one side and disappear
in the thicket. After going through the wood for about a mile and a half
they came out on a glade where troops of Tuchkov's corps were stationed
to defend the left flank.

Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and with
much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great military
importance. In front of Tuchkov's troops was some high ground not
occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake, saying
that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the country around
unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the generals expressed
the same opinion. One in particular declared with martial heat that they
were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen on his own authority ordered
the troops to occupy the high ground. This disposition on the left flank
increased Pierre's doubt of his own capacity to understand military
matters. Listening to Bennigsen and the generals criticizing the
position of the troops behind the hill, he quite understood them and
shared their opinion, but for that very reason he could not understand
how the man who put them there behind the hill could have made so gross
and palpable a blunder.

Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen supposed,
put there to defend the position, but were in a concealed position as
an ambush, that they should not be seen and might be able to strike an
approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not know this and moved
the troops forward according to his own ideas without mentioning the
matter to the commander in chief.





CHAPTER XXIV


On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on his
elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkovo at the further
end of his regiment's encampment. Through a gap in the broken wall he
could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty year-old birches
with their lower branches lopped off, a field on which shocks of
oats were standing, and some bushes near which rose the smoke of
campfires--the soldiers' kitchens.

Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed to
him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable as
he had done seven years before at Austerlitz.

He had received and given the orders for next day's battle and had
nothing more to do. But his thoughts--the simplest, clearest, and
therefore most terrible thoughts--would give him no peace. He knew that
tomorrow's battle would be the most terrible of all he had taken
part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of death
presented itself to him--not in relation to any worldly matter or with
reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to himself, to
his own soul--vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as a certainty. And
from the height of this perception all that had previously tormented and
preoccupied him suddenly became illumined by a cold white light without
shadows, without perspective, without distinction of outline. All life
appeared to him like magic-lantern pictures at which he had long been
gazing by artificial light through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those
badly daubed pictures in clear daylight and without a glass. "Yes,
yes! There they are, those false images that agitated, enraptured,
and tormented me," said he to himself, passing in review the principal
pictures of the magic lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold
white daylight of his clear perception of death. "There they are, those
rudely painted figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious.
Glory, the good of society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself--how
important these pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they
seemed to be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the
cold white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me." The
three great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his
love for a woman, his father's death, and the French invasion which had
overrun half Russia. "Love... that little girl who seemed to me brimming
over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made romantic plans
of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I was!" he said aloud
bitterly. "Ah me! I believed in some ideal love which was to keep her
faithful to me for the whole year of my absence! Like the gentle dove
in the fable she was to pine apart from me.... But it was much simpler
really.... It was all very simple and horrible."

"When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his
land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside,
unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his path,
and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess Mary says
it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when he is not
here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is the trial
intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And tomorrow I
shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one of our own
men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as one of them
did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by head and heels
and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses, and new
conditions of life will arise, which will seem quite ordinary to others
and about which I shall know nothing. I shall not exist..."

He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with their
motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. "To die... to be
killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this should still
be, but no me...."

And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the
smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed
terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose
quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.

After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. "Who's that?"
he cried.

The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov's squadron commander,
but now from lack of officers a battalion commander, shyly entered the
shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental paymaster.

Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come
about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss
them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.

"Devil take it!" said the voice of a man stumbling over something.

Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped
over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It was
unpleasant to Prince Andrew to meet people of his own set in general,
and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful moments of
his last visit to Moscow.

"You? What a surprise!" said he. "What brings you here? This is
unexpected!"

As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness--they
expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached
the shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andrew's face he felt
constrained and ill at ease.

"I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests me," said
Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word
"interesting." "I wish to see the battle."

"Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would they
stop it?" said Prince Andrew sarcastically. "Well, and how's Moscow? And
my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?" he asked seriously.

"Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to see them, but
missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow."





CHAPTER XXV


The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently
reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and have
tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed with
surprise at Pierre's huge stout figure and listened to his talk of
Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden. Prince
Andrew remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding that Pierre
addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured battalion commander.

"So you understand the whole position of our troops?" Prince Andrew
interrupted him.

"Yes--that is, how do you mean?" said Pierre. "Not being a military man
I can't say I have understood it fully, but I understand the general
position."

"Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may," said
Prince Andrew.

"Oh!" said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at Prince
Andrew. "Well, and what do you think of Kutuzov's appointment?" he
asked.

"I was very glad of his appointment, that's all I know," replied Prince
Andrew.

"And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are saying
heaven knows what about him.... What do you think of him?"

"Ask them," replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.

Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly interrogative smile
with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.

"We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your
excellency," said Timokhin timidly, and continually turning to glance at
his colonel.

"Why so?" asked Pierre.

"Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you. Why, when
we were retreating from Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick or a wisp
of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would get it all;
wasn't it so, your excellency?" and again Timokhin turned to the prince.
"But we daren't. In our regiment two officers were court-martialed for
that kind of thing. But when his Serenity took command everything became
straight forward. Now we see light..."

"Then why was it forbidden?"

Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to answer
such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.

"Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the
enemy," said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. "It is very sound:
one can't permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to
marauding. At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French might
outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand
this," cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him
involuntarily: "he could not understand that there, for the first time,
we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit in the
men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the French for
two days, and that that success had increased our strength tenfold. He
ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and losses went for nothing.
He had no thought of betraying us, he tried to do the best he could,
he thought out everything, and that is why he is unsuitable. He is
unsuitable now, just because he plans out everything very thoroughly and
accurately as every German has to. How can I explain?... Well, say your
father has a German valet, and he is a splendid valet and satisfies your
father's requirements better than you could, then it's all right to let
him serve. But if your father is mortally sick you'll send the valet
away and attend to your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands,
and will soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could.
So it has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could
serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in danger
she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have been making him
out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the only result will
be that afterwards, ashamed of their false accusations, they will make
him out a hero or a genius instead of a traitor, and that will be still
more unjust. He is an honest and very punctilious German."

"And they say he's a skillful commander," rejoined Pierre.

"I don't understand what is meant by 'a skillful commander,'" replied
Prince Andrew ironically.

"A skillful commander?" replied Pierre. "Why, one who foresees all
contingencies... and foresees the adversary's intentions."

"But that's impossible," said Prince Andrew as if it were a matter
settled long ago.

Pierre looked at him in surprise.

"And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?" he remarked.

"Yes," replied Prince Andrew, "but with this little difference, that
in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are not
limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is always
stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while
in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes
weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies of troops can
never be known to anyone. Believe me," he went on, "if things
depended on arrangements made by the staff, I should be there making
arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve here in
the regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider that on us tomorrow's
battle will depend and not on those others.... Success never depends,
and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or even on numbers,
and least of all on position."

"But on what then?"

"On the feeling that is in me and in him," he pointed to Timokhin, "and
in each soldier."

Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his commander in alarm
and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity
Prince Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from
expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.

"A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it! Why did we lose
the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal to ours,
but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the battle,
and we did lose it. And we said so because we had nothing to fight for
there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as we could.
'We've lost, so let us run,' and we ran. If we had not said that till
the evening, heaven knows what might not have happened. But tomorrow we
shan't say it! You talk about our position, the left flank weak and the
right flank too extended," he went on. "That's all nonsense, there's
nothing of the kind. But what awaits us tomorrow? A hundred million most
diverse chances which will be decided on the instant by the fact that
our men or theirs run or do not run, and that this man or that man is
killed, but all that is being done at present is only play. The fact is
that those men with whom you have ridden round the position not only
do not help matters, but hinder. They are only concerned with their own
petty interests."

"At such a moment?" said Pierre reproachfully.

"At such a moment!" Prince Andrew repeated. "To them it is only a moment
affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an extra cross
or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a hundred
thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to fight, and
the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight and the side
that fights more fiercely and spares itself least will win. And if you
like I will tell you that whatever happens and whatever muddles those at
the top may make, we shall win tomorrow's battle. Tomorrow, happen what
may, we shall win!"

"There now, your excellency! That's the truth, the real truth," said
Timokhin. "Who would spare himself now? The soldiers in my battalion,
believe me, wouldn't drink their vodka! 'It's not the day for that!'
they say."

All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out of the shed
with them, giving final orders to the adjutant. After they had gone
Pierre approached Prince Andrew and was about to start a conversation
when they heard the clatter of three horses' hoofs on the road not far
from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince Andrew recognized
Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack. They rode close by
continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew involuntarily heard these
words:

"Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht genug
Preis geben," * said one of them.


     * "The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently
     commend that view."


"Oh, ja," said the other, "der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwachen,
so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung
nehmen." *


     * "Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of
     course one cannot take into account the loss of private
     individuals."


"Oh, no," agreed the other.

"Extend widely!" said Prince Andrew with an angry snort, when they had
ridden past. "In that 'extend' were my father, son, and sister, at
Bald Hills. That's all the same to him! That's what I was saying to
you--those German gentlemen won't win the battle tomorrow but will only
make all the mess they can, because they have nothing in their German
heads but theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven't in their
hearts the one thing needed tomorrow--that which Timokhin has. They
have yielded up all Europe to him, and have now come to teach us. Fine
teachers!" and again his voice grew shrill.

"So you think we shall win tomorrow's battle?" asked Pierre.

"Yes, yes," answered Prince Andrew absently. "One thing I would do if
I had the power," he began again, "I would not take prisoners. Why take
prisoners? It's chivalry! The French have destroyed my home and are on
their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are outraging me
every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are all criminals.
And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army. They should be executed!
Since they are my foes they cannot be my friends, whatever may have been
said at Tilsit."

"Yes, yes," muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince Andrew.
"I quite agree with you!"

The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk hill and all
that day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He now
understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the
impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and
stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up
for him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in
physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen,
and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly, and as
it were lightheartedly.

"Not take prisoners," Prince Andrew continued: "That by itself would
quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have
played at war--that's what's vile! We play at magnanimity and all that
stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she
is so kindhearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating the
calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of
chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It's
all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they humbugged
us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people's houses, issue
false paper money, and worst of all they kill my children and my
father, and then talk of rules of war and magnanimity to foes! Take no
prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who has come to this as I have
through the same sufferings..."

Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to him whether or
not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his
speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a
few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips
quivered as he began speaking.

"If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war only
when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then there would
not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended Michael Ivanovich. And
when there was a war, like this one, it would be war! And then the
determination of the troops would be quite different. Then all these
Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading would not follow
him into Russia, and we should not go to fight in Austria and Prussia
without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in
life; and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to
accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in
that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is
now, war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. The military
calling is the most highly honored.

"But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the
habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war
are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country's
inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud
and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class
are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance,
cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the
highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese,
wear military uniforms, and he who kills most people receives the
highest rewards.

"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill
and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for
having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they
announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed
the greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear
them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill, piercing voice. "Ah, my
friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. I see that I have
begun to understand too much. And it doesn't do for man to taste of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil.... Ah, well, it's not for long!" he
added.

"However, you're sleepy, and it's time for me to sleep. Go back to
Gorki!" said Prince Andrew suddenly.

"Oh no!" Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with frightened,
compassionate eyes.

"Go, go! Before a battle one must have one's sleep out," repeated Prince
Andrew.

He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed him. "Good-by, be
off!" he shouted. "Whether we meet again or not..." and turning away
hurriedly he entered the shed.

It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out whether the
expression of Prince Andrew's face was angry or tender.

For some time he stood in silence considering whether he should follow
him or go away. "No, he does not want it!" Pierre concluded. "And I know
that this is our last meeting!" He sighed deeply and rode back to Gorki.

On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a rug, but he could
not sleep.

He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his imagination. On
one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly recalled an evening
in Petersburg. Natasha with animated and excited face was telling him
how she had gone to look for mushrooms the previous summer and had lost
her way in the big forest. She incoherently described the depths of
the forest, her feelings, and a talk with a beekeeper she met, and
constantly interrupted her story to say: "No, I can't! I'm not telling
it right; no, you don't understand," though he encouraged her by saying
that he did understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to
say. But Natasha was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that
they did not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced
that day and wished to convey. "He was such a delightful old man, and
it was so dark in the forest... and he had such kind... No, I can't
describe it," she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew smiled
now the same happy smile as then when he had looked into her eyes. "I
understood her," he thought. "I not only understood her, but it was
just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that frankness of
soul--that very soul of hers which seemed to be fettered by her body--it
was that soul I loved in her... loved so strongly and happily..." and
suddenly he remembered how his love had ended. "He did not need anything
of that kind. He neither saw nor understood anything of the sort. He
only saw in her a pretty and fresh young girl, with whom he did not
deign to unite his fate. And I?... and he is still alive and gay!"

Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned him, and again began
pacing up and down in front of the shed.





CHAPTER XXVI


On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de Beausset, prefect
of the French Emperor's palace, arrived at Napoleon's quarters at
Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier, the former from Paris and the latter from
Madrid.

Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a box he had
brought for the Emperor to be carried before him and entered the first
compartment of Napoleon's tent, where he began opening the box while
conversing with Napoleon's aides-de-camp who surrounded him.

Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance talking to some
generals of his acquaintance.

The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was finishing his
toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting, he presented now his back and
now his plump hairy chest to the brush with which his valet was rubbing
him down. Another valet, with his finger over the mouth of a bottle,
was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor's pampered body with an
expression which seemed to say that he alone knew where and how much Eau
de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon's short hair was wet and
matted on the forehead, but his face, though puffy and yellow, expressed
physical satisfaction. "Go on, harder, go on!" he muttered to the valet
who was rubbing him, slightly twitching and grunting. An aide-de-camp,
who had entered the bedroom to report to the Emperor the number of
prisoners taken in yesterday's action, was standing by the door after
delivering his message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon,
frowning, looked at him from under his brows.

"No prisoners!" said he, repeating the aide-de-camp's words. "They
are forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the Russian
army.... Go on... harder, harder!" he muttered, hunching his back and
presenting his fat shoulders.

"All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier too," he said,
nodding to the aide-de-camp.

"Yes, sire," and the aide-de-camp disappeared through the door of the
tent.

Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing the blue uniform of
the Guards he went with firm quick steps to the reception room.

De Beausset's hands meanwhile were busily engaged arranging the present
he had brought from the Empress, on two chairs directly in front of the
entrance. But Napoleon had dressed and come out with such unexpected
rapidity that he had not time to finish arranging the surprise.

Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and guessed that they were
not ready. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure of giving him
a surprise, so he pretended not to see de Beausset and called Fabvier to
him, listening silently and with a stern frown to what Fabvier told him
of the heroism and devotion of his troops fighting at Salamanca, at
the other end of Europe, with but one thought--to be worthy of their
Emperor--and but one fear--to fail to please him. The result of
that battle had been deplorable. Napoleon made ironic remarks during
Fabvier's account, as if he had not expected that matters could go
otherwise in his absence.

"I must make up for that in Moscow," said Napoleon. "I'll see you
later," he added, and summoned de Beausset, who by that time had
prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and covered
it with a cloth.

De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow which only the
old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to make, and approached him,
presenting an envelope.

Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear.

"You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?" he
asked, suddenly changing his former stern expression for a most cordial
tone.

"Sire, all Paris regrets your absence," replied de Beausset as was
proper.

But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say something of this
kind, and though in his lucid moments he knew it was untrue, he was
pleased to hear it from him. Again he honored him by touching his ear.

"I am very sorry to have made you travel so far," said he.

"Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates of Moscow,"
replied de Beausset.

Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absent-mindedly, glanced to the
right. An aide-de-camp approached with gliding steps and offered him a
gold snuffbox, which he took.

"Yes, it has happened luckily for you," he said, raising the open
snuffbox to his nose. "You are fond of travel, and in three days you
will see Moscow. You surely did not expect to see that Asiatic capital.
You will have a pleasant journey."

De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste for travel (of
which he had not till then been aware).

"Ha, what's this?" asked Napoleon, noticing that all the courtiers were
looking at something concealed under a cloth.

With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and without turning his
back to the Emperor retired two steps, twitching off the cloth at the
same time, and said:

"A present to Your Majesty from the Empress."

It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of the son borne
to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, the boy whom for
some reason everyone called "The King of Rome."

A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the Christ in the Sistine
Madonna was depicted playing at stick and ball. The ball represented the
terrestrial globe and the stick in his other hand a scepter.

Though it was not clear what the artist meant to express by depicting
the so-called King of Rome spiking the earth with a stick, the allegory
apparently seemed to Napoleon, as it had done to all who had seen it in
Paris, quite clear and very pleasing.

"The King of Rome!" he said, pointing to the portrait with a graceful
gesture. "Admirable!"

With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the expression of
his face at will, he drew nearer to the portrait and assumed a look
of pensive tenderness. He felt that what he now said and did would
be historical, and it seemed to him that it would now be best for
him--whose grandeur enabled his son to play stick and ball with the
terrestrial globe--to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the simplest
paternal tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved forward, glanced round
at a chair (which seemed to place itself under him), and sat down on it
before the portrait. At a single gesture from him everyone went out on
tiptoe, leaving the great man to himself and his emotion.

Having sat still for a while he touched--himself not knowing why--the
thick spot of paint representing the highest light in the portrait,
rose, and recalled de Beausset and the officer on duty. He ordered the
portrait to be carried outside his tent, that the Old Guard, stationed
round it, might not be deprived of the pleasure of seeing the King of
Rome, the son and heir of their adored monarch.

And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of breakfasting with
him, they heard, as Napoleon had anticipated, the rapturous cries of the
officers and men of the Old Guard who had run up to see the portrait.

"Vive l'Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l'Empereur!" came those
ecstatic cries.

After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset's presence dictated his order of
the day to the army.

"Short and energetic!" he remarked when he had read over the
proclamation which he had dictated straight off without corrections. It
ran:


Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Victory depends on
you. It is essential for us; it will give us all we need: comfortable
quarters and a speedy return to our country. Behave as you did at
Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our remotest posterity
recall your achievements this day with pride. Let it be said of each of
you: "He was in the great battle before Moscow!"


"Before Moscow!" repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who was
so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of the tent
to where the horses stood saddled.

"Your Majesty is too kind!" replied de Beausset to the invitation to
accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride and
was afraid of doing so.

But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount. When
Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before his
son's portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned.

"Take him away!" he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic gesture to
the portrait. "It is too soon for him to see a field of battle."

De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed deeply, to
indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor's words.





CHAPTER XXVII


On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us, Napoleon spent
the whole day on horseback inspecting the locality, considering plans
submitted to him by his marshals, and personally giving commands to his
generals.

The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolocha had
been dislocated by the capture of the Shevardino Redoubt on the
twenty-fourth, and part of the line--the left flank--had been drawn
back. That part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it the
ground was more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to anyone,
military or not, that it was here the French should attack. It would
seem that not much consideration was needed to reach this conclusion,
nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the Emperor and his
marshals, nor was there any need of that special and supreme quality
called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to Napoleon; yet the
historians who described the event later and the men who then surrounded
Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise.

Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality with a profound
air and in silence, nodded with approval or shook his head dubiously,
and without communicating to the generals around him the profound
course of ideas which guided his decisions merely gave them his final
conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to a suggestion
from Davout, who was now called Prince d'Eckmuhl, to turn the Russian
left wing, Napoleon said it should not be done, without explaining
why not. To a proposal made by General Campan (who was to attack the
fleches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon agreed, though
the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to remark that a movement
through the woods was dangerous and might disorder the division.

Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino Redoubt, Napoleon
pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots where two
batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against the Russian
entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them, the field
artillery should be placed.

After giving these and other commands he returned to his tent, and the
dispositions for the battle were written down from his dictation.

These dispositions, of which the French historians write with enthusiasm
and other historians with profound respect, were as follows:


At dawn the two new batteries established during the night on the
plain occupied by the Prince d'Eckmuhl will open fire on the opposing
batteries of the enemy.

At the same time the commander of the artillery of the 1st Corps,
General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan's division and all the
howitzers of Dessaix's and Friant's divisions, will move forward, open
fire, and overwhelm with shellfire the enemy's battery, against which
will operate:

        24 guns of the artillery of the Guards
        30 guns of Campan's division

 and     8 guns of Friant's and Dessaix's divisions
        --

 in all 62 guns.


The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouche, will
place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all, on the
flanks of the battery that is to bombard the entrenchment on the left,
which will have forty guns in all directed against it.

General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all the
howitzers of the Guard's artillery against either one or other of the
entrenchments.

During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the wood
on the village and turn the enemy's position.

General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first
fortification.

After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given in
accordance with the enemy's movements.

The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of the
right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand's division and of
the vice-King's division will open a heavy fire on seeing the attack
commence on the right wing.

The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three bridges,
advancing to the same heights as Morand's and Gibrard's divisions, which
under his leadership will be directed against the redoubt and come into
line with the rest of the forces.

All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et
methode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.

The Imperial Camp near Mozhaysk,

September, 6, 1812.



These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one allows
oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his genius,
related to Napoleon's orders to deal with four points--four different
orders. Not one of these was, or could be, carried out.

In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the
spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which
were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and
shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be
done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not
carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air until
the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon's instructions, moved them
forward.

The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through the
wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done and
was not done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village through the
wood, met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and did not turn
the Russian position.

The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to seize
the first fortification. General Campan's division did not seize the
first fortification but was driven back, for on emerging from the wood
it had to reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was unaware.

The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village (Borodino)
and cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same heights as
Morand's and Gdrard's divisions (for whose movements no directions are
given), which under his leadership will be directed against the redoubt
and come into line with the rest of the forces.

As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible
sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders
given him, he was to advance from the left through Borodino to the
redoubt while the divisions of Morand and Gerard were to advance
simultaneously from the front.

All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could
not be executed. After passing through Borodino the vice-King was driven
back to the Kolocha and could get no farther; while the divisions of
Morand and Gerard did not take the redoubt but were driven back, and the
redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle by the cavalry (a thing
probably unforeseen and not heard of by Napoleon). So not one of
the orders in the disposition was, or could be, executed. But in the
disposition it is said that, after the fight has commenced in this
manner, orders will be given in accordance with the enemy's movements,
and so it might be supposed that all necessary arrangements would be
made by Napoleon during the battle. But this was not and could not be
done, for during the whole battle Napoleon was so far away that, as
appeared later, he could not know the course of the battle and not one
of his orders during the fight could be executed.





CHAPTER XXVIII


Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of Borodino
because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a cold the
orders he gave before and during the battle would have been still more
full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face of the world
have been changed. To historians who believe that Russia was shaped by
the will of one man--Peter the Great--and that France from a republic
became an empire and French armies went to Russia at the will of one
man--Napoleon--to say that Russia remained a power because Napoleon
had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August may seem logical and
convincing.

If it had depended on Napoleon's will to fight or not to fight the
battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended on
his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of his will
might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who omitted to bring
Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth would have been
the savior of Russia. Along that line of thought such a deduction is
indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction Voltaire made in jest
(without knowing what he was jesting at) when he saw that the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX's stomach being deranged. But
to men who do not admit that Russia was formed by the will of one man,
Peter I, or that the French Empire was formed and the war with Russia
begun by the will of one man, Napoleon, that argument seems not merely
untrue and irrational, but contrary to all human reality. To the
question of what causes historic events another answer presents itself,
namely, that the course of human events is predetermined from on
high--depends on the coincidence of the wills of all who take part
in the events, and that a Napoleon's influence on the course of these
events is purely external and fictitious.

Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX's will, though he gave the
order for it and thought it was done as a result of that order; and
strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of eighty thousand
men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon's will, though he ordered the
commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it was done
because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions appear, yet human
dignity--which tells me that each of us is, if not more at least not
less a man than the great Napoleon--demands the acceptance of that
solution of the question, and historic investigation abundantly confirms
it.

At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one.
That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who killed
people.

The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of Borodino
not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition. The whole
army--French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch--hungry, ragged, and
weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army blocking their road
to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be drunk. Had Napoleon then
forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and
have proceeded to fight the Russians because it was inevitable.

When they heard Napoleon's proclamation offering them, as compensation
for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about their having been
in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive l'Empereur!" just as they
had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of the portrait of the boy
piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy stick, and just as they would
have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any nonsense that might be told them.
There was nothing left for them to do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go
to fight, in order to get food and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it
was not because of Napoleon's commands that they killed their fellow
men.

And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none
of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know what
was going on before him. So the way in which these people killed one
another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred independently of
him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took
part in the common action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took
place by his will. And so the question whether he had or had not a
cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the
transport soldiers.

Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was
the cause of his dispositions not being as well planned as on former
occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as
previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's cold on
the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.

The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even
better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories. His
pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than formerly, but
much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders only seem worse
than previous ones because the battle of Borodino was the first Napoleon
did not win. The profoundest and most excellent dispositions and orders
seem very bad, and every learned militarist criticizes them with looks
of importance, when they relate to a battle that has been lost, and the
very worst dispositions and orders seem very good, and serious people
fill whole volumes to demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a
battle that has been won.

The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of Austerlitz were
a model of perfection for that kind of composition, but still they were
criticized--criticized for their very perfection, for their excessive
minuteness.

Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as
representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other
battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he
inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did not
contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the field of
battle, but with his great tact and military experience carried out his
role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.





CHAPTER XXIX


On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon remarked:

"The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!"

Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to him
about Paris and about some changes he meant to make in the Empress'
household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details
relating to the court.

He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset's love of
travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon who
knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron
while a patient is being strapped to the operating table. "The matter is
in my hands and is clear and definite in my head. When the time comes to
set to work I shall do it as no one else could, but now I can jest, and
the more I jest and the calmer I am the more tranquil and confident you
ought to be, and the more amazed at my genius."

Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest before
the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next day. He
was so much interested in that task that he was unable to sleep, and
in spite of his cold which had grown worse from the dampness of the
evening, he went into the large division of the tent at three o'clock in
the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked whether the Russians had
not withdrawn, and was told that the enemy's fires were still in the
same places. He nodded approval.

The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.

"Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?" Napoleon
asked him.

"Without doubt, sire," replied Rapp.

Napoleon looked at him.

"Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at Smolensk?"
continued Rapp. "The wine is drawn and must be drunk."

Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head on his
hand.

"This poor army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly since
Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always said so
and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the Guards
are intact?" he remarked interrogatively.

"Yes, sire," replied Rapp.

Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his watch.
He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was impossible
to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for the orders had
all been given and were now being executed.

"Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of the
Guards?" asked Napoleon sternly.

"Yes, sire."

"The rice too?"

Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor's order about the rice, but
Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing that
his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch. Napoleon
ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently sipped his
own.

"I have neither taste nor smell," he remarked, sniffing at his glass.
"This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine--what is the good of
medicine when it can't cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these lozenges but
they don't help at all. What can doctors cure? One can't cure anything.
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its
nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it
will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.
Our body is like a perfect watch that should go for a certain time; the
watchmaker cannot open it, he can only adjust it by fumbling, and that
blindfold.... Yes, our body is just a machine for living, that is all."

And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was fond,
Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.

"Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?" asked he. "It is the art of
being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That's all."

Rapp made no reply.

"Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!" said Napoleon. "We shall
see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three weeks
and did not once mount a horse to inspect his entrenchments.... We shall
see!"

He looked at his watch. It was still only four o'clock. He did not feel
sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do. He
rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went
out of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible
moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were dimly
burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of the
Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and the
rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to take
up their positions were clearly audible.

Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires and
listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman in
a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had drawn
himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon stopped
in front of him.

"What year did you enter the service?" he asked with that affectation
of military bluntness and geniality with which he always addressed the
soldiers.

The man answered the question.

"Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?"

"It has, Your Majesty."

Napoleon nodded and walked away.


At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino.

It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud lay in
the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out in the
faint morning light.

On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died away in
the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a third report
shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed solemnly near by on the
right.

The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang out
and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another.

Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he
dismounted. The game had begun.





CHAPTER XXX


On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre ordered
his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the morning,
and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a corner Boris
had given up to him.

Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already left
the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his groom was
shaking him.

"Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!" he kept repeating
pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without looking at
him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up.

"What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked, waking up.

"Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged soldier. "All the
gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past long
ago."

Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was bright,
fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from behind a
cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still half broken
by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on the
dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on the
windows, the fence, and on Pierre's horses standing before the hut. The
roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant accompanied by a
Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.

"It's time, Count; it's time!" cried the adjutant.

Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down the
street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of battle the
day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there, members of the
staff could be heard conversing in French, and Kutuzov's gray head in
a white cap with a red band was visible, his gray nape sunk between his
shoulders. He was looking through a field glass down the highroad before
him.

Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before him,
spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired from that
spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of troops and
covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting rays of the
bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre, cast upon it
through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of rosy, golden tinted
light and long dark shadows. The forest at the farthest extremity of
the panorama seemed carved in some precious stone of a yellowish-green
color; its undulating outline was silhouetted against the horizon and
was pierced beyond Valuevo by the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops.
Nearer at hand glittered golden cornfields interspersed with copses.
There were troops to be seen everywhere, in front and to the right and
left. All this was vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed
Pierre most of all was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino
and the hollows on both sides of the Kolocha.

Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially to
the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls into
the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve, and to
become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and magically colored
and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns mingled with this mist,
and over the whole expanse and through that mist the rays of the morning
sun were reflected, flashing back like lightning from the water, from
the dew, and from the bayonets of the troops crowded together by the
riverbanks and in Borodino. A white church could be seen through the
mist, and here and there the roofs of huts in Borodino as well as dense
masses of soldiers, or green ammunition chests and ordnance. And all
this moved, or seemed to move, as the smoke and mist spread out over
the whole space. Just as in the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so
along the entire line outside and above it and especially in the woods
and fields to the left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high
ground, clouds of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of
nothing, now singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others
dense, which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over
the whole expanse.

These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of the firing
produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.

"Puff!"--suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging from
violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!" came the report a second
later.

"Puff! puff!"--and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending
together; and "boom, boom!" came the sounds confirming what the eye had
seen.

Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a round
compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke floating
to one side, and--"puff" (with a pause)--"puff, puff!" three and
then four more appeared and then from each, with the same
interval--"boom--boom, boom!" came the fine, firm, precise sounds in
reply. It seemed as if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and sometimes
stood still while woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran past them.
From the left, over fields and bushes, those large balls of smoke were
continually appearing followed by their solemn reports, while nearer
still, in the hollows and woods, there burst from the muskets small
cloudlets that had no time to become balls, but had their little echoes
in just the same way. "Trakh-ta-ta-takh!" came the frequent crackle of
musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in comparison with the reports
of the cannon.

Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, that
movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and his suite,
to compare his impressions with those of others. They were all looking
at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed to him, with the
same feelings. All their faces were now shining with that latent warmth
of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before and had fully understood
after his talk with Prince Andrew.

"Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!" Kutuzov was
saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from the
battlefield.

Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way down
the knoll.

"To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly in reply to one
of the staff who asked where he was going.

"I'll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and followed the general.

The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went to
his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the quietest,
clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out his toes
pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his spectacles
were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and reins, he
galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to smile as they
watched him from the knoll.





CHAPTER XXXI


Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was galloping
turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him, galloped
in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He tried to pass
either in front of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers
everywhere, all with the same preoccupied expression and busy with
some unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same
dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white hat,
who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under his horse's
hoofs.

"Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted at him.

Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,
bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying horse,
galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.

There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood firing.
Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had come to the
bridge across the Kolocha between Gorki and Borodino, which the French
(having occupied Borodino) were attacking in the first phase of the
battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of him and that
soldiers were doing something on both sides of it and in the meadow,
among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken no notice of amid the
smoke of the campfires the day before; but despite the incessant firing
going on there he had no idea that this was the field of battle. He did
not notice the sound of the bullets whistling from every side, or the
projectiles that flew over him, did not see the enemy on the other side
of the river, and for a long time did not notice the killed and wounded,
though many fell near him. He looked about him with a smile which did
not leave his face.

"Why's that fellow in front of the line?" shouted somebody at him again.

"To the left!... Keep to the right!" the men shouted to him.

Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of Raevski's
adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at him, evidently
also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing him he nodded.

"How have you got here?" he said, and galloped on.

Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid of
getting in someone's way again, galloped after the adjutant.

"What's happening here? May I come with you?" he asked.

"One moment, one moment!" replied the adjutant, and riding up to a stout
colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message and
then addressed Pierre.

"Why have you come here, Count?" he asked with a smile. "Still
inquisitive?"

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.

"Here it's tolerable," said he, "but with Bagration on the left flank
they're getting it frightfully hot."

"Really?" said Pierre. "Where is that?"

"Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and in
our battery it is still bearable," said the adjutant. "Will you come?"

"Yes, I'll come with you," replied Pierre, looking round for his groom.

It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or being
carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over the day
before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay, with his
head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.

"Why haven't they carried him away?" Pierre was about to ask, but seeing
the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking that way, he
checked himself.

Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the
adjutant to Raevski's Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the adjutant's
and jolted him at every step.

"You don't seem to be used to riding, Count?" remarked the adjutant.

"No it's not that, but her action seems so jerky," said Pierre in a
puzzled tone.

"Why... she's wounded!" said the adjutant. "In the off foreleg above the
knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your baptism of
fire!"

Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the artillery
which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening them with the
noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was cool and quiet,
with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant dismounted and walked up
the hill on foot.

"Is the general here?" asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll.

"He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way," someone told him,
pointing to the right.

The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now.

"Don't trouble about me," said Pierre. "I'll go up onto the knoll if I
may?"

"Yes, do. You'll see everything from there and it's less dangerous, and
I'll come for you."

Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not meet
again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm that
day.

The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards known
to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raevski's Redoubt, and to the
French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du centre,
around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French regarded as
the key to the whole position.

This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which trenches had
been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that were being fired
through openings in the earthwork.

In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also fired
incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When ascending
that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which small trenches
had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was the most
important point of the battle.

On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought it one
of the least significant parts of the field.

Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench
surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with
an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about the
battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the soldiers
who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running past
him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being fired
continually one after another with a deafening roar, enveloping the
whole neighborhood in powder smoke.

In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in support,
here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their work were
separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced a common and
as it were family feeling of animation.

The intrusion of Pierre's nonmilitary figure in a white hat made an
unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at him with
surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior artillery
officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if
to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him with curiosity.

A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just
out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two guns
entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.

"Sir," he said, "permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not be
here."

The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre.
But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the white hat
was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench
with a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up
and down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard,
their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change into a
kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers feel for their dogs,
cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that live with the
regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their family, adopted him,
gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made kindly fun of him among
themselves.

A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around
with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown up.

"And how's it you're not afraid, sir, really now?" a red-faced,
broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a set
of sound, white teeth.

"Are you afraid, then?" said Pierre.

"What else do you expect?" answered the soldier. "She has no mercy, you
know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards. One can't
help being afraid," he said laughing.

Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.
They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and the
discovery that he did so delighted them.

"It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's wonderful!
There's a gentleman for you!"

"To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered round
Pierre.

The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the first or
second time and therefore treated both his superiors and the men with
great precision and formality.

The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing more
intense over the whole field, especially to the left where Bagration's
fleches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing made it
almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole attention
was engrossed by watching the family circle--separated from all
else--formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious feeling
of joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the battlefield
was now replaced by another, especially since he had seen that soldier
lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the slope of the trench, he
observed the faces of those around him.

By ten o'clock some twenty men had already been carried away from the
battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more
frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled around.
But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and merry voices
and jokes were heard on all sides.

"A live one!" shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.

"Not this way! To the infantry!" added another with loud laughter,
seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.

"Are you bowing to a friend, eh?" remarked another, chaffing a peasant
who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.

Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out to see
what was happening in front.

"They've withdrawn the front line, it has retired," said they, pointing
over the earthwork.

"Mind your own business," an old sergeant shouted at them. "If they've
retired it's because there's work for them to do farther back."

And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a
shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.

"To the fifth gun, wheel it up!" came shouts from one side.

"Now then, all together, like bargees!" rose the merry voices of those
who were moving the gun.

"Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman's hat off!" cried the red-faced
humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. "Awkward baggage!" he added
reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon wheel and a man's
leg.

"Now then, you foxes!" said another, laughing at some militiamen who,
stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man.

"So this gruel isn't to your taste? Oh, you crows! You're scared!" they
shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man whose leg
had been torn off.

"There, lads... oh, oh!" they mimicked the peasants, "they don't like it
at all!"

Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after
every loss, the liveliness increased more and more.

As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly and
rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to
what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire growing more and
more intense glowed in the faces of these men.

Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned to know
what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching this fire
which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was flaming up in the
same way in his own soul.

At ten o'clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in front of
the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet retreated. From the battery
they could be seen running back past it carrying their wounded on
their muskets. A general with his suite came to the battery, and after
speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look and went away again
having ordered the infantry supports behind the battery to lie down,
so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from amid the ranks of
infantry to the right of the battery came the sound of a drum and shouts
of command, and from the battery one saw how those ranks of infantry
moved forward.

Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly struck
by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was walking
backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.

The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their
long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few
minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back from
that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently in the
battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed. Around
the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No one any
longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted at for being
in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid strides from one
gun to another with a frowning face. The young officer, with his face
still more flushed, commanded the men more scrupulously than ever. The
soldiers handed up the charges, turned, loaded, and did their business
with strained smartness. They gave little jumps as they walked, as
though they were on springs.

The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire which
Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing beside the
commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his shako, ran up to
his superior.

"I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left. Are
we to continue firing?" he asked.

"Grapeshot!" the senior shouted, without answering the question, looking
over the wall of the trench.

Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and bending
double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing. Everything
became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre's eyes.

One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the earthwork, a
soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these sounds before,
now heard nothing else. On the right of the battery soldiers shouting
"Hurrah!" were running not forwards but backwards, it seemed to Pierre.

A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he was
standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before his eyes
and at the same instant plumped into something. Some militiamen who were
entering the battery ran back.

"All with grapeshot!" shouted the officer.

The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper informed
him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is no more of
some wine asked for) that there were no more charges.

"The scoundrels! What are they doing?" shouted the officer, turning to
Pierre.

The officer's face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered under
his frowning brow.

"Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!" he yelled,
angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men.

"I'll go," said Pierre.

The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite side.

"Don't fire.... Wait!" he shouted.

The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against
Pierre.

"Eh, sir, this is no place for you," said he, and ran down the slope.

Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer was
sitting.

One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in front,
beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. "Where am I going?"
he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green ammunition
wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to return or go on.
Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to the ground. At the
same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of flame, and immediately a
deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made his ears tingle.

When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on his
hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer existed,
only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched grass, and a
horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it, galloped past, while
another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering prolonged and
piercing cries.





CHAPTER XXXII


Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the battery,
as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him.

On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing something
there but that no shots were being fired from the battery. He had no
time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior officer lying on
the earth wall with his back turned as if he were examining something
down below and that one of the soldiers he had noticed before was
struggling forward shouting "Brothers!" and trying to free himself from
some men who were holding him by the arm. He also saw something else
that was strange.

But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed, that
the soldier shouting "Brothers!" was a prisoner, and that another man
had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had he run
into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in a blue
uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something. Instinctively
guarding against the shock--for they had been running together at full
speed before they saw one another--Pierre put out his hands and seized
the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one hand and by the
throat with the other. The officer, dropping his sword, seized Pierre by
his collar.

For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another's
unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and
what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him
prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently more
inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's strong
hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever tighter and
tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when just above their
heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled, and it seemed to Pierre
that the French officer's head had been torn off, so swiftly had he
ducked it.

Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further thought
as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to the battery
and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead and wounded who,
it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he reached the foot
of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian soldiers who,
stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and wildly toward
the battery. (This was the attack for which Ermolov claimed the credit,
declaring that only his courage and good luck made such a feat possible:
it was the attack in which he was said to have thrown some St. George's
Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery for the first soldiers to
take who got there.)

The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops shouting
"Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it was difficult
to call them back.

The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them was
a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds of
wounded--some known to Pierre and some unknown--Russians and French,
with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were carried on
stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto the knoll where
he had spent over an hour, and of that family circle which had received
him as a member he did not find a single one. There were many dead whom
he did not know, but some he recognized. The young officer still sat in
the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood at the edge of the earth
wall. The red-faced man was still twitching, but they did not carry him
away.

Pierre ran down the slope once more.

"Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have
done!" he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers
moving from the battlefield.

But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front and
especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be seething
in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not diminish, but
even increased to desperation like a man who, straining himself, shrieks
with all his remaining strength.





CHAPTER XXXIII


The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought within the seven
thousand feet between Borodino and Bagration's fleches. Beyond that
space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the Russians
with Uvarov's cavalry at midday, and on the other side, beyond Utitsa,
Poniatowski's collision with Tuchkov; but these two were detached and
feeble actions in comparison with what took place in the center of the
battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the fleches, beside the
wood, the chief action of the day took place on an open space visible
from both sides and was fought in the simplest and most artless way.

The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred
guns.

Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,
Campan's and Dessaix's, advanced from the French right, while Murat's
troops advanced on Borodino from their left.

From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the fleches were
two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as the crow flies
to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was happening there,
especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid the whole locality.
The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing against the fleches could
only be seen till they had entered the hollow that lay between them and
the fleches. As soon as they had descended into that hollow, the smoke
of the guns and musketry on the fleches grew so dense that it covered
the whole approach on that side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could
be caught of something black--probably men--and at times the glint of
bayonets. But whether they were moving or stationary, whether they were
French or Russian, could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.

The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight into
Napoleon's face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked at the
fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it looked as if
the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved. Sometimes shouts
were heard through the firing, but it was impossible to tell what was
being done there.

Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and in
its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and sometimes
Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he could not tell
where what he had seen was.

He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.

Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed intently at
the battlefield.

But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from where
he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which some of his
generals had taken their stand, but even from the fleches themselves--in
which by this time there were now Russian and now French soldiers,
alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive, frightened, or
maddened--even at those fleches themselves it was impossible to make out
what was taking place. There for several hours amid incessant cannon and
musketry fire, now Russians were seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now
infantry, and now cavalry: they appeared, fired, fell, collided, not
knowing what to do with one another, screamed, and ran back again.

From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from his
marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the progress
of the action, but all these reports were false, both because it was
impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at any given
moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the actual place
of conflict but reported what they had heard from others; and also
because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to Napoleon
circumstances changed and the news he brought was already becoming
false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings that
Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in the
hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished the
troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should form up
on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given--almost
as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino--the bridge had been
retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at which Pierre
had been present at the beginning of the battle.

An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and frightened face
and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been repulsed, Campan
wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time the adjutant had been
told that the French had been repulsed, the fleches had in fact been
recaptured by other French troops, and Davout was alive and only
slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily untrustworthy
reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either been executed before
he gave them or could not be and were not executed.

The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle
but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and only
occasionally went within musket range, made their own arrangements
without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in what direction to
fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry should run. But even
their orders, like Napoleon's, were seldom carried out, and then but
partially. For the most part things happened contrary to their orders.
Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on meeting grapeshot; soldiers
ordered to remain where they were, suddenly, seeing Russians
unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed back and sometimes forward,
and the cavalry dashed without orders in pursuit of the flying Russians.
In this way two cavalry regiments galloped through the Semenovsk hollow
and as soon as they reached the top of the incline turned round and
galloped full speed back again. The infantry moved in the same way,
sometimes running to quite other places than those they were ordered to
go to. All orders as to where and when to move the guns, when to send
infantry to shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry--all
such orders were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the
units concerned, without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less
Napoleon. They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling
orders or for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at
stake is what is dearest to man--his own life--and it sometimes seems
that safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and
these men who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to
the mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward
and backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops. All
their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the harm of
disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that flew over
the fields on which these men were floundering about. As soon as they
left the place where the balls and bullets were flying about, their
superiors, located in the background, re-formed them and brought them
under discipline and under the influence of that discipline led them
back to the zone of fire, where under the influence of fear of death
they lost their discipline and rushed about according to the chance
promptings of the throng.





CHAPTER XXXIV


Napoleon's generals--Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that region
of fire and sometimes even entered it--repeatedly led into it huge
masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always happened
in their former battles, instead of the news they expected of the
enemy's flight, these orderly masses returned thence as disorganized
and terrified mobs. The generals re-formed them, but their numbers
constantly decreased. In the middle of the day Murat sent his adjutant
to Napoleon to demand reinforcements.

Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when Murat's
adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians would be routed
if His Majesty would let him have another division.

"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking at
the adjutant--a handsome lad with long black curls arranged like Murat's
own--as though he did not understand his words.

"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How can they need
reinforcements when they already have half the army directed against a
weak, unentrenched Russian wing?"

"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that it is not noon yet,
and I don't yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..."

The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply without
removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were being
slaughtered.

Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began
talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.

In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interest
Napoleon, Berthier's eyes turned to look at a general with a suite, who
was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It was Belliard.
Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapid strides and in
a loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity of sending
reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians were lost if the
Emperor would give another division.

Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and down
without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the
generals of the suite around him.

"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when he again came up to
the general. "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake. Go
and have another look and then come back to me."

Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of the
battlefield galloped up.

"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in the tone of a man
irritated at being continually disturbed.

"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant.

"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an angry gesture.

The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but the
Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, came back, and
called Berthier.

"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart.
"Who do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom he
subsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle").

"Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew all the
divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.

Napoleon nodded assent.

The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minutes later
the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward. Napoleon
gazed silently in that direction.

"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't send Claparede. Send
Friant's division."

Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division instead of
Claparede's, and even in obvious inconvenience and delay in stopping
Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried out exactly.
Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was playing the
part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines--a role he so justly
understood and condemned.

Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into the smoke
of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive at a
gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all asked
for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding their
positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the French army was
melting away.

Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.

M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since morning,
came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest lunch to His
Majesty.

"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he.

Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the negation to
refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. de Beausset ventured
with respectful jocularity to remark that there is no reason for not
having lunch when one can get it.

"Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turned aside.

A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M. de
Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals.

Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an
ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and always
winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances of the
game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely he
loses.

His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same preparations
had been made, the same dispositions, and the same proclamation courte
et energique, he himself was still the same: he knew that and knew that
he was now even more experienced and skillful than before. Even the
enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and Friedland--yet the terrible
stroke of his arm had supernaturally become impotent.

All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with success: the
concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by reserves to break
the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the men of iron," all these
methods had already been employed, yet not only was there no victory,
but from all sides came the same news of generals killed and wounded,
of reinforcements needed, of the impossibility of driving back the
Russians, and of disorganization among his own troops.

Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a
few phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with
congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the
corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon and
stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to gather
in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola, Jena,
Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was happening
to his troops.

Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this was
not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his former
battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the men about
him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked dejected, and
they all shunned one another's eyes--only a de Beausset could fail to
grasp the meaning of what was happening.

But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning of
a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all
efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and that
the least accident might now--with the fight balanced on such a strained
center--destroy him and his army.

When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign in
which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or cannon,
or army corps had been captured in two months, when he looked at the
concealed depression on the faces around him and heard reports of the
Russians still holding their ground--a terrible feeling like a nightmare
took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents that might destroy
him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall on his left wing,
might break through his center, he himself might be killed by a stray
cannon ball. All this was possible. In former battles he had only
considered the possibilities of success, but now innumerable unlucky
chances presented themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like
a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to attack him,
and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a terrible blow which he knows
should annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless and
limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes him in
his helplessness.

The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the French
army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on a campstool
below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees. Berthier
approached and suggested that they should ride along the line to
ascertain the position of affairs.

"What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, tell them to bring me my
horse."

He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.

Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space through
which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools of blood, singly
or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals had ever before
seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small area. The roar of
guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the ear and gave
a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does to tableaux
vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semenovsk, and through the
smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color unfamiliar to him. They
were Russians.

The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village and its
knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sent
forth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was a continuous
slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French or the
Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the reverie
from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what was going on
before him and around him and was supposed to be directed by him and to
depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair, for the first
time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.

One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer to lead
the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing near Napoleon,
exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this general's senseless
offer.

Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.

"At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guard
destroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevardino.





CHAPTER XXXV


On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning sat
Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no
orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested.

"Yes, yes, do that," he replied to various proposals. "Yes, yes: go,
dear boy, and have a look," he would say to one or another of those
about him; or, "No, don't, we'd better wait!" He listened to the reports
that were brought him and gave directions when his subordinates demanded
that of him; but when listening to the reports it seemed as if he
were not interested in the import of the words spoken, but rather in
something else--in the expression of face and tone of voice of those who
were reporting. By long years of military experience he knew, and with
the wisdom of age understood, that it is impossible for one man to
direct hundreds of thousands of others struggling with death, and he
knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a
commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by
the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force
called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it
in as far as that was in his power.

Kutuzov's general expression was one of concentrated quiet attention,
and his face wore a strained look as if he found it difficult to master
the fatigue of his old and feeble body.

At eleven o'clock they brought him news that the fleches captured by the
French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagration was wounded. Kutuzov
groaned and swayed his head.

"Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about it exactly," he
said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of Wurttemberg
who was standing behind him.

"Will Your Highness please take command of the first army?"

Soon after the duke's departure--before he could possibly have reached
Semenovsk--his adjutant came back from him and told Kutuzov that the
duke asked for more troops.

Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhturov to take over the
command of the first army, and a request to the duke--whom he said he
could not spare at such an important moment--to return to him. When
they brought him news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the staff
officers congratulated him, Kutuzov smiled.

"Wait a little, gentlemen," said he. "The battle is won, and there is
nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is better to
wait before we rejoice."

But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the army.

When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank with news that the
French had captured the fleches and the village of Semenovsk, Kutuzov,
guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbinin's looks that the
news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and, taking Scherbinin's
arm, led him aside.

"Go, my dear fellow," he said to Ermolov, "and see whether something
can't be done."

Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian position. The
attack directed by Napoleon against our left flank had been several
times repulsed. In the center the French had not got beyond Borodino,
and on their left flank Uvarov's cavalry had put the French to flight.

Toward three o'clock the French attacks ceased. On the faces of all
who came from the field of battle, and of those who stood around him,
Kutuzov noticed an expression of extreme tension. He was satisfied with
the day's success--a success exceeding his expectations, but the old
man's strength was failing him. Several times his head dropped low as if
it were falling and he dozed off. Dinner was brought him.

Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding past Prince Andrew
had said, "the war should be extended widely," and whom Bagration so
detested, rode up while Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen had come from
Barclay de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on the left flank.
The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of wounded men running
back and the disordered rear of the army, weighed all the circumstances,
concluded that the battle was lost, and sent his favorite officer to the
commander in chief with that news.

Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and glanced
at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened under their puckering lids.

Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached Kutuzov with a
half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak of his
cap.

He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected nonchalance
intended to show that, as a highly trained military man, he left it to
Russians to make an idol of this useless old man, but that he knew whom
he was dealing with. "Der alte Herr" (as in their own set the Germans
called Kutuzov) "is making himself very comfortable," thought Wolzogen,
and looking severely at the dishes in front of Kutuzov he began to
report to "the old gentleman" the position of affairs on the left flank
as Barclay had ordered him to and as he himself had seen and understood
it.

"All the points of our position are in the enemy's hands and we cannot
dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away and it is
impossible to stop them," he reported.

Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen, as
if not understanding what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing "the old
gentleman's" agitation, said with a smile:

"I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness
what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder..."

"You have seen? You have seen?..." Kutuzov shouted frowning, and rising
quickly he went up to Wolzogen.

"How... how dare you!..." he shouted, choking and making a threatening
gesture with his trembling arms: "How dare you, sir, say that to me? You
know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me that his information
is incorrect and that the real course of the battle is better known to
me, the commander in chief, than to him."

Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov interrupted him.

"The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right
flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say what
you don't know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and inform
him of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow," said Kutuzov
sternly.

All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy breathing of
the panting old general.

"They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave army!
The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the sacred
soil of Russia," said Kutuzov crossing himself, and he suddenly sobbed
as his eyes filled with tears.

Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped silently
aside, marveling at "the old gentleman's" conceited stupidity.

"Ah, here he is, my hero!" said Kutuzov to a portly, handsome,
dark-haired general who was just ascending the knoll.

This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the most important part
of the field of Borodino.

Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground and
that the French no longer ventured to attack.

After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French:

"Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?"

"On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is always
the most stubborn who remain victors," replied Raevski, "and in my
opinion..."

"Kaysarov!" Kutuzov called to his adjutant. "Sit down and write out
the order of the day for tomorrow. And you," he continued, addressing
another, "ride along the line and announce that tomorrow we attack."

While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating the order of the day,
Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General Barclay wished to
have written confirmation of the order the field marshal had given.

Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the order to
be written out which the former commander in chief, to avoid personal
responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive.

And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains
throughout an army one and the same temper, known as "the spirit of
the army," and which constitutes the sinew of war, Kutuzov's words, his
order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end of
the army to the other.

It was far from being the same words or the same order that reached the
farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth to mouth at
different ends of the army did not even resemble what Kutuzov had said,
but the sense of his words spread everywhere because what he said was
not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a feeling that lay in
the commander in chief's soul as in that of every Russian.

And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and hearing
from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted to believe,
the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.





CHAPTER XXXVI


Prince Andrew's regiment was among the reserves which till after one
o'clock were stationed inactive behind Semenovsk, under heavy artillery
fire. Toward two o'clock the regiment, having already lost more than
two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled oatfield in the gap
between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where thousands of men perished
that day and on which an intense, concentrated fire from several hundred
enemy guns was directed between one and two o'clock.

Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment here
lost another third of its men. From in front and especially from the
right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the mysterious
domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front, quick hissing
cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly. At times, as
if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed during which
the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but sometimes several men
were torn from the regiment in a minute and the slain were continually
being dragged away and the wounded carried off.

With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those not
yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three hundred
paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and the same
mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely heard in the
ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of a successful
shot and the cry of "stretchers!" was heard. Most of the time, by their
officers' order, the men sat on the ground. One, having taken off his
shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its lining and drew them tight
again; another, rubbing some dry clay between his palms, polished
his bayonet; another fingered the strap and pulled the buckle of his
bandolier, while another smoothed and refolded his leg bands and put
his boots on again. Some built little houses of the tufts in the plowed
ground, or plaited baskets from the straw in the cornfield. All seemed
fully absorbed in these pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when
rows of stretchers went past, when some troops retreated, and when great
masses of the enemy came into view through the smoke, no one paid any
attention to these things. But when our artillery or cavalry advanced or
some of our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval
were heard on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted by
occurrences quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was
as if the minds of these morally exhausted men found relief in everyday,
commonplace occurrences. A battery of artillery was passing in front of
the regiment. The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a trace.
"Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She'll fall.... Ah,
they don't see it!" came identical shouts from the ranks all along the
regiment. Another time, general attention was attracted by a small brown
dog, coming heaven knows whence, which trotted in a preoccupied manner
in front of the ranks with tail stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell
close by, when it yelped, tucked its tail between its legs, and darted
aside. Yells and shrieks of laughter rose from the whole regiment. But
such distractions lasted only a moment, and for eight hours the men had
been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale
and gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier.

Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the regiment, paced up
and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge of the
meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind his back.
There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given. Everything
went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the front, the wounded
carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any soldiers ran to the
rear they returned immediately and hastily. At first Prince Andrew,
considering it his duty to rouse the courage of the men and to set them
an example, walked about among the ranks, but he soon became convinced
that this was unnecessary and that there was nothing he could teach
them. All the powers of his soul, as of every soldier there, were
unconsciously bent on avoiding the contemplation of the horrors of their
situation. He walked along the meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the
grass, and gazing at the dust that covered his boots; now he took big
strides trying to keep to the footprints left on the meadow by the
mowers, then he counted his steps, calculating how often he must walk
from one strip to another to walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers
from the wormwood that grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his
palms, and smelled their pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained
of the previous day's thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with
weary ears to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle
of flying projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the
tiresomely familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and
waited. "Here it comes... this one is coming our way again!" he thought,
listening to an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. "One,
another! Again! It has hit...." He stopped and looked at the ranks. "No,
it has gone over. But this one has hit!" And again he started trying
to reach the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five
paces from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A
chill ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many
had been hit--a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.

"Adjutant!" he shouted. "Order them not to crowd together."

The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached Prince Andrew.
From the other side a battalion commander rode up.

"Look out!" came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird
whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell dropped
with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and close to the
battalion commander's horse. The horse first, regardless of whether it
was right or wrong to show fear, snorted, reared almost throwing the
major, and galloped aside. The horse's terror infected the men.

"Lie down!" cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.

Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between him
and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the field and
the meadow.

"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite new,
envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke
that curled up from the rotating black ball. "I cannot, I do not wish
to die. I love life--I love this grass, this earth, this air...." He
thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were looking
at him.

"It's shameful, sir!" he said to the adjutant. "What..."

He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the sound of
an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking window frame,
a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started to one side,
raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several officers ran up to him.
From the right side of his abdomen, blood was welling out making a large
stain on the grass.

The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the
officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass,
breathing heavily and noisily.

"What are you waiting for? Come along!"

The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but he
moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.

"Pick him up, lift him, it's all the same!" cried someone.

They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher.

"Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My
God!"--voices among the officers were heard saying.

"It flew a hair's breadth past my ear," said the adjutant.

The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started
hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing station.

"Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!" shouted an officer, seizing by
their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly and
jolting the stretcher.

"Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!" said the foremost peasant.

"Now that's right!" said the one behind joyfully, when he had got into
step.

"Your excellency! Eh, Prince!" said the trembling voice of Timokhin, who
had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.

Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from the
stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his eyelids
drooped.


The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to the dressing station by the
wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of
three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch wood.
In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were eating
oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and pecked the
grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among the birch
trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than five acres,
bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay. Around the wounded
stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with dismal and attentive
faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in vain to drive from the
spot. Disregarding the officers' orders, the soldiers stood leaning
against their stretchers and gazing intently, as if trying to comprehend
the difficult problem of what was taking place before them. From the
tents came now loud angry cries and now plaintive groans. Occasionally
dressers ran out to fetch water, or to point out those who were to be
brought in next. The wounded men awaiting their turn outside the tents
groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, swore, or asked for vodka. Some were
delirious. Prince Andrew's bearers, stepping over the wounded who had
not yet been bandaged, took him, as a regimental commander, close up to
one of the tents and there stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew
opened his eyes and for a long time could not make out what was going
on around him. He remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the
whirling black ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life.
Two steps from him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and
attracting general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired
noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in the
head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his talk, a
crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered.

"We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we grabbed
the King himself!" cried he, looking around him with eyes that glittered
with fever. "If only reserves had come up just then, lads, there
wouldn't have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely..."

Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him with
shining eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. "But isn't it all the
same now?" thought he. "And what will be there, and what has there been
here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was something in
this life I did not and do not understand."





CHAPTER XXXVII


One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron,
holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his small
bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head and looked
about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He evidently wanted a
little respite. After turning his head from right to left for some time,
he sighed and looked down.

"All right, immediately," he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince
Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.

Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.

"It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have a
chance!" remarked one.

Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only just been
cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince Andrew could not
make out distinctly what was in that tent. The pitiful groans from all
sides and the torturing pain in his thigh, stomach, and back distracted
him. All he saw about him merged into a general impression of naked,
bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill the whole of the low tent, as
a few weeks previously, on that hot August day, such bodies had filled
the dirty pond beside the Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh,
the same chair a canon, the sight of which had even then filled him with
horror, as by a presentiment.

There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied, and
on the third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he was left
alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on the other two
tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a Cossack, judging by
the uniform thrown down beside him. Four soldiers were holding him, and
a spectacled doctor was cutting into his muscular brown back.

"Ooh, ooh, ooh!" grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his swarthy
snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white teeth,
he began to wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing, ringing,
and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many people were
crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his head thrown back.
His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head seemed strangely
familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were pressing on his chest
to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg twitched rapidly all
the time with a feverish tremor. The man was sobbing and choking
convulsively. Two doctors--one of whom was pale and trembling--were
silently doing something to this man's other, gory leg. When he had
finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an overcoat, the
spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew, wiping his hands.

He glanced at Prince Andrew's face and quickly turned away.

"Undress him! What are you waiting for?" he cried angrily to the
dressers.

His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to Prince
Andrew's mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began hastily to
undo the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The doctor bent
down over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he made a sign to
someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused Prince Andrew to
lose consciousness. When he came to himself the splintered portions of
his thighbone had been extracted, the torn flesh cut away, and the
wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on his face. As soon as Prince
Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent over, kissed him silently on the
lips, and hurried away.

After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a
blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All
the best and happiest moments of his life--especially his earliest
childhood, when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when leaning
over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his head in the
pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of life--returned to his
memory, not merely as something past but as something present.

The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of whose
head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him up and
trying to quiet him.

"Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!" his frightened moans could
be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.

Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted to weep. Whether because he
was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to part with life,
or because of those memories of a childhood that could not return, or
because he was suffering and others were suffering and that man near him
was groaning so piteously--he felt like weeping childlike, kindly, and
almost happy tears.

The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted blood
and with the boot still on.

"Oh! Oh, ooh!" he sobbed, like a woman.

The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince Andrew
from seeing his face, moved away.

"My God! What is this? Why is he here?" said Prince Andrew to himself.

In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been
amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men were supporting him in
their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling, swollen
lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully. "Yes, it is
he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully connected with me,"
thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping what he saw before him.
"What is the connection of that man with my childhood and life?" he
asked himself without finding an answer. And suddenly a new unexpected
memory from that realm of pure and loving childhood presented itself to
him. He remembered Natasha as he had seen her for the first time at the
ball in 1810, with her slender neck and arms and with a frightened happy
face ready for rapture, and love and tenderness for her, stronger
and more vivid than ever, awoke in his soul. He now remembered the
connection that existed between himself and this man who was dimly
gazing at him through tears that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered
everything, and ecstatic pity and love for that man overflowed his happy
heart.

Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender loving
tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and their errors.

"Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for those
who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God preached on
earth and which Princess Mary taught me and I did not understand--that
is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what remained for me
had I lived. But now it is too late. I know it!"





CHAPTER XXXVIII


The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and wounded,
together with the heaviness of his head and the news that some twenty
generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded, and the
consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm, produced an
unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to look at the
killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his strength of
mind. This day the horrible appearance of the battlefield overcame
that strength of mind which he thought constituted his merit and his
greatness. He rode hurriedly from the battlefield and returned to the
Shevardino knoll, where he sat on his campstool, his sallow face
swollen and heavy, his eyes dim, his nose red, and his voice hoarse,
involuntarily listening, with downcast eyes, to the sounds of firing.
With painful dejection he awaited the end of this action, in which he
regarded himself as a participant and which he was unable to arrest.
A personal, human feeling for a brief moment got the better of the
artificial phantasm of life he had served so long. He felt in his own
person the sufferings and death he had witnessed on the battlefield.
The heaviness of his head and chest reminded him of the possibility
of suffering and death for himself. At that moment he did not desire
Moscow, or victory, or glory (what need had he for any more glory?). The
one thing he wished for was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he
had been on the Semenovsk heights the artillery commander had proposed
to him to bring several batteries of artillery up to those heights to
strengthen the fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo.
Napoleon had assented and had given orders that news should be brought
to him of the effect those batteries produced.

An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns
had been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that they
still held their ground.

"Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on," said the
adjutant.

"They want more!..." said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.

"Sire?" asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.

"They want more!" croaked Napoleon frowning. "Let them have it!"

Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and for
which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of him,
was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary
greatness, and again--as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing
something for itself--he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy,
and inhuman role predestined for him.

And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience
darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening
lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the end
of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the
significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and
truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to
grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as they
were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and
all humanity.

Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with men
killed and maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as he
looked at them how many Russians there were for each Frenchman and,
deceiving himself, find reason for rejoicing in the calculation that
there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on that day alone
did he write in a letter to Paris that "the battle field was superb,"
because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the island of St.
Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said he intended to devote his
leisure to an account of the great deeds he had done, he wrote:


The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern times:
it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the tranquillity and
security of all; it was purely pacific and conservative.

It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the
beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening out,
full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system was
already founded; all that remained was to organize it.

Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I
too should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were
stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have
discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account to
the peoples as clerk to master.

Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people, and
anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in the
common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all navigable
rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and that
the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to mere guards
for the sovereigns.

On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong, magnificent,
peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have proclaimed
her frontiers immutable; all future wars purely defensive, all
aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated my son in the
Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and his constitutional
reign would have begun.

Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the envy
of the nations!

My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company
with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to
leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country couple,
every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing wrongs,
and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all sides and
everywhere.


Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of executioner
of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his actions had been the
peoples' welfare and that he could control the fate of millions and by
the employment of power confer benefactions.


"Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula," he wrote further
of the Russian war, "half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles,
Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and
Neapolitans. The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third
composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine,
Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the
Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on: it
included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French. The
Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty thousand men;
the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna to Moscow lost in the various
battles four times more men than the French army; the burning of Moscow
cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who died of cold and want
in the woods; finally, in its march from Moscow to the Oder the Russian
army also suffered from the severity of the season; so that by the time
it reached Vilna it numbered only fifty thousand, and at Kalisch less
than eighteen thousand."


He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the
horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the
whole responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found
justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who
perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.





CHAPTER XXXIX


Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and
various uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davydov
family and to the crown serfs--those fields and meadows where for
hundreds of years the peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and
Semenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At the
dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for a space
of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms, wounded and
unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselves back to Mozhaysk
from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other. Other crowds,
exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their officers. Others held
their ground and continued to fire.

Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter of
bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now spread a
mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of saltpeter and blood.
Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall on the dead and wounded,
on the frightened, exhausted, and hesitating men, as if to say: "Enough,
men! Enough! Cease... bethink yourselves! What are you doing?"

To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest,
it began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to
slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the
question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be
killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want to do
so anymore!" By evening this thought had ripened in every soul. At any
moment these men might have been seized with horror at what they were
doing and might have thrown up everything and run away anywhere.

But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the horror of
what they were doing, though they would have been glad to leave off,
some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to control them, and
they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed, and applied the match,
though only one artilleryman survived out of every three, and though
they stumbled and panted with fatigue, perspiring and stained with blood
and powder. The cannon balls flew just as swiftly and cruelly from both
sides, crushing human bodies, and that terrible work which was not done
by the will of a man but at the will of Him who governs men and worlds
continued.

Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would have
said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it would
disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army would have
said that the Russians need only make one more slight effort and the
French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor the Russians made
that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly out.

The Russians did not make that effort because they were not attacking
the French. At the beginning of the battle they stood blocking the
way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the battle as at the
beginning. But even had the aim of the Russians been to drive the French
from their positions, they could not have made this last effort, for all
the Russian troops had been broken up, there was no part of the Russian
army that had not suffered in the battle, and though still holding their
positions they had lost ONE HALF of their army.

The French, with the memory of all their former victories during
fifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, with the
consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and had
lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guards intact,
twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort. The French
who had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from its position
ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians continued to
block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French had not been
attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain. But the French
did not make that effort. Some historians say that Napoleon need only
have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and the battle would have
been won. To speak of what would have happened had Napoleon sent his
Guards is like talking of what would happen if autumn became spring. It
could not be. Napoleon did not give his Guards, not because he did not
want to, but because it could not be done. All the generals, officers,
and soldiers of the French army knew it could not be done, because the
flagging spirit of the troops would not permit it.

It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling
of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and
soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not,
after all their experience of previous battles--when after one tenth of
such efforts the enemy had fled--experienced a similar feeling of terror
before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as threateningly
at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The moral force of the
attacking French army was exhausted. Not that sort of victory which is
defined by the capture of pieces of material fastened to sticks, called
standards, and of the ground on which the troops had stood and were
standing, but a moral victory that convinces the enemy of the moral
superiority of his opponent and of his own impotence was gained by the
Russians at Borodino. The French invaders, like an infuriated animal
that has in its onslaught received a mortal wound, felt that they were
perishing, but could not stop, any more than the Russian army, weaker
by one half, could help swerving. By impetus gained, the French army was
still able to roll forward to Moscow, but there, without further effort
on the part of the Russians, it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal
wound it had received at Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle
of Borodino was Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat
along the old Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of
five hundred thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on
which at Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger
spirit had been laid.





BOOK ELEVEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human mind.
Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only when he
examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but at the
same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary
division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements. There is a
well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in this, that
Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was following, in spite
of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise. By
the time Achilles has covered the distance that separated him from the
tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of that distance ahead
of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth, the tortoise has covered
another one hundredth, and so on forever. This problem seemed to
the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that Achilles could never
overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that motion was arbitrarily
divided into discontinuous elements, whereas the motion both of Achilles
and of the tortoise was continuous.

By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only approach a
solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we have admitted
the conception of the infinitely small, and the resulting geometrical
progression with a common ratio of one tenth, and have found the sum of
this progression to infinity, do we reach a solution of the problem.

A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing with
the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more complex
problems of motion which used to appear insoluble.

This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing
with problems of motion admits the conception of the infinitely small,
and so conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity)
and thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot
avoid when it deals with separate elements of motion instead of
examining continuous motion.

In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens.
The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable arbitrary
human wills, is continuous.

To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of
history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all
those human wills, man's mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected
units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily selected
series of continuous events and examine it apart from others, though
there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event always
flows uninterruptedly from another.

The second method is to consider the actions of some one man--a king or
a commander--as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills; whereas
the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity of a
single historic personage.

Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth continually
takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But however small the
units it takes, we feel that to take any unit disconnected from others,
or to assume a beginning of any phenomenon, or to say that the will of
many men is expressed by the actions of any one historic personage, is
in itself false.

It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any deductions
drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some larger or
smaller unit as the subject of observation--as criticism has every
right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must always be
arbitrarily selected.

Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the
differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and
attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of
these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.

The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe present an
extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave their customary
pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other, plunder and
slaughter one another, triumph and are plunged in despair, and for some
years the whole course of life is altered and presents an intensive
movement which first increases and then slackens. What was the cause of
this movement, by what laws was it governed? asks the mind of man.

The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings and
doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris, calling
these sayings and doings "the Revolution"; then they give a detailed
biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or hostile to him;
tell of the influence some of these people had on others, and say: that
is why this movement took place and those are its laws.

But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation, but
plainly says that this method of explanation is fallacious, because in
it a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger. The sum of
human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and only the sum of
those wills first tolerated and then destroyed them.

"But every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors;
every time there has been a revolution in any state there have been
great men," says history. And, indeed, human reason replies: every time
conquerors appear there have been wars, but this does not prove that the
conquerors caused the wars and that it is possible to find the laws of
a war in the personal activity of a single man. Whenever I look at my
watch and its hands point to ten, I hear the bells of the neighboring
church; but because the bells begin to ring when the hands of the clock
reach ten, I have no right to assume that the movement of the bells is
caused by the position of the hands of the watch.

Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and see
the valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to conclude
that the whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of the
movement of the engine.

The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the oaks
are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when the oak
is budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold winds to blow
when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the peasants that the
unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold wind, for the
force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I see only a
coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the phenomena of
life, and I see that however much and however carefully I observe the
hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the engine, and the
oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells ringing, the engine
moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I must entirely change my
point of view and study the laws of the movement of steam, of the
bells, and of the wind. History must do the same. And attempts in this
direction have already been made.

To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of
our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and
study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are
moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance
in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it is
evident that only along that path does the possibility of discovering
the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth part as much
mental effort has been applied in this direction by historians as has
been devoted to describing the actions of various kings, commanders,
and ministers and propounding the historians' own reflections concerning
these actions.





CHAPTER II


The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The Russian
army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached, and again
from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army pushed on to Moscow, its
goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, just as the
velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches the earth. Behind
it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken, hostile country; ahead
were a few dozen miles separating it from its goal. Every soldier in
Napoleon's army felt this and the invasion moved on by its own momentum.

The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of hatred
of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army increased and
consolidated. At Borodino a collision took place. Neither army was
broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately after the
collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding with another
having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability the ball
of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on for some
distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its force.

The Russians retreated eighty miles--to beyond Moscow--and the French
reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks after that
there was not a single battle. The French did not move. As a bleeding,
mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained inert in Moscow
for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh reason, fled back:
they made a dash for the Kaluga road, and (after a victory--for at
Malo-Yaroslavets the field of conflict again remained theirs) without
undertaking a single serious battle, they fled still more rapidly back
to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and
farther still.

On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov and the whole
Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino was a victory.
Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare for a
fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive anyone,
but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who had taken
part in the battle knew it.

But all that evening and next day reports came in one after another
of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a fresh battle
proved physically impossible.

It was impossible to give battle before information had been collected,
the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition replenished, the
slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to replace those who had been
killed, and before the men had had food and sleep. And meanwhile, the
very next morning after the battle, the French army advanced of itself
upon the Russians, carried forward by the force of its own momentum now
seemingly increased in inverse proportion to the square of the distance
from its aim. Kutuzov's wish was to attack next day, and the whole
army desired to do so. But to make an attack the wish to do so is not
sufficient, there must also be a possibility of doing it, and that
possibility did not exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day's
march, and then in the same way it was impossible not to retreat another
and a third day's march, and at last, on the first of September when
the army drew near Moscow--despite the strength of the feeling that had
arisen in all ranks--the force of circumstances compelled it to retire
beyond Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day's march, and
abandoned Moscow to the enemy.

For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles are
made by generals--as any one of us sitting over a map in his study may
imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that battle--the
questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the retreat not do
this or that? Why did he not take up a position before reaching Fili?
Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga road, abandoning Moscow? and
so on. People accustomed to think in that way forget, or do not know,
the inevitable conditions which always limit the activities of any
commander in chief. The activity of a commander in chief does not at all
resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at ease in
our studies examining some campaign on the map, with a certain number of
troops on this and that side in a certain known locality, and begin our
plans from some given moment. A commander in chief is never dealing
with the beginning of any event--the position from which we always
contemplate it. The commander in chief is always in the midst of a
series of shifting events and so he never can at any moment consider the
whole import of an event that is occurring. Moment by moment the event
is imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous,
uninterrupted shaping of events the commander in chief is in the
midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies,
authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is
continually obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him,
which constantly conflict with one another.

Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutuzov should
have moved his army to the Kaluga road long before reaching Fili, and
that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But a commander
in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always before him not
one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these proposals, based
on strategics and tactics, contradict each other.

A commander in chief's business, it would seem, is simply to choose one
of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and time do not
wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested to him to
cross to the Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant gallops up from
Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French or retire. An
order must be given him at once, that instant. And the order to retreat
carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road. And after the adjutant
comes the commissary general asking where the stores are to be taken,
and the chief of the hospitals asks where the wounded are to go, and a
courier from Petersburg brings a letter from the sovereign which does
not admit of the possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander in
chief's rival, the man who is undermining him (and there are always
not merely one but several such), presents a new project diametrically
opposed to that of turning to the Kaluga road, and the commander in
chief himself needs sleep and refreshment to maintain his energy and
a respectable general who has been overlooked in the distribution of
rewards comes to complain, and the inhabitants of the district pray to
be defended, and an officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and
gives a report quite contrary to what was said by the officer
previously sent; and a spy, a prisoner, and a general who has been
on reconnaissance, all describe the position of the enemy's army
differently. People accustomed to misunderstand or to forget these
inevitable conditions of a commander in chief's actions describe to
us, for instance, the position of the army at Fili and assume that the
commander in chief could, on the first of September, quite freely decide
whether to abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army
less than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had
that question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most
palpably of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on
the twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and minute of the
retreat from Borodino to Fili.





CHAPTER III


When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to inspect the position, told
the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before Moscow
and that they must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence.

"Give me your hand," said he and, turning it over so as to feel the
pulse, added: "You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you are
saying!"

Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond Moscow
without a battle.

On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomilov gate of Moscow,
Kutuzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the roadside.
A great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count Rostopchin, who
had come out from Moscow, joined them. This brilliant company separated
into several groups who all discussed the advantages and disadvantages
of the position, the state of the army, the plans suggested, the
situation of Moscow, and military questions generally. Though they had
not been summoned for the purpose, and though it was not so called, they
all felt that this was really a council of war. The conversations all
dealt with public questions. If anyone gave or asked for personal
news, it was done in a whisper and they immediately reverted to general
matters. No jokes, or laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all
these men. They evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the
height the situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking
among themselves, tried to keep near the commander in chief (whose
bench formed the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might
overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what was being said
and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not himself
take part in the conversations or express any opinion. After hearing
what was being said by one or other of these groups he generally turned
away with an air of disappointment, as though they were not speaking of
anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the position that had been
chosen, criticizing not the position itself so much as the mental
capacity of those who had chosen it. Others argued that a mistake had
been made earlier and that a battle should have been fought two days
before. Others again spoke of the battle of Salamanca, which was
described by Crosart, a newly arrived Frenchman in a Spanish uniform.
(This Frenchman and one of the German princes serving with the Russian
army were discussing the siege of Saragossa and considering the
possibility of defending Moscow in a similar manner.) Count Rostopchin
was telling a fourth group that he was prepared to die with the city
train bands under the walls of the capital, but that he still could not
help regretting having been left in ignorance of what was happening, and
that had he known it sooner things would have been different.... A
fifth group, displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions,
discussed the direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth group
was talking absolute nonsense. Kutuzov's expression grew more and more
preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that
to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning of
those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any senseless
commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would result but the
battle would still not take place. It would not take place because the
commanders not merely all recognized the position to be impossible, but
in their conversations were only discussing what would happen after its
inevitable abandonment. How could the commanders lead their troops to
a field of battle they considered impossible to hold? The lower-grade
officers and even the soldiers (who too reason) also considered the
position impossible and therefore could not go to fight, fully convinced
as they were of defeat. If Bennigsen insisted on the position being
defended and others still discussed it, the question was no longer
important in itself but only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue.
This Kutuzov knew well.

Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian
patriotism (Kutuzov could not listen to this without wincing) by
insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as daylight
to Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on Kutuzov who had
brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without giving battle; if
it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if battle were not
given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning Moscow. But this
intrigue did not now occupy the old man's mind. One terrible question
absorbed him and to that question he heard no reply from anyone. The
question for him now was: "Have I really allowed Napoleon to reach
Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it decided? Can it have been
yesterday when I ordered Platov to retreat, or was it the evening
before, when I had a nap and told Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it
earlier still?... When, when was this terrible affair decided? Moscow
must be abandoned. The army must retreat and the order to do so must
be given." To give that terrible order seemed to him equivalent to
resigning the command of the army. And not only did he love power to
which he was accustomed (the honours awarded to Prince Prozorovski,
under whom he had served in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced
that he was destined to save Russia and that that was why, against
the Emperor's wish and by the will of the people, he had been chosen
commander in chief. He was convinced that he alone could maintain
command of the army in these difficult circumstances, and that in all
the world he alone could encounter the invincible Napoleon without fear,
and he was horrified at the thought of the order he had to issue. But
something had to be decided, and these conversations around him which
were assuming too free a character must be stopped.

He called the most important generals to him.

"My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself," said he, rising
from the bench, and he rode to Fili where his carriages were waiting.





CHAPTER IV


The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in the
better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov's hut. The men, women, and
children of the large peasant family crowded into the back room across
the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew's six-year-old granddaughter whom
his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had given a lump of sugar
while drinking his tea, remained on the top of the brick oven in the
larger room. Malasha looked down from the oven with shy delight at the
faces, uniforms, and decorations of the generals, who one after another
came into the room and sat down on the broad benches in the corner
under the icons. "Granddad" himself, as Malasha in her own mind called
Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep
in a folding armchair, and continually cleared his throat and pulled at
the collar of his coat which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed
to pinch his neck. Those who entered went up one by one to the field
marshal; he pressed the hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant
Kaysarov was about to draw back the curtain of the window facing
Kutuzov, but the latter moved his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood
that his Serene Highness did not wish his face to be seen.

Round the peasant's deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils, and
papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in another
bench and put it beside the table. Ermolov, Kaysarov, and Toll, who had
just arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost place, immediately
under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high forehead merging into
his bald crown. He had a St. George's Cross round his neck and looked
pale and ill. He had been feverish for two days and was now shivering
and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov, who with rapid gesticulations was
giving him some information, speaking in low tones as they all did.
Chubby little Dokhturov was listening attentively with eyebrows
raised and arms folded on his stomach. On the other side sat Count
Ostermann-Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts. His broad
head with its bold features and glittering eyes was resting on his hand.
Raevski, twitching forward the black hair on his temples as was his
habit, glanced now at Kutuzov and now at the door with a look of
impatience. Konovnitsyn's firm, handsome, and kindly face was lit up by
a tender, sly smile. His glance met Malasha's, and the expression of his
eyes caused the little girl to smile.

They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of inspecting
the position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited for him from
four till six o'clock and did not begin their deliberations all that
time but talked in low tones of other matters.

Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov leave his corner and
draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that had been
placed there to light up his face.

Bennigsen opened the council with the question: "Are we to abandon
Russia's ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to
defend it?" A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a frown
on every face and only Kutuzov's angry grunts and occasional cough
broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha too looked at
"Granddad." She was nearest to him and saw how his face puckered; he
seemed about to cry, but this did not last long.

"Russia's ancient and sacred capital!" he suddenly said, repeating
Bennigsen's words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to the
false note in them. "Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that that
question has no meaning for a Russian." (He lurched his heavy body
forward.) "Such a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The question
I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military one.
The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up Moscow
without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the army as well
as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your opinion," and he
sank back in his chair.

The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game lost.
Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle at
Fili was impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the love
of Moscow, he proposed to move troops from the right to the left flank
during the night and attack the French right flank the following day.
Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced for and against that
project. Ermolov, Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed with Bennigsen. Whether
feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice before abandoning the capital
or guided by other, personal considerations, these generals seemed not
to understand that this council could not alter the inevitable course
of events and that Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other
generals, however, understood it and, leaving aside the question of
Moscow, spoke of the direction the army should take in its retreat.
Malasha, who kept her eyes fixed on what was going on before her,
understood the meaning of the council differently. It seemed to her that
it was only a personal struggle between "Granddad" and "Long-coat" as
she termed Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful when they spoke to
one another, and in her heart she sided with "Granddad." In the midst of
the conversation she noticed "Granddad" give Bennigsen a quick, subtle
glance, and then to her joys he saw that "Granddad" said something to
"Long-coat" which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and paced
angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutuzov's calm
and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen's
proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to
attack the French right wing.

"Gentlemen," said Kutuzov, "I cannot approve of the count's plan. Moving
troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous, and military
history supports that view. For instance..." Kutuzov seemed to reflect,
searching for an example, then with a clear, naive look at Bennigsen he
added: "Oh yes; take the battle of Friedland, which I think the count
well remembers, and which was... not fully successful, only because our
troops were rearranged too near the enemy..."

There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them all.

The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and they all
felt that there was no more to be said.

During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh as if preparing to
speak. They all looked at him.

"Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the broken
crockery," said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table. "Gentlemen,
I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with me. But I," he
paused, "by the authority entrusted to me by my Sovereign and country,
order a retreat."

After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and
circumspect silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral.

Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different from
the way they had spoken during the council, communicated something to
their commander in chief.

Malasha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully
backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its
projections, and slipping between the legs of the generals she darted
out of the room.

When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long time with his
elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible question:
"When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable? When was
that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame for it?"

"I did not expect this," said he to his adjutant Schneider when the
latter came in late that night. "I did not expect this! I did not think
this would happen."

"You should take some rest, your Serene Highness," replied Schneider.

"But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!" exclaimed
Kutuzov without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist. "They
shall too, if only..."





CHAPTER V


At that very time, in circumstances even more important than retreating
without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of Moscow,
Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigator of that
event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.

After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow was
as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without fighting.

Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the
feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.

The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the towns
and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without the
participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The people
awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited or tear
anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the strength to
find what it should do at that most difficult moment. And as soon as the
enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away abandoning their property,
while the poorer remained and burned and destroyed what was left.

The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was and
is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of this,
and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in Russian
Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already in July
and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this. Those who
went away, taking what they could and abandoning their houses and half
their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism which expresses
itself not by phrases or by giving one's children to save the fatherland
and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively, simply, organically,
and therefore in the way that always produces the most powerful results.

"It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running
away from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchin
impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed
to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing
it had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that
Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had
committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the
rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had
remained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation the inhabitants
had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the charming Frenchmen
whom the Russians, and especially the Russian ladies, then liked so
much.

They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to
whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It was
out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst thing
that could happen. They went away even before the battle of Borodino and
still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's calls to defend Moscow
or the announcement of his intention to take the wonder-working icon of
the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or of the balloons that were
to destroy the French, and despite all the nonsense Rostopchin wrote in
his broadsheets. They knew that it was for the army to fight, and that
if it could not succeed it would not do to take young ladies and house
serfs to the Three Hills quarter of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that
they must go away, sorry as they were to abandon their property
to destruction. They went away without thinking of the tremendous
significance of that immense and wealthy city being given over to
destruction, for a great city with wooden buildings was certain when
abandoned by its inhabitants to be burned. They went away each on his
own account, and yet it was only in consequence of their going away
that the momentous event was accomplished that will always remain the
greatest glory of the Russian people. The lady who, afraid of being
stopped by Count Rostopchin's orders, had already in June moved with her
Negroes and her women jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with
a vague consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really,
simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia. But
Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now had the
government offices removed; now distributed quite useless weapons to
the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the icons, and now
forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics of saints; now
seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one hundred and thirty-six
of them removed the balloon that was being constructed by Leppich; now
hinted that he would burn Moscow and related how he had set fire to his
own house; now wrote a proclamation to the French solemnly upbraiding
them for having destroyed his Orphanage; now claimed the glory of
having hinted that he would burn Moscow and now repudiated the deed;
now ordered the people to catch all spies and bring them to him, and now
reproached them for doing so; now expelled all the French residents from
Moscow, and now allowed Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole
French colony in Moscow) to remain, but ordered the venerable old
postmaster Klyucharev to be arrested and exiled for no particular
offense; now assembled the people at the Three Hills to fight the French
and now, to get rid of them, handed over to them a man to be killed
and himself drove away by a back gate; now declared that he would
not survive the fall of Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums
concerning his share in the affair--this man did not understand the
meaning of what was happening but merely wanted to do something himself
that would astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic
feat; and like a child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable
event--the abandonment and burning of Moscow--and tried with his puny
hand now to speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore
him along with it.





CHAPTER VI


Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to Petersburg, found
herself in a difficult position.

In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee who
occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vilna she had formed
an intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she returned to Petersburg
both the magnate and the prince were there, and both claimed their
rights. Helene was faced by a new problem--how to preserve her intimacy
with both without offending either.

What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman did
not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova, who evidently
deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had she attempted
concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her awkward position
by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by acknowledging herself
guilty. But Helene, like a really great man who can do whatever
he pleases, at once assumed her own position to be correct, as she
sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else was to blame.

The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach her, she
lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said firmly: "That's
just like a man--selfish and cruel! I expected nothing else. A woman
sacrifices herself for you, she suffers, and this is her reward! What
right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my attachments and
friendships? He is a man who has been more than a father to me!" The
prince was about to say something, but Helene interrupted him.

"Well, yes," said she, "it may be that he has other sentiments for me
than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut my door
on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with ingratitude!
Know, monseigneur, that in all that relates to my intimate feelings I
render account only to God and to my conscience," she concluded, laying
her hand on her beautiful, fully expanded bosom and looking up to
heaven.

"But for heaven's sake listen to me!"

"Marry me, and I will be your slave!"

"But that's impossible."

"You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you..." said Helene,
beginning to cry.

The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite distraught,
said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying,
that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but
she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she had
never been her husband's wife, and that she had been sacrificed.

"But the law, religion..." said the prince, already yielding.

"The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can't
arrange that?" said Helene.

The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred to him,
and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the Society of Jesus,
with whom he was on intimate terms.

A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Helene gave at
her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur de Jobert,
a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant black eyes,
a Jesuit a robe courte * was presented to her, and in the garden by the
light of the illuminations and to the sound of music talked to her for a
long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the Sacred Heart, and of the
consolations the one true Catholic religion affords in this world and
the next. Helene was touched, and more than once tears rose to her eyes
and to those of Monsieur de Jobert and their voices trembled. A dance,
for which her partner came to seek her, put an end to her discourse with
her future directeur de conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de
Jobert came to see Helene when she was alone, and after that often came
again.


    * Lay member of the Society of Jesus.


One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she knelt
down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting, middle-aged
Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself afterward
described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze wafted into her
soul. It was explained to her that this was la grace.

After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She confessed to
him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box
containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to
partake of. A few days later Helene learned with pleasure that she had
now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few days the
Pope himself would hear of her and would send her a certain document.

All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the attention
devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed in such pleasant,
refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was now in (she wore
only white dresses and white ribbons all that time) gave her pleasure,
but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment to forget her aim. And
as it always happens in contests of cunning that a stupid person gets
the better of cleverer ones, Helene--having realized that the main
object of all these words and all this trouble was, after converting her
to Catholicism, to obtain money from her for Jesuit institutions (as to
which she received indications)-before parting with her money insisted
that the various operations necessary to free her from her husband
should be performed. In her view the aim of every religion was merely
to preserve certain proprieties while affording satisfaction to
human desires. And with this aim, in one of her talks with her Father
Confessor, she insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she
bound by her marriage?

They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room.
The scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene was wearing a white
dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe, a well-fed
man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth, and white
hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to Helene and, with a
subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look of delight at her beauty,
occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his opinion on the
subject. Helene with an uneasy smile looked at his curly hair and his
plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every moment expected the
conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbe, though he evidently
enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was absorbed in his mastery of the
matter.

The course of the Father Confessor's arguments ran as follows: "Ignorant
of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow of conjugal
fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married state without
faith in the religious significance of marriage, committed an act of
sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual significance it should have
had. Yet in spite of this your vow was binding. You swerved from it.
What did you commit by so acting? A venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial
sin, for you acted without evil intention. If now you married again
with the object of bearing children, your sin might be forgiven. But the
question is again a twofold one: firstly..."

But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with one of her
bewitching smiles: "But I think that having espoused the true religion I
cannot be bound by what a false religion laid upon me."

The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case
presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus' egg. He was
delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil's progress, but could
not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously constructed.

"Let us understand one another, Countess," said he with a smile, and
began refuting his spiritual daughter's arguments.





CHAPTER VII


Helene understood that the question was very simple and easy from
the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making
difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the matter
would be regarded by the secular authorities.

So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of society.
She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him what she
had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so that the only
way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her. The elderly
magnate was at first as much taken aback by this suggestion of marriage
with a woman whose husband was alive, as the younger man had been, but
Helene's imperturbable conviction that it was as simple and natural as
marrying a maiden had its effect on him too. Had Helene herself shown
the least sign of hesitation, shame, or secrecy, her cause would
certainly have been lost; but not only did she show no signs of secrecy
or shame, on the contrary, with good-natured naivete she told her
intimate friends (and these were all Petersburg) that both the prince
and the magnate had proposed to her and that she loved both and was
afraid of grieving either.

A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Helene wanted to
be divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would have
opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the unfortunate and
interesting Helene was in doubt which of the two men she should marry.
The question was no longer whether this was possible, but only which was
the better match and how the matter would be regarded at court. There
were, it is true, some rigid individuals unable to rise to the height of
such a question, who saw in the project a desecration of the sacrament
of marriage, but there were not many such and they remained silent,
while the majority were interested in Helene's good fortune and in the
question which match would be the more advantageous. Whether it was
right or wrong to remarry while one had a husband living they did not
discuss, for that question had evidently been settled by people "wiser
than you or me," as they said, and to doubt the correctness of that
decision would be to risk exposing one's stupidity and incapacity to
live in society.

Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had come to Petersburg that
summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express
an opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Helene at a ball she
stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence, said
in her gruff voice: "So wives of living men have started marrying
again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been
forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all the
brothels," and with these words Marya Dmitrievna, turning up her wide
sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly round,
moved across the room.

Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was regarded in
Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only noticed,
and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had used, supposing
the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.

Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he had said and
repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his
daughter whenever he chanced to see her:

"Helene, I have a word to say to you," and he would lead her
aside, drawing her hand downward. "I have heard of certain projects
concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father's
heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much.... But, my
dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to say," and
concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek against his
daughter's and move away.

Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever man,
and who was one of the disinterested friends so brilliant a woman as
Helene always has--men friends who can never change into lovers--once
gave her his view of the matter at a small and intimate gathering.

"Listen, Bilibin," said Helene (she always called friends of that sort
by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her white,
beringed fingers. "Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought to do.
Which of the two?"

Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with a
smile on his lips.

"You are not taking me unawares, you know," said he. "As a true friend,
I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see, if you
marry the prince"--he meant the younger man--and he crooked one finger,
"you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you will
displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of
connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last days
happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be making
a mesalliance by marrying you," and Bilibin smoothed out his forehead.

"That's a true friend!" said Helene beaming, and again touching
Bilibin's sleeve. "But I love them, you know, and don't want to distress
either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of them both."

Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he could
help in that difficulty.

"Une maitresse-femme! * That's what is called putting things squarely.
She would like to be married to all three at the same time," thought he.


    * A masterly woman.


"But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin asked,
his reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so
naive a question. "Will he agree?"

"Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that
Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."

Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.

"Even divorce you?" said he.

Helene laughed.

Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually
tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned
a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the
idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce
and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest told her that
it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel
which (as it seemed to him) plainly forbids remarriage while the husband
is alive.

Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she
drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone.

Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly and
ironically.

"But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced...'"
said the old princess.

"Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rein. Dans ma
position j'ai des devoirs," * said Helene changing from Russian, in
which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear,
into French which suited it better.


     * "Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand
     anything. In my position I have obligations."


"But, my dear...."

"Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who has
the right to grant dispensations..."

Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to announce
that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.

"Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre
lui, parce qu'il m'a manque parole." *


     * "No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with
     him for not keeping his word to me."


"Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde," * said a fair-haired young man
with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.


    * "Countess, there is mercy for every sin."


The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who had
entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and
sidled out of the room.

"Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions
dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how
is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so
simple," she thought as she got into her carriage.


By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and
she wrote a letter to her husband--who, as she imagined, loved her very
much--informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having
embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all the
formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to him by
the bearer of the letter.


And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful
keeping--Your friend Helene.


This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field of
Borodino.





CHAPTER VIII


Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down
from Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully to
Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station, and
seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in
the crowds of soldiers.

The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quickly
from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day and return
to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own
bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of life would he
be able to understand himself and all he had seen and felt. But such
ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.

Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along which he
was going, still on all sides there was what there had been on the field
of battle. There were still the same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes
strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers'
overcoats, the same sounds of firing which, though distant now, still
aroused terror, and besides this there were the foul air and the dust.

Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat down
by the roadside.

Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay leaning on
his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved past him in
the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon ball was flying
toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he shuddered and sat up. He
had no idea how long he had been there. In the middle of the night three
soldiers, having brought some firewood, settled down near him and began
lighting a fire.

The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire to burn
and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some dried bread and
put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy viands mingled with
the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed. The three soldiers were
eating and talking among themselves, taking no notice of him.

"And who may you be?" one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently
meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: "If you want to eat
we'll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest
man."

"I, I..." said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social
position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and
better understood by them. "By rights I am a militia officer, but my men
are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them."

"There now!" said one of the soldiers.

Another shook his head.

"Would you like a little mash?" the first soldier asked, and handed
Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.

Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they called
the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than any food
he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it, helping himself
to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another, his face was lit up by
the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.

"Where have you to go to? Tell us!" said one of them.

"To Mozhaysk."

"You're a gentleman, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"And what's your name?"

"Peter Kirilych."

"Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we'll take you there."

In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozhaysk.

By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep hill
into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on with the
soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom of the hill
and that he had already passed it. He would not soon have remembered
this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he not halfway up the
hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to look for him in the
town and was returning to the inn. The groom recognized Pierre in the
darkness by his white hat.

"Your excellency!" he said. "Why, we were beginning to despair! How is
it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?"

"Oh, yes!" said Pierre.

The soldiers stopped.

"So you've found your folk?" said one of them. "Well, good-by, Peter
Kirilych--isn't it?"

"Good-by, Peter Kirilych!" Pierre heard the other voices repeat.

"Good-by!" he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.

"I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his pocket.
"No, better not!" said another, inner voice.

There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied.
Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all, lay
down in his carriage.





CHAPTER IX


Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt himself
falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness of reality,
he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans
and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a feeling of horror and
dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he opened his eyes and
lifted his head from under his cloak. All was tranquil in the yard. Only
someone's orderly passed through the gateway, splashing through the mud,
and talked to the innkeeper. Above Pierre's head some pigeons, disturbed
by the movement he had made in sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof
of the penthouse. The whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful
smell of stable yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see
the clear starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.

"Thank God, there is no more of that!" he thought, covering up his head
again. "Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I yielded
to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time, to the
end..." thought he.

They, in Pierre's mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the
battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before
the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood out
clearly and sharply from everyone else.

"To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep,
"to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what
they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my
outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could have run
away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve
as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov." And the memory of the dinner
at the English Club when he had challenged Dolokhov flashed through
Pierre's mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at Torzhok. And now
a picture of a solemn meeting of the lodge presented itself to his mind.
It was taking place at the English Club and someone near and dear to him
sat at the end of the table. "Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor.
But he died!" thought Pierre. "Yes, he died, and I did not know he was
alive. How sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive
again!" On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski,
Denisov, and others like them (in his dream the category to which these
men belonged was as clearly defined in his mind as the category of
those he termed they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dolokhov,
shouting and singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his
benefactor was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words
was as weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but
pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor
was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite
distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the
possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind,
firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they were
kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him. Wishing to
speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at that moment his
legs grew cold and bare.

He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his cloak
had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak Pierre
opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs, posts, and yard, but
now they were all bluish, lit up, and glittering with frost or dew.

"It is dawn," thought Pierre. "But that's not what I want. I want to
hear and understand my benefactor's words." Again he covered himself up
with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there.
There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that
someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.

Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that
someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of that
day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to think
and express his thoughts like that when awake.

"To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man's freedom to
the law of God," the voice had said. "Simplicity is submission to the
will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do
not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden.
Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not
fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know
his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing (Pierre went
on thinking, or hearing, in his dream) is to be able in your soul to
unite the meaning of all. To unite all?" he asked himself. "No, not
to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts
together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness
them!" he repeated to himself with inward rapture, feeling that these
words and they alone expressed what he wanted to say and solved the
question that tormented him.

"Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness."

"Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your excellency!"
some voice was repeating. "We must harness, it is time to harness...."

It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone
straight into Pierre's face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the
middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump
while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with
repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage seat.
"No, I don't want that, I don't want to see and understand that. I want
to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream. One second
more and I should have understood it all! But what am I to do? Harness,
but how can I harness everything?" and Pierre felt with horror that the
meaning of all he had seen and thought in the dream had been destroyed.

The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an officer
had come with news that the French were already near Mozhaysk and that
our men were leaving it.

Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, went on
foot through the town.

The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind
them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses, and
the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts that
were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and blows could
be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which had overtaken
him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him to Moscow. On the
way Pierre was told of the death of his brother-in-law Anatole and of
that of Prince Andrew.





CHAPTER X


On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the gates of
the city he was met by Count Rostopchin's adjutant.

"We have been looking for you everywhere," said the adjutant. "The count
wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at once on a
very important matter."

Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow
commander in chief.

Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to town from his summer
villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and reception room of his house
were full of officials who had been summoned or had come for orders.
Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and explained to him
that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it would have to be
surrendered. Though this news was being concealed from the inhabitants,
the officials--the heads of the various government departments--knew
that Moscow would soon be in the enemy's hands, just as Count Rostopchin
himself knew it, and to escape personal responsibility they had all
come to the governor to ask how they were to deal with their various
departments.

As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army came
out of Rostopchin's private room.

In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a
despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room.

While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched the
various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who were there.
They all seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to a group of
men, one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they continued their
conversation.

"If they're sent out and brought back again later on it will do no harm,
but as things are now one can't answer for anything."

"But you see what he writes..." said another, pointing to a printed
sheet he held in his hand.

"That's another matter. That's necessary for the people," said the
first.

"What is it?" asked Pierre.

"Oh, it's a fresh broadsheet."

Pierre took it and began reading.


His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in order to join up with
the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong position where
the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty eight guns with ammunition
have been sent him from here, and his Serene Highness says he will
defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is even ready to fight in
the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that the law courts are closed;
things have to be put in order, and we will deal with villains in our
own way! When the time comes I shall want both town and peasant lads and
will raise the cry a day or two beforehand, but they are not wanted yet
so I hold my peace. An ax will be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a
three-pronged fork will be best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a
sheaf of rye. Tomorrow after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of
the Mother of God to the wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will
have some water blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I,
too, am well now: one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout
with both.


"But military men have told me that it is impossible to fight in the
town," said Pierre, "and that the position..."

"Well, of course! That's what we were saying," replied the first
speaker.

"And what does he mean by 'One of my eyes was sore but now I am on the
lookout with both'?" asked Pierre.

"The count had a sty," replied the adjutant smiling, "and was very much
upset when I told him people had come to ask what was the matter with
him. By the by, Count," he added suddenly, addressing Pierre with a
smile, "we heard that you have family troubles and that the countess,
your wife..."

"I have heard nothing," Pierre replied unconcernedly. "But what have you
heard?"

"Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I
heard."

"But what did you hear?"

"Well, they say," continued the adjutant with the same smile, "that
the countess, your wife, is preparing to go abroad. I expect it's
nonsense...."

"Possibly," remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-mindedly. "And who
is that?" he asked, indicating a short old man in a clean blue peasant
overcoat, with a big snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy face.

"He? That's a tradesman, that is to say, he's the restaurant
keeper, Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the
proclamation."

"Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!" said Pierre, looking at the firm, calm
face of the old man and seeking any indication of his being a traitor.

"That's not he himself, that's the father of the fellow who wrote the
proclamation," said the adjutant. "The young man is in prison and I
expect it will go hard with him."

An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German wearing a
cross round his neck, approached the speaker.

"It's a complicated story, you know," said the adjutant. "That
proclamation appeared about two months ago. The count was informed of
it. He gave orders to investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivanovich
here made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly
sixty-three hands. He asked one, 'From whom did you get it?' 'From
so-and-so.' He went to the next one. 'From whom did you get it?' and so
on till he reached Vereshchagin, a half educated tradesman, you know, 'a
pet of a trader,'" said the adjutant smiling. "They asked him, 'Who gave
it you?' And the point is that we knew whom he had it from. He could
only have had it from the Postmaster. But evidently they had come to
some understanding. He replied: 'From no one; I made it up myself.'
They threatened and questioned him, but he stuck to that: 'I made it
up myself.' And so it was reported to the count, who sent for the man.
'From whom did you get the proclamation?' 'I wrote it myself.' Well, you
know the count," said the adjutant cheerfully, with a smile of pride,
"he flared up dreadfully--and just think of the fellow's audacity,
lying, and obstinacy!"

 "And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharev? I
understand!" said Pierre.

"Not at all," rejoined the adjutant in dismay. "Klyucharev had his own
sins to answer for without that and that is why he has been banished.
But the point is that the count was much annoyed. 'How could you have
written it yourself?' said he, and he took up the Hamburg Gazette that
was lying on the table. 'Here it is! You did not write it yourself but
translated it, and translated it abominably, because you don't even know
French, you fool.' And what do you think? 'No,' said he, 'I have not
read any papers, I made it up myself.' 'If that's so, you're a traitor
and I'll have you tried, and you'll be hanged! Say from whom you had
it.' 'I have seen no papers, I made it up myself.' And that was the end
of it. The count had the father fetched, but the fellow stuck to it.
He was sent for trial and condemned to hard labor, I believe. Now the
father has come to intercede for him. But he's a good-for-nothing lad!
You know that sort of tradesman's son, a dandy and lady-killer. He
attended some lectures somewhere and imagines that the devil is no match
for him. That's the sort of fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop
here by the Stone Bridge, and you know there was a large icon of God
Almighty painted with a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other.
Well, he took that icon home with him for a few days and what did he do?
He found some scoundrel of a painter..."





CHAPTER XI


In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the commander in
chief.

When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin, puckering his face,
was rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was saying
something, but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went out.

"Ah, how do you do, great warrior?" said Rostopchin as soon as the short
man had left the room. "We have heard of your prowess. But that's not
the point. Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to the Masons?" he
went on severely, as though there were something wrong about it which
he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained silent. "I am well
informed, my friend, but I am aware that there are Masons and I hope
that you are not one of those who on pretense of saving mankind wish to
ruin Russia."

"Yes, I am a Mason," Pierre replied.

"There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs. Speranski and
Magnitski have been deported to their proper place. Mr. Klyucharev has
been treated in the same way, and so have others who on the plea of
building up the temple of Solomon have tried to destroy the temple of
their fatherland. You can understand that there are reasons for this and
that I could not have exiled the Postmaster had he not been a harmful
person. It has now come to my knowledge that you lent him your carriage
for his removal from town, and that you have even accepted papers from
him for safe custody. I like you and don't wish you any harm and--as
you are only half my age--I advise you, as a father would, to cease
all communication with men of that stamp and to leave here as soon as
possible."

"But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?" asked Pierre.

"That is for me to know, but not for you to ask," shouted Rostopchin.

"If he is accused of circulating Napoleon's proclamation it is not
proved that he did so," said Pierre without looking at Rostopchin, "and
Vereshchagin..."

"There we are!" Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder than before,
frowning suddenly. "Vereshchagin is a renegade and a traitor who will
be punished as he deserves," said he with the vindictive heat with which
people speak when recalling an insult. "But I did not summon you to
discuss my actions, but to give you advice--or an order if you prefer
it. I beg you to leave the town and break off all communication
with such men as Klyucharev. And I will knock the nonsense out of
anybody"--but probably realizing that he was shouting at Bezukhov who
so far was not guilty of anything, he added, taking Pierre's hand in a
friendly manner, "We are on the eve of a public disaster and I haven't
time to be polite to everybody who has business with me. My head is
sometimes in a whirl. Well, mon cher, what are you doing personally?"

"Why, nothing," answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing the
thoughtful expression of his face.

The count frowned.

"A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can, that's
all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-by, my dear
fellow. Oh, by the by!" he shouted through the doorway after Pierre,
"is it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches of the holy
fathers of the Society of Jesus?"

Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin's room more sullen and angry
than he had ever before shown himself.

When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight people had
come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee, the colonel
of his battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various petitioners.
They all had business with Pierre and wanted decisions from him. Pierre
did not understand and was not interested in any of these questions and
only answered them in order to get rid of these people. When left alone
at last he opened and read his wife's letter.

"They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old
man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary... the
meaning of all... one must harness... my wife is getting married... One
must forget and understand..." And going to his bed he threw himself on
it without undressing and immediately fell asleep.

When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that a
special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count Rostopchin to
know whether Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving the town.

A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in the
drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to see
them, went to the back porch and out through the gate.

From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of
Bezukhov's household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre again
or knew where he was.





CHAPTER XII


The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is,
till the eve of the enemy's entry into the city.

After Petya had joined Obolenski's regiment of Cossacks and left for
Belaya Tserkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was seized
with terror. The thought that both her sons were at the war, had both
gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or both of them
might be killed like the three sons of one of her acquaintances, struck
her that summer for the first time with cruel clearness. She tried to
get Nicholas back and wished to go herself to join Petya, or to get
him an appointment somewhere in Petersburg, but neither of these proved
possible. Petya could not return unless his regiment did so or unless
he was transferred to another regiment on active service. Nicholas was
somewhere with the army and had not sent a word since his last letter,
in which he had given a detailed account of his meeting with Princess
Mary. The countess did not sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep
dreamed that she saw her sons lying dead. After many consultations and
conversations, the count at last devised means to tranquillize her. He
got Petya transferred from Obolenski's regiment to Bezukhov's, which was
in training near Moscow. Though Petya would remain in the service, this
transfer would give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one
of her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her
Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to
places where he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as
Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved her
first-born more than all her other children and even reproached herself
for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad at
lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself a
nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his merry black eyes
and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show--when
he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were fighting
somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure in it--then
his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all her other
children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return, the more uneasy
grew the countess. She began to think she would never live to see such
happiness. The presence of Sonya, of her beloved Natasha, or even of
her husband irritated her. "What do I want with them? I want no one but
Petya," she thought.

At the end of August the Rostovs received another letter from Nicholas.
He wrote from the province of Voronezh where he had been sent to procure
remounts, but that letter did not set the countess at ease. Knowing that
one son was out of danger she became the more anxious about Petya.

Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostovs' acquaintances
had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to persuade the countess to
get away as quickly as possible, she would not hear of leaving before
her treasure, her adored Petya, returned. On the twenty-eighth of August
he arrived. The passionate tenderness with which his mother received him
did not please the sixteen-year-old officer. Though she concealed from
him her intention of keeping him under her wing, Petya guessed her
designs, and instinctively fearing that he might give way to emotion
when with her--might "become womanish" as he termed it to himself--he
treated her coldly, avoided her, and during his stay in Moscow attached
himself exclusively to Natasha for whom he had always had a particularly
brotherly tenderness, almost lover-like.

Owing to the count's customary carelessness nothing was ready for their
departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were to
come from their Ryazan and Moscow estates to remove their household
belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth.

From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a bustle
and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodino were
brought in by the Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts of Moscow,
and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their possessions
out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin's broadsheets, or because
of them or independently of them, the strangest and most contradictory
rumors were current in the town. Some said that no one was to be allowed
to leave the city, others on the contrary said that all the icons had
been taken out of the churches and everybody was to be ordered to leave.
Some said there had been another battle after Borodino at which the
French had been routed, while others on the contrary reported that the
Russian army had been destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia
which, preceded by the clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others
whispered that Augustin had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had
been seized, that the peasants were rioting and robbing people on their
way from Moscow, and so on. But all this was only talk; in reality
(though the Council of Fili, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow,
had not yet been held) both those who went away and those who remained
behind felt, though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly
be abandoned, and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and
save their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break
up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so.
As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die
immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is
awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life,
though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the
conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would
be completely upset.

During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole
Rostov family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the
family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting
the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty orders
at home about the preparations for their departure.

The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied with
everything, was constantly in pursuit of Petya who was always running
away from her, and was jealous of Natasha with whom he spent all his
time. Sonya alone directed the practical side of matters by getting
things packed. But of late Sonya had been particularly sad and silent.
Nicholas' letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had elicited, in
her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who saw an intervention
of Providence in this meeting of the princess and Nicholas.

"I was never pleased at Bolkonski's engagement to Natasha," said the
countess, "but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had a
presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!"

Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of retrieving
the Rostovs' affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman, and that the
princess was a good match. It was very bitter for her. But despite
her grief, or perhaps just because of it, she took on herself all the
difficult work of directing the storing and packing of their things and
was busy for whole days. The count and countess turned to her when they
had any orders to give. Petya and Natasha on the contrary, far from
helping their parents, were generally a nuisance and a hindrance to
everyone. Almost all day long the house resounded with their running
feet, their cries, and their spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were
gay not because there was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and
mirth were in their hearts and so everything that happened was a cause
for gaiety and laughter to them. Petya was in high spirits because
having left home a boy he had returned (as everybody told him) a fine
young man, because he was at home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov
where there was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come to
Moscow where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly because
Natasha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natasha was
gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her of
the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was also
happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of others
was a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed to make them run
freely--and Petya adored her. Above all, they were gay because there was
a war near Moscow, there would be fighting at the town gates, arms were
being given out, everybody was escaping--going away somewhere, and
in general something extraordinary was happening, and that is always
exciting, especially to the young.





CHAPTER XIII


On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostovs'
house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was
being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been
taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and
ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying out
the things were treading heavily on the parquet floors. The yard was
crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high and already corded up,
others still empty.

The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants who
had come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another in
the yard and in the house. The count had been out since morning. The
countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil and was
lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress on her head.
Petya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend with whom he meant
to obtain a transfer from the militia to the active army. Sonya was in
the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass and china. Natasha
was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room with dresses, ribbons,
and scarves strewn all about her, gazing fixedly at the floor and
holding in her hands the old ball dress (already out of fashion) which
she had worn at her first Petersburg ball.

Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy, and
several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart was
not in it, and she could not and did not know how to do anything except
with all her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood beside
Sonya while the china was being packed and tried to help, but soon gave
it up and went to her room to pack her own things. At first she found it
amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to the maids, but when that was
done and what was left had still to be packed, she found it dull.

"Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won't you, dear?" And when Dunyasha
willingly promised to do it all for her, Natasha sat down on the floor,
took her old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite unrelated to what
ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was roused from her reverie
by the talk of the maids in the next room (which was theirs) and by the
sound of their hurried footsteps going to the back porch. Natasha got
up and looked out of the window. An enormously long row of carts full of
wounded men had stopped in the street.

The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen,
postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded.

Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and holding
an end of it in each hand, went out into the street.

The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had stepped out of the
crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of bast
mats, and was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside.
Natasha moved a few steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her
handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was saying.

"Then you have nobody in Moscow?" she was saying. "You would be more
comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the family
are leaving."

"I don't know if it would be allowed," replied the officer in a weak
voice. "Here is our commanding officer... ask him," and he pointed to a
stout major who was walking back along the street past the row of carts.

Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded officer
and at once went to meet the major.

"May the wounded men stay in our house?" she asked.

The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.

"Which one do you want, Ma'am'selle?" said he, screwing up his eyes and
smiling.

Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole
manner were so serious, though she was still holding the ends of
her handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some
reflection--as if considering in how far the thing was possible--replied
in the affirmative.

"Oh yes, why not? They may," he said.

With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped back quickly to
Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking compassionately to the officer.

"They may. He says they may!" whispered Natasha.

The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostovs' yard,
and dozens of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the
townsfolk to turn into the yards and to draw up at the entrances of the
houses in Povarskaya Street. Natasha was evidently pleased to be dealing
with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life. She and Mavra
Kuzminichna tried to get as many of the wounded as possible into their
yard.

"Your Papa must be told, though," said Mavra Kuzminichna.

"Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can move
into the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house."

"There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if we
put them into the wing, the men's room, or the nurse's room, we must ask
permission."

"Well, I'll ask."

Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the half-open door
into the sitting room, where there was a smell of vinegar and Hoffman's
drops.

"Are you asleep, Mamma?"

"Oh, what sleep-?" said the countess, waking up just as she was dropping
into a doze.

"Mamma darling!" said Natasha, kneeling by her mother and bringing her
face close to her mother's, "I am sorry, forgive me, I'll never do it
again; I woke you up! Mavra Kuzminichna has sent me: they have brought
some wounded here--officers. Will you let them come? They have nowhere
to go. I knew you'd let them come!" she said quickly all in one breath.

"What officers? Whom have they brought? I don't understand anything
about it," said the countess.

Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.

"I knew you'd give permission... so I'll tell them," and, having kissed
her mother, Natasha got up and went to the door.

In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news.

"We've stayed too long!" said the count with involuntary vexation. "The
Club is closed and the police are leaving."

"Papa, is it all right--I've invited some of the wounded into the
house?" said Natasha.

"Of course it is," he answered absently. "That's not the point. I beg
you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and tomorrow we
must go, go, go!...."

And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the servants.

At dinner Petya having returned home told them the news he had heard.
He said the people had been getting arms in the Kremlin, and that though
Rostopchin's broadsheet had said that he would sound a call two or three
days in advance, the order had certainly already been given for everyone
to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and that there would be a big
battle there.

The countess looked with timid horror at her son's eager, excited face
as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his not
going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed the thought of the impending
engagement) he would say something about men, honor, and the
fatherland--something senseless, masculine, and obstinate which there
would be no contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and so,
hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Petya with her as their
protector and defender, she did not answer him, but after dinner called
the count aside and implored him with tears to take her away quickly,
that very night if possible. With a woman's involuntary loving cunning
she, who till then had not shown any alarm, said that she would die of
fright if they did not leave that very night. Without any pretense she
was now afraid of everything.





CHAPTER XIV


Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the
countess' fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit
dealer's in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had
been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of
the shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the
cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the barrels at
the drink store, having received orders to do so.

After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work with enthusiastic
haste packing their belongings and preparing for their departure. The
old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing from the yard to the
house and back again, shouting confused instructions to the hurrying
people, and flurrying them still more. Petya directed things in the
yard. Sonya, owing to the count's contradictory orders, lost her head
and did not know what to do. The servants ran noisily about the house
and yard, shouting and disputing. Natasha, with the ardor characteristic
of all she did suddenly set to work too. At first her intervention in
the business of packing was received skeptically. Everybody expected
some prank from her and did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely
and passionately demanded obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because
they did not heed her, and at last succeeded in making them believe her.
Her first exploit, which cost her immense effort and established her
authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable
Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When Natasha set
to work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one almost full
up with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much china
standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from the
storeroom. A third case was needed and servants had gone to fetch it.

"Sonya, wait a bit--we'll pack everything into these," said Natasha.

"You can't, Miss, we have tried to," said the butler's assistant.

"No, wait a minute, please."

And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates
wrapped in paper.

"The dishes must go in here among the carpets," said she.

"Why, it's a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three cases,"
said the butler's assistant.

"Oh, wait, please!" And Natasha began rapidly and deftly sorting out the
things. "These aren't needed," said she, putting aside some plates of
Kiev ware. "These--yes, these must go among the carpets," she said,
referring to the Saxony china dishes.

"Don't, Natasha! Leave it alone! We'll get it all packed," urged Sonya
reproachfully.

"What a young lady she is!" remarked the major-domo.

But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything out and began
quickly repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and
unnecessary crockery should not be taken at all. When everything had
been taken out of the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned
out that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all been
rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the two cases. Only
the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down. A few
more things might have been taken out, but Natasha insisted on having
her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler's assistant
and Petya--whom she had drawn into the business of packing--press on the
lid, and made desperate efforts herself.

"That's enough, Natasha," said Sonya. "I see you were right, but just
take out the top one."

"I won't!" cried Natasha, with one hand holding back the hair that hung
over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down the
carpets. "Now press, Petya! Press, Vasilich, press hard!" she cried.

The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha, clapping her hands,
screamed with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only
lasted a moment. She at once set to work afresh and they now trusted her
completely. The count was not angry even when they told him that Natasha
had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now came to her
to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded, and whether it might
be corded up. Thanks to Natasha's directions the work now went on
expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most valuable
packed as compactly as possible.

But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could not
get everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the count,
having put off their departure till next morning, went to bed.

Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without undressing.

That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskaya, and Mavra
Kuzminichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought into the
Rostovs' yard. Mavra Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very important
man. He was being conveyed in a caleche with a raised hood, and was
quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the driver sat a venerable
old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers followed the carriage in a
cart.

"Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house
will be empty," said the old woman to the old attendant.

"Well, perhaps," said he with a sigh. "We don't expect to get him home
alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it's a long way from
here, and there's nobody living in it."

"Do us the honor to come in, there's plenty of everything in the
master's house. Come in," said Mavra Kuzminichna. "Is he very ill?" she
asked.

The attendant made a hopeless gesture.

"We don't expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor."

And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.

"All right!" said the doctor.

The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it, shook his
head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and stopped
beside Mavra Kuzminichna.

"O, Lord Jesus Christ!" she murmured.

She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.

"The masters won't object..." she said.

But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took him
into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame Schoss'.

This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski.





CHAPTER XV


Moscow's last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a Sunday.
The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just as usual on
Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the city.

Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow--the rabble,
that is the poor people, and the price of commodities. An enormous crowd
of factory hands, house serfs, and peasants, with whom some officials,
seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone early that morning to
the Three Hills. Having waited there for Rostopchin who did not turn
up, they became convinced that Moscow would be surrendered, and then
dispersed all about the town to the public houses and cookshops. Prices
too that day indicated the state of affairs. The price of weapons, of
gold, of carts and horses, kept rising, but the value of paper money and
city articles kept falling, so that by midday there were instances of
carters removing valuable goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment
a half of what they carted, while peasant horses were fetching five
hundred rubles each, and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being
given away for nothing.

In the Rostovs' staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of former
conditions of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs the only
indication was that three out of their huge retinue disappeared
during the night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the value of their
possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come in from their
estates and which many people envied proved to be extremely valuable and
they were offered enormous sums of money for them. Not only were huge
sums offered for the horses and carts, but on the previous evening and
early in the morning of the first of September, orderlies and servants
sent by wounded officers came to the Rostovs' and wounded men dragged
themselves there from the Rostovs' and from neighboring houses where
they were accommodated, entreating the servants to try to get them
a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo to whom these entreaties were
addressed, though he was sorry for the wounded, resolutely refused,
saying that he dare not even mention the matter to the count. Pity these
wounded men as one might, it was evident that if they were given one
cart there would be no reason to refuse another, or all the carts and
one's own carriages as well. Thirty carts could not save all the wounded
and in the general catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one's
own family. So thought the major-domo on his master's behalf.

On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his bedroom softly, so
as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward morning,
and came out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In the yard
stood the carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front porch.
The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly and to
a pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing the count the
major-domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go away.

"Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?" asked the count, and stroking his
bald head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the orderly and
nodded to them. (He liked to see new faces.)

"We can harness at once, your excellency."

"Well, that's right. As soon as the countess wakes we'll be off, God
willing! What is it, gentlemen?" he added, turning to the officer. "Are
you staying in my house?"

The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed crimson.

"Count, be so good as to allow me... for God's sake, to get into some
corner of one of your carts! I have nothing here with me.... I shall be
all right on a loaded cart..."

Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made the same
request on behalf of his master.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" said the count hastily. "I shall be very pleased,
very pleased. Vasilich, you'll see to it. Just unload one or two carts.
Well, what of it... do what's necessary..." said the count, muttering
some indefinite order.

But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the officer's
face had already sealed the order. The count looked around him. In the
yard, at the gates, at the window of the wings, wounded officers and
their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at the count and
moving toward the porch.

"Please step into the gallery, your excellency," said the major-domo.
"What are your orders about the pictures?"

The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to
refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.

"Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded," he added in a
soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard.

At nine o'clock the countess woke up, and Matrena Timofeevna, who had
been her lady's maid before her marriage and now performed a sort of
chief gendarme's duty for her, came to say that Madame Schoss was much
offended and the young ladies' summer dresses could not be left behind.
On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame Schoss was offended because
her trunk had been taken down from its cart, and all the loads were
being uncorded and the luggage taken out of the carts to make room for
wounded men whom the count in the simplicity of his heart had ordered
that they should take with them. The countess sent for her husband.

"What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded."

"You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer
came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are
things that can be bought but think what being left behind means to
them!... Really now, in our own yard--we asked them in ourselves and
there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let them
be taken... where's the hurry?"

The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money matters.
The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of news of
something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the building
of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a private theater
or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose anything announced
in that timid tone and considered it her duty to do so.

She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband:
"Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are getting
nothing for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our--all the
children's property! You said yourself that we have a hundred thousand
rubles' worth of things in the house. I don't consent, my dear, I don't!
Do as you please! It's the government's business to look after the
wounded; they know that. Look at the Lopukhins opposite, they cleared
out everything two days ago. That's what other people do. It's only
we who are such fools. If you have no pity on me, have some for the
children."

Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without
replying.

"Papa, what are you doing that for?" asked Natasha, who had followed him
into her mother's room.

"Nothing! What business is it of yours?" muttered the count angrily.

"But I heard," said Natasha. "Why does Mamma object?"

"What business is it of yours?" cried the count.

Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered.

"Papa! Here's Berg coming to see us," said she, looking out of the
window.





CHAPTER XVI


Berg, the Rostovs' son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the orders
of Vladimir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and agreeable post
of assistant to the head of the staff of the assistant commander of the
first division of the Second Army.

On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army.

He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone in the
army was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something to do there.
So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence for family and
domestic reasons.

Berg drove up to his father-in-law's house in his spruce little trap
with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He
looked attentively at the carts in the yard and while going up to the
porch took out a clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it.

From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into the
drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of Natasha
and Sonya, and hastened to inquire after "Mamma's" health.

"Health, at a time like this?" said the count. "Come, tell us the news!
Is the army retreating or will there be another battle?"

"God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa," said
Berg. "The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the leaders, so
to say, have now assembled in council. No one knows what is coming. But
in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic spirit, the truly
antique valor of the Russian army, which they--which it" (he
corrected himself) "has shown or displayed in the battle of the
twenty-sixth--there are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell you,
Papa" (he smote himself on the breast as a general he had heard speaking
had done, but Berg did it a trifle late for he should have struck his
breast at the words "Russian army"), "I tell you frankly that we, the
commanders, far from having to urge the men on or anything of that kind,
could hardly restrain those... those... yes, those exploits of antique
valor," he went on rapidly. "General Barclay de Tolly risked his life
everywhere at the head of the troops, I can assure you. Our corps was
stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!"

And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he had
heard those days. Natasha watched him with an intent gaze that confused
him, as if she were trying to find in his face the answer to some
question.

"Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors
cannot be imagined or adequately praised!" said Berg, glancing round
at Natasha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her intent
look with a smile. "'Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in the hearts of
her sons!' Isn't it so, Papa?" said he.

Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary and
dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her hand,
asked about her health, and, swaying his head from side to side to
express sympathy, remained standing beside her.

"Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad times for
every Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still time to get
away...."

"I can't think what the servants are about," said the countess, turning
to her husband. "I have just been told that nothing is ready yet.
Somebody after all must see to things. One misses Mitenka at such times.
There won't be any end to it."

The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained himself.
He got up from his chair and went to the door.

At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose
and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and
significantly.

"And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa," said he.

"Hm..." said the count, and stopped.

"I was driving past Yusupov's house just now," said Berg with a laugh,
"when the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I wouldn't
buy something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and there is a
small chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear Vera wanted a
chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute about it." (At the mention
of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg involuntarily changed his tone
to one of pleasure at his admirable domestic arrangements.) "And it's
such a beauty! It pulls out and has a secret English drawer, you know!
And dear Vera has long wanted one. I wish to give her a surprise, you
see. I saw so many of those peasant carts in your yard. Please let me
have one, I will pay the man well, and..."

The count frowned and coughed.

"Ask the countess, I don't give orders."

"If it's inconvenient, please don't," said Berg. "Only I so wanted it,
for dear Vera's sake."

"Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the devil..."
cried the old count. "My head's in a whirl!"

And he left the room. The countess began to cry.

"Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!" said Berg.

Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it difficult to
reach some decision, first followed him and then ran downstairs.

Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the servants
who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still standing in the
yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded officer was climbing
into one of them helped by an orderly.

"Do you know what it's about?" Petya asked Natasha.

She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling about.
She did not answer.

"It's because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the wounded," said
Petya. "Vasilich told me. I consider..."

"I consider," Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry face to
Petya, "I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I don't know what.
Are we despicable Germans?"

Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening and
letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed
headlong up the stairs.

Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the respectful
attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was pacing up and down
the room, when Natasha, her face distorted by anger, burst in like a
tempest and approached her mother with rapid steps.

"It's horrid! It's abominable!" she screamed. "You can't possibly have
ordered it!"

Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The count
stood still at the window and listened.

"Mamma, it's impossible: see what is going on in the yard!" she cried.
"They will be left!..."

"What's the matter with you? Who are 'they'? What do you want?"

"Why, the wounded! It's impossible, Mamma. It's monstrous!... No, Mamma
darling, it's not the thing. Please forgive me, darling.... Mamma, what
does it matter what we take away? Only look what is going on in the
yard... Mamma!... It's impossible!"

The count stood by the window and listened without turning round.
Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer to the window.

The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for her
mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did not turn
to look at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.

"Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?" she said, not surrendering
at once.

"Mamma, darling, forgive me!"

But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her husband.

"My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don't understand about
it," said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.

"The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen," muttered the count through
tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide her look of
shame on his breast.

"Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?..." asked Natasha. "We will still
take all the most necessary things."

The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at which
she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to the
anteroom and downstairs into the yard.

The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the strange
order she brought them until the count himself, in his wife's name,
confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the wounded and take the
trunks to the storerooms. When they understood that order the servants
set to work at this new task with pleasure and zeal. It no longer seemed
strange to them but on the contrary it seemed the only thing that could
be done, just as a quarter of an hour before it had not seemed strange
to anyone that the wounded should be left behind and the goods carted
away but that had seemed the only thing to do.

The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner, set
eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the carts. The
wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood with pale but
happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to be had spread
to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men began to come into the
Rostovs' yard. Many of the wounded asked them not to unload the carts
but only to let them sit on the top of the things. But the work of
unloading, once started, could not be arrested. It seemed not to matter
whether all or only half the things were left behind. Cases full of
china, bronzes, pictures, and mirrors that had been so carefully
packed the night before now lay about the yard, and still they went on
searching for and finding possibilities of unloading this or that and
letting the wounded have another and yet another cart.

"We can take four more men," said the steward. "They can have my trap,
or else what is to become of them?"

"Let them have my wardrobe cart," said the countess. "Dunyasha can go
with me in the carriage."

They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from a
house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was bright
and animated. Natasha was in a state of rapturous excitement such as she
had not known for a long time.

"What could we fasten this onto?" asked the servants, trying to fix a
trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. "We must keep at least
one cart."

"What's in it?" asked Natasha.

"The count's books."

"Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It's not wanted."

The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where Count
Peter could sit.

"On the box. You'll sit on the box, won't you, Petya?" cried Natasha.

Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was quite
different from Natasha's. She was putting away the things that had to
be left behind and making a list of them as the countess wished, and she
tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.





CHAPTER XVII


Before two o'clock in the afternoon the Rostovs' four carriages, packed
full and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door. One by one
the carts with the wounded had moved out of the yard.

The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sonya's
attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she was
arranging a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that stood at
the entrance.

"Whose caleche is that?" she inquired, leaning out of the carriage
window.

"Why, didn't you know, Miss?" replied the maid. "The wounded prince: he
spent the night in our house and is going with us."

"But who is it? What's his name?"

"It's our intended that was--Prince Bolkonski himself! They say he is
dying," replied the maid with a sigh.

Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess,
tired out and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey,
was pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to
assemble for the usual silent prayer with closed doors before starting.
Natasha was not in the room.

"Mamma," said Sonya, "Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is
going with us."

The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sonya's arm, glanced
around.

"Natasha?" she murmured.

At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them.
They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what would happen if she heard
this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.

"Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us," said Sonya.

"You say he is dying?"

Sonya nodded.

The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to cry.

"The ways of God are past finding out!" she thought, feeling that the
Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all that was
now taking place.

"Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What's the matter?" asked Natasha, as
with animated face she ran into the room.

"Nothing," answered the countess. "If everything is ready let us start."

And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face. Sonya
embraced Natasha and kissed her.

Natasha looked at her inquiringly.

"What is it? What has happened?"

"Nothing... No..."

"Is it something very bad for me? What is it?" persisted Natasha with
her quick intuition.

Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya, Madame Schoss, Mavra
Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came into the drawing room and, having closed
the doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments silently
seated without looking at one another.

The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed himself
before the icon. All the others did the same. Then the count embraced
Mavra Kuzminichna and Vasilich, who were to remain in Moscow, and while
they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted their backs
lightly with some vaguely affectionate and comforting words. The
countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on her knees
before the icons that had been left here and there hanging on the wall.
(The most precious ones, with which some family tradition was connected,
were being taken with them.)

In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had armed with swords
and daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and with belts
and girdles tightened, were taking leave of those remaining behind.

As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put in
the wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on
each side of the open door and the carriage steps waiting to help the
countess in, while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the house
to the carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back again.

"They always will forget everything!" said the countess. "Don't you know
I can't sit like that?"

And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an
aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange the
seat.

"Oh, those servants!" said the count, swaying his head.

Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to
drive her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as glance
round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years' experience
he knew it would be some time yet before the order, "Be off, in God's
name!" would be given him: and he knew that even when it was said
he would be stopped once or twice more while they sent back to fetch
something that had been forgotten, and even after that he would again
be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of the window and beg
him for the love of heaven to drive carefully down the hill. He knew
all this and therefore waited calmly for what would happen, with more
patience than the horses, especially the near one, the chestnut Falcon,
who was pawing the ground and champing his bit. At last all were
seated, the carriage steps were folded and pulled up, the door was shut,
somebody was sent for a traveling case, and the countess leaned out
and said what she had to say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and
began crossing himself. The postilion and all the other servants did the
same. "Off, in God's name!" said Efim, putting on his hat. "Start!" The
postilion started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his collar,
the high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman
sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed out
of the yard onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted in
their turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In the
carriages, the caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as they
passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to remain in Moscow
walked on either side of the vehicles seeing the travelers off.

Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting in
the carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly receding
walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned out of the
carriage window and looked back and then forward at the long train of
wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of the line she could see
the raised hood of Prince Andrew's caleche. She did not know who was
in it, but each time she looked at the procession her eyes sought that
caleche. She knew it was right in front.

In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and Podnovinsk Streets came
several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostovs', and as they
passed along the Sadovaya Street the carriages and carts formed two rows
abreast.

As they were going round the Sukharev water tower Natasha, who was
inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking
past, suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:

"Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it's he!"

"Who? Who?"

"Look! Yes, on my word, it's Bezukhov!" said Natasha, putting her head
out of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a coachman's
long coat, who from his manner of walking and moving was evidently
a gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the arch of the
Sukharev tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced, beardless old man
in a frieze coat.

"Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman's coat, with a queer-looking
old boy. Really," said Natasha, "look, look!"

"No, it's not he. How can you talk such nonsense?"

"Mamma," screamed Natasha, "I'll stake my head it's he! I assure you!
Stop, stop!" she cried to the coachman.

But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchanski Street came
more carts and carriages, and the Rostovs were being shouted at to move
on and not block the way.

In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the Rostovs
all saw Pierre--or someone extraordinarily like him--in a coachman's
coat, going down the street with head bent and a serious face beside a
small, beardless old man who looked like a footman. That old man
noticed a face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at them, and
respectfully touching Pierre's elbow said something to him and pointed
to the carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in thought, could not at
first understand him. At length when he had understood and looked in the
direction the old man indicated, he recognized Natasha, and following
his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly toward the coach. But
having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember something and stopped.

Natasha's face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical
kindliness.

"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is
wonderful!" she cried, holding out her hand to him. "What are you doing?
Why are you like this?"

Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he walked
along beside her while the coach still moved on.

"What is the matter, Count?" asked the countess in a surprised and
commiserating tone.

"What? What? Why? Don't ask me," said Pierre, and looked round at
Natasha whose radiant, happy expression--of which he was conscious
without looking at her--filled him with enchantment.

"Are you remaining in Moscow, then?"

Pierre hesitated.

"In Moscow?" he said in a questioning tone. "Yes, in Moscow. Good-by!"

"Ah, if only I were a man? I'd certainly stay with you. How splendid!"
said Natasha. "Mamma, if you'll let me, I'll stay!"

Pierre glanced absently at Natasha and was about to say something, but
the countess interrupted him.

"You were at the battle, we heard."

"Yes, I was," Pierre answered. "There will be another battle
tomorrow..." he began, but Natasha interrupted him.

"But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like yourself...."

"Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me! I don't know myself. Tomorrow... But
no! Good-by, good-by!" he muttered. "It's an awful time!" and dropping
behind the carriage he stepped onto the pavement.

Natasha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming at
him with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile.





CHAPTER XVIII


For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been living
in the empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdeev. This is how it
happened.

When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his
interview with Count Rostopchin, he could not for some time make out
where he was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that
among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a Frenchman
who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Helene, he felt
suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and hopelessness to which
he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything was now at an end, all
was in confusion and crumbling to pieces, that nobody was right or
wrong, the future held nothing, and there was no escape from this
position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to himself, he first sat
down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then rose, went to the door
of the reception room and peeped through the crack, returned flourishing
his arms, and took up a book. His major-domo came in a second time to
say that the Frenchman who had brought the letter from the countess
was very anxious to see him if only for a minute, and that someone from
Bazdeev's widow had called to ask Pierre to take charge of her husband's
books, as she herself was leaving for the country.

"Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say I will
come directly," Pierre replied to the major-domo.

But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat which
was lying on the table and went out of his study by the other door.
There was no one in the passage. He went along the whole length of this
passage to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his forehead with
both hands, went down as far as the first landing. The hall porter was
standing at the front door. From the landing where Pierre stood there
was a second staircase leading to the back entrance. He went down that
staircase and out into the yard. No one had seen him. But there were
some carriages waiting, and as soon as Pierre stepped out of the gate
the coachmen and the yard porter noticed him and raised their caps to
him. When he felt he was being looked at he behaved like an ostrich
which hides its head in a bush in order not to be seen: he hung his head
and quickening his pace went down the street.

Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph
Bazdeev's books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.

He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the
Patriarch's Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev's house was.

Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that were
making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing his bulky
body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle, Pierre,
experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school, began to
talk to his driver.

The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the Kremlin
and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the Three Hills
gates and a great battle would be fought there.

Having reached the Patriarch's Ponds Pierre found the Bazdeevs' house,
where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the gate.
Gerasim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at Torzhok five
years before with Joseph Bazdeev, came out in answer to his knock.

"At home?" asked Pierre.

"Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danilovna has gone to the
Torzhok estate with the children, your excellency."

"I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books," said
Pierre.

"Be so good as to step in. Makar Alexeevich, the brother of my late
master--may the kingdom of heaven be his--has remained here, but he is
in a weak state as you know," said the old servant.

Pierre knew that Makar Alexeevich was Joseph Bazdeev's half-insane
brother and a hard drinker.

"Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in..." said Pierre and entered the house.

A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown and
with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing Pierre
he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.

"He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your honor
sees," said Gerasim. "Will you step into the study?" Pierre nodded. "As
it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia Danilovna gave orders
that if anyone should come from you they were to have the books."

Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such
trepidation in his benefactor's lifetime. The room, dusty and untouched
since the death of Joseph Bazdeev was now even gloomier.

Gerasim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe. Pierre
went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the manuscripts
were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most important,
the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic Scotch Acts
with Bazdeev's notes and explanations. He sat down at the dusty writing
table, and, having laid the manuscripts before him, opened them out,
closed them, finally pushed them away, and resting his head on his hand
sank into meditation.

Gerasim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw Pierre
always sitting in the same attitude.

More than two hours passed and Gerasim took the liberty of making a
slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did not
hear him.

"Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?"

"Oh yes!" said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. "Look
here," he added, taking Gerasim by a button of his coat and looking down
at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, "I say, do you
know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?"

"We heard so," replied the man.

"I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you."

"Yes, your excellency," replied Gerasim. "Will you have something to
eat?"

"No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a pistol,"
said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.

"Yes, your excellency," said Gerasim after thinking for a moment.

All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor's study,
and Gerasim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to another and
talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made up for him
there.

Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange things,
accepted Pierre's taking up his residence in the house without
surprise, and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same
evening--without even asking himself what they were wanted for--he
procured a coachman's coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him
the pistol next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening shuffling
along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and looked
ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward him he
wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and angry look
and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the coachman's coat which
Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected by steam) was on his
way with the old man to buy the pistol at the Sukharev market that he
met the Rostovs.





CHAPTER XIX


Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was issued
at night on the first of September.

The first troops started at once, and during the night they marched
slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those nearing
the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers
crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side
and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless masses of troops were
bearing down on them from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm
overcame them. They all rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and
to the fords and the boats. Kutuzov himself had driven round by side
streets to the other side of Moscow.

By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September, only the rear
guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample room. The
main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.

At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,
Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny Hill looking at
the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August
to the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the
entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,
memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that
always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat
than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear
atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and
refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights
are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and
delight us continually by falling from the sky.

At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather still
held.

The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the Poklonny
Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, and her
churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas
glittering like stars in the sunlight.

The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as
he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious and
uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that has
no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full force
of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a distance,
distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the Poklonny
Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as it were, the
breathing of that great and beautiful body.

Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every
foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the
mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.

"Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou la sainte. La
voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait temps," * said he, and
dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him, and
summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville, the interpreter.


     * "That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy
     Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was
     high time."


"A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her honor,"
thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at Smolensk). From that point of
view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen before. It seemed
strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had seemed unattainable,
had at last been realized. In the clear morning light he gazed now at
the city and now at the plan, considering its details, and the assurance
of possessing it agitated and awed him.

"But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my
feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange,
beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In what
light must I appear to them!" thought he, thinking of his troops.
"Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men," he reflected,
glancing at those near him and at the troops who were approaching and
forming up. "One word from me, one movement of my hand, and that ancient
capital of the Tsars would perish. But my clemency is always ready to
descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But
no, it can't be true that I am in Moscow," he suddenly thought.
"Yet here she is lying at my feet, with her golden domes and crosses
scintillating and twinkling in the sunshine. But I shall spare her. On
the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great
words of justice and mercy.... It is just this which Alexander will
feel most painfully, I know him." (It seemed to Napoleon that the chief
import of what was taking place lay in the personal struggle between
himself and Alexander.) "From the height of the Kremlin--yes, there
is the Kremlin, yes--I will give them just laws; I will teach them the
meaning of true civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember
their conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not,
and do not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false
policy of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in
Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people.
I do not wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored
monarch. 'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire
the peace and welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their
presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do:
clearly, impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in
Moscow? Yes, there she lies."

"Qu'on m'amene les boyars," * said he to his suite.


    * "Bring the boyars to me."


A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the
boyars.

Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the
same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to
the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That
speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.

He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended to
adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for assemblies
at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and his own would
mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who would win the
hearts of the people. Having learned that there were many charitable
institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he would shower favors
on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he had to put on a burnoose
and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must be beneficent like the Tsars.
And in order finally to touch the hearts of the Russians--and being like
all Frenchmen unable to imagine anything sentimental without a reference
to ma chere, ma tendre, ma pauvre mere * --he decided that he would
place an inscription on all these establishments in large letters:
"This establishment is dedicated to my dear mother." Or no, it should
be simply: Maison de ma Mere, *(2) he concluded. "But am I really in
Moscow? Yes, here it lies before me, but why is the deputation from the
city so long in appearing?" he wondered.


     * "My dear, my tender, my poor mother."

     * (2) "House of my Mother."


Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in whispers
among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite. Those sent to
fetch the deputation had returned with the news that Moscow was empty,
that everyone had left it. The faces of those who were not conferring
together were pale and perturbed. They were not alarmed by the fact
that Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants (grave as that fact
seemed), but by the question how to tell the Emperor--without putting
him in the terrible position of appearing ridiculous--that he had been
awaiting the boyars so long in vain: that there were drunken mobs left
in Moscow but no one else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must
be scraped together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that
the Emperor should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then
told the truth.

"He will have to be told, all the same," said some gentlemen of the
suite. "But, gentlemen..."

The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating upon
his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before the
outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from under
his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.

"But it's impossible..." declared the gentlemen of the suite, shrugging
their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word--le
ridicule...

At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor's instinct
suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too long drawn out
was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with his hand. A single
report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops, who were already
spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into the city through
Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov gates. Faster and faster, vying with
one another, they moved at the double or at a trot, vanishing amid the
clouds of dust they raised and making the air ring with a deafening roar
of mingling shouts.

Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as far as
the Dorogomilov gate, but there again stopped and, dismounting from his
horse, paced for a long time by the Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting
the deputation.





CHAPTER XX


Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a
fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was empty.
It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.

In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance it
seems as much alive as other hives.

The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the midday
sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it smells of
honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same way. But one
has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any
life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound
that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the beekeeper's tap on the
wall of the sick hive, instead of the former instant unanimous
humming of tens of thousands of bees with their abdomens threateningly
compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration of their wings an
aerial living sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from
different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting board, instead
of the former spirituous fragrant smell of honey and venom, and the warm
whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness and decay mingling
with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels sounding the
alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the
hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity,
like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of
disorder. In and out of the hive long black robber bees smeared with
honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do not sting, but crawl away from
danger. Formerly only bees laden with honey flew into the hive, and they
flew out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper opens the lower
part of the hive and peers in. Instead of black, glossy bees--tamed by
toil, clinging to one another's legs and drawing out the wax, with a
ceaseless hum of labor--that used to hang in long clusters down to
the floor of the hive, drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately
in various directions on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a
neatly glued floor, swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings,
there is a floor littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees
scarcely moving their legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared
away.

The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the super.
Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the combs and
keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex structures of the
combs, but no longer in their former state of purity. All is neglected
and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and stealthily prowling about
the combs, and the short home bees, shriveled and listless as if they
were old, creep slowly about without trying to hinder the robbers,
having lost all motive and all sense of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps,
and butterflies knock awkwardly against the walls of the hive in their
flight. Here and there among the cells containing dead brood and honey
an angry buzzing can sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of
bees, by force of habit and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with
efforts beyond their strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or
bumblebee without knowing why they do it. In another corner two old bees
are languidly fighting, or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another,
without themselves knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile
intent. In a third place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack
some victim and fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or
killed, drops from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap
of corpses. The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine
the brood cells. In place of the former close dark circles formed by
thousands of bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery
of generation, he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of
bees. They have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they
had guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only
a few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the enemy's
hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are dead and fall
as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the hive, chalks a mark
on it, and when he has time tears out its contents and burns it clean.

So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy, and
morose, paced up and down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski rampart,
awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal, observance of
the proprieties--a deputation.

In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people aimlessly
moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of what they
were doing.

When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed that Moscow was
empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently
continued to walk to and fro.

"My carriage!" he said.

He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into the
suburb. "Moscow deserted!" he said to himself. "What an incredible
event!"

He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the Dorogomilov
suburb.

The coup de theatre had not come off.





CHAPTER XXI


The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock at night
till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded and the
last of the inhabitants who were leaving.

The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took place at the
Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.

While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the
Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges, a great many
soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back
from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church of
Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the hill
to the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily take
things not belonging to them. Crowds of the kind seen at cheap sales
filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were no
dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers to
enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of female
purchasers--but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though without
muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently making their way
out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen and their assistants
(of whom there were but few) moved about among the soldiers quite
bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked them up again, and
themselves carried goods away with the help of their assistants. On the
square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating the muster call.
But the roll of the drums did not make the looting soldiers run in the
direction of the drum as formerly, but made them, on the contrary, run
farther away. Among the soldiers in the shops and passages some men were
to be seen in gray coats, with closely shaven heads. Two officers, one
with a scarf over his uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse,
the other in an overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka
Street, talking. A third officer galloped up to them.

"The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail.
This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed."

"Where are you off to?... Where?..." he shouted to three infantrymen
without muskets who, holding up the skirts of their overcoats, were
slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. "Stop, you rascals!"

"But how are you going to stop them?" replied another officer. "There is
no getting them together. The army should push on before the rest bolt,
that's all!"

"How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged on the bridge, and
don't move. Shouldn't we put a cordon round to prevent the rest from
running away?"

"Come, go in there and drive them out!" shouted the senior officer.

The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer, and went with
him into the arcade. Some soldiers started running away in a group. A
shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose, and a calm,
persistent, calculating expression on his plump face, hurriedly and
ostentatiously approached the officer, swinging his arms.

"Your honor!" said he. "Be so good as to protect us! We won't grudge
trifles, you are welcome to anything--we shall be delighted! Pray!...
I'll fetch a piece of cloth at once for such an honorable gentleman,
or even two pieces with pleasure. For we feel how it is; but what's all
this--sheer robbery! If you please, could not guards be placed if only
to let us close the shop...."

Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.

"Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man. "When
one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair! Take what any of you
like!" And flourishing his arm energetically he turned sideways to the
officer.

"It's all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk," said the first
tradesman angrily. "Please step inside, your honor!"

"Talk indeed!" cried the thin one. "In my three shops here I have a
hundred thousand rubles' worth of goods. Can they be saved when the army
has gone? Eh, what people! 'Against God's might our hands can't fight.'"

"Come inside, your honor!" repeated the tradesman, bowing.

The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.

"It's not my business!" he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one of
the passages.

From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and just
as the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with a shaven head was
flung out violently.

This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer. The
officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that
moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the Moskva
bridge and the officer ran out into the square.

"What is it? What is it?" he asked, but his comrade was already
galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction from which the
screams came.

The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he reached the
bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the bridge,
several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing faces among the
troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two horses were
harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close to the wheels.
The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside a child's chair
with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman uttering piercing and
desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers that the screams
of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman were due to the fact that
General Ermolov, coming up to the crowd and learning that soldiers were
dispersing among the shops while crowds of civilians blocked the bridge,
had ordered two guns to be unlimbered and made a show of firing at the
bridge. The crowd, crushing one another, upsetting carts, and shouting
and squeezing desperately, had cleared off the bridge and the troops
were now moving forward.





CHAPTER XXII


Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone in the
streets. The gates and shops were all closed, only here and there round
the taverns solitary shouts or drunken songs could be heard. Nobody
drove through the streets and footsteps were rarely heard. The
Povarskaya was quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard of the
Rostovs' house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung from the
horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great drawing
room of the house, which had been left with all it contained, were
two people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the page boy Mishka,
Vasilich's grandson who had stayed in Moscow with his grandfather.
Mishka had opened the clavichord and was strumming on it with
one finger. The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling with
satisfaction before the large mirror.

"Isn't it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?" said the boy, suddenly beginning to
strike the keyboard with both hands.

"Only fancy!" answered Ignat, surprised at the broadening grin on his
face in the mirror.

"Impudence! Impudence!" they heard behind them the voice of Mavra
Kuzminichna who had entered silently. "How he's grinning, the fat mug!
Is that what you're here for? Nothing's cleared away down there and
Vasilich is worn out. Just you wait a bit!"

Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of the room with
meekly downcast eyes.

"Aunt, I did it gently," said the boy.

"I'll give you something gently, you monkey you!" cried Mavra
Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly. "Go and get the samovar to
boil for your grandfather."

Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord and closed it, and
with a deep sigh left the drawing room and locked its main door.

Going out into the yard she paused to consider where she should go
next--to drink tea in the servants' wing with Vasilich, or into the
storeroom to put away what still lay about.

She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street. Someone
stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to open it.
Mavra Kuzminichna went to the gate.

"Who do you want?"

"The count--Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov."

"And who are you?"

"An officer, I have to see him," came the reply in a pleasant, well-bred
Russian voice.

Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with the
round face of a Rostov, entered the yard.

"They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime," said
Mavra Kuzminichna cordially.

The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating whether to
enter or not, clicked his tongue.

"Ah, how annoying!" he muttered. "I should have come yesterday.... Ah,
what a pity."

Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and sympathetically
examining the familiar Rostov features of the young man's face, his
tattered coat and trodden-down boots.

"What did you want to see the count for?" she asked.

"Oh well... it can't be helped!" said he in a tone of vexation and
placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.

He again paused in indecision.

"You see," he suddenly said, "I am a kinsman of the count's and he has
been very kind to me. As you see" (he glanced with an amused air and
good-natured smile at his coat and boots) "my things are worn out and I
have no money, so I was going to ask the count..."

Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish.

"Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment," said she.

And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she turned and,
hurrying away on her old legs, went through the back yard to the
servants' quarters.

While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room the officer walked about
the yard gazing at his worn-out boots with lowered head and a faint
smile on his lips. "What a pity I've missed Uncle! What a nice old
woman! Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the nearest way
to overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near the Rogozhski
gate?" thought he. Just then Mavra Kuzminichna appeared from behind
the corner of the house with a frightened yet resolute look, carrying a
rolled-up check kerchief in her hand. While still a few steps from
the officer she unfolded the kerchief and took out of it a white
twenty-five-ruble assignat and hastily handed it to him.

"If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of course...
but as it is..."

Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not
decline, but took the note quietly and thanked her.

"If the count had been at home..." Mavra Kuzminichna went on
apologetically. "Christ be with you, sir! May God preserve you!" said
she, bowing as she saw him out.

Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself, the officer ran
almost at a trot through the deserted streets toward the Yauza bridge to
overtake his regiment.

But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for some time with moist
eyes, pensively swaying her head and feeling an unexpected flow of
motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer.





CHAPTER XXIII


From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of which was
a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches round the tables
in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands. Tipsy and perspiring,
with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were all laboriously singing
some song or other. They were singing discordantly, arduously, and with
great effort, evidently not because they wished to sing, but because
they wanted to show they were drunk and on a spree. One, a tall,
fair-haired lad in a clean blue coat, was standing over the others. His
face with its fine straight nose would have been handsome had it not
been for his thin, compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed
eyes. Evidently possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were
singing, and solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white
arm with the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread
out his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he
always carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it were
most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing should be
bare. In the midst of the song cries were heard, and fighting and blows
in the passage and porch. The tall lad waved his arm.

"Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's a fight, lads!" And,
still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.

The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the leadership of
the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning, had brought the
publican some skins from the factory and for this had had drink served
them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring smithy, hearing the sounds of
revelry in the tavern and supposing it to have been broken into, wished
to force their way in too and a fight in the porch had resulted.

The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when the
workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern
keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.

Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the publican
with his chest.

The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in the face and
cried wildly: "They're fighting us, lads!"

At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his bruised
face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: "Police! Murder!...
They've killed a man, lads!"

"Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death--killed!..." screamed a woman
coming out of a gate close by.

A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.

"Haven't you robbed people enough--taking their last shirts?" said a
voice addressing the publican. "What have you killed a man for, you
thief?"

The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from the
publican to the smith and back again as if considering whom he ought to
fight now.

"Murderer!" he shouted suddenly to the publican. "Bind him, lads!"

"I daresay you would like to bind me!" shouted the publican, pushing
away the men advancing on him, and snatching his cap from his head he
flung it on the ground.

As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the
workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision.

"I know the law very well, mates! I'll take the matter to the captain
of police. You think I won't get to him? Robbery is not permitted to
anybody now a days!" shouted the publican, picking up his cap.

"Come along then! Come along then!" the publican and the tall young
fellow repeated one after the other, and they moved up the street
together.

The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands and others
followed behind, talking and shouting.

At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with closed
shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score of thin,
worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and long tattered
coats.

"He should pay folks off properly," a thin workingman, with frowning
brows and a straggly beard, was saying.

"But he's sucked our blood and now he thinks he's quit of us. He's been
misleading us all the week and now that he's brought us to this pass
he's made off."

On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the workman ceased
speaking, and with eager curiosity all the bootmakers joined the moving
crowd.

"Where are all the folks going?"

"Why, to the police, of course!"

"I say, is it true that we have been beaten?" "And what did you think?
Look what folks are saying."

Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking advantage of the
increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern.

The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe, waved his
bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention
to himself. It was around him that the people chiefly crowded, expecting
answers from him to the questions that occupied all their minds.

"He must keep order, keep the law, that's what the government is there
for. Am I not right, good Christians?" said the tall youth, with a
scarcely perceptible smile. "He thinks there's no government! How can
one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who'd rob us."

"Why talk nonsense?" rejoined voices in the crowd. "Will they give
up Moscow like this? They told you that for fun, and you believed it!
Aren't there plenty of troops on the march? Let him in, indeed! That's
what the government is for. You'd better listen to what people are
saying," said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth.

By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered round
a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.

"An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!" cried voices in
the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader.

The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August 31 When
the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but at the demand
of the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him, he began in a rather
tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning.

"Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness," he read ("Sirin
Highness," said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his lips and
a frown on his brow), "to consult with him to act, and to aid the army
to exterminate these scoundrels. We too will take part..." the reader
went on, and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth victoriously,
"he's going to clear up the whole affair for you...."), "in destroying
them, and will send these visitors to the devil. I will come back to
dinner, and we'll set to work. We will do, completely do, and undo these
scoundrels."

The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence. The tall
lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one had understood
the last part. In particular, the words "I will come back to dinner,"
evidently displeased both reader and audience. The people's minds
were tuned to a high pitch and this was too simple and needlessly
comprehensible--it was what any one of them might have said and
therefore was what an ukase emanating from the highest authority should
not say.

They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved his lips and
swayed from side to side.

"We should ask him... that's he himself?"... "Yes, ask him indeed!...
Why not? He'll explain"... voices in the rear of the crowd were
suddenly heard saying, and the general attention turned to the police
superintendent's trap which drove into the square attended by two
mounted dragoons.

The superintendent of police, who had gone that morning by Count
Rostopchin's orders to burn the barges and had in connection with that
matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment in his
pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to
stop.

"What people are these?" he shouted to the men, who were moving singly
and timidly in the direction of his trap.

"What people are these?" he shouted again, receiving no answer.

"Your honor..." replied the shopman in the frieze coat, "your honor, in
accord with the proclamation of his highest excellency the count, they
desire to serve, not sparing their lives, and it is not any kind of
riot, but as his highest excellence said..."

"The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued
concerning you," said the superintendent of police. "Go on!" he ordered
his coachman.

The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what the
superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.

The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a scared
look, said something to his coachman, and his horses increased their
speed.

"It's a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!" shouted the tall
youth. "Don't let him go, lads! Let him answer us! Keep him!" shouted
different people and the people dashed in pursuit of the trap.

Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly the crowd went
in the direction of the Lubyanka Street.

"There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to
perish. Do they think we're dogs?" voices in the crowd were heard saying
more and more frequently.





CHAPTER XXIV


On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with
Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned to Moscow mortified and offended
because he had not been invited to attend the council of war, and
because Kutuzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in the
defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed to him
at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital and its
patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite irrelevant and
unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and surprised by all this,
Rostopchin had returned to Moscow. After supper he lay down on a sofa
without undressing, and was awakened soon after midnight by a courier
bringing him a letter from Kutuzov. This letter requested the count to
send police officers to guide the troops through the town, as the army
was retreating to the Ryazan road beyond Moscow. This was not news to
Rostopchin. He had known that Moscow would be abandoned not merely since
his interview the previous day with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but
ever since the battle of Borodino, for all the generals who came to
Moscow after that battle had said unanimously that it was impossible to
fight another battle, and since then the government property had been
removed every night, and half the inhabitants had left the city
with Rostopchin's own permission. Yet all the same this information
astonished and irritated the count, coming as it did in the form of a
simple note with an order from Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking
in on his beauty sleep.

When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin explained his actions at
this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated by two important
considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow and expedite the
departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this twofold aim all
Rostopchin's actions appear irreproachable. "Why were the holy relics,
the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of corn not removed? Why
were thousands of inhabitants deceived into believing that Moscow would
not be given up--and thereby ruined?" "To preserve the tranquillity
of the city," explains Count Rostopchin. "Why were bundles of useless
papers from the government offices, and Leppich's balloon and other
articles removed?" "To leave the town empty," explains Count Rostopchin.
One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action
finds a justification.

All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude for
public tranquillity.

On what, then, was Count Rostopchin's fear for the tranquillity of
Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any probability
of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving it and the
retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause the masses to
riot?

Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling an
insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than
ten thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of
September, and except for a mob in the governor's courtyard, assembled
there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would
have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people
if after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of Moscow became
certain or at least probable, Rostopchin instead of exciting the people
by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to remove all
the holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and had told the
population plainly that the town would be abandoned.

Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and
impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative circles
and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed himself to
be guiding. Ever since the enemy's entry into Smolensk he had in
imagination been playing the role of director of the popular feeling
of "the heart of Russia." Not only did it seem to him (as to all
administrators) that he controlled the external actions of Moscow's
inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental attitude by
means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a coarse tone which the
people despise in their own class and do not understand from those in
authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the fine role of leader of
popular feeling, and had grown so used to it, that the necessity of
relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow without any heroic display
took him unawares and he suddenly felt the ground slip away from under
his feet, so that he positively did not know what to do. Though he knew
it was coming, he did not till the last moment wholeheartedly believe
that Moscow would be abandoned, and did not prepare for it. The
inhabitants left against his wishes. If the government offices were
removed, this was only done on the demand of officials to whom the count
yielded reluctantly. He was absorbed in the role he had created
for himself. As is often the case with those gifted with an ardent
imagination, though he had long known that Moscow would be abandoned he
knew it only with his intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and
did not adapt himself mentally to this new position of affairs.

All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful
and had any effect on the people is another question) had been simply
directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of patriotic
hatred of the French.

But when events assumed their true historical character, when expressing
hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it was not
even possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle, when
self-confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question before
Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one man,
abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action all
the depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by Rostopchin
suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself ridiculous,
weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on.

When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory note
from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself
to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state
property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it was no
longer possible to take the whole of it away.

"Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?" he
ruminated. "Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow
firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains!
Traitors!" he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and
traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever
they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous position in
which he found himself.

All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for which people came to
him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the count
so morose and irritable.

"Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar's Department has sent
for instructions... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from the
University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent...
asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire Brigade?
From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of the
lunatic asylum..." All night long such announcements were continually
being received by the count.

To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating that
orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair, carefully
prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that that somebody
would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that might happen.

"Oh, tell that blockhead," he said in reply to the question from the
Registrar's Department, "that he should remain to guard his documents.
Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They have
horses, let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the French."

"Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come:
what are your commands?"

"My commands? Let them go away, that's all.... And let the lunatics
out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God evidently means
these other madmen to be free."

In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count
Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor:

"Do you expect me to give you two battalions--which we have not got--for
a convoy? Release them, that's all about it!"

"Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkov,
Vereshchagin..."

"Vereshchagin! Hasn't he been hanged yet?" shouted Rostopchin. "Bring
him to me!"





CHAPTER XXV


Toward nine o'clock in the morning, when the troops were already moving
through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for instructions.
Those who were able to get away were going of their own accord, those
who remained behind decided for themselves what they must do.

The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, and sat
in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it
is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is
kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every
administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the
sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark,
holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself
moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding
on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and
the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves
independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer
reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead
of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant,
useless, feeble man.

Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated him.

The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in to
see him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count that the
horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent of
police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he had
received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collected in the
courtyard and wished to see him.

Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked hastily to his light,
luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took hold of the
handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which he had a
better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in front,
flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. The blood
stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone of voices was
audible through the closed window.

"Is my carriage ready?" asked Rostopchin, stepping back from the window.

"It is, your excellency," replied the adjutant.

Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.

"But what do they want?" he asked the superintendent of police.

"Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to your
orders, to go against the French, and they shouted something about
treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency--I hardly
managed to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..."

"You may go. I don't need you to tell me what to do!" exclaimed
Rostopchin angrily.

He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.

"This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have done
with me!" thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled up
within him against the someone to whom what was happening might be
attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he was mastered by
anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it. "Here is
that mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed at the crowd:
"this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want a victim,"
he thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his arm. And this
thought occurred to him just because he himself desired a victim,
something on which to vent his rage.

"Is the carriage ready?" he asked again.

"Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? He is
waiting at the porch," said the adjutant.

"Ah!" exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpected recollection.

And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto the balcony.
The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed, and all eyes
were raised to the count.

"Good morning, lads!" said the count briskly and loudly. "Thank you for
coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we must first settle
with the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused the ruin of
Moscow. Wait for me!"

And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammed the door
behind him.

A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd. "He'll
settle with all the villains, you'll see! And you said the French...
He'll show you what law is!" the mob were saying as if reproving one
another for their lack of confidence.

A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door,
gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd moved
eagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming out there
with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking someone.

"Where is he?" he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young man coming
round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had a long thin
neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was again covered by
short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue cloth coat
lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty hempen convict
trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty, trodden-down boots.
On his thin, weak legs were heavy chains which hampered his irresolute
movements.

"Ah!" said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes from the young
man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of the porch.
"Put him there."

The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to the spot
indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar which chafed
his neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed, and
submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work.

For several seconds while the young man was taking his place on the step
the silence continued. Only among the back rows of the people, who were
all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs, groans, and the shuffling
of feet be heard.

While waiting for the young man to take his place on the step Rostopchin
stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.

"Lads!" said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. "This man,
Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing."

The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in a
submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciated young
face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down hopelessly. At
the count's first words he raised it slowly and looked up at him as if
wishing to say something or at least to meet his eye. But Rostopchin did
not look at him. A vein in the young man's long thin neck swelled like a
cord and went blue behind the ear, and suddenly his face flushed.

All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and rendered more
hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled sadly
and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step.

"He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he has gone over to
Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian name,
he has caused Moscow to perish," said Rostopchin in a sharp, even voice,
but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who continued to stand in
the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight, he raised his
arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:

"Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you."

The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer to
one another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stifling
atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown,
uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those standing
in front, who had seen and heard what had taken place before them, all
stood with wide open eyes and mouths, straining with all their strength,
and held back the crowd that was pushing behind them.

"Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russian name!"
shouted Rostopchin. "Cut him down. I command it."

Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin's voice,
the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.

"Count!" exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchagin in the
midst of the momentary silence that ensued, "Count! One God is above us
both...." He lifted his head and again the thick vein in his thin neck
filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went in his face.

He did not finish what he wished to say.

"Cut him down! I command it..." shouted Rostopchin, suddenly growing
pale like Vereshchagin.

"Draw sabers!" cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own.

Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reaching the
front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. The tall
youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm, stood
beside Vereshchagin.

"Saber him!" the dragoon officer almost whispered.

And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury,
struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.

"Ah!" cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round with a
frightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him. A
similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. "O Lord!"
exclaimed a sorrowful voice.

But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from Vereshchagin
he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was fatal. The barrier
of human feeling, strained to the utmost, that had held the crowd in
check suddenly broke. The crime had begun and must now be completed. The
plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by the threatening and angry roar
of the crowd. Like the seventh and last wave that shatters a ship, that
last irresistible wave burst from the rear and reached the front ranks,
carrying them off their feet and engulfing them all. The dragoon was
about to repeat his blow. Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering
his head with his hands, rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth,
against whom he stumbled, seized his thin neck with his hands and,
yelling wildly, fell with him under the feet of the pressing, struggling
crowd.

Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall youth. And the
screams of those that were being trampled on and of those who tried to
rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd. It was a long
time before the dragoons could extricate the bleeding youth, beaten
almost to death. And for a long time, despite the feverish haste with
which the mob tried to end the work that had been begun, those who were
hitting, throttling, and tearing at Vereshchagin were unable to kill
him, for the crowd pressed from all sides, swaying as one mass with them
in the center and rendering it impossible for them either to kill him or
let him go.

"Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold Christ....
Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture serves a thief
right. Use the hatchet!... What--still alive?"

Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to a
long-drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around his prostrate,
bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each one came
up, glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and
astonishment pushed back again.

"O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?" voices
in the crowd could be heard saying. "Quite a young fellow too... must
have been a merchant's son. What men!... and they say he's not the right
one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there's another has been
beaten too--they say he's nearly done for.... Oh, the people... Aren't
they afraid of sinning?..." said the same mob now, looking with pained
distress at the dead body with its long, thin, half-severed neck and its
livid face stained with blood and dust.

A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpse in
his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it away.
Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it along the
ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its long neck
trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back from it.

At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in with savage
yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale and, instead
of going to the back entrance where his carriage awaited him, went
with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing where and why, along the
passage leading to the rooms on the ground floor. The count's face was
white and he could not control the feverish twitching of his lower jaw.

"This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,
please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.

Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went in
the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche. The
distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He hastily
took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his country house in
Sokolniki.

When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear
the shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with
dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his
subordinates. "The mob is terrible--disgusting," he said to himself
in French. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease."
"Count! One God is above us both!"--Vereshchagin's words suddenly
recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this
was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled disdainfully
at himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The people had to be
appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing for the
public good"--and he began thinking of his social duties to his family
and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself--not himself as
Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore Vasilyevich
Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good) but himself as
governor, the representative of authority and of the Tsar. "Had I been
simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action would have been quite
different, but it was my duty to safeguard my life and dignity as
commander in chief."

Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no longer
hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew physically
calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became physically tranquil
his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally tranquil too. The
thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new one. Since the
world began and men have killed one another no one has ever committed
such a crime against his fellow man without comforting himself with
this same idea. This idea is le bien public, the hypothetical welfare of
other people.

To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he
who commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies. And
Rostopchin now knew it.

Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but
he even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully
contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a
criminal and at the same time pacify the mob.

"Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thought Rostopchin
(though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to hard labor), "he
was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go unpunished and so I have
killed two birds with one stone: to appease the mob I gave them a victim
and at the same time punished a miscreant."

Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about domestic
arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.

Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the
Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but considering
what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where he had heard
that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing the angry and
stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov for his deception. He
would make that foxy old courtier feel that the responsibility for all
the calamities that would follow the abandonment of the city and the
ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded it) would fall upon his doting
old head. Planning beforehand what he would say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin
turned angrily in his caleche and gazed sternly from side to side.

The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of the
almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in white
and others like them walking singly across the field shouting and
gesticulating.

One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin's
carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons
looked with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and
especially at the one running toward them.

Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering
dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on
Rostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs to him
to stop. The lunatic's solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow, with
its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with
saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.

"Stop! Pull up, I tell you!" he cried in a piercing voice, and again
shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.

Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.

"Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead. They
stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shall rise.
They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown... Thrice
will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!" he cried, raising his
voice higher and higher.

Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd closed
in on Vereshchagin. He turned away. "Go fas... faster!" he cried in a
trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew over the ground as
fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long time Count Rostopchin
still heard the insane despairing screams growing fainter in the
distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the astonished, frightened,
bloodstained face of "the traitor" in the fur-lined coat.

Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already felt that it had
cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt clearly that
the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with time, but that
the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in his heart ever more
cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He seemed still to hear
the sound of his own words: "Cut him down! I command it...."

"Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said them....
I need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothing would have
happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated face of the dragoon
who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid reproach that boy in the
fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But I did not do it for my own
sake. I was bound to act that way.... The mob, the traitor... the public
welfare," thought he.

Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov,
dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his
whip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a general's
uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said something
in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that he had come
because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army remained.

"Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not told
me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle; all this
would not have happened," he said.

Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said to him,
he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment on the
face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused and became
silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his penetrating
gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly:

"No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!"

Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when
he spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be
meaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left him.
And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count Rostopchin,
took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he began with shouts
to drive on the carts that blocked the way.





CHAPTER XXVI


Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering
Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind
them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.

About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the Miraculous
Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the advanced
detachment as to the condition in which they had found the citadel, le
Kremlin.

Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow. They
all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired commander
dressed up in feathers and gold.

"Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could be heard
saying.

An interpreter rode up to the group.

"Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one to another
in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and asked if
it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in perplexity to the
unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that the interpreter was
speaking Russian, did not understand what was being said to him and
slipped behind the others.

Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the Russian
army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and several
voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer,
returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported
that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that there was
probably an ambuscade there.

"Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his suite,
ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the gates.

The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and advanced
up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka Street they
halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers superintended the
placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin through field glasses.

The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound
troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few
infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had been
put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as soon as
an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was standing
by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and the latter
ran back again with his men.

The sound of three more shots came from the gate.

One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screens
came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a
word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of
the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined
concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from
the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,
Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar in
Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove sanguinary.
And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the gates ceased. The
guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash off their linstocks,
and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This was followed by two whistling
sounds of canister shot, one after another. The shot rattled against
the stone of the gate and upon the wooden beams and screens, and two
wavering clouds of smoke rose over the Square.

A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the
stone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound above
their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and circled in the
air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings. Together with that sound
came a solitary human cry from the gateway and amid the smoke appeared
the figure of a bareheaded man in a peasant's coat. He grasped a musket
and took aim at the French. "Fire!" repeated the officer once more,
and the reports of a musket and of two cannon shots were heard
simultaneously. The gate was again hidden by smoke.

Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry soldiers
and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three wounded and
four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot of the wall,
toward the Znamenka.

"Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and the
corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw
the corpses over the parapet.

Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all that was said
of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed later on that
they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few eloquent lines to
their memory: "These wretches had occupied the sacred citadel, having
supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal, and fired" (the
wretches) "at the French. Some of them were sabered and the Kremlin was
purged of their presence."

Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered
the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of the
windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the Square
for fuel and kindled fires there.

Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along
the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered
themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy
Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French were
not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in it as
in a camp.

Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their
original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order. It
was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army. But
it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into their
different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various regiments began
to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the army was lost
forever and there came into being something nondescript, neither
citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When five weeks
later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed an army. They
were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of articles which
seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man when he left
Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but merely to keep
what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its paw into the narrow
neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts will not open its
fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore perishes, the
French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish because they
carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they had stolen was as
impossible for them as it is for the monkey to open its paw and let
go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment had entered a Moscow
district, not a soldier or officer was left. Men in military uniforms
and Hessian boots could be seen through the windows, laughing and
walking through the rooms. In cellars and storerooms similar men were
busy among the provisions, and in the yards unlocking or breaking open
coach house and stable doors, lighting fires in kitchens and kneading
and baking bread with rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening,
amusing, or caressing women and children. There were many such men both
in the shops and houses--but there was no army.

Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day
forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding any
violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a roll call
for that very evening. But despite all these measures the men, who had
till then constituted an army, flowed all over the wealthy, deserted
city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As a hungry herd of
cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren field, but gets out
of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as soon as it reaches rich
pastures, so did the army disperse all over the wealthy city.

No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers--like water
percolating through sand--spread irresistibly through the city in all
directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The
cavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned and
finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,
all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of
them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and
quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they had
had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the streets to
see the city and, hearing that everything had been abandoned, rushed
to places where valuables were to be had for the taking. The officers
followed to check the soldiers and were involuntarily drawn into doing
the same. In Carriage Row carriages had been left in the shops, and
generals flocked there to select caleches and coaches for themselves.
The few inhabitants who had remained invited commanding officers to
their houses, hoping thereby to secure themselves from being plundered.
There were masses of wealth and there seemed no end to it. All around
the quarters occupied by the French were other regions still unexplored
and unoccupied where, they thought, yet greater riches might be found.
And Moscow engulfed the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is
spilled on dry ground both the dry ground and the water disappear and
mud results; and in the same way the entry of the famished army into the
rich and deserted city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction
of both the army and the wealthy city.


The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de
Rostopchine, * the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,
however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning
of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people, responsible
for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which
any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite apart from whether it
had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior fire engines. Deserted
Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of shavings has to burn on
which sparks continually fall for several days. A town built of wood,
where scarcely a day passes without conflagrations when the house owners
are in residence and a police force is present, cannot help burning when
its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke
pipes, make campfires of the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and
cook themselves meals twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to
billet troops in the villages of any district and the number of fires in
that district immediately increases. How much then must the probability
of fire be increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops
are quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity
of the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire by
the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the carelessness of
enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even if there was any
arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any reason to burn the
houses--in any case a troublesome and dangerous thing to do), arson
cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same thing would have happened
without any incendiarism.


    * To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.


However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin's
ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later
on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is
impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of the
fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house must
burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are allowed to
live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its inhabitants, it
is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not by those who remained
in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not remain intact like
Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its inhabitants
abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and salt, nor
bring them the keys of the city.





CHAPTER XXVII


The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it did,
only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the evening of the
second of September.

After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,
Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely obsessed
by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this thought had
taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of the past,
understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and heard appeared to
him like a dream.

He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life's demands
that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was unable
to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexeevich's house, on the plea of
sorting the deceased's books and papers, only in search of rest from
life's turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph Alexeevich was
connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm thoughts, quite
contrary to the restless confusion into which he felt himself being
drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph Alexeevich's study he
really found it. When he sat with his elbows on the dusty writing table
in the deathlike stillness of the study, calm and significant memories
of the last few days rose one after another in his imagination,
particularly of the battle of Borodino and of that vague sense of his
own insignificance and insincerity compared with the truth, simplicity,
and strength of the class of men he mentally classed as they. When
Gerasim roused him from his reverie the idea occurred to him of taking
part in the popular defense of Moscow which he knew was projected. And
with that object he had asked Gerasim to get him a peasant's coat and
a pistol, confiding to him his intentions of remaining in Joseph
Alexeevich's house and keeping his name secret. Then during the first
day spent in inaction and solitude (he tried several times to fix his
attention on the Masonic manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea
that had previously occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of
his name in connection with Bonaparte's more than once vaguely presented
itself. But the idea that he, L'russe Besuhof, was destined to set a
limit to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that
often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.

When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part among
the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the Rostovs and
Natasha had said to him: "Are you remaining in Moscow?... How splendid!"
the thought flashed into his mind that it really would be a good thing,
even if Moscow were taken, for him to remain there and do what he was
predestined to do.

Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not lagging in
any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate. But when he
returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be defended, he
suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a possibility
had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He must remain in
Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and kill him, and
either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe--which it seemed
to him was solely due to Napoleon.

Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte's life in 1809
by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been shot.
And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out his
design excited him still more.

Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this purpose.
The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and suffering in
view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had caused him to go
to Mozhaysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way to the very thick
of the battle and had now caused him to run away from his home and, in
place of the luxury and comfort to which he was accustomed, to sleep
on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the same food as Gerasim.
The other was that vague and quite Russian feeling of contempt for
everything conventional, artificial, and human--for everything the
majority of men regard as the greatest good in the world. Pierre had
first experienced this strange and fascinating feeling at the Sloboda
Palace, when he had suddenly felt that wealth, power, and life--all that
men so painstakingly acquire and guard--if it has any worth has so only
by reason of the joy with which it can all be renounced.

It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his last
penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for no
apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money he
possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions which from
an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it were, his personal
power and strength, affirming the existence of a higher, nonhuman
criterion of life.

From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the first time
at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its influence, but
only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at this moment Pierre
was supported in his design and prevented from renouncing it by what he
had already done in that direction. If he were now to leave Moscow like
everyone else, his flight from home, the peasant coat, the pistol, and
his announcement to the Rostovs that he would remain in Moscow would all
become not merely meaningless but contemptible and ridiculous, and to
this Pierre was very sensitive.

Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded to his
mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he drank during
those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty unchanged linen,
two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa without bedding--all
this kept him in a state of excitement bordering on insanity.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The French had already entered
Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only thought about
his undertaking, going over its minutest details in his mind. In his
fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either the striking of the
blow or the death of Napoleon, but with extraordinary vividness and
melancholy enjoyment imagined his own destruction and heroic endurance.

"Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!" he thought.
"Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol or dagger?
But that is all the same! 'It is not I but the hand of Providence that
punishes thee,' I shall say," thought he, imagining what he would say
when killing Napoleon. "Well then, take me and execute me!" he went on,
speaking to himself and bowing his head with a sad but firm expression.

While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to himself
in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold appeared
the figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but now quite
transformed.

His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He
was obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but
noticing embarrassment on Pierre's face immediately grew bold and,
staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.

"They're frightened," he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. "I say I
won't surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?"

He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it
with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.

Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped him
in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre, coming
out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the half-crazy
old man. Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held on to the pistol
and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic fancy in his head.

"To arms! Board them! No, you shan't get it," he yelled.

"That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness--please, sir, to
let go! Please, sir..." pleaded Gerasim, trying carefully to steer Makar
Alexeevich by the elbows back to the door.

"Who are you? Bonaparte!..." shouted Makar Alexeevich.

"That's not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow me to
have the pistol."

"Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?" shouted Makar
Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. "Board them!"

"Catch hold!" whispered Gerasim to the porter.

They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged him to the door.

The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle and of
a tipsy, hoarse voice.

Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated from
the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule.

"It's them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!" she
cried.

Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now silent
corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front door could be
heard.





CHAPTER XXVIII


Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he would
disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood at the
half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as soon
as the French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre did not
retire--an irresistible curiosity kept him there.

There were two of them. One was an officer--a tall, soldierly, handsome
man--the other evidently a private or an orderly, sunburned, short, and
thin, with sunken cheeks and a dull expression. The officer walked in
front, leaning on a stick and slightly limping. When he had advanced
a few steps he stopped, having apparently decided that these were good
quarters, turned round to the soldiers standing at the entrance, and in
a loud voice of command ordered them to put up the horses. Having done
that, the officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his
mustache and lightly touched his hat.

"Bonjour, la compagnie!" * said he gaily, smiling and looking about him.


    * "Good day, everybody!"


No one gave any reply.

"Vous etes le bourgeois?" * the officer asked Gerasim.


    * "Are you the master here?"


Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look.

"Quartier, quartier, logement!" said the officer, looking down at the
little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. "Les francais
sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons pas, mon
vieux!" * added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim on the
shoulder. "Well, does no one speak French in this establishment?" he
asked again in French, looking around and meeting Pierre's eyes. Pierre
moved away from the door.


     * "Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good
     fellows. What the devil! There, don't let us be cross, old
     fellow!"


Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to show him the rooms
in the house.

"Master, not here--don't understand... me, you..." said Gerasim, trying
to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.

Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before Gerasim's
nose, intimating that he did not understand him either, and moved,
limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre wished to go
away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar Alexeevich
appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his hand. With
a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman, raised his
pistol, and took aim.

"Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger. Hearing
the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment Pierre threw
himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and struck up the
pistol Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the trigger, there
was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. The
Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door.

Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French, Pierre,
snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to the officer
and addressed him in French.

"You are not wounded?" he asked.

"I think not," answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. "But I have
had a lucky escape this time," he added, pointing to the damaged plaster
of the wall. "Who is that man?" said he, looking sternly at Pierre.

"Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred," said Pierre rapidly,
quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. "He is an unfortunate
madman who did not know what he was doing."

The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar.

Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about to
fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.

"Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go
of him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon
traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine energetic
gesture.

Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold that
drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence with the
same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For
a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed a
melodramatically gentle expression and he held out his hand.

"You have saved my life. You are French," said he.

For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman could
perform a great deed, and to save his life--the life of M. Ramballe,
captain of the 13th Light Regiment--was undoubtedly a very great deed.

But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction
based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.

"I am Russian," he said quickly.

"Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others," said the officer, waving his
finger before his nose and smiling. "You shall tell me all about that
presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what are we
to do with this man?" he added, addressing himself to Pierre as to a
brother.

Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that loftiest
of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the officer's look
and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again explained who Makar
Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival that drunken imbecile
had seized the loaded pistol which they had not had time to recover from
him, and begged the officer to let the deed go unpunished.

The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with his
arm.

"You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant it
you. Lead that man away!" said he quickly and energetically, and taking
the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for saving his
life, he went with him into the room.

The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage asking
what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish the culprits,
but the officer sternly checked them.

"You will be called in when you are wanted," he said.

The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile had time
to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.

"Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen," said he.
"Shall I serve them up?"

"Yes, and some wine," answered the captain.





CHAPTER XXIX


When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter again
thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and wished to
go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so very polite,
amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre for saving his
life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat down with him in
the parlor--the first room they entered. To Pierre's assurances that he
was not a Frenchman, the captain, evidently not understanding how anyone
could decline so flattering an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and
said that if Pierre absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it
be so, but for all that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude
for saving his life.

Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving the
feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's feelings
were, the latter would probably have left him, but the man's animated
obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed Pierre.

"A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito," said the officer, looking
at Pierre's fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his finger.
"I owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman never
forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my friendship. That
is all I can say."

There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of the
word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in
his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the
Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him.

"Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September," he introduced
himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his lips under
his mustache. "Will you now be so good as to tell me with whom I have
the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in the ambulance
with that maniac's bullet in my body?"

Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing,
began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason for
concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.

"Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an officer...
a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That's not
my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am quite at
your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with a shade of
inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your baptismal name, if you
please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you say.... That's all I
want to know."

When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and vodka
brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a Russian cellar
and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share his dinner, and
himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a healthy and hungry man,
munching his food rapidly with his strong teeth, continually smacking
his lips, and repeating--"Excellent! Delicious!" His face grew red and
was covered with perspiration. Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner
with pleasure. Morel, the orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan
and placed a bottle of claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass,
taken from the kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known
to the French and had been given a special name. They called it limonade
de cochon (pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de
cochon he had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they
had taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and
applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up
to its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for
Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the captain
still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through dinner.

"Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for
saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my
body already. Here is one I got at Wagram" (he touched his side) "and a
second at Smolensk"--he showed a scar on his cheek--"and this leg which
as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh at the
great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That deluge of
fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us there, my word!
You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of the cough I caught
there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those who did not see
it."

"I was there," said Pierre.

"Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes. The
great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!" continued the Frenchman. "And
you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times--sure as I sit
here. Three times we reached the guns and three times we were thrown
back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur Pierre! Your
grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close up their ranks six
times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine fellows! Our King of
Naples, who knows what's what, cried 'Bravo!' Ha, ha! So you are one of
us soldiers!" he added, smiling, after a momentary pause. "So much
the better, so much the better, Monsieur Pierre! Terrible in battle...
gallant... with the fair" (he winked and smiled), "that's what the
French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren't they?"

The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so
pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked merrily
at him. Probably the word "gallant" turned the captain's thoughts to the
state of Moscow.

"Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left
Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?"

"Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered it?"
asked Pierre.

"Ha, ha, ha!" The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle, patting
Pierre on the shoulder. "What a thing to say!" he exclaimed. "Paris?...
But Paris, Paris..."

"Paris--the capital of the world," Pierre finished his remark for him.

The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in the
middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly eyes.

"Well, if you hadn't told me you were Russian, I should have wagered
that you were Parisian! You have that... I don't know what, that..." and
having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.

"I have been in Paris. I spent years there," said Pierre.

"Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn't know Paris
is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is Talma, la
Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards," and noticing that
his conclusion was weaker than what had gone before, he added quickly:
"There is only one Paris in the world. You have been to Paris and have
remained Russian. Well, I don't esteem you the less for it."

Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days he had
spent alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre involuntarily enjoyed
talking with this cheerful and good-natured man.

"To return to your ladies--I hear they are lovely. What a wretched idea
to go and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army is
in Moscow. What a chance those girls have missed! Your peasants,
now--that's another thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know
us better than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome,
Warsaw, all the world's capitals.... We are feared, but we are loved.
We are nice to know. And then the Emperor..." he began, but Pierre
interrupted him.

"The Emperor," Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and
embarrassed, "is the Emperor...?"

"The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius--that's
what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I assure you
I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an emigrant count.... But
that man has vanquished me. He has taken hold of me. I could not resist
the sight of the grandeur and glory with which he has covered France.
When I understood what he wanted--when I saw that he was preparing a bed
of laurels for us, you know, I said to myself: 'That is a monarch,' and
I devoted myself to him! So there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest
man of the ages past or future."

"Is he in Moscow?" Pierre stammered with a guilty look.

The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.

"No, he will make his entry tomorrow," he replied, and continued his
talk.

Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at
the gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Wurttemberg hussars had
come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the captain's
horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because the hussars did
not understand what was said to them in French.

The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern voice
asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding officer,
and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that were already
occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the two first
questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his commanding
officer, but in reply to the third question which he did not understand
said, introducing broken French into his own German, that he was the
quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had ordered him to
occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who knew German,
translated what the German said to the captain and gave the captain's
reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had understood what
was said to him, the German submitted and took his men elsewhere. The
captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in a loud voice.

When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as
before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He
really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and he
was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the position
he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that the happy
conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him. Painful as
that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the moment. He was
tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The few glasses of
wine he had drunk and the conversation with this good-natured man had
destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which he had spent the last
few days and which was essential for the execution of his design. The
pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were ready. Napoleon was to enter the
town next day. Pierre still considered that it would be a useful and
worthy action to slay the evildoer, but now he felt that he would not
do it. He did not know why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not
carry out his intention. He struggled against the confession of his
weakness but dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that his
former gloomy frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and
self-sacrifice, had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first
man he met.

The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a tune.

The Frenchman's chatter which had previously amused Pierre now repelled
him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture with which
he twirled his mustache, all now seemed offensive. "I will go away
immediately. I won't say another word to him," thought Pierre. He
thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange feeling of
weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go away, but
could not do so.

The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up and
down the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as if he
were smiling to himself at some amusing thought.

"The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful," he suddenly said.
"He's a German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he's a German."
He sat down facing Pierre. "By the way, you know German, then?"

Pierre looked at him in silence.

"What is the German for 'shelter'?"

"Shelter?" Pierre repeated. "The German for shelter is Unterkunft."

"How do you say it?" the captain asked quickly and doubtfully.

"Unterkunft," Pierre repeated.

"Onterkoff," said the captain and looked at Pierre for some seconds with
laughing eyes. "These Germans are first-rate fools, don't you think so,
Monsieur Pierre?" he concluded.

"Well, let's have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux, shall we?
Morel will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!" he called out
gaily.

Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at Pierre
by the candlelight and was evidently struck by the troubled expression
on his companion's face. Ramballe, with genuine distress and sympathy in
his face, went up to Pierre and bent over him.

"There now, we're sad," said he, touching Pierre's hand. "Have I
upset you? No, really, have you anything against me?" he asked Pierre.
"Perhaps it's the state of affairs?"

Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the Frenchman's eyes
whose expression of sympathy was pleasing to him.

"Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for
you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and death.
I say it with my hand on my heart!" said he, striking his chest.

"Thank you," said Pierre.

The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when he learned that
"shelter" was Unterkunft in German, and his face suddenly brightened.

"Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!" he cried gaily, filling
two glasses with wine.

Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied his too,
again pressed Pierre's hand, and leaned his elbows on the table in a
pensive attitude.

"Yes, my dear friend," he began, "such is fortune's caprice. Who would
have said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons in the
service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am in Moscow
with him. I must tell you, mon cher," he continued in the sad and
measured tones of a man who intends to tell a long story, "that our name
is one of the most ancient in France."

And with a Frenchman's easy and naive frankness the captain told Pierre
the story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and manhood, and all
about his relations and his financial and family affairs, "ma pauvre
mere" playing of course an important part in the story.

"But all that is only life's setting, the real thing is love--love! Am I
not right, Monsieur Pierre?" said he, growing animated. "Another glass?"

Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third.

"Oh, women, women!" and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at
Pierre, began talking of love and of his love affairs.

There were very many of these, as one could easily believe, looking
at the officer's handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the eager
enthusiasm with which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe's love
stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the special
charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such sincere
conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the charm of love
and he described women so alluringly that Pierre listened to him with
curiosity.

It was plain that l'amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not
that low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor
was it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for
Natasha. (Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the one
he considered the "love of clodhoppers" and the other the "love
of simpletons.") L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted
principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a
combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.

Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a
fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a charming,
innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching marquise. The
conflict of magnanimity between the mother and the daughter, ending in
the mother's sacrificing herself and offering her daughter in marriage
to her lover, even now agitated the captain, though it was the memory of
a distant past. Then he recounted an episode in which the husband
played the part of the lover, and he--the lover--assumed the role of the
husband, as well as several droll incidents from his recollections of
Germany, where "shelter" is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat
sauerkraut and the young girls are "too blonde."

Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain's
memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face, was
of how he had saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving of
life continually occurred in the captain's stories) and the Pole had
entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur) while himself
entering the French service. The captain was happy, the enchanting
Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by magnanimity, the
captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as he did so: "I have
saved your life, and I save your honor!" Having repeated these words the
captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a shake, as if driving away the
weakness which assailed him at this touching recollection.

Listening to the captain's tales, Pierre--as often happens late in the
evening and under the influence of wine--followed all that was told him,
understood it all, and at the same time followed a train of personal
memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his mind. While
listening to these love stories his own love for Natasha unexpectedly
rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that love in his
imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe's tales. Listening
to the story of the struggle between love and duty, Pierre saw before
his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting with the object of
his love at the Sukharev water tower. At the time of that meeting it had
not produced an effect upon him--he had not even once recalled it. But
now it seemed to him that that meeting had had in it something very
important and poetic.

"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you," he now seemed
to hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes, her
smile, her traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and there
seemed to him something pathetic and touching in all this.

Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the captain
asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to sacrifice
himself for love and a feeling of envy of the legitimate husband.

Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need to
express the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that he
understood love for a women somewhat differently. He said that in all
his life he had loved and still loved only one woman, and that she could
never be his.

"Tiens!" said the captain.

Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest
years, but that he had not dared to think of her because she was too
young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name.
Afterwards when he had received a name and wealth he dared not think of
her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything in
the world, and especially therefore above himself.

When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether he
understood that.

The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not understand
it he begged Pierre to continue.

"Platonic love, clouds..." he muttered.

Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or the
thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of those who
played a part in his story, or whether it was all these things together,
something loosened Pierre's tongue. Speaking thickly and with a faraway
look in his shining eyes, he told the whole story of his life: his
marriage, Natasha's love for his best friend, her betrayal of him, and
all his own simple relations with her. Urged on by Ramballe's questions
he also told what he had at first concealed--his own position and even
his name.

More than anything else in Pierre's story the captain was impressed by
the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in Moscow, and that
he had abandoned everything and not left the city, but remained there
concealing his name and station.

When it was late at night they went out together into the street. The
night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokrovka a
fire glowed--the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To the
right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and
opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in Pierre's
heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and two
Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible remarks in
two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow seen in the
town.

There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire in the immense
city.

Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet, and at the
glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful emotion. "There now,
how good it is, what more does one need?" thought he. And suddenly
remembering his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he leaned
against the fence to save himself from falling.

Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with
unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on the sofa and
immediately fell asleep.





CHAPTER XXX


The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was
watched from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the
retreating troops, with many different feelings.

The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen miles from
Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road
had been so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many things had been
forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided to
spend that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next morning
they woke late and were again delayed so often that they only got as far
as Great Mytishchi. At ten o'clock that evening the Rostov family and
the wounded traveling with them were all distributed in the yards and
huts of that large village. The Rostovs' servants and coachmen and the
orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to their masters, had
supper, fed the horses, and came out into the porches.

In a neighboring hut lay Raevski's adjutant with a fractured wrist. The
awful pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and piteously, and his
moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the autumn night. He had
spent the first night in the same yard as the Rostovs. The countess said
she had been unable to close her eyes on account of his moaning, and at
Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut simply to be farther away from the
wounded man.

In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above the high
body of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow of another
fire. One glow had long been visible and everybody knew that it was
Little Mytishchi burning--set on fire by Mamonov's Cossacks.

"But look here, brothers, there's another fire!" remarked an orderly.

All turned their attention to the glow.

"But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire by Mamonov's
Cossacks."

"But that's not Mytishchi, it's farther away."

"Look, it must be in Moscow!"

Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and sat down
on its steps.

"It's more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over there, and this is
right on the other side."

Several men joined the first two.

"See how it's flaring," said one. "That's a fire in Moscow: either in
the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski quarter."

No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed silently
at the spreading flames of the second fire in the distance.

Old Daniel Terentich, the count's valet (as he was called), came up to
the group and shouted at Mishka.

"What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be
calling and there's nobody there; go and gather the clothes together."

"I only ran out to get some water," said Mishka.

"But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn't it look as if that
glow were in Moscow?" remarked one of the footmen.

Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long time they were all
silent. The glow spread, rising and falling, farther and farther still.

"God have mercy.... It's windy and dry..." said another voice.

"Just look! See what it's doing now. O Lord! You can even see the crows
flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!"

"They'll put it out, no fear!"

"Who's to put it out?" Daniel Terentich, who had hitherto been silent,
was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. "Moscow it is,
brothers," said he. "Mother Moscow, the white..." his voice faltered,
and he gave way to an old man's sob.

And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the
significance for them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were heard,
words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count's old valet.





CHAPTER XXXI


The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that Moscow was
burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to look. Sonya
and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only
Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya was no longer
with the family, he had gone on with his regiment which was making for
Troitsa.

The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. Natasha,
pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the icons just
where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to her father's
words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of the adjutant, three
houses off.

"Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the yard chilled and
frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful
glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to her
cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.

But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to her
and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had been in
this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sonya, to the surprise
and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable reason found
it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew's wound and of his being
with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry with anyone as
she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and begged to be forgiven and now,
as if trying to atone for her fault, paid unceasing attention to her
cousin.

"Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said she.

"What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes, Moscow."

And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her, she turned
her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was evident
that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her former
attitude.

"But you didn't see it!"

"Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to be left
in peace.

Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow
nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of importance to
Natasha.

The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess went
up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand as she
was wont to do when Natasha was ill, then touched her forehead with her
lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and finally kissed her.

"You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better lie down," said
the countess.

"Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once," said Natasha.

When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was seriously
wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first asked many
questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it serious? And
could she see him? But after she had been told that she could not see
him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was not in danger,
she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all, evidently disbelieving
what they told her, and convinced that say what she might she would
still be told the same. All the way she had sat motionless in a corner
of the coach with wide open eyes, and the expression in them which the
countess knew so well and feared so much, and now she sat in the same
way on the bench where she had seated herself on arriving. She was
planning something and either deciding or had already decided something
in her mind. The countess knew this, but what it might be she did not
know, and this alarmed and tormented her.

"Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed."

A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame Schoss
and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.

"No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied
irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open
window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She put
her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her slim neck
shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame. Natasha knew
it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince Andrew was in
the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut across the passage;
but this dreadful incessant moaning made her sob. The countess exchanged
a look with Sonya.

"Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the countess, softly
touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie down."

"Oh, yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha, and began hurriedly
undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.

When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket, she sat
down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made up on the
floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the front,
and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers rapidly
unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved from side
to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked fixedly before
her. When her toilet for the night was finished she sank gently onto the
sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the door.

"Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said Sonya.

"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down," she added crossly,
and buried her face in the pillow.

The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay down.
The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left in
the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little
Mytishchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise
of people shouting at a tavern Mamonov's Cossacks had set up across the
street, and the adjutant's unceasing moans could still be heard.

For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds that reached
her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First she heard
her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed under
her, then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's gentle
breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not answer.

"I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly.

After a short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one
replied.

Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing. Natasha did
not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the quilt,
was growing cold on the bare floor.

As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in a
crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near
by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of the
adjutant was heard. Natasha sat up.

"Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered.

No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed herself, and
stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her slim, supple,
bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping cautiously from one
foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and
grasped the cold door handle.

It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically against
all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking with alarm and
terror and overflowing with love.

She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the cold,
damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed her. With
her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened
the door into the part of the hut where Prince Andrew lay. It was dark
in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench beside a bed on which
something was lying, stood a tallow candle with a long, thick, and
smoldering wick.

From the moment she had been told that morning of Prince Andrew's wound
and his presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him. She did not
know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt the
more convinced that it was necessary.

All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now
that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might
see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that incessant
moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her
imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When she saw an
indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees raised under the
quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body there, and stood
still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her forward. She
cautiously took one step and then another, and found herself in the
middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man--Timokhin--was
lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two others--the
doctor and a valet--lay on the floor.

The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by the
pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange
apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap.
The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What do you want? What's
the matter?" made Natasha approach more swiftly to what was lying in the
corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked, she must see him.
She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle wick, and she saw
Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the quilt, and such as she
had always seen him.

He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his
glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his neck,
delicate as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar of his shirt,
gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had never
seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift, flexible,
youthful movement dropped on her knees.

He smiled and held out his hand to her.





CHAPTER XXXII


Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the
ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the
inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's
opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with
pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that his
temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.
The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had
remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself asked
to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his removal into
the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness. When he
had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with
closed eyes. Then he opened them and whispered softly: "And the tea?"
His remembering such a small detail of everyday life astonished
the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse, and to his surprise and
dissatisfaction found it had improved. He was dissatisfied because he
knew by experience that if his patient did not die now, he would do so
a little later with greater suffering. Timokhin, the red-nosed major of
Prince Andrew's regiment, had joined him in Moscow and was being
taken along with him, having been wounded in the leg at the battle of
Borodino. They were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his
coachman, and two orderlies.

They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking with
feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to understand and
remember something.

"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked.

Timokhin crept along the bench to him.

"I am here, your excellency."

"How's your wound?"

"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?"

Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.

"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked.

"What book?"

"The Gospels. I haven't one."

The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he
was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but
reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was
uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak
with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of
mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began examining that dreadful
place. The doctor was very much displeased about something and made a
change in the dressings, turning the wounded man over so that he groaned
again and grew unconscious and delirious from the agony. He kept asking
them to get him the book and put it under him.

"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I have not got one. Please
get it for me and put it under for a moment," he pleaded in a piteous
voice.

The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.

"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the valet who was pouring
water over his hands. "For just one moment I didn't look after you...
It's such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it."

"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under him!"
said the valet.

The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was the
matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he asked
to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at Mytishchi.
After growing confused from pain while being carried into the hut he
again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once more recalled
all that had happened to him, and above all vividly remembered the
moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of the sufferings of
a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to him which promised him
happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague and indefinite, again
possessed his soul. He remembered that he had now a new source of
happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the Gospels.
That was why he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position in
which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts,
and when he came to himself a third time it was in the complete
stillness of the night. Everybody near him was sleeping. A cricket
chirped from across the passage; someone was shouting and singing in
the street; cockroaches rustled on the table, on the icons, and on
the walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and around the
candle beside him, the wick of which was charred and had shaped itself
like a mushroom.

His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,
feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the
power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to
fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from the
deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in and can
then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's mind was not
in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of his mind were more
active and clearer than ever, but they acted apart from his will. Most
diverse thoughts and images occupied him simultaneously. At times his
brain suddenly began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth it had
never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in the midst of its
work it would turn to some unexpected idea and he had not the strength
to turn it back again.

"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
deprived," he thought as he lay in the semidarkness of the quiet hut,
gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness
lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act
on man--a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. Every
man can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible
only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?"

And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrew
heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) a
soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating
"piti-piti-piti," and then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti," and
"ti-ti" once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above
the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being erected out
of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered music.
He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so
that this airy structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept
collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound of whispered rhythmic
music--"it stretches, stretches, spreading out and stretching," said
Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to this whispering and feeling
the sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this edifice
of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo round the candle, and
heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that
flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly touched his
face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not
destroy the structure, though it knocked against the very region of his
face where it was rising. But besides this there was something else of
importance. It was something white by the door--the statue of a sphinx,
which also oppressed him.

"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought, "and that's my
legs, and that is the door, but why is it always stretching and drawing
itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti' and 'piti-piti-piti'...?
That's enough, please leave off!" Prince Andrew painfully entreated
someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of
his mind with peculiar clearness and force.

"Yes--love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which loves
for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason,
but the love which I--while dying--first experienced when I saw my enemy
and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very
essence of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel
that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to love one's enemies, to love
everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to
love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved
by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I
loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...

"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have
I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did
her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he had done in
the past with nothing but her charms which gave him delight, but for
the first time picturing to himself her soul. And he understood her
feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now understood for the
first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the cruelty of his
rupture with her. "If only it were possible for me to see her once more!
Just once, looking into those eyes to say..."


"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the fly...
And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of
reality and delirium in which something particular was happening. In
that world some structure was still being erected and did not fall,
something was still stretching out, and the candle with its red halo
was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay near the door; but
besides all this something creaked, there was a whiff of fresh air, and
a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the door. And that sphinx had
the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natasha of whom he had just
been thinking.

"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince Andrew,
trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained
before him with the force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew
wished to return to that former world of pure thought, but he could not,
and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft whispering voice
continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed him and stretched
out, and the strange face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all
his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a little, and
suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and
like a man plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came to
himself, Natasha, that same living Natasha whom of all people he most
longed to love with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to
him, was kneeling before him. He realized that it was the real living
Natasha, and he was not surprised but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless
on her knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes riveted on
him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the
lower part of it something quivered.

Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.

"You?" he said. "How fortunate!"

With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on her
knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and began
kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.

"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.
"Forgive me!"

"I love you," said Prince Andrew.

"Forgive...!"

"Forgive what?" he asked.

"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a scarcely
audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more rapidly, just
touching it with her lips.

"I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew, lifting her
face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.

Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face, with
its swollen lips, was more than plain--it was dreadful. But Prince
Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were beautiful.
They heard the sound of voices behind them.

Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had
long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his bare
body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.

"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed. "Please go away,
madam!"

At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
daughter's absence, knocked at the door.

Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the room
and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.


From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at every
halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never left the
wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected
from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a
wounded man.

Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew
die in her daughter's arms during the journey--as, judging by what
the doctor said, it seemed might easily happen--she could not oppose
Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between the wounded
man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover their former
engagement would be renewed, no one--least of all Natasha and Prince
Andrew--spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and death, which
hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut out all other
considerations.





CHAPTER XXXIII


On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching, the
clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt uncomfortable on
his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of something shameful
he had done the day before. That something shameful was his yesterday's
conversation with Captain Ramballe.

It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of doors.
Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an engraved
stock which Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, he remembered
where he was and what lay before him that very day.

"Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't make his entry
into Moscow before noon."

Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him, but
hastened to act.

After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to go out.
But it then occurred to him for the first time that he certainly could
not carry the weapon in his hand through the streets. It was difficult
to hide such a big pistol even under his wide coat. He could not
carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his arm. Besides, it had been
discharged, and he had not had time to reload it. "No matter, dagger
will do," he said to himself, though when planning his design he had
more than once come to the conclusion that the chief mistake made by the
student in 1809 had been to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as
his chief aim consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving
to himself that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he
could to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a
green sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the pistol,
and hid it under his waistcoat.

Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his head,
Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or meeting
the captain, and passed out into the street.

The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much indifference the
evening before, had greatly increased during the night. Moscow was on
fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage Row, across the river,
in the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as the barges on the Moskva
River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov Bridge, were all ablaze.

Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and from there
to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had long before
decided that the deed should be done. The gates of most of the houses
were locked and the shutters up. The streets and lanes were deserted.
The air was full of smoke and the smell of burning. Now and then he met
Russians with anxious and timid faces, and Frenchmen with an air not of
the city but of the camp, walking in the middle of the streets. Both
the Russians and the French looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his
height and stoutness, and the strange morose look of suffering in his
face and whole figure, the Russians stared at Pierre because they could
not make out to what class he could belong. The French followed him with
astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the
other Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid no
attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who were
explaining something to some Russians who did not understand them,
stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.

Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel
standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the shout
was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man's musket as
he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on the other side
of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what went on around
him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror and haste, like
something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the previous night's
experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was not destined to bring
his mood safely to his destination. And even had he not been hindered by
anything on the way, his intention could not now have been carried out,
for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than four hours previously on his
way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the Kremlin, and was now sitting in
a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal study in the Kremlin, giving
detailed and exact orders as to measures to be taken immediately
to extinguish the fire, to prevent looting, and to reassure the
inhabitants. But Pierre did not know this; he was entirely absorbed
in what lay before him, and was tortured--as those are who obstinately
undertake a task that is impossible for them not because of its
difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their natures--by the
fear of weakening at the decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.

Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by instinct
and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the Povarskoy.

As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser--he
even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose
from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the streets
and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that something
unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he was
approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across a
wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens
of Prince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the
desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if awakening
from a dream and lifted his head.

By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of household
goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and trunks. On the
ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer young, with long,
prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman,
swaying to and fro and muttering something, was choking with sobs. Two
girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty short frocks and cloaks,
were staring at their mother with a look of stupefaction on their pale
frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy of about seven, who wore an
overcoat and an immense cap evidently not his own, was crying in his
old nurse's arms. A dirty, barefooted maid was sitting on a trunk,
and, having undone her pale-colored plait, was pulling it straight
and sniffing at her singed hair. The woman's husband, a short,
round-shouldered man in the undress uniform of a civilian official, with
sausage-shaped whiskers and showing under his square-set cap the hair
smoothly brushed forward over his temples, with expressionless face was
moving the trunks, which were placed one on another, and was dragging
some garments from under them.

As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his feet.

"Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends... help
us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... My daughter!
My youngest daughter is left behind. She's burned! Ooh! Was it for this
I nursed you.... Ooh!"

"Don't, Mary Nikolievna!" said her husband to her in a low voice,
evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. "Sister must have
taken her, or else where can she be?" he added.

"Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to weep.
"You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Another man would
have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and neither a
man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," she went on,
addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire broke out
alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and we rushed
to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is what we
have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the rest is lost.
We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O Lord!..." and again she
began to sob. "My child, my dear one! Burned, burned!"

"But where was she left?" asked Pierre.

From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man
might help her.

"Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "My benefactor, set
my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, show him the way!" she
cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and still farther exposing
her long teeth.

"Show me the way, show me, I... I'll do it," gasped Pierre rapidly.

The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her plait,
sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre felt
as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his head
higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift steps
he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the Povarskoy. The
whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues of flame here
and there broke through that cloud. A great number of people crowded in
front of the conflagration. In the middle of the street stood a French
general saying something to those around him. Pierre, accompanied by the
maid, was advancing to the spot where the general stood, but the French
soldiers stopped him.

"On ne passe pas!" * cried a voice.


    * "You can't pass!"


"This way, uncle," cried the girl. "We'll pass through the side street,
by the Nikulins'!"

Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with her.
She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left, and,
passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right.

"It's here, close by," said she and, running across the yard, opened a
gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small wooden
wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One of its
sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames issued from
the openings of the windows and from under the roof.

As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air and
involuntarily stopped.

"Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked.

"Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it, that was our
lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my precious little
missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight of the fire felt that she
too must give expression to her feelings.

Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he
involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house
that was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and around
which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not realize
what these men, who were dragging something out, were about; but seeing
before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber and trying
to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that looting was
going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.

The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings, the
whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the people, and
the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick black clouds
and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here and there dense
sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish scales creeping along
the walls), and the heat and smoke and rapidity of motion, produced
on Pierre the usual animating effects of a conflagration. It had a
peculiarly strong effect on him because at the sight of the fire he felt
himself suddenly freed from the ideas that had weighed him down. He felt
young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other side of
the lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which was still
standing, when just above his head he heard several voices shouting
and then a cracking sound and the ring of something heavy falling close
beside him.

Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some Frenchmen
who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with metal
articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the drawer.

"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to Pierre.

"There's a child in that house. Haven't you seen a child?" cried Pierre.

"What's he talking about? Get along!" said several voices, and one of
the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take from
them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved
threateningly toward him.

"A child?" shouted a Frenchman from above. "I did hear something
squealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his brat that the fellow is
looking for. After all, one must be human, you know...."

"Where is it? Where?" said Pierre.

"There! There!" shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the
garden at the back of the house. "Wait a bit--I'm coming down."

And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with a spot
on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window on the
ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with him into the
garden.

"Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades. "It's getting
hot."

When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman pulled
Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space where a
three-year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.

"There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!" said the
Frenchman. "Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you
know!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his
comrades.

Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going to take
her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly, scrofulous-looking
child, unattractively like her mother, began to yell and run away.
Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his arms. She screamed
desperately and angrily and tried with her little hands to pull Pierre's
hands away and to bite them with her slobbering mouth. Pierre was seized
by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he had experienced when
touching some nasty little animal. But he made an effort not to throw
the child down and ran with her to the large house. It was now, however,
impossible to get back the way he had come; the maid, Aniska, was no
longer there, and Pierre with a feeling of pity and disgust pressed the
wet, painfully sobbing child to himself as tenderly as he could and ran
with her through the garden seeking another way out.





CHAPTER XXXIV


Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back
with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the
Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had set
out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and goods
that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian families who
had taken refuge here from the fire with their belongings, there were
several French soldiers in a variety of clothing. Pierre took no notice
of them. He hurried to find the family of that civil servant in order to
restore the daughter to her mother and go to save someone else. Pierre
felt that he had still much to do and to do quickly. Glowing with the
heat and from running, he felt at that moment more strongly than ever
the sense of youth, animation, and determination that had come on him
when he ran to save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging
with her little hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about
her like some little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a
slight smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that
frightened, sickly little face.

He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left them. He
walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various faces he
met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family
consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new,
cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar
type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the
perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched,
black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long,
beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the
crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright
lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out
onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the old
woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless, large,
almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she was aware
of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck Pierre and,
hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to look at her.
When he had reached the fence, still without finding those he sought, he
stopped and looked about him.

With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous than
before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered about him.

"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry yourself,
aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him.

Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat who
had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked whether
anyone knew where she had gone.

"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon, addressing a
pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!" he added
in his customary bass.

"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the morning. That must
be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!"

"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a house
serf.

"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre.

"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these wolves
swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.

"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon.

"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept on lamenting and
crying," continued the woman. "It's she. Here, this way!"

But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds been
intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was looking at
the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone up to them.
One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied round
the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and his feet were
bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a
long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in his movements
and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a woman's loose gown
of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian boots. The little
barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the Armenians and,
saying something, immediately seized the old man by his legs and the old
man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in the frieze gown
stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and with his hands in
his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and silent.

"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to the
woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give her back to them, give her
back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on the
ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the Armenian family.

The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had
secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other.
The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre
caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to the
Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from side to
side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands from his
pockets had seized her by the neck.

The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same attitude,
with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or feel what the
soldier was doing to her.

While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing
from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the young
woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.

"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious voice,
seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him aside.

The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing down
the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward Pierre.

"Voyons, Pas de betises!" * he cried.


    * "Look here, no nonsense!"


Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing and
his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted Frenchman
and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked him off his
feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval were heard
from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted patrol of French
Uhlans appeared from round the corner. The Uhlans came up at a trot to
Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them. Pierre remembered nothing
of what happened after that. He only remembered beating someone and
being beaten and finally feeling that his hands were bound and that a
crowd of French soldiers stood around him and were searching him.

"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words Pierre understood.

"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the barefooted soldier
who had been arrested with Pierre. "All right, you can tell all about it
at the court-martial." Then he turned to Pierre. "Do you speak French?"

Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply. His
face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something in
a whisper and four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves on
both sides of Pierre.

"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again, keeping at a distance
from Pierre. "Call the interpreter."

A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks, and
by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to be a
French salesman from one of the Moscow shops.

"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter, after a
searching look at Pierre.

"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked the officer. "And
ask him who he is," he added.

"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "You must answer
the chief."

"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner--take me!" Pierre
suddenly replied in French.

"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well then, march!"

A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood the
pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol
started she moved forward.

"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she. "And the little
girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not theirs?"
said the woman.

"What does that woman want?" asked the officer.

Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight of the
little girl he had saved.

"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my daughter whom
I have just saved from the flames," said he. "Good-by!" And without
knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along with
resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.

The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various
streets of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage,
and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general
opinion which had that day originated among the higher French officers,
were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through a number
of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects: a small
shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house serf, besides
several looters. But of all these various suspected characters, Pierre
was considered to be the most suspicious of all. When they had all been
brought for the night to a large house on the Zubov Rampart that was
being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed apart under strict guard.





BOOK TWELVE: 1812





CHAPTER I


In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being carried on
with greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between the parties
of Rumyantsev, the French, Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich, and others,
drowned as usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But the calm,
luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about phantoms and
reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made it hard,
except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the difficult
position of the Russian people. There were the same receptions and
balls, the same French theater, the same court interests and service
interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the very highest circles were
attempts made to keep in mind the difficulties of the actual position.
Stories were whispered of how differently the two Empresses behaved
in these difficult circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned for
the welfare of the charitable and educational institutions under her
patronage, had given directions that they should all be removed to
Kazan, and the things belonging to these institutions had already been
packed up. The Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions
she would be pleased to give--with her characteristic Russian patriotism
had replied that she could give no directions about state institutions
for that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally
was concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.

At Anna Pavlovna's on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of the
battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which was
to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when sending
the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was regarded as a model
of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince Vasili himself, famed for
his elocution, was to read it. (He used to read at the Empress'.) The
art of his reading was supposed to lie in rolling out the words, quite
independently of their meaning, in a loud and singsong voice alternating
between a despairing wail and a tender murmur, so that the wail fell
quite at random on one word and the murmur on another. This reading,
as was always the case at Anna Pavlovna's soirees, had a political
significance. That evening she expected several important personages who
had to be made ashamed of their visits to the French theater and aroused
to a patriotic temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna
Pavlovna, not yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room,
did not let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general
conversation.

The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess Bezukhova.
She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously, had missed
several gatherings of which she was usually ornament, and was said to be
receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated Petersburg doctors who
usually attended her had entrusted herself to some Italian doctor who
was treating her in some new and unusual way.

They all knew very well that the enchanting countess' illness arose from
an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at the same time,
and that the Italian's cure consisted in removing such inconvenience;
but in Anna Pavlovna's presence no one dared to think of this or even
appear to know it.

"They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is angina
pectoris."

"Angina? Oh, that's a terrible illness!"

"They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina..." and
the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction.

"The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the doctor
told him the case was dangerous."

"Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman."

"You are speaking of the poor countess?" said Anna Pavlovna, coming
up just then. "I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a little
better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the world," she
went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. "We belong to different
camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she deserves. She
is very unfortunate!" added Anna Pavlovna.

Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was somewhat lifting the
veil from the secret of the countess' malady, an unwary young man
ventured to express surprise that well known doctors had not been called
in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan who might
employ dangerous remedies.

"Your information maybe better than mine," Anna Pavlovna suddenly and
venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, "but I know on good
authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He is private
physician to the Queen of Spain."

And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pavlovna turned to
another group where Bilibin was talking about the Austrians: having
wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again
and utter one of his mots.

"I think it is delightful," he said, referring to a diplomatic note that
had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners captured from the
French by Wittgenstein, "the hero of Petropol" as he was then called in
Petersburg.

"What? What's that?" asked Anna Pavlovna, securing silence for the mot,
which she had heard before.

And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch, which
he had himself composed.

"The Emperor returns these Austrian banners," said Bilibin, "friendly
banners gone astray and found on a wrong path," and his brow became
smooth again.

"Charming, charming!" observed Prince Vasili.

"The path to Warsaw, perhaps," Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly and
unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he meant.
Prince Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise. He knew no
more than the others what his words meant. During his diplomatic career
he had more than once noticed that such utterances were received as very
witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in that way the first words
that entered his head. "It may turn out very well," he thought, "but
if not, they'll know how to arrange matters." And really, during the
awkward silence that ensued, that insufficiently patriotic person
entered whom Anna Pavlovna had been waiting for and wished to convert,
and she, smiling and shaking a finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince
Vasili to the table and bringing him two candles and the manuscript
begged him to begin. Everyone became silent.


"Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor!" Prince Vasili sternly declaimed,
looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether anyone had
anything to say to the contrary. But no one said anything. "Moscow, our
ancient capital, the New Jerusalem, receives her Christ"--he placed a
sudden emphasis on the word her--"as a mother receives her zealous sons
into her arms, and through the gathering mists, foreseeing the brilliant
glory of thy rule, sings in exultation, 'Hosanna, blessed is he that
cometh!'"


Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.

Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present
appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna
Pavlovna whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman
muttering the prayer at Communion: "Let the bold and insolent
Goliath..." she whispered.

Prince Vasili continued.


"Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France encompass
the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble Faith, the sling
of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head in his bloodthirsty
pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the servant of God and
zealous champion of old of our country's weal, is offered to Your
Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength prevents rejoicing
in the sight of your most gracious presence. I raise fervent prayers to
Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race of the just, and mercifully
fulfill the desires of Your Majesty."


"What force! What a style!" was uttered in approval both of reader and
of author.

Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna's guests talked for a long time
of the state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as to the
result of the battle to be fought in a few days.

"You will see," said Anna Pavlovna, "that tomorrow, on the Emperor's
birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!"





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day during the
service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor's birthday, Prince
Volkonski was called out of the church and received a dispatch from
Prince Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov's report, written from Tatarinova on the
day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians had not retreated a
step, that the French losses were much heavier than ours, and that he
was writing in haste from the field of battle before collecting full
information. It followed that there must have been a victory. And at
once, without leaving the church, thanks were rendered to the Creator
for His help and for the victory.

Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was justified, and all that morning a
joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the victory
to have been complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon's having been
captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new ruler for
France.

It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real strength
and completeness amid the conditions of court life and far from the
scene of action. General events involuntarily group themselves around
some particular incident. So now the courtiers' pleasure was based as
much on the fact that the news had arrived on the Emperor's birthday as
on the fact of the victory itself. It was like a successfully arranged
surprise. Mention was made in Kutuzov's report of the Russian losses,
among which figured the names of Tuchkov, Bagration, and Kutaysov. In
the Petersburg world this sad side of the affair again involuntarily
centered round a single incident: Kutaysov's death. Everybody knew
him, the Emperor liked him, and he was young and interesting. That day
everyone met with the words:

"What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a loss
Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!"

"What did I tell about Kutuzov?" Prince Vasili now said with a
prophet's pride. "I always said he was the only man capable of defeating
Napoleon."

But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood grew
anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the suspense
occasioned the Emperor.

"Fancy the Emperor's position!" said they, and instead of extolling
Kutuzov as they had done the day before, they condemned him as the cause
of the Emperor's anxiety. That day Prince Vasili no longer boasted of
his protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the commander in chief was
mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if everything conspired to make
Petersburg society anxious and uneasy, a terrible piece of news was
added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had suddenly died of that terrible
malady it had been so agreeable to mention. Officially, at large
gatherings, everyone said that Countess Bezukhova had died of a
terrible attack of angina pectoris, but in intimate circles details
were mentioned of how the private physician of the Queen of Spain had
prescribed small doses of a certain drug to produce a certain effect;
but Helene, tortured by the fact that the old count suspected her and
that her husband to whom she had written (that wretched, profligate
Pierre) had not replied, had suddenly taken a very large dose of the
drug, and had died in agony before assistance could be rendered her.
It was said that Prince Vasili and the old count had turned upon the
Italian, but the latter had produced such letters from the unfortunate
deceased that they had immediately let the matter drop.

Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor's
lack of news, the loss of Kutuzov, and the death of Helene.

On the third day after Kutuzov's report a country gentleman arrived from
Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French spread through
the whole town. This was terrible! What a position for the Emperor to
be in! Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili during the visits of
condolence paid to him on the occasion of his daughter's death said of
Kutuzov, whom he had formerly praised (it was excusable for him in his
grief to forget what he had said), that it was impossible to expect
anything else from a blind and depraved old man.

"I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted to such
a man."

As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt it,
but the next day the following communication was received from Count
Rostopchin:


Prince Kutuzov's adjutant has brought me a letter in which he demands
police officers to guide the army to the Ryazan road. He writes that
he is regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov's action decides the
fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will shudder to learn of
the abandonment of the city in which her greatness is centered and in
which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall follow the army. I have
had everything removed, and it only remains for me to weep over the fate
of my fatherland.


On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkonski to Kutuzov
with the following rescript:


Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have
received no communication from you, yet on the first of September I
received from the commander in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad
news that you, with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You can
yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your silence
increases my astonishment. I am sending this by Adjutant-General Prince
Volkonski, to hear from you the situation of the army and the reasons
that have induced you to take this melancholy decision.





CHAPTER III


Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from Kutuzov
reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that event. This
messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know Russian, but who was
quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d'ame, * as he said of himself.


    * Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.


The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the palace
on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before the campaign
and who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as he wrote) when
he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain * with the news of the
burning of Moscow, dont les flammes eclairaient sa route. *(2)


     * Our most gracious sovereign.

     * (2) Whose flames illumined his route.


Though the source of M. Michaud's chagrin must have been different from
that which caused Russians to grieve, he had such a sad face when shown
into the Emperor's study that the latter at once asked:

"Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?"

"Very sad, sire," replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh. "The
abandonment of Moscow."

"Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?" asked the
Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.

Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov had entrusted to him,
which was that it had been impossible to fight before Moscow, and that
as the only remaining choice was between losing the army as well as
Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal had to choose the
latter.

The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.

"Has the enemy entered the city?" he asked.

"Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in flames,"
replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at the Emperor he was
frightened by what he had done.

The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his lower lip
trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine blue eyes.

But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as if blaming
himself for his weakness, and raising his head addressed Michaud in a
firm voice:

"I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence requires
great sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself in all things to
His will; but tell me, Michaud, how did you leave the army when it
saw my ancient capital abandoned without a battle? Did you not notice
discouragement?..."

Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more, Michaud also
grew calm, but was not immediately ready to reply to the Emperor's
direct and relevant question which required a direct answer.

"Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal soldier?" he
asked to gain time.

"Colonel, I always require it," replied the Emperor. "Conceal nothing
from me, I wish to know absolutely how things are."

"Sire!" said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible smile on his
lips, having now prepared a well-phrased reply, "sire, I left the
whole army, from its chiefs to the lowest soldier, without exception in
desperate and agonized terror..."

"How is that?" the Emperor interrupted him, frowning sternly. "Would
misfortune make my Russians lose heart?... Never!"

Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase he had
prepared.

"Sire," he said, with respectful playfulness, "they are only afraid lest
Your Majesty, in the goodness of your heart, should allow yourself to be
persuaded to make peace. They are burning for the combat," declared this
representative of the Russian nation, "and to prove to Your Majesty by
the sacrifice of their lives how devoted they are...."

"Ah!" said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly gleam in his eyes,
he patted Michaud on the shoulder. "You set me at ease, Colonel."

He bent his head and was silent for some time.

"Well, then, go back to the army," he said, drawing himself up to his
full height and addressing Michaud with a gracious and majestic gesture,
"and tell our brave men and all my good subjects wherever you go that
when I have not a soldier left I shall put myself at the head of my
beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last resources of
my empire. It still offers me more than my enemies suppose," said the
Emperor growing more and more animated; "but should it ever be ordained
by Divine Providence," he continued, raising to heaven his fine eyes
shining with emotion, "that my dynasty should cease to reign on the
throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting all the means at my
command, I shall let my beard grow to here" (he pointed halfway down his
chest) "and go and eat potatoes with the meanest of my peasants, rather
than sign the disgrace of my country and of my beloved people whose
sacrifices I know how to appreciate."

Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly
turned away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his eyes,
and went to the further end of his study. Having stood there a few
moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm below the elbow
with a vigorous movement. The Emperor's mild and handsome face was
flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.

"Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we may
recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I," said the Emperor,
touching his breast. "We can no longer both reign together. I have
learned to know him, and he will not deceive me any more...."

And the Emperor paused, with a frown.

When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm resolution
in the Emperor's eyes, Michaud--quoique etranger, russe de coeur et
d'ame--at that solemn moment felt himself enraptured by all that he had
heard (as he used afterwards to say), and gave expression to his
own feelings and those of the Russian people whose representative he
considered himself to be, in the following words:

"Sire!" said he, "Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory of
the nation and the salvation of Europe!"

With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him.





CHAPTER IV


It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine that
when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were fleeing to
distant provinces, and one levy after another was being raised for the
defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the greatest to the least
were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves, saving their fatherland,
or weeping over its downfall. The tales and descriptions of that time
without exception speak only of the self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion,
despair, grief, and the heroism of the Russians. But it was not really
so. It appears so to us because we see only the general historic
interest of that time and do not see all the personal human interests
that people had. Yet in reality those personal interests of the moment
so much transcend the general interests that they always prevent the
public interest from being felt or even noticed. Most of the people at
that time paid no attention to the general progress of events but were
guided only by their private interests, and they were the very people
whose activities at that period were most useful.

Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to take
part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless members
of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they did for the
common good turned out to be useless and foolish--like Pierre's and
Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and the lint the
young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded, and so on.
Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing their feelings,
who discussed Russia's position at the time involuntarily introduced
into their conversation either a shade of pretense and falsehood or
useless condemnation and anger directed against people accused of
actions no one could possibly be guilty of. In historic events the rule
forbidding us to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is specially
applicable. Only unconscious action bears fruit, and he who plays a part
in an historic event never understands its significance. If he tries to
realize it his efforts are fruitless.

The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place in
Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg and
in the provinces at a distance from Moscow, ladies, and gentlemen in
militia uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital and talked of
self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which retired beyond Moscow
there was little talk or thought of Moscow, and when they caught sight
of its burned ruins no one swore to be avenged on the French, but they
thought about their next pay, their next quarters, of Matreshka the
vivandiere, and like matters.

As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostov took a close
and prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so casually,
without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked at what was
going on in Russia without despair and without dismally racking his
brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the state of
Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to think about
it, that Kutuzov and others were there for that purpose, but that he had
heard that the regiments were to be made up to their full strength, that
fighting would probably go on for a long time yet, and that things being
so it was quite likely he might be in command of a regiment in a couple
of years' time.

As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being
sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without
regret at being prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but
with the greatest pleasure--which he did not conceal and which his
comrades fully understood.

A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas received the
necessary money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in
advance, he set out with post horses for Voronezh.

Only a man who has experienced it--that is, has passed some months
continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war--can understand
the delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by the
army's foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When--free
from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp--he saw villages
with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country houses, fields
where cattle were grazing, posthouses with stationmasters asleep in
them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this for the first time. What for
a long while specially surprised and delighted him were the women, young
and healthy, without a dozen officers making up to each of them; women,
too, who were pleased and flattered that a passing officer should joke
with them.

In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in Voronezh,
ordered things he had long been deprived of in camp, and next day, very
clean-shaven and in a full-dress uniform he had not worn for a long
time, went to present himself to the authorities.

The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man who was
evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He received
Nicholas brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically military)
and questioned him with an important air, as if considering the general
progress of affairs and approving and disapproving with full right to do
so. Nicholas was in such good spirits that this merely amused him.

From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The governor
was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated the stud
farms at which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended to him a horse
dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles out of town who had
the best horses, and promised to assist him in every way.

"You are Count Ilya Rostov's son? My wife was a great friend of your
mother's. We are at home on Thursdays--today is Thursday, so please come
and see us quite informally," said the governor, taking leave of him.

Immediately on leaving the governor's, Nicholas hired post horses and,
taking his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop to the
landowner, fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything seemed to
him pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay in Voronezh
and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind,
everything went well and easily.

The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old cavalryman, a
horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some century-old brandy
and some old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery where he smoked, and who
owned some splendid horses.

In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six
thousand rubles--to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts.
After dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine,
Nicholas--having exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was
already on the friendliest terms--galloped back over abominable roads,
in the brightest frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as
to be in time for the governor's party.

When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented himself,
Nicholas arrived at the governor's rather late, but with the phrase
"better late than never" on his lips.

It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew
that Catherine Petrovna would play valses and the ecossaise on the
clavichord and that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come as
to a ball.

Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this
difference, that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the
arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow, and as in everything that
went on in Russia at that time a special recklessness was noticeable, an
"in for a penny, in for a pound--who cares?" spirit, and the inevitable
small talk, instead of turning on the weather and mutual acquaintances,
now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.

The society gathered together at the governor's was the best in
Voronezh.

There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas' Moscow
acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the
cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured
and well-bred Count Rostov. Among the men was an Italian prisoner, an
officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence of that
prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero. The Italian
was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it seemed to him
that everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he treated him
cordially though with dignity and restraint.

As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing around him
a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the words "better late
than never" and heard them repeated several times by others, people
clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he felt at once that
he had entered into his proper position in the province--that of a
universal favorite: a very pleasant position, and intoxicatingly so
after his long privations. At posting stations, at inns, and in the
landowner's snuggery, maidservants had been flattered by his notice, and
here too at the governor's party there were (as it seemed to Nicholas)
an inexhaustible number of pretty young women, married and unmarried,
impatiently awaiting his notice. The women and girls flirted with him
and, from the first day, the people concerned themselves to get this
fine young daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these
was the governor's wife herself, who welcomed Rostov as a near relative
and called him "Nicholas."

Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the ecossaise, and
dancing began in which Nicholas still further captivated the provincial
society by his agility. His particularly free manner of dancing even
surprised them all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised at the way he
danced that evening. He had never danced like that in Moscow and would
even have considered such a very free and easy manner improper and in
bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to astonish them all by
something unusual, something they would have to accept as the regular
thing in the capital though new to them in the provinces.

All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and
pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials.
With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other men's
wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's side and
treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, as if,
without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and the lady
would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem to share that
conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostov. But the
latter's good-natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even he
involuntarily yielded to Nicholas' good humor. Toward the end of the
evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and animated, the
husband's became more and more melancholy and solemn, as though there
were but a given amount of animation between them and as the wife's
share increased the husband's diminished.





CHAPTER V


Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending closely
over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments with a
smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the position of his
legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor of perfume, and
admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines of his legs in
their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the blonde lady that he
wished to run away with a certain lady here in Voronezh.

"Which lady?"

"A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes" (Nicholas looked at his
partner) "are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure" (he glanced
at her shoulders) "like Diana's...."

The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking
about.

"Ah, Nikita Ivanych!" cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if wishing
Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to tell him of his intention
to elope with a blonde lady.

The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor's good-natured
wife came up with a look of disapproval.

"Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas," said she, pronouncing the
name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna Ignatyevna was a very
important person. "Come, Nicholas! You know you let me call you so?"

"Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?"

"Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her niece how you
rescued her... Can you guess?"

"I rescued such a lot of them!" said Nicholas.

"Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in Voronezh with her aunt.
Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?"

"Not a bit! Please don't, Aunt!"

"Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!"

The governor's wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady with
a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with the most
important personages of the town. This was Malvintseva, Princess Mary's
aunt on her mother's side, a rich, childless widow who always lived in
Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was standing settling up for
the game. She looked at him and, screwing up her eyes sternly, continued
to upbraid the general who had won from her.

"Very pleased, mon cher," she then said, holding out her hand to
Nicholas. "Pray come and see me."

After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom
Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas
knew of Prince Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the
important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation to
come to see her.

Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the mention
of Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and even of fear,
which he himself did not understand.

When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas wished to return to the
dancing, but the governor's little wife placed her plump hand on his
sleeve and, saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to
her sitting room, from which those who were there immediately withdrew
so as not to be in her way.

"Do you know, dear boy," began the governor's wife with a serious
expression on her kind little face, "that really would be the match for
you: would you like me to arrange it?"

"Whom do you mean, Aunt?" asked Nicholas.

"I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petrovna
speaks of Lily, but I say, no--the princess! Do you want me to do it? I
am sure your mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl she is,
really! And she is not at all so plain, either."

"Not at all," replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. "As befits
a soldier, Aunt, I don't force myself on anyone or refuse anything," he
said before he had time to consider what he was saying.

"Well then, remember, this is not a joke!"

"Of course not!"

"Yes, yes," the governor's wife said as if talking to herself. "But,
my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other, the
blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really...."

"Oh no, we are good friends with him," said Nicholas in the simplicity
of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so pleasant to
himself might not be pleasant to someone else.

"But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor's wife!" thought
Nicholas suddenly at supper. "She will really begin to arrange a
match... and Sonya...?" And on taking leave of the governor's wife,
when she again smilingly said to him, "Well then, remember!" he drew her
aside.

"But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..."

"What is it, my dear? Come, let's sit down here," said she.

Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate
thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or
his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he afterwards
recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which
had very important results for him, it seemed to him--as it seems to
everyone in such cases--that it was merely some silly whim that seized
him: yet that burst of frankness, together with other trifling events,
had immense consequences for him and for all his family.

"You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but the
very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me."

"Oh yes, I understand," said the governor's wife.

"But Princess Bolkonskaya--that's another matter. I will tell you the
truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to her; and
then, after I met her under such circumstances--so strangely, the idea
often occurred to me: 'This is fate.' Especially if you remember that
Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never happened to meet her
before, somehow it had always happened that we did not meet. And as long
as my sister Natasha was engaged to her brother it was of course out of
the question for me to think of marrying her. And it must needs happen
that I should meet her just when Natasha's engagement had been broken
off... and then everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone
and never will, only to you."

The governor's wife pressed his elbow gratefully.

"You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her, and
will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-" said Nicholas
incoherently and blushing.

"My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sonya has nothing and
you yourself say your Papa's affairs are in a very bad way. And what
about your mother? It would kill her, that's one thing. And what sort of
life would it be for Sonya--if she's a girl with a heart? Your mother
in despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and Sonya ought to
understand that."

Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments.

"All the same, Aunt, it is impossible," he rejoined with a sigh, after
a short pause. "Besides, would the princess have me? And besides, she is
now in mourning. How can one think of it!"

"But you don't suppose I'm going to get you married at once? There is
always a right way of doing things," replied the governor's wife.

"What a matchmaker you are, Aunt..." said Nicholas, kissing her plump
little hand.





CHAPTER VI


On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov, Princess Mary had
found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince Andrew
giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at Voronezh.
That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her during her
father's illness, since his death, and especially since her meeting with
Rostov was smothered by arrangements for the journey, anxiety about her
brother, settling in a new house, meeting new people, and attending to
her nephew's education. She was sad. Now, after a month passed in quiet
surroundings, she felt more and more deeply the loss of her father which
was associated in her mind with the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and
incessantly tortured by the thought of the dangers to which her brother,
the only intimate person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was
worried too about her nephew's education for which she had always felt
herself incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace--a
peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal dreams
and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her and were
related to her meeting with Rostov.

The day after her party the governor's wife came to see Malvintseva
and, after discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked that though
under present circumstances a formal betrothal was, of course, not to be
thought of, all the same the young people might be brought together and
could get to know one another. Malvintseva expressed approval, and the
governor's wife began to speak of Rostov in Mary's presence, praising
him and telling how he had blushed when Princess Mary's name was
mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a painful rather than a joyful
feeling--her mental tranquillity was destroyed, and desires, doubts,
self-reproach, and hopes reawoke.

During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called, Princess Mary
continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she decided
not to come to the drawing room when he called to see her aunt--that it
would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to receive visitors;
then she thought this would be rude after what he had done for her; then
it occurred to her that her aunt and the governor's wife had intentions
concerning herself and Rostov--their looks and words at times seemed to
confirm this supposition--then she told herself that only she, with
her sinful nature, could think this of them: they could not forget that
situated as she was, while still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking
would be an insult to her and to her father's memory. Assuming that she
did go down to see him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would say
to her and what she would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed
undeservedly cold and then to mean too much. More than anything she
feared lest the confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as
soon as she saw him.

But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing
room that Count Rostov had called, the princess showed no confusion,
only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new
and radiant light.

"You have met him, Aunt?" said she in a calm voice, unable herself to
understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural.

When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an
instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then
just as Nicholas turned to her she raised her head and met his look with
shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she half rose
with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate hand to him,
and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time new deep
womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in the drawing
room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise. Herself a
consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on meeting a
man she wished to attract.

"Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has greatly
improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what tact and
grace!" thought Mademoiselle Bourienne.

Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she would
have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the change that
had taken place in herself. From the moment she recognized that dear,
loved face, a new life force took possession of her and compelled her to
speak and act apart from her own will. From the time Rostov entered, her
face became suddenly transformed. It was as if a light had been kindled
in a carved and painted lantern and the intricate, skillful, artistic
work on its sides, that previously seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless,
was suddenly shown up in unexpected and striking beauty. For the first
time all that pure, spiritual, inward travail through which she had
lived appeared on the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction
with herself, her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her
meekness, love, and self-sacrifice--all this now shone in those radiant
eyes, in her delicate smile, and in every trait of her gentle face.

Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He
felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better
than, anyone he had met before, and above all better than himself.

Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of the
war, and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow about
it; they spoke of their last meeting--Nicholas trying to change
the subject--they talked of the governor's kind wife, of Nicholas'
relations, and of Princess Mary's.

She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as soon
as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of Russia's
misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was too near
her heart and she neither could nor would speak lightly of him. Nicholas
noticed this, as he noticed every shade of Princess Mary's character
with an observation unusual to him, and everything confirmed his
conviction that she was a quite unusual and extraordinary being.
Nicholas blushed and was confused when people spoke to him about the
princess (as she did when he was mentioned) and even when he thought of
her, but in her presence he felt quite at ease, and said not at all what
he had prepared, but what, quite appropriately, occurred to him at the
moment.

When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is usual when
there are children, turned to Prince Andrew's little son, caressing him
and asking whether he would like to be an hussar. He took the boy on
his knee, played with him, and looked round at Princess Mary. With a
softened, happy, timid look she watched the boy she loved in the arms
of the man she loved. Nicholas also noticed that look and, as if
understanding it, flushed with pleasure and began to kiss the boy with
good natured playfulness.

As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society, and
Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but all
the same the governor's wife went on with her matchmaking, passing on to
Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and vice
versa, and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary. For this
purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people at the bishop's
house before Mass.

Though Rostov told the governor's wife that he would not make any
declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.

As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that what everybody
considered right was right, so now, after a short but sincere struggle
between his effort to arrange his life by his own sense of justice, and
in obedient submission to circumstances, he chose the latter and yielded
to the power he felt irresistibly carrying him he knew not where. He
knew that after his promise to Sonya it would be what he deemed base to
declare his feelings to Princess Mary. And he knew that he would never
act basely. But he also knew (or rather felt at the bottom of his heart)
that by resigning himself now to the force of circumstances and to those
who were guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing
something very important--more important than anything he had ever done
in his life.

After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on
externally as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for him
and he often thought about her. But he never thought about her as he
had thought of all the young ladies without exception whom he had met
in society, nor as he had for a long time, and at one time rapturously,
thought about Sonya. He had pictured each of those young ladies as
almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as a possible wife,
adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions of married life:
a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his wife's carriage,
little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to her, and so on--and
these pictures of the future had given him pleasure. But with Princess
Mary, to whom they were trying to get him engaged, he could never
picture anything of future married life. If he tried, his pictures
seemed incongruous and false. It made him afraid.





CHAPTER VII


The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed and
wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow reached
Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having learned of
her brother's wound only from the Gazette and having no definite news of
him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her again himself) to
set off in search of Prince Andrew.

When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and the abandonment
of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with despair, anger, the desire for
vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but everything in Voronezh
suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and he experienced an
indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The conversations he heard
seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to judge all these affairs
and felt that only in the regiment would everything again become clear
to him. He made haste to finish buying the horses, and often became
unreasonably angry with his servant and squadron quartermaster.

A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which
Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian victory.
He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with military
decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of subjects.
When the service was over the governor's wife beckoned him to her.

"Have you seen the princess?" she asked, indicating with a movement of
her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond the choir.

Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the profile
he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude, timidity, and
pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary, evidently engrossed
by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last time before leaving
the church.

Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he had
seen before, there was the same general expression of refined, inner,
spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There was a
pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had occurred
before when she was present, Nicholas went up to her without waiting to
be prompted by the governor's wife and not asking himself whether or not
it was right and proper to address her here in church, and told her he
had heard of her trouble and sympathized with his whole soul. As soon as
she heard his voice a vivid glow kindled in her face, lighting up both
her sorrow and her joy.

"There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess," said Rostov. "It
is that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikolievich, were not living, it
would have been at once announced in the Gazette, as he is a colonel."

The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but cheered
by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.

"And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound" (the Gazette said
it was a shell) "either proving fatal at once or being very slight,"
continued Nicholas. "We must hope for the best, and I am sure..."

Princess Mary interrupted him.

"Oh, that would be so dread..." she began and, prevented by agitation
from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as graceful as
everything she did in his presence and, looking up at him gratefully,
went out, following her aunt.

That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle some
accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that business it
was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to go to bed,
and for a long time he paced up and down the room, reflecting on his
life, a thing he rarely did.

Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had met
her in Smolensk province. His having encountered her in such exceptional
circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned her to him as
a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her. When he met her
again in Voronezh the impression she made on him was not merely pleasing
but powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the peculiar moral beauty he
observed in her at this time. He was, however, preparing to go away and
it had not entered his head to regret that he was thus depriving himself
of chances of meeting her. But that day's encounter in church had, he
felt, sunk deeper than was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale,
sad, refined face, that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures,
and especially the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features
agitated him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear to
see the expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not
like Prince Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy
and dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed
the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an irresistible
attraction.

"She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!" he said to himself.
"Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?" And he
involuntarily compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one and
the abundance of it in the other--a spirituality he himself lacked and
therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what would happen were
he free. How he would propose to her and how she would become his wife.
But no, he could not imagine that. He felt awed, and no clear picture
presented itself to his mind. He had long ago pictured to himself a
future with Sonya, and that was all clear and simple just because it
had all been thought out and he knew all there was in Sonya, but it was
impossible to picture a future with Princess Mary, because he did not
understand her but simply loved her.

Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them, but to
dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little frightening.

"How she prayed!" he thought. "It was plain that her whole soul was in
her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains, and I am
sure her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I want?" he
suddenly thought. "What do I want? To be free, released from Sonya...
She was right," he thought, remembering what the governor's wife had
said: "Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sonya. Muddles,
grief for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible muddles!
Besides, I don't love her--not as I should. O, God! release me from
this dreadful, inextricable position!" he suddenly began to pray. "Yes,
prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not pray as
Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn into
sugar--and then run out into the yard to see whether it had done so.
No, but I am not praying for trifles now," he thought as he put his pipe
down in a corner, and folding his hands placed himself before the icon.
Softened by memories of Princess Mary he began to pray as he had not
done for a long time. Tears were in his eyes and in his throat when the
door opened and Lavrushka came in with some papers.

"Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?" cried Nicholas,
quickly changing his attitude.

"From the governor," said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice. "A courier has
arrived and there's a letter for you."

"Well, all right, thanks. You can go!"

Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother and
the other from Sonya. He recognized them by the handwriting and opened
Sonya's first. He had read only a few lines when he turned pale and his
eyes opened wide with fear and joy.

"No, it's not possible!" he cried aloud.

Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter and
reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then again,
and standing still in the middle of the room he raised his shoulders,
stretching out his hands, with his mouth wide open and his eyes fixed.
What he had just been praying for with confidence that God would hear
him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much astonished as if it were
something extraordinary and unexpected, and as if the very fact that it
had happened so quickly proved that it had not come from God to whom he
had prayed, but by some ordinary coincidence.

This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary letter
from Sonya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from which
there had seemed no escape. She wrote that the last unfortunate
events--the loss of almost the whole of the Rostovs' Moscow
property--and the countess' repeatedly expressed wish that Nicholas
should marry Princess Bolkonskaya, together with his silence and
coldness of late, had all combined to make her decide to release him
from his promise and set him completely free.


It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of sorrow
or discord in the family that has been so good to me (she wrote), and my
love has no aim but the happiness of those I love; so, Nicholas, I
beg you to consider yourself free, and to be assured that, in spite of
everything, no one can love you more than does

Your Sonya


Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from the countess,
described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the fire, and
the destruction of all their property. In this letter the countess also
mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded traveling with them;
his state was very critical, but the doctor said there was now more
hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.

Next day Nicholas took his mother's letter and went to see Princess
Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about what "Natasha nursing him"
might mean, but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly became almost as
intimate with the princess as if they were relations.

The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to Yaroslavl,
and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.





CHAPTER VIII


Sonya's letter written from Troitsa, which had come as an answer to
Nicholas' prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting Nicholas
married to an heiress occupied the old countess' mind more and more. She
knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this happening, and Sonya's
life in the countess' house had grown harder and harder, especially
after they had received a letter from Nicholas telling of his meeting
with Princess Mary in Bogucharovo. The countess let no occasion slip of
making humiliating or cruel allusions to Sonya.

But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all that
was going on, she called Sonya to her and, instead of reproaching and
making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself
and repay all that the family had done for her by breaking off her
engagement with Nicholas.

"I shall not be at peace till you promise me this."

Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs that
she would do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave no actual
promise and could not bring herself to decide to do what was demanded
of her. She must sacrifice herself for the family that had reared and
brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sonya's habit. Her
position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could she show her
worth, and she was accustomed to this and loved doing it. But in all her
former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily conscious that they
raised her in her own esteem and in that of others, and so made her more
worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more than anything in the world. But
now they wanted her to sacrifice the very thing that constituted the
whole reward for her self-sacrifice and the whole meaning of her life.
And for the first time she felt bitterness against those who had been
her benefactors only to torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous
of Natasha who had never experienced anything of this sort, had never
needed to sacrifice herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for
her and yet was beloved by everybody. And for the first time Sonya felt
that out of her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling
was beginning to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue,
or religion. Under the influence of this feeling Sonya, whose life of
dependence had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered
the countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her and
resolved to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in order to set him
free but on the contrary at that meeting to bind him to her forever.

The bustle and terror of the Rostovs' last days in Moscow stifled the
gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya. She was glad to find escape
from them in practical activity. But when she heard of Prince Andrew's
presence in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and for
Natasha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that God
did not intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that Natasha
loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never ceased to love him. She
knew that being thrown together again under such terrible circumstances
they would again fall in love with one another, and that Nicholas would
then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would be within the
prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror of what had
happened during those last days and during the first days of their
journey, this feeling that Providence was intervening in her personal
affairs cheered Sonya.

At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their journey for a
whole day.

Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry, one
of which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much better
that day and Natasha was sitting with him. In the next room sat the
count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was
calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery.
Sonya was there too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew and
Natasha were talking about. She heard the sound of their voices through
the door. That door opened and Natasha came out, looking excited. Not
noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was drawing back the
wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya and took her hand.

"Natasha, what are you about? Come here!" said the countess.

Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and he advised her to pray
for aid to God and His saint.

As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend by the hand and
went with her into the unoccupied room.

"Sonya, will he live?" she asked. "Sonya, how happy I am, and how
unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he
lives! He cannot... because... because... of" and Natasha burst into
tears.

"Yes! I knew it! Thank God!" murmured Sonya. "He will live."

Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter's fear and
grief and by her own personal feelings which she shared with no one.
Sobbing, she kissed and comforted Natasha. "If only he lives!" she
thought. Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two
friends went together to Prince Andrew's door. Natasha opened it
cautiously and glanced into the room, Sonya standing beside her at the
half-open door.

Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale face was
calm, his eyes closed, and they could see his regular breathing.

"O, Natasha!" Sonya suddenly almost screamed, catching her companion's
arm and stepping back from the door.

"What? What is it?" asked Natasha.

"It's that, that..." said Sonya, with a white face and trembling lips.

Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to the window, not
yet understanding what the latter was telling her.

"You remember," said Sonya with a solemn and frightened expression.
"You remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at Otradnoe at
Christmas? Do you remember what I saw?"

"Yes, yes!" cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely recalling
that Sonya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom she had seen
lying down.

"You remember?" Sonya went on. "I saw it then and told everybody, you
and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed," said she, making a gesture with
her hand and a lifted finger at each detail, "and that he had his eyes
closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that his hands were
folded," she concluded, convincing herself that the details she had just
seen were exactly what she had seen in the mirror.

She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first thing that
came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed to her now
as real as any other recollection. She not only remembered what she had
then said--that he turned to look at her and smiled and was covered with
something red--but was firmly convinced that she had then seen and said
that he was covered with a pink quilt and that his eyes were closed.

"Yes, yes, it really was pink!" cried Natasha, who now thought she
too remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most
extraordinary and mysterious part of the prediction.

"But what does it mean?" she added meditatively.

"Oh, I don't know, it is all so strange," replied Sonya, clutching at
her head.

A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha went to him, but
Sonya, feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the window
thinking about the strangeness of what had occurred.


They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and the
countess was writing to her son.

"Sonya!" said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as her
niece passed, "Sonya, won't you write to Nicholas?" She spoke in a soft,
tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her spectacles
Sonya read all that the countess meant to convey with these words. Those
eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear of a refusal, and
readiness for relentless hatred in case of such refusal.

Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.

"Yes, Mamma, I will write," said she.

Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred that
day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen of her
vision. Now that she knew that the renewal of Natasha's relations with
Prince Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying Princess Mary, she
was joyfully conscious of a return of that self-sacrificing spirit in
which she was accustomed to live and loved to live. So with a joyful
consciousness of performing a magnanimous deed--interrupted several
times by the tears that dimmed her velvety black eyes--she wrote that
touching letter the arrival of which had so amazed Nicholas.





CHAPTER IX


The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with
hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was taken.
In their attitude toward him could still be felt both uncertainty as
to who he might be--perhaps a very important person--and hostility as a
result of their recent personal conflict with him.

But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for the
new guard--both officers and men--he was not as interesting as he had
been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day did not
recognize in this big, stout man in a peasant coat the vigorous person
who had fought so desperately with the marauder and the convoy and had
uttered those solemn words about saving a child; they saw in him only
No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and detained for some reason
by order of the Higher Command. If they noticed anything remarkable
about Pierre, it was only his unabashed, meditative concentration
and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke French, which struck them as
surprisingly good. In spite of this he was placed that day with the
other arrested suspects, as the separate room he had occupied was
required by an officer.

All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class and,
recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more especially as
he spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them making fun of him.

That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably, among
them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was taken
with the others to a house where a French general with a white mustache
sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on their arms.
With the precision and definiteness customary in addressing prisoners,
and which is supposed to preclude human frailty, Pierre like the others
was questioned as to who he was, where he had been, with what object,
and so on.

These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the
essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that essence's
being revealed, and were designed only to form a channel through which
the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow so as to lead to
the desired result, namely a conviction. As soon as Pierre began to say
anything that did not fit in with that aim, the channel was removed and
the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt, moreover, what the accused
always feel at their trial, perplexity as to why these questions were
put to him. He had a feeling that it was only out of condescension or a
kind of civility that this device of placing a channel was employed. He
knew he was in these men's power, that only by force had they brought
him there, that force alone gave them the right to demand answers
to their questions, and that the sole object of that assembly was to
inculpate him. And so, as they had the power and wish to inculpate
him, this expedient of an inquiry and trial seemed unnecessary. It was
evident that any answer would lead to conviction. When asked what he
was doing when he was arrested, Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner
that he was restoring to its parents a child he had saved from the
flames. Why had he fought the marauder? Pierre answered that he "was
protecting a woman," and that "to protect a woman who was being insulted
was the duty of every man; that..." They interrupted him, for this
was not to the point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house where
witnesses had seen him? He replied that he had gone out to see what
was happening in Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had not asked
where he was going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he? they
asked, repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer.
Again he replied that he could not answer it.

"Put that down, that's bad... very bad," sternly remarked the general
with the white mustache and red flushed face.


On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart.

Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a merchant's
house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the streets Pierre
felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the whole
city. Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize the
significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires with
horror.

He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and
during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that all
those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any day
from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn from the
soldiers. Evidently for them "the marshal" represented a very high and
rather mysterious power.

These first days, before the eighth of September when the prisoners were
had up for a second examination, were the hardest of all for Pierre.





CHAPTER X


On the eighth of September an officer--a very important one judging by
the respect the guards showed him--entered the coach house where the
prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on the staff, was holding
a paper in his hand, and called over all the Russians there, naming
Pierre as "the man who does not give his name." Glancing indolently and
indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered the officer in charge
to have them decently dressed and tidied up before taking them to the
marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers arrived and Pierre with
thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field. It was a fine day, sunny
after rain, and the air was unusually pure. The smoke did not hang low
as on the day when Pierre had been taken from the guardhouse on the
Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure air in columns. No flames
were seen, but columns of smoke rose on all sides, and all Moscow as far
as Pierre could see was one vast charred ruin. On all sides there were
waste spaces with only stoves and chimney stacks still standing, and
here and there the blackened walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed
at the ruins and did not recognize districts he had known well. Here and
there he could see churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which
was not destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and
the belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin
glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.
These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the
Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate this
holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to be
seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when they saw
the French.

It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but in
place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed, Pierre
unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order had been
established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the looks of
the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and gaily, were
escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the looks of an
important French official in a carriage and pair driven by a soldier,
whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of regimental
music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt and realized
it especially from the list of prisoners the French officer had read out
when he came that morning. Pierre had been taken by one set of soldiers
and led first to one and then to another place with dozens of other men,
and it seemed that they might have forgotten him, or confused him with
the others. But no: the answers he had given when questioned had come
back to him in his designation as "the man who does not give his name,"
and under that appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were
now leading him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces
that he and all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted
and that they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself
to be an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose
action he did not understand but which was working well.

He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the Virgin's
Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not far from the
convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house, where Pierre had often
been in other days, and which, as he learned from the talk of the
soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of Eckmuhl (Davout).

They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one.
Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass gallery,
an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a long low
study at the door of which stood an adjutant.

Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end of
the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently consulting
a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without raising his eyes,
he said in a low voice:

"Who are you?"

Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To him
Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for his
cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern schoolmaster
who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre felt that every
instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did not know what
to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at his first
examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was dangerous and
embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he had decided what to do,
Davout raised his head, pushed his spectacles back on his forehead,
screwed up his eyes, and looked intently at him.

"I know that man," he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently
calculated to frighten Pierre.

The chill that had been running down Pierre's back now seized his head
as in a vise.

"You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you..."

"He is a Russian spy," Davout interrupted, addressing another general
who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.

Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice Pierre
rapidly began:

"No, monseigneur," he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a duke.
"No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia officer and
have not quitted Moscow."

"Your name?" asked Davout.

"Bezukhov."

"What proof have I that you are not lying?"

"Monseigneur!" exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but in a pleading
voice.

Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked
at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war
and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At
that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their
minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and
were brothers.

At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the
papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre
was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without
burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a
human being. He reflected for a moment.

"How can you show me that you are telling the truth?" said Davout
coldly.

Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment and the
street where the house was.

"You are not what you say," returned Davout.

In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs of the
truth of his statements.

But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something to Davout.

Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and began
buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten Pierre.

When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked his head in
Pierre's direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But
where they were to take him Pierre did not know: back to the coach house
or to the place of execution his companions had pointed out to him as
they crossed the Virgin's Field.

He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another
question to Davout.

"Yes, of course!" replied Davout, but what this "yes" meant, Pierre did
not know.

Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether it was far, or
in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed, he was stupefied,
and noticing nothing around him went on moving his legs as the others
did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only thought in his
mind at that time was: who was it that had really sentenced him to
death? Not the men on the commission that had first examined him--not
one of them wished to or, evidently, could have done it. It was not
Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In another moment
Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but just then
the adjutant had come in and interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had
evidently had no evil intent though he might have refrained from coming
in. Then who was executing him, killing him, depriving him of life--him,
Pierre, with all his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was
doing this? And Pierre felt that it was no one.

It was a system--a concurrence of circumstances.

A system of some sort was killing him--Pierre--depriving him of life, of
everything, annihilating him.





CHAPTER XI


From Prince Shcherbatov's house the prisoners were led straight down the
Virgin's Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen garden
in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit had been
dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large crowd stood
in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and many of
Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty--Germans, Italians, and
Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of the post
stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red epaulets and high
boots and shakos.

The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according to the list
(Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums suddenly
began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre felt as
if part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of thinking
or understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only one
wish--that the frightful thing that had to happen should happen quickly.
Pierre looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized them.

The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was tall and thin,
the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a flat nose. The third was
a domestic serf, about forty-five years old, with grizzled hair and a
plump, well-nourished body. The fourth was a peasant, a very handsome
man with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes. The fifth was a
factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen in a loose coat.

Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them separately or
two at a time. "In couples," replied the officer in command in a calm
voice. There was a stir in the ranks of the soldiers and it was evident
that they were all hurrying--not as men hurry to do something they
understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary but unpleasant and
incomprehensible task.

A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of the row of
prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian and in French.

Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals and at the
officer's command took the two convicts who stood first in the row. The
convicts stopped when they reached the post and, while sacks were being
brought, looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at an approaching
huntsman. One crossed himself continually, the other scratched his back
and made a movement of the lips resembling a smile. With hurried hands
the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks over their heads, and
bound them to the post.

Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the ranks with a firm
regular tread and halted eight paces from the post. Pierre turned away
to avoid seeing what was going to happen. Suddenly a crackling, rolling
noise was heard which seemed to him louder than the most terrific
thunder, and he looked round. There was some smoke, and the Frenchmen
were doing something near the pit, with pale faces and trembling hands.
Two more prisoners were led up. In the same way and with similar looks,
these two glanced vainly at the onlookers with only a silent appeal for
protection in their eyes, evidently unable to understand or believe
what was going to happen to them. They could not believe it because they
alone knew what their life meant to them, and so they neither understood
nor believed that it could be taken from them.

Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned away; but again the
sound as of a frightful explosion struck his ear, and at the same moment
he saw smoke, blood, and the pale, scared faces of the Frenchmen who
were again doing something by the post, their trembling hands impeding
one another. Pierre, breathing heavily, looked around as if asking what
it meant. The same question was expressed in all the looks that met his.

On the faces of all the Russians and of the French soldiers and officers
without exception, he read the same dismay, horror, and conflict that
were in his own heart. "But who, after all, is doing this? They are all
suffering as I am. Who then is it? Who?" flashed for an instant through
his mind.

"Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!" shouted someone. The fifth
prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was led away--alone. Pierre did not
understand that he was saved, that he and the rest had been brought
there only to witness the execution. With ever-growing horror, and no
sense of joy or relief, he gazed at what was taking place. The fifth man
was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The moment they laid hands on
him he sprang aside in terror and clutched at Pierre. (Pierre shuddered
and shook himself free.) The lad was unable to walk. They dragged him
along, holding him up under the arms, and he screamed. When they got
him to the post he grew quiet, as if he suddenly understood something.
Whether he understood that screaming was useless or whether he thought
it incredible that men should kill him, at any rate he took his stand at
the post, waiting to be blindfolded like the others, and like a wounded
animal looked around him with glittering eyes.

Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his eyes. His curiosity
and agitation, like that of the whole crowd, reached the highest pitch
at this fifth murder. Like the others this fifth man seemed calm; he
wrapped his loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare foot with the other.

When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted the knot which
hurt the back of his head; then when they propped him against the
bloodstained post, he leaned back and, not being comfortable in that
position, straightened himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned back again
more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and did not miss
his slightest movement.

Probably a word of command was given and was followed by the reports of
eight muskets; but try as he would Pierre could not afterwards remember
having heard the slightest sound of the shots. He only saw how the
workman suddenly sank down on the cords that held him, how blood showed
itself in two places, how the ropes slackened under the weight of the
hanging body, and how the workman sat down, his head hanging unnaturally
and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the post. No one hindered
him. Pale, frightened people were doing something around the workman.
The lower jaw of an old Frenchman with a thick mustache trembled as he
untied the ropes. The body collapsed. The soldiers dragged it awkwardly
from the post and began pushing it into the pit.

They all plainly and certainly knew that they were criminals who must
hide the traces of their guilt as quickly as possible.

Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was lying with
his knees close up to his head and one shoulder higher than the other.
That shoulder rose and fell rhythmically and convulsively, but spadefuls
of earth were already being thrown over the whole body. One of the
soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and angrily at Pierre to
go back. But Pierre did not understand him and remained near the post,
and no one drove him away.

When the pit had been filled up a command was given. Pierre was taken
back to his place, and the rows of troops on both sides of the post
made a half turn and went past it at a measured pace. The twenty-four
sharpshooters with discharged muskets, standing in the center of the
circle, ran back to their places as the companies passed by.

Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in
couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined their companies. This
one, a young soldier, his face deadly pale, his shako pushed back, and
his musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit at the spot
from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken man, taking some steps
forward and back to save himself from falling. An old, noncommissioned
officer ran out of the ranks and taking him by the elbow dragged him to
his company. The crowd of Russians and Frenchmen began to disperse. They
all went away silently and with drooping heads.

"That will teach them to start fires," said one of the Frenchmen.

Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier who
was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was not
able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he made a
hopeless movement with his arm and went away.





CHAPTER XII


After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest of the prisoners
and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church.

Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered with two soldiers and
told him that he had been pardoned and would now go to the barracks for
the prisoners of war. Without understanding what was said to him, Pierre
got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the upper end of the
field, where there were some sheds built of charred planks, beams,
and battens, and led him into one of them. In the darkness some twenty
different men surrounded Pierre. He looked at them without understanding
who they were, why they were there, or what they wanted of him. He heard
what they said, but did not understand the meaning of the words and
made no kind of deduction from or application of them. He replied to
questions they put to him, but did not consider who was listening to his
replies, nor how they would understand them. He looked at their faces
and figures, but they all seemed to him equally meaningless.

From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders committed by
men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the mainspring of
his life, on which everything depended and which made everything appear
alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything had collapsed
into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did not acknowledge it to
himself, his faith in the right ordering of the universe, in humanity,
in his own soul, and in God, had been destroyed. He had experienced this
before, but never so strongly as now. When similar doubts had assailed
him before, they had been the result of his own wrongdoing, and at the
bottom of his heart he had felt that relief from his despair and from
those doubts was to be found within himself. But now he felt that
the universe had crumbled before his eyes and only meaningless ruins
remained, and this not by any fault of his own. He felt that it was not
in his power to regain faith in the meaning of life.

Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something
about him interested them greatly. They were telling him something and
asking him something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he
found himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing and
talking on all sides.

"Well, then, mates... that very prince who..." some voice at the other
end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis on the word who.

Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against the wall,
Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed his eyes. But as soon as
he closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory
lad--especially dreadful because of its simplicity--and the faces of the
murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he opened
his eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around him.

Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of whose presence he
was first made aware by a strong smell of perspiration which came from
him every time he moved. This man was doing something to his legs in the
darkness, and though Pierre could not see his face he felt that the man
continually glanced at him. On growing used to the darkness Pierre saw
that the man was taking off his leg bands, and the way he did it aroused
Pierre's interest.

Having unwound the string that tied the band on one leg, he carefully
coiled it up and immediately set to work on the other leg, glancing up
at Pierre. While one hand hung up the first string the other was already
unwinding the band on the second leg. In this way, having carefully
removed the leg bands by deft circular motions of his arm following
one another uninterruptedly, the man hung the leg bands up on some pegs
fixed above his head. Then he took out a knife, cut something, closed
the knife, placed it under the head of his bed, and, seating himself
comfortably, clasped his arms round his lifted knees and fixed his eyes
on Pierre. The latter was conscious of something pleasant, comforting,
and well rounded in these deft movements, in the man's well-ordered
arrangements in his corner, and even in his very smell, and he looked at
the man without taking his eyes from him.

"You've seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?" the little man suddenly said.

And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his singsong voice
that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw trembled and he felt tears
rising to his eyes. The little fellow, giving Pierre no time to betray
his confusion, instantly continued in the same pleasant tones:

"Eh, lad, don't fret!" said he, in the tender singsong caressing voice
old Russian peasant women employ. "Don't fret, friend--'suffer an hour,
live for an age!' that's how it is, my dear fellow. And here we live,
thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too, there are good
men as well as bad," said he, and still speaking, he turned on his knees
with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and went off to another part of
the shed.

"Eh, you rascal!" Pierre heard the same kind voice saying at the other
end of the shed. "So you've come, you rascal? She remembers... Now, now,
that'll do!"

And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was jumping up at
him, returned to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something
wrapped in a rag.

"Here, eat a bit, sir," said he, resuming his former respectful tone as
he unwrapped and offered Pierre some baked potatoes. "We had soup for
dinner and the potatoes are grand!"

Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes seemed
extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier and began to eat.

"Well, are they all right?" said the soldier with a smile. "You should
do like this."

He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato into two
equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled some salt on it from the
rag, and handed it to Pierre.

"The potatoes are grand!" he said once more. "Eat some like that!"

Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted better.

"Oh, I'm all right," said he, "but why did they shoot those poor
fellows? The last one was hardly twenty."

"Tss, tt...!" said the little man. "Ah, what a sin... what a sin!" he
added quickly, and as if his words were always waiting ready in his
mouth and flew out involuntarily he went on: "How was it, sir, that you
stayed in Moscow?"

"I didn't think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally," replied
Pierre.

"And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?"

"No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there, and tried
me as an incendiary."

"Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man.

"And have you been here long?" Pierre asked as he munched the last of
the potato.

"I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow."

"Why, are you a soldier then?"

"Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of fever. We
weren't told anything. There were some twenty of us lying there. We had
no idea, never guessed at all."

"And do you feel sad here?" Pierre inquired.

"How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the surname is
Karataev," he added, evidently wishing to make it easier for Pierre to
address him. "They call me 'little falcon' in the regiment. How is one
to help feeling sad? Moscow--she's the mother of cities. How can one see
all this and not feel sad? But 'the maggot gnaws the cabbage, yet dies
first'; that's what the old folks used to tell us," he added rapidly.

"What? What did you say?" asked Pierre.

"Who? I?" said Karataev. "I say things happen not as we plan but as God
judges," he replied, thinking that he was repeating what he had said
before, and immediately continued:

"Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house? So you have
abundance, then? And a housewife? And your old parents, are they still
living?" he asked.

And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that a suppressed
smile of kindliness puckered the soldier's lips as he put these
questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had no parents, especially that
he had no mother.

"A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but there's none as
dear as one's own mother!" said he. "Well, and have you little ones?" he
went on asking.

Again Pierre's negative answer seemed to distress him, and he hastened
to add:

"Never mind! You're young folks yet, and please God may still have some.
The great thing is to live in harmony...."

"But it's all the same now," Pierre could not help saying.

"Ah, my dear fellow!" rejoined Karataev, "never decline a prison or a
beggar's sack!"

He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently preparing to
tell a long story.

"Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home," he began. "We had
a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and our
house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing
there were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so
happened..."

And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into someone's
copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper, had been
tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier.

"Well, lad," and a smile changed the tone of his voice "we thought it
was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been for
my sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier. But he, my younger
brother, had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a wife
behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a
soldier. I come home on leave and I'll tell you how it was, I look and
see that they are living better than before. The yard full of cattle,
the women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only Michael the
youngest, at home. Father, he says, 'All my children are the same to
me: it hurts the same whichever finger gets bitten. But if Platon hadn't
been shaved for a soldier, Michael would have had to go.' called us
all to him and, will you believe it, placed us in front of the icons.
'Michael,' he says, 'come here and bow down to his feet; and you, young
woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also bow down before
him! Do you understand?' he says. That's how it is, dear fellow. Fate
looks for a head. But we are always judging, 'that's not well--that's
not right!' Our luck is like water in a dragnet: you pull at it and it
bulges, but when you've drawn it out it's empty! That's how it is."

And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.

After a short silence he rose.

"Well, I think you must be sleepy," said he, and began rapidly crossing
himself and repeating:

"Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus
Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ, have
mercy on us and save us!" he concluded, then bowed to the ground, got
up, sighed, and sat down again on his heap of straw. "That's the way.
Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf," he
muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.

"What prayer was that you were saying?" asked Pierre.

"Eh?" murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep. "What was I saying?
I was praying. Don't you pray?"

"Yes, I do," said Pierre. "But what was that you said: Frola and Lavra?"

"Well, of course," replied Platon quickly, "the horses' saints. One must
pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now you've curled up and got warm,
you daughter of a bitch!" said Karataev, touching the dog that lay at
his feet, and again turning over he fell asleep immediately.

Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance
outside, and flames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but
inside it was quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep, but
lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular snoring
of Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that the world that had been
shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a new beauty and on
new and unshakable foundations.





CHAPTER XIII


Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were confined
in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he remained for
four weeks.

When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures to
him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in his mind a most
vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything Russian,
kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next morning at dawn
the first impression of him, as of something round, was fully confirmed:
Platon's whole figure--in a French overcoat girdled with a cord, a
soldier's cap, and bast shoes--was round. His head was quite round,
his back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms, which he held as if ever
ready to embrace something, were rounded, his pleasant smile and his
large, gentle brown eyes were also round.

Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of
campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not himself
know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his brilliantly
white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken semicircles when he
laughed--as he often did--were all sound and good, there was not a gray
hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole body gave an impression
of suppleness and especially of firmness and endurance.

His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of
innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief
peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It was
evident that he never considered what he had said or was going to say,
and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation had an
irresistible persuasiveness.

His physical strength and agility during the first days of his
imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and
sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: "Lord, lay me
down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!" and every morning on getting
up, he said: "I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake myself." And
indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a stone, and he
only had to shake himself, to be ready without a moment's delay for some
work, just as children are ready to play directly they awake. He could
do everything, not very well but not badly. He baked, cooked, sewed,
planed, and mended boots. He was always busy, and only at night allowed
himself conversation--of which he was fond--and songs. He did not sing
like a trained singer who knows he is listened to, but like the birds,
evidently giving vent to the sounds in the same way that one stretches
oneself or walks about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were
always high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his
face at such times was very serious.

Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he seemed to
have thrown off all that had been forced upon him--everything military
and alien to himself--and had returned to his former peasant habits.

"A soldier on leave--a shirt outside breeches," he would say.

He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did not
complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once during
the whole of his army service. When he related anything it was generally
some old and evidently precious memory of his "Christian" life, as he
called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of which his talk was full,
were for the most part not the coarse and indecent saws soldiers
employ, but those folk sayings which taken without a context seem so
insignificant, but when used appositely suddenly acquire a significance
of profound wisdom.

He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a previous
occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he talked well,
adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with folk sayings which
Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his talk lay
in the fact that the commonest events--sometimes just such as Pierre
had witnessed without taking notice of them--assumed in Karataev's a
character of solemn fitness. He liked to hear the folk tales one of the
soldiers used to tell of an evening (they were always the same), but
most of all he liked to hear stories of real life. He would smile
joyfully when listening to such stories, now and then putting in a word
or asking a question to make the moral beauty of what he was told clear
to himself. Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre
understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life
brought him in contact with, particularly with man--not any particular
man, but those with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his
comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt
that in spite of Karataev's affectionate tenderness for him (by which
he unconsciously gave Pierre's spiritual life its due) he would not have
grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in
the same way toward Karataev.

To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary
soldier. They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha," chaffed him
good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always
remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable, rounded,
eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth.

Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he began
to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.

Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask him to
repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a moment
before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of his
favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred in
it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of it. He
did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from
their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of
an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he
regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only as
part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and actions
flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as fragrance
exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value or significance
of any word or deed taken separately.





CHAPTER XIV


When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the
Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepared to go there, in spite of her
aunt's efforts to dissuade her--and not merely to go herself but to
take her nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy, possible
or impossible, she did not ask and did not want to know: it was her duty
not only herself to be near her brother who was perhaps dying, but to do
everything possible to take his son to him, and so she prepared to set
off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew himself, Princess Mary
attributed to his being too weak to write or to his considering the long
journey too hard and too dangerous for her and his son.

In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were the
huge family coach in which she had traveled to Voronezh, a semiopen
trap, and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle Bourienne,
little Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three maids, Tikhon, and a
young footman and courier her aunt had sent to accompany her.

The usual route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the
roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk,
Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not
everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the French
were said to have shown themselves was even dangerous.

During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne, Dessalles, and
Princess Mary's servants were astonished at her energy and firmness of
spirit. She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and
no difficulties daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy, which
infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl by the end of
the second week.

The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest of her life.
Her love for Rostov no longer tormented or agitated her. It filled her
whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she no longer
struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced that she loved
and was beloved, though she never said this definitely to herself
in words. She had become convinced of it at her last interview with
Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that her brother was with the
Rostovs. Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the fact that
Prince Andrew's relations with Natasha might, if he recovered, be
renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he knew and thought of
this.

Yet in spite of that, his relation to her--considerate, delicate, and
loving--not only remained unchanged, but it sometimes seemed to Princess
Mary that he was even glad that the family connection between them
allowed him to express his friendship more freely. She knew that she
loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that she was
beloved, and was happy in regard to it.

But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not prevent
her feeling grief for her brother with full force; on the contrary, that
spiritual tranquility on the one side made it the more possible for her
to give full play to her feeling for her brother. That feeling was so
strong at the moment of leaving Voronezh that those who saw her off, as
they looked at her careworn, despairing face, felt sure she would fall
ill on the journey. But the very difficulties and preoccupations of the
journey, which she took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from
her grief and gave her strength.

As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary thought only of the
journey itself, forgetting its object. But as she approached Yaroslavl
the thought of what might await her there--not after many days, but that
very evening--again presented itself to her and her agitation increased
to its utmost limit.

The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out where the
Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in what condition Prince Andrew
was, when he met the big coach just entering the town gates was appalled
by the terrible pallor of the princess' face that looked out at him from
the window.

"I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostovs are staying
at the merchant Bronnikov's house, in the Square not far from here,
right above the Volga," said the courier.

Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry, not understanding
why he did not reply to what she chiefly wanted to know: how was her
brother? Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her.

"How is the prince?" she asked.

"His excellency is staying in the same house with them."

"Then he is alive," thought Princess Mary, and asked in a low voice:
"How is he?"

"The servants say he is still the same."

What "still the same" might mean Princess Mary did not ask, but with an
unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old Nicholas, who was sitting in
front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her head
and did not raise it again till the heavy coach, rumbling, shaking and
swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as they were let
down.

The carriage door was opened. On the left there was water--a great
river--and on the right a porch. There were people at the entrance:
servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait of black hair, smiling as
it seemed to Princess Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This was
Sonya.) Princess Mary ran up the steps. "This way, this way!" said the
girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess found herself in
the hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came rapidly to
meet her with a look of emotion. This was the countess. She embraced
Princess Mary and kissed her.

"Mon enfant!" she muttered, "je vous aime et vous connais depuis
longtemps." *


    * "My child! I love you and have known you a long time."


 Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the
countess and that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly
knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in
French in the same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and
asked: "How is he?"

"The doctor says that he is not in danger," said the countess, but as
she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed a
contradiction of her words.

"Where is he? Can I see him--can I?" asked the princess.

"One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?" said the
countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with Dessalles.
"There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh, what a
lovely boy!"

The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sonya was
talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the boy, and
the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had changed very
much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had been a brisk,
cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful, bewildered
person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually looked round as
if asking everyone whether he was doing the right thing. After the
destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out of his accustomed
groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own significance and to
feel that there was no longer a place for him in life.

In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible, and
her vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him they
should be trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her nephew,
the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt the
necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things which
she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it was hard for
her she was not vexed with these people.

"This is my niece," said the count, introducing Sonya--"You don't know
her, Princess?"

Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the hostile
feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she felt
oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so far
from what was in her own heart.

"Where is he?" she asked again, addressing them all.

"He is downstairs. Natasha is with him," answered Sonya, flushing. "We
have sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess."

Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary's eyes. She turned
away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to him, when
light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard at the
door. The princess looked round and saw Natasha coming in, almost
running--that Natasha whom she had liked so little at their meeting in
Moscow long since.

But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha's face before she realized
that here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a friend.
She ran to meet her, embraced her, and began to cry on her shoulder.

As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew's bed, heard
of Princess Mary's arrival, she softly left his room and hastened to her
with those swift steps that had sounded buoyant to Princess Mary.

There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into the
drawing room--that of love--boundless love for him, for her, and for all
that was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for others,
and passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping them. It was
plain that at that moment there was in Natasha's heart no thought of
herself or of her own relations with Prince Andrew.

Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at the
first glance at Natasha's face, and wept on her shoulder with sorrowful
pleasure.

"Come, come to him, Mary," said Natasha, leading her into the other
room.

Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to Natasha.
She felt that from her she would be able to understand and learn
everything.

"How..." she began her question but stopped short.

She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words.
Natasha's face and eyes would have to tell her all more clearly and
profoundly.

Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to say
all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous eyes
which penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was impossible
not to tell the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly, Natasha's lips
twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and covering her face
with her hands she burst into sobs.

Princess Mary understood.

But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust:

"But how is his wound? What is his general condition?"

"You, you... will see," was all Natasha could say.

They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had left off
crying and were able to go to him with calm faces.

"How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse? When
did this happen?" Princess Mary inquired.

Natasha told her that at first there had been danger from his feverish
condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had passed
and the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger had also
passed. When they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to fester
(Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the doctor had
said that the festering might take a normal course. Then fever set in,
but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.

"But two days ago this suddenly happened," said Natasha, struggling with
her sobs. "I don't know why, but you will see what he is like."

"Is he weaker? Thinner?" asked the princess.

"No, it's not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too good, he
cannot, cannot live, because..."





CHAPTER XV


When Natasha opened Prince Andrew's door with a familiar movement and
let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt the
sobs in her throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself, and now
tried to remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to look at
him without tears.

The princess understood what Natasha had meant by the words: "two days
ago this suddenly happened." She understood those words to mean that he
had suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness were signs
of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she already saw in
imagination Andrew's face as she remembered it in childhood, a gentle,
mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely shown, and which therefore
affected her very strongly. She was sure he would speak soft, tender
words to her such as her father had uttered before his death, and
that she would not be able to bear it and would burst into sobs in his
presence. Yet sooner or later it had to be, and she went in. The sobs
rose higher and higher in her throat as she more and more clearly
distinguished his form and her shortsighted eyes tried to make out his
features, and then she saw his face and met his gaze.

He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan, surrounded by
pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin, translucently white hand
he held a handkerchief, while with the other he stroked the delicate
mustache he had grown, moving his fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them
as they entered.

On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary's pace suddenly
slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She suddenly
felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of his face and
eyes.

"But in what am I to blame?" she asked herself. And his cold, stern look
replied: "Because you are alive and thinking of the living, while I..."

In the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but inwards there
was an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded his sister and
Natasha.

He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.

"How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?" said he in a voice
as calm and aloof as his look.

Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such horror
into Princess Mary's heart as the tone of his voice.

"And have you brought little Nicholas?" he asked in the same slow, quiet
manner and with an obvious effort to remember.

"How are you now?" said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she was
saying.

"That, my dear, you must ask the doctor," he replied, and again making
an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips only (his
words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts):

"Merci, chere amie, d'etre venue." *


    * "Thank you for coming, my dear."


Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just
perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She now
understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words, his
tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look could be
felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world, terrible
in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he understand
anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to understand, not
because he lacked the power to do so but because he understood something
else--something the living did not and could not understand--and which
wholly occupied his mind.

"There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together," said he,
breaking the silence and pointing to Natasha. "She looks after me all
the time."

Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such a
thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say that,
before her whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to live he
could not have said those words in that offensively cold tone. If he had
not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to pity her and
how could he speak like that in her presence? The only explanation was
that he was indifferent, because something else, much more important,
had been revealed to him.

The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke off.

"Mary came by way of Ryazan," said Natasha.

Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and only
after calling her so in his presence did Natasha notice it herself.

"Really?" he asked.

"They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that..."

Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was
making an effort to listen, but could not do so.

"Yes, they say it's burned," he said. "It's a great pity," and he gazed
straight before him, absently stroking his mustache with his fingers.

"And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?" Prince Andrew suddenly said,
evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. "He wrote here that he
took a great liking to you," he went on simply and calmly, evidently
unable to understand all the complex significance his words had for
living people. "If you liked him too, it would be a good thing for you
to get married," he added rather more quickly, as if pleased at having
found words he had long been seeking.

Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her, except as
a proof of how far away he now was from everything living.

"Why talk of me?" she said quietly and glanced at Natasha.

Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were again
silent.

"Andrew, would you like..." Princess Mary suddenly said in a trembling
voice, "would you like to see little Nicholas? He is always talking
about you!"

Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first time, but
Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he did
not smile with pleasure or affection for his son, but with quiet, gentle
irony because he thought she was trying what she believed to be the last
means of arousing him.

"Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?"

When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew's room he looked at
his father with frightened eyes, but did not cry, because no one else
was crying. Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know what to
say to him.

When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again went up to her
brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain her tears any longer began
to cry.

He looked at her attentively.

"Is it about Nicholas?" he asked.

Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.

"Mary, you know the Gosp..." but he broke off.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. You mustn't cry here," he said, looking at her with the same
cold expression.


When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that she was crying at
the thought that little Nicholas would be left without a father. With
a great effort he tried to return to life and to see things from their
point of view.

"Yes, to them it must seem sad!" he thought. "But how simple it is.

"The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father
feedeth them," he said to himself and wished to say to Princess Mary;
"but no, they will take it their own way, they won't understand!
They can't understand that all those feelings they prize so--all our
feelings, all those ideas that seem so important to us, are unnecessary.
We cannot understand one another," and he remained silent.


Prince Andrew's little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and knew
nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining knowledge,
observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the faculties he
afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or more profound
understanding of the meaning of the scene he had witnessed between
his father, Mary, and Natasha, than he had then. He understood it
completely, and, leaving the room without crying, went silently up
to Natasha who had come out with him and looked shyly at her with his
beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy upper lip trembled
and leaning his head against her he began to cry.

After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him and
either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natasha of whom
he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them quietly and
shyly.

When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood what
Natasha's face had told her. She did not speak any more to Natasha of
hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside his sofa, and
did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in soul to that
Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the dying man was now so
evident.





CHAPTER XVI


Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he felt that he was
dying and was already half dead. He was conscious of an aloofness from
everything earthly and a strange and joyous lightness of existence.
Without haste or agitation he awaited what was coming. That inexorable,
eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which he had felt
continually all his life--was now near to him and, by the strange
lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and palpable...


Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that terribly
tormenting fear of death--the end--but now he no longer understood that
fear.

 He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top
before him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the sky,
and knew that he was face to face with death. When he came to himself
after being wounded and the flower of eternal, unfettered love had
instantly unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage of
life that had restrained it, he no longer feared death and ceased to
think about it.

During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he
spent after he was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new
principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously
detached himself from earthly life. To love everything and everybody and
always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not
to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with that
principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more completely
he destroyed that dreadful barrier which--in the absence of such
love--stands between life and death. When during those first days he
remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: "Well, what of
it? So much the better!"

But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious, he had seen her
for whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her hand to his
lips, had shed gentle, happy tears, love for a particular woman again
crept unobserved into his heart and once more bound him to life. And
joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy his mind. Recalling the
moment at the ambulance station when he had seen Kuragin, he could not
now regain the feeling he then had, but was tormented by the question
whether Kuragin was alive. And he dared not inquire.

His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natasha
referred to when she said: "This suddenly happened," had occurred two
days before Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual struggle
between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It was
the unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life as
presented to him in the form of his love for Natasha, and a last, though
ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.

It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish, and his
thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya was sitting by the table. He
began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized him.

"Ah, she has come!" thought he.

And so it was: in Sonya's place sat Natasha who had just come in
noiselessly.

Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced this
physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an armchair
placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from him, and was
knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings since Prince
Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick so well as old
nurses who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in
the knitting of stockings. The needles clicked lightly in her slender,
rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see the thoughtful profile
of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball rolled off her knees. She
started, glanced round at him, and screening the candle with her hand
stooped carefully with a supple and exact movement, picked up the ball,
and regained her former position.

He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a
deep breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed
cautiously.

At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had told
her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound which had
brought them together again, but after that they never spoke of the
future.

"Can it or can it not be?" he now thought as he looked at her and
listened to the light click of the steel needles. "Can fate have brought
me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible that the
truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that I have spent
my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in the world! But what
am I to do if I love her?" he thought, and he involuntarily groaned,
from a habit acquired during his sufferings.

On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking, leaned nearer to
him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to him
and bent over him.

"You are not asleep?"

"No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in. No one
else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do... that light.
I want to weep for joy."

Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.

"Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world."

"And I!"--She turned away for an instant. "Why too much?" she asked.

"Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your soul, your
whole soul--shall I live? What do you think?"

"I am sure of it, sure!" Natasha almost shouted, taking hold of both his
hands with a passionate movement.

He remained silent awhile.

"How good it would be!" and taking her hand he kissed it.

Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this would
not do and that he had to be quiet.

"But you have not slept," she said, repressing her joy. "Try to sleep...
please!"

He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle and
sat down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked at
him, and her eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on her
stocking and resolved not to turn round till it was finished.

Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep long and
suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold perspiration.

As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now
always occupied his mind--about life and death, and chiefly about death.
He felt himself nearer to it.

"Love? What is love?" he thought.

"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I
understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only
because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to
die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and
eternal source." These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But they were
only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they
were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former
agitation and obscurity. He fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but that
he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and
insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and
discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.
Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had
more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by
empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to
disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded
all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything
depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, and
tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he would not be
in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all his powers. He
was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was the fear of death. It
stood behind the door. But just when he was clumsily creeping toward
the door, that dreadful something on the other side was already pressing
against it and forcing its way in. Something not human--death--was
breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the
door, making a final effort to hold it back--to lock it was no longer
possible--but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from
behind by that terror, opened and closed again.

Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts were vain
and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was
death, and Prince Andrew died.

But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep,
and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he awoke.

"Yes, it was death! I died--and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!"
And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil that had till
then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt
as if powers till then confined within him had been liberated, and that
strange lightness did not again leave him.

When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan, Natasha went
up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer and looked at
her strangely, not understanding.

That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary's
arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting fever
assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did not interest
Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her were more
convincing.

From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew together with
his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did
not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep compared to the
duration of a dream.

There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow
awakening.

His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both
Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt this. They did
not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves felt
that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left
them) but on what reminded them most closely of him--his body. Both felt
this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of death did not
affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment their grief.
Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep, nor did they ever
talk to one another about him. They felt that they could not express in
words what they understood.

They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and deeper,
away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so and that it
was right.

He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of
him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the boy's
and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess Mary and
Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was all that
was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy, he did
what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there was
anything else he should do.

When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving,
occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were present.

"Is it over?" said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes
lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natasha went up, looked at
the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but did not
kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of him--his
body.

"Where has he gone? Where is he now?..."

When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table,
everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.

Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful perplexity.
The countess and Sonya cried from pity for Natasha and because he was
no more. The old count cried because he felt that before long, he, too,
must take the same terrible step.

Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their own
personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion which
had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of the
simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in their
presence.





BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but
the desire to find those causes is implanted in man's soul. And without
considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one
of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the
first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says:
"This is the cause!" In historical events (where the actions of men are
the subject of observation) the first and most primitive approximation
to present itself was the will of the gods and, after that, the will of
those who stood in the most prominent position--the heroes of history.
But we need only penetrate to the essence of any historic event--which
lies in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in it--to
be convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the
actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may seem
to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the meaning of
historical events this way or that; yet there is the same difference
between a man who says that the people of the West moved on the East
because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this happened because
it had to happen, as there is between those who declared that the
earth was stationary and that the planets moved round it and those who
admitted that they did not know what upheld the earth, but knew there
were laws directing its movement and that of the other planets. There
is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause of
all causes. But there are laws directing events, and some of these laws
are known to us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend.
The discovery of these laws is only possible when we have quite
abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man,
just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was
possible only when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the
earth.

The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the
occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the most
important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the Russian
army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino camp--the
so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. They ascribe the
glory of that achievement of genius to different men and dispute as to
whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians, including the French,
acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders when they speak of
that flank march. But it is hard to understand why military writers,
and following them others, consider this flank march to be the profound
conception of some one man who saved Russia and destroyed Napoleon. In
the first place it is hard to understand where the profundity and genius
of this movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that
the best position for an army when it is not being attacked is where
there are most provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have
guessed that the best position for an army after its retreat from Moscow
in 1812 was on the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by
what reasoning the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver
was a profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why
they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and destroy
the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded, accompanied,
or followed by other circumstances, might have proved ruinous to the
Russians and salutary for the French. If the position of the Russian
army really began to improve from the time of that march, it does not at
all follow that the march was the cause of it.

That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to
the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its
destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If
Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle as
Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French
attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? What
would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had attacked
the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when he
attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the French moved
on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank march that
brought salvation might have proved disastrous.

The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying
history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be
attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in
reality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself to anyone
in its entirety, but resulted--moment by moment, step by step, event by
event--from an endless number of most diverse circumstances and was only
seen in its entirety when it had been accomplished and belonged to the
past.

At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of the
Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a
direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is the fact
that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and above
all there is the well-known conversation after the council, between the
commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the commissariat
department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief that the army
supplies were for the most part stored along the Oka in the Tula and
Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni the army would
be separated from its supplies by the broad river Oka, which cannot be
crossed early in winter. This was the first indication of the necessity
of deviating from what had previously seemed the most natural course--a
direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod. The army turned more to the south,
along the Ryazan road and nearer to its supplies. Subsequently the
inactivity of the French (who even lost sight of the Russian army),
concern for the safety of the arsenal at Tula, and especially the
advantages of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn
still further south to the Tula road. Having crossed over, by a forced
march, to the Tula road beyond the Pakhra, the Russian commanders
intended to remain at Podolsk and had no thought of the Tarutino
position; but innumerable circumstances and the reappearance of French
troops who had for a time lost touch with the Russians, and projects
of giving battle, and above all the abundance of provisions in Kaluga
province, obliged our army to turn still more to the south and to cross
from the Tula to the Kaluga road and go to Tarutino, which was between
the roads along which those supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to
say when it was decided to abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say
precisely when, or by whom, it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only
when the army had got there, as the result of innumerable and varying
forces, did people begin to assure themselves that they had desired this
movement and long ago foreseen its result.





CHAPTER II


The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the advance
of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been continually
retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated from that direct
course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally drawn toward the
district where supplies were abundant.

If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading the
Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could not
have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow, describing
an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be found and where
the country was richest.

That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga roads was
so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that direction, and
demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take his army that
way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a reprimand from
the Emperor for having moved his army along the Ryazan road, and the
Emperor's letter indicated to him the very position he had already
occupied near Kaluga.

Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by the
whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army--when
the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push was
received--assumed the position natural to it.

Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as it is
called, but in the fact that he alone understood the significance of
what had happened. He alone then understood the meaning of the French
army's inactivity, he alone continued to assert that the battle of
Borodino had been a victory, he alone--who as commander in chief might
have been expected to be eager to attack--employed his whole strength to
restrain the Russian army from useless engagements.

The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had
left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and
merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was heard
to moan.

The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed its
calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's camp with
overtures for peace.

Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head was
right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him, though
they were meaningless.


MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my adjutants-general
to discuss several interesting questions with you. I beg your Highness
to credit what he says to you, especially when he expresses the
sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long entertained for your
person. This letter having no other object, I pray God, monsieur le
Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and gracious protection!

NAPOLEON

MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812


Kutuzov replied: "I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on as
the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present spirit
of my nation." But he continued to exert all his powers to restrain his
troops from attacking.

During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and
the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had taken
place in the relative strength of the two armies--both in spirit and in
number--as a result of which the superiority had passed to the Russian
side. Though the condition and numbers of the French army were unknown
to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the need of attacking
at once showed itself by countless signs. These signs were: Lauriston's
mission; the abundance of provisions at Tarutino; the reports coming in
from all sides of the inactivity and disorder of the French; the flow of
recruits to our regiments; the fine weather; the long rest the Russian
soldiers had enjoyed, and the impatience to do what they had been
assembled for, which usually shows itself in an army that has been
resting; curiosity as to what the French army, so long lost sight of,
was doing; the boldness with which our outposts now scouted close up to
the French stationed at Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained by
peasants and guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this;
the desire for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as
the French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every
soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed and
that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial change
in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable. And at
once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the minute hand
has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an increased
activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.





CHAPTER III


The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his staff, and also by the
Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of Moscow
had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole campaign
had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance. Though this plan
had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow was still in our hands,
it was approved by the staff and accepted as a basis for action.
Kutuzov only replied that movements arranged from a distance were always
difficult to execute. So fresh instructions were sent for the solution
of difficulties that might be encountered, as well as fresh people who
were to watch Kutuzov's actions and report upon them.

Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now reorganized.
The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had been killed, and by
Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be filled. Very serious
consideration was given to the question whether it would be better to
put A in B's place and B in D's, or on the contrary to put D in A's
place, and so on--as if anything more than A's or B's satisfaction
depended on this.

As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his Chief of
Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the Emperor, and
these transfers, a more than usually complicated play of parties
was going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining B, D was
undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and permutations.
In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was generally the conduct
of the war, which all these men believed they were directing; but this
affair of the war went on independently of them, as it had to go:
that is, never in the way people devised, but flowing always from the
essential attitude of the masses. Only in the highest spheres did
all these schemes, crossings, and interminglings appear to be a true
reflection of what had to happen.


Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of October
in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the battle at Tarutino) Since
September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last reports
were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not only has
no action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of the ancient
capital, but according to your last report you have even retreated
farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy detachment and Tula
with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the army, is in danger.
From General Wintzingerode's reports, I see that an enemy corps of ten
thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road. Another corps of several
thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third has advanced along the
Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather considerable detachment is stationed
between Ruza and Mozhaysk. Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as
the twenty-fifth. In view of all this information, when the enemy has
scattered his forces in large detachments, and with Napoleon and his
Guards in Moscow, is it possible that the enemy's forces confronting you
are so considerable as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the
contrary, he is probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with
an army corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem
that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might advantageously
attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least oblige him to
retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the provinces now
occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger from Tula and other
towns in the interior. You will be responsible if the enemy is able to
direct a force of any size against Petersburg to threaten this capital
in which it has not been possible to retain many troops; for with the
army entrusted to you, and acting with resolution and energy, you have
ample means to avert this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still
to answer to our offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have
experienced my readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken
in me, but I and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal,
firmness, and success which your intellect, military talent, and the
courage of the troops you command justify us in expecting.


But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation of
the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was dispatched,
Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain the army he
commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place.

On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out scouting,
killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded hare he made
his way far into the forest and came upon the left flank of Murat's
army, encamped there without any precautions. The Cossack laughingly
told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the hands of the French.
A cornet, hearing the story, informed his commander.

The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished
to take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of
the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities,
reported the incident to a general on the staff. The state of things on
the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had been to
see Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to use
his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to take the
offensive.

"If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you are
asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure to do
the opposite," replied Bennigsen.

The Cossack's report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent out, was
the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled spring was
released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to play. Despite all
his supposed power, his intellect, his experience, and his knowledge of
men, Kutuzov--having taken into consideration the Cossack's report, a
note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to the Emperor, the wishes
he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the fact that all the generals
expressed the same wish--could no longer check the inevitable movement,
and gave the order to do what he regarded as useless and harmful--gave
his approval, that is, to the accomplished fact.





CHAPTER IV


Bennigsen's note and the Cossack's information that the left flank
of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it was
necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of October.

On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed the dispositions.
Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the further
arrangements.

"All right--all right. I haven't time just now," replied Ermolov, and
left the hut.

The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the Austerlitz
dispositions, it was written--though not in German this time:

"The First Column will march here and here," "the Second Column will
march there and there," and so on; and on paper, all these columns
arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.
Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,
and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at the
appointed time.

When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been
prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to Ermolov
to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov's orderly,
pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him, went to
Ermolov's quarters.

"Gone away," said Ermolov's orderly.

The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom Ermolov was
often to be found.

"No, and the general's out too."

The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.

"No, he's gone out."

"If only they don't make me responsible for this delay! What a nuisance
it is!" thought the officer, and he rode round the whole camp. One man
said he had seen Ermolov ride past with some other generals, others said
he must have returned home. The officer searched till six o'clock in the
evening without even stopping to eat. Ermolov was nowhere to be found
and no one knew where he was. The officer snatched a little food at
a comrade's, and rode again to the vanguard to find Miloradovich.
Miloradovich too was away, but here he was told that he had gone to a
ball at General Kikin's and that Ermolov was probably there too.

"But where is it?"

"Why, there, over at Echkino," said a Cossack officer, pointing to a
country house in the far distance.

"What, outside our line?"

"They've put two regiments as outposts, and they're having such a spree
there, it's awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!"

The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While still at a
distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier's dance song
proceeding from the house.

"In the meadows... in the meadows!" he heard, accompanied by whistling
and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by shouts. These
sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he was afraid that
he would be blamed for not having executed sooner the important order
entrusted to him. It was already past eight o'clock. He dismounted
and went up into the porch of a large country house which had remained
intact between the Russian and French forces. In the refreshment room
and the hall, footmen were bustling about with wine and viands. Groups
of singers stood outside the windows. The officer was admitted and
immediately saw all the chief generals of the army together, and among
them Ermolov's big imposing figure. They all had their coats unbuttoned
and were standing in a semicircle with flushed and animated faces,
laughing loudly. In the middle of the room a short handsome general with
a red face was dancing the trepak with much spirit and agility.

"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!"

The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a moment
he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait; but one of
the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come about, informed
Ermolov.

Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what the
officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.


"You think he went off just by chance?" said a comrade, who was on the
staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards, referring to
Ermolov. "It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get Konovnitsyn into
trouble. You'll see what a mess there'll be tomorrow."





CHAPTER V


Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called early,
said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant consciousness of
having to direct a battle he did not approve of, got into his caleche
and drove from Letashovka (a village three and a half miles from
Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns were to meet. He sat
in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns, and listening for any
sound of firing on the right as an indication that the action had begun.
But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn morning was just dawning. On
approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed cavalrymen leading their horses to
water across the road along which he was driving. Kutuzov looked at
them searchingly, stopped his carriage, and inquired what regiment they
belonged to. They belonged to a column that should have been far in
front and in ambush long before then. "It may be a mistake," thought
the old commander in chief. But a little further on he saw infantry
regiments with their arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed,
eating their rye porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The
officer reported that no order to advance had been received.

"How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself immediately and
sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his caleche, he waited with
drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down. When
Eykhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned, appeared,
Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer was to blame
for the mistake, but because he was an object of sufficient importance
for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and panting the old man fell
into that state of fury in which he sometimes used to roll on the
ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him with his hands,
shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another man, Captain Brozin,
who happened to turn up and who was not at all to blame, suffered the
same fate.

"What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you shot!
Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and
reeling.

He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene
Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever had
in Russia, to be placed in this position--made the laughingstock of the
whole army! "I needn't have been in such a hurry to pray about today,
or have kept awake thinking everything over all night," thought he to
himself. "When I was a chit of an officer no one would have dared to
mock me so... and now!" He was in a state of physical suffering as if
from corporal punishment, and could not avoid expressing it by cries of
anger and distress. But his strength soon began to fail him, and looking
about him, conscious of having said much that was amiss, he again got
into his caleche and drove back in silence.

His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he
listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to see
him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnitsyn,
and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should be executed next
day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.





CHAPTER VI


Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the evening
and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple
clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops
advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery
could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk out loud, to
smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried to prevent their
horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm
and they marched gaily. Some columns, supposing they had reached their
destination, halted, piled arms, and settled down on the cold ground,
but the majority marched all night and arrived at places where they
evidently should not have been.

Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important
detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time. This
detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path leading from
the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.

Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened by a
deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a Polish
sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in Polish that he had
come over because he had been slighted in the service: that he ought
long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver than any of
them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them out. He said that
Murat was spending the night less than a mile from where they were,
and that if they would let him have a convoy of a hundred men he would
capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov consulted his fellow officers.

The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go and
everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and arguing,
Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the
Polish sergeant.

"Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at parting,
"if you have been lying I'll have you hanged like a dog; but if it's
true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!"

Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and rode
away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into
the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen Grekov off, returned,
shivering from the freshness of the early dawn and excited by what he
had undertaken on his own responsibility, and began looking at the enemy
camp, now just visible in the deceptive light of dawn and the dying
campfires. Our columns ought to have begun to appear on an open
declivity to his right. He looked in that direction, but though the
columns would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be seen.
It seemed to the count that things were beginning to stir in the French
camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.

"Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking at the camp.

As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before
our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which
he would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!

"I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count.

"They can still be called back," said one of his suite, who like Count
Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the enemy's
camp.

"Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?"

"Will you have them fetched back?"

"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden
determination, looking at his watch. "It will be too late. It is quite
light."

And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When Grekov
returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the abandoned attempt and
by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as
well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men
felt the same excitement.

"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!"

"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,
trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out
of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.

One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the
Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just waking
up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.

Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and
around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there.
That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to make the
Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. None of them
listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and thirty-eight guns were
taken on the spot, besides standards and (what seemed most important to
the Cossacks) horses, saddles, horsecloths, and the like. All this had
to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided--not
without some shouting and even a little fighting among themselves--and
it was on this that the Cossacks all busied themselves.

The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover themselves: they
formed into detachments and began firing. Orlov-Denisov, still waiting
for the other columns to arrive, advanced no further.

Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First
Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due order
and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their appointed
places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully, began to halt;
murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and finally a
backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about, shouted, grew
angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and were late, gave
vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and went forward,
simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or other!" And they did
indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually
even got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and only
in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this battle played the part of
Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place to place,
finding everything upside down everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's
corps in a wood when it was already broad daylight, though the corps
should long before have joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the
failure and supposing that someone must be responsible for it, Toll
galloped up to the commander of the corps and began upbraiding him
severely, saying that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting
old soldier of placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay,
confusion, and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise
and quite contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things
to Toll.

"I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men as
well as anybody," he said, and advanced with a single division.

Coming out onto a field under the enemy's fire, this brave general went
straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering in his
agitation whether going into action now, with a single division, would
be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just what he
needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets killed him, and other
bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained under fire for
some time quite uselessly.





CHAPTER VII


Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the front,
but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that nothing but
confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his will, and as
far as was in his power held the troops back. He did not advance.

He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering
suggestions that they should attack.

"The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don't see that we are
unable to execute complicated maneuvers," said he to Miloradovich who
asked permission to advance.

"We couldn't take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in
time, and nothing can be done now!" he replied to someone else.

When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear--where according to
the reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody--there were
now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov who
was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.

"You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,
but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,
forewarned, takes measures accordingly."

Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these words.
He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that Kutuzov
would content himself with that hint.

"He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly, nudging
with his knee Raevski who was at his side.

Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully remarked:

"It is not too late yet, your Highness--the enemy has not gone away--if
you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as see
a little smoke."

Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's troops
were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every hundred paces he
halted for three quarters of an hour.

The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had done:
the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.

In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration,
and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also
received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various grades,
and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.

"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the
Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be
understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that
we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today. But
people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking about
or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle--Tarutino, Borodino, or
Austerlitz--takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an
essential condition.

A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than during
a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the course
taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in advance and
never coincides with the direction of any one force.

If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a given
body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one of those
forces, but will always be a mean--what in mechanics is represented by
the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.

If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French ones, we
find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with previously
formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those descriptions
are false.

The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had in
view--to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the
dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in
view--to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying
the whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor
the aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish
himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got, and
so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and what
all the Russians of that day desired--to drive the French out of Russia
and destroy their army--it is quite clear that the battle of Tarutino,
just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that
stage of the campaign. It would be difficult and even impossible to
imagine any result more opportune than the actual outcome of this
battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant losses, despite the
greatest confusion, the most important results of the whole campaign
were attained: the transition from retreat to advance, an exposure of
the weakness of the French, and the administration of that shock which
Napoleon's army had only awaited to begin its flight.





CHAPTER VIII


Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa; there
can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in the
hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their ancient
capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and
incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon's hands. The Russian army, only half
the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to attack for
a whole month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. He can either fall
on the Russian army with double its strength and destroy it; negotiate
an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal make a menacing move on
Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse, return to Smolensk or
Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special genius would seem to be
required to retain the brilliant position the French held at that time.
For that, only very simple and easy steps were necessary: not to allow
the troops to loot, to prepare winter clothing--of which there was
sufficient in Moscow for the whole army--and methodically to collect
the provisions, of which (according to the French historians) there were
enough in Moscow to supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon,
that greatest of all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of
the army, took none of these steps.

He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used his
power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses open
to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in Moscow,
advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring by a more
northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov afterwards
took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined than what he
actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting the troops
plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a garrison behind
him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without joining battle,
turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets, again without
attempting to break through and take the road Kutuzov took, but retiring
instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk road. Nothing more
stupid than that could have been devised, or more disastrous for the
army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon's aim been to destroy his army,
the most skillful strategist could hardly have devised any series
of actions that would so completely have accomplished that purpose,
independently of anything the Russian army might do.

Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his
army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as
unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he
wished to and because he was very clever and a genius.

In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the
personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws that
guided the event.

The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon's faculties as having
weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did not justify
his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to do the best he
could for himself and his army, as he had done previously and as he did
subsequently in 1813. His activity at that time was no less astounding
than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in Austria, and in Prussia. We do not
know for certain in how far his genius was genuine in Egypt--where forty
centuries looked down upon his grandeur--for his great exploits there
are all told us by Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius
in Austria or Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French
or German sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps
without fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans
to recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on
in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius
in order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the
matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.

His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as
elsewhere. Order after order and plan after plan were issued by him
from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The absence
of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of Moscow, did not
disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the welfare of his
army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare of the people
of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or of diplomatic
considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated peace.





CHAPTER IX


With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry into
Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the movements
of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different roads, and
charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful directions about the
fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a brilliant plan for a future
campaign over the whole map of Russia.

With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain Yakovlev,
who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how to get out of
Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and his magnanimity,
and having written a letter to the Emperor Alexander in which he
considered it his duty to inform his Friend and Brother that Rostopchin
had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he dispatched Yakovlev to
Petersburg.

Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to Tutolmin, he
dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.

With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave orders
to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel Rostopchin was
punished by an order to burn down his houses.

With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a
constitution. A municipality was established and the following
announcement issued:


INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!

Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King
desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you how he
punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been taken to
put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A
paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form your
municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of your
needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished by a red
ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city will wear
a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only wear a red
ribbon round the left arm.

The city police is established on its former footing, and better order
already prevails in consequence of its activity. The government has
appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of police, and twenty
commissaries or captains of wards have been appointed to the different
wards of the city. You will recognize them by the white ribbon they will
wear on the left arm. Several churches of different denominations are
open, and divine service is performed in them unhindered. Your fellow
citizens are returning every day to their homes and orders have been
given that they should find in them the help and protection due to
their misfortunes. These are the measures the government has adopted to
re-establish order and relieve your condition. But to achieve this
aim it is necessary that you should add your efforts and should, if
possible, forget the misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain
the hope of a less cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and
ignominious death awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or
on what remains of your property, and finally that you should not doubt
that these will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest
and most just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you
may be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of
a state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to
another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the
military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to flow!


With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all the
troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude * to obtain provisions
for themselves, so that the army might have its future provided for.


    * As looters.


With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be brought back
and services to be again performed in the churches.

With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the following was
placarded everywhere:


PROCLAMATION!

You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom
misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of
the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!
Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being restored in
it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from their hiding places
on finding that they are respected. Any violence to them or to their
property is promptly punished. His Majesty the Emperor and King protects
them, and considers no one among you his enemy except those who disobey
his orders. He desires to end your misfortunes and restore you to your
homes and families. Respond, therefore, to his benevolent intentions
and come to us without fear. Inhabitants, return with confidence to your
abodes! You will soon find means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen
and industrious artisans, return to your work, your houses, your shops,
where the protection of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay
for your work. And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where
you are hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full
assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in the
city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the products of
the soil. The government has taken the following steps to ensure freedom
of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants, husbandmen, and those
living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without any danger bring their
supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets, of which one is on
the Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision Market. (2) Such
supplies will be bought from them at such prices as seller and buyer may
agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a fair price he will be
free to take his goods back to his village and no one may hinder him
under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday of each week are appointed
as the chief market days and to that end a sufficient number of troops
will be stationed along the highroads on Tuesdays and Saturdays at such
distances from the town as to protect the carts. (4) Similar measures
will be taken that peasants with their carts and horses may meet with no
hindrance on their return journey. (5) Steps will immediately be taken
to re-establish ordinary trading.

Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and artisans,
to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry out the
paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to
co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and
confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!


With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the people,
reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The Emperor
rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and, despite his
preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the theaters that were
established by his order.

In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,
Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma
Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining
tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He
visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by him
to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then, as
Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in forged
Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of these means
by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let relief
be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food was too
precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part enemies,
Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to purchase food
from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them."

With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being issued
to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military duties
and to suppress robbery.





CHAPTER X


But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans--which were
not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances--did not
affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock detached
from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless way without
engaging the cogwheels.

With reference to the military side--the plan of campaign--that work of
genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised anything
more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and enters into a
polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius must be referred
not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October--that plan never was
or could be executed, for it was quite out of touch with the facts
of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for which la Mosquee (as
Napoleon termed the church of Basil the Beatified) was to have been
razed to the ground, proved quite useless. The mining of the Kremlin
only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's wish that it should be blown
up when he left Moscow--as a child wants the floor on which he has
hurt himself to be beaten. The pursuit of the Russian army, about which
Napoleon was so concerned, produced an unheard-of result. The French
generals lost touch with the Russian army of sixty thousand men, and
according to Thiers it was only eventually found, like a lost pin, by
the skill--and apparently the genius--of Murat.

With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon's arguments as to his
magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief
concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;
Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their
embassage.

With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed
incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.

With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a
municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain
people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of
preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from being
looted.

With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so easily been
settled by Napoleon's visit to a mosque, no results were achieved.
Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to carry out
Napoleon's wish, but one of them was slapped in the face by a French
soldier while conducting service, and a French official reported of
another that: "The priest whom I found and invited to say Mass cleaned
and locked up the church. That night the doors were again broken
open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and other disorders
perpetrated."

With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious workmen and
to peasants evoked no response. There were no industrious workmen, and
the peasants caught the commissaries who ventured too far out of town
with the proclamation and killed them.

As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the troops,
these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in the
Kremlin and in Posnyakov's house were closed again at once because the
actors and actresses were robbed.

Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as
well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The
French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the
paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to the
unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.

But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders given
by the authorities at that time was Napoleon's attempt to stop the
looting and re-establish discipline.

This is what the army authorities were reporting:

"Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order
is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade in a
lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they sell stolen
goods."

"The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of
the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate
inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have
the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly
witnessed."

"Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and
pillaging--October 9."

"Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our
district who ought to be arrested by a strong force--October 11."

"The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict orders to
stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually seen returning
to the Kremlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and pillage were renewed
more violently than ever yesterday evening, last night, and today. The
Emperor sees with regret that the picked soldiers appointed to guard his
person, who should set an example of discipline, carry disobedience to
such a point that they break into the cellars and stores containing army
supplies. Others have disgraced themselves to the extent of disobeying
sentinels and officers, and have abused and beaten them."

"The Grand Marshal of the palace," wrote the governor, "complains
bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to
commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows
of the Emperor."

That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot the
provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated and
perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it did not
go away.

It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused by the
capture of transport trains on the Smolensk road, and by the battle of
Tarutino. The news of that battle of Tarutino, unexpectedly received
by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a desire to punish the Russians
(Thiers says), and he issued the order for departure which the whole
army was demanding.

Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they had
stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal tresor, but on
seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers says)
horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not order all
the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with those of a
certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the caleches and
carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that it was a very
good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry provisions, the
sick, and the wounded.

The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal which
feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To study the
skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from the time it
entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying the dying leaps
and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very often a wounded animal,
hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the hunter's gun, runs forward and
back again, and hastens its own end. Napoleon, under pressure from his
whole army, did the same thing. The rustle of the battle of Tarutino
frightened the beast, and it rushed forward onto the hunter's gun,
reached him, turned back, and finally--like any wild beast--ran back
along the most disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent
was familiar.

During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have been
the leader of all these movements--as the figurehead of a ship may
seem to a savage to guide the vessel--acted like a child who, holding a
couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it.





CHAPTER XI


Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of the
shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little
blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped about
him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside Karataev at
night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but always returned
again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it still belonged to
nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor; the soldier who
told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others called it Gray, or
sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, or even of a breed or
any definite color did not seem to trouble the blue-gray dog in the
least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round as a plume, its bandy legs
served it so well that it would often gracefully lift a hind leg and run
very easily and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to use all
four. Everything pleased it. Now it would roll on its back, yelping with
delight, now bask in the sun with a thoughtful air of importance, and
now frolic about playing with a chip of wood or a straw.

Pierre's attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only
remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by
Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and
a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this
time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of
solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache
covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested
with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes
was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The former
slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now replaced by an
energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet were bare.

Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and horsemen
were passing that morning, then into the distance across the river, then
at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about biting him,
and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in various
positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he looked at his
bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction flitted across his face.
The sight of them reminded him of all he had experienced and learned
during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant to him.

For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts in
the mornings--what is called an "old wives' summer."

In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly
pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in
the air.

On everything--far and near--lay the magic crystal glitter seen only
at that time of autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,
with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare trees,
the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green church spire,
and the corners of the white house in the distance, all stood out in the
transparent air in most delicate outline and with unnatural clearness.
Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a half-burned mansion
occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still showing dark green
beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled house--which in
dull weather was repulsively ugly--seemed quietly beautiful now, in the
clear, motionless brilliance.

A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a skullcap on
his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from behind a corner of
the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly wink.

"What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!" (Their name for Pierre.) "Eh? Just like
spring!"

And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his pipe,
though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.

"To be on the march in such weather..." he began.

Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the corporal told
him that nearly all the troops were starting and there ought to be an
order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the soldiers in the
shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the corporal that something
should be done about him. The corporal replied that Pierre need not
worry about that as they had an ambulance and a permanent hospital and
arrangements would be made for the sick, and that in general everything
that could happen had been foreseen by the authorities.

"Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the captain,
you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to the captain
when he makes his round, he will do anything for you."

(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with Pierre
and showed him all sorts of favors.)

"'You see, St. Thomas,' he said to me the other day. 'Monsieur Kiril is
a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who has
had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.... If he wants
anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has studied, you
see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for your sake I
mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not been for you
that affair would have ended ill."

And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The affair
he had alluded to had happened a few days before--a fight between the
prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had succeeded in
pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had heard Pierre
talking to the corporal immediately asked what the Frenchman had said.
While Pierre was repeating what he had been told about the army leaving
Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier came up to the door of
the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his fingers to his forehead by way
of greeting, he asked Pierre whether the soldier Platoche to whom he had
given a shirt to sew was in that shed.

A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to them,
which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into boots and
shirts for them.

"Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly
folded shirt.

Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at work,
was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot. His
hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree bast,
and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.

"A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here it is,
ready," said Platon, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had sewn.

The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his
hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had
a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin bare
body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking on
would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly. None
of the prisoners said a word.

"See, it fits well!" Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt straight.

The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without raising
his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.

"You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper
tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse," said
Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his work.

"It's good, quite good, thank you," said the Frenchman, in French, "but
there must be some linen left over.

"It will fit better still when it sets to your body," said Karataev,
still admiring his handiwork. "You'll be nice and comfortable...."

"Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?" said the
Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note and
gave it to Karataev. "But give me the pieces that are over."

Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman
was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the
Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The Frenchman
insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over and asked
Pierre to translate what he said.

"What does he want the bits for?" said Karataev. "They'd make fine leg
bands for us. Well, never mind."

And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression, took
a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the
Frenchman without looking at him. "Oh dear!" muttered Karataev and went
away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment, then
looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre's look had told him
something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:

"Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!" And handing back the odd
bits he turned and went out.

"There, look at that," said Karataev, swaying his head. "People said
they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It's what the old
folk used to say: 'A sweating hand's an open hand, a dry hand's close.'
He's naked, but yet he's given it back."

Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the
pieces.

"But they'll make grand leg bands, dear friend," he said, and went back
into the shed.





CHAPTER XII


Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and though
the French had offered to move him from the men's to the officers' shed,
he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.

In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme
limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical
strength and health, of which he had till then been unconscious, and
thanks especially to the fact that the privations came so gradually that
it was impossible to say when they began, he endured his position
not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time he obtained the
tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain to reach.
He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that
inner harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle
of Borodino. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the
dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice,
and in romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning--and all
these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking
about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the
horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in
Karataev.

Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as it
were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the agitating
thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important. It did
not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or politics, or
Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things were no business
of his, and that he was not called on to judge concerning them and
therefore could not do so. "Russia and summer weather are not bound
together," he thought, repeating words of Karataev's which he found
strangely consoling. His intention of killing Napoleon and his
calculations of the cabalistic number of the beast of the Apocalypse now
seemed to him meaningless and even ridiculous. His anger with his wife
and anxiety that his name should not be smirched now seemed not merely
trivial but even amusing. What concern was it of his that somewhere or
other that woman was leading the life she preferred? What did it matter
to anybody, and especially to him, whether or not they found out that
their prisoner's name was Count Bezukhov?

He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and quite
agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts somewhat
differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could
only be negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony
as though he was really saying that all desire for positive happiness is
implanted in us merely to torment us and never be satisfied. But Pierre
believed it without any mental reservation. The absence of suffering,
the satisfaction of one's needs and consequent freedom in the choice of
one's occupation, that is, of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to
be indubitably man's highest happiness. Here and now for the first time
he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat,
drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of
warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to
talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs--good
food, cleanliness, and freedom--now that he was deprived of all this,
seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice
of occupation, that is, of his way of life--now that that was so
restricted--seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a
superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one's
needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation--such freedom as
his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in
his own life--is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly
difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of having an
occupation.

All Pierre's daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free. Yet
subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke with
enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable, strong,
joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind and inner
freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.

When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn, and
saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still dark
at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, and the
wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple distance,
when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the noise of the
crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when afterwards light
gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared solemnly from behind a
cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the hoarfrost, the distance and the
river, all began to sparkle in the glad light--Pierre felt a new joy and
strength in life such as he had never before known. And this not only
stayed with him during the whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in
strength as the hardships of his position increased.

That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still
further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners
formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge
of languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his
readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance
of three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which he
showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut; his
gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still and
thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them incomprehensible),
he appeared to them a rather mysterious and superior being. The very
qualities that had been a hindrance, if not actually harmful, to him in
the world he had lived in--his strength, his disdain for the comforts of
life, his absent-mindedness and simplicity--here among these people
gave him almost the status of a hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion
placed responsibilities upon him.





CHAPTER XIII


The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and seventh
of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts loaded, and troops
and baggage trains started.

At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing shakos
and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in front
of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all
along the lines.

In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only awaited
the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov, pale and thin with dark
shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot and not dressed.
His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his face, gazed inquiringly
at his comrades who were paying no attention to him, and he moaned
regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so much his sufferings that
caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as his fear and grief at being
left alone.

Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes Karataev had
made for him from some leather a French soldier had torn off a tea chest
and brought to have his boots mended with, went up to the sick man and
squatted down beside him.

"You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They have a hospital
here. You may be better off than we others," said Pierre.

"O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!" moaned the man in a
louder voice.

"I'll go and ask them again directly," said Pierre, rising and going to
the door of the shed.

Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him a
pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal and
soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had metal
straps, and these changed their familiar faces.

The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The prisoners
had to be counted before being let out.

"Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?..." Pierre began.

But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal
he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that
moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums
was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre's
words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. The shed
became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two sides drowned
the sick man's groans.

"There it is!... It again!..." said Pierre to himself, and an
involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal's changed face,
in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise of the
drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled
people against their will to kill their fellow men--that force the
effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to
try to escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those
who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to
wait and endure. He did not again go to the sick man, nor turn to look
at him, but stood frowning by the door of the hut.

When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one
another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed
his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal had
assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also in
marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which Pierre
had recognized in the corporal's words and in the roll of the drums.

"Pass on, pass on!" the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.

Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.

"What now?" the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
Pierre.

Pierre told him about the sick man.

"He'll manage to walk, devil take him!" said the captain. "Pass on, pass
on!" he continued without looking at Pierre.

"But he is dying," Pierre again began.

"Be so good..." shouted the captain, frowning angrily.

"Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam..." rattled the drums, and Pierre understood
that this mysterious force completely controlled these men and that it
was now useless to say any more.

The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to march
in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and
about three hundred men.

The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all strangers to
Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at him and at his
shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him walked a fat major
with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazan dressing
gown tied round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of
his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped his tobacco
pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown and held the stem of his
pipe firmly with the other. Panting and puffing, the major grumbled and
growled at everybody because he thought he was being pushed and that
they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were
all surprised at something when there was nothing to be surprised at.
Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing
where they were now being taken and how far they would get that day. An
official in felt boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from
side to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his
observations as to what had been burned down and what this or that part
of the city was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent
was a Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.

"What are you disputing about?" said the major angrily. "What does it
matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it's burned
down, and there's an end of it.... What are you pushing for? Isn't the
road wide enough?" said he, turning to a man behind him who was not
pushing him at all.

"Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?" the prisoners on one side and another
were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. "All beyond the
river, and Zubova, and in the Kremlin.... Just look! There's not half of
it left. Yes, I told you--the whole quarter beyond the river, and so it
is."

"Well, you know it's burned, so what's the use of talking?" said the
major.

As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of the few unburned
quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly started to one
side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.

"Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
smeared with something!"

Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked these
exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the palings
surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw better
than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set upright
against the palings with its face smeared with soot.

"Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!..." the convoy
guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh virulence,
drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at
the dead man.





CHAPTER XIV


Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners
marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons
belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they
came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
private vehicles.

At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get across.
From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving baggage
trains before and behind them. To the right, where the Kaluga road turns
near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts stretched away into
the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais' corps which had started
before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and across the
Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and transport.

Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the
Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga road.
But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais'
train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kaluga road when
the vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging from the Great Ordynka
Street.

When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps
forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles and men
crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces
that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking more than an
hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the streets of the
Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and the prisoners jammed
close together had to stand for some hours at that crossway. From all
sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard the rattle of wheels, the
tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse. Pierre stood
pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise
which mingled in his imagination with the roll of the drums.

To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the wall of
the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.

"What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They've loaded goods even on
the cannon! Look there, those are furs!" they exclaimed. "Just see what
the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one has behind
in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by
heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has loaded
himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they've even grabbed those
chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks.... Heavens!
They're fighting."

"That's right, hit him on the snout--on his snout! Like this, we
shan't get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be
Napoleon's own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown! It's
like a portable house.... That fellow's dropped his sack and doesn't see
it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either!
Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you pass... Just look,
there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In
carriages--see how comfortably they've settled themselves!"

Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general curiosity
bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to
his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted their
curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts, closely
squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in glaring
colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.

From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious
force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse
smeared with soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned
ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an impression
on him--as if his soul, making ready for a hard struggle, refused to
receive impressions that might weaken it.

The women's vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts, soldiers,
wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts,
more soldiers, and now and then women.

Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.

All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some invisible
power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came flowing from
the different streets with one and the same desire to get on quickly;
they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white
teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew from
side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute
and coldly cruel expression that had struck Pierre that morning on the
corporal's face when the drums were beating.

It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the escort
collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way in among
the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged
onto the Kaluga road.

They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun
began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men
began to prepare for their night's rest. They all appeared angry and
dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could
be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran
into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. Several
soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat the
carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others fought among
themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the head
by a sword.

It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields
in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same
feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on
that had seized them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed
to understand that they did not yet know where they were going, and that
much that was painful and difficult awaited them on this journey.

During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than they
had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the first time
received horseflesh for their meat ration.

From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like
personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to
their former friendly relations.

This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of
prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one Russian
soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw
a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from
the road, and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten to
court-martial a noncommissioned officer on account of the escape of the
Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's excuse that the prisoner was
ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot
those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had
crushed him during the executions, but which he had not felt during his
imprisonment, now again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but
he felt that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush
him, there grew and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent
of it.

He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with his
comrades.

Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen in
Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of the
order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in reaction
against the worsening of their position they were all particularly
animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, of amusing
scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and avoided all talk of
their present situation.

The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the
sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the
rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray
haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not yet
come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, crossing between the
campfires to the other side of the road where he had been told the
common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On
the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered him back.

Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and
dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the
cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he
burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that
men from various sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and
evidently solitary laughter could mean.

"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The soldier
did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive.
What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and he laughed
till tears started to his eyes.

A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at
all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from
the inquisitive man, and looked around him.

The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light
sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen
before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond
those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance
lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling
stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that is within me,
and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all that and put it
into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and went and lay down to
sleep beside his companions.





CHAPTER XV


In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a letter
from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, though
Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga road.
Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one formerly
brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no question of peace.

Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla
detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of Broussier's
division had been seen at Forminsk and that being separated from the
rest of the French army they might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and
officers again demanded action. Generals on the staff, excited by the
memory of the easy victory at Tarutino, urged Kutuzov to carry out
Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not consider any offensive necessary.
The result was a compromise which was inevitable: a small detachment was
sent to Forminsk to attack Broussier.

By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov--that same
modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing up
plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering crosses
on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was spoken of
as undecided and undiscerning--but whom we find commanding wherever
the position was most difficult all through the Russo-French wars from
Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he remained last at the
Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what was possible when all
were flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the rear
guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk with twenty thousand men
to defend the town against Napoleon's whole army. In Smolensk, at the
Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he
was awakened by the bombardment of the town--and Smolensk held out all
day long. At the battle of Borodino, when Bagration was killed and nine
tenths of the men of our left flank had fallen and the full force of the
French artillery fire was directed against it, the man sent there was
this same irresolute and undiscerning Dokhturov--Kutuzov hastening to
rectify a mistake he had made by sending someone else there first.
And the quiet little Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the
greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to
us in verse and prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said.

It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk and from there to
Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last battle with the French was
fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army began;
and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of the
campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that
dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest testimony to
his merit.

It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a
machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance
and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most
important part. The man who does not understand the construction of
the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine, and
not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.

On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to Forminsk and
stopped at the village of Aristovo, preparing faithfully to execute the
orders he had received, the whole French army having, in its convulsive
movement, reached Murat's position apparently in order to give
battle--suddenly without any reason turned off to the left onto the new
Kaluga road and began to enter Forminsk, where only Broussier had
been till then. At that time Dokhturov had under his command, besides
Dorokhov's detachment, the two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and
Seslavin.

On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo headquarters
with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner said that the
troops that had entered Forminsk that day were the vanguard of the whole
army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army had left Moscow four
days previously. That same evening a house serf who had come from
Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering the town. Some
Cossacks of Dokhturov's detachment reported having sighted the French
Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From all these reports it was
evident that where they had expected to meet a single division there
was now the whole French army marching from Moscow in an unexpected
direction--along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov was unwilling to undertake
any action, as it was not clear to him now what he ought to do. He had
been ordered to attack Forminsk. But only Broussier had been there at
that time and now the whole French army was there. Ermolov wished to act
on his own judgment, but Dokhturov insisted that he must have Kutuzov's
instructions. So it was decided to send a dispatch to the staff.

For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was chosen, who
was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering
a written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the
dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.





CHAPTER XVI


It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four days.
Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour and a
half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka after
one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence
hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he entered
a dark passage.

"The general on duty, quick! It's very important!" said he to someone
who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.

"He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third night
he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper. "You should
wake the captain first."

"But this is very important, from General Dokhturov," said
Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in
the dark.

The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.

"Your honor, your honor! A courier."

"What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice.

"From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk,"
said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but
guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.

The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.

"I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for something. "He is very
ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor."

"Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My orders are to give it at
once to the general on duty."

"Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you
always hide it?" said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,
to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn's adjutant.) "I've
found it, I've found it!" he added.

The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling for
something on the candlestick.

"Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust.

By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's youthful face
as he held the candle, and the face of another man who was still asleep.
This was Konovnitsyn.

When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned
up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from
the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were
running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was bespattered
all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it with his sleeve.

"Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking the envelope.

"The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners, Cossacks, and
the scouts all say the same thing."

"There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him," said Shcherbinin,
rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay covered by a
greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said he. (Konovnitsyn did not stir.) "To
the General Staff!" he said with a smile, knowing that those words would
be sure to arouse him.

And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote
from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face assumed
its habitual calm and firm appearance.

"Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately but without hurry,
blinking at the light.

While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke the seal and
read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his legs in
their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began putting on his
boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair over his temples,
and donned his cap.

"Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness."

Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of great
importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or ask
himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest him. He
regarded the whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his
reason but by something else. There was within him a deep unexpressed
conviction that all would be well, but that one must not trust to this
and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one's own work.
And he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.

Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have been included
merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called heroes of
1812--the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and Miloradoviches.
Like Dokhturov he had the reputation of being a man of very limited
capacity and information, and like Dokhturov he never made plans of
battle but was always found where the situation was most difficult.
Since his appointment as general on duty he had always slept with his
door open, giving orders that every messenger should be allowed to wake
him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that Kutuzov reproved him
for it and feared to send him to the front, and like Dokhturov he
was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without clatter or noise,
constitute the most essential part of the machine.

Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn
frowned--partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at
the unpleasant thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest
of influential men on the staff would be stirred up by this news,
especially Bennigsen, who ever since Tarutino had been at daggers
drawn with Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue
orders, and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him
though he knew it could not be helped.

And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news, immediately
began to expound his plans to a general sharing his quarters, until
Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded him that they must
go to see his Highness.





CHAPTER XVII


Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often fell
asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his bed
without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.

So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred head on
his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and peering into the
darkness.

Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more
influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him, Kutuzov
was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his troops being
obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The lesson of the
Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which Kutuzov remembered with
pain, must, he thought, have some effect on others too.

"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.
Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutuzov. He
knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall
of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree
is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an experienced sportsman
he knew that the beast was wounded, and wounded as only the whole
strength of Russia could have wounded it, but whether it was mortally
wounded or not was still an undecided question. Now by the fact of
Lauriston and Barthelemi having been sent, and by the reports of the
guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure that the wound was mortal. But he
needed further proofs and it was necessary to wait.

"They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall
see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!" thought he. "What for?
Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are
like children from whom one can't get any sensible account of what has
happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But
that's not what is needed now.

"And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to
them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he
remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have
foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless."

The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino was
mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov's head for a whole month. On the one
hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt assured
with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and all the
Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal. But in any
case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for them and grew
more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed during those
sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those younger generals
for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible contingencies, just like
the younger men, but with this difference, that he saw thousands of
contingencies instead of two or three and based nothing on them. The
longer he thought the more contingencies presented themselves. He
imagined all sorts of movements of the Napoleonic army as a whole or
in sections--against Petersburg, or against him, or to outflank him.
He thought too of the possibility (which he feared most of all) that
Napoleon might fight him with his own weapon and remain in Moscow
awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined that Napoleon's army might turn back
through Medyn and Yukhnov, but the one thing he could not foresee was
what happened--the insane, convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army
during its first eleven days after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made
possible what Kutuzov had not yet even dared to think of--the complete
extermination of the French. Dorokhov's report about Broussier's
division, the guerrillas' reports of distress in Napoleon's army, rumors
of preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that
the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were
only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not to
Kutuzov. With his sixty years' experience he knew what value to attach
to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group all news
so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew how readily
in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary. And the more
he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe it. This question
absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to him only life's
customary routine. To such customary routine belonged his conversations
with the staff, the letters he wrote from Tarutino to Madame de Stael,
the reading of novels, the distribution of awards, his correspondence
with Petersburg, and so on. But the destruction of the French, which he
alone foresaw, was his heart's one desire.

On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm and
thinking of that.

There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,
Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.

"Eh, who's there? Come in, come in! What news?" the field marshal called
out to them.

While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the substance
of the news.

"Who brought it?" asked Kutuzov with a look which, when the candle was
lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.

"There can be no doubt about it, your Highness."

"Call him in, call him here."

Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big paunch
resting against the other which was doubled under him. He screwed up his
seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more carefully, as if wishing to
read in his face what preoccupied his own mind.

"Tell me, tell me, friend," said he to Bolkhovitinov in his low, aged
voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his chest,
"come nearer--nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That Napoleon
has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?"

Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he had
been told to report.

"Speak quicker, quicker! Don't torture me!" Kutuzov interrupted him.

Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov checked
him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered and
wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side of
the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.

"O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a
tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O
Lord!" and he wept.





CHAPTER XVIII


From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all
Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by
authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks,
maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to
Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave
orders for the evacuation of Kaluga--a retreat beyond which town seemed
to him quite possible.

Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his
retreat fled in the opposite direction.

Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarutino
and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would have
happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern
provinces.

But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from advancing
into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his
way), the historians forget that nothing could have saved his army, for
then already it bore within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How
could that army--which had found abundant supplies in Moscow and had
trampled them underfoot instead of keeping them, and on arriving at
Smolensk had looted provisions instead of storing them--how could that
army recuperate in Kaluga province, which was inhabited by Russians such
as those who lived in Moscow, and where fire had the same property of
consuming what was set ablaze?

That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino
and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, the
chemical elements of dissolution.

The members of what had once been an army--Napoleon himself and all his
soldiers fled--without knowing whither, each concerned only to make his
escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of
which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.

So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets, when the
generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all
mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier
Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing
needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not
even Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
recognized.

But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, there
still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must flee. An
external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in
due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de l'Empereur."

The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out early in
the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and
an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the
previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks on the prowl for
booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly captured him. If the
Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what saved him was the very
thing that was destroying the French army, the booty on which the
Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went after plunder, leaving the
men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after the plunder and Napoleon
managed to escape.

When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor himself
in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was nothing for it but
to fly as fast as possible along the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon
with his forty-year-old stomach understood that hint, not feeling his
former agility and boldness, and under the influence of the fright
the Cossacks had given him he at once agreed with Mouton and issued
orders--as the historians tell us--to retreat by the Smolensk road.

That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated, does
not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces which
influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhaysk (that is,
the Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also.





CHAPTER XIX


A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go
a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the
end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a promised
land to have the strength to move.

The promised land for the French during their advance had been Moscow,
during their retreat it was their native land. But that native land
was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely
necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to himself: "Today I
shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and
spend the night," and during the first day's journey that resting place
eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And
the impulses felt by a single person are always magnified in a crowd.

For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final
goal--their native land--was too remote, and their immediate goal
was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously
intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that
much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they were
told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon himself,
knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this alone could
give them strength to move on and endure their present privations. So
both those who knew and those who did not know deceived themselves, and
pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land.

Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising energy
and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on. Besides the
common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French into one mass and
supplied them with a certain energy, there was another cause binding
them together--their great numbers. As with the physical law of gravity,
their enormous mass drew the individual human atoms to itself. In their
hundreds of thousands they moved like a whole nation.

Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner
to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force
of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in
the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender
to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every
convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the
slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur. Their
very numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that
possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the
Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all
their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the
body could hasten the process of decomposition.

A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a certain
limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On
the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow
becomes.

Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When the flight
of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined, what
Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of October began
to occur. The superior officers all wanted to distinguish themselves,
to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to overthrow the French, and all
clamored for action.

Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited in the
case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.

He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block the road,
losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What
is the use of that, when a third of their army has melted away on the
road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" But drawing from his
aged wisdom what they could understand, he told them of the golden
bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him, flinging themselves on,
rending and exulting over the dying beast.

Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the French
near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up two
French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov they
sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.

And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,
trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to the
attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost thousands
of men.

But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,
closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting
away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.





BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that followed it
and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is one of the
most instructive phenomena in history.

All historians agree that the external activity of states and nations
in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars, and that as a
direct result of greater or less success in war the political strength
of states and nations increases or decreases.

Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or emperor,
having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his enemy's
army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and
subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all
the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the
statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against another
is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an increase or
decrease in the strength of the nation--even though it is unintelligible
why the defeat of an army--a hundredth part of a nation--should oblige
that whole nation to submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the
rights of the conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the
defeated. An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its
rights in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army
suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.

So according to history it has been found from the most ancient times,
and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon's wars serve to confirm this
rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army Austria loses
its rights, and the rights and the strength of France increase. The
victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy the independent
existence of Prussia.

But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow is
taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia that
ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and
then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of
history: to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the
hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles
that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible.

After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement nor
any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist. What
does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of China,
we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is the
historians' usual expedient when anything does not fit their standards);
if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which only a small number
of troops took part, we might treat it as an exception; but this event
occurred before our fathers' eyes, and for them it was a question of the
life or death of their fatherland, and it happened in the greatest of
all known wars.

The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to the
expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does not
produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of conquest;
it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples lies not in
the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in something else.

The French historians, describing the condition of the French army
before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,
except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport--there was no
forage for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one could
remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather than
let the French have it.

The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the peasants
Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow drove in their
carts to pillage the town, and in general personally failed to manifest
any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable multitude of such
peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for the high price offered
them, but burned it instead.

Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with rapiers
according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has
gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants, feeling himself
wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his
life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to
hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine that the combatant who
so sensibly employed the best and simplest means to attain his end was
at the same time influenced by traditions of chivalry and, desiring to
conceal the facts of the case, insisted that he had gained his victory
with the rapier according to all the rules of art. One can imagine what
confusion and obscurity would result from such an account of the duel.

The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was
the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up
the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to explain the matter
according to the rules of fencing are the historians who have described
the event.

After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any
previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the
retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed
retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of
transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures from the rules.

Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing
attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel
raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and to
the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to all
the rules--as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite of
the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the rules, in
spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it seemed rather
disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to assume a pose en
quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and to make an adroit
thrust en prime, and so on--the cudgel of the people's war was lifted
with all its menacing and majestic strength, and without consulting
anyone's tastes or rules and regardless of anything else, it rose and
fell with stupid simplicity, but consistently, and belabored the French
till the whole invasion had perished.

And it is well for a people who do not--as the French did in
1813--salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt
of their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their magnanimous
conqueror, but at the moment of trial, without asking what rules others
have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick up the first
cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the feeling of
resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and
compassion.





CHAPTER II


One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the so-called
laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men pressed
together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that take on a
national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds opposing
each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when attacked by
stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers. This was done
by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and
by the Russians in 1812.

People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare" and assume that
by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a war does
not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule
of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That rule says that an
attacker should concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his
opponent at the moment of conflict.

Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes
that rule.

This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes
the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Military
science says that the more troops the greater the strength. Les gros
bataillons ont toujours raison. *


    * Large battalions are always victorious.


For military science to say this is like defining momentum in mechanics
by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are equal or unequal
to each other simply because the masses involved are equal or unequal.

Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.

In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass
and some unknown x.

Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact
that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that
small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence
of this unknown factor and tries to discover it--now in a geometric
formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the
genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these various meanings
to the factor does not yield results which accord with the historic
facts.

Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify
the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions issued in wartime by
commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.

That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men
composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are not,
fighting under the command of a genius, in two--or three-line formation,
with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men
who want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous
conditions for fighting.

The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives
the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this
unknown factor--the spirit of an army--is a problem for science.

This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute
for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force becomes
apparent--such as the commands of the general, the equipment employed,
and so on--mistaking these for the real significance of the factor,
and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being
the greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then,
expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative
significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.

Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, or
divisions, conquer--that is, kill or take captive--all the others, while
themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and on the other
fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to the fifteen, and
therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This equation does not
give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us a ratio between two
unknowns. And by bringing variously selected historic units (battles,
campaigns, periods of war) into such equations, a series of numbers
could be obtained in which certain laws should exist and might be
discovered.

The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when attacking, and
in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms the truth that the
strength of an army depends on its spirit. To lead men forward under
fire more discipline (obtainable only by movement in masses) is needed
than is needed to resist attacks. But this rule which leaves out of
account the spirit of the army continually proves incorrect and is in
particularly striking contrast to the facts when some strong rise or
fall in the spirit of the troops occurs, as in all national wars.

The French, retreating in 1812--though according to tactics they should
have separated into detachments to defend themselves--congregated into
a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen that only the mass
held the army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought according
to tactics to have attacked in mass, but in fact they split up
into small units, because their spirit had so risen that separate
individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without needing
any compulsion to induce them to expose themselves to hardships and
dangers.





CHAPTER III


The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into
Smolensk.

Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the
government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had
been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off
as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denis Davydov,
with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the value of
this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of military science
destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit for taking the first
step toward regularizing this method of warfare.

On August 24 Davydov's first partisan detachment was formed and then
others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more
numerous these detachments became.

The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the
fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree--the
French army--and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October, when
the French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of such
companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some that adopted
all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and the
comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were
also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and
landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which
captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there
was Vasilisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew hundreds of the
French.

The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of
October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,
amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded
and captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,
hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the end
of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had become
clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what could
not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and moving
according to rules at a distance from the French, still regarded many
things as impossible. The small bands that had started their activities
long before and had already observed the French closely considered
things possible which the commanders of the big detachments did not dare
to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who crept in among the French
now considered everything possible.

On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars) was with his
group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early morning he
and his party had been on the move. All day long he had been watching
from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French convoy of
cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the rest of the
army, which--as was learned from spies and prisoners--was moving under a
strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and Dolokhov (who also led
a small party and moved in Denisov's vicinity), the commanders of some
large divisions with staffs also knew of this convoy and, as Denisov
expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for it. Two of the commanders
of large parties--one a Pole and the other a German--sent invitations
to Denisov almost simultaneously, requesting him to join up with their
divisions to attack the convoy.

"No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself," said Denisov on reading
these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite his heartfelt
desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general, he had to forgo
that pleasure because he was already under the command of the Polish
general. To the Polish general he replied to the same effect, informing
him that he was already under the command of the German.

Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov intended, without
reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that
convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from
the village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the road
between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests, extending in
some places up to the road itself though in others a mile or more back
from it. Through these forests Denisov and his party rode all day,
sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to the very
edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That morning,
Cossacks of Denisov's party had seized and carried off into the forest
two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck in the mud not
far from Mikulino where the forest ran close to the road. Since then,
and until evening, the party had watched the movements of the French
without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach Shamshevo
quietly without alarming them and then, after joining Dolokhov who was
to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman's hut in the forest
less than a mile from Shamshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling
like an avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and capture
them all at one blow.

In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the forest came
right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any fresh
columns of French should show themselves.

Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road in the same way, to
find out at what distance there were other French troops. They reckoned
that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two hundred, and
Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers did not
deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what troops these were
and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"--that is, a man from
the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons had been made so
hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a
little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he
could tell them nothing definite about the troops in that column.

Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of
putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon Shcherbaty, a
peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at least one of the
French quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.





CHAPTER IV


It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both
the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and then
suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.

Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain ran down
was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. Like his horse,
which turned its head and laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving
rain and gazed anxiously before him. His thin face with its short, thick
black beard looked angry.

Beside Denisov rode an esaul, * Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt
cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.


    * A captain of Cossacks.


Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,
pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm
self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to
say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first
glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and
uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the
esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always
and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one
with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold strength.

A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and
wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.

A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an enormous
tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a blue
French overcoat.

Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and
blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the
hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him
with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that morning.

Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars in
threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in French
greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The horses,
being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or bay.
Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes, looked strangely
thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles, reins, were all wet,
slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the fallen leaves that strewed
the road. The men sat huddled up trying not to stir, so as to warm the
water that had trickled to their bodies and not admit the fresh cold
water that was leaking in under their seats, their knees, and at the
back of their necks. In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two
wagons, drawn by French horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had
been hitched on in front, rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and
splashed through the water that lay in the ruts.

Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and bumped
his rider's knee against a tree.

"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he
struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his
comrades with mud.

Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from hunger
(none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more because he
still had no news from Dolokhov and the man sent to capture a "tongue"
had not returned.

"There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as today.
It's too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it off till
another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will snatch the prey
from under our noses," thought Denisov, continually peering forward,
hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov.

On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to the
right, Denisov stopped.

"There's someone coming," said he.

The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.

"There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not presupposable
that it is the lieutenant colonel himself," said the esaul, who was fond
of using words the Cossacks did not know.

The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer
visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary
gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and
drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,
standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young
lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov
and handed him a sodden envelope.

"From the general," said the officer. "Please excuse its not being quite
dry."

Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.

"There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'"
said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading
the dispatch. "But Komarov and I"--he pointed to the Cossack--"were
prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what's this?" he asked,
noticing the French drummer boy. "A prisoner? You've already been in
action? May I speak to him?"

"Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through the dispatch.
"Why didn't you say who you were?" and turning with a smile he held out
his hand to the lad.

The officer was Petya Rostov.

All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with Denisov as
befitted a grownup man and an officer--without hinting at their previous
acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him Petya brightened
up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner he had been
rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already been in a battle
near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had distinguished himself there.

"Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted him, and his face
again assumed its anxious expression.

"Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this is again fwom that
German, you know. He"--he indicated Petya--"is serving under him."

And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a
repetition of the German general's demand that he should join forces
with him for an attack on the transport.

"If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under our noses," he
added.

While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya--abashed by Denisov's
cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition of his
trousers--furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat so
that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air as
possible.

"Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked Denisov, holding his
hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general for
which he had prepared himself, "or shall I remain with your honor?"

"Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But can you stay till
tomowwow?"

"Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya.

"But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?" asked
Denisov.

Petya blushed.

"He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he returned, inquiringly.

"Well, all wight," said Denisov.

And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting place
arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest, and told the officer on
the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant) to go and
find out where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that evening.
Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya to the edge of
the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo, to have a look at the part
of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.

"Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide, "lead us to
Shamshevo."

Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and the
hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to the
edge of the forest.





CHAPTER V


The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from
the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following the
peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes
and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves,
silently led them to the edge of the forest.

He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to where
the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree that
had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to
them with his hand.

Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant was
standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a
downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep
ravine, was a small village and a landowner's house with a broken roof.
In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond,
over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill from the
bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred yards
away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist. Their
un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining uphill with the
carts, and their calls to one another, could be clearly heard.

"Bwing the prisoner here," said Denisov in a low voice, not taking his
eyes off the French.

A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Denisov.
Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these and those
of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and
lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but in spite of
an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers, merely
assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov turned away from him
frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.

Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now
at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village and
along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.

"Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?" said Denisov with
a merry sparkle in his eyes.

"It is a very suitable spot," said the esaul.

"We'll send the infantwy down by the swamps," Denisov continued.
"They'll cweep up to the garden; you'll wide up fwom there with the
Cossacks"--he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village--"and I
with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..."

"The hollow is impassable--there's a swamp there," said the esaul. "The
horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left...."

While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded
from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then
another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices
shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment Denisov and the
esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought they were the cause
of the firing and shouting. But the firing and shouting did not relate
to them. Down below, a man wearing something red was running through the
marsh. The French were evidently firing and shouting at him.

"Why, that's our Tikhon," said the esaul.

"So it is! It is!"

"The wascal!" said Denisov.

"He'll get away!" said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.

The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the stream, plunged in
so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared for an
instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on.
The French who had been pursuing him stopped.

"Smart, that!" said the esaul.

"What a beast!" said Denisov with his former look of vexation. "What has
he been doing all this time?"

"Who is he?" asked Petya.

"He's our plastun. I sent him to capture a 'tongue.'"

"Oh, yes," said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov uttered as if
he understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of
it.

Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable men in their band.
He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near the river Gzhat. When Denisov had
come to Pokrovsk at the beginning of his operations and had as usual
summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew about the French,
the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied, as all village
elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything of them. But
when Denisov explained that his purpose was to kill the French, and
asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied that some
"more-orderers" had really been at their village, but that Tikhon
Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt with such matters. Denisov had
Tikhon called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words
in the elder's presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country and
the hatred of the French that all sons of the fatherland should cherish.

"We don't do the French any harm," said Tikhon, evidently frightened by
Denisov's words. "We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you know!
We killed a score or so of 'more-orderers,' but we did no harm else..."

Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite forgotten about
this peasant, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached himself
to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it. Denisov gave
orders to let him do so.

Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water,
flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude
for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for booty and always
brought back French clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring
in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him from drudgery and
began taking him with him when he went out on expeditions and had him
enrolled among the Cossacks.

Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging
behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried
rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf uses
its teeth, with equal ease picking fleas out of its fur or crunching
thick bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs with blows at
arm's length, or holding the head of the ax would cut thin little pegs
or carve spoons. In Denisov's party he held a peculiar and exceptional
position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be
done--to push a cart out of the mud with one's shoulders, pull a horse
out of a swamp by its tail, skin it, slink in among the French, or walk
more than thirty miles in a day--everybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.

"It won't hurt that devil--he's as strong as a horse!" they said of him.

Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him
and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tikhon
treated only with internal and external applications of vodka) was the
subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment--jokes in which
Tikhon readily joined.

"Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?" the Cossacks would banter
him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended to be
angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only effect
of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he seldom
brought in prisoners.

He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found more
opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen,
and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars
and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by Denisov
overnight to Shamshevo to capture a "tongue." But whether because he
had not been content to take only one Frenchman or because he had slept
through the night, he had crept by day into some bushes right among the
French and, as Denisov had witnessed from above, had been detected by
them.





CHAPTER VI


After talking for some time with the esaul about next day's attack,
which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he seemed to have
definitely decided on, Denisov turned his horse and rode back.

"Now, my lad, we'll go and get dwy," he said to Petya.

As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped, peering into the
forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging arms,
wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan hat, was approaching
with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax
stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he hastily threw something
into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its floppy brim, and
approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked
face and narrow little eyes beamed with self-satisfied merriment. He
lifted his head high and gazed at Denisov as if repressing a laugh.

"Well, where did you disappear to?" inquired Denisov.

"Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon
boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.

"Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well, why
haven't you taken one?"

"Oh, I took one all right," said Tikhon.

"Where is he?"

"You see, I took him first thing at dawn," Tikhon continued, spreading
out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes. "I took him
into the forest. Then I see he's no good and think I'll go and fetch a
likelier one."

"You see?... What a wogue--it's just as I thought," said Denisov to the
esaul. "Why didn't you bwing that one?"

"What was the good of bringing him?" Tikhon interrupted hastily and
angrily--"that one wouldn't have done for you. As if I don't know what
sort you want!"

"What a bwute you are!... Well?"

"I went for another one," Tikhon continued, "and I crept like this
through the wood and lay down." (He suddenly lay down on his stomach
with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) "One turned up and
I grabbed him, like this." (He jumped up quickly and lightly.) "'Come
along to the colonel,' I said. He starts yelling, and suddenly there
were four of them. They rushed at me with their little swords. So I went
for them with my ax, this way: 'What are you up to?' says I. 'Christ
be with you!'" shouted Tikhon, waving his arms with an angry scowl and
throwing out his chest.

"Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the
puddles!" said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.

Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained from
laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tikhon's face to the esaul's
and Denisov's, unable to make out what it all meant.

"Don't play the fool!" said Denisov, coughing angrily. "Why didn't you
bwing the first one?"

Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,
then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,
disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called
Shcherbaty--the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a
peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.

"Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The clothes
on him--poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your honor! Why,
he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't go!' he says."

"You are a bwute!" said Denisov. "I wanted to question..."

"But I questioned him," said Tikhon. "He said he didn't know much.
'There are a lot of us,' he says, 'but all poor stuff--only soldiers
in name,' he says. 'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take
them all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
Denisov's eyes.

"I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes--that'll teach you to play the
fool!" said Denisov severely.

"But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd never seen
your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll fetch you any of
them you want--three if you like."

"Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the watchhouse
in silence and frowning angrily.

Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with him
and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the bushes.

When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and smile
had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon had killed a
man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive drummer boy and felt
a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted only a moment. He felt
it necessary to hold his head higher, to brace himself, and to question
the esaul with an air of importance about tomorrow's undertaking, that
he might not be unworthy of the company in which he found himself.

The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with the
news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.

Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well, tell
me about yourself."





CHAPTER VII


Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow, joined
his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general commanding a
large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his commission,
and especially since he had joined the active army and taken part in
the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state of blissful
excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic hurry not to
miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was highly delighted
with what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the same time
it always seemed to him that the really heroic exploits were being
performed just where he did not happen to be. And he was always in a
hurry to get where he was not.

When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish to send
somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to be sent
that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled
Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead of riding by
the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had galloped to the
advanced line under the fire of the French and had there twice fired
his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade his taking part in any
action whatever of Denisov's. That was why Petya had blushed and grown
confused when Denisov asked him whether he could stay. Before they had
ridden to the outskirts of the forest Petya had considered he must carry
out his instructions strictly and return at once. But when he saw the
French and saw Tikhon and learned that there would certainly be an
attack that night, he decided, with the rapidity with which young people
change their views, that the general, whom he had greatly respected till
then, was a rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero,
and Tikhon a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave
them at a moment of difficulty.

It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and the esaul rode up
to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be seen, and
Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the glade and
were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest where the French
could not see the smoke. In the passage of the small watchhouse a
Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some mutton. In the room
three officers of Denisov's band were converting a door into a tabletop.
Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and at once began
helping the officers to fix up the dinner table.

In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the
table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.

Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton
with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Petya was in an ecstatic
childish state of love for all men, and consequently of confidence that
others loved him in the same way.

"So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?" said he to Denisov. "It's
all right my staying a day with you?" And not waiting for a reply he
answered his own question: "You see I was told to find out--well, I
am finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the chief... I
don't want a reward... But I want..."

Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head and
flourishing his arms.

"Into the vewy chief..." Denisov repeated with a smile.

"Only, please let me command something, so that I may really command..."
Petya went on. "What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a knife?" he
said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a piece of mutton.

And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.

"Please keep it. I have several like it," said Petya, blushing.
"Heavens! I was quite forgetting!" he suddenly cried. "I have some
raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler and
he has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to something
sweet. Would you like some?..." and Petya ran out into the passage to
his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained about five pounds
of raisins. "Have some, gentlemen, have some!"

"You want a coffeepot, don't you?" he asked the esaul. "I bought a
capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he's very
honest, that's the chief thing. I'll be sure to send it to you. Or
perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out--that happens
sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are"--and he
showed a bag--"a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap. Please take
as many as you want, or all if you like...."

Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Petya stopped and
blushed.

He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that was
foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered the French
drummer boy. "It's capital for us here, but what of him? Where have they
put him? Have they fed him? Haven't they hurt his feelings?" he thought.
But having caught himself saying too much about the flints, he was now
afraid to speak out.

"I might ask," he thought, "but they'll say: 'He's a boy himself and so
he pities the boy.' I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Will it
seem odd if I ask?" Petya thought. "Well, never mind!" and immediately,
blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see if they appeared
ironical, he said:

"May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him something to
eat?... Perhaps..."

"Yes, he's a poor little fellow," said Denisov, who evidently saw
nothing shameful in this reminder. "Call him in. His name is Vincent
Bosse. Have him fetched."

"I'll call him," said Petya.

"Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow," Denisov repeated.

Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. He slipped in
between the officers, came close to Denisov, and said:

"Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!"

And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.

"Bosse! Vincent!" Petya cried, stopping outside the door.

"Who do you want, sir?" asked a voice in the darkness.

Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured that
day.

"Ah, Vesenny?" said a Cossack.

Vincent, the boy's name, had already been changed by the Cossacks into
Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the peasants and soldiers. In both
these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched the impression
made by the young lad.

"He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya!
Vesenya!--Vesenny!" laughing voices were heard calling to one another in
the darkness.

"He's a smart lad," said an hussar standing near Petya. "We gave him
something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!"

The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the
darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door.

"Ah, c'est vous!" said Petya. "Voulez-vous manger? N'ayez pas peur, on
ne vous fera pas de mal," * he added shyly and affectionately, touching
the boy's hand. "Entrez, entrez." *(2)


     * "Ah, it's you! Do you want something to eat? Don't be
     afraid, they won't hurt you."

     * (2) "Come in, come in."


"Merci, monsieur," * said the drummer boy in a trembling almost childish
voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold.


    * "Thank you, sir."


There were many things Petya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but did
not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then in
the darkness he took the boy's hand and pressed it.

"Come in, come in!" he repeated in a gentle whisper. "Oh, what can I do
for him?" he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in first.

When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a distance from
him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to him. But
he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it would seem
ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.





CHAPTER VIII


The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya's attention from the drummer boy,
to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given, and whom he had had
dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept with their band and
not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya had heard in the army many
stories of Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery and of his cruelty to the
French, so from the moment he entered the hut Petya did not take his
eyes from him, but braced himself up more and more and held his head
high, that he might not be unworthy even of such company.

Dolokhov's appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.

Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas the
Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and everything he
did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in Moscow had worn
a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most correct officer of
the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a Guardsman's padded coat with
an Order of St. George at his buttonhole and a plain forage cap set
straight on his head. He took off his wet felt cloak in a corner of
the room, and without greeting anyone went up to Denisov and began
questioning him about the matter in hand. Denisov told him of the
designs the large detachments had on the transport, of the message Petya
had brought, and his own replies to both generals. Then he told him all
he knew of the French detachment.

"That's so. But we must know what troops they are and their numbers,"
said Dolokhov. "It will be necessary to go there. We can't start the
affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I like to work
accurately. Here now--wouldn't one of these gentlemen like to ride over
to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare uniform."

"I, I... I'll go with you!" cried Petya.

"There's no need for you to go at all," said Denisov, addressing
Dolokhov, "and as for him, I won't let him go on any account."

"I like that!" exclaimed Petya. "Why shouldn't I go?"

"Because it's useless."

"Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and that's
all. You'll take me, won't you?" he said, turning to Dolokhov.

"Why not?" Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of the
French drummer boy. "Have you had that youngster with you long?" he
asked Denisov.

"He was taken today but he knows nothing. I'm keeping him with me."

"Yes, and where do you put the others?" inquired Dolokhov.

"Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them," shouted Denisov,
suddenly flushing. "And I say boldly that I have not a single man's life
on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send thirty or
thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of staining--I speak
bluntly--staining the honor of a soldier?"

"That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count of
sixteen," said Dolokhov with cold irony, "but it's time for you to drop
it."

"Why, I've not said anything! I only say that I'll certainly go with
you," said Petya shyly.

"But for you and me, old fellow, it's time to drop these amenities,"
continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking of
this subject which irritated Denisov. "Now, why have you kept this lad?"
he went on, swaying his head. "Because you are sorry for him! Don't we
know those 'receipts' of yours? You send a hundred men away, and thirty
get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So isn't it all the
same not to send them?"

The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.

"That's not the point. I'm not going to discuss the matter. I do not
wish to take it on my conscience. You say they'll die. All wight. Only
not by my fault!"

Dolokhov began laughing.

"Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if
they did catch me they'd string me up to an aspen tree, and with all
your chivalry just the same." He paused. "However, we must get to work.
Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms in it.
Well, are you coming with me?" he asked Petya.

"I? Yes, yes, certainly!" cried Petya, blushing almost to tears and
glancing at Denisov.

While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what should be done with
prisoners, Petya had once more felt awkward and restless; but again he
had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about. "If grown-up,
distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and right," thought he.
"But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine that I'll obey him and
that he can order me about. I will certainly go to the French camp with
Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!"

And to all Denisov's persuasions, Petya replied that he too was
accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that he
never considered personal danger.

"For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them there
are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are only two
of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go, so don't
hinder me," said he. "It will only make things worse..."





CHAPTER IX


Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov rode to
the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French camp,
and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended into the
hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks accompanying
him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot along the road to the
bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with excitement, rode by his side.

"If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol," whispered
he.

"Don't talk Russian," said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper, and at that
very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui vive?" *
and the click of a musket.


    * "Who goes there?"


The blood rushed to Petya's face and he grasped his pistol.

"Lanciers du 6-me," * replied Dolokhov, neither hastening nor slackening
his horse's pace.


    * "Lancers of the 6th Regiment."


The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.

"Mot d'ordre." *


    * "Password."


Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.

"Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?" * he asked.


    * "Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?"


"Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not replying.

"Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas le
mot d'ordre..." cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring up and riding straight
at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici." *


     * "When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask
     him for the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is
     here."


And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped
aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a walk.

Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov stopped
him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The man,
a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up to
Dolokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply and in
a friendly way that the commander and the officers were higher up
the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he called the
landowner's house.

Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk could be
heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the courtyard of the
landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted and approached a
big blazing campfire, around which sat several men talking noisily.
Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge of the fire and
a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by the fire, was
kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.

"Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was sitting
in the shadow at the other side of the fire.

"He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another, laughing.

Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of
Dolokhov's and Petya's steps as they advanced to the fire leading their
horses.

"Bonjour, messieurs!" * said Dolokhov loudly and clearly.


    * "Good day, gentlemen."


There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire,
and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up to
Dolokhov.

"Is that you, Clement?" he asked. "Where the devil...?" But, noticing
his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dolokhov as a
stranger, asking what he could do for him.

Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake their
regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether they knew
anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything, and Petya
thought the officers were beginning to look at him and Dolokhov with
hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were silent.

"If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too late," said
a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.

Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on farther that
night.

He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot and
squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the long
neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dolokhov and again asked
to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not heard the
question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe which he took
from his pocket began asking the officer in how far the road before them
was safe from Cossacks.

"Those brigands are everywhere," replied an officer from behind the
fire.

Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers
such as his companion and himself, "but probably they would not dare to
attack large detachments?" he added inquiringly. No one replied.

"Well, now he'll come away," Petya thought every moment as he stood by
the campfire listening to the talk.

But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and began
putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the battalion,
how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about the Russian
prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said:

"A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would be
better to shoot such rabble," and burst into loud laughter, so strange
that Petya thought the French would immediately detect their disguise,
and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.

No one replied a word to Dolokhov's laughter, and a French officer whom
they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and whispered
something to a companion. Dolokhov got up and called to the soldier who
was holding their horses.

"Will they bring our horses or not?" thought Petya, instinctively
drawing nearer to Dolokhov.

The horses were brought.

"Good evening, gentlemen," said Dolokhov.

Petya wished to say "Good night" but could not utter a word. The
officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was a long time mounting
his horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at a
footpace. Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see whether or
not the French were running after them, but not daring to.

Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back across the open
country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and listened.
"Do you hear?" he asked. Petya recognized the sound of Russian voices
and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round their campfires.
When they had descended to the bridge Petya and Dolokhov rode past the
sentinel, who without saying a word paced morosely up and down it, then
they descended into the hollow where the Cossacks awaited them.

"Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, 'at the first shot at daybreak,'" said
Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya seized hold of him.

"Really!" he cried, "you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how splendid!
How I love you!"

"All right, all right!" said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let go of him
and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya was bending toward him and
wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his horse, and
vanished into the darkness.





CHAPTER X


Having returned to the watchman's hut, Petya found Denisov in the
passage. He was awaiting Petya's return in a state of agitation,
anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Yes, thank God!" he repeated, listening to
Petya's rapturous account. "But, devil take you, I haven't slept because
of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can still get a nap before
morning."

"But... no," said Petya, "I don't want to sleep yet. Besides I know
myself, if I fall asleep it's finished. And then I am used to not
sleeping before a battle."

He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his
expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next day.

Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went out of doors.

It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were still
falling from the trees. Near the watchman's hut the black shapes of the
Cossacks' shanties and of horses tethered together could be seen. Behind
the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their horses beside them
were discernible, and in the hollow the dying campfire gleamed red.
Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep; here and there, amid the
sounds of falling drops and the munching of the horses near by, could be
heard low voices which seemed to be whispering.

Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.
Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses
munching their oats. In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which
he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to it.

"Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he, sniffing its
nostrils and kissing it.

"Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a
wagon.

"No, ah... Likhachev--isn't that your name? Do you know I have only just
come back! We've been into the French camp."

And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride but
also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his life
than to act "just anyhow."

"Well, you should get some sleep now," said the Cossack.

"No, I am used to this," said Petya. "I say, aren't the flints in your
pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don't you want any? You can
have some."

The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look at
Petya.

"Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately," said Petya.
"Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and then
they're sorry for it afterwards. I don't like that."

"Just so," said the Cossack.

"Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen my
saber for me? It's got bl..." (Petya feared to tell a lie, and the saber
never had been sharpened.) "Can you do it?"

"Of course I can."

Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the warlike
sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat on its
edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.

"I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya.

"Some are, and some aren't--like us."

"Well, and that boy?"

"Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast asleep
after his fright. He was that glad!"

After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the
sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure appeared.

"What are you sharpening?" asked a man coming up to the wagon.

"Why, this gentleman's saber."

"That's right," said the man, whom Petya took to be an hussar. "Was the
cup left here?"

"There, by the wheel!"

The hussar took the cup.

"It must be daylight soon," said he, yawning, and went away.

Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's
guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon
captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under
it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark
blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below to
the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had come
for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew nor
waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom where
nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be the
watchman's hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very depths of
the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be the eye of an
enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a wagon, but it might
very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon but on a terribly high
tower from which, if he fell, he would have to fall for a whole day or a
whole month, or go on falling and never reach the bottom. Perhaps it
was just the Cossack, Likhachev, who was sitting under the wagon, but it
might be the kindest, bravest, most wonderful, most splendid man in the
world, whom no one knew of. It might really have been that the hussar
came for water and went back into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply
vanished--disappeared altogether and dissolved into nothingness.

Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was in a
fairy kingdom where everything was possible.

He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth.
It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly
sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if the clouds
were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes it seemed as
if the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed to be rising
high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low that one could
touch it with one's hand.

Petya's eyes began to close and he swayed a little.

The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed and
jostled one another. Someone snored.

"Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg..." hissed the saber against the whetstone,
and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious orchestra playing some unknown,
sweetly solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha and more so than
Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about it, and so the
melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him particularly
fresh and attractive. The music became more and more audible. The melody
grew and passed from one instrument to another. And what was played was
a fugue--though Petya had not the least conception of what a fugue is.
Each instrument--now resembling a violin and now a horn, but better
and clearer than violin or horn--played its own part, and before it had
finished the melody merged with another instrument that began almost the
same air, and then with a third and a fourth; and they all blended into
one and again became separate and again blended, now into solemn church
music, now into something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.

"Oh--why, that was in a dream!" Petya said to himself, as he lurched
forward. "It's in my ears. But perhaps it's music of my own. Well, go
on, my music! Now!..."

He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance, sounds
fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again all
mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. "Oh, this is delightful!
As much as I like and as I like!" said Petya to himself. He tried to
conduct that enormous orchestra.

"Now softly, softly die away!" and the sounds obeyed him. "Now fuller,
more joyful. Still more and more joyful!" And from an unknown depth rose
increasingly triumphant sounds. "Now voices join in!" ordered Petya. And
at first from afar he heard men's voices and then women's. The voices
grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and Petya listened to their
surpassing beauty in awe and joy.

With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from the
trees, and the hissing of the saber, "Ozheg-zheg-zheg..." and again the
horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the choir but
joining in it.

Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all the
time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no one to
share it. He was awakened by Likhachev's kindly voice.

"It's ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!"

Petya woke up.

"It's getting light, it's really getting light!" he exclaimed.

The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to their
very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare branches.
Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it
to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and sheathed
it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening their saddle
girths.

"And here's the commander," said Likhachev.

Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya, gave
orders to get ready.





CHAPTER XI


The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, tightened
their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood by the
watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the detachment
passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the trees in the mist
of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through the mud. The esaul
gave some orders to his men. Petya held his horse by the bridle,
impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face, having been bathed
in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were particularly brilliant.
Cold shivers ran down his spine and his whole body pulsed rhythmically.

"Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing the horses."

The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack because the
saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted. Petya put his
foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to nip his leg, but
Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of his own weight and,
turning to look at the hussars starting in the darkness behind him, rode
up to Denisov.

"Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for God's
sake...!" said he.

Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He turned to
glance at him.

"I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to obey me and not shove
yourself forward anywhere."

He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all the way.
When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably growing
light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the esaul and
the Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had all ridden by,
Denisov touched his horse and rode down the hill. Slipping onto their
haunches and sliding, the horses descended with their riders into the
ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation of his body constantly
increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter, but the mist still hid
distant objects. Having reached the valley, Denisov looked back and
nodded to a Cossack beside him.

"The signal!" said he.

The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the tramp
of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from various sides,
and then more shots.

At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya lashed his
horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denisov who
shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was
fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge.
Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the bridge
he collided with a Cossack who had fallen 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 horse's
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
Petya's mind and he galloped on to the place from which the rapid firing
could be heard. The shots came from the yard of the landowner's 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 Petya's 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 won't 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 Petya's 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 Junot's 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, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder that Pierre
had noticed at their first halting place after leaving Moscow had now
reached the utmost limit.

The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead
horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments
continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again
lagging behind it.

Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the
soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run
headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and
abused each other for their causeless panic.

These three groups traveling together--the cavalry stores, the convoy of
prisoners, and Junot's baggage train--still constituted a separate and
united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly melting away.

Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred and
twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been
captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured
or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers
from Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned that
a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to the
prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had been
shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoon belonging to the
marshal had been found in his possession.

The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three hundred
and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a hundred now
remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort than even the
cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood that the saddles and
Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold and hungry soldiers
should have to stand and guard equally cold and hungry Russians who
froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case the order was to
shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the
escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were in,
of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering
their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness
and severity.

At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the
prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores, several
of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away, but were
recaptured by the French and shot.

The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer prisoners
should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been abandoned.
All who could walk went together, and after the third stage Pierre had
rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen
Karataev for its master.

On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill with the
fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he grew
gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know why, but
since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to
go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning with which
Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when he smelled
the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than before, Pierre
moved farther away and did not think about him.

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect
but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for
happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple
human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from
superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had
learned still another new, consolatory truth--that nothing in this world
is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man
can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he
need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom
have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the
person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as
he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled
while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing
shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet
that were covered with sores--his footgear having long since fallen to
pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife--of his own free
will as it had seemed to him--he had been no more free than now
when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself
subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely
felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet.
(The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of
the gunpowder they used instead of salt was even pleasant; there was
no great cold, it was always warm walking in the daytime, and at night
there were the campfires; the lice that devoured him warmed his body.)
The one thing that was at first hard to bear was his feet.

After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the
campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when
everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,
walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more
terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,
but thought of other things.

Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the
saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing
to another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows
superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.

He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged
behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did not
think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would soon
have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The
harder his position became and the more terrible the future, the more
independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful
and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.





CHAPTER XIII


At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill along
the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the roughness of
the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd around him and
then again at his feet. The former and the latter were alike familiar
and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran merrily along the side
of the road, sometimes in proof of its agility and self-satisfaction
lifting one hind leg and hopping along on three, and then again going on
all four and rushing to bark at the crows that sat on the carrion. The
dog was merrier and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around lay
the flesh of different animals--from men to horses--in various stages
of decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the
dog could eat all it wanted.

It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment it
might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began raining
harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed the water,
which ran along the ruts in streams.

Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps in
threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally addressing the
rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt harder!"

It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and
deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and
comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction from a
conversation with Karataev the day before.

At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying campfire,
Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was burning better.
There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up--head and all--with
his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers in his
effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre knew. It
was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually free of
his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the fire and
heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his pathetic face
brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at his heart. His
feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he wished to go away,
but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down, trying not to look at
Platon.

"Well, how are you?" he asked.

"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death," replied
Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun.

"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale emaciated face
and a particularly happy light in his eyes, "you see, brother..."

Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told it
to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially joyful
emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that tale as to
something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently felt as he told
it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was of an old merchant
who lived a good and God-fearing life with his family, and who went once
to the Nizhni fair with a companion--a rich merchant.

Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning his
companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained knife
was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried, knouted, and
his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as Karataev put it,
he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.

"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten years
or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict, submitting as
he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God for death. Well, one
night the convicts were gathered just as we are, with the old man among
them. And they began telling what each was suffering for, and how they
had sinned against God. One told how he had taken a life, another had
taken two, a third had set a house on fire, while another had simply
been a vagrant and had done nothing. So they asked the old man: 'What
are you being punished for, Daddy?'--'I, my dear brothers,' said he, 'am
being punished for my own and other men's sins. But I have not killed
anyone or taken anything that was not mine, but have only helped my
poorer brothers. I was a merchant, my dear brothers, and had much
property. 'And he went on to tell them all about it in due order. 'I
don't grieve for myself,' he says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me.
Only I am sorry for my old wife and the children,' and the old man began
to weep. Now it happened that in the group was the very man who had
killed the other merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When,
and in what month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache.
So he comes up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet!
'You are perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true,
lads, that this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for
nothing! I,' he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your
head while you were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's
sake!'"

Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and he drew
the logs together.

"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners in His
sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears. Well,
and what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his face
brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he now had
to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his story:
"What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to the
authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great sinner),
'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let him suffer
because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down and the
papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and while
they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in the
papers all in due form--the authorities I mean--time passed. The affair
reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to set the
merchant free and give him a compensation that had been awarded. The
paper arrived and they began to look for the old man. 'Where is the old
man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A paper has come from
the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here Karataev's lower jaw
trembled, "but God had already forgiven him--he was dead! That's how it
was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat for a long time silent,
gazing before him with a smile.

And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story itself
but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that lit up
Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of that joy.





CHAPTER XIV


"A vos places!" * suddenly cried a voice.


    * "To your places."


A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something
joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the
prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left came
smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the prisoners at a
trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension people feel at the
approach of those in authority. The prisoners thronged together and were
pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.

"The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!" and hardly had the
sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses rattled
by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat with a
tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of the
marshals. His eye fell on Pierre's large and striking figure, and in
the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre thought he
detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.

The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with a
red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several officers
formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their faces all
looked excited and worried.

"What did he say? What did he say?" Pierre heard them ask.

While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in a
crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he had not yet seen that morning.
He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On his face,
besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday while telling
the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently, there was now an
expression of quiet solemnity.

Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with
tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say something to
him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself. He made as if he
did not notice that look and moved hastily away.

When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round. Karataev
was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch tree and two
Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look round again
but went limping up the hill.

From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the sound of a shot.
Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that he
had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to
Smolensk--a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And
he again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one of
whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale, and
in the expression on their faces--one of them glanced timidly at
Pierre--there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of
the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and
remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt while
drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.

Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog began to howl.
"What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?" thought Pierre.

His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided looking
back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog was howling,
just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their faces.





CHAPTER XV


The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage train stopped at
the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the campfires.
Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh, lay down with his
back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He again slept as he had
done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.

Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or another,
gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same thoughts that had
been expressed in his dream at Mozhaysk.

"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that
movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness
of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed
than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in innocent
sufferings."

"Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind.

And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly old man
who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a bit,"
said the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was alive--a
vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted of
drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved and changed
places, sometimes several of them merging into one, sometimes one
dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and occupy as much
space as possible, but others striving to do the same compressed it,
sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.

"That is life," said the old teacher.

"How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not know
it before?"

"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect
Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from the
surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now, Karataev
has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?" said the
teacher.

"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.

He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a Russian
soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting a piece
of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and his sinewy,
hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. His
brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly visible by the glow of
the charcoal.

"It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a soldier
who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!"

And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned
away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier the
Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting something
with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the blue-gray dog,
sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.

"Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not finish.

Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his fancy--of
the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of the shot
heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty faces of the two
Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and of
Karataev's absence at this halt--and he was on the point of realizing
that Karataev had been killed, but just at that instant, he knew not
why, the recollection came to his mind of a summer evening he had spent
with a beautiful Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And
without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion
from them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country in
summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating
globe, and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.

Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid firing.
French soldiers were running past him.

"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of
Russians surrounded Pierre.

For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him. All
around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.

"Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping, as
they embraced Cossacks and hussars.

The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered them
clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he sat
among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier who
approached him, and kissed him, weeping.

Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd
of disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had
happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed
Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched them
with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent. On the
opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the prisoners and
marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.

"How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack.

"The second hundred," replied the Cossack.

"Filez, filez!" * Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this expression
from the French, and when his eyes met those of the prisoners they
flashed with a cruel light.


    * "Get along, get along!"


Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some Cossacks
who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had been dug
in the garden.





CHAPTER XVI


After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight of
the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men freezing,
or roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while carriages
with people dressed in furs continued to drive past, carrying away the
property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings, and dukes; but
the process of the flight and disintegration of the French army went on
essentially as before.

From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-three thousand men not
reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but pillage)
was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five thousand
had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding terms of the
progression could be determined mathematically. The French army melted
away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to Vyazma, from Vyazma
to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and from the Berezina to
Vilna--independently of the greater or lesser intensity of the cold,
the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any other particular conditions.
Beyond Vyazma the French army instead of moving in three columns huddled
together into one mass, and so went on to the end. Berthier wrote to his
Emperor (we know how far commanding officers allow themselves to diverge
from the truth in describing the condition of an army) and this is what
he said:


I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the various
corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages of the last
two or three days' march. They are almost disbanded. Scarcely a quarter
of the soldiers remain with the standards of their regiments, the others
go off by themselves in different directions hoping to find food and
escape discipline. In general they regard Smolensk as the place where
they hope to recover. During the last few days many of the men have been
seen to throw away their cartridges and their arms. In such a state
of affairs, whatever your ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your
Majesty's service demands that the army should be rallied at Smolensk
and should first of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted
cavalry, unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer
in proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out with
hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as well as a few days' rest.
Many have died these last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This
state of things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear that
unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer be under
control in case of an engagement.

November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.


After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them a promised land, the
French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own stores,
and when everything had been plundered fled farther.

They all went without knowing whither or why they were going. Still less
did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any orders to
him. But still he and those about him retained their old habits: wrote
commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day; called one another
sire, mon cousin, prince d'Eckmuhl, roi de Naples, and so on. But these
orders and reports were only on paper, nothing in them was acted upon
for they could not be carried out, and though they entitled one
another Majesties, Highnesses, or Cousins, they all felt that they were
miserable wretches who had done much evil for which they had now to
pay. And though they pretended to be concerned about the army, each
was thinking only of himself and of how to get away quickly and save
himself.





CHAPTER XVII


The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign
from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian
blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of
them occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his
whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into
a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to
escape runs straight into his opponent's arms.

At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road, Napoleon's
armies made their presence known, but later when they reached the
Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell tight--and
often thinking they were escaping ran right into the Russians.

Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit
and the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means
of approximately ascertaining the enemy's position--by cavalry
scouting--was not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent
and rapid change of position by each army, even what information was
obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was received one day
that the enemy had been in a certain position the day before, by the
third day when something could have been done, that army was already two
days' march farther on and in quite another position.

One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk there were several
different roads available for the French, and one would have thought
that during their stay of four days they might have learned where
the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan and
undertaken something new. But after a four days' halt the mob, with no
maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten track, neither
to the right nor to the left but along the old--the worst--road, through
Krasnoe and Orsha.

Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French separated
in their flight and spread out over a distance of twenty-four hours. In
front of them all fled the Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The
Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take the road to the right
beyond the Dnieper--which was the only reasonable thing for him to
do--themselves turned to the right and came out onto the highroad at
Krasnoe. And here as in a game of blindman's buff the French ran into
our vanguard. Seeing their enemy unexpectedly the French fell into
confusion and stopped short from the sudden fright, but then they
resumed their flight, abandoning their comrades who were farther behind.
Then for three days separate portions of the French army--first Murat's
(the vice-king's), then Davout's, and then Ney's--ran, as it were, the
gauntlet of the Russian army. They abandoned one another, abandoned
all their heavy baggage, their artillery, and half their men, and fled,
getting past the Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.

Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of
Smolensk which were in nobody's way, because despite the unfortunate
plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor
against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of ten
thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one thousand men left,
having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having crossed the
Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.

From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna, still playing
at blindman's buff with the pursuing army. At the Berezina they again
became disorganized, many were drowned and many surrendered, but those
who got across the river fled farther. Their supreme chief donned a
fur coat and, having seated himself in a sleigh, galloped on alone,
abandoning his companions. The others who could do so drove away too,
leaving those who could not to surrender or die.





CHAPTER XVIII


This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which they did
all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they turned onto
the Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the army, none of the
movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might have thought that
regarding this period of the campaign the historians, who attributed
the actions of the mass to the will of one man, would have found it
impossible to make the story of the retreat fit their theory. But
no! Mountains of books have been written by the historians about this
campaign, and everywhere are described Napoleon's arrangements, the
maneuvers, and his profound plans which guided the army, as well as the
military genius shown by his marshals.

The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a
well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along
which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him--this unnecessary retreat along
a devastated road--is explained to us as being due to profound
considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for
his retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is
described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle
and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick
and said:

"J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general," * but
nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the
scattered fragments of the army he left behind.


     * "I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act
     the general."


Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals, especially
of Ney--a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he made his way by
night around through the forest and across the Dnieper and escaped to
Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his men.

And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic
army is presented to us by the historians as something great and
characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in
ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child
is taught to be ashamed of--even that act finds justification in the
historians' language.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical
ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all
that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving
conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems, excludes the standards
of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing is wrong, there is no
atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.

"C'est grand!" * say the historians, and there no longer exists either
good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good, not
grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of some
special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm
fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his comrades
but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que c'est
grand, *(2) and his soul is tranquil.


     * "It is great."

     * (2) That it is great.


"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n'y
a qu'un pas," * said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been
repeating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule
il n'y a qu'un pas.


    * "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."


And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with
the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness
and immeasurable meanness.

For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human
actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity,
goodness, and truth are absent.





CHAPTER XIX


What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign
of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,
dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is
that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three armies
surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered French, hungry
and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the historians relate)
the aim of the Russians was to stop the French, to cut them off, and
capture them all?

How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than the
French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose when it
had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim was to capture
them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when we had
surrounded them with superior forces we could not beat them? How could
that happen?

History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions
says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov, and
this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers...

But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were
guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried and
punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and others
were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible
why, the position of the Russian army being what it was at Krasnoe and
at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior forces), the French army
with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not captured, if that was what
the Russians aimed at.

The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military
historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is unfounded,
for we know that he could not restrain the troops from attacking at
Vyazma and Tarutino.

Why was the Russian army--which with inferior forces had withstood the
enemy in full strength at Borodino--defeated at Krasnoe and the Berezina
by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was numerically
superior?

If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing
Napoleon and his marshals--and that aim was not merely frustrated but
all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled--then this last
period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the French to be a
series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by Russian
historians.

The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims
of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical
rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit
that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for
Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.

But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a
conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French
victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series
of Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the
liberation of their country.

The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the historians
studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns and the generals,
from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth, have attributed to this
last period of the war of 1812 an aim that never existed, namely that of
cutting off and capturing Napoleon with his marshals and his army.

There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have been
senseless and its attainment quite impossible.

It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon's disorganized
army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that is to say, was
doing just what every Russian desired. So what was the use of performing
various operations on the French who were running away as fast as they
possibly could?

Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men whose
whole energy was directed to flight.

Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's own troops in
order to destroy the French army, which without external interference
was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its path was not
blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than it actually
did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original army.

Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the
Emperor, kings, and dukes--whose capture would have been in the highest
degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of
the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized. Still more senseless
would have been the wish to capture army corps of the French, when our
own army had melted away to half before reaching Krasnoe and a whole
division would have been needed to convoy the corps of prisoners, and
when our men were not always getting full rations and the prisoners
already taken were perishing of hunger.

All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon and his
army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving out of
his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had planted, should
run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The only thing to be said
in excuse of that gardener would be that he was very angry. But not even
that could be said for those who drew up this project, for it was not
they who had suffered from the trampled beds.

But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would have
been senseless, it was impossible.

It was impossible first because--as experience shows that a three-mile
movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with the plans--the
probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein effecting a junction
on time at an appointed place was so remote as to be tantamount to
impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when he received the plan
remarked that diversions planned over great distances do not yield the
desired results.

Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with which
Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than the
Russians possessed would have been required.

Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off" has no
meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army. To cut
off an army--to bar its road--is quite impossible, for there is always
plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when nothing can
be seen, as the military scientists might convince themselves by the
example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only possible to capture
prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it is only possible
to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men can only be taken
prisoners if they surrender according to the rules of strategy and
tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops quite rightly did not
consider that this suited them, since death by hunger and cold awaited
them in flight or captivity alike.

Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the world
began has a war been fought under such conditions as those that obtained
in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the French strained its
strength to the utmost and could not have done more without destroying
itself.

During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe it
lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to the
population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of the army
without a battle.

And it is of this period of the campaign--when the army lacked boots
and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and
was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees
of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and
the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be
maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for
months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and
cold, when half the army perished in a single month--it is of this
period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich
should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to
another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than knee-deep
in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and "cut off" the
French and so on and so on.

The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should have been
done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not to blame
because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed that they should
do what was impossible.

All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between the
facts and the historical accounts only arises because the historians
dealing with the matter have written the history of the beautiful words
and sentiments of various generals, and not the history of the events.

To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do their
surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but the question
of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals and in graves
does not even interest them, for it does not come within the range of
their investigation.

Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans and
consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who took a
direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed insoluble
easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.

The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in
the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it was
senseless and unattainable.

The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion. That aim
was attained in the first place of itself, as the French ran away,
and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight. Secondly it was
attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying the French, and
thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was following the French,
ready to use its strength in case their movement stopped.

The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a
menace than to strike the running animal on the head.





BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13





CHAPTER I


When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror: substance
similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it is a
beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this horror at
the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual wound, which
like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes heals, but always
aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.

After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike felt this.
Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing cloud of
death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the face. They
carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and painful contact.
Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street, a summons to
dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, or worse still any
word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an insult, painfully
irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary quiet in which
they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful choir that still
resounded in their imagination, and hindered their gazing into those
mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant had opened out before
them.

Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and pain.
They spoke little even to one another, and when they did it was of very
unimportant matters.

Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of
a future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did
they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them that
what they had lived through and experienced could not be expressed in
words, and that any reference to the details of his life infringed the
majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been accomplished before
their eyes.

Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of everything
that might lead up to the subject--this halting on all sides at the
boundary of what they might not mention--brought before their minds with
still greater purity and clearness what they were both feeling.

But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent arbiter of
her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was the first to
be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which she had dwelt
for the first fortnight. She received letters from her relations to
which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas had been put
was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came to Yaroslavl with reports
on the state of their affairs and with advice and suggestions that they
should return to Moscow to the house on the Vozdvizhenka Street, which
had remained uninjured and needed only slight repairs. Life did not
stand still and it was necessary to live. Hard as it was for Princess
Mary to emerge from the realm of secluded contemplation in which she
had lived till then, and sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave
Natasha alone, yet the cares of life demanded her attention and she
involuntarily yielded to them. She went through the accounts with
Alpatych, conferred with Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and
made preparations for the journey to Moscow.

Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making
preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.

Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her to Moscow,
and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw their daughter
losing strength every day and thought that a change of scene and the
advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.

"I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed to
her. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room, with
difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation rather than
of sorrow.

After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her grief,
Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself, sitting huddled
up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and twisting
something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing intently and
fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This solitude exhausted
and tormented her but she was in absolute need of it. As soon as anyone
entered she got up quickly, changed her position and expression, and
picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting impatiently for the
intruder to go.

She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that
on which--with a terrible questioning too great for her strength--her
spiritual gaze was fixed.

One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressed in a
black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a knot, was
crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously crumpling and
smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at a corner of the
door.

She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone--to the other side
of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never before
thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and improbable,
was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible than this side of
life, where everything was either emptiness and desolation or suffering
and indignity.

She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine him
otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he had been
at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.

She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own, and
sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.

There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning
his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his
shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and a
wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs twitches
just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is struggling with
terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does he have that pain? What
does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thought Natasha. He noticed her
watching him, raised his eyes, and began to speak seriously:

"One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself forever to a
suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he looked searchingly
at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to think what
she would say. She said: "This can't go on--it won't. You will get
well--quite well."

She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what she
had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at those words
and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in that protracted
gaze.

"I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would be dreadful if
he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because it would have
been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently. He thought it
would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live and feared death.
And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not say what I meant.
I thought quite differently. Had I said what I thought, I should have
said: even if he had to go on dying, to die continually before my eyes,
I should have been happy compared with what I am now. Now there is
nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No, he did not and never will know
it. And now it will never, never be possible to put it right." And
now he again seemed to be saying the same words to her, only in her
imagination Natasha this time gave him a different answer. She stopped
him and said: "Terrible for you, but not for me! You know that for me
there is nothing in life but you, and to suffer with you is the greatest
happiness for me," and he took her hand and pressed it as he had
pressed it that terrible evening four days before his death. And in her
imagination she said other tender and loving words which she might have
said then but only spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..."
she said, convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a
desperate effort...

She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in her
eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.
Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again with a
strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And now, now
it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at the instant
when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a
loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her ears. Dunyasha,
her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a frightened look
on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.

"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange, excited
look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she finished
with a sob.





CHAPTER II


Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling
a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of
them--her father, mother, and Sonya--were so near to her, so familiar,
so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult to
the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not
merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not grasp
them.

"What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live
their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha.

As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of
her mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He
had evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were
choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and
burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round face.

"Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a child
and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost fell into
it, covering his face with his hands.

Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole being.
Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache as if
something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But the pain
was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the oppressive
constraint that had prevented her taking part in life. The sight of her
father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that she heard through the
door, made her immediately forget herself and her own grief.

She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to her
mother's door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came out
from that room and taking Natasha by the arm said something to her.
Natasha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid steps, pausing
at the door for an instant as if struggling with herself, and then ran
to her mother.

The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward position,
stretching out and beating her head against the wall. Sonya and the
maids were holding her arms.

"Natasha! Natasha!..." cried the countess. "It's not true... it's not
true... He's lying... Natasha!" she shrieked, pushing those around her
away. "Go away, all of you; it's not true! Killed!... ha, ha, ha!...
It's not true!"

Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother, embraced
her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face toward
herself, and clung to her.

"Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy," she kept on
whispering, not pausing an instant.

She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her,
demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her
mother's dress.

"My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!..." she whispered
incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her own
irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.

The countess pressed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and became
quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed swiftness,
glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natasha began to press her
daughter's head with all her strength. Then she turned toward her
daughter's face which was wincing with pain and gazed long at it.

"Natasha, you love me?" she said in a soft trustful whisper. "Natasha,
you would not deceive me? You'll tell me the whole truth?"

Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look there was
nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.

"My darling Mummy!" she repeated, straining all the power of her love to
find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that crushed her
mother.

And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing to
believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in the bloom
of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.

Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the
next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother. Her
persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the countess
every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling her to life.

During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few minutes,
and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and closed her eyes,
but opened them again on hearing the bedstead creak. The countess was
sitting up in bed and speaking softly.

"How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won't you have some tea?"
Natasha went up to her. "You have improved in looks and grown more
manly," continued the countess, taking her daughter's hand.

"Mamma! What are you saying..."

"Natasha, he is no more, no more!"

And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first
time.





CHAPTER III


Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried to
replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able to
restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natasha
remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge chair
in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her incessantly
because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones soothed her
mother.

The mother's wounded spirit could not heal. Petya's death had torn from
her half her life. When the news of Petya's death had come she had been
a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a month later she left her room
a listless old woman taking no interest in life. But the same blow that
almost killed the countess, this second blow, restored Natasha to life.

A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is like
a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep wound may
heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike can yet
heal completely only as the result of a vital force from within.

Natasha's wound healed in that way. She thought her life was ended,
but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the essence of
life--love--was still active within her. Love awoke and so did life.

Prince Andrew's last days had bound Princess Mary and Natasha together;
this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another. Princess Mary
put off her departure, and for three weeks looked after Natasha as if
she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed in her mother's bedroom
had strained Natasha's physical strength.

One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever, Princess Mary took
her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natasha lay down,
but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she
called her back.

"I don't want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little."

"You are tired--try to sleep."

"No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me."

"She is much better. She spoke so well today," said Princess Mary.

Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned
Princess Mary's face.

"Is she like him?" thought Natasha. "Yes, like and yet not like. But she
is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me. What
is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind like? What
does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!"

"Mary," she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary's hand to herself,
"Mary, you mustn't think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love you!
Let us be quite, quite friends."

And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making
Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her feelings.

From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only
between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha. They
were continually kissing and saying tender things to one another and
spent most of their time together. When one went out the other became
restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony
with one another than either of them felt with herself when alone. A
feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them; an exclusive
feeling of life being possible only in each other's presence.

Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were already
in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They spoke most
of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her
mother, her father, and her daydreams; and Natasha, who with a passive
lack of understanding had formerly turned away from that life of
devotion, submission, and the poetry of Christian self-sacrifice, now
feeling herself bound to Princess Mary by affection, learned to love her
past too and to understand a side of life previously incomprehensible to
her. She did not think of applying submission and self-abnegation to her
own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood
and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For
Princess Mary, listening to Natasha's tales of childhood and early
youth, there also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of
life: belief in life and its enjoyment.

Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they
thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him had
the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without being
conscious of it.

Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all
talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was
suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,
and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm
carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her
drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed to
her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.

One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.
Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and
then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.

Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she called
again--though she could hear Dunyasha coming--called her in the deep
chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, and listened attentively
to herself.

She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer
of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, delicate
young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking root would so
cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that
it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound had begun to heal
from within.

At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count
insisted on Natasha's going with her to consult the doctors.





CHAPTER IV


After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold
back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy and
so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the Russians
who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a battle. The
flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the French could
not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke down, and the
information received of the movements of the French was never reliable.

The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous marching
at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not go any
faster.

To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only
necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not
losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and
less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that place a
hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty thousand.

The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our army
as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference was that
the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of destruction
as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen were left behind
in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind were among their
own people. The chief cause of the wastage of Napoleon's army was
the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing proof of this is the
corresponding decrease of the Russian army.

Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the
movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian
army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at
Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of our
army.

But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of the
army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident, another
reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself to Kutuzov.
The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French. The road the
French would take was unknown, and so the closer our troops trod on
their heels the greater distance they had to cover. Only by following
at some distance could one cut across the zigzag path of the French. All
the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals meant fresh movements of
the army and a lengthening of its marches, whereas the only reasonable
aim was to shorten those marches. To that end Kutuzov's activity was
directed during the whole campaign from Moscow to Vilna--not casually or
intermittently but so consistently that he never once deviated from it.

Kutuzov felt and knew--not by reasoning or science but with the whole of
his Russian being--what every Russian soldier felt: that the French were
beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven out; but at the
same time he like the soldiers realized all the hardship of this march,
the rapidity of which was unparalleled for such a time of the year.

But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian army,
who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody, and for some
reason to capture a king or a duke--it seemed that now--when any battle
must be horrible and senseless--was the very time to fight and conquer
somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when one after
another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with those
soldiers--ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved--who within a
month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half their number,
and who at the best if the flight continued would have to go a greater
distance than they had already traversed, before they reached the
frontier.

This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow, and
to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians stumbled on
the French army.

So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three
French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen
thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous
encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob
of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three
days.

Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and so,"
etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition.
Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the French crowds
that were running past, and demanded reinforcements which did not
arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and hid themselves
in the forest by night, making their way round as best they could, and
continued their flight.

Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the
commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found when
he was wanted--that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche * as he styled
himself--who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys demanding
their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was ordered to do.


    * Knight without fear and without reproach.


"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and
pointing out the French to the cavalry.

And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could
scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented
to them--that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,
frost-bitten, and starving--and the column that had been presented to
them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been anxious to
do.

At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several hundred
cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputed as to
who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their
achievement--though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon, or at
least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one another and
especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.

These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of the
most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes and
imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable
deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the
campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought of
nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from the Linen
Factories because he was comfortable there, that at Krasnoe he checked
the advance because on learning that Napoleon was there he had quite
lost his head, and that it was probable that he had an understanding
with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.

Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions, talk
in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as grand,
while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak
old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite--a sort of puppet
useful only because he had a Russian name.





CHAPTER V


In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor
was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written by order
of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a cunning court
liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at
Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian army of the glory of
complete victory over the French. *


     * History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and
     reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at
     Krasnoe, by Bogdanovich.


Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian mind
does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary individuals
who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their personal will to
it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish such men for discerning
the higher laws.

For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon--that most
insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in exile, showed
human dignity--Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he
is grand. But Kutuzov--the man who from the beginning to the end of his
activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or deed from Borodino to
Vilna, presented an example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice
and a present consciousness of the future importance of what was
happening--Kutuzov seems to them something indefinite and pitiful, and
when speaking of him and of the year 1812 they always seem a little
ashamed.

And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose
activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be
difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the
will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find
an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being so
completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov's efforts were
directed in 1812.

Kutuzov never talked of "forty centuries looking down from the
Pyramids," of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of
what he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said
nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the
simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most
ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de
Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with
generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who tried
to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza bridge
galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for having caused the
destruction of Moscow, and said: "How was it you promised not to abandon
Moscow without a battle?" Kutuzov replied: "And I shall not abandon
Moscow without a battle," though Moscow was then already abandoned. When
Arakcheev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that Ermolov ought to
be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied: "Yes, I was
just saying so myself," though a moment before he had said quite the
contrary. What did it matter to him--who then alone amid a senseless
crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what was
happening--what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed the
calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it matter to
him who was appointed chief of the artillery.

Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man--who by
experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the
words serving as their expression are not what move people--use quite
meaningless words that happened to enter his head.

But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole
time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single aim
toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite of
himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real
thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be understood.
Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his disagreement
with those about him began, he alone said that the battle of Borodino
was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in his dispatches
and reports up to the time of his death. He alone said that the loss of
Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauriston's proposal of
peace, he said: There can be no peace, for such is the people's will. He
alone during the retreat of the French said that all our maneuvers are
useless, everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could
desire; that the enemy must be offered "a golden bridge"; that neither
the Tarutino, the Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that
we must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that he would
not sacrifice a single Russian for ten Frenchmen.

And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakcheev
to please the Emperor, he alone--incurring thereby the Emperor's
displeasure--said in Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier is
useless and harmful.

Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of the
events. His actions--without the smallest deviation--were all directed
to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his strength for
conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out
of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the sufferings of our people
and of our army.

This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was "Patience and Time,"
this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodino, investing the
preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov who before
the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be lost, he alone, in
contradiction to everyone else, declared till his death that Borodino
was a victory, despite the assurance of generals that the battle was
lost and despite the fact that for an army to have to retire after
winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during the whole retreat
insisted that battles, which were useless then, should not be fought,
and that a new war should not be begun nor the frontiers of Russia
crossed.

It is easy now to understand the significance of these events--if
only we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that
existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals--for the events and
results now lie before us.

But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general opinion,
so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the events that
in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?

The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of the
events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he possessed in
full purity and strength.

Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling caused
the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar's wish, to
select him--an old man in disfavor--to be their representative in the
national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest human
pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all his powers
not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing pity on
them.

That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not be cast
in the false mold of a European hero--the supposed ruler of men--that
history has invented.

To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of
greatness.





CHAPTER VI


The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle of
Krasnoe. Toward evening--after much disputing and many mistakes made by
generals who did not go to their proper places, and after adjutants had
been sent about with counterorders--when it had become plain that the
enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no
battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither his headquarters
had that day been transferred.

The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump little
white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented generals who
whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the road groups of
French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them)
were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dobroe an immense
crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with talk and wrapped and bandaged
in anything they had been able to get hold of, were standing in the road
beside a long row of unharnessed French guns. At the approach of the
commander in chief the buzz of talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on
Kutuzov who, wearing a white cap with a red band and a padded overcoat
that bulged on his round shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his
white horse. One of the generals was reporting to him where the guns and
prisoners had been captured.

Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general was
saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he gazed
attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a specially
wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by frost-bitten noses
and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and festering eyes.

One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them, one of
whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of raw
flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial in
the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the malevolent
expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the soldier with the
sores immediately turned away and went on with what he was doing.

Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He puckered his
face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head. At another
spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a Frenchman on the
shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly manner, and Kutuzov with
the same expression on his face again swayed his head.

"What were you saying?" he asked the general, who continuing his report
directed the commander in chief's attention to some standards captured
from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment.

"Ah, the standards!" said Kutuzov, evidently detaching himself with
difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.

He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at him from
all sides awaiting a word from him.

He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment, sighed deeply, and
closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers carrying
the standards to advance and surround the commander in chief with them.
Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds and then, submitting with evident
reluctance to the duty imposed by his position, raised his head
and began to speak. A throng of officers surrounded him. He looked
attentively around at the circle of officers, recognizing several of
them.

"I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers and then again the
officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words were
distinctly heard. "I thank you all for your hard and faithful service.
The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor to you
forever."

He paused and looked around.

"Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had accidentally
lowered the French eagle he was holding before the Preobrazhensk
standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he added, addressing
the men with a rapid movement of his chin.

"Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices.

While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his saddle
and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and apparently ironic
gleam.

"You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all at
once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no longer
the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who wanted to
tell his comrades something very important.

There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of the
soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was going to
say.

"You see, brothers, I know it's hard for you, but it can't be helped!
Bear up; it won't be for long now! We'll see our visitors off and then
we'll rest. The Tsar won't forget your service. It is hard for you, but
still you are at home while they--you see what they have come to," said
he, pointing to the prisoners. "Worse off than our poorest beggars.
While they were strong we didn't spare ourselves, but now we may even
pity them. They are human beings too. Isn't it so, lads?"

He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze fixed
upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew brighter
and brighter with an old man's mild smile, which drew the corners of his
lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased speaking and bowed
his head as if in perplexity.

"But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody
bastards!" he cried, suddenly lifting his head.

And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first time
during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the soldiers
laughing joyfully and shouting "Hurrah!"

Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could have
repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then changing
into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty sincerity of that
speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined with pity for the foe
and consciousness of the justice of our cause, exactly expressed by that
old man's good-natured expletives, was not merely understood but lay
in the soul of every soldier and found expression in their joyous and
long-sustained shouts. Afterwards when one of the generals addressed
Kutuzov asking whether he wished his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in
answering unexpectedly gave a sob, being evidently greatly moved.





CHAPTER VII


When the troops reached their night's halting place on the eighth of
November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already growing
dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional lightly
falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the falling
snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost grew
keener.

An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three thousand strong but
now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that night
at its halting place--a village on the highroad. The quartermasters who
met the regiment announced that all the huts were full of sick and dead
Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff. There was only one hut
available for the regimental commander.

The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the
village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.

Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its
lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep
through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village, and
immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of branches,
and merry voices could be heard from there. Another section amid the
regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a group was busy
getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the horses. A third
section scattered through the village arranging quarters for the staff
officers, carrying out the French corpses that were in the huts, and
dragging away boards, dry wood, and thatch from the roofs, for the
campfires, or wattle fences to serve for shelter.

Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle
wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.

"Now then, all together--shove!" cried the voices, and the huge surface
of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost, was seen
swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked more and
more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had been pushing
it. Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued.

"Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That's it... Where are
you shoving to?"

"Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!"

All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to sing. At
the end of the third verse as the last note died away, twenty voices
roared out at once: "Oo-oo-oo-oo! That's it. All together! Heave away,
boys!..." but despite their united efforts the wattle hardly moved, and
in the silence that followed the heavy breathing of the men was audible.

"Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand...
will you? You may want us one of these days."

Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into the
village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about
thirty-five feet long and seven feet high, moved forward along the
village street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of the
gasping men.

"Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now..."

Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.

"What are you up to?" suddenly came the authoritative voice of a
sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden.
"There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you
foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I'll give it to you!" shouted he,
hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back.
"Can't you make less noise?"

The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and wiped
his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling against
the wattle.

"There, how that devil hits out! He's made my face all bloody," said he
in a frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on.

"Don't you like it?" said a laughing voice, and moderating their tones
the men moved forward.

When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud as
before, interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives.

In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered and
were in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day and the
maneuvers suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a flank march
to the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture him.

By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place
the campfires were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood
crackled, the snow was melting, and black shadows of soldiers flitted
to and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been trodden
down.

Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without any
orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night, shelters
were rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being boiled, and muskets
and accouterments put in order.

The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by the
Eighth Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket rests,
and a campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo, called the
roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for the night--some
repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and some stripping
themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts.





CHAPTER VIII


One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched
conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time--lacking warm boots
and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the snow
with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations (the
commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)--they would have
presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.

On the contrary, the army had never under the best material conditions
presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was because all who
began to grow depressed or who lost strength were sifted out of the army
day by day. All the physically or morally weak had long since been
left behind and only the flower of the army--physically and
mentally--remained.

More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company than
anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and their
campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by their wattle
they demanded contributions of fuel.

"Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you lost or
have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a red-haired
and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the
smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch
some wood!" said he to another soldier.

This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being
robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier
they called "Jackdaw," a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose
obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into
the light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier
carrying a load of wood.

"Bring it here--that's fine!"

They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with
their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats, making
the flames hiss and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit their pipes.
The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood, setting his arms
akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and deftly on the spot
where he stood.

"Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It's well that I'm a
musketeer..." he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.

"Look out, your soles will fly off!" shouted the red-haired man,
noticing that the sole of the dancer's boot was hanging loose. "What a
fellow you are for dancing!"

The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw it
on the fire.

"Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of his
knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his foot.
"It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out his feet
toward the fire.

"They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've finished
hammering them, we're to receive double kits!"

"And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it seems,"
said one sergeant major.

"I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other.

"Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..."

"But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday."

"Yes, it's all very well, but when a man's feet are frozen how can he
walk?"

"Eh? Don't talk nonsense!" said a sergeant major.

"Do you want to be doing the same?" said an old soldier, turning
reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.

"Well, you know," said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in a
squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the
fire, "a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it's death. Take
me, now! I've got no strength left," he added, with sudden resolution
turning to the sergeant major. "Tell them to send me to hospital; I'm
aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up."

"That'll do, that'll do!" replied the sergeant major quietly.

The soldier said no more and the talk went on.

"What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is that
not one of them had what you might call real boots on," said a soldier,
starting a new theme. "They were no more than make-believes."

"The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for the
colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys," put in
the dancer. "As they turned them over one seemed still alive and, would
you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo."

"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was
white--as white as birchbark--and some of them are such fine fellows,
you might think they were nobles."

"Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there."

"But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with a
puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in his
own way. A queer lot!"

"But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at their
whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when they began
burying the dead--where the battle was you know--well, those dead had
been lying there for nearly a month, and says the peasant, 'they lie
as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell as a puff of powder
smoke.'"

"Was it from the cold?" asked someone.

"You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If it
had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,' he
says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he says,
'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag
them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are white as paper
and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'"

All were silent.

"It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to
gobble the same food as the gentry."

No one contradicted him.

"That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were all
called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days and
still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the wolves, he
says..."

"That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one worth
remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk."

"And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them and,
my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw down their
muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's only one
case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he didn't know the
right charm. He catches him and catches him--no good! He turns into
a bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no way of killing him
either."

"You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!"

"Liar, indeed! It's the real truth."

"If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the
ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he's
ruined!"

"Well, anyhow we're going to end it. He won't come here again," remarked
the old soldier, yawning.

The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to sleep.

"Look at the stars. It's wonderful how they shine! You would think the
women had spread out their linen," said one of the men, gazing with
admiration at the Milky Way.

"That's a sign of a good harvest next year."

"We shall want some more wood."

"You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That's queer."

"O Lord!"

"What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he's
sprawling!"

In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen asleep
could be heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now and again
exchanging a few words. From a campfire a hundred paces off came a sound
of general, merry laughter.

"Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!" said one of the
soldiers, "and what a lot of them there are!"

One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.

"They're having such fun," said he, coming back. "Two Frenchies have
turned up. One's quite frozen and the other's an awful swaggerer. He's
singing songs...."

"Oh, I'll go across and have a look...."

And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.





CHAPTER IX


The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest. A huge
campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow, lighting up the
branches of trees heavy with hoarfrost.

About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the forest,
and the crackling of dry branches.

"A bear, lads," said one of the men.

They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into the
bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging to
one another.

These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They came up
to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our soldiers did
not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an officer's hat
and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he had been going to
sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy soldier with a shawl
tied round his head, was stronger. He raised his companion and said
something, pointing to his mouth. The soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen,
spread a greatcoat on the ground for the sick man, and brought some
buckwheat porridge and vodka for both of them.

The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his head
wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.

When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he
suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the
soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and
resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire, looking at
the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally he emitted
a long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel, pointing to his
shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact that Ramballe was
an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer who had come up
to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would not take a French
officer into his hut to warm him, and when the messenger returned and
said that the colonel wished the officer to be brought to him, Ramballe
was told to go. He rose and tried to walk, but staggered and would have
fallen had not a soldier standing by held him up.

"You won't do it again, eh?" said one of the soldiers, winking and
turning mockingly to Ramballe.

"Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are--a real peasant!"
came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.

They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two
soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around their
necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively:

"Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh, my
brave, kind friends," and he leaned his head against the shoulder of one
of the men like a child.

Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire, surrounded by
the soldiers.

Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes, was
wearing a woman's cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round his
head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a French song
in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the nearest soldier.
The soldiers simply held their sides as they watched him.

"Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I'll soon pick it up. How is
it?" said the man--a singer and a wag--whom Morel was embracing.

"Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!" sang Morel, winking. "Ce
diable a quatre..." *


     * "Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy
     devil."


"Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!" repeated the soldier, flourishing
his arm and really catching the tune.

"Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!" rose their rough, joyous laughter from all sides.

Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.

"Well, go on, go on!"

    "Qui eut le triple talent,
    De boire, de battre,
    Et d'etre un vert galant." *


      * Who had a triple talent
      For drinking, for fighting,
      And for being a gallant old boy...


"It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!"

"Ke..." Zaletaev, brought out with effort: "ke-e-e-e," he drawled,
laboriously pursing his lips, "le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e
de-tra-va-ga-la" he sang.

"Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to eat?"

"Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after
starving."

They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to work on
his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they watched him.
The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse themselves with such
nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side of the fire, but one
would occasionally raise himself on an elbow and glance at Morel with a
smile.

"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his
coat. "Even wormwood grows on its own root."

"O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard
frost...."

They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was looking
at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now flaring
up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering something
gladsome and mysterious to one another.





CHAPTER X


The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical
progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has
been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and
not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been
and still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this is only
because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities their army
had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated at one moment
into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory, and on the
Russian side merely because in Petersburg--far from the seat of war--a
plan (again one of Pfuel's) had been devised to catch Napoleon in a
strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured himself that all
would happen according to plan, and therefore insisted that it was just
the crossing of the Berezina that destroyed the French army. In reality
the results of the crossing were much less disastrous to the French--in
guns and men lost--than Krasnoe had been, as the figures show.

The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact
that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans for
cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only possible
line of action--the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the army
demanded--namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd fled
at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed to
reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was impossible
to block its path. This was shown not so much by the arrangements it
made for crossing as by what took place at the bridges. When the bridges
broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from Moscow and women with
children who were with the French transport, all--carried on by vis
inertiae--pressed forward into boats and into the ice-covered water and
did not, surrender.

That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of pursuers
was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own people each
might hope for help from his fellows and the definite place he held
among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining in the same
pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share in the
necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed of the fact
that half the prisoners--with whom the Russians did not know what to
do--perished of cold and hunger despite their captors' desire to save
them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The most compassionate
Russian commanders, those favorable to the French--and even the
Frenchmen in the Russian service--could do nothing for the prisoners.
The French perished from the conditions to which the Russian army was
itself exposed. It was impossible to take bread and clothes from our
hungry and indispensable soldiers to give to the French who, though not
harmful, or hated, or guilty, were simply unnecessary. Some Russians
even did that, but they were exceptions.

Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was hope.
Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in collective
flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was concentrated.

The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the
remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of the
Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians, and
the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, who blamed one
another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of
the Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led
to dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly
expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a
respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was
to blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or
asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable
formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at
every turn.

Because they could not understand him all these people assumed that
it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never grasp the
profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his phrases (which
they thought were mere phrases) about a "golden bridge," about the
impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd of tatterdemalions,
and so forth. They had heard all that before. And all he said--that it
was necessary to await provisions, or that the men had no boots--was so
simple, while what they proposed was so complicated and clever, that
it was evident that he was old and stupid and that they, though not in
power, were commanders of genius.

After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and Petersburg
hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff reached their
maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get angry and write
to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the Emperor) the following
letter:

"On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency please
be so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of this, and there await
further commands and appointments from His Imperial Majesty."

But after Bennigsen's departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine
Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the beginning of the
campaign but had subsequently been removed from the army by Kutuzov.
Now having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of the Emperor's
displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the slowness of their
advance. The Emperor intended to join the army personally in a few days'
time.

The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs--this
same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief
against the sovereign's wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke and
heir--apparent from the army--who on his own authority and contrary
to the Emperor's will had decided on the abandonment of Moscow, now
realized at once that his day was over, that his part was played,
and that the power he was supposed to hold was no longer his. And he
understood this not merely from the attitude of the court. He saw on the
one hand that the military business in which he had played his part was
ended and felt that his mission was accomplished; and at the same time
he began to be conscious of the physical weariness of his aged body and
of the necessity of physical rest.

On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilna--his "dear Vilna"
as he called it. Twice during his career Kutuzov had been governor of
Vilna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured, he found old
friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of which he had
so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the cares of army
and state and, as far as the passions that seethed around him allowed,
immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had formerly been
accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that had still to be
done in the realm of history did not concern him at all.

Chichagov, one of the most zealous "cutters-off" and "breakers-up," who
had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece and then in Warsaw but
never wished to go where he was sent: Chichagov, noted for the boldness
with which he spoke to the Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to be
under an obligation to him because when he was sent to make peace
with Turkey in 1811 independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had
already been concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of
securing that peace was really Kutuzov's; this Chichagov was the first
to meet Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress
naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he handed
Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The contemptuously
respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man in his dotage was
expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of Chichagov, who knew
of the accusations that were being directed against Kutuzov.

When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally mentioned that the
vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at Borisov
had been recovered and would be restored to him.

"You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the
contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give
dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word he
spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov to be
animated by the same desire.

Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle penetrating
smile: "I meant merely to say what I said."

Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part of the
army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became extraordinarily slack
and physically feeble during his stay in that town. He attended to army
affairs reluctantly, left everything to his generals, and while awaiting
the Emperor's arrival led a dissipated life.

Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite--Count
Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others--the Emperor reached
Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove straight to
the castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred generals and staff
officers in full parade uniform stood in front of the castle, as well as
a guard of honor of the Semenov regiment.

A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with three
foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed into the
vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall porter's little
lodge.

A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress uniform,
his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his stomach,
waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its peaks to the
sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking with an effort
sideways down the steps to the level of the street, took in his hand the
report he had prepared for the Emperor.

There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka flew
furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh
in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be
descried.

From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating effect
on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all over,
readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up and,
at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the sleigh,
lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began speaking in his
smooth, ingratiating voice.

The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot,
frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to the
old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too, owing
to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings, had its
usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob.

The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard, and again
pressing the old man's hand went with him into the castle.

When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his
dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes made
at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions for a
future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The same
submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the
Emperor's commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before settled
on his face now.

When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered head was crossing
the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by someone's
voice saying:

"Your Serene Highness!"

Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of
Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which lay
a small object. Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected of
him.

Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed
across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the
object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the
First Class.





CHAPTER XI


Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the Emperor
honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received the Order of St. George
of the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest honors, but
everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him. The proprieties
were observed and the Emperor was the first to set that example,
but everybody understood that the old man was blameworthy and
good-for-nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming to a custom of Catherine's
day, ordered the standards that had been captured to be lowered at the
Emperor's feet on his entering the ballroom, the Emperor made a wry face
and muttered something in which some people caught the words, "the old
comedian."

The Emperor's displeasure with Kutuzov was specially increased at Vilna
by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could not or would not understand the
importance of the coming campaign.

When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers assembled
about him: "You have not only saved Russia, you have saved Europe!" they
all understood that the war was not ended.

Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion that
no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of Russia,
but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that Russia had
gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the impossibility of levying
fresh troops, spoke of the hardships already endured by the people, of
the possibility of failure and so forth.

This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally regarded
as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.

To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural method was
to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with Barclay at
the beginning of the Russian campaign--to transfer the authority to the
Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under the commander in
chief's feet without upsetting the old man by informing him of the
change.

With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its real
strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll, Konovnitsyn, and
Ermolov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke loudly of the field
marshal's great weakness and failing health.

His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to
another. And in fact his health was poor.

So naturally, simply, and gradually--just as he had come from Turkey to
the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to the army
when he was needed there--now when his part was played out, Kutuzov's
place was taken by a new and necessary performer.

The war of 1812, besides its national significance dear to every Russian
heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance.

The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a
movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war another
leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing from
Kutuzov's and animated by different motives.

Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from east
to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutuzov had been
for the salvation and glory of Russia.

Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or
Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative of
the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia had
been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was nothing
left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the representative of the
national war but to die, and Kutuzov died.





CHAPTER XII


As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the
physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until after
they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the third
day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was laid up
for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious fever." But
despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him
medicines to drink, he recovered.

Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that happened
to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He remembered
only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy, internal physical
distress, and pains in his feet and side. He remembered a general
impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of people and of being
worried by the curiosity of officers and generals who questioned him, he
also remembered his difficulty in procuring a conveyance and horses, and
above all he remembered his incapacity to think and feel all that time.
On the day of his rescue he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same
day he had learned that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of
Borodino for more than a month had recently died in the Rostovs' house
at Yaroslavl, and Denisov who told him this news also mentioned Helene's
death, supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at
the time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its
significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly as
possible from places where people were killing one another, to some
peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over
all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he
immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw
in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had
come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had been
living on his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and illness had
come to look after him.

It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost the
impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months
and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere
tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he
would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long time in
his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of captivity. In the
same way little by little he came to understand the news he had been
told after his rescue, about the death of Prince Andrew, the death of
his wife, and the destruction of the French.

A joyous feeling of freedom--that complete inalienable freedom natural
to man which he had first experienced at the first halt outside
Moscow--filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He was surprised
to find that this inner freedom, which was independent of external
conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of external
liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without acquaintances. No one
demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere. He had all he wanted:
the thought of his wife which had been a continual torment to him was no
longer there, since she was no more.

"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid
table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down for
the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the French had
gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how splendid!"

And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what then?
What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the answer:
"Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"

The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had
continually sought to find--the aim of life--no longer existed for
him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared
temporarily--he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not
present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at
this time.

He could not see an aim, for he now had faith--not faith in any kind
of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living, ever-manifest
God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for
an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity
he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his
nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his
captivity he had learned that in Karataev God was greater, more infinite
and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the
Freemasons. He felt like a man who after straining his eyes to see into
the far distance finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life
he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have
merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.

In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and
had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had only
what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped
himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where
petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him
great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such
had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy
seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted
them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen
the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he
had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and
therefore--to see it and enjoy its contemplation--he naturally threw
away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men's heads,
and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable,
and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil
and happy he became. That dreadful question, "What for?" which had
formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him.
To that question, "What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in
his soul: "Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one
hair falls from a man's head."





CHAPTER XIII


In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he
was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed
occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something special
of his own. The difference between his former and present self was that
formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to
him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to
distinguish something at a distance. At present he still forgot what was
said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but he now
looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what
was before him and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing
and hearing something quite different. Formerly he had appeared to be
a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to avoid
him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played round his lips, and
sympathy for others, shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to
whether they were as contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his
presence.

Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he talked, and
seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in conversation and
knew how to listen so that people readily told him their most intimate
secrets.

The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly
hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him after
the old count's death, now after staying a short time in Orel--where she
had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his ingratitude she
considered it her duty to nurse him--felt to her surprise and vexation
that she had become fond of him. Pierre did not in any way seek her
approval, he merely studied her with interest. Formerly she had felt
that he regarded her with indifference and irony, and so had shrunk into
herself as she did with others and had shown him only the combative side
of her nature; but now he seemed to be trying to understand the most
intimate places of her heart, and, mistrustfully at first but afterwards
gratefully, she let him see the hidden, kindly sides of her character.

The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more
successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and
showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre's cunning consisted simply in
finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,
hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.

"Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence of
bad people but of people such as myself," thought she.

His servants too--Terenty and Vaska--in their own way noticed the change
that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had become much
"simpler." Terenty, when he had helped him undress and wished him good
night, often lingered with his master's boots in his hands and clothes
over his arm, to see whether he would not start a talk. And Pierre,
noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally kept him there.

"Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?" he would ask.

And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of
the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and
talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and then would go
out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master and
affection for him.

The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though he
considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every moment
was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with Pierre
telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on the
characters of his patients in general, and especially of the ladies.

"It's a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our
provincials," he would say.

There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the
doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.

This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make fun of
the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.

The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk
with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love,
and pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially
against Napoleon.

"If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight
such a nation," he said to Pierre. "You, who have suffered so from the
French, do not even feel animosity toward them."

Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely by
evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so doing.

During the last days of Pierre's stay in Orel his old Masonic
acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in
1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress who
had a large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary post in
the commissariat department in that town.

Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though they had never been
intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship and intimacy
that people who meet in a desert generally express for one another.
Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man of his own
circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.

But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged much
behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself, into
apathy and egotism.

"You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow," he said.

But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had been
formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To Pierre as
he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to think that
he had been like that himself but a short time before.

Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family affairs,
his wife's affairs, and his official duties. He regarded all these
occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that they were all
contemptible because their aim was the welfare of himself and his
family. Military, administrative, political, and Masonic interests
continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre, without trying to
change the other's views and without condemning him, but with the quiet,
joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him, was interested in this
strange though very familiar phenomenon.

There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with the
princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which
gained for him the general good will. This was his acknowledgment of
the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by words, and his
recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing
things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of
each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre now became a
basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other
people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between
men's opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased
him and drew from him an amused and gentle smile.

In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a center
of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary questions,
especially requests for money to which, as an extremely wealthy man,
he was very exposed, produced in him a state of hopeless agitation and
perplexity. "To give or not to give?" he had asked himself. "I have
it and he needs it. But someone else needs it still more. Who needs it
most? And perhaps they are both impostors?" In the old days he had been
unable to find a way out of all these surmises and had given to all
who asked as long as he had anything to give. Formerly he had been in a
similar state of perplexity with regard to every question concerning his
property, when one person advised one thing and another something else.

Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt or
perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a judge who
by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should not be done.

He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he felt
certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first time he
had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a colonel,
came to him and, after talking a great deal about his exploits,
concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre should give
him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children. Pierre
refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was afterwards
surprised how simple and easy had been what used to appear so
insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused the colonel's
demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to artifice when
leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept some money of
which he was evidently in need. A further proof to Pierre of his own
more settled outlook on practical matters was furnished by his decision
with regard to his wife's debts and to the rebuilding of his houses in
and near Moscow.

His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him his
diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according to the
head steward's calculation, about two million rubles.

To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an estimate
showing that despite these losses his income would not be diminished but
would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife's debts which he
was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild his Moscow house
and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had cost him eighty
thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.

"Yes, of course that's true," said Pierre with a cheerful smile. "I
don't need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much richer."

But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave him an account of the
state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect had made
of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses, speaking of this
as of a settled matter. About the same time he received letters from
Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances speaking of his wife's
debts. And Pierre decided that the steward's proposals which had so
pleased him were wrong and that he must go to Petersburg and settle his
wife's affairs and must rebuild in Moscow. Why this was necessary he
did not know, but he knew for certain that it was necessary. His income
would be reduced by three fourths, but he felt it must be done.

Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together.

During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel Pierre had
experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his
journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new
faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt like
a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone--the stagecoach driver, the post-house
overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villages--had a
new significance for him. The presence and remarks of Willarski who
continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia and its
backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's pleasure.
Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary strength
and vitality--the strength which in that vast space amid the snows
maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique people.
He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree with him--an
apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid discussions that
could lead to nothing--and he smiled joyfully as he listened to him.





CHAPTER XIV


It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap
has been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of
rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they
jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally
difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of the
French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But when
we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, energy, and
immense number of the delving insects prove that despite the destruction
of the heap, something indestructible, which though intangible is the
real strength of the colony, still exists; and similarly, though in
Moscow in the month of October there was no government and no churches,
shrines, riches, or houses--it was still the Moscow it had been in
August. All was destroyed, except something intangible yet powerful and
indestructible.

The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after it had
been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and at first
for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all had in
common: a desire to get to the place that had been called Moscow, to
apply their activities there.

Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in a
fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the
number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in
1812.

The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of Wintzingerode's
detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and residents who had
fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its vicinity. The Russians who
entered Moscow, finding it plundered, plundered it in their turn. They
continued what the French had begun. Trains of peasant carts came to
Moscow to carry off to the villages what had been abandoned in the
ruined houses and the streets. The Cossacks carried off what they could
to their camps, and the householders seized all they could find in other
houses and moved it to their own, pretending that it was their property.

But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third
contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and more
difficult and assumed more definite forms.

The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations of
regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and craftsmanship, with
luxury, and governmental and religious institutions. These forms were
lifeless but still existed. There were bazaars, shops, warehouses,
market stalls, granaries--for the most part still stocked with
goods--and there were factories and workshops, palaces and wealthy
houses filled with luxuries, hospitals, prisons, government offices,
churches, and cathedrals. The longer the French remained the more these
forms of town life perished, until finally all was merged into one
confused, lifeless scene of plunder.

The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the
wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But
plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city
began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater
the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth
of the city and its regular life restored.

Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by curiosity,
some by official duties, some by self-interest--house owners, clergy,
officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and peasants--streamed into
Moscow as blood flows to the heart.

Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off
plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses
out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades'
discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat down
one another's prices to below what they had been in former days. Gangs
of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow every day, and on
all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built, and old, charred ones
repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths. Cookshops and taverns were
opened in partially burned houses. The clergy resumed the services
in many churches that had not been burned. Donors contributed
Church property that had been stolen. Government clerks set up their
baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of documents in small rooms.
The higher authorities and the police organized the distribution of
goods left behind by the French. The owners of houses in which much
property had been left, brought there from other houses, complained of
the injustice of taking everything to the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin;
others insisted that as the French had gathered things from different
houses into this or that house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to
keep all that was found there. They abused the police and bribed them,
made out estimates at ten times their value for government stores that
had perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin
wrote proclamations.





CHAPTER XV


At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex of
his house which had not been burned. He called on Count Rostopchin and
on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he intended to leave
for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was celebrating the victory,
everything was bubbling with life in the ruined but reviving city.
Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone wished to meet him, and
everyone questioned him about what he had seen. Pierre felt particularly
well disposed toward them all, but was now instinctively on his
guard for fear of binding himself in any way. To all questions put to
him--whether important or quite trifling--such as: Where would he live?
Was he going to rebuild? When was he going to Petersburg and would he
mind taking a parcel for someone?--he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I
think so," and so on.

He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but the thought of
Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant
memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from social
obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him, he had
aroused in himself.

On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskoys that
Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days of
Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre's thoughts and now recurred to
him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary
was in Moscow and living in her house--which had not been burned--in
Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her.

On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of their
friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially of the last
one at Borodino.

"Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then in?
Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him
before he died?" thought Pierre. He recalled Karataev and his death and
involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and yet so
similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the love he
felt for both of them.

Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious mood.
The house had escaped the fire; it showed signs of damage but its
general aspect was unchanged. The old footman, who met Pierre with a
stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence
of the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the house,
informed him that the princess had gone to her own apartments, and that
she received on Sundays.

"Announce me. Perhaps she will see me," said Pierre.

"Yes, sir," said the man. "Please step into the portrait gallery."

A few minutes later the footman returned with Dessalles, who brought
word from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre if he
would excuse her want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment.

In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her
another person dressed in black. Pierre remembered that the princess
always had lady companions, but who they were and what they were like
he never knew or remembered. "This must be one of her companions," he
thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.

The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand.

"Yes," she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her
hand, "so this is how we meet again. He spoke of you even at the very
last," she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion with a
shyness that surprised him for an instant.

"I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of good
news we had received for a long time."

Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more
uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre
interrupted her.

"Just imagine--I knew nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had
been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only know
that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!"

Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the
companion's face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and,
as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion
in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would not
hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.

But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary's face expressed still
greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre's face to
that of the lady in the black dress and said:

"Do you really not recognize her?"

Pierre looked again at the companion's pale, delicate face with its
black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long forgotten
and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive eyes.

"But no, it can't be!" he thought. "This stern, thin, pale face that
looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her."
But at that moment Princess Mary said, "Natasha!" And with difficulty,
effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its
hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from
that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre with
a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even been
thinking--especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him, and
enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer possible,
it was Natasha and he loved her.

At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess Mary,
and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had been unaware.
He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He tried to hide his
agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more clearly--clearer
than any words could have done--did he betray to himself, to her, and to
Princess Mary that he loved her.

"No, it's only the unexpectedness of it," thought Pierre. But as soon as
he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with Princess Mary he
again glanced at Natasha, and a still-deeper flush suffused his face and
a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and fear seized his soul. He
became confused in his speech and stopped in the middle of what he was
saying.

Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect to
see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the change in
her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin and pale, but
that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was unrecognizable at the
moment he entered because on that face whose eyes had always shone with
a suppressed smile of the joy of life, now when he first entered and
glanced at her there was not the least shadow of a smile: only her eyes
were kindly attentive and sadly interrogative.

Pierre's confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natasha's part,
but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her whole face.





CHAPTER XVI


"She has come to stay with me," said Princess Mary. "The count and
countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful
state; but it was necessary for Natasha herself to see a doctor. They
insisted on her coming with me."

"Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?" said Pierre, addressing
Natasha. "You know it happened the very day we were rescued. I saw him.
What a delightful boy he was!"

Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes
widened and lit up.

"What can one say or think of as a consolation?" said Pierre. "Nothing!
Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?"

"Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith..." remarked
Princess Mary.

"Yes, yes, that is really true," Pierre hastily interrupted her.

"Why is it true?" Natasha asked, looking attentively into Pierre's eyes.

"How can you ask why?" said Princess Mary. "The thought alone of what
awaits..."

Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked
inquiringly at Pierre.

"And because," Pierre continued, "only one who believes that there is a
God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours."

Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly stopped.
Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed Princess Mary,
asking about his friend's last days.

Pierre's confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time he felt
that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that there was now a
judge of his every word and action whose judgment mattered more to
him than that of all the rest of the world. As he spoke now he was
considering what impression his words would make on Natasha. He did
not purposely say things to please her, but whatever he was saying he
regarded from her standpoint.

Princess Mary--reluctantly as is usual in such cases--began telling of
the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But Pierre's face
quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager restless expression,
gradually compelled her to go into details which she feared to recall
for her own sake.

"Yes, yes, and so...?" Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her with
his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. "Yes, yes... so he
grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always sought one
thing--to be perfectly good--so he could not be afraid of death.
The faults he had--if he had any--were not of his making. So he did
soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again," he added, suddenly
turning to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of tears.

Natasha's face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a moment.
She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not.

"Yes, that was happiness," she then said in her quiet voice with its
deep chest notes. "For me it certainly was happiness." She paused. "And
he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I entered
the room...."

Natasha's voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her
knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted her
head and began to speak rapidly.

"We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare to
ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me he was traveling with us. I
had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I wanted was
to see him and be with him," she said, trembling, and breathing quickly.

And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she had
never yet mentioned to anyone--all she had lived through during those
three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslavl.

Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full of
tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of death,
nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only pity for
her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking.

Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat beside
Natasha, and heard for the first time the story of those last days of
her brother's and Natasha's love.

Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale.

She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate secrets of
her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish. Several times she
repeated the same thing twice.

Dessalles' voice was heard outside the door asking whether little
Nicholas might come in to say good night.

"Well, that's all--everything," said Natasha.

She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the door
which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and rushed
from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow.

Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did not
understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world.

Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his attention
to her nephew who had entered the room.

At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas' face, which
resembled his father's, affected Pierre so much that when he had kissed
the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and went to the
window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but she would not let
him go.

"No, Natasha and I sometimes don't go to sleep till after two, so please
don't go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come immediately."

Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: "This is the first
time she has talked of him like that."





CHAPTER XVII


Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few minutes
later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with Natasha. Natasha
was calm, though a severe and grave expression had again settled on her
face. They all three of them now experienced that feeling of awkwardness
which usually follows after a serious and heartfelt talk. It is
impossible to go back to the same conversation, to talk of trifles is
awkward, and yet the desire to speak is there and silence seems like
affectation. They went silently to table. The footmen drew back the
chairs and pushed them up again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin
and, resolving to break the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess
Mary. They had evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of
both shone with satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life
also has joy.

"Do you take vodka, Count?" asked Princess Mary, and those words
suddenly banished the shadows of the past. "Now tell us about yourself,"
said she. "One hears such improbable wonders about you."

"Yes," replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to him.
"They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary Abramovna
invited me to her house and kept telling me what had happened, or ought
to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also instructed me how I ought
to tell of my experiences. In general I have noticed that it is very
easy to be an interesting man (I am an interesting man now); people
invite me out and tell me all about myself."

Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.

"We have been told," Princess Mary interrupted her, "that you lost two
millions in Moscow. Is that true?"

"But I am three times as rich as before," returned Pierre.

Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his wife's
debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that he had
become three times as rich as before.

"What I have certainly gained is freedom," he began seriously, but did
not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic.

"And are you building?"

"Yes. Savelich says I must!"

"Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided to
remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed, noticing
that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed to his
words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.

"No," answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning
Princess Mary had given to his words. "I heard of it in Orel and you
cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple," he
added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face curiosity as
to how he would speak of his wife, "but her death shocked me terribly.
When two people quarrel they are always both in fault, and one's own
guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other is no longer
alive. And then such a death... without friends and without consolation!
I am very, very sorry for her," he concluded, and was pleased to notice
a look of glad approval on Natasha's face.

"Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor," said Princess
Mary.

Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to look
at Natasha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was cold,
stern, and he fancied even contemptuous.

"And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been told?"
said Princess Mary.

Pierre laughed.

"No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken prisoner
means being Napoleon's guest. Not only did I never see him but I heard
nothing about him--I was in much lower company!"

Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his
captivity was gradually led on to do so.

"But it's true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?" Natasha
asked with a slight smile. "I guessed it then when we met at the
Sukharev tower, do you remember?"

Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by
Princess Mary's questions and especially by Natasha's into giving a
detailed account of his adventures.

At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary with
him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he came
to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was
unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed
emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he
has lived through.

Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at
Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his goodness.
Natasha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face constantly
changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an attention that never
wandered--evidently herself experiencing all that he described. Not only
her look, but her exclamations and the brief questions she put, showed
Pierre that she understood just what he wished to convey. It was clear
that she understood not only what he said but also what he wished to,
but could not, express in words. The account Pierre gave of the incident
with the child and the woman for protecting whom he was arrested was
this: "It was an awful sight--children abandoned, some in the flames...
One was snatched out before my eyes... and there were women who had
their things snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed
and grew confused. "Then a patrol arrived and all the men--all those who
were not looting, that is--were arrested, and I among them."

"I am sure you're not telling us everything; I am sure you did
something..." said Natasha and pausing added, "something fine?"

Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass
over the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not omit
anything.

Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this time he had
risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natasha following him with
her eyes. Then he added:

"No, you can't understand what I learned from that illiterate man--that
simple fellow."

"Yes, yes, go on!" said Natasha. "Where is he?"

"They killed him almost before my eyes."

And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of the last
days of their retreat, of Karataev's illness and his death.

He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now, as
it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that he was
telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which a man has
when women listen to him--not clever women who when listening either try
to remember what they hear to enrich their minds and when opportunity
offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt it to some thought of their
own and promptly contribute their own clever comments prepared in their
little mental workshop--but the pleasure given by real women gifted with
a capacity to select and absorb the very best a man shows of himself.
Natasha without knowing it was all attention: she did not lose a word,
no single quiver in Pierre's voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in
his face, nor a single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its
flight and took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret
meaning of all Pierre's mental travail.

Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she
now saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the
possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and the
first thought of this filled her heart with gladness.

It was three o'clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad and
stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.

Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at him intently
with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to understand
something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre in shamefaced
and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and tried to think what
to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess Mary was silent. It
occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock and time to go to
bed.

"People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre, "but if
at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you were before
you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?' then for
heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh! We imagine
that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is
only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is
happiness. There is much, much before us. I say this to you," he added,
turning to Natasha.

"Yes, yes," she said, answering something quite different. "I too should
wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning."

Pierre looked intently at her.

"Yes, and nothing more," said Natasha.

"It's not true, not true!" cried Pierre. "I am not to blame for being
alive and wishing to live--nor you either."

Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and
began to cry.

"What is it, Natasha?" said Princess Mary.

"Nothing, nothing." She smiled at Pierre through her tears. "Good night!
It is time for bed."

Pierre rose and took his leave.


Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked of
what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her opinion of
Pierre nor did Natasha speak of him.

"Well, good night, Mary!" said Natasha. "Do you know, I am often afraid
that by not speaking of him" (she meant Prince Andrew) "for fear of not
doing justice to our feelings, we forget him."

Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice of
Natasha's remark, but she did not express agreement in words.

"Is it possible to forget?" said she.

"It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard and
painful, but good, very good!" said Natasha. "I am sure he really loved
him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?" she added, suddenly
blushing.

"To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!" said Princess
Mary.

"Do you know, Mary..." Natasha suddenly said with a mischievous smile
such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long time, "he has
somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh--as if he had just come out of
a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral bath. Isn't it true?"

"Yes," replied Princess Mary. "He has greatly improved."

"With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as if he
had come straight from the bath... Papa used to..."

"I understand why he" (Prince Andrew) "liked no one so much as him,"
said Princess Mary.

"Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when
they are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike
him--in everything."

"Yes, but he's wonderful."

"Well, good night," said Natasha.

And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her face as
if it had been forgotten there.





CHAPTER XVIII


It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He paced
up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult problem
and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and wincing, and now
smiling happily.

He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of their love, at one
moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that feeling.
It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and down the
room.

"Well, what's to be done if it cannot be avoided? What's to be done?
Evidently it has to be so," said he to himself, and hastily undressing
he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or
indecision.

"Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do everything
that she and I may be man and wife," he told himself.

A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on the
Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savelich came to ask him about
packing for the journey.

"What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in Petersburg?"
he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. "Oh, yes, long ago
before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to Petersburg,"
he reflected. "Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good fellow he is and
how attentive, and how he remembers everything," he thought, looking at
Savelich's old face, "and what a pleasant smile he has!"

"Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?" Pierre
asked him.

"What's the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under the
late count--the kingdom of heaven be his!--and we have lived under you
too, without ever being wronged."

"And your children?"

"The children will live just the same. With such masters one can live."

"But what about my heirs?" said Pierre. "Supposing I suddenly marry...
it might happen," he added with an involuntary smile.

"If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good thing."

"How easy he thinks it," thought Pierre. "He doesn't know how terrible
it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is terrible!"

"So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?" asked Savelich.

"No, I'll put it off for a bit. I'll tell you later. You must forgive
the trouble I have put you to," said Pierre, and seeing Savelich smile,
he thought: "But how strange it is that he should not know that now
there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be settled first of
all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only pretending. Shall
I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?" Pierre reflected. "No,
another time."

At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had been to
see Princess Mary the day before and had there met--"Whom do you think?
Natasha Rostova!"

The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than if he
had seen Anna Semenovna.

"Do you know her?" asked Pierre.

"I have seen the princess," she replied. "I heard that they were
arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would be a very good
thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined."

"No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?"

"I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great pity."

"No, she either doesn't understand or is pretending," thought Pierre.
"Better not say anything to her either."

The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre's journey.

"How kind they all are," thought Pierre. "What is surprising is that
they should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of
interest to them. And all for me!"

On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him to send
a representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things that were to be
returned to their owners that day.

"And this man too," thought Pierre, looking into the face of the Chief
of Police. "What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind. Fancy
bothering about such trifles now! And they actually say he is not honest
and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn't he take bribes?
That's the way he was brought up, and everybody does it. But what a
kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at me."

Pierre went to Princess Mary's to dinner.

As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned
down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The picturesqueness
of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the burned-out quarters
of the town, stretching out and concealing one another, reminded him of
the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he met and their passengers,
the carpenters cutting the timber for new houses with axes, the women
hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked at him with cheerful beaming
eyes that seemed to say: "Ah, there he is! Let's see what will come of
it!"

At the entrance to Princess Mary's house Pierre felt doubtful whether
he had really been there the night before and really seen Natasha and
talked to her. "Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall go in and find
no one there." But he had hardly entered the room before he felt her
presence with his whole being by the loss of his sense of freedom. She
was in the same black dress with soft folds and her hair was done the
same way as the day before, yet she was quite different. Had she been
like this when he entered the day before he could not for a moment have
failed to recognize her.

She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince
Andrew's fiancee. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on
her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.

Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there, but
Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house with her.

Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening. Though
Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently glad to see their visitor and
though all Pierre's interest was now centered in that house, by the
evening they had talked over everything and the conversation passed from
one trivial topic to another and repeatedly broke off. He stayed so long
that Princess Mary and Natasha exchanged glances, evidently wondering
when he would go. Pierre noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy
and embarrassed, but sat on because he simply could not get up and take
his leave.

Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and complaining of
a headache began to say good night.

"So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?" she asked.

"No, I am not going," Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone and as
though offended. "Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow--but I won't say
good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any commissions for me,"
said he, standing before Princess Mary and turning red, but not taking
his departure.

Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other hand
instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly and
intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she
had plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and
long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.

When Natasha left the room Pierre's confusion and awkwardness
immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly
moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.

"Yes, I wanted to tell you," said he, answering her look as if she had
spoken. "Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess, my
dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of her, I
know it's impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a brother to
her. No, not that, I don't, I can't..."

He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.

"Well," he went on with an evident effort at self-control and coherence.
"I don't know when I began to love her, but I have loved her and her
alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine life without
her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the thought that
perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be missing that
possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell me, can I hope?
Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!" he added after a pause, and
touched her hand as she did not reply.

"I am thinking of what you have told me," answered Princess Mary.
"This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love at
present..."

Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love was
impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden change
in Natasha two days before that she would not only not be hurt if Pierre
spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she wished for.

"To speak to her now wouldn't do," said the princess all the same.

"But what am I to do?"

"Leave it to me," said Princess Mary. "I know..."

Pierre was looking into Princess Mary's eyes.

"Well?... Well?..." he said.

"I know that she loves... will love you," Princess Mary corrected
herself.

Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a frightened
expression seized Princess Mary's hand.

"What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?"

"Yes, I think so," said Princess Mary with a smile. "Write to her
parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it to
happen and my heart tells me it will."

"No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can't be.... How happy I am!
No, it can't be!" Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess Mary's hands.

"Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you," she
said.

"To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I'll go. But I may come again
tomorrow?"

Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less animated than
she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her Pierre
sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor she
existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. "Is it possible?
No, it can't be," he told himself at every look, gesture, and word that
filled his soul with joy.

When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could not help
holding it a little longer in his own.

"Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this treasure
of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that it will one
day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to myself?... No, that's
impossible!..."

"Good-by, Count," she said aloud. "I shall look forward very much to
your return," she added in a whisper.

And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face which
accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of inexhaustible
memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for Pierre. "'I shall
look forward very much to your return....' Yes, yes, how did she say it?
Yes, 'I shall look forward very much to your return.' Oh, how happy I
am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!" said Pierre to himself.





CHAPTER XIX


There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled it
during his courtship of Helene.

He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the words
he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and, "Whatever made
me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now repeated in imagination
every word that he or Natasha had spoken and pictured every detail of
her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add anything, but
only to repeat it again and again. There was now not a shadow of doubt
in his mind as to whether what he had undertaken was right or wrong.
Only one terrible doubt sometimes crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all
a dream? Isn't Princess Mary mistaken? Am I not too conceited and
self-confident? I believe all this--and suddenly Princess Mary will tell
her, and she will be sure to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be
deluding himself. Doesn't he know that he is a man, just a man, while
I...? I am something altogether different and higher.'"

That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now make any
plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable that if only
he could attain it, it would be the end of all things. Everything ended
with that.

A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself incapable,
possessed him. The whole meaning of life--not for him alone but for the
whole world--seemed to him centered in his love and the possibility of
being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied with
one thing only--his future happiness. Sometimes it seemed to him that
other people were all as pleased as he was himself and merely tried to
hide that pleasure by pretending to be busy with other interests. In
every word and gesture he saw allusions to his happiness. He often
surprised those he met by his significantly happy looks and smiles which
seemed to express a secret understanding between him and them. And when
he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied
them with his whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them
that all that occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of
attention.

When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service,
or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the
assumption that everybody's welfare depended on this or that issue
of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and surprise
people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw everybody--both
those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning of life (that
is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who evidently did not
understand it--in the bright light of the emotion that shone within
himself, and at once without any effort saw in everyone he met
everything that was good and worthy of being loved.

When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her memory
aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the bliss he
now knew. Prince Vasili, who having obtained a new post and some
fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed to him a
pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.

Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. All
the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained true
for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently, but when
he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had
held at this time of his madness and they always proved correct.

"I may have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was
not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had
more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is worth
understanding in life, because... because I was happy."

Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to
discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in people
before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by
loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving
them.





CHAPTER XX


After Pierre's departure that first evening, when Natasha had said to
Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: "He looks just, yes, just as
if he had come out of a Russian bath--in a short coat and with his hair
cropped," something hidden and unknown to herself, but irrepressible,
awoke in Natasha's soul.

Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered.
To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to the
surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to have
forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer complained of her
position, did not say a word about the past, and no longer feared to
make happy plans for the future. She spoke little of Pierre, but when
Princess Mary mentioned him a long-extinguished light once more kindled
in her eyes and her lips curved with a strange smile.

The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised Princess Mary;
but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. "Can she have loved
my brother so little as to be able to forget him so soon?" she thought
when she reflected on the change. But when she was with Natasha she was
not vexed with her and did not reproach her. The reawakened power
of life that had seized Natasha was so evidently irrepressible and
unexpected by her that in her presence Princess Mary felt that she had
no right to reproach her even in her heart.

 Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling
that she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad, but
bright and cheerful.

When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk with
Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold.

"He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?" she repeated.

And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness for
her joy settled on Natasha's face.

"I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me."

Understandable and touching as the look with which Natasha gazed at
her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her agitation,
these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her brother and his
love.

"But what's to be done? She can't help it," thought the princess.

And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all that Pierre
had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha was
astounded.

"To Petersburg!" she repeated as if unable to understand.

But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary's face she guessed
the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.

"Mary," said she, "tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being bad.
Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...."

"You love him?"

"Yes," whispered Natasha.

"Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake," said Princess Mary,
who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha's joy.

"It won't be just yet--someday. Think what fun it will be when I am his
wife and you marry Nicholas!"

"Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about you."

They were silent awhile.

"But why go to Petersburg?" Natasha suddenly asked, and hastily replied
to her own question. "But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He must...."





FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20





CHAPTER I


Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had
subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the
mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of
their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.

Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the movement
of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time. Various groups
of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation and dissolution of
kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in course of preparation.

The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to shore as
previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures were not
borne by the waves from one shore to another as before. They now seemed
to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the head of armies,
who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by ordering wars,
campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless movement by political
and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.

The historians call this activity of the historical figures "the
reaction."

In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical
personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the
reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and
Napoleon to Madame de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte, Chateaubriand,
and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and are acquitted or
condemned according to whether they conduced to progress or to reaction.

According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in Russia
also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who according
to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the commencement
of his reign, being the savior of Russia.

There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist to
learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander for
things he did wrong at this period of his reign.

"He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he did
well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning of
his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution
to Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev,
favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and Photius.
He also acted badly by concerning himself with the active army and
disbanding the Semenov regiment."

It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the
historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good for
humanity.

What do these reproaches mean?

Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander I
(the liberal attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle with
Napoleon, the firmness he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of 1813)
flow from the same sources--the circumstances of his birth, education,
and life--that made his personality what it was and from which the
actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance, the restoration of
Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also flowed?

In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?

It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I,
standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the
blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to those
strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and self-deception
inseparable from power; a character who at every moment of his life
felt a responsibility for all that was happening in Europe; and not
a fictitious but a live character who like every man had his personal
habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth--that
this character--though not lacking in virtue (the historians do not
accuse him of that)--had not the same conception of the welfare of
humanity fifty years ago as a present-day professor who from his
youth upwards has been occupied with learning: that is, with books and
lectures and with taking notes from them.

But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was mistaken in
his view of what was good for the people, we must inevitably assume that
the historian who judges Alexander will also after the lapse of some
time turn out to be mistaken in his view of what is good for humanity.
This assumption is all the more natural and inevitable because, watching
the movement of history, we see that every year and with each new
writer, opinion as to what is good for mankind changes; so that what
once seemed good, ten years later seems bad, and vice versa. And what is
more, we find at one and the same time quite contradictory views as to
what is bad and what is good in history: some people regard giving a
constitution to Poland and forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in
Alexander, while others regard it as blameworthy.

The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful or
harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or harmful.
If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it does
not agree with his limited understanding of what is good. Whether the
preservation of my father's house in Moscow, or the glory of the Russian
arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other universities, or the
freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia, or the balance of power in
Europe, or a certain kind of European culture called "progress" appear
to me to be good or bad, I must admit that besides these things the
action of every historic character has other more general purposes
inaccessible to me.

But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all
contradictions and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by
which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander
could have done everything differently; let us say that with guidance
from those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate aim of the
movement of humanity, he might have arranged matters according to the
program his present accusers would have given him--of nationality,
freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover the ground). Let
us assume that this program was possible and had then been formulated,
and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then have become of the
activity of all those who opposed the tendency that then prevailed in
the government--an activity that in the opinion of the historians was
good and beneficent? Their activity would not have existed: there would
have been no life, there would have been nothing.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of
life is destroyed.





CHAPTER II


If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to the
attainment of certain ends--the greatness of Russia or of France,
the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas of the
Revolution, general progress, or anything else--then it is impossible
to explain the facts of history without introducing the conceptions of
chance and genius.

If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth
century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have been
accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the invasion. If
the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have been attained
without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the aim was the
dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have accomplished that
much better than warfare. If the aim was the progress of civilization,
it is easy to see that there are other ways of diffusing civilization
more expedient than by the destruction of wealth and of human lives.

Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?

Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius utilized
it," says history.

But what is chance? What is genius?

The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and
therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of
understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I
think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about
chance. I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary
human agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of
genius.

To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a
special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the others
must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing conjunction
of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances that this ram,
who instead of getting into the general fold every evening goes into
a special enclosure where there are oats--that this very ram, swelling
with fat, is killed for meat.

But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to them
happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they need only
admit that what happens to them may also have purposes beyond their ken,
and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence in what happened
to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not know for what purpose
they are fattened, they will at least know that all that happened to the
ram did not happen accidentally, and will no longer need the conceptions
of chance or genius.

Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately
intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond our
ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of
historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they produce
(incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then the words
chance and genius become superfluous.

We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European
convulsions and that we know only the facts--that is, the murders, first
in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, in Spain,
and in Russia--and that the movements from the west to the east and from
the east to the west form the essence and purpose of these events, and
not only shall we have no need to see exceptional ability and genius in
Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable to consider them to
be anything but like other men, and we shall not be obliged to have
recourse to chance for an explanation of those small events which made
these people what they were, but it will be clear that all those small
events were inevitable.

By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall
clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for
any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it is
impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down to the
smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than Napoleon and
Alexander with all their antecedents.





CHAPTER III


The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of the
beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the mass of
the European peoples from west to east and afterwards from east to west.
The commencement of that movement was the movement from west to east.
For the peoples of the west to be able to make their warlike movement
to Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they should form themselves into
a military group of a size able to endure a collision with the warlike
military group of the east, (2) that they should abandon all established
traditions and customs, and (3) that during their military movement they
should have at their head a man who could justify to himself and to them
the deceptions, robberies, and murders which would have to be committed
during that movement.

And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately large
group was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions, and step
by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new customs and
traditions, and a man was produced who would stand at the head of the
coming movement and bear the responsibility for all that had to be done.

A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without
a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges--by what seem the strangest
chances--from among all the seething French parties, and without joining
any one of them is borne forward to a prominent position.

The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance of
his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling and
self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of the
army. The brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent to Italy,
his opponents' reluctance to fight, and his own childish audacity and
self-confidence secure him military fame. Innumerable so called chances
accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he falls with the
rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts to avoid his
predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received into the Russian
service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes to nothing. During
the war in Italy he is several times on the verge of destruction and
each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing to various diplomatic
considerations the Russian armies--just those which might have destroyed
his prestige--do not appear upon the scene till he is no longer there.

On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a process
of dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably wiped
out and destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous position
presents itself in the form of an aimless and senseless expedition
to Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him. Impregnable Malta
surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes are crowned with
success. The enemy's fleet, which subsequently did not let a single boat
pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In Africa a whole series of
outrages are committed against the almost unarmed inhabitants. And the
men who commit these crimes, especially their leader, assure themselves
that this is admirable, this is glory--it resembles Caesar and Alexander
the Great and is therefore good.

This ideal of glory and grandeur--which consists not merely in
considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on every
crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible supernatural
significance--that ideal, destined to guide this man and his associates,
had scope for its development in Africa. Whatever he does succeeds. The
plague does not touch him. The cruelty of murdering prisoners is not
imputed to him as a fault. His childishly rash, uncalled-for, and
ignoble departure from Africa, leaving his comrades in distress, is
set down to his credit, and again the enemy's fleet twice lets him slip
past. When, intoxicated by the crimes he has committed so successfully,
he reaches Paris, the dissolution of the republican government, which a
year earlier might have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and
his presence there now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can
only serve to exalt him--and though he himself has no plan, he is quite
ready for his new role.

He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties snatched at
him and demanded his participation.

He alone--with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy and
Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and frankness in
lying--he alone could justify what had to be done.

He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from
his will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his
mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and
the conspiracy is crowned with success.

He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes to
flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon and
says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once proud
and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played out, are
even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they should have
said to destroy him and retain their power.

Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by
agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the characters
of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms the character
of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government; chance contrives
a plot against him which not only fails to harm him but confirms his
power. Chance puts the Duc d'Enghien in his hands and unexpectedly
causes him to kill him--thereby convincing the mob more forcibly than
in any other way that he had the right, since he had the might.
Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to prepare an
expedition against England (which would inevitably have ruined him) he
never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly falls upon Mack and
the Austrians, who surrender without a battle. Chance and genius give
him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance all men, not only the
French but all Europe--except England which does not take part in the
events about to happen--despite their former horror and detestation of
his crimes, now recognize his authority, the title he has given
himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which seems excellent and
reasonable to them all.

As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement, the
western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806, 1807,
and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of people that
had formed in France unites into one group with the peoples of Central
Europe. The strength of the justification of the man who stands at the
head of the movement grows with the increased size of the group. During
the ten-year preparatory period this man had formed relations with all
the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited rulers of the world can
oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate Napoleonic ideal of
glory and grandeur. One after another they hasten to display their
insignificance before him. The King of Prussia sends his wife to seek
the great man's mercy; the Emperor of Austria considers it a favor that
this man receives a daughter of the Caesars into his bed; the Pope, the
guardian of all that the nations hold sacred, utilizes religion for the
aggrandizement of the great man. It is not Napoleon who prepares himself
for the accomplishment of his role, so much as all those round him who
prepare him to take on himself the whole responsibility for what is
happening and has to happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud
he commits, which in the mouths of those around him is not at once
represented as a great deed. The most suitable fete the Germans can
devise for him is a celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he
great, but so are his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his
brothers-in-law. Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his
reason and to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so
too are the forces.

The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal--Moscow. That
city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the opposing
armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to Wagram. But
suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which hitherto had
so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of successes to the
predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of inverse chances occur--from
the cold in his head at Borodino to the sparks which set Moscow on
fire, and the frosts--and instead of genius, stupidity and immeasurable
baseness become evident.

The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are now
not for Napoleon but always against him.

A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a
remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east.
Attempted drives from east to west--similar to the contrary movements of
1805, 1807, and 1809--precede the great westward movement; there is the
same coalescence into a group of enormous dimensions; the same adhesion
of the people of Central Europe to the movement; the same hesitation
midway, and the same increasing rapidity as the goal is approached.

Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government and army
are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any account; all his
actions are evidently pitiful and mean, but again an inexplicable chance
occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they regard as the cause of
their sufferings. Deprived of power and authority, his crimes and his
craft exposed, he should have appeared to them what he appeared ten
years previously and one year later--an outlawed brigand. But by some
strange chance no one perceives this. His part is not yet ended. The man
who ten years before and a year later was considered an outlawed brigand
is sent to an island two days' sail from France, which for some reason
is presented to him as his dominion, and guards are given to him and
millions of money are paid him.





CHAPTER IV


The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The
waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies are
formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have
caused the floods to abate.

But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The diplomatists
think that their disagreements are the cause of this fresh pressure
of natural forces; they anticipate war between their sovereigns; the
position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they feel to be rising
does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises again from the same
point as before--Paris. The last backwash of the movement from the west
occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the apparently insuperable
diplomatic difficulties and ends the military movement of that period of
history.

The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without any
conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but by
strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man they
cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.

This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.

That act is performed.

The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off his
powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.

And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to himself
in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues and lies
when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to the whole
world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as long as an
unseen hand directed his actions.

The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the actor
shows him to us.

"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was not he
but I who moved you?"

But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people
understood this.

Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of
Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from
east to west.

What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head of
that movement from east to west?

What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with European
affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests; a moral
superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated with him;
a mild and attractive personality; and a personal grievance against
Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all this had been
prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life: his education,
his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded him, and by
Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.

During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed. But
as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented itself he
appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the nations of
Europe, led them to the goal.

The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses all
possible power. How does he use it?

Alexander I--the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early years
had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of the liberal
innovations in his fatherland--now that he seemed to possess the utmost
power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing about the
welfare of his peoples--at the time when Napoleon in exile was drawing
up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made mankind happy
had he retained power--Alexander I, having fulfilled his mission and
feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes the insignificance
of that supposed power, turns away from it, and gives it into the hands
of contemptible men whom he despises, saying only:

"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like the
rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of God."

As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and
yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to
comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet
has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid
of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the
bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the
fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from
flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey.
Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely
says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees and rear
a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices
that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil
fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee's
existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the
bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the
bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first,
the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The
higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes,
the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our
comprehension.

All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to
other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic
characters and nations.





CHAPTER V


Natasha's wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the last
happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov died
that same year and, as always happens, after the father's death the
family group broke up.

The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the flight
from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha's despair, Petya's death,
and the old countess' grief fell blow after blow on the old count's
head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of all these
events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if expecting and
inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed now frightened
and distraught and now unnaturally animated and enterprising.

The arrangements for Natasha's marriage occupied him for a while. He
ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful, but
his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the contrary it
evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.

When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to
complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his
bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again, despite
the doctor's encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in an
armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave him
his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last day,
sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for having
dissipated their property--that being the chief fault of which he was
conscious. After receiving communion and unction he quietly died; and
next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay their last respects
to the deceased filled the house rented by the Rostovs. All these
acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at his house and had so
often laughed at him, now said, with a common feeling of self-reproach
and emotion, as if justifying themselves: "Well, whatever he may have
been he was a most worthy man. You don't meet such men nowadays.... And
which of us has not weaknesses of his own?"

It was just when the count's affairs had become so involved that it was
impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year that he
unexpectedly died.

Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his
father's death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and
without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went to
Moscow. The state of the count's affairs became quite obvious a month
after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of small
debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts amounted to
double the value of the property.

Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance. But
he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father's memory, which he
held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and accepted the
inheritance together with the obligation to pay the debts.

The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague
but powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count's
careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once. As
always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should get
paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given them
as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors. Nicholas was
allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed to pity
the old man--the cause of their losses (if they were losses)--now
remorselessly pursued the young heir who had voluntarily undertaken the
debts and was obviously not guilty of contracting them.

Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold by
auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained
unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his
brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely due
for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the remainder, as
the creditors threatened, he re-entered the government service.

He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel at
the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold on
life; and so despite his reluctance to remain in Moscow among people who
had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil service,
he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the uniform of
which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sonya to a small
house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.

Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had no
clear idea of Nicholas' circumstances. Having borrowed money from his
brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from him.
His position was the more difficult because with his salary of twelve
hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and Sonya,
but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty. The
countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious conditions she
had been used to from childhood and, unable to realize how hard it was
for her son, kept demanding now a carriage (which they did not keep) to
send for a friend, now some expensive article of food for herself, or
wine for her son, or money to buy a present as a surprise for Natasha or
Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.

Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her
whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their poverty
from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably indebted
to Sonya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly admired her
patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.

He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and
because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that people
are valued for, but little that could have made him love her. He felt
that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had taken her at
her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now behaved as if all
that had passed between them had been long forgotten and could never in
any case be renewed.

Nicholas' position became worse and worse. The idea of putting something
aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he not save
anything, but to comply with his mother's demands he even incurred some
small debts. He could see no way out of this situation. The idea of
marrying some rich woman, which was suggested to him by his female
relations, was repugnant to him. The other way out--his mother's
death--never entered his head. He wished for nothing and hoped
for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy and stern
satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his position. He tried
to avoid his old acquaintances with their commiseration and offensive
offers of assistance; he avoided all distraction and recreation, and
even at home did nothing but play cards with his mother, pace silently
up and down the room, and smoke one pipe after another. He seemed
carefully to cherish within himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled
him to endure his position.





CHAPTER VI


At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From reports
current in town she learned how the Rostovs were situated, and how "the
son has sacrificed himself for his mother," as people were saying.

"I never expected anything else of him," said Princess Mary to herself,
feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her friendly
relations with all the Rostovs which had made her almost a member of the
family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But remembering her
relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy about doing so. Making
a great effort she did however go to call on them a few weeks after her
arrival in Moscow.

Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess' room could only be
reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure as she
had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a cold, stiff,
proud expression she had not seen on it before. He inquired about her
health, led the way to his mother, and having sat there for five minutes
left the room.

When the princess came out of the countess' room Nicholas met her again,
and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to the anteroom.
To her remarks about his mother's health he made no reply. "What's that
to you? Leave me in peace," his looks seemed to say.

"Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can't bear these
ladies and all these civilities!" said he aloud in Sonya's presence,
evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the princess' carriage
had disappeared.

"Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?" cried Sonya, hardly able to
conceal her delight. "She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!"

Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess any
more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several times a
day.

She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her, expressed
a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored when she
began to talk about her.

Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the princess,
but his silence irritated her.

"She is a very admirable and excellent young woman," said she, "and you
must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing somebody, and I
think it must be dull for you only seeing us."

"But I don't in the least want to, Mamma."

"You used to want to, and now you don't. Really I don't understand you,
my dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see anyone."

"But I never said I was dull."

"Why, you said yourself you don't want even to see her. She is a very
admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now suddenly you
have got some notion or other in your head. You hide everything from
me."

"Not at all, Mamma."

"If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now--but I only ask
you to return a call. One would think mere politeness required it....
Well, I have asked you, and now I won't interfere any more since you
have secrets from your mother."

"Well, then, I'll go if you wish it."

"It doesn't matter to me. I only wish it for your sake."

Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a
patience, trying to divert his mother's attention to another topic.

The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and the
day after that.

After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly reception by
Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been right in
not wishing to be the first to call.

"I expected nothing else," she told herself, calling her pride to her
aid. "I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the
old lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many
obligations."

But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling akin
to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she had
firmly resolved not to call on the Rostovs again and to forget the whole
matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position. And when
she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit that it was her
relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not express his feeling
for her (she knew that) but it concealed something, and until she could
discover what that something was, she felt that she could not be at
ease.

One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her
nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostov had called. With a firm
resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she sent
for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.

Her first glance at Nicholas' face told her that he had only come to
fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain
the tone in which he addressed her.

They spoke of the countess' health, of their mutual friends, of the
latest war news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety had
elapsed after which a visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say good-by.

With Mademoiselle Bourienne's help the princess had maintained the
conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he rose,
she was so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and her
mind was so full of the question why she alone was granted so little
happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat still, her
luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing that he had risen.

Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her
abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then
again looked at the princess. She still sat motionless with a look of
suffering on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was
vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness her face
expressed. He wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could
think of nothing to say.

"Good-by, Princess!" said he.

She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said as if waking up. "Are you going
already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the
countess!"

"Wait a moment, I'll fetch it," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she
left the room.

They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.

"Yes, Princess," said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't
seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo, but how much water
has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then, yet
I would give much to bring back that time... but there's no bringing it
back."

Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous ones
as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden meaning of
his words which would explain his feeling for her.

"Yes, yes," said she, "but you have no reason to regret the past, Count.
As I understand your present life, I think you will always recall it
with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills it now..."

"I cannot accept your praise," he interrupted her hurriedly. "On the
contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an
interesting or cheerful subject."

His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the
princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved, and it
was to him that she now spoke.

"I thought you would allow me to tell you this," she said. "I had come
so near to you... and to all your family that I thought you would not
consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken," and suddenly her
voice trembled. "I don't know why," she continued, recovering herself,
"but you used to be different, and..."

"There are a thousand reasons why," laying special emphasis on the why.
"Thank you, Princess," he added softly. "Sometimes it is hard."

"So that's why! That's why!" a voice whispered in Princess Mary's soul.
"No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only that
handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble, resolute,
self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes, he is poor now
and I am rich.... Yes, that's the only reason.... Yes, were it not for
that..." And remembering his former tenderness, and looking now at his
kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood the cause of his coldness.

"But why, Count, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer to
him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!"

He was silent.

"I don't understand your why, Count," she continued, "but it's hard for
me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of our former
friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her eyes and in her
voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that every loss is hard
for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!" and suddenly she began to cry
and was hurrying from the room.

"Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her.
"Princess!"

She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one
another's eyes--and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly
became possible, inevitable, and very near.





CHAPTER VII


In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to Bald
Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.

Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without
selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small
inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as well.

In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs that he
was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was negotiating
to buy back Otradnoe--that being his pet dream.

Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it
that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas was
a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the English ones
then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate
management, disliked factories, the raising of expensive products,
and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not make a hobby of any
particular part of the work on his estate. He always had before his
mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any particular part of it. The
chief thing in his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen
in the air, nor manures, nor special plows, but that most important
agent by which nitrogen, oxygen, manure, and plow were made
effective--the peasant laborer. When Nicholas first began farming
and began to understand its different branches, it was the serf who
especially attracted his attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely
a tool, but also a judge of farming and an end in himself. At first
he watched the serfs, trying to understand their aims and what they
considered good and bad, and only pretended to direct them and give
orders while in reality learning from them their methods, their manner
of speech, and their judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he
had understood the peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk
their language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt
akin to them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to
perform toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' management
produced very brilliant results.

Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the
estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and
delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they
had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before
analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and
credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle the
peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He kept the
peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not allowing
the family groups to divide into separate households. He was hard alike
on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to get them expelled
from the commune.

He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants' hay
and corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown
and harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did
Nicholas.

He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs--the "drones"
as he called them--and everyone said he spoiled them by his laxity. When
a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf, especially if one
had to be punished, he always felt undecided and consulted everybody in
the house; but when it was possible to have a domestic serf conscripted
instead of a land worker he did so without the least hesitation. He
never felt any hesitation in dealing with the peasants. He knew that his
every decision would be approved by them all with very few exceptions.

He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to
make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined
to do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what he
should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and definite in
his own mind.

Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he would
say: "What can one do with our Russian peasants?" and imagined that he
could not bear them.

Yet he loved "our Russian peasants" and their way of life with his whole
soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated the one
way and manner of farming which produced good results.

Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's and regretted
that she could not share it; but she could not understand the joys and
vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote and alien. She
could not understand why he was so particularly animated and happy
when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the whole morning in the
fields or on the threshing floor, he returned from the sowing or mowing
or reaping to have tea with her. She did not understand why he spoke
with such admiration and delight of the farming of the thrifty and
well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, who with his family had carted
corn all night; or of the fact that his (Nicholas') sheaves were already
stacked before anyone else had his harvest in. She did not understand
why he stepped out from the window to the veranda and smiled under his
mustache and winked so joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall
on the dry and thirsty shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind
carried away a threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return
from the barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of
wormwood and gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would
say: "Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be
under cover."

Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready to
anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she brought
him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed to her
to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should obstinately
refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what was not her
business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved passionately and
which had laws she had not fathomed.

Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work he
was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in the least;
it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good! That's
all poetry and old wives' talk--all that doing good to one's neighbor!
What I want is that our children should not have to go begging. I must
put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all. And to do that,
order and strictness are essential.... That's all about it!" said he,
clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, of course," he added, "for
if the peasant is naked and hungry and has only one miserable horse, he
can do no good either for himself or for me."

And all Nicholas did was fruitful--probably just because he refused to
allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for virtue's
sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring estates came
to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the memory of his
administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs. "He was a
master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Of course he was
not to be trifled with either--in a word, he was a real master!"





CHAPTER VIII


One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas, and
that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of making
free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in
this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form of
punishment suddenly changed.

Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a
man who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused of
dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the porch
to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few replies
the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch Nicholas
went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over her embroidery
frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had been doing that
morning. Among other things he spoke of the Bogucharovo elder. Countess
Mary turned red and then pale, but continued to sit with head bowed and
lips compressed and gave her husband no reply.

"Such an insolent scoundrel!" he cried, growing hot again at the mere
recollection of him. "If he had told me he was drunk and did not see...
But what is the matter with you, Mary?" he suddenly asked.

Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked
down again and her lips puckered.

"Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?"

The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in
tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow or
pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible charm.

The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain herself
and began to cry.

"Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!" and
she covered her face with her hands.

Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and paced up
and down the room. He understood what she was weeping about, but could
not in his heart at once agree with her that what he had regarded
from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong. "Is it just
sentimentality, old wives' tales, or is she right?" he asked himself.
Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her face filled with
love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she was right and that he
had long been sinning against himself.

"Mary," he said softly, going up to her, "it will never happen again;
I give you my word. Never," he repeated in a trembling voice like a boy
asking for forgiveness.

The tears flowed faster still from the countess' eyes. She took his hand
and kissed it.

"Nicholas, when did you break your cameo?" she asked to change the
subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo of
Laocoon's head.

"Today--it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don't remind me of it!" and
again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan't occur again,
and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the broken
ring.

After that, when in discussions with his village elders or stewards the
blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench, Nicholas would
turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his eyes before the
man who was making him angry. But he did forget himself once or twice
within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and confess to his wife, and
would again promise that this should really be the very last time.

"Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it."

"You should go, go away at once, if you don't feel strong enough to
control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her husband.

Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not liked.
He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class, and
consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid. The
whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with the work
on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the same
business like seriousness--leaving home for a month, or even two, with
his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his time
reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on these he
spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he said, a serious
library, and he made it a rule to read through all the books he bought.
He would sit in his study with a grave air, reading--a task he first
imposed upon himself as a duty, but which afterwards became a habit
affording him a special kind of pleasure and a consciousness of
being occupied with serious matters. In winter, except for business
excursions, he spent most of his time at home making himself one with
his family and entering into all the details of his children's relations
with their mother. The harmony between him and his wife grew closer and
closer and he daily discovered fresh spiritual treasures in her.

From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before
that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and
Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess Mary to
be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized the wrong he
had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and imagined that her
wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could not find fault with
Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her, but often felt ill-will
toward her which she could not overcome.

Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about her
own injustice toward her.

"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal--there
is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."

"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.

"'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be
taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I don't know.
Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is taken away, and
everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her.
Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always had
a sort of presentiment that it would not come off. She is a sterile
flower, you know--like some strawberry blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry
for her, and sometimes I think she doesn't feel it as you or I would."

Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel must be
understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with Natasha's
explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her position
trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower.
She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a
whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to the
home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled the children,
was always ready to render the small services for which she had a gift,
and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient
gratitude.

The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the same
scale as under the old prince.

The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more than
simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of wood,
plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished with
very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own
serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was spacious
and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for visitors. Whole
families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations sometimes came to
Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of servants and stayed for
months. Besides that, four times a year, on the name days and birthdays
of the hosts, as many as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day
or two. The rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its
ordinary occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers,
provided out of the produce of the estate.





CHAPTER IX


It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha had
been staying at her brother's with her husband and children since early
autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his own for three
weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven weeks and was
expected back every minute.

Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired General
Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this fifth of
December.

On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for
a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to
the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would come to
congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about the elections
of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to spend the eve
of that day in his usual way. He examined the bailiff's accounts of
the village in Ryazan which belonged to his wife's nephew, wrote two
business letters, and walked over to the granaries, cattle yards and
stables before dinner. Having taken precautions against the general
drunkenness to be expected on the morrow because it was a great saint's
day, he returned to dinner, and without having time for a private talk
with his wife sat down at the long table laid for twenty persons, at
which the whole household had assembled. At that table were his mother,
his mother's old lady companion Belova, his wife, their three children
with their governess and tutor, his wife's nephew with his tutor, Sonya,
Denisov, Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael
Ivanovich, the late prince's architect, who was living on in retirement
at Bald Hills.

Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband took
his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after taking
up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass standing
before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the case when he
came in to dinner straight from the farm--especially before the soup.
Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when she herself was in
a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had his soup and then
began to talk to him and make him admit that there was no cause for his
ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and was hurt that he should
be angry with her without any reason, and she felt unhappy. She asked
him where he had been. He replied. She again inquired whether
everything was going well on the farm. Her unnatural tone made him wince
unpleasantly and he replied hastily.

"Then I'm not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross with
me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and wished
to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded unnatural, but
could not refrain from asking some more questions.

Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general and
lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the table
and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary held out her
hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was angry with her.

"You always have such strange fancies! I didn't even think of being
angry," he replied.

But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I won't
tell you why."

Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya and the
old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to disagree,
could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they had their
moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always just after they
had been happiest together, they suddenly had a feeling of estrangement
and hostility, which occurred most frequently during Countess Mary's
pregnancies, and this was such a time.

"Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with apparent
cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on purpose to
vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning. Tomorrow I
shall have to suffer, so today I'll go and rest."

And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room and
lay down on the sofa.

"That's always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to everyone
except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him, especially when I
am in this condition." She looked down at her expanded figure and in the
glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face in which her eyes now looked
larger than ever.

And everything annoyed her--Denisov's shouting and laughter, Natasha's
talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.

Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling
irritated.

Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything of
what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the nursery.

The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of
chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with
them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable
crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with
difficulty, went to the small sitting room.

"Perhaps he is not asleep; I'll have an explanation with him," she
said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his mother,
followed her on tiptoe. She did not notice him.

"Mary, dear, I think he is asleep--he was so tired," said Sonya, meeting
her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that she
crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him."

Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt that
Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with evident
difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made no reply, but
to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly and went
to the door. Sonya went away by another door. From the room in which
Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his even breathing, every
slightest tone of which was familiar to his wife. As she listened to it
she saw before her his smooth handsome forehead, his mustache, and his
whole face, as she had so often seen it in the stillness of the night
when he slept. Nicholas suddenly moved and cleared his throat. And at
that moment little Andrew shouted from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma's
standing here!" Countess Mary turned pale with fright and made signs
to the boy. He grew silent, and quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to
Countess Mary. She knew how Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through
the door she heard Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and
his voice said crossly:

"I can't get a moment's peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you bring
him here?"

"I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..."

Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the
door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little
black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father's pet, having learned from
her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting room, ran
to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little girl boldly
opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with energetic steps of
her sturdy little legs, and having examined the position of her father,
who was asleep with his back to her, rose on tiptoe and kissed the hand
which lay under his head. Nicholas turned with a tender smile on his
face.

"Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary's frightened whisper from the
door. "Papa wants to sleep."

"No, Mamma, he doesn't want to sleep," said little Natasha with
conviction. "He's laughing."

Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.

"Come in, Mary," he said to his wife.

She went in and sat down by her husband.

"I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just looked
in."

Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife and,
seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and kissed
her hair.

"May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha.

Natasha smiled bashfully.

"Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the spot
where Nicholas had placed the kiss.

"I don't know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying to the
question he knew was in his wife's mind.

"You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are like
that. It always seems to me..."

"Mary, don't talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he
said gaily.

"It seems to be that you can't love me, that I am so plain... always...
and now... in this cond..."

"Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it's love that
makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind who are
loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don't love her, but...
I don't know how to put it. Without you, or when something comes between
us like this, I seem lost and can't do anything. Now do I love my
finger? I don't love it, but just try to cut it off!"

"I'm not like that myself, but I understand. So you're not angry with
me?"

"Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing his hair
he began to pace the room.

"Do you know, Mary, what I've been thinking?" he began, immediately
thinking aloud in his wife's presence now that they had made it up.

He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A
thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he told
her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till spring.

Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and in
her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the children.

"You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing to
little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here is our
logic. I say: 'Papa wants to sleep!' but she says, 'No, he's laughing.'
And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile.

"Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong hand,
lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the legs, and
paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree happiness
on the faces of both father and daughter.

"But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one," his wife
whispered in French.

"Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..."

At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps in
the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.

"Somebody has come."

"I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see," said Countess Mary and left
the room.

In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little daughter a
gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the laughing child quickly
from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart. His capers reminded
him of dancing, and looking at the child's round happy little face he
thought of what she would be like when he was an old man, taking her
into society and dancing the mazurka with her as his old father had
danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.

"It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering the room
a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You should have
seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed away so long.
Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two were parted," she
added, looking smilingly at the little girl who clung to her father.

Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.

Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.

"I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy," she
whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time she
sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though she
felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of happiness
unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily thought at that
instant.





CHAPTER X


Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already had
three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she was
now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was difficult
to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively Natasha of
former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm, soft,
and serene expression. In her face there was none of the ever-glowing
animation that had formerly burned there and constituted its charm.
Now her face and body were often all that one saw, and her soul was
not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a strong, handsome, and
fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindled in her face now. That
happened only when, as was the case that day, her husband returned home,
or a sick child was convalescent, or when she and Countess Mary spoke of
Prince Andrew (she never mentioned him to her husband, who she imagined
was jealous of Prince Andrew's memory), or on the rare occasions when
something happened to induce her to sing, a practice she had quite
abandoned since her marriage. At the rare moments when the old fire
did kindle in her handsome, fully developed body she was even more
attractive than in former days.

Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in
Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is to
say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often seen
in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her
and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked
solitude--she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even thought
that she did not--but with her pregnancies, her confinements, the
nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of her husband's life,
she had demands on her time which could be satisfied only by renouncing
society. All who had known Natasha before her marriage wondered at the
change in her as at something extraordinary. Only the old countess with
her maternal instinct had realized that all Natasha's outbursts had
been due to her need of children and a husband--as she herself had once
exclaimed at Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest--and her mother
was now surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never
understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that
Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother.

"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all
bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."

Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,
especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let herself
go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be
even more careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried, and
should fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became her
husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once abandoned all her witchery,
of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it up
just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with
her manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her toilet, or to show
herself to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid
inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in contradiction
to all those rules. She felt that the allurements instinct had formerly
taught her to use would now be merely ridiculous in the eyes of
her husband, to whom she had from the first moment given herself up
entirely--that is, with her whole soul, leaving no corner of it hidden
from him. She felt that her unity with her husband was not maintained
by the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by something
else--indefinite but firm as the bond between her own body and soul.

To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing romantic
songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange as to adorn
herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others might perhaps
have been agreeable--she did not know--but she had no time at all for
it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to singing, to dress,
or to choosing her words was that she really had no time to spare for
these things.

We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in
a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so
trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's entire
attention is devoted to it.

The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her family:
that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should belong
entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she had to bear,
bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.

And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her whole
soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the larger
did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did her powers
appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet
was unable to accomplish all that she considered necessary.

There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's
rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and rights,
though these themes were not yet termed questions as they are now; but
these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha, she positively
did not understand them.

These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing in
marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that is,
only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, which
lies in the family.

Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the question of
how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner, did not then
and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of a dinner is the
nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is the family.

If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats two
dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain his
purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.

If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to have
many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in that
case will not have a family.

If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is the
family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more than one
can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are needed for
the family--that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha needed a husband.
A husband was given her and he gave her a family. And she not only saw
no need of any other or better husband, but as all the powers of her
soul were intent on serving that husband and family, she could not
imagine and saw no interest in imagining how it would be if things were
different.

Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the
society of her relatives--Countess Mary, and her brother, her mother,
and Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could come
striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and with
joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby's napkin, and
from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect that baby was
much better.

To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she dressed
and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy--she was
jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty or
plain--were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The general
opinion was that Pierre was under his wife's thumb, which was really
true. From the very first days of their married life Natasha had
announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his wife's view,
to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his life belonged to
her and to the family. His wife's demands astonished him, but they also
flattered him, and he submitted to them.

Pierre's subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not
flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; did
not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money on a
whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except on
business--in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, which
she did not in the least understand but to which she attributed great
importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had the right to
regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as he chose. At
home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to her husband,
and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was occupied--that is,
was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but to show a partiality
for anything to get just what he liked done always. He had only to
express a wish and Natasha would jump up and run to fulfill it.

The entire household was governed according to Pierre's supposed orders,
that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way of
life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties, Natasha's
occupations, the children's upbringing, were all selected not merely
with regard to Pierre's expressed wishes, but to what Natasha from the
thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his wishes to be. And she
deduced the essentials of his wishes quite correctly, and having once
arrived at them clung to them tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to
change his mind she would fight him with his own weapons.

Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of their
first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet nurse
three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day told her
of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to have a wet
nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born, despite
the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her husband
himself--who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing her baby
herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious--she insisted
on having her own way, and after that nursed all her babies herself.

It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and wife
would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his surprise and
delight would find in his wife's ideas and actions the very thought
against which she had argued, but divested of everything superfluous
that in the excitement of the dispute he had added when expressing his
opinion.

After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm
consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he saw
himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within himself
inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really good in
him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was rejected.
And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a direct and
mysterious reflection.





CHAPTER XI


Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the Rostovs
he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come
to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were being
discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the principal
founders.

On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters) Natasha
herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel
his absence very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all
her husband's intellectual and abstract interests though she did not
understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance to him in such
matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry after reading the letter she
replied by asking him to go, but to fix a definite date for his return.
He was given four weeks' leave of absence.

Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a fortnight
before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and
irritability.

Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with
the present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He
looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a
person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies, and talk about
the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former enchantress.

Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother,
her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to console her
tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.

"It's all nonsense, all rubbish--those discussions which lead to nothing
and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very affairs
in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.

And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one
else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this
little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was
conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little
nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous, you would
like to pay him out, you are afraid--but here am I! And I am he..." and
that was unanswerable. It was more than true.

During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for
comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and
he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was just
what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety about her
husband more easily.

She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was heard
at the front door, and the old nurse--knowing how to please her
mistress--entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming
face.

"Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move lest
she should rouse the dozing baby.

"He's come, ma'am," whispered the nurse.

The blood rushed to Natasha's face and her feet involuntarily moved, but
she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his eyes and
looked at her. "You're here?" he seemed to be saying, and again lazily
smacked his lips.

Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little, handed
him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door. But at the
door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for having in
her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round. The nurse with
raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of his cot.

"Go, ma'am! Don't worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the kind of
familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.

Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.

Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with his
pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood of
brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.

"He's come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he too
was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had returned.

On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat
unwinding his scarf. "It's he! It's really he! He has come!" she said
to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head to her
breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy, happy face,
covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and contented..."

Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had
experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her
face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of
reproaches and angry words.

"Yes, it's all very well for you. You are pleased, you've had a good
time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown consideration
for the children. I am nursing and my milk was spoiled.... Petya was at
death's door. But you were enjoying yourself. Yes, enjoying..."

Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come sooner; he
knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a minute or two;
above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy. He wanted
to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a piteous,
frightened face and bent down.

"I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?"

"All right now. Come along! I wonder you're not ashamed! If only you
could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!"

"You are well?"

"Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went to
their rooms.

When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the nursery
holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right palm and
dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby's broad face
with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since over and there
was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha's face as she gazed tenderly at
her husband and child.

"And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she
asked.

"Yes, capitally."

"You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby's head.) "But how he did
frighten me... You've seen the princess? Is it true she's in love with
that..."

"Yes, just fancy..."

At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the baby
on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries. But
in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the baby
with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all his
attention.

"How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the baby.
"Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can't understand
how it is you don't see the charm of these delicious marvels."

"I don't and can't," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby. "A
lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!"

"And yet he's such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary,
vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..."

"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his hand is
just made for a baby's seat. Just look!"

"Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and
shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.





CHAPTER XII


As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several perfectly
distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole, though each
retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the others. Every
event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house was important to all
these worlds, but each had its own special reasons to rejoice or grieve
over that occurrence independently of the others.

For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and they
all felt it to be so.

The servants--the most reliable judges of their masters because they
judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their
acts and way of life--were glad of Pierre's return because they knew
that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day to
attend to the estate, and would be in better spirits and temper, and
also because they would all receive handsome presents for the holidays.

The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return because
no one else drew them into the social life of the household as he did.
He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only piece)
to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced, and they felt
sure he had brought presents for them all.

Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,
with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted because
Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his rapturous and
passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this love for Pierre
whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had brought him up
had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she loved him, and
little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him with just a shade of
contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did not want to be an hussar or
a Knight of St. George like his uncle Nicholas; he wanted to be learned,
wise, and kind like Pierre. In Pierre's presence his face always shone
with pleasure and he flushed and was breathless when Pierre spoke to
him. He did not miss a single word he uttered, and would afterwards,
with Dessalles or by himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of
everything Pierre had said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior
to 1812 (of which young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from
some words he had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity,
Platon Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha
(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially Pierre's
friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not remember--all this
made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.

From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion with
which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful, reverent
tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who was only just
beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that his father had
loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his friend. But the father
whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a divinity who could not
be pictured, and of whom he never thought without a swelling heart and
tears of sadness and rapture. So the boy also was happy that Pierre had
arrived.

The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and unite
any company he was in.

The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were
pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more smoothly
and peacefully.

The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and
especially that Natasha would now be herself again.

Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and made
haste to satisfy all their expectations.

Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the aid
of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not forgetting
his mother--and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress material for
a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews. In the early days
of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that his wife should expect
him not to forget to procure all the things he undertook to buy, and he
had been taken aback by her serious annoyance when on his first trip he
forgot everything. But in time he grew used to this demand. Knowing that
Natasha asked nothing for herself, and gave him commissions for others
only when he himself had offered to undertake them, he now found an
unexpected and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for
everyone in the house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred
Natasha's censure it was only for buying too many and too expensive
things. To her other defects (as most people thought them, but which
to Pierre were qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now
added stinginess.

From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing
entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he
spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs--which had been
in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts--had
begun to improve.

Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive
luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no
longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had now
been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not in
his power, and so that way of life proved economical.

With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.

"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff like a
shopman.

Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on her
lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the things he
showed her.

"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the material.
"It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"

Pierre told her the price.

"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be and
Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added, unable to
suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb set with pearls,
of a kind then just coming into fashion.

"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned Pierre.

"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair. "When
I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be fashionable again
by then. Well, let's go now."

And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and then to
the old countess' rooms.

The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing
grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing
room with parcels under their arms.

The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with a
frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper lip
had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.

After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession, she
felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or kept
awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She wanted
nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity only death
could give her. But until death came she had to go on living, that is,
to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in very young children
and very old people was particularly evident in her. Her life had
no external aims--only a need to exercise her various functions and
inclinations was apparent. She had to eat, sleep, think, speak, weep,
work, give vent to her anger, and so on, merely because she had a
stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a liver. She did these things not
under any external impulse as people in the full vigor of life do,
when behind the purpose for which they strive that of exercising their
functions remains unnoticed. She talked only because she physically
needed to exercise her tongue and lungs. She cried as a child does,
because her nose had to be cleared, and so on. What for people in their
full vigor is an aim was for her evidently merely a pretext.

Thus in the morning--especially if she had eaten anything rich the day
before--she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the handiest
pretext Belova's deafness.

She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other end
of the room.

"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.

And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter
angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"

Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or too damp
or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability her face
would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible symptoms when Belova
would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the countess' face yellow. Just
as she needed to work off her spleen so she had sometimes to exercise
her still-existing faculty of thinking--and the pretext for that was a
game of patience. When she needed to cry, the deceased count would be
the pretext. When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health
would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the
pretext would be Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise,
which was usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner
rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
stories over and over again to the same audience.

The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household though no
one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible effort to satisfy
her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a sad smile
between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the common
understanding of her condition expressed.

But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had
played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole self,
that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to yield to
her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being formerly as
full of life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied. "Memento
mori," said these glances.

Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and the
little children failed to understand this and avoided her.





CHAPTER XIII


When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was in
one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion of
playing patience, and so--though by force of habit she greeted him
with the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned after an
absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of waiting
for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with another
customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear, but that
you give it to me, an old woman..."--yet it was evident that she was
not pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it diverted her
attention from the unfinished game.

She finished her game of patience and only then examined the presents.
They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid workmanship, a
bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses depicted on it and with
a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count's portrait on the lid which
Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in Petersburg. The countess had
long wished for such a box, but as she did not want to cry just then she
glanced indifferently at the portrait and gave her attention chiefly to
the box for cards.

"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always
did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back--for I never saw
anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are we
to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away. Doesn't see
anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on, repeating her usual
phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her companion, "see what
a box for cards my son has brought us!"

Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress material.

Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had much to
talk about that they could not discuss before the old countess--not
that anything was hidden from her, but because she had dropped so
far behindhand in many things that had they begun to converse in her
presence they would have had to answer inopportune questions and to
repeat what they had already told her many times: that so-and-so was
dead and so-and-so was married, which she would again be unable to
remember--yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the drawing room from
habit, and Pierre answered the countess' questions as to whether Prince
Vasili had aged and whether Countess Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings
and still thought of them, and other matters that interested no one and
to which she herself was indifferent.

Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,
continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the family
were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided beside
the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had had
tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all sat
in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small table
where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi bitch
(daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and large black
eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the armchair beside
him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers had turned half
gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general's tunic unbuttoned;
Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He spoke of what he
knew might interest the old lady and that she could understand. He
told her of external social events and of the people who had formed
the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a real, living, and
distinct group, but who were now for the most part scattered about the
world and like herself were garnering the last ears of the harvests they
had sown in earlier years. But to the old countess those contemporaries
of hers seemed to be the only serious and real society. Natasha saw by
Pierre's animation that his visit had been interesting and that he had
much to tell them but dare not say it before the old countess. Denisov,
not being a member of the family, did not understand Pierre's caution
and being, as a malcontent, much interested in what was occurring in
Petersburg, kept urging Pierre to tell them about what had happened in
the Semenovsk regiment, then about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible
Society. Once or twice Pierre was carried away and began to speak of
these things, but Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the
health of Prince Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.

"Well, and all this idiocy--Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov asked. "Is
that weally still going on?"

"Going on?" Pierre exclaimed. "Why more than ever! The Bible Society is
the whole government now!"

 "What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had
finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry
after her meal. "What are you saying about the government? I don't
understand."

"Well, you know, Maman," Nicholas interposed, knowing how to translate
things into his mother's language, "Prince Alexander Golitsyn has
founded a society and in consequence has great influence, they say."

"Arakcheev and Golitsyn," incautiously remarked Pierre, "are now the
whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere and
are afraid of everything."

"Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most estimable
man. I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna's," said the countess in an
offended tone; and still more offended that they all remained silent,
she went on: "Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel Society! Well, and
what harm is there in that?" and she rose (everybody else got up too)
and with a severe expression sailed back to her table in the sitting
room.

The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the
children's voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some jolly
excitement was going on there.

"Finished, finished!" little Natasha's gleeful yell rose above them all.

Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he
never lost sight of) and smiled happily.

"That's delightful music!" said he.

"It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stocking," said Countess
Mary.

"Oh, I'll go and see," said Pierre, jumping up. "You know," he added,
stopping at the door, "why I'm especially fond of that music? It is
always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was driving
here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I grew. As I
entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha's peals of laughter and that meant
that all was well."

"I know! I know that feeling," said Nicholas. "But I mustn't go
there--those stockings are to be a surprise for me."

Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew still
louder.

"Come, Anna Makarovna," Pierre's voice was heard saying, "come here into
the middle of the room and at the word of command, 'One, two,' and when
I say 'three'... You stand here, and you in my arms--well now! One,
two!..." said Pierre, and a silence followed: "three!" and a rapturously
breathless cry of children's voices filled the room. "Two, two!" they
shouted.

This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to
herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same
needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly drew,
one out of the other, in the children's presence.





CHAPTER XIV


Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They kissed
everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and they went out.
Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles whispered to the
boy to come downstairs.

"No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied
Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.

"Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt.

His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary
glanced at him and turned to Pierre.

"When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said.

"I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good night!"
said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned to young
Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of one another
yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing Countess
Mary.

"Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up at
Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.

Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the
children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork; Natasha
did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov rose, asked
for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from Sonya--who
sat weary but resolute at the samovar--and questioned Pierre. The
curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed in a corner,
starting every now and then and muttering something to himself, and
evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he turned his curly
head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down collar, toward the
place where Pierre sat.

The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in power,
in which most people see the chief interest of home politics. Denisov,
dissatisfied with the government on account of his own disappointments
in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done in Petersburg
which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and sharp comments on what
Pierre told them.

"One used to have to be a German--now one must dance with Tatawinova
and Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
should let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose--he'd knock all this nonsense
out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment to a
fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried.

Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with
everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a very
serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been appointed
Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that the Emperor
had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed to him very
important. And so he thought it necessary to take an interest in these
things and to question Pierre. The questions put by these two kept the
conversation from changing its ordinary character of gossip about the
higher government circles.

But Natasha, knowing all her husband's ways and ideas, saw that he had
long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation to
another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake of
which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend Prince
Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with Prince
Theodore had gone.

"What was it about?" asked Nicholas.

"Always the same thing," said Pierre, looking round at his listeners.
"Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they cannot be
allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent men to
counteract it as far as they can."

"What can decent men do?" Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly. "What
can be done?"

"Why, this..."

"Come into my study," said Nicholas.

Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby, now
heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary
followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas Bolkonski
followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the writing table
in a shady corner by the window.

"Well, what would you do?" asked Denisov.

"Always some fantastic schemes," said Nicholas.

"Why this," began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room,
sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: "the position
in Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He
has abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not
tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and only
these people sans foi ni loi * can give it him--people who recklessly
hack at and strangle everything--Magnitski, Arakcheev, and tutti
quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after your estates
yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your steward was the
more readily your object might be attained," he said to Nicholas.


    * Without faith or law.


"Well, what does that lead up to?" said Nicholas.

"Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law courts, in the
army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the
people are tortured, enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young and
honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on. Everything is
strained to such a degree that it will certainly break," said Pierre (as
those who examine the actions of any government have always said since
governments began). "I told them just one thing in Petersburg."

"Told whom?"

"Well, you know whom," said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under
his brows. "Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and
philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in the
present circumstances something else is needed."

At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his nephew. His face
darkened and he went up to the boy.

"Why are you here?"

"Why? Let him be," said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and
continuing. "That is not enough, I told them. Something else is needed.
When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at any moment,
when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe, as many as
possible must join hands as closely as they can to withstand the general
calamity. Everything that is young and strong is being enticed away and
depraved. One is lured by women, another by honors, a third by ambition
or money, and they go over to that camp. No independent men, such as you
or I, are left. What I say is widen the scope of our society, let the
mot d'ordre be not virtue alone but independence and action as well!"

Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an armchair, sat
down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing discontentedly and frowning
more and more.

"But action with what aim?" he cried. "And what position will you adopt
toward the government?"

"Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret if the
government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to government, but it
is a society of true conservatives--a society of gentlemen in the full
meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some Pugachev or other from
killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev from sending me off to some
Military Settlement. We join hands only for the public welfare and the
general safety."

"Yes, but it's a secret society and therefore a hostile and harmful one
which can only cause harm."

"Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe" (they did not then venture
to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) "do any harm? The Tugendbund
is an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it is what Christ
preached on the Cross."

Natasha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at her
husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her--that did not
even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely simple
and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her because she
knew that it sprang from Pierre's whole soul), but it was his animated
and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.

The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down
collar--whom everyone had forgotten--gazed at Pierre with even greater
and more rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre's burned into his heart,
and with a nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke the
sealing wax and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle's table.

"It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German
Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing."

"No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage eaters,
but I don't understand it and can't even pwonounce it," interposed
Denisov in a loud and resolute voice. "I agwee that evewything here is
wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don't understand. If we're
not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own. That's all wight. Je suis
vot'e homme!" *


    * "I'm your man."


Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his brows
still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no prospect of
any great change and that all the danger he spoke of existed only in his
imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and as his mental faculties
were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas felt himself cornered. This
made him still angrier, for he was fully convinced, not by reasoning
but by something within him stronger than reason, of the justice of his
opinion.

"I will tell you this," he said, rising and trying with nervously
twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally
abandoning the attempt. "I can't prove it to you. You say that
everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't
see it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional
matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know,
but if you formed a secret society and began working against the
government--be it what it may--I know it is my duty to obey the
government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you
and cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.'
And you may argue about that as you like!"

An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to speak,
defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense was weak
and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was resumed, and
no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas' last remark.

When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkonski went
up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.

"Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree with
you?" he asked.

And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex, and
powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in
this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said he
regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to give
him an answer.

"Yes, I think so," he said reluctantly, and left the study.

The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what he
had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to Nicholas.

"Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally," he said, pointing to
the broken sealing wax and pens.

Nicholas started angrily.

"All right, all right," he said, throwing the bits under the table.

And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned away
from the boy.

"You ought not to have been here at all," he said.





CHAPTER XV


The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies, but
turned on the subject Nicholas liked best--recollections of 1812.
Denisov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable and amusing
about them. The family separated on the most friendly terms.

After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given
instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to the
bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her
table, writing.

"What are you writing, Mary?" Nicholas asked.

Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing would
not be understood or approved by her husband.

She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at the same
time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would now have to
tell him.

"A diary, Nicholas," she replied, handing him a blue exercise book
filled with her firm, bold writing.

"A diary?" Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up the
book.

It was in French.


December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy) woke up he did not
wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was naughty and
obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then I took the
matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's help to get the
other children up, telling him that I did not love him. For a long time
he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped out of bed, ran to me in
his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not calm him for a long time.
It was plain that what troubled him most was that he had grieved me.
Afterwards in the evening when I gave him his ticket, he again began
crying piteously and kissing me. One can do anything with him by
tenderness.


"What is a 'ticket'?" Nicholas inquired.

"I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how
they have behaved."

Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and
continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down
everything in the children's lives that seemed noteworthy to their
mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections
on educational methods. They were for the most part quite insignificant
trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the father either, now
that he read this diary about his children for the first time.

Under the date "5" was entered:


Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding. He had
none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others while they were
eating! I think that punishment by depriving children of sweets only
develops their greediness. Must tell Nicholas this.


Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant eyes
gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her
diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of his
admiration for his wife.

Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or even
done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of which the
sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had Nicholas
been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that his steady,
tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling of wonder at
her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost beyond his reach,
in which she had her being.

He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own
insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the
more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part of
himself.

"I quite, quite approve, my dearest!" said he with a significant look,
and after a short pause he added: "And I behaved badly today. You
weren't in the study. We began disputing--Pierre and I--and I lost my
temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don't know what would
become of him if Natasha didn't keep him in hand.... Have you any idea
why he went to Petersburg? They have formed..."

"Yes, I know," said Countess Mary. "Natasha told me."

"Well, then, you know," Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere
recollection of their discussion, "he wanted to convince me that it is
every honest man's duty to go against the government, and that the oath
of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren't there. They all fell
on me--Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she rules over him!
And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no words of her
own but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas, yielding to that
irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge those nearest and
dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying about Natasha could
have been applied word for word to himself in relation to his wife.

"Yes, I have noticed that," said Countess Mary.

"When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he
started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there--what
would you have said?"

"As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so. Pierre says
everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that it
is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there," said
Countess Mary, "but he forgets that we have other duties nearer to us,
duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might expose
ourselves to risks we must not risk our children."

"Yes, that's it! That's just what I said to him," put in Nicholas, who
fancied he really had said it. "But they insisted on their own view:
love of one's neighbor and Christianity--and all this in the presence of
young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all my things."

"Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little Nicholas,"
said Countess Mary. "He is such an exceptional boy. I am afraid I
neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and relations while
he has no one. He is constantly alone with his thoughts."

"Well, I don't think you need reproach yourself on his account. All that
the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are doing for
him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine lad! This
evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and fancy--as we were
going in to supper I looked and he had broken everything on my table to
bits, and he told me of it himself at once! I never knew him to tell an
untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!" repeated Nicholas, who at heart was
not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but was always anxious to recognize that
he was a fine lad.

"Still, I am not the same as his own mother," said Countess Mary. "I
feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am
dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have companions."

"Well it won't be for long. Next summer I'll take him to Petersburg,"
said Nicholas. "Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and always will be,"
he continued, returning to the talk in the study which had evidently
disturbed him. "Well, what business is it of mine what goes on
there--whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that? What business was it of
mine when I married and was so deep in debt that I was threatened with
prison, and had a mother who could not see or understand it? And
then there are you and the children and our affairs. Is it for my own
pleasure that I am at the farm or in the office from morning to night?
No, but I know I must work to comfort my mother, to repay you, and not
to leave the children such beggars as I was."

Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread alone
and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But she knew
she must not say this and that it would be useless to do so. She only
took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of approval and
a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few minutes' reflection
continued to think aloud.

"You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych" (this was his overseer) "came
back from the Tambov estate and told me they are already offering eighty
thousand rubles for the forest."

And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of
repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: "Another ten years of life
and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position."

Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he told
her. She knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would sometimes
ask her what he had been saying, and be vexed if he noticed that she
had been thinking about something else. But she had to force herself to
attend, for what he was saying did not interest her at all. She looked
at him and did not think, but felt, about something different. She felt
a submissive tender love for this man who would never understand all
that she understood, and this seemed to make her love for him still
stronger and added a touch of passionate tenderness. Besides this
feeling which absorbed her altogether and hindered her from following
the details of her husband's plans, thoughts that had no connection with
what he was saying flitted through her mind. She thought of her nephew.
Her husband's account of the boy's agitation while Pierre was speaking
struck her forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive
character recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew she
thought also of her own children. She did not compare them with him, but
compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt
with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for young
Nicholas.

Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the
difference in their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and
promised in her heart to do better and to accomplish the impossible--in
this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and all
her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary's soul always
strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute, and could
therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the lofty, secret
suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on her face. Nicholas
gazed at her. "O God! What will become of us if she dies, as I always
fear when her face is like that?" thought he, and placing himself before
the icon he began to say his evening prayers.





CHAPTER XVI


Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband
and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity,
understanding and expressing each other's thoughts in ways contrary to
all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions, and in
a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of talk with her
husband that for her it was the surest sign of something being wrong
between them if Pierre followed a line of logical reasoning. When he
began proving anything, or talking argumentatively and calmly and she,
led on by his example, began to do the same, she knew that they were on
the verge of a quarrel.

From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up to him with
wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her
bosom, saying: "Now you are all mine, mine! You won't escape!"--from
that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic
and contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked about
at one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many topics
did not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was the surest
sign that they fully understood one another.

Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and
contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this
intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves were
not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted them.

Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother's life and doings, of how she
had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of how she
was fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way better than
herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in acknowledging Mary's
superiority, but at the same time by saying it she made a demand on
Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her to Mary and to all
other women, and that now, especially after having seen many women in
Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.

Pierre, answering Natasha's words, told her how intolerable it had been
for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.

"I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies," he said. "It was
simply dull. Besides, I was very busy."

Natasha looked intently at him and went on:

"Mary is so splendid," she said. "How she understands children! It is as
if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance, Mitya was
naughty..."

"How like his father he is," Pierre interjected.

Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya's likeness to Nicholas: the
recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and
he wanted to know what Natasha thought of it.

"Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not generally
accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a fresh line,"
said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered.

"No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are
an amusement--almost a pastime," said Pierre. "For instance, he is
collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book
till he has read what he had already bought--Sismondi and Rousseau and
Montesquieu," he added with a smile. "You know how much I..." he began
to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to show
that this was unnecessary.

"So you say ideas are an amusement to him...."

"Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg I
saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all else is
mere amusement."

"Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children," said
Natasha. "Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure."

"Yes," Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind. "Nicholas
says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides, when I was in
Petersburg I felt (I can say this to you) that the whole affair would go
to pieces without me--everyone was pulling his own way. But I succeeded
in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear and simple. You see,
I don't say that we ought to oppose this and that. We may be mistaken.
What I say is: 'Join hands, you who love the right, and let there be but
one banner--that of active virtue.' Prince Sergey is a fine fellow and
clever."

Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's idea,
but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and necessary to
society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She wished to express
this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether he is really cleverer
than all the others?" she asked herself, and passed in review all those
whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what he had said there was no one
he had respected so highly as Platon Karataev.

"Do you know what I am thinking about?" she asked. "About Platon
Karataev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?"

Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood his
wife's line of thought.

"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely
trying to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not have
understood... yet perhaps he would."

"I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!"

"No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection. "What
he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so anxious
to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and I should
have been proud to let him see us. There now--you talk of my absence,
but you wouldn't believe what a special feeling I have for you after a
separation...."

"Yes, I should think..." Natasha began.

"No, it's not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn't love
more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course-" he did not
finish because their eyes meeting said the rest.

"What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed, "about honeymoons,
and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the contrary, now is
the best of all. If only you did not go away! Do you remember how
we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always mine. And what we
quarreled about--I don't even remember!"

"Always about the same thing," said Pierre with a smile. "Jealo..."

"Don't say it! I can't bear it!" Natasha cried, and her eyes glittered
coldly and vindictively. "Did you see her?" she added, after a pause.

"No, and if I had I shouldn't have recognized her."

They were silent for a while.

"Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was looking at
you," Natasha began, evidently anxious to disperse the cloud that had
come over them. "You are as like him as two peas--like the boy." (She
meant her little son.) "Oh, it's time to go to him.... The milk's
come.... But I'm sorry to leave you."

They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one
another at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with
self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile.
Having interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other
continue.

"No. What did you say? Go on, go on."

"No, you go on, I was talking nonsense," said Natasha.

Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his complacent
reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it seemed to
him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the whole of Russian
society and to the whole world.

"I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are always
simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united and
constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now that's simple
enough."

"Yes."

"And what were you going to say?"

"I? Only nonsense."

"But all the same?"

"Oh nothing, only a trifle," said Natasha, smilingly still more
brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was coming
to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung to me. I'm
sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now he's crying.
Well, good-by!" and she left the room.


Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a little lamp
was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark and they could
not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four pillows and his
Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring. Little Nicholas, who had
just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat up in bed and gazed before him
with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from a terrible dream. He had dreamed
that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing helmets such as were depicted in
his Plutarch, were leading a huge army. The army was made up of white
slanting lines that filled the air like the cobwebs that float about in
autumn and which Dessalles called les fils de la Vierge. In front was
Glory, which was similar to those threads but rather thicker. He and
Pierre were borne along lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their
goal. Suddenly the threads that moved them began to slacken and become
entangled and it grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before
them in a stern and threatening attitude.

"Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax and
pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill
the first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look
at Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his
father--Prince Andrew--and his father had neither shape nor form, but he
existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with love:
he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father caressed and
pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer to them. Terror
seized young Nicholas and he awoke.

"My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of Prince
Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human form.) "My
father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of me and of Uncle
Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it. Mucius Scaevola burned
his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing happen to me? I know
they want me to learn. And I will learn. But someday I shall have
finished learning, and then I will do something. I only pray God that
something may happen to me such as happened to Plutarch's men, and I
will act as they did. I will do better. Everyone shall know me, love me,
and be delighted with me!" And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and
he began to cry.

"Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking.

"No," answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.

"He is good and kind and I am fond of him!" he thought of Dessalles.
"But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father? Oh,
Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he would be
satisfied...."





SECOND EPILOGUE





CHAPTER I


History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into
words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single
nation, appears impossible.

The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to describe
and seize the apparently elusive--the life of a people. They described
the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and regarded the
activity of those men as representing the activity of the whole nation.

The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished and by
what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the ancients
met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations to the will of
a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so as to accomplish
ends that were predestined.

For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the direct
participation of the Deity in human affairs.

Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.

It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in man's
subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward which nations
are led, modern history should study not the manifestations of power but
the causes that produce it. But modern history has not done this. Having
in theory rejected the view held by the ancients, it still follows them
in practice.

Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided by
the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes endowed with
extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of very various
kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the
former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations,
which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of
humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims--the welfare of the
French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the
welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually
meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a
large continent.

Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the divine
authority of the kings and the "fate" of the ancients, to reach the same
conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations guided
by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to which these
nations and humanity at large are tending.

At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon to
Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of
their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.

In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals
who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian considers
only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, while another
includes also orators, learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets).
Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward which humanity is being led
is known to the historians: to one of them this goal is the greatness of
the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to another it is liberty, equality,
and a certain kind of civilization of a small corner of the world called
Europe.

In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is expressed
by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves
eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward.
In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable
symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting to
it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle Europe. The
counter movement reaches the starting point of the first movement in the
west--Paris--and subsides.

During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions
of men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions
of Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.

What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people burn
houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these events?
What force made men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and
most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the
monuments and tradition of that period.

For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the
science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity to know
themselves.

If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply,
would have been clear and complete. One might believe or disbelieve
in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in
it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the history of that
period, nor would there have been any contradictions.

But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit the
conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity
in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other answers.

Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know what
this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced these
events? Then listen:

"Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such and such
mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His
descendants were weak men and they too ruled France badly. And they had
such and such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover, certain
men wrote some books at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century
there were a couple of dozen men in Paris who began to talk about all
men being free and equal. This caused people all over France to begin
to slash at and drown one another. They killed the king and many other
people. At that time there was in France a man of genius--Napoleon. He
conquered everybody everywhere--that is, he killed many people because
he was a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned to
France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him. Having
become an Emperor he again went out to kill people in Italy, Austria,
and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. In Russia there
was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and
therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends
with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled and again began killing many
people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand men into Russia and captured
Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the Emperor
Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to
arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon's allies suddenly
became his enemies and their forces advanced against the fresh forces he
raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to
abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the
title of Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years before
and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand.
Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the laughingstock both of the
French and the Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears
before his Old Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then
the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who
managed to sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and
thereby extended the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by
these conversations made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the
diplomatists and monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of
again ordering their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon
arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating
him, immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were
angry at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent him
to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved
France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that rock and
bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a reaction
occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress their
subjects."

It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic--a caricature of the
historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild expression of
the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions, which all the
historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the histories
of separate states to the writers of general histories and the new
histories of the culture of that period.

The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that
modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.

If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of
humanity and of the peoples, the first question--in the absence of a
reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible--is: what is the
power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies
either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very
proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.

All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not
what was asked. All that would be interesting if we recognized a divine
power based on itself and always consistently directing its nations
through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we do not acknowledge such
a power, and therefore before speaking about Napoleons, Louis-es, and
authors, we ought to be shown the connection existing between these men
and the movement of the nations.

If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it should
be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole interest of
history lies precisely in that force.

History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
quite well known to everybody.





CHAPTER II


What force moves the nations?

Biographical historians and historians of separate nations understand
this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In their narration
events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and Alexander, or in
general of the persons they describe. The answers given by this kind
of historian to the question of what force causes events to happen are
satisfactory only as long as there is but one historian to each event.
As soon as historians of different nationalities and tendencies begin
to describe the same event, the replies they give immediately lose all
meaning, for this force is understood by them all not only differently
but often in quite contradictory ways. One historian says that an
event was produced by Napoleon's power, another that it was produced by
Alexander's, a third that it was due to the power of some other person.
Besides this, historians of that kind contradict each other even
in their statement as to the force on which the authority of some
particular person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon's
power was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it
was based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians
of this class, by mutually destroying one another's positions, destroy
the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no
reply to history's essential question.

Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to
recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians' view of the force
which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power inherent in
heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a multiplicity of variously
directed forces. In describing a war or the subjugation of a people, a
general historian looks for the cause of the event not in the power
of one man, but in the interaction of many persons connected with the
event.

According to this view the power of historical personages, represented
as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would seem, be regarded
as a force that itself produces events. Yet in most cases universal
historians still employ the conception of power as a force that itself
produces events, and treat it as their cause. In their exposition, an
historic character is first the product of his time, and his power only
the resultant of various forces, and then his power is itself a force
producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and others, for instance, at one
time prove Napoleon to be a product of the Revolution, of the ideas of
1789 and so forth, and at another plainly say that the campaign of 1812
and other things they do not like were simply the product of Napoleon's
misdirected will, and that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their
development by Napoleon's caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the
general temper of the age produced Napoleon's power. But Napoleon's
power suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of
the age.

This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur at
every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made up of
a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs because after
entering the field of analysis the universal historians stop halfway.

To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant force, the
sum of the components must equal the resultant. This condition is never
observed by the universal historians, and so to explain the resultant
forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to the insufficient
components, another unexplained force affecting the resultant action.

Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the restoration
of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were produced by the
will of Alexander. But the universal historian Gervinus, refuting this
opinion of the specialist historian, tries to prove that the campaign of
1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons were due to other things beside
Alexander's will--such as the activity of Stein, Metternich, Madame
de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte Chateaubriand, and others. The historian
evidently decomposes Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand,
Chateaubriand, and the rest--but the sum of the components, that is,
the interactions of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the
others, evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon
of millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That Chateaubriand,
Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to one another only
affected their mutual relations but does not account for the submission
of millions. And therefore to explain how from these relations of theirs
the submission of millions of people resulted--that is, how component
forces equal to one A gave a resultant equal to a thousand times A--the
historian is again obliged to fall back on power--the force he had
denied--and to recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he
has to admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is
just what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only
contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.

Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according to
whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the clouds
away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the same way the
universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in with
their theory, say that power is the result of events, and sometimes,
when they want to prove something else, say that power produces events.

A third class of historians--the so-called historians of
culture--following the path laid down by the universal historians who
sometimes accept writers and ladies as forces producing events--again
take that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is
called culture--in mental activity.

The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their
progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical
events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one
another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that
such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense number of
indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these historians select
the indication of intellectual activity and say that this indication is
the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove that the cause of events
lies in intellectual activity, only by a great stretch can one admit
that there is any connection between intellectual activity and the
movement of peoples, and in no case can one admit that intellectual
activity controls people's actions, for that view is not confirmed by
such facts as the very cruel murders of the French Revolution resulting
from the doctrine of the equality of man, or the very cruel wars and
executions resulting from the preaching of love.

But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments with
which these histories are filled--admitting that nations are governed by
some undefined force called an idea--history's essential question still
remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs and to the
influence of advisers and other people introduced by the universal
historians, another, newer force--the idea--is added, the connection of
which with the masses needs explanation. It is possible to understand
that Napoleon had power and so events occurred; with some effort one may
even conceive that Napoleon together with other influences was the cause
of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat social, had the effect of making
Frenchmen begin to drown one another cannot be understood without an
explanation of the causal nexus of this new force with the event.

Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live contemporaneously,
and so it is possible to find some connection between the intellectual
activity of men and their historical movements, just as such a
connection may be found between the movements of humanity and commerce,
handicraft, gardening, or anything else you please. But why intellectual
activity is considered by the historians of culture to be the cause or
expression of the whole historical movement is hard to understand.
Only the following considerations can have led the historians to such
a conclusion: (1) that history is written by learned men, and so it is
natural and agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class
supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a similar
belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists, and soldiers
(if they do not express it, that is merely because traders and soldiers
do not write history), and (2) that spiritual activity, enlightenment,
civilization, culture, ideas, are all indistinct, indefinite conceptions
under whose banner it is very easy to use words having a still less
definite meaning, and which can therefore be readily introduced into any
theory.

But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this kind
(which may possibly even be of use to someone for something) the
histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and more
to approximate, are significant from the fact that after seriously
and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and political
doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to describe an
actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for instance, they
involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise of power--and
say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will. Speaking so,
the historians of culture involuntarily contradict themselves, and show
that the new force they have devised does not account for what happens
in history, and that history can only be explained by introducing a
power which they apparently do not recognize.





CHAPTER III


A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant says
the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because its
wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement lies in
the smoke which the wind carries away.

The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation. To
refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no devil,
or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is not the devil
but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as a result of the
contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong. But the man who
says that the movement of the wheels is the cause refutes himself, for
having once begun to analyze he ought to go on and explain further why
the wheels go round; and till he has reached the ultimate cause of the
movement of the locomotive in the pressure of steam in the boiler, he
has no right to stop in his search for the cause. The man who explains
the movement of the locomotive by the smoke that is carried back has
noticed that the wheels do not supply an explanation and has taken the
first sign that occurs to him and in his turn has offered that as an
explanation.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the locomotive is
that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples is that
of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the peoples.

Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of
different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the
peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force resulting
from several other forces, like the movement of the wheels; others again
as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that is blown away.

So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether
Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories
of all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite
impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception
of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain end.
And the only such conception known to historians is that of power.

This conception is the one handle by means of which the material of
history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who
breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other method
of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the one
possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception of
power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated by
the universal historians and historians of culture themselves, for they
professedly reject that conception but inevitably have recourse to it at
every step.

In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now
is like money in circulation--paper money and coin. The biographies and
special national histories are like paper money. They can be used and
can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to anyone and even
advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the security behind them.
You need only forget to ask how the will of heroes produces events, and
such histories as Thiers' will be interesting and instructive and may
perhaps even possess a tinge of poetry. But just as doubts of the real
value of paper money arise either because, being easy to make, too much
of it gets made or because people try to exchange it for gold, so also
doubts concerning the real value of such histories arise either because
too many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart
someone inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?--that is, wants
to exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual
comprehension.

The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are
like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to
substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific gravity
of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more than
that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is deceived by
tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle. As gold is
gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange but also for use,
so universal historians will be valuable only when they can reply to
history's essential question: what is power? The universal historians
give contradictory replies to that question, while the historians of
culture evade it and answer something quite different. And as counters
of imitation gold can be used only among a group of people who agree to
accept them as gold, or among those who do not know the nature of
gold, so universal historians and historians of culture, not answering
humanity's essential question, serve as currency for some purposes of
their own, only in universities and among the mass of readers who have a
taste for what they call "serious reading."





CHAPTER IV


Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine
subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the subjection
of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without contradictions
take a single step till it has chosen one of two things: either a return
to the former belief in the direct intervention of the Deity in human
affairs or a definite explanation of the meaning of the force producing
historical events and termed "power."

A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been destroyed; and
so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.

Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so
accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the question:
why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon uttered
certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and so what he
ordered was done.

This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was given
him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes essential to
determine what is this power of one man over others.

It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak
one--a domination based on the application or threat of physical force,
like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect of moral
force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say that the
leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted with a
special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power cannot be
based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to mention heroes
such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions differ widely,
history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a Metternich, who ruled
over millions of people, had any particular moral qualities, but on the
contrary were generally morally weaker than any of the millions they
ruled over.

If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral
qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for
elsewhere--in the relation to the people of the man who wields the
power.

And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,
that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's
understanding of power for true gold.

Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed or
tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.

In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how a
state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to
be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that
definition of power needs explanation.

The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the ancients
regarded fire--namely, as something existing absolutely. But for
history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for modern
physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.

From this fundamental difference between the view held by history and
that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell
minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what
power--existing immutably outside time--is, but to history's questions
about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer
nothing.

If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their
ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If not,
then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when he was
taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those criminals whom
he arrested?

Do palace revolutions--in which sometimes only two or three people take
part--transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In international
relations, is the will of the people also transferred to their
conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine transferred
to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people transferred
to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the French went to
fight the Austrians?

To these questions three answers are possible:

Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen, and
that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle
against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as an
infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the people
is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite and known
conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and even
destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers of the
conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or (3) that
the will of the people is delegated to the rulers conditionally, but
that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and that the appearance
of several authorities, their struggles and their falls, result solely
from the greater or lesser fulfillment by the rulers of these unknown
conditions on which the will of the people is transferred from some
people to others.

And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain the
relation of the people to their rulers.

Some historians--those biographical and specialist historians already
referred to--in their simplicity failing to understand the question of
the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective will of
the people is unconditionally transferred to historical persons, and
therefore when describing some single state they assume that particular
power to be the one absolute and real power, and that any other force
opposing this is not a power but a violation of power--mere violence.

Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of history,
has the inconvenience--in application to complex and stormy periods in
the life of nations during which various powers arise simultaneously and
struggle with one another--that a Legitimist historian will prove
that the National Convention, the Directory, and Bonaparte were mere
infringers of the true power, while a Republican and a Bonapartist will
prove: the one that the Convention and the other that the Empire was the
real power, and that all the others were violations of power.
Evidently the explanations furnished by these historians being mutually
contradictory can only satisfy young children.

Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of
historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the will
of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have power
only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will of the
people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this program
consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they continually
contradict one another.

Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's
progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth, freedom,
or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country. But not
to mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature of this
program--or even admitting that some one general program of these
conditions exists--the facts of history almost always contradict that
theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted consist in the
wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how is it that Louis
XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns tranquilly, while Louis XVI
and Charles I are executed by their people? To this question historians
reply that Louis XIV's activity, contrary to the program, reacted on
Louis XVI. But why did it not react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV--why
should it react just on Louis XVI? And what is the time limit for such
reactions? To these questions there are and can be no answers. Equally
little does this view explain why for several centuries the collective
will is not withdrawn from certain rulers and their heirs, and
then suddenly during a period of fifty years is transferred to the
Convention, to the Directory, to Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII,
to Napoleon again, to Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican
government, and to Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers
of the people's will from one individual to another, especially in view
of international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians are
obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal delegations
of the people's will but are accidents dependent on cunning, on
mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a ruler, or a
party leader. So that the greater part of the events of history--civil
wars, revolutions, and conquests--are presented by these historians
not as the results of free transferences of the people's will, but as
results of the ill-directed will of one or more individuals, that is,
once again, as usurpations of power. And so these historians also see
and admit historical events which are exceptions to the theory.

These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some
plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that all
that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the palm, the
mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth and no longer
resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.

Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people
is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the
conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have
power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has been
delegated to them.

But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the
historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have
those leaders?

The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the people:
the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the people.

But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the
leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some part
of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression of
the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the details
of the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or
a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is evident
nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the activity of an
historical leader which serves to express the people's life, as other
so-called "philosophical" historians believe, then to determine which
side of the activity of a leader expresses the nation's life, we have
first of all to know in what the nation's life consists.

Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most
obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all
conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of
humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by almost
all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment, progress,
civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization as the goal
of the movement of humanity, the historians study the men of whom the
greatest number of monuments have remained: kings, ministers, generals,
authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to the extent to which in
their opinion these persons have promoted or hindered that abstraction.
But as it is in no way proved that the aim of humanity does consist in
freedom, equality, enlightenment, or civilization, and as the connection
of the people with the rulers and enlighteners of humanity is only based
on the arbitrary assumption that the collective will of the people is
always transferred to the men whom we have noticed, it happens that the
activity of the millions who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture,
and destroy one another never is expressed in the account of the
activity of some dozen people who did not burn houses, practice
agriculture, or slay their fellow creatures.

History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples of
the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive eastward
explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their mistresses
and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau, Diderot,
Beaumarchais, and others?

Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and Siberia
expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the Terrible and by
his correspondence with Kurbski?

Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained by
the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their ladies?
For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without
leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit, remains
incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the cessation of that
movement when a rational and sacred aim for the Crusade--the deliverance
of Jerusalem--had been clearly defined by historic leaders. Popes,
kings, and knights incited the peoples to free the Holy Land; but the
people did not go, for the unknown cause which had previously impelled
them to go no longer existed. The history of the Godfreys and the
Minnesingers can evidently not cover the life of the peoples. And the
history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers has remained the history
of Godfreys and Minnesingers, but the history of the life of the peoples
and their impulses has remained unknown.

Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us the
life of the peoples.

The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of
life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had
a hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was
suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why after
the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why during the
French Revolution they guillotined one another.

If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest
historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not
the history of the life of the peoples.





CHAPTER V


The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few men, for
the connection between those men and the nations has not been found.
The theory that this connection is based on the transference of the
collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an
hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.

The theory of the transference of the collective will of the people to
historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of jurisprudence
and be essential for its purposes, but in its application to history, as
soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil wars occur--that is, as soon as
history begins--that theory explains nothing.

The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of transference of the
people's will cannot be verified, for it never occurred.

Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head of affairs, the
theory can always say that such and such a person took the lead because
the collective will was transferred to him.

The replies this theory gives to historical questions are like the
replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and
paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in different
parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman, should attribute
the direction the herd takes to what animal happens to be at its head.

"The herd goes in that direction because the animal in front leads
it and the collective will of all the other animals is vested in that
leader." This is what historians of the first class say--those who
assume the unconditional transference of the people's will.

"If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the
collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to
another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them in
the direction selected by the whole herd." Such is the reply historians
who assume that the collective will of the people is delegated to
rulers under conditions which they regard as known. (With this method
of observation it often happens that the observer, influenced by the
direction he himself prefers, regards those as leaders who, owing to the
people's change of direction, are no longer in front, but on one side,
or even in the rear.)

"If the animals in front are continually changing and the direction of
the whole herd is constantly altered, this is because in order to follow
a given direction the animals transfer their will to the animals that
have attracted our attention, and to study the movements of the herd
we must watch the movements of all the prominent animals moving on all
sides of the herd." So say the third class of historians who regard all
historical persons, from monarchs to journalists, as the expression of
their age.

The theory of the transference of the will of the people to historic
persons is merely a paraphrase--a restatement of the question in other
words.

What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the
collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what
condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On
condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people. That
is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning of which
we do not understand.


If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning,
then having subjected to criticism the explanation of "power" that
juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is merely
a word and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena man
has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies his
reflections. And experience tells us that power is not merely a word but
an actually existing phenomenon.

Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective activity
of men can do without the conception of power, the existence of power is
proved both by history and by observing contemporary events.

Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear, by whose will the
event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree and the
French go to Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue decrees and
an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and an army enters
Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French submit to the
Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever event occurs it is always
related to the will of one or of several men who have decreed it.

The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowledging divine
intervention in human affairs, want to see the cause of events in
the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that
supposition is not confirmed either by reason or by experience.

On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a man's
will--his words--are only part of the general activity expressed in an
event, as for instance in a war or a revolution, and so without assuming
an incomprehensible, supernatural force--a miracle--one cannot admit
that words can be the immediate cause of the movements of millions of
men. On the other hand, even if we admitted that words could be the
cause of events, history shows that the expression of the will of
historical personages does not in most cases produce any effect, that
is to say, their commands are often not executed, and sometimes the very
opposite of what they order occurs.

Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity we
cannot regard "power" as the cause of events.

Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that
exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution of
that will by others.

To explain the conditions of that relationship we must first establish a
conception of the expression of will, referring it to man and not to the
Deity.

If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as ancient history
tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time and is not
caused by anything, for the Divinity is not controlled by an event. But
speaking of commands that are the expression of the will of men acting
in time and in relation to one another, to explain the connection of
commands with events we must restore: (1) the condition of all that
takes place: the continuity of movement in time both of the events and
of the person who commands, and (2) the inevitability of the connection
between the person commanding and those who execute his command.





CHAPTER VI


Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time, can
relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of years or
centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can by His
sole will determine the direction of humanity's movement; but man acts
in time and himself takes part in what occurs.

Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that no
command can be executed without some preceding order having been given
rendering the execution of the last command possible.

No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole series
of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and never refers
to a whole series of events but always to one moment only of an event.

When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to war,
we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of consecutive
commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have commanded
an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered such and such
papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to Petersburg;
tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army, the fleet, the
commissariat, and so on and so on--millions of commands, which formed
a whole series corresponding to a series of events which brought the
French armies into Russia.

If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an invasion
of England and expended on no other undertaking so much time and effort,
and yet during his whole reign never once attempted to execute that
design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with which country he
considered it desirable to be in alliance (a conviction he repeatedly
expressed)--this came about because his commands did not correspond to
the course of events in the first case, but did so correspond in the
latter.

For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man should
order what can be executed. But to know what can and what cannot be
executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon's invasion of
Russia in which millions participated, but even in the simplest event,
for in either case millions of obstacles may arise to prevent its
execution. Every order executed is always one of an immense number
unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with the course of
events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get linked up with a
consecutive series of commands corresponding to a series of events, and
are executed.

Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which precedes
it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and out of
thousands of others those few commands which were consistent with that
event have been executed, we forget about the others that were not
executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the chief source
of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in the historical
accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and petty events, such
for instance as all those which led the French armies to Russia, is
generalized into one event in accord with the result produced by that
series of events, and corresponding with this generalization the whole
series of commands is also generalized into a single expression of will.

We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In
reality in all Napoleon's activity we never find anything resembling an
expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or expressions of
his will, very variously and indefinitely directed. Amid a long series
of unexecuted orders of Napoleon's one series, for the campaign of 1812,
was carried out--not because those orders differed in any way from the
other, unexecuted orders but because they coincided with the course of
events that led the French army into Russia; just as in stencil work
this or that figure comes out not because the color was laid on from
this side or in that way, but because it was laid on from all sides over
the figure cut in the stencil.

So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the events,
we find that a command can never be the cause of the event, but that a
certain definite dependence exists between the two.

To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to
reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not from
the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the command
himself takes part in the event.

This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what is
called power. This relation consists in the following:

For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in which
regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common action, the
relation between those taking part in it is always the same.

Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations toward
one another that the larger number take a more direct share, and the
smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action for which
they have combined.

Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one of
the most striking and definite examples is an army.

Every army is composed of lower grades of the service--the rank and
file--of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next higher
military rank--corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom there are
fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are still fewer,
and so on to the highest military command which is concentrated in one
person.

A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone, of
which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and file;
the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of the next
higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point of which
will represent the commander in chief.

The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section of
the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing, hacking,
burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for these actions
from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The noncommissioned
officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the action itself less
frequently than the soldiers, but they already give commands. An
officer still less often acts directly himself, but commands still more
frequently. A general does nothing but command the troops, indicates the
objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon himself. The commander in chief
never takes direct part in the action itself, but only gives general
orders concerning the movement of the mass of the troops. A similar
relation of people to one another is seen in every combination of men
for common activity--in agriculture, trade, and every administration.

And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to the
highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action, combine
in such relations that the more directly they participate in performing
the action the less they can command and the more numerous they are,
while the less their direct participation in the action itself, the more
they command and the fewer of them there are; rising in this way from
the lowest ranks to the man at the top, who takes the least direct share
in the action and directs his activity chiefly to commanding.

This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.

Having restored the condition of time under which all events occur,
we find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest part
in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively directed to
commanding.





CHAPTER VII


When an event is taking place people express their opinions and wishes
about it, and as the event results from the collective activity of
many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure to be
fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions expressed
is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event as a command
preceding it.

Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to how and
where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens that this is
done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have command and power
in their primary form. The man who worked most with his hands could not
think so much about what he was doing, or reflect on or command what
would result from the common activity; while the man who commanded
more would evidently work less with his hands on account of his greater
verbal activity.

When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a common aim
there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their activity is
given to directing and commanding, take less part in the direct work.

When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections which
as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his present
activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just the same is
done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not take a direct
part in the activity to devise considerations, justifications, and
surmises concerning their collective activity.

For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and kill
one another. And corresponding to the event its justification appears in
people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare of France, for
liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one another, and
this event was accompanied by its justification in the necessity for a
centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and so on. Men went
from the west to the east killing their fellow men, and the event
was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France, the baseness of
England, and so on. History shows us that these justifications of the
events have no common sense and are all contradictory, as in the case of
killing a man as the result of recognizing his rights, and the killing
of millions in Russia for the humiliation of England. But these
justifications have a very necessary significance in their own day.

These justifications release those who produce the events from moral
responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front
of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they clear
men's moral responsibilities from their path.

Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest
question that presents itself when examining each historical event. How
is it that millions of men commit collective crimes--make war, commit
murder, and so on?

With the present complex forms of political and social life in Europe
can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by monarchs,
ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is there any
collective action which cannot find its justification in political
unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in civilization? So
that every event that occurs inevitably coincides with some expressed
wish and, receiving a justification, presents itself as the result of
the will of one man or of several men.

In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts
will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship the
movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.

Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that flow and
comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince ourselves that
every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement of the ship,
and that we were led into error by the fact that we ourselves were
imperceptibly moving.

We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of historical
characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable condition of all that
occurs--the continuity of movement in time) and do not lose sight of the
essential connection of historical persons with the masses.

When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same wave
ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also turns
frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the wave
anticipating its movement.

Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen
and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither
directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a distance
seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the ship's
movement also.


Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons
which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed
that the events depended on those commands. But examining the events
themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to
the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on
events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however many
commands were issued, the event does not take place unless there are
other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs--be it what it
may--then out of all the continually expressed wishes of different
people some will always be found which by their meaning and their time
of utterance are related as commands to the events.

Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively to
these two essential questions of history:

(1) What is power?

(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?

(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals,
in which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and
justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is
his participation in that action.

(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by intellectual
activity, nor even by a combination of the two as historians have
supposed, but by the activity of all the people who participate in
the events, and who always combine in such a way that those taking
the largest direct share in the event take on themselves the least
responsibility and vice versa.

Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event; physically
it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral activity is
inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event is neither in
the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.

Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to the
phenomena we are examining.

In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity--that final limit
to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if it is not
playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat produces
electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one another.

Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we
cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is
inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law. The
same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we do
not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,
people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and
we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in other
words that it is a law.





CHAPTER VIII


If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment of this
simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have finished our
argument. But the law of history relates to man. A particle of matter
cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of attraction or repulsion
and that that law is untrue, but man, who is the subject of history,
says plainly: I am free and am therefore not subject to the law.

The presence of the problem of man's free will, though unexpressed, is
felt at every step of history.

All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered this
question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the
false path historical science has followed are due solely to the lack of
a solution of that question.

If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he
pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents.

If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely, that
is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that man's
in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy the
possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of humanity.

If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will cannot
exist, for then man's will is subject to that law.

In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most
ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most ancient
times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.

The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation
from whatever point of view--theological, historical, ethical, or
philosophic--we find a general law of necessity to which he (like all
that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves as what
we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.

This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from and
independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself, but only
through consciousness does he know himself.

Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of reason
is conceivable.

To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of all be
conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of himself as
a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is conscious of
his volition. But his will--which forms the essence of his life--man
recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.

If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed by
one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking
food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this
never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation of
it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to him
to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as free.

You say: I am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let it fall.
Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an irrefutable
demonstration of freedom.

That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not subject to
reason.

If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and independent
source of self-consciousness it would be subject to reasoning and
to experience, but in fact such subjection does not exist and is
inconceivable.

A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he, as
an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man submits to
them and never resists the laws of gravity or impermeability once he
has become acquainted with them. But the same series of experiments
and arguments proves to him that the complete freedom of which he is
conscious in himself is impossible, and that his every action depends
on his organization, his character, and the motives acting upon him; yet
man never submits to the deductions of these experiments and arguments.
Having learned from experiment and argument that a stone falls
downwards, a man indubitably believes this and always expects the law
that he has learned to be fulfilled.

But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does
not and cannot believe this.

However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the
same conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as
before, yet when under the same conditions and with the same character
he approaches for the thousandth time the action that always ends in the
same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment
that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however
incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is
impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely the
same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which
constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels
that however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conception
of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life, but he would
be unable to live for a single moment.

He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life,
are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and
obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and
disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger,
virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.

A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of
life.

If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless
contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one and
the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only
proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom, uncontrolled by
experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and felt by everyone
without exception, this consciousness without which no conception of man
is possible constitutes the other side of the question.

Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing God.
What is sin, the conception of which arises from the consciousness of
man's freedom? That is a question for theology.

The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed in
statistics. What is man's responsibility to society, the conception of
which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question for
jurisprudence.

Man's actions proceed from his innate character and the motives acting
upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and wrong
in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom? That is a
question for ethics.

Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears subject
to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from that
connection appears to be free. How should the past life of nations and
of humanity be regarded--as the result of the free, or as the result of
the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for history.

Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of
knowledge--thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the
diffusion of printed matter--has the question of the freedom of will
been put on a level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our
time the majority of so-called advanced people--that is, the crowd of
ignoramuses--have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with one
side of the question for a solution of the whole problem.

They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist,
for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular
movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul and
free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we sprang
from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that thousands of
years ago that same law of necessity which with such ardor they are now
trying to prove by physiology and comparative zoology was not merely
acknowledged by all the religions and all the thinkers, but has never
been denied. They do not see that the role of the natural sciences in
this matter is merely to serve as an instrument for the illumination
of one side of it. For the fact that, from the point of view of
observation, reason and the will are merely secretions of the brain, and
that man following the general law may have developed from lower animals
at some unknown period of time, only explains from a fresh side
the truth admitted thousands of years ago by all the religious and
philosophic theories--that from the point of view of reason man is
subject to the law of necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's
breadth the solution of the question, which has another, opposite, side,
based on the consciousness of freedom.

If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is
as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at a
certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is the
time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of how
man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of
necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative
physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can
observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe
consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.

The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this
question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls of
a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief
superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over the
windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should be
delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything is now
so smooth and regular.





CHAPTER IX


For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability, history
has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which the
question is dealt with, that for history this question does not refer
to the essence of man's free will but its manifestation in the past and
under certain conditions.

In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences as
experimental science stands to abstract science.

The subject for history is not man's will itself but our presentation of
it.

And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the
incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it does
for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a presentation of
man's life in which the union of these two contradictions has already
taken place.

In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very clearly
and definitely understood without any sense of contradiction, although
each event presents itself as partly free and partly compulsory.

To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined and
what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the philosophy
of history can and should follow a path contrary to that taken by other
sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions of freedom and
inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the phenomena of life
under those definitions, history should deduce a definition of the
conception of freedom and inevitability themselves from the immense
quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and that always appear
dependent on these two elements.

Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an individual
we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly of man's free
will and partly of the law of inevitability.

Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the incursions
of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of someone's
action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of several for his
walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The degree of freedom and
inevitability governing the actions of these people is clearly defined
for us.

Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to
differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but
every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom and
inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure of
freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive, and
the more inevitability the less freedom.

The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases
according to the point of view from which the action is regarded, but
their relation is always one of inverse proportion.

A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry mother
exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man trained
to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a defenseless
man--seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject to the law of
necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which these people were
placed, and more free to one who does not know that the man was himself
drowning, that the mother was hungry, that the soldier was in the ranks,
and so on. Similarly a man who committed a murder twenty years ago and
has since lived peaceably and harmlessly in society seems less guilty
and his action more due to the law of inevitability, to someone who
considers his action after twenty years have elapsed than to one who
examined it the day after it was committed. And in the same way every
action of an insane, intoxicated, or highly excited man appears less
free and more inevitable to one who knows the mental condition of him
who committed the action, and seems more free and less inevitable to one
who does not know it. In all these cases the conception of freedom
is increased or diminished and the conception of compulsion is
correspondingly decreased or increased, according to the point of view
from which the action is regarded. So that the greater the conception of
necessity the smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.

Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,
and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity and
freedom.

All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and
necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:

(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the deeds.

(2) His relation to time.

(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.

The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the man's
relation to the external world and the greater or lesser clearness
of our understanding of the definite position occupied by the man
in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what makes it
evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject to necessity
than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the actions of a man
closely connected with others in a thickly populated district, or of one
bound by family, official, or business duties, seem certainly less free
and more subject to necessity than those of a man living in solitude and
seclusion.

If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything around
him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his relation
to anything around him, if we see his connection with anything
whatever--with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads, the work on
which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or the light that
falls on the things about him--we see that each of these circumstances
has an influence on him and controls at least some side of his activity.
And the more we perceive of these influences the more our conception of
his freedom diminishes and the more our conception of the necessity that
weighs on him increases.

The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation of
the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the place
the man's action occupies in time. That is the ground which makes the
fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the human race,
appear evidently less free than a man's entry into marriage today. It is
the reason why the life and activity of people who lived centuries ago
and are connected with me in time cannot seem to me as free as the life
of a contemporary, the consequences of which are still unknown to me.

The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends in this
respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the performance
of the action and our judgment of it.

If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the same
circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me undoubtedly
free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago, then being in
different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing that if that act had
not been committed much that resulted from it--good, agreeable, and even
essential--would not have taken place. If I reflect on an action still
more remote, ten years ago or more, then the consequences of my action
are still plainer to me and I find it hard to imagine what would have
happened had that action not been performed. The farther I go back
in memory, or what is the same thing the farther I go forward in my
judgment, the more doubtful becomes my belief in the freedom of my
action.

In history we find a very similar progress of conviction concerning
the part played by free will in the general affairs of humanity. A
contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing of all the
known participants, but with a more remote event we already see its
inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else possible.
And the farther we go back in examining events the less arbitrary do
they appear.

The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of the
crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still seem
to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their heroes'
will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying its definite
place in history and without which we cannot imagine the modern history
of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the Crusades that event appeared
as merely due to the will of certain people. In regard to the migration
of the peoples it does not enter anyone's head today to suppose that
the renovation of the European world depended on Attila's caprice. The
farther back in history the object of our observation lies, the more
doubtful does the free will of those concerned in the event become and
the more manifest the law of inevitability.

The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that
endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which each
phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must have
its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a cause of
what will follow.

The better we are acquainted with the physiological, psychological, and
historical laws deduced by observation and by which man is controlled,
and the more correctly we perceive the physiological, psychological,
and historical causes of the action, and the simpler the action we are
observing and the less complex the character and mind of the man in
question, the more subject to inevitability and the less free do our
actions and those of others appear.

When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a
crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we ascribe a
greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we most urgently
demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act we
rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case we recognize in it
more individuality, originality, and independence. But if even one of
the innumerable causes of the act is known to us we recognize a certain
element of necessity and are less insistent on punishment for the crime,
or the acknowledgment of the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom
of the apparently original action. That a criminal was reared among male
factors mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father
or mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems less
deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The founder of a
sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by
what the way was prepared for his activity. If we have a large range
of examples, if our observation is constantly directed to seeking the
correlation of cause and effect in people's actions, their actions
appear to us more under compulsion and less free the more correctly we
connect the effects with the causes. If we examined simple actions and
had a vast number of such actions under observation, our conception of
their inevitability would be still greater. The dishonest conduct of the
son of a dishonest father, the misconduct of a woman who had fallen
into bad company, a drunkard's relapse into drunkenness, and so on are
actions that seem to us less free the better we understand their cause.
If the man whose actions we are considering is on a very low stage
of mental development, like a child, a madman, or a simpleton--then,
knowing the causes of the act and the simplicity of the character and
intelligence in question, we see so large an element of necessity and so
little free will that as soon as we know the cause prompting the action
we can foretell the result.

On these three considerations alone is based the conception of
irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted
by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less
according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in
which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according
to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of the
action and its investigation, and according to the greater or lesser
understanding of the causes that led to the action.





CHAPTER X


Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually diminishes
or increases according to the greater or lesser connection with the
external world, the greater or lesser remoteness of time, and the
greater or lesser dependence on the causes in relation to which we
contemplate a man's life.

So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
external world is well known, where the time between the action and
its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are most
accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability and a
minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on external
conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the causes of
whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of a minimum of
inevitability and a maximum of freedom.

In neither case--however we may change our point of view, however plain
we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and the external
world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long or short the
period of time, however intelligible or incomprehensible the causes
of the action may be--can we ever conceive either complete freedom or
complete necessity.

(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
influence of the external world, we never get a conception of freedom
in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds
him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My action seems
to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my arm in every
direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in which there was
least obstruction to that action either from things around me or from
the construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the possible
directions because in it there were fewest obstacles. For my action
to be free it was necessary that it should encounter no obstacles. To
conceive of a man being free we must imagine him outside space, which is
evidently impossible.

(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time of the
deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I examine
an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it as not
being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which it was
committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself: could I have
abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has already passed? To
convince myself of this I do not lift it the next moment. But I am
not now abstaining from doing so at the first moment when I asked the
question. Time has gone by which I could not detain, the arm I then
lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now refrain from lifting,
nor is the air in which I lifted it the same that now surrounds me. The
moment in which the first movement was made is irrevocable, and at that
moment I could make only one movement, and whatever movement I made
would be the only one. That I did not lift my arm a moment later does
not prove that I could have abstained from lifting it then. And since I
could make only one movement at that single moment of time, it could not
have been any other. To imagine it as free, it is necessary to imagine
it in the present, on the boundary between the past and the future--that
is, outside time, which is impossible.

(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,
an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of the
expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the first demand
of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause, for without a
cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to perform an action
independently of any cause, but my wish to perform an action without a
cause is the cause of my action.

But even if--imagining a man quite exempt from all influences, examining
only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any cause--we were
to admit so infinitely small a remainder of inevitability as equaled
zero, we should even then not have arrived at the conception of complete
freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by the external world, standing
outside of time and independent of cause, is no longer a man.

In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite devoid of
freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.

(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space
in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for the
number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of space. And
therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men are defined,
there is no complete inevitability but a certain measure of freedom
remains.

(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action we are
examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite, while
time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never be absolute
inevitability.

(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any action, we
shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and so again we
never reach absolute inevitability.

But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of freedom to
equal zero, we assumed in some given case--as for instance in that of a
dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot--complete absence of freedom, by
so doing we should destroy the very conception of man in the case we are
examining, for as soon as there is no freedom there is also no man. And
so the conception of the action of a man subject solely to the law of
inevitability without any element of freedom is just as impossible as
the conception of a man's completely free action.

And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of an
infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of time,
and an infinite series of causes.

To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond time,
and free from dependence on cause.

In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom
we should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.

In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability we
should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time, and
cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and unlimited would
be nothing, or mere content without form.

We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's
whole outlook on the universe is constructed--the incomprehensible
essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.

Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time is
infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable otherwise.
(3) The connection between cause and effect has no beginning and can
have no end.

Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the fixed
moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as living,
consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I feel myself
to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.

Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness
gives expression to the essence of freedom.

Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's
consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its
three forms.

Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines. Freedom
is the content. Inevitability is the form.

Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one another
as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and separately
incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.

Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.

Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define one
another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.

All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation of free
will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws of reason.

All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence of
life to the laws of reason.

The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious of
them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity, animal
force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life in man and
we call that freedom.

But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which we
know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the first
knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so too the
force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which everyone is
conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know the laws of
inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that every man dies,
up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and historic laws).

All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
laws of reason.

Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is directly
conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way differs from
any other force. The forces of gravitation, electricity, or chemical
affinity are only distinguished from one another in that they are
differently defined by reason. Just so the force of man's free will
is distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature only by the
definition reason gives it. Freedom, apart from necessity, that is,
apart from the laws of reason that define it, differs in no way from
gravitation, or heat, or the force that makes things grow; for reason,
it is only a momentary undefinable sensation of life.

And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly bodies,
the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity, or
of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
same way does the force of free will form the content of history.
But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of this
unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free will
in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause forms
the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
metaphysics.

In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is
only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know
of the essence of life.

So also in history what is known to us we call laws of inevitability,
what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only an
expression for the unknown remainder of what we know about the laws of
human life.





CHAPTER XI


History examines the manifestations of man's free will in connection
with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is, it
defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a science
only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws.

The recognition of man's free will as something capable of influencing
historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the same for
history as the recognition of a free force moving the heavenly bodies
would be for astronomy.

That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of laws,
that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body
moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no
conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists. If
any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical law
can exist, nor any conception of historical events.

For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end
of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a
consciousness of man's will in the present moves in space, time, and
dependence on cause.

The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the more
evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define those laws
is the problem of history.

From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards its
subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events in
man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is impossible,
for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon as we recognize
it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law becomes
impossible.

Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal, that
is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we convince
ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes, and then
instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of laws as
its problem.

The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of
thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously
with the self-destruction toward which--ever dissecting and dissecting
the causes of phenomena--the old method of history is moving.

All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at
infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons the
process of analysis and enters on the new process of the integration
of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the conception
of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property common to all
unknown, infinitely small, elements.

In another form but along the same path of reflection the other sciences
have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity he did not say
that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction; he said that all
bodies from the largest to the smallest have the property of attracting
one another, that is, leaving aside the question of the cause of the
movement of the bodies, he expressed the property common to all bodies
from the infinitely large to the infinitely small. The same is done by
the natural sciences: leaving aside the question of cause, they seek for
laws. History stands on the same path. And if history has for its object
the study of the movement of the nations and of humanity and not the
narration of episodes in the lives of individuals, it too, setting
aside the conception of cause, should seek the laws common to all the
inseparably interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.





CHAPTER XII


From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the mere
recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth that moves
sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the ancients. By disproving
that law it might have been possible to retain the old conception of
the movements of the bodies, but without disproving it, it would seem
impossible to continue studying the Ptolemaic worlds. But even after
the discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still
studied for a long time.

From the time the first person said and proved that the number of births
or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this or that
mode of government is determined by certain geographical and economic
conditions, and that certain relations of population to soil produce
migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history had been built
were destroyed in their essence.

By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have been
retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to continue
studying historic events as the results of man's free will. For if a
certain mode of government was established or certain migrations
of peoples took place in consequence of such and such geographic,
ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will of those
individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of government
or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as the cause.

And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with the
laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology,
and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.

The struggle between the old views and the new was long and stubbornly
fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on guard for the
old views and accused the new of violating revelation. But when truth
conquered, theology established itself just as firmly on the new
foundation.

Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding between
the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the same way
stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of subverting
revelation.

In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes
passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret for
the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the other
is the passion for destruction.

To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical philosophy,
it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would destroy faith in
God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the
son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton, to
Voltaire for example, it seemed that the laws of astronomy destroyed
religion, and he utilized the law of gravitation as a weapon against
religion.

Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and evil,
and all the institutions of state and church that have been built up on
those conceptions.

So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of
inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, though
the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus in
astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which
the institutions of state and church are erected.

As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history
now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or
nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible
phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history
it is the independence of personality--free will.

As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth
lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's fixity and of
the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing
the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause
lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one's own
personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: "It is true that we
do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility
we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not
feel) we arrive at laws," so also in history the new view says: "It is
true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our
free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on
the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an
unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel;
in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom
that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not
conscious.

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       Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition.

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                     OXFORD MEDICAL PUBLICATIONS



                          MANUAL OF SURGERY



                                  BY

                     ALEXIS THOMSON, F.R.C.S.Ed.
           _PROFESSOR OF SURGERY, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH_
                  SURGEON EDINBURGH ROYAL INFIRMARY

                                 AND

                     ALEXANDER MILES, F.R.C.S.Ed.
                  SURGEON EDINBURGH ROYAL INFIRMARY


                             VOLUME FIRST
                           GENERAL SURGERY


                       _SIXTH EDITION REVISED_
                       _WITH 169 ILLUSTRATIONS_



                                LONDON
                 HENRY FROWDE and HODDER & STOUGHTON
                        THE _LANCET_ BUILDING
                 1 & 2 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.2






    First Edition                                             1904
    Second Edition                                            1907
    Third Edition                                             1909
    Fourth Edition                                            1911
      "       "    Second Impression                          1913
    Fifth Edition                                             1915
      "       "    Second Impression                          1919
    Sixth Edition                                             1921



                     PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
                  MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH




PREFACE TO SIXTH EDITION


Much has happened since this Manual was last revised, and many surgical
lessons have been learned in the hard school of war. Some may yet have
to be unlearned, and others have but little bearing on the problems
presented to the civilian surgeon. Save in its broadest principles, the
surgery of warfare is a thing apart from the general surgery of civil
life, and the exhaustive literature now available on every aspect of it
makes it unnecessary that it should receive detailed consideration in a
manual for students. In preparing this new edition, therefore, we have
endeavoured to incorporate only such additions to our knowledge and
resources as our experience leads us to believe will prove of permanent
value in civil practice.

For the rest, the text has been revised, condensed, and in places
rearranged; a number of old illustrations have been discarded, and a
greater number of new ones added. Descriptions of operative procedures
have been omitted from the _Manual_, as they are to be found in the
companion volume on _Operative Surgery_, the third edition of which
appeared some months ago.

We have retained the Basle anatomical nomenclature, as extended
experience has confirmed our preference for it. For the convenience of
readers who still employ the old terms, these are given in brackets
after the new.

This edition of the _Manual_ appears in three volumes; the first being
devoted to General Surgery, the other two to Regional Surgery. This
arrangement has enabled us to deal in a more consecutive manner than
hitherto with the surgery of the Extremities, including Fractures and
Dislocations.

We have once more to express our thanks to colleagues in the Edinburgh
School and to other friends for aiding us in providing new
illustrations, and for other valuable help, as well as to our publishers
for their generosity in the matter of illustrations.

EDINBURGH,
    _March_ 1921.




CONTENTS


                                                                   PAGE
    CHAPTER I
    REPAIR                                                            1

    CHAPTER II
    CONDITIONS WHICH INTERFERE WITH REPAIR                           17

    CHAPTER III
    INFLAMMATION                                                     31

    CHAPTER IV
    SUPPURATION                                                      45

    CHAPTER V
    ULCERATION AND ULCERS                                            68

    CHAPTER VI
    GANGRENE                                                         86

    CHAPTER VII
    BACTERIAL AND OTHER WOUND INFECTIONS                            107

    CHAPTER VIII
    TUBERCULOSIS                                                    133

    CHAPTER IX
    SYPHILIS                                                        146

    CHAPTER X
    TUMOURS                                                         181

    CHAPTER XI
    INJURIES                                                        218

    CHAPTER XII
    METHODS OF WOUND TREATMENT                                      241

    CHAPTER XIII
    CONSTITUTIONAL EFFECTS OF INJURIES                              249

    CHAPTER XIV
    THE BLOOD VESSELS                                               258

    CHAPTER XV
    THE LYMPH VESSELS AND GLANDS                                    321

    CHAPTER XVI
    THE NERVES                                                      342

    CHAPTER XVII
    SKIN AND SUBCUTANEOUS TISSUES                                   376

    CHAPTER XVIII
    THE MUSCLES, TENDONS, AND TENDON SHEATHS                        405

    CHAPTER XIX
    THE BURS                                                       426

    CHAPTER XX
    DISEASES OF BONE                                                434

    CHAPTER XXI
    DISEASES OF JOINTS                                              501

    INDEX                                                           547




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  FIG.                                                             PAGE

    1. Ulcer of Back of Hand grafted from Abdominal Wall             15

    2. Staphylococcus aureus in Pus from case of Osteomyelitis       25

    3. Streptococci in Pus from case of Diffuse Cellulitis           26

    4. Bacillus coli communis in Pus from Abdominal Abscess          27

    5. Fraenkel's Pneumococci in Pus from Empyema following          28
       Pneumonia

    6. Passive Hypermia of Hand and Forearm induced by Bier's       37
       Bandage

    7. Passive Hypermia of Finger induced by Klapp's Suction        38
       Bell

    8. Passive Hypermia induced by Klapp's Suction Bell for         39
       Inflammation of Inguinal Gland

    9. Diagram of various forms of Whitlow                           56

   10. Charts of Acute Saprmia                                      61

   11. Chart of Hectic Fever                                         62

   12. Chart of Septicmia followed by Pymia                        63

   13. Chart of Pymia following on Acute Osteomyelitis              65

   14. Leg Ulcers associated with Varicose Veins                     71

   15. Perforating Ulcers of Sole of Foot                            74

   16. Bazin's Disease in a girl t. 16                              75

   17. Syphilitic Ulcers in region of Knee                           76

   18. Callous Ulcer showing thickened edges                         78

   19. Tibia and Fibula, showing changes due to Chronic Ulcer of     80
       Leg

   20. Senile Gangrene of the Foot                                   89

   21. Embolic Gangrene of Hand and Arm                              92

   22. Gangrene of Terminal Phalanx of Index-Finger                 100

   23. Cancrum Oris                                                 103

   24. Acute Bed Sores over right Buttock                           104

   25. Chart of Erysipelas occurring in a wound                     108

   26. Bacillus of Tetanus                                          113

   27. Bacillus of Anthrax                                          120

   28. Malignant Pustule third day after infection                  122

   29. Malignant Pustule fourteen days after infection              122

   30. Colony of Actinomyces                                        126

   31. Actinomycosis of Maxilla                                     128

   32. Mycetoma, or Madura Foot                                     130

   33. Tubercle bacilli                                             134

   34. Tuberculous Abscess in Lumbar Region                         141

   35. Tuberculous Sinus injected through its opening in the        144
       Forearm with Bismuth Paste

   36. Spirochte pallida                                           147

   37. Spirochta refrigerans from scraping of Vagina               148

   38. Primary Lesion on Thumb, with Secondary Eruption on          154
       Forearm

   39. Syphilitic Rupia                                             159

   40. Ulcerating Gumma of Lips                                     169

   41. Ulceration in inherited Syphilis                             170

   42. Tertiary Syphilitic Ulceration in region of Knee and on      171
       both Thumbs

   43. Facies of Inherited Syphilis                                 174

   44. Facies of Inherited Syphilis                                 175

   45. Subcutaneous Lipoma                                          185

   46. Pedunculated Lipoma of Buttock                               186

   47. Diffuse Lipomatosis of Neck                                  187

   48. Zanthoma of Hands                                            188

   49. Zanthoma of Buttock                                          189

   50. Chondroma growing from Infra-Spinous Fossa of Scapula        190

   51. Chondroma of Metacarpal Bone of Thumb                        190

   52. Cancellous Osteoma of Lower End of Femur                     192

   53. Myeloma of Shaft of Humerus                                  195

   54. Fibro-myoma of Uterus                                        196

   55. Recurrent Sarcoma of Sciatic Nerve                           198

   56. Sarcoma of Arm fungating                                     199

   57. Carcinoma of Breast                                          206

   58. Epithelioma of Lip                                           209

   59. Dermoid Cyst of Ovary                                        213

   60. Carpal Ganglion in a woman t. 25                            215

   61. Ganglion on lateral aspect of Knee                           216

   62. Radiogram showing pellets embedded in Arm                    228

   63. Cicatricial Contraction following Severe Burn                236

   64. Genealogical Tree of Hmophilic Family                       278

   65. Radiogram showing calcareous degeneration of Arteries        284

   66. Varicose Vein with Thrombosis                                289

   67. Extensive Varix of Internal Saphena System on Left Leg       291

   68. Mixed Nvus of Nose                                          296

   69. Cirsoid Aneurysm of Forehead                                 299

   70. Cirsoid Aneurysm of Orbit and Face                           300

   71. Radiogram of Aneurysm of Aorta                               303

   72. Sacculated Aneurysm of Abdominal Aorta                       304

   73. Radiogram of Innominate Aneurysm after Treatment by          309
       Moore-Corradi method

   74. Thoracic Aneurysm threatening to rupture                     313

   75. Innominate Aneurysm in a woman                               315

   76. Congenital Cystic Tumour or Hygroma of Axilla                328

   77. Tuberculous Cervical Gland with Abscess formation            331

   78. Mass of Tuberculous Glands removed from Axilla               333

   79. Tuberculous Axillary Glands                                  335

   80. Chronic Hodgkin's Disease in boy t. 11                      337

   81. Lymphadenoma in a woman t. 44                               338

   82. Lympho Sarcoma removed from Groin                            339

   83. Cancerous Glands in Neck, secondary to Epithelioma of Lip    341

   84. Stump Neuromas of Sciatic Nerve                              345

   85. Stump Neuromas, showing changes at ends of divided Nerves    354

   86. Diffuse Enlargement of Nerves in generalised                 356
       Neuro-Fibromatosis

   87. Plexiform Neuroma of small Sciatic Nerve                     357

   88. Multiple Neuro-Fibromas of Skin (Molluscum fibrosum)         358

   89. Elephantiasis Neuromatosa in a woman t. 28                  359

   90. Drop-Wrist following Fracture of Shaft of Humerus            365

   91. To illustrate the Loss of Sensation produced by Division     367
       of the Median Nerve

   92. To illustrate Loss of Sensation produced by Complete         368
       Division of Ulnar Nerve

   93. Callosities and Corns on Sole of Foot                        377

   94. Ulcerated Chilblains on Fingers                              378

   95. Carbuncle on Back of Neck                                    381

   96. Tuberculous Elephantiasis                                    383

   97. Elephantiasis in a woman t. 45                              387

   98. Elephantiasis of Penis and Scrotum                           388

   99. Multiple Sebaceous Cysts or Wens                             390

  100. Sebaceous Horn growing from Auricle                          392

  101. Paraffin Epithelioma                                         394

  102. Rodent Cancer of Inner Canthus                               395

  103. Rodent Cancer with destruction of contents of Orbit          396

  104. Diffuse Melanotic Cancer of Lymphatics of Skin               398

  105. Melanotic Cancer of Forehead with Metastasis in Lymph        399
       Glands

  106. Recurrent Keloid                                             401

  107. Subungual Exostosis                                          403

  108. Avulsion of Tendon                                           410

  109. Volkmann's Ischmic Contracture                              414

  110. Ossification in Tendon of Ilio-psoas Muscle                  417

  111. Radiogram of Calcification and Ossification in Biceps and    418
       Triceps

  112. Ossification in Muscles of Trunk in generalised Ossifying    419
       Myositis

  113. Hydrops of Prepatellar Bursa                                 427

  114. Section through Gouty Bursa                                  428

  115. Tuberculous Disease of Sub-Deltoid Bursa                     429

  116. Great Enlargement of the Ischial Bursa                       431

  117. Gouty Disease of Burs                                       432

  118. Shaft of the Femur after Acute Osteomyelitis                 444

  119. Femur and Tibia showing results of Acute Osteomyelitis       445

  120. Segment of Tibia resected for Brodie's Abscess               449

  121. Radiogram of Brodie's Abscess in Lower End of Tibia          451

  122. Sequestrum of Femur after Amputation                         453

  123. New Periosteal Bone on Surface of Femur from Amputation      454
       Stump

  124. Tuberculous Osteomyelitis of Os Magnum                       456

  125. Tuberculous Disease of Tibia                                 457

  126. Diffuse Tuberculous Osteomyelitis of Right Tibia             458

  127. Advanced Tuberculous Disease in Region of Ankle              459

  128. Tuberculous Dactylitis                                       460

  129. Shortening of Middle Finger of Adult, the result of          461
       Tuberculous Dactylitis in Childhood

  130. Syphilitic Disease of Skull                                  463

  131. Syphilitic Hyperostosis and Sclerosis of Tibia               464

  132. Sabre-blade Deformity of Tibia                               467

  133. Skeleton of Rickety Dwarf                                    470

  134. Changes in the Skull resulting from Ostitis Deformans        474

  135. Cadaver, illustrating the alterations in the Lower Limbs     475
       resulting from Ostitis Deformans

  136. Osteomyelitis Fibrosa affecting Femora                       476

  137. Radiogram of Upper End of Femur in Osteomyelitis Fibrosa     478

  138. Radiogram of Right Knee showing Multiple Exostoses           482

  139. Multiple Exostoses of Limbs                                  483

  140. Multiple Cartilaginous Exostoses                             484

  141. Multiple Cartilaginous Exostoses                             486

  142. Multiple Chondromas of Phalanges and Metacarpals             488

  143. Skiagram of Multiple Chondromas                              489

  144. Multiple Chondromas in Hand                                  490

  145. Radiogram of Myeloma of Humerus                              492

  146. Periosteal Sarcoma of Femur                                  493

  147. Periosteal Sarcoma of Humerus                                493

  148. Chondro-Sarcoma of Scapula                                   494

  149. Central Sarcoma of Femur invading Knee Joint                 495

  150. Osseous Shell of Osteo-Sarcoma of Femur                      495

  151. Radiogram of Osteo-Sarcoma of Femur                          496

  152. Radiogram of Chondro-Sarcoma of Humerus                      497

  153. Epitheliomatus Ulcer of Leg invading Tibia                   499

  154. Osseous Ankylosis of Femur and Tibia                         503

  155. Osseous Ankylosis of Knee                                    504

  156. Caseating focus in Upper End of Fibula                       513

  157. Arthritis Deformans of Elbow                                 525

  158. Arthritis Deformans of Knee                                  526

  159. Hypertrophied Fringes of Synovial Membrane of Knee           527

  160. Arthritis Deformans of Hands                                 529

  161. Arthritis Deformans of several Joints                        530

  162. Bones of Knee in Charcot's Disease                           533

  163. Charcot's Disease of Left Knee                               534

  164. Charcot's Disease of both Ankles: front view                 535

  165. Charcot's Disease of both Ankles: back view                  536

  166. Radiogram of Multiple Loose Bodies in Knee-joint             540

  167. Loose Body from Knee-joint                                   541

  168. Multiple partially ossified Chondromas of Synovial           542
       Membrane from Shoulder-joint

  169. Multiple Cartilaginous Loose Bodies from Knee-joint          543




MANUAL OF SURGERY




CHAPTER I

REPAIR


Introduction--Process of repair--Healing by primary union--Granulation
    tissue--Cicatricial tissue--Modifications of process of
    repair--Repair in individual tissues--Transplantation or grafting
    of tissues--Conditions--Sources of grafts--Grafting of individual
    tissues--Methods.


INTRODUCTION

To prolong human life and to alleviate suffering are the ultimate
objects of scientific medicine. The two great branches of the healing
art--Medicine and Surgery--are so intimately related that it is
impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line between them, but for
convenience Surgery may be defined as "the art of treating lesions and
malformations of the human body by manual operations, mediate and
immediate." To apply his art intelligently and successfully, it is
essential that the surgeon should be conversant not only with the normal
anatomy and physiology of the body and with the various pathological
conditions to which it is liable, but also with the nature of the
process by which repair of injured or diseased tissues is effected.
Without this knowledge he is unable to recognise such deviations from
the normal as result from mal-development, injury, or disease, or
rationally to direct his efforts towards the correction or removal of
these.


PROCESS OF REPAIR

The process of repair in living tissue depends upon an inherent power
possessed by vital cells of reacting to the irritation caused by injury
or disease. The cells of the damaged tissues, under the influence of
this irritation, undergo certain proliferative changes, which are
designed to restore the normal structure and configuration of the part.
The process by which this restoration is effected is essentially the
same in all tissues, but the extent to which different tissues can carry
the recuperative process varies. Simple structures, such as skin,
cartilage, bone, periosteum, and tendon, for example, have a high power
of regeneration, and in them the reparative process may result in almost
perfect restitution to the normal. More complex structures, on the other
hand, such as secreting glands, muscle, and the tissues of the central
nervous system, are but imperfectly restored, simple cicatricial
connective tissue taking the place of what has been lost or destroyed.
Any given tissue can be replaced only by tissue of a similar kind, and
in a damaged part each element takes its share in the reparative process
by producing new material which approximates more or less closely to the
normal according to the recuperative capacity of the particular tissue.
The normal process of repair may be interfered with by various
extraneous agencies, the most important of which are infection by
disease-producing micro-organisms, the presence of foreign substances,
undue movement of the affected part, and improper applications and
dressings. The effect of these agencies is to delay repair or to prevent
the individual tissues carrying the process to the furthest degree of
which they are capable.

In the management of wounds and other diseased conditions the main
object of the surgeon is to promote the natural reparative process by
preventing or eliminating any factor by which it may be disturbed.

#Healing by Primary Union.#--The most favourable conditions for the
progress of the reparative process are to be found in a clean-cut wound
of the integument, which is uncomplicated by loss of tissue, by the
presence of foreign substances, or by infection with disease-producing
micro-organisms, and its edges are in contact. Such a wound in virtue of
the absence of infection is said to be _aseptic_, and under these
conditions healing takes place by what is called "primary union"--the
"healing by first intention" of the older writers.

#Granulation Tissue.#--The essential and invariable medium of repair in
all structures is an elementary form of new tissue known as _granulation
tissue_, which is produced in the damaged area in response to the
irritation caused by injury or disease. The vital reaction induced by
such irritation results in dilatation of the vessels of the part,
emigration of leucocytes, transudation of lymph, and certain
proliferative changes in the fixed tissue cells. These changes are
common to the processes of inflammation and repair; no hard-and-fast
line can be drawn between these processes, and the two may go on
together. It is, however, only when the proliferative changes have come
to predominate that the reparative process is effectively established by
the production of healthy granulation tissue.

_Formation of Granulation Tissue._--When a wound is made in the
integument under aseptic conditions, the passage of the knife through
the tissues is immediately followed by an oozing of blood, which soon
coagulates on the cut surfaces. In each of the divided vessels a clot
forms, and extends as far as the nearest collateral branch; and on the
surface of the wound there is a microscopic layer of bruised and
devitalised tissue. If the wound is closed, the narrow space between its
edges is occupied by blood-clot, which consists of red and white
corpuscles mixed with a quantity of fibrin, and this forms a temporary
uniting medium between the divided surfaces. During the first twelve
hours, the minute vessels in the vicinity of the wound dilate, and from
them lymph exudes and leucocytes migrate into the tissues. In from
twenty-four to thirty-six hours, the capillaries of the part adjacent to
the wound begin to throw out minute buds and fine processes, which
bridge the gap and form a firmer, but still temporary, connection
between the two sides. Each bud begins in the wall of the capillary as a
small accumulation of granular protoplasm, which gradually elongates
into a filament containing a nucleus. This filament either joins with a
neighbouring capillary or with a similar filament, and in time these
become hollow and are filled with blood from the vessels that gave them
origin. In this way a series of young _capillary loops_ is formed.

The spaces between these loops are filled by cells of various kinds, the
most important being the _fibroblasts_, which are destined to form
cicatricial fibrous tissue. These fibroblasts are large irregular
nucleated cells derived mainly from the proliferation of the fixed
connective-tissue cells of the part, and to a less extent from the
lymphocytes and other mononuclear cells which have migrated from the
vessels. Among the fibroblasts, larger multi-nucleated cells--_giant
cells_--are sometimes found, particularly when resistant substances,
such as silk ligatures or fragments of bone, are embedded in the
tissues, and their function seems to be to soften such substances
preliminary to their being removed by the phagocytes. Numerous
_polymorpho-nuclear leucocytes_, which have wandered from the vessels,
are also present in the spaces. These act as phagocytes, their function
being to remove the red corpuscles and fibrin of the original clot, and
this performed, they either pass back into the circulation in virtue of
their amboid movement, or are themselves eaten up by the growing
fibroblasts. Beyond this phagocytic action, they do not appear to play
any direct part in the reparative process. These young capillary loops,
with their supporting cells and fluids, constitute granulation tissue,
which is usually fully formed in from three to five days, after which it
begins to be replaced by cicatricial or scar tissue.

_Formation of Cicatricial Tissue._--The transformation of this temporary
granulation tissue into scar tissue is effected by the fibroblasts,
which become elongated and spindle-shaped, and produce in and around
them a fine fibrillated material which gradually increases in quantity
till it replaces the cell protoplasm. In this way white fibrous tissue
is formed, the cells of which are arranged in parallel lines and
eventually become grouped in bundles, constituting fully formed white
fibrous tissue. In its growth it gradually obliterates the capillaries,
until at the end of two, three, or four weeks both vessels and cells
have almost entirely disappeared, and the original wound is occupied by
cicatricial tissue. In course of time this tissue becomes consolidated,
and the cicatrix undergoes a certain amount of contraction--_cicatricial
contraction_.

_Healing of Epidermis._--While these changes are taking place in the
deeper parts of the wound, the surface is being covered over by
_epidermis_ growing in from the margins. Within twelve hours the cells
of the rete Malpighii close to the cut edge begin to sprout on to the
surface of the wound, and by their proliferation gradually cover the
granulations with a thin pink pellicle. As the epithelium increases in
thickness it assumes a bluish hue and eventually the cells become
cornified and the epithelium assumes a greyish-white colour.

_Clinical Aspects._--So long as the process of repair is not complicated
by infection with micro-organisms, there is no interference with the
general health of the patient. The temperature remains normal; the
circulatory, gastro-intestinal, nervous, and other functions are
undisturbed; locally, the part is cool, of natural colour and free from
pain.

#Modifications of the Process of Repair.#--The process of repair by
primary union, above described, is to be looked upon as the type of all
reparative processes, such modifications as are met with depending
merely upon incidental differences in the conditions present, such as
loss of tissue, infection by micro-organisms, etc.

_Repair after Loss or Destruction of Tissue._--When the edges of a wound
cannot be approximated either because tissue has been lost, for example
in excising a tumour or because a drainage tube or gauze packing has
been necessary, a greater amount of granulation tissue is required to
fill the gap, but the process is essentially the same as in the ideal
method of repair.

The raw surface is first covered by a layer of coagulated blood and
fibrin. An extensive new formation of capillary loops and fibroblasts
takes place towards the free surface, and goes on until the gap is
filled by a fine velvet-like mass of granulation tissue. This
granulation tissue is gradually replaced by young cicatricial tissue,
and the surface is covered by the ingrowth of epithelium from the edges.

This modification of the reparative process can be best studied
clinically in a recent wound which has been packed with gauze. When the
plug is introduced, the walls of the cavity consist of raw tissue with
numerous oozing blood vessels. On removing the packing on the fifth or
sixth day, the surface is found to be covered with minute, red,
papillary granulations, which are beginning to fill up the cavity. At
the edges the epithelium has proliferated and is covering over the newly
formed granulation tissue. As lymph and leucocytes escape from the
exposed surface there is a certain amount of serous or sero-purulent
discharge. On examining the wound at intervals of a few days, it is
found that the granulation tissue gradually increases in amount till the
gap is completely filled up, and that coincidently the epithelium
spreads in and covers over its surface. In course of time the epithelium
thickens, and as the granulation tissue is slowly replaced by young
cicatricial tissue, which has a peculiar tendency to contract and so to
obliterate the blood vessels in it, the scar that is left becomes
smooth, pale, and depressed. This method of healing is sometimes spoken
of as "healing by granulation"--although, as we have seen, it is by
granulation that all repair takes place.

_Healing by Union of two Granulating Surfaces._--In gaping wounds union
is sometimes obtained by bringing the two surfaces into apposition after
each has become covered with healthy granulations. The exudate on the
surfaces causes them to adhere, capillary loops pass from one to the
other, and their final fusion takes place by the further development of
granulation and cicatricial tissue.

_Reunion of Parts entirely Separated from the Body._--Small portions of
tissue, such as the end of a finger, the tip of the nose or a portion of
the external ear, accidentally separated from the body, if accurately
replaced and fixed in position, occasionally adhere by primary union.

In the course of operations also, portions of skin, fascia, or bone, or
even a complete joint may be transplanted, and unite by primary union.

_Healing under a Scab._--When a small superficial wound is exposed to
the air, the blood and serum exuded on its surface may dry and form a
hard crust or _scab_, which serves to protect the surface from external
irritation in the same way as would a dry pad of sterilised gauze. Under
this scab the formation of granulation tissue, its transformation into
cicatricial tissue, and the growth of epithelium on the surface, go on
until in the course of time the crust separates, leaving a scar.

_Healing by Blood-clot._--In subcutaneous wounds, for example tenotomy,
in amputation wounds, and in wounds made in excising tumours or in
operating upon bones, the space left between the divided tissues becomes
filled with blood-clot, which acts as a temporary scaffolding in which
granulation tissue is built up. Capillary loops grow into the coagulum,
and migrated leucocytes from the adjacent blood vessels destroy the red
corpuscles, and are in turn disposed of by the developing fibroblasts,
which by their growth and proliferation fill up the gap with young
connective tissue. It will be evident that this process only differs
from healing by primary union in the _amount_ of blood-clot that is
present.

_Presence of a Foreign Body._--When an aseptic foreign body is present
in the tissues, _e.g._ a piece of unabsorbable chromicised catgut, the
healing process may be modified. After primary union has taken place the
scar may broaden, become raised above the surface, and assume a
bluish-brown colour; the epidermis gradually thins and gives way,
revealing the softened portion of catgut, which can be pulled out in
pieces, after which the wound rapidly heals and resumes a normal
appearance.


REPAIR IN INDIVIDUAL TISSUES

_Skin and Connective Tissue._--The mode of regeneration of these tissues
under aseptic conditions has already been described as the type of ideal
repair. In highly vascular parts, such as the face, the reparative
process goes on with great rapidity, and even extensive wounds may be
firmly united in from three to five days. Where the anastomosis is less
free the process is more prolonged. The more highly organised elements
of the skin, such as the hair follicles, the sweat and sebaceous glands,
are imperfectly reproduced; hence the scar remains smooth, dry, and
hairless.

_Epithelium._--Epithelium is only reproduced from pre-existing
epithelium, and, as a rule, from one of a similar type, although
metaplastic transformation of cells of one kind of epithelium into
another kind can take place. Thus a granulating surface may be covered
entirely by the ingrowing of the cutaneous epithelium from the margins;
or islets, originating in surviving cells of sebaceous glands or sweat
glands, or of hair follicles, may spring up in the centre of the raw
area. Such islets may also be due to the accidental transference of
loose epithelial cells from the edges. Even the fluid from a blister, in
virtue of the isolated cells of the rete Malpighii which it contains, is
capable of starting epithelial growth on a granulating surface. Hairs
and nails may be completely regenerated if a sufficient amount of the
hair follicles or of the nail matrix has escaped destruction. The
epithelium of a mucous membrane is regenerated in the same way as that
on a cutaneous surface.

Epithelial cells have the power of living for some time after being
separated from their normal surroundings, and of growing again when once
more placed in favourable circumstances. On this fact the practice of
skin grafting is based (p. 11).

_Cartilage._--When an articular cartilage is divided by incision or by
being implicated in a fracture involving the articular end of a bone, it
is repaired by ordinary cicatricial fibrous tissue derived from the
proliferating cells of the perichondrium. Cartilage being a non-vascular
tissue, the reparative process goes on slowly, and it may be many weeks
before it is complete.

It is possible for a metaplastic transformation of connective-tissue
cells into cartilage cells to take place, the characteristic hyaline
matrix being secreted by the new cells. This is sometimes observed as an
intermediary stage in the healing of fractures, especially in young
bones. It may also take place in the regeneration of lost portions of
cartilage, provided the new tissue is so situated as to constitute part
of a joint and to be subjected to pressure by an opposing cartilaginous
surface. This is illustrated by what takes place after excision of
joints where it is desired to restore the function of the articulation.
By carrying out movements between the constituent parts, the fibrous
tissue covering the ends of the bones becomes moulded into shape, its
cells take on the characters of cartilage cells, and, forming a matrix,
so develop a new cartilage.

Conversely, it is observed that when articular cartilage is no longer
subjected to pressure by an opposing cartilage, it tends to be
transformed into fibrous tissue, as may be seen in deformities attended
with displacement of articular surfaces, such as hallux valgus and
club-foot.

After fractures of costal cartilage or of the cartilages of the larynx
the cicatricial tissue may be ultimately replaced by bone.

_Tendons._--When a tendon is divided, for example by subcutaneous
tenotomy, the end nearer the muscle fibres is drawn away from the other,
leaving a gap which is speedily filled by blood-clot. In the course of a
few days this clot becomes permeated by granulation tissue, the
fibroblasts of which are derived from the sheath of the tendon, the
surrounding connective tissue, and probably also from the divided ends
of the tendon itself. These fibroblasts ultimately develop into typical
tendon cells, and the fibres which they form constitute the new tendon
fibres. Under aseptic conditions repair is complete in from two to three
weeks. In the course of the reparative process the tendon and its sheath
may become adherent, which leads to impaired movement and stiffness. If
the ends of an accidentally divided tendon are at once brought into
accurate apposition and secured by sutures, they unite directly with a
minimum amount of scar tissue, and function is perfectly restored.

_Muscle._--Unstriped muscle does not seem to be capable of being
regenerated to any but a moderate degree. If the ends of a divided
striped muscle are at once brought into apposition by stitches, primary
union takes place with a minimum of intervening fibrous tissue. The
nuclei of the muscle fibres in close proximity to this young cicatricial
tissue proliferate, and a few new muscle fibres may be developed, but
any gross loss of muscular tissue is replaced by a fibrous cicatrix. It
would appear that portions of muscle transplanted from animals to fill
up gaps in human muscle are similarly replaced by fibrous tissue. When a
muscle is paralysed from loss of its nerve supply and undergoes complete
degeneration, it is not capable of being regenerated, even should the
integrity of the nerve be restored, and so its function is permanently
lost.

_Secretory Glands._--The regeneration of secretory glands is usually
incomplete, cicatricial tissue taking the place of the glandular
substance which has been destroyed. In wounds of the liver, for example,
the gap is filled by fibrous tissue, but towards the periphery of the
wound the liver cells proliferate and a certain amount of regeneration
takes place. In the kidney also, repair mainly takes place by
cicatricial tissue, and although a few collecting tubules may be
reformed, no regeneration of secreting tissue takes place. After the
operation of decapsulation of the kidney a new capsule is formed, and
during the process young blood vessels permeate the superficial parts
of the kidney and temporarily increase its blood supply, but in the
consolidation of the new fibrous tissue these vessels are ultimately
obliterated. This does not prove that the operation is useless, as the
temporary improvement of the circulation in the kidney may serve to tide
the patient over a critical period of renal insufficiency.

_Stomach and Intestine._--Provided the peritoneal surfaces are
accurately apposed, wounds of the stomach and intestine heal with great
rapidity. Within a few hours the peritoneal surfaces are glued together
by a thin layer of fibrin and leucocytes, which is speedily organised
and replaced by fibrous tissue. Fibrous tissue takes the place of the
muscular elements, which are not regenerated. The mucous lining is
restored by ingrowth from the margins, and there is evidence that some
of the secreting glands may be reproduced.

Hollow viscera, like the sophagus and urinary bladder, in so far
as they are not covered by peritoneum, heal less rapidly.

_Nerve Tissues._--There is no trustworthy evidence that regeneration of
the tissues of the brain or spinal cord in man ever takes place. Any
loss of substance is replaced by cicatricial tissue.

The repair of _Bone_, _Blood Vessels_, and _Peripheral Nerves_ is more
conveniently considered in the chapters dealing with these structures.

#Rate of Healing.#--While the rate at which wounds heal is remarkably
constant there are certain factors that influence it in one direction or
the other. Healing is more rapid when the edges are in contact, when
there is a minimum amount of blood-clot between them, when the patient
is in normal health and the vitality of the tissues has not been
impaired. Wounds heal slightly more quickly in the young than in the
old, although the difference is so small that it can only be
demonstrated by the most careful observations.

Certain tissues take longer to heal than others: for example, a fracture
of one of the larger long bones takes about six weeks to unite, and
divided nerve trunks take much longer--about a year.

Wounds of certain parts of the body heal more quickly than others: those
of the scalp, face, and neck, for example, heal more quickly than those
over the buttock or sacrum, probably because of their greater
vascularity.

The extent of the wound influences the rate of healing; it is only
natural that a long and deep wound should take longer to heal than a
short and superficial one, because there is so much more work to be
done in the conversion of blood-clot into granulation tissue, and this
again into scar tissue that will be strong enough to stand the strain on
the edges of the wound.


THE TRANSPLANTATION OR GRAFTING OF TISSUES

Conditions are not infrequently met with in which healing is promoted
and restoration of function made possible by the transference of a
portion of tissue from one part of the body to another; the tissue
transferred is known as the _graft_ or the _transplant_. The simplest
example of grafting is the transplantation of skin.

In order that the graft may survive and have a favourable chance of
"taking," as it is called, the transplanted tissue must retain its
vitality until it has formed an organic connection with the tissue in
which it is placed, so that it may derive the necessary nourishment from
its new bed. When these conditions are fulfilled the tissues of the
graft continue to proliferate, producing new tissue elements to replace
those that are lost and making it possible for the graft to become
incorporated with the tissue with which it is in contact.

Dead tissue, on the other hand, can do neither of these things; it is
only capable of acting as a model, or, at the most, as a scaffolding for
such mobile tissue elements as may be derived from, the parent tissue
with which the graft is in contact: a portion of sterilised marine
sponge, for example, may be observed to become permeated with
granulation tissue when it is embedded in the tissues.

A successful graft of living tissue is not only capable of regeneration,
but it acquires a system of lymph and blood vessels, so that in time it
bleeds when cut into, and is permeated by new nerve fibres spreading in
from the periphery towards the centre.

It is instructive to associate the period of survival of the different
tissues of the body after death, with their capacity of being used for
grafting purposes; the higher tissues such as those of the central
nervous system and highly specialised glandular tissues like those of
the kidney lose their vitality quickly after death and are therefore
useless for grafting; connective tissues, on the other hand, such as
fat, cartilage, and bone retain their vitality for several hours after
death, so that when they are transplanted, they readily "take" and do
all that is required of them: the same is true of the skin and its
appendages.

_Sources of Grafts._--It is convenient to differentiate between
_autoplastic_ grafts, that is those derived from the same individual;
_homoplastic_ grafts, derived from another animal of the same species;
and _heteroplastic_ grafts, derived from an animal of another species.
Other conditions being equal, the prospects of success are greatest with
autoplastic grafts, and these are therefore preferred whenever possible.

There are certain details making for success that merit attention: the
graft must not be roughly handled or allowed to dry, or be subjected to
chemical irritation; it must be brought into accurate contact with the
new soil, no blood-clot intervening between the two, no movement of the
one upon the other should be possible and all infection must be
excluded; it will be observed that these are exactly the same conditions
that permit of the primary healing of wounds, with which of course the
healing of grafts is exactly comparable.

_Preservation of Tissues for Grafting._--It was at one time believed
that tissues might be taken from the operating theatre and kept in cold
storage until they were required. It is now agreed that tissues which
have been separated from the body for some time inevitably lose their
vitality, become incapable of regeneration, and are therefore unsuited
for grafting purposes. If it is intended to preserve a portion of tissue
for future grafting, it should be embedded in the subcutaneous tissue of
the abdominal wall until it is wanted; this has been carried out with
portions of costal cartilage and of bone.


INDIVIDUAL TISSUES AS GRAFTS

#The Blood# lends itself in an ideal manner to transplantation, or, as
it has long been called, _transfusion_. Being always a homoplastic
transfer, the new blood is not always tolerated by the old, in which
case biochemical changes occur, resulting in hmolysis, which
corresponds to the disintegration of other unsuccessful homoplastic
grafts. (See article on Transfusion, _Op. Surg._, p. 37.)

#The Skin.#--The skin was the first tissue to be used for grafting
purposes, and it is still employed with greater frequency than any
other, as lesions causing defects of skin are extremely common and
without the aid of grafts are tedious in healing.

Skin grafts may be applied to a raw surface or to one that is covered
with granulations.

_Skin grafting of raw surfaces_ is commonly indicated after operations
for malignant disease in which considerable areas of skin must be
sacrificed, and after accidents, such as avulsion of the scalp by
machinery.

_Skin grafting of granulating surfaces_ is chiefly employed to promote
healing in the large defects of skin caused by severe burns; the
grafting is carried out when the surface is covered by a uniform layer
of healthy granulations and before the inevitable contraction of scar
tissue makes itself manifest. Before applying the grafts it is usual to
scrape away the granulations until the young fibrous tissue underneath
is exposed, but, if the granulations are healthy and can be rendered
aseptic, the grafts may be placed on them directly.

If it is decided to scrape away the granulations, the oozing must be
arrested by pressure with a pad of gauze, a sheet of dental rubber or
green protective is placed next the raw surface to prevent the gauze
adhering and starting the bleeding afresh when it is removed.

#Methods of Skin-Grafting.#--Two methods are employed: one in which the
epidermis is mainly or exclusively employed--epidermis or epithelial
grafting; the other, in which the graft consists of the whole thickness
of the true skin--cutis-grafting.

_Epidermis or Epithelial Grafting._--The method introduced by the late
Professor Thiersch of Leipsic is that almost universally practised. It
consists in transplanting strips of epidermis shaved from the surface of
the skin, the razor passing through the tips of the papill, which
appear as tiny red points yielding a moderate ooze of blood.

The strips are obtained from the front and lateral aspects of the thigh
or upper arm, the skin in those regions being pliable and comparatively
free from hairs.

They are cut with a sharp hollow-ground razor or with Thiersch's
grafting knife, the blade of which is rinsed in alcohol and kept
moistened with warm saline solution. The cutting is made easier if the
skin is well stretched and kept flat and perfectly steady, the
operator's left hand exerting traction on the skin behind, the hands of
the assistant on the skin in front, one above and the other below the
seat of operation. To ensure uniform strips being cut, the razor is kept
parallel with the surface and used with a short, rapid, sawing movement,
so that, with a little practice, grafts six or eight inches long by one
or two inches broad can readily be cut. The patient is given a general
ansthetic, or regional ansthesia is obtained by injections of a
solution of one per cent. novocain into the line of the lateral and
middle cutaneous nerves; the disinfection of the skin is carried out on
the usual lines, any chemical agent being finally got rid of, however,
by means of alcohol followed by saline solution.

The strips of epidermis wrinkle up on the knife and are directly
transferred to the surface, for which they should be made to form a
complete carpet, slightly overlapping the edges of the area and of one
another; some blunt instrument is used to straighten out the strips,
which are then subjected to firm pressure with a pad of gauze to express
blood and air-bells and to ensure accurate contact, for this must be as
close as that between a postage stamp and the paper to which it is
affixed.

As a dressing for the grafted area and of that also from which the
grafts have been taken, gauze soaked in _liquid paraffin_--the patent
variety known as _ambrine_ is excellent--appears to be the best; the
gauze should be moistened every other day or so with fresh paraffin, so
that, at the end of a week, when the grafts should have united, the
gauze can be removed without risk of detaching them. _Dental wax_ is
another useful type of dressing; as is also _picric acid_ solution. Over
the gauze, there is applied a thick layer of cotton wool, and the whole
dressing is kept in place by a firmly applied bandage, and in the case
of the limbs some form of splint should be added to prevent movement.

A dressing may be dispensed with altogether, the grafts being protected
by a wire cage such as is used after vaccination, but they tend to dry
up and come to resemble a scab.

When the grafts have healed, it is well to protect them from injury and
to prevent them drying up and cracking by the liberal application of
lanoline or vaseline.

The new skin is at first insensitive and is fixed to the underlying
connective tissue or bone, but in course of time (from six weeks
onwards) sensation returns and the formation of elastic tissue beneath
renders the skin pliant and movable so that it can be pinched up between
the finger and thumb.

_Reverdin's_ method consists in planting out pieces of skin not bigger
than a pin-head over a granulating surface. It is seldom employed.

_Grafts of the Cutis Vera._--Grafts consisting of the entire thickness
of the true skin were specially advocated by Wolff and are often
associated with his name. They should be cut oval or spindle-shaped, to
facilitate the approximation of the edges of the resulting wound. The
graft should be cut to the exact size of the surface it is to cover;
Gillies believes that tension of the graft favours its taking. These
grafts may be placed either on a fresh raw surface or on healthy
granulations. It is sometimes an advantage to stitch them in position,
especially on the face. The dressing and the after-treatment are the
same as in epidermis grafting.

There is a degree of uncertainty about the graft retaining its vitality
long enough to permit of its deriving the necessary nourishment from its
new surroundings; in a certain number of cases the flap dies and is
thrown off as a slough--moist or dry according to the presence or
absence of septic infection.

The technique for cutis-grafting must be without a flaw, and the asepsis
absolute; there must not only be a complete absence of movement, but
there must be no traction on the flap that will endanger its blood
supply.

Owing to the uncertainty in the results of cutis-grafting the
_two-stage_ or _indirect method_ has been introduced, and its almost
uniform success has led to its sphere of application being widely
extended. The flap is raised as in the direct method but is left
attached at one of its margins for a period ranging from 14 to 21 days
until its blood supply from its new bed is assured; the detachment is
then made complete. The blood supply of the proposed flap may influence
its selection and the way in which it is fashioned; for example, a flap
cut from the side of the head to fill a defect in the cheek, having in
its margin of attachment or pedicle the superficial temporal artery, is
more likely to take than a flap cut with its base above.

Another modification is to raise the flap but leave it connected at both
ends like the piers of a bridge; this method is well suited to defects
of skin on the dorsum of the fingers, hand and forearm, the bridge of
skin is raised from the abdominal wall and the hand is passed beneath it
and securely fixed in position; after an interval of 14 to 21 days, when
the flap is assured of its blood supply, the piers of the bridge are
divided (Fig. 1). With undermining it is usually easy to bring the
edges of the gap in the abdominal wall together, even in children; the
skin flap on the dorsum of the hand appears rather thick and
prominent--almost like the pad of a boxing-glove--for some time, but
the restoration of function in the capacity to flex the fingers is
gratifying in the extreme.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Ulcer of back of Hand covered by flap of skin
raised from anterior abdominal wall. The lateral edges of the flap are
divided after the graft has adhered.]

The indirect element of this method of skin-grafting may be carried
still further by transferring the flap of skin first to one part of the
body and then, after it has taken, transferring it to a third part.
Gillies has especially developed this method in the remedying of
deformities of the face caused by gunshot wounds and by petrol burns in
air-men. A rectangular flap of skin is marked out in the neck and chest,
the lateral margins of the flap are raised sufficiently to enable them
to be brought together so as to form a tube of skin: after the
circulation has been restored, the lower end of the tube is detached and
is brought up to the lip or cheek, or eyelid, where it is wanted; when
this end has derived its new blood supply, the other end is detached
from the neck and brought up to where it is wanted. In this way, skin
from the chest may be brought up to form a new forehead and eyelids.

Grafts of _mucous membrane_ are used to cover defects in the lip, cheek,
and conjunctiva. The technique is similar to that employed in
skin-grafting; the sources of mucous membrane are limited and the
element of septic infection cannot always be excluded.

_Fat._--Adipose tissue has a low vitality, but it is easily retained and
it readily lends itself to transplantation. Portions of fat are often
obtainable at operations--from the omentum, for example, otherwise the
subcutaneous fat of the buttock is the most accessible; it may be
employed to fill up cavities of all kinds in order to obtain more rapid
and sounder healing and also to remedy deformity, as in filling up a
depression in the cheek or forehead. It is ultimately converted into
ordinary connective tissue _pari passu_ with the absorption of the fat.

The _fascia lata of the thigh_ is widely and successfully used as a
graft to fill defects in the dura mater, and interposed between the
bones of a joint--if the articular cartilage has been destroyed--to
prevent the occurrence of ankylosis.

The _peritoneum_ of hydrocele and hernial sacs and of the omentum
readily lends itself to transplantation.

_Cartilage and bone_, next to skin, are the tissues most frequently
employed for grafting purposes; their sphere of action is so extensive
and includes so much of technical detail in their employment, that they
will be considered later with the surgery of the bones and joints and
with the methods of re-forming the nose.

_Tendons and blood vessels_ readily lend themselves to transplantation
and will also be referred to later.

_Muscle and nerve_, on the other hand, do not retain their vitality when
severed from their surroundings and do not functionate as grafts except
for their connective-tissue elements, which it goes without saying are
more readily obtainable from other sources.

Portions of the _ovary_ and of the _thyreoid_ have been successfully
transplanted into the subcutaneous cellular tissue of the abdominal wall
by Tuffier and others. In these new surroundings, the ovary or thyreoid
is vascularised and has been shown to functionate, but there is not
sufficient regeneration of the essential tissue elements to "carry on";
the secreting tissue is gradually replaced by connective tissue and the
special function comes to an end. Even such temporary function may,
however, tide a patient over a difficult period.




CHAPTER II

CONDITIONS WHICH INTERFERE WITH REPAIR


SURGICAL BACTERIOLOGY

Want of rest--Irritation--Unhealthy tissues--Pathogenic bacteria.
    SURGICAL BACTERIOLOGY--General characters of
    bacteria--Classification of bacteria--Conditions of bacterial
    life--Pathogenic powers of bacteria--Results of bacterial
    growth--Death of bacteria--Immunity--Antitoxic sera--Identification
    of bacteria--Pyogenic bacteria.

In the management of wounds and other surgical conditions it is
necessary to eliminate various extraneous influences which tend to delay
or arrest the natural process of repair.

Of these, one of the most important is undue movement of the affected
part. "The first and great requisite for the restoration of injured
parts is _rest_," said John Hunter; and physiological and mechanical
rest as the chief of natural therapeutic agents was the theme of John
Hilton's classical work--_Rest and Pain_. In this connection it must be
understood that "rest" implies more than the mere state of physical
repose: all physiological as well as mechanical function must be
prevented as far as is possible. For instance, the constituent bones of
a joint affected with tuberculosis must be controlled by splints or
other appliances so that no movement can take place between them, and
the limb may not be used for any purpose; physiological rest may be
secured to an inflamed colon by making an artificial anus in the ccum;
the activity of a diseased kidney may be diminished by regulating the
quantity and quality of the fluids taken by the patient.

Another source of interference with repair in wounds is _irritation_,
either by mechanical agents such as rough, unsuitable dressings,
bandages, or ill-fitting splints; or by chemical agents in the form of
strong lotions or other applications.

An _unhealthy or devitalised condition of the patient's tissues_ also
hinders the reparative process. Bruised or lacerated skin heals less
kindly than skin cut with a smooth, sharp instrument; and persistent
venous congestion of a part, such as occurs, for example, in the leg
when the veins are varicose, by preventing the access of healthy blood,
tends to delay the healing of open wounds. The existence of grave
constitutional disease, such as Bright's disease, diabetes, syphilis,
scurvy, or alcoholism, also impedes healing.

Infection by disease-producing micro-organisms or _pathogenic bacteria_
is, however, the most potent factor in disturbing the natural process of
repair in wounds.


SURGICAL BACTERIOLOGY

The influence of micro-organisms in the causation of disease, and the
rle played by them in interfering with the natural process of repair,
are so important that the science of applied bacteriology has now come
to dominate every department of surgery, and it is from the standpoint
of bacteriology that nearly all surgical questions have to be
considered.

The term _sepsis_ as now used in clinical surgery no longer retains its
original meaning as synonymous with "putrefaction," but is employed to
denote all conditions in which bacterial infection has taken place, and
more particularly those in which pyogenic bacteria are present. In the
same way the term _aseptic_ conveys the idea of freedom from all forms
of bacteria, putrefactive or otherwise; and the term _antiseptic_ is
used to denote a power of counteracting bacteria and their products.

#General Characters of Bacteria.#--A _bacterium_ consists of a finely
granular mass of protoplasm, enclosed in a thin gelatinous envelope.
Many forms are motile--some in virtue of fine thread-like flagella, and
others through contractility of the protoplasm. The great majority
multiply by simple fission, each parent cell giving rise to two daughter
cells, and this process goes on with extraordinary rapidity. Other
varieties, particularly bacilli, are propagated by the formation of
_spores_. A spore is a minute mass of protoplasm surrounded by a dense,
tough membrane, developed in the interior of the parent cell. Spores are
remarkable for their tenacity of life, and for the resistance they offer
to the action of heat and chemical germicides.

Bacteria are most conveniently classified according to their shape. Thus
we recognise (1) those that are globular--_cocci_; (2) those that
resemble a rod--_bacilli_; (3) the spiral or wavy forms--_spirilla_.

_Cocci_ or _micrococci_ are minute round bodies, averaging about 1  in
diameter. The great majority are non-motile. They multiply by fission;
and when they divide in such a way that the resulting cells remain in
pairs, are called _diplococci_, of which the bacteria of gonorrha and
pneumonia are examples (Fig. 5). When they divide irregularly, and form
grape-like bunches, they are known as _staphylococci_, and to this
variety the commonest pyogenic or pus-forming organisms belong (Fig. 2).
When division takes place only in one axis, so that long chains are
formed, the term _streptococcus_ is applied (Fig. 3). Streptococci are
met with in erysipelas and various other inflammatory and suppurative
processes of a spreading character.

_Bacilli_ are rod-shaped bacteria, usually at least twice as long as
they are broad (Fig. 4). Some multiply by fission, others by
sporulation. Some forms are motile, others are non-motile. Tuberculosis,
tetanus, anthrax, and many other surgical diseases are due to different
forms of bacilli.

_Spirilla_ are long, slender, thread-like cells, more or less spiral or
wavy. Some move by a screw-like contraction of the protoplasm, some by
flagell. The spirochte associated with syphilis (Fig. 36) is the most
important member of this group.

#Conditions of Bacterial Life.#--Bacteria require for their growth and
development a suitable food-supply in the form of proteins,
carbohydrates, and salts of calcium and potassium which they break up
into simpler elements. An alkaline medium favours bacterial growth; and
moisture is a necessary condition; spores, however, can survive the want
of water for much longer periods than fully developed bacteria. The
necessity for oxygen varies in different species. Those that require
oxygen are known as _arobic bacilli_ or _arobes_; those that cannot
live in the presence of oxygen are spoken of as _anarobes_. The great
majority of bacteria, however, while they prefer to have oxygen, are
able to live without it, and are called _facultative anarobes_.

The most suitable temperature for bacterial life is from 95 to 102 F.,
roughly that of the human body. Extreme or prolonged cold paralyses but
does not kill micro-organisms. Few, however, survive being raised to a
temperature of 134 F. Boiling for ten to twenty minutes will kill all
bacteria, and the great majority of spores. Steam applied in an
autoclave under a pressure of two atmospheres destroys even the most
resistant spores in a few minutes. Direct sunlight, electric light, or
even diffuse daylight, is inimical to the growth of bacteria, as are
also Rntgen rays and radium emanations.

#Pathogenic Properties of Bacteria.#--We are now only concerned with
pathogenic bacteria--that is, bacteria capable of producing disease in
the human subject. This capacity depends upon two sets of factors--(1)
certain features peculiar to the invading bacteria, and (2) others
peculiar to the host. Many bacteria have only the power of living upon
dead matter, and are known as _saphrophytes_. Such as do nourish in
living tissue are, by distinction, known as _parasites_. The power a
given parasitic micro-organism has of multiplying in the body and giving
rise to disease is spoken of as its _virulence_, and this varies not
only with different species, but in the same species at different times
and under varying circumstances. The actual number of organisms
introduced is also an important factor in determining their pathogenic
power. Healthy tissues can resist the invasion of a certain number of
bacteria of a given species, but when that number is exceeded, the
organisms get the upper hand and disease results. When the organisms
gain access directly to the blood-stream, as a rule they produce their
effects more certainly and with greater intensity than when they are
introduced into the tissues.

Further, the virulence of an organism is modified by the condition of
the patient into whose tissues it is introduced. So long as a person is
in good health, the tissues are able to resist the attacks of moderate
numbers of most bacteria. Any lowering of the vitality of the
individual, however, either locally or generally, at once renders him
more susceptible to infection. Thus bruised or torn tissue is much more
liable to infection with pus-producing organisms than tissues clean-cut
with a knife; also, after certain diseases, the liability to infection
by the organisms of diphtheria, pneumonia, or erysipelas is much
increased. Even such slight depression of vitality as results from
bodily fatigue, or exposure to cold and damp, may be sufficient to turn
the scale in the battle between the tissues and the bacteria. Age is an
important factor in regard to the action of certain bacteria. Young
subjects are attacked by diphtheria, tuberculosis, acute osteomyelitis,
and some other diseases with greater frequency and severity than those
of more advanced years.

In different races, localities, environment, and seasons, the pathogenic
powers of certain organisms, such as those of erysipelas, diphtheria,
and acute osteomyelitis, vary considerably.

There is evidence that a _mixed infection_--that is, the introduction of
more than one species of organism, for example, the tubercle bacillus
and a pyogenic staphylococcus--increases the severity of the resulting
disease. If one of the varieties gain the ascendancy, the poisons
produced by the others so devitalise the tissue cells, and diminish
their power of resistance, that the virulence of the most active
organisms is increased. On the other hand, there is reason to believe
that the products of certain organisms antagonise one another--for
example, an attack of erysipelas may effect the cure of a patch of
tuberculous lupus.

Lastly, in patients suffering from chronic wasting diseases, bacteria
may invade the internal organs by the blood-stream in enormous numbers
and with great rapidity, during the period of extreme debility which
shortly precedes death. The discovery of such collections of organisms
on post-mortem examination may lead to erroneous conclusions being drawn
as to the cause of death.

#Results of Bacterial Growth.#--Some organisms, such as those of tetanus
and erysipelas, and certain of the pyogenic bacteria, show little
tendency to pass far beyond the point at which they gain an entrance to
the body. Others, on the contrary--for example, the tubercle bacillus
and the organism of acute osteomyelitis--although frequently remaining
localised at the seat of inoculation, tend to pass to distant parts,
lodging in the capillaries of joints, bones, kidney, or lungs, and there
producing their deleterious effects.

In the human subject, multiplication in the blood-stream does not occur
to any great extent. In some general acute pyogenic infections, such as
osteomyelitis, cellulitis, etc., pure cultures of staphylococci or of
streptococci may be obtained from the blood. In pneumococcal and typhoid
infections, also, the organisms may be found in the blood.

It is by the vital changes they bring about in the parts where they
settle that micro-organisms disturb the health of the patient. In
deriving nourishment from the complex organic compounds in which they
nourish, the organisms evolve, probably by means of a ferment, certain
chemical products of unknown composition, but probably colloidal in
nature, and known as _toxins_. When these poisons are absorbed into the
general circulation they give rise to certain groups of symptoms--such
as rise of temperature, associated circulatory and respiratory
derangements, interference with the gastro-intestinal functions and also
with those of the nervous system--which go to make up the condition
known as blood-poisoning, toxmia, or _bacterial intoxication_. In
addition to this, certain bacteria produce toxins that give rise to
definite and distinct groups of symptoms--such as the convulsions of
tetanus, or the paralyses that follow diphtheria.

_Death of Bacteria._--Under certain circumstances, it would appear that
the accumulation of the toxic products of bacterial action tends to
interfere with the continued life and growth of the organisms
themselves, and in this way the natural cure of certain diseases is
brought about. Outside the body, bacteria may be killed by starvation,
by want of moisture, by being subjected to high temperature, or by the
action of certain chemical agents of which carbolic acid, the
perchloride and biniodide of mercury, and various chlorine preparations
are the most powerful.

#Immunity.#--Some persons are insusceptible to infection by certain
diseases, from which they are said to enjoy a _natural immunity_. In
many acute diseases one attack protects the patient, for a time at
least, from a second attack--_acquired immunity_.

_Phagocytosis._--In the production of immunity the leucocytes and
certain other cells play an important part in virtue of the power they
possess of ingesting bacteria and of destroying them by a process of
intra-cellular digestion. To this process Metchnikoff gave the name of
_phagocytosis_, and he recognised two forms of _phagocytes_: (1) the
_microphages_, which are the polymorpho-nuclear leucocytes of the blood;
and (2) the _macrophages_, which include the larger hyaline leucocytes,
endothelial cells, and connective-tissue corpuscles.

During the process of phagocytosis, the polymorpho-nuclear leucocytes in
the circulating blood increase greatly in numbers (_leucocytosis_), as
well as in their phagocytic action, and in the course of destroying the
bacteria they produce certain ferments which enter the blood serum.
These are known as _opsonins_ or _alexins_, and they act on the bacteria
by a process comparable to narcotisation, and render them an easy prey
for the phagocytes.

_Artificial or Passive Immunity._--A form of immunity can be induced by
the introduction of protective substances obtained from an animal which
has been actively immunised. The process by which passive immunity is
acquired depends upon the fact that as a result of the reaction between
the specific virus of a particular disease (the _antigen_) and the
tissues of the animal attacked, certain substances--_antibodies_--are
produced, which when transferred to the body of a susceptible animal
protect it against that disease. The most important of these antibodies
are the _antitoxins_. From the study of the processes by which immunity
is secured against the effects of bacterial action the serum and vaccine
methods of treating certain infective diseases have been evolved. The
_serum treatment_ is designed to furnish the patient with a sufficiency
of antibodies to neutralise the infection. The anti-diphtheritic and the
anti-tetanic act by neutralising the specific toxins of the
disease--_antitoxic serums_; the anti-streptcoccic and the serum for
anthrax act upon the bacteria--_anti-bacterial serums_.

A _polyvalent_ serum, that is, one derived from an animal which has been
immunised by numerous strains of the organism derived from various
sources, is much more efficacious than when a single strain has been
used.

_Clinical Use of Serums._--Every precaution must be taken to prevent
organismal contamination of the serum or of the apparatus by means of
which it is injected. Syringes are so made that they can be sterilised
by boiling. The best situations for injection are under the skin of the
abdomen, the thorax, or the buttock, and the skin should be purified at
the seat of puncture. If the bulk of the full dose is large, it should
be divided and injected into different parts of the body, not more than
20 c.c. being injected at one place. The serum may be introduced
directly into a vein, or into the spinal canal, _e.g._ anti-tetanic
serum. The immunity produced by injections of antitoxic sera lasts only
for a comparatively short time, seldom longer than a few weeks.

_"Serum Disease" and Anaphylaxis._--It is to be borne in mind that some
patients exhibit a supersensitiveness with regard to protective sera, an
injection being followed in a few days by the appearance of an
urticarial or erythematous rash, pain and swelling of the joints, and a
variable degree of fever. These symptoms, to which the name _serum
disease_ is applied, usually disappear in the course of a few days.

The term _anaphylaxis_ is applied to an allied condition of
supersensitiveness which appears to be induced by the injection of
certain substances, including toxins and sera, that are capable of
acting as antigens. When a second injection is given after an interval
of some days, if anaphylaxis has been established by the first dose, the
patient suddenly manifests toxic symptoms of the nature of profound
shock which may even prove fatal. The conditions which render a person
liable to develop anaphylaxis and the mechanism by which it is
established are as yet imperfectly understood.

_Vaccine Treatment._--The vaccine treatment elaborated by A. E. Wright
consists in injecting, while the disease is still active, specially
prepared dead cultures of the causative organisms, and is based on the
fact that these "vaccines" render the bacteria in the tissues less able
to resist the attacks of the phagocytes. The method is most successful
when the vaccine is prepared from organisms isolated from the patient
himself, _autogenous vaccine_, but when this is impracticable, or takes
a considerable time, laboratory-prepared polyvalent _stock vaccines_ may
be used.

_Clinical Use of Vaccines._--Vaccines should not be given while a
patient is in a negative phase, as a certain amount of the opsonin in
the blood is used up in neutralising the substances injected, and this
may reduce the opsonic index to such an extent that the vaccines
themselves become dangerous. As a rule, the propriety of using a vaccine
can be determined from the general condition of the patient. The initial
dose should always be a small one, particularly if the disease is acute,
and the subsequent dosage will be regulated by the effect produced. If
marked constitutional disturbance with rise of temperature follows the
use of a vaccine, it indicates a negative phase, and calls for a
diminution in the next dose. If, on the other hand, the local as well as
the general condition of the patient improves after the injection, it
indicates a positive phase, and the original dose may be repeated or
even increased. Vaccines are best introduced subcutaneously, a part
being selected which is not liable to pressure, as there is sometimes
considerable local reaction. Repeated doses may be necessary at
intervals of a few days.

The vaccine treatment has been successfully employed in various
tuberculous lesions, in pyogenic infections such as acne, boils,
sycosis, streptococcal, pneumococcal, and gonococcal conditions, in
infections of the accessory air sinuses, and in other diseases caused by
bacteria.


PYOGENIC BACTERIA

From the point of view of the surgeon the most important varieties of
micro-organisms are those that cause inflammation and suppuration--the
_pyogenic bacteria_. This group includes a great many species, and these
are so widely distributed that they are to be met with under all
conditions of everyday life.

The nature of the inflammatory and suppurative processes will be
considered in detail later; suffice it here to say that they are brought
about by the action of one or other of the organisms that we have now to
consider.

It is found that the _staphylococci_, which cluster into groups, tend to
produce localised lesions; while the chain-forms--_streptococci_--give
rise to diffuse, spreading conditions. Many varieties of pyogenic
bacteria have now been differentiated, the best known being the
staphylococcus aureus, the streptococcus, and the bacillus coli
communis.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Staphylococcus aureus in Pus from case of
Osteomyelitis.  1000 diam. Gram's stain.]

_Staphylococcus Aureus._--This is the commonest organism found in
localised inflammatory and suppurative conditions. It varies greatly in
its virulence, and is found in such widely different conditions as skin
pustules, boils, carbuncles, and some acute inflammations of bone. As
seen by the microscope it occurs in grape-like clusters, fission of the
individual cells taking place irregularly (Fig. 2). When grown in
artificial media, the colonies assume an orange-yellow colour--hence the
name _aureus_. It is of high vitality and resists more prolonged
exposure to high temperatures than most non-sporing bacteria. It is
capable of lying latent in the tissues for long periods, for example, in
the marrow of long bones, and of again becoming active and causing a
fresh outbreak of suppuration. This organism is widely distributed: it
is found on the skin, in the mouth, and in other situations in the body,
and as it is present in the dust of the air and on all objects upon
which dust has settled, it is a continual source of infection unless
means are taken to exclude it from wounds.

The _staphylococcus albus_ is much less common than the aureus, but has
the same properties and characters, save that its growth on artificial
media assumes a white colour. It is the common cause of stitch
abscesses, the skin being its normal habitat.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Streptococci in Pus from an acute abscess in
subcutaneous tissue.  1000 diam. Gram's stain.]

_Streptococcus Pyogenes._--This organism also varies greatly in its
virulence; in some instances--for example in erysipelas--it causes a
sharp attack of acute spreading inflammation, which soon subsides
without showing any tendency to end in suppuration; under other
conditions it gives rise to a generalised infection which rapidly proves
fatal. The streptococcus has less capacity of liquefying the tissues
than the staphylococcus, so that pus formation takes place more slowly.
At the same time its products are very potent in destroying the tissues
in their vicinity, and so interfering with the exudation of leucocytes
which would otherwise exercise their protective influence. Streptococci
invade the lymph spaces, and are associated with acute spreading
conditions such as phlegmonous or erysipelatous inflammations and
suppurations, lymphangitis and suppuration in lymph glands, and
inflammation of serous and synovial membranes, also with a form of
pneumonia which is prone to follow on severe operations in the mouth and
throat. Streptococci are also concerned in the production of spreading
gangrene and pymia.

Division takes place in one axis, so that chains of varying length are
formed (Fig. 3). It is less easily cultivated by artificial media than
the staphylococcus; it forms a whitish growth.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Bacillus coli communis in Urine, from a case of
Cystitis.  1000 diam. Leishman's stain.]

_Bacillus Coli Communis._--This organism, which is a normal inhabitant
of the intestinal tract, shows a great tendency to invade any organ or
tissue whose vitality is lowered. It is causatively associated with such
conditions as peritonitis and peritoneal suppuration resulting from
strangulated hernia, appendicitis, or perforation in any part of the
alimentary canal. In cystitis, pyelitis, abscess of the kidney,
suppuration in the bile-ducts or liver, and in many other abdominal
conditions, it plays a most important part. The discharge from wounds
infected by this organism has usually a ftid, or even a fcal odour,
and often contains gases resulting from putrefaction.

It is a small rod-shaped organism with short flagell, which render it
motile (Fig. 4). It closely resembles the typhoid bacillus, but is
distinguished from it by its behaviour in artificial culture media.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Fraenkel's Pneumococci in Pus from Empyema
following Pneumonia.  100 diam. Stained with Muir's capsule stain.]

_Pneumo-bacteria._--Two forms of organism associated with
pneumonia--_Fraenkel's pneumococcus_ (one of the diplococci) (Fig. 5)
and _Friedlnder's pneumo-bacillus_ (a short rod-shaped form)--are
frequently met with in inflammations of the serous and synovial
membranes, in suppuration in the liver, and in various other
inflammatory and suppurative conditions.

_Bacillus Typhosus._--This organism has been found in pure culture in
suppurative conditions of bone, of cellular tissue, and of internal
organs, especially during convalescence from typhoid fever. Like the
staphylococcus, it is capable of lying latent in the tissues for long
periods.

_Other Pyogenic Bacteria._--It is not necessary to do more than name
some of the other organisms that are known to be pyogenic, such as the
bacillus pyocyaneus, which is found in green and blue pus, the
micrococcus tetragenus, the gonococcus, actinomyces, the glanders
bacillus, and the tubercle bacillus. Most of these will receive further
mention in connection with the diseases to which they give rise.

#Leucocytosis.#--Most bacterial diseases, as well as certain other
pathological conditions, are associated with an increase in the number
of leucocytes in the blood throughout the circulatory system. This
condition of the blood, which is known as _leucocytosis_, is believed to
be due to an excessive output and rapid formation of leucocytes by the
bone marrow, and it probably has as its object the arrest and
destruction of the invading organisms or toxins. To increase the
resisting power of the system to pathogenic organisms, an artificial
leucocytosis may be induced by subcutaneous injection of a solution of
nucleinate of soda (16 minims of a 5 per cent. solution).

The _normal_ number of leucocytes per cubic millimetre varies in
different individuals, and in the same individual under different
conditions, from 5000 to 10,000: 7500 is a normal average, and anything
above 12,000 is considered abnormal. When leucocytosis is present, the
number may range from 12,000 to 30,000 or even higher; 40,000 is looked
upon as a high degree of leucocytosis. According to Ehrlich, the
following may be taken as the standard proportion of the various forms
of leucocytes in normal blood: polynuclear neutrophile leucocytes, 70 to
72 per cent.; lymphocytes, 22 to 25 per cent.; eosinophile cells, 2 to 4
per cent.; large mononuclear and transitional leucocytes, 2 to 4 per
cent.; mast-cells, 0.5 to 2 per cent.

In estimating the clinical importance of a leucocytosis, it is not
sufficient merely to count the aggregate number of leucocytes present. A
differential count must be made to determine which variety of cells is
in excess. In the majority of surgical affections it is chiefly the
granular polymorpho-nuclear neutrophile leucocytes that are in excess
(_ordinary leucocytosis_). In some cases, and particularly in parasitic
diseases such as trichiniasis and hydatid disease, the eosinophile
leucocytes also show a proportionate increase (_eosinophilia_). The term
_lymphocytosis_ is applied when there is an increase in the number of
circulating lymphocytes, as occurs, for example, in lymphatic leucmia,
and in certain cases of syphilis.

Leucocytosis is met with in nearly all acute infective diseases, and in
acute pyogenic inflammatory affections, particularly in those attended
with suppuration. In exceptionally acute septic conditions the extreme
virulence of the toxins may prevent the leucocytes reacting, and
leucocytosis may be absent. The absence of leucocytosis in a disease in
which it is usually present is therefore to be looked upon as a grave
omen, particularly when the general symptoms are severe. In some cases
of malignant disease the number of leucocytes is increased to 15,000 or
20,000. A few hours after a severe hmorrhage also there is usually a
leucocytosis of from 15,000 to 30,000, which lasts for three or four
days (Lyon). In cases of hmorrhage the leucocytosis is increased by
infusion of fluids into the circulation. After all operations there is
at least a transient leucocytosis (_post-operative leucocytosis_)
(F. I. Dawson).

The leucocytosis begins soon after the infection manifests itself--for
example, by shivering, rigor, or rise of temperature. The number of
leucocytes rises somewhat rapidly, increases while the condition is
progressing, and remains high during the febrile period, but there is no
constant correspondence between the number of leucocytes and the height
of the temperature. The arrest of the inflammation and its resolution
are accompanied by a fall in the number of leucocytes, while the
occurrence of suppuration is attended with a further increase in their
number.

In interpreting the "blood count," it is to be kept in mind that a
_physiological leucocytosis_ occurs within three or four hours of taking
a meal, especially one rich in proteins, from 1500 to 2000 being added
to the normal number. In this _digestion leucocytosis_ the increase is
chiefly in the polynuclear neutrophile leucocytes. Immediately before
and after delivery, particularly in primipar, there is usually a
moderate degree of leucocytosis. If the labour is normal and the
puerperium uncomplicated, the number of leucocytes regains the normal in
about a week. Lactation has no appreciable effect on the number of
leucocytes. In new-born infants the leucocyte count is abnormally high,
ranging from 15,000 to 20,000. In children under one year of age, the
normal average is from 10,000 to 20,000.

_Absence of Leucocytosis--Leucopenia._--In certain infective diseases
the number of leucocytes in the circulating blood is abnormally
low--3000 or 4000--and this condition is known as _leucopenia_. It
occurs in typhoid fever, especially in the later stages of the disease,
in tuberculous lesions unaccompanied by suppuration, in malaria, and in
most cases of uncomplicated influenza. The occurrence of leucocytosis in
any of these conditions is to be looked upon as an indication that a
mixed infection has taken place, and that some suppurative process is
present.

The absence of leucocytosis in some cases of virulent septic poisoning
has already been referred to.

It will be evident that too much reliance must not be placed upon a
single observation, particularly in emergency cases. Whenever possible,
a series of observations should be made, the blood being examined about
four hours after meals, and about the same hour each day.

The clinical significance of the blood count in individual diseases will
be further referred to.

_The Iodine or Glycogen Reaction._--The leucocyte count may be
supplemented by staining films of the blood with a watery solution of
iodine and potassium iodide. In all advancing purulent conditions, in
septic poisonings, in pneumonia, and in cancerous growths associated
with ulceration, a certain number of the polynuclear leucocytes are
stained a brown or reddish-brown colour, due to the action of the iodine
on some substance in the cells of the nature of glycogen. This reaction
is absent in serous effusions, in unmixed tuberculous infections, in
uncomplicated typhoid fever, and in the early stages of cancerous
growths.




CHAPTER III

INFLAMMATION


Definition--Nature of inflammation from surgical point of
    view--Sequence of changes in bacterial inflammation--Clinical
    aspects of inflammation--General principles of treatment--Chronic
    inflammation.

Inflammation may be defined as the series of vital changes that occurs
in the tissues in response to irritation. These changes represent the
reaction of the tissue elements to the irritant, and constitute the
attempt made by nature to arrest or to limit its injurious effects, and
to repair the damage done by it.

The phenomena which characterise the inflammatory reaction can be
induced by any form of irritation--such, for example, as mechanical
injury, the application of heat or of chemical substances, or the action
of pathogenic bacteria and their toxins--and they are essentially
similar in kind whatever the irritant may be. The extent to which the
process may go, however, and its effects on the part implicated and on
the system as a whole, vary with different irritants and with the
intensity and duration of their action. A mechanical, a thermal, or a
chemical irritant, acting alone, induces a degree of reaction directly
proportionate to its physical properties, and so long as it does not
completely destroy the vitality of the part involved, the changes in the
tissues are chiefly directed towards repairing the damage done to the
part, and the inflammatory reaction is not only compatible with the
occurrence of ideal repair, but may be looked upon as an integral step
in the reparative process.

The irritation caused by infection with bacteria, on the other hand, is
cumulative, as the organisms not only multiply in the tissues, but in
addition produce chemical poisons (toxins) which aggravate the
irritative effects. The resulting reaction is correspondingly
progressive, and has as its primary object the expulsion of the irritant
and the limitation of its action. If the natural protective effort is
successful, the resulting tissue changes subserve the process of repair,
but if the bacteria gain the upper hand in the struggle, the
inflammatory reaction becomes more intense, certain of the tissue
elements succumb, and the process for the time being is a destructive
one. During the stage of bacterial inflammation, reparative processes
are in abeyance, and it is only after the inflammation has been allayed,
either by natural means or by the aid of the surgeon, that repair takes
place.

In applying the antiseptic principle to the treatment of wounds, our
main object is to exclude or to eliminate the bacterial factor, and so
to prevent the inflammatory reaction going beyond the stage in which it
is protective, and just in proportion as we succeed in attaining this
object, do we favour the occurrence of ideal repair.

#Sequence of Changes in Bacterial Inflammation.#--As the form of
inflammation with which we are most concerned is that due to the action
of bacteria, in describing the process by which the protective influence
of the inflammatory reaction is brought into play, we shall assume the
presence of a bacterial irritant.

The introduction of a colony of micro-organisms is quickly followed by
an accumulation of wandering cells, and proliferation of
connective-tissue cells in the tissues at the site of infection. The
various cells are attracted to the bacteria by a peculiar chemical or
biological power known as _chemotaxis_, which seems to result from
variations in the surface tension of different varieties of cells,
probably caused by some substance produced by the micro-organisms.
Changes in the blood vessels then ensue, the arteries becoming dilated
and the rate of the current in them being for a time increased--_active
hypermia_. Soon, however, the rate of the blood flow becomes slower
than normal, and in course of time the current may cease (_stasis_), and
the blood in the vessels may even coagulate (_thrombosis_). Coincidently
with these changes in the vessels, the leucocytes in the blood of the
inflamed part rapidly increase in number, and they become viscous and
adhere to the vessel wall, where they may accumulate in large numbers.
In course of time the leucocytes pass through the vessel
wall--_emigration of leucocytes_--and move towards the seat of
infection, giving rise to a marked degree of _local leucocytosis_.
Through the openings by which the leucocytes have escaped from the
vessels, red corpuscles may be passively extruded--_diapedesis of red
corpuscles_. These processes are accompanied by changes in the
endothelium of the vessel walls, which result in an increased formation
of lymph, which transudes into the meshes of the connective tissue
giving rise to an _inflammatory dema_, or, if the inflammation is on a
free surface, forming an _inflammatory exudate_. The quantity and
characters of this exudate vary in different parts of the body, and
according to the nature, virulence, and location of the organisms
causing the inflammation. Thus it may be _serous_, as in some forms of
synovitis; _sero-fibrinous_, as in certain varieties of peritonitis, the
fibrin tending to limit the spread of the inflammation by forming
adhesions; _croupous_, when it coagulates on a free surface and forms a
false membrane, as in diphtheria; _hmorrhagic_ when mixed with blood;
or _purulent_, when suppuration has occurred. The protective effects of
the inflammatory reaction depend for the most part upon the transudation
of lymph and the emigration of leucocytes. The lymph contains the
opsonins which act on the bacteria and render them less able to resist
the attack of the phagocytes, as well as the various protective
antibodies which neutralise the toxins. The polymorph leucocytes are the
principal agents in the process of phagocytosis (p. 22), and together
with the other forms of phagocytes they ingest and destroy the bacteria.

If the attempt to repel the invading organisms is successful, the
irritant effects are overcome, the inflammation is arrested, and
_resolution_ is said to take place.

Certain of the vascular and cellular changes are now utilised to restore
the condition to the normal, and _repair_ ensues after the manner
already described. In certain situations, notably in tendon sheaths, in
the cavities of joints, and in the interior of serous cavities, for
example the pleura and peritoneum, the restoration to the normal is not
perfect, adhesions forming between the opposing surfaces.

If, however, the reaction induced by the infection is insufficient to
check the growth and spread of the organisms, or to inhibit their toxin
production, local necrosis of tissue may take place, either in the form
of suppuration or of gangrene, or the toxins absorbed into the
circulation may produce blood-poisoning, which may even prove fatal.

#Clinical Aspects of Inflammation.#--It must clearly be understood that
inflammation is not to be looked upon as a disease in itself, but rather
as an evidence of some infective process going on in the tissues in
which it occurs, and of an effort on the part of these tissues to
overcome the invading organisms and their products. The chief danger to
the patient lies, not in the reactive changes that constitute the
inflammatory process, but in the fact that he is liable to be poisoned
by the toxins of the bacteria at work in the inflamed area.

Since the days of Celsus (first century A.D.), heat, redness, swelling,
and pain have been recognised as cardinal signs of inflammation, and to
these may be added, interference with function in the inflamed part, and
general constitutional disturbance. Variations in these signs and
symptoms depend upon the acuteness of the condition, the nature of the
causative organism and of the tissue attacked, the situation of the part
in relation to the surface, and other factors.

The _heat_ of the inflamed part is to be attributed to the increased
quantity of blood present in it, and the more superficial the affected
area the more readily is the local increase of temperature detected by
the hand. This clinical point is best tested by placing the palm of the
hand and fingers for a few seconds alternately over an uninflamed and an
inflamed area, otherwise under similar conditions as to coverings and
exposure. In this way even slight differences may be recognised.

_Redness_, similarly, is due to the increased afflux of blood to the
inflamed part. The shade of colour varies with the stage of the
inflammation, being lighter and brighter in the early, hypermic stages,
and darker and duskier when the blood flow is slowed or when stasis has
occurred and the oxygenation of the blood is defective. In the
thrombotic stage the part may assume a purplish hue.

The _swelling_ is partly due to the increased amount of blood in the
affected part and to the accumulation of leucocytes and proliferated
tissue cells, but chiefly to the exudate in the connective
tissue--_inflammatory dema_. The more open the structure of the tissue
of the part, the greater is the amount of swelling--witness the marked
degree of dema that occurs in such parts as the scrotum or the eyelids.

_Pain_ is a symptom seldom absent in inflammation. _Tenderness_--that
is, pain elicited on pressure--is one of the most valuable diagnostic
signs we possess, and is often present before pain is experienced by the
patient. That the area of tenderness corresponds to the area of
inflammation is almost an axiom of surgery. Pain and tenderness are due
to the irritation of nerve filaments of the part, rendered all the more
sensitive by the abnormal conditions of their blood supply. In
inflammatory conditions of internal organs, for example the abdominal
viscera, the pain is frequently referred to other parts, usually to an
area supplied by branches from the same segment of the cord as that
supplying the inflamed part.

For purposes of diagnosis, attention should be paid to the terms in
which the patient describes his pain. For example, the pain caused by
an inflammation of the skin is usually described as of a _burning_ or
_itching_ character; that of inflammation in dense tissues like
periosteum or bone, or in encapsuled organs, as _dull_, _boring_, or
_aching_. When inflammation is passing on to suppuration the pain
assumes a _throbbing_ character, and as the pus reaches the surface, or
"points," as it is called, sharp, _darting_, or _lancinating_ pains are
experienced. Inflammation involving a nerve-trunk may cause a _boring_
or a _tingling_ pain; while the implication of a serous membrane such as
the pleura or peritoneum gives rise to a pain of a sharp, _stabbing_
character.

_Interference with the function_ of the inflamed part is always present
to a greater or less extent.

#Constitutional Disturbances.#--Under the term constitutional
disturbances are included the presence of fever or elevation of
temperature; certain changes in the pulse rate and the respiration;
gastro-intestinal and urinary disturbances; and derangements of the
central nervous system. These are all due to the absorption of toxins
into the general circulation.

_Temperature._--A marked rise of temperature is one of the most constant
and important concomitants of acute inflammatory conditions, and the
temperature chart forms a fairly reliable index of the state of the
patient. The toxins interfere with the nerve-centres in the medulla that
regulate the balance between the production and the loss of body heat.

Clinically the temperature is estimated by means of a self-registering
thermometer placed, for from one to five minutes, in close contact with
the skin in the axilla, or in the mouth. Sometimes the thermometer is
inserted into the rectum, where, however, the temperature is normally
 F. higher than in the axilla.

_In health_ the temperature of the body is maintained at a mean of about
98.4 F. (37 C.) by the heat-regulating mechanism. It varies from hour
to hour even in health, reaching its maximum between four and eight in
the evening, when it may rise to 99 F., and is at its lowest between
four and six in the morning, when it may be about 97 F.

The temperature is more easily disturbed in children than in adults, and
may become markedly elevated (104 or 105 F.) from comparatively slight
causes; in the aged it is less liable to change, so that a rise to 103
or 104 F. is to be looked upon as indicating a high state of fever.

A sudden rise of temperature is usually associated with a feeling of
chilliness down the back and in the limbs, which may be so marked that
the patient shivers violently, while the skin becomes cold, pale, and
shrivelled--_cutis anserina_. This is a nervous reaction due to a want
of correspondence between the internal and the surface temperature of
the body, and is known clinically as a _rigor_. When the temperature
rises gradually the chill is usually slight and may be unobserved. Even
during the cold stage, however, the internal temperature is already
raised, and by the time the chill has passed off its maximum has been
reached.

The _pulse_ is always increased in frequency, and usually varies
directly with the height of the temperature. _Respiration_ is more
active during the progress of an inflammation; and bronchial catarrh is
common apart from any antecedent respiratory disease.

_Gastro-intestinal disturbances_ take the form of loss of appetite,
vomiting, diminished secretion of the alimentary juices, and weakening
of the peristalsis of the bowel, leading to thirst, dry, furred tongue,
and constipation. Diarrha is sometimes present. The _urine_ is usually
scanty, of high specific gravity, rich in nitrogenous substances,
especially urea and uric acid, and in calcium salts, while sodium
chloride is deficient. Albumin and hyaline casts may be present in cases
of severe inflammation with high temperature. The significance of
general _leucocytosis_ has already been referred to.

#General Principles of Treatment.#--The capacity of the inflammatory
reaction for dealing with bacterial infections being limited, it often
becomes necessary for the surgeon to aid the natural defensive
processes, as well as to counteract the local and general effects of the
reaction, and to relieve symptoms.

The ideal means of helping the tissues is by removing the focus of
infection, and when this can be done, as for example in a carbuncle or
an anthrax pustule, the infected area may be completely excised. When
the focus is not sufficiently limited to admit of this, the infected
tissue may be scraped away with the sharp spoon, or destroyed by
caustics or by the actual cautery. If this is inadvisable, the organisms
may be attacked by strong antiseptics, such as pure carbolic acid.

Moist dressings favour the removal of bacteria by promoting the escape
of the inflammatory exudate, in which they are washed out.

#Artificial Hypermia.#--When such direct means as the above are
impracticable, much can be done to aid the tissues in their struggle by
improving the condition of the circulation in the inflamed area, so as
to ensure that a plentiful supply of fresh arterial blood reaches it.
The beneficial effects of _hot fomentations and poultices_ depend on
their causing a dilatation of the vessels, and so inducing a hypermia
in the affected area. It has been shown experimentally that repeated,
short applications of moist heat (not exceeding 106 F.) are more
efficacious than continuous application. It is now believed that the
so-called _counter-irritants_--mustard, iodine, cantharides, actual
cautery--act in the same way; and the method of treating erysipelas by
applying a strong solution of iodine around the affected area is based
on the same principle.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Passive Hypermia of Hand and Forearm induced by
Bier's Bandage.]

While these and similar methods have long been employed in the treatment
of inflammatory conditions, it is only within comparatively recent years
that their mode of action has been properly understood, and to August
Bier belongs the credit of having put the treatment of inflammation on a
scientific and rational basis. Recognising the "beneficent intention" of
the inflammatory reaction, and the protective action of the leucocytosis
which accompanies the hypermic stages of the process, Bier was led to
study the effects of increasing the hypermia by artificial means. As a
result of his observations, he has formulated a method of treatment
which consists in inducing an artificial hypermia in the inflamed area,
either by obstructing the venous return from the part (_passive
hypermia_), or by stimulating the arterial flow through it (_active
hypermia_).

_Bier's Constricting Bandage._--To induce a _passive hypermia_ in a
limb, an elastic bandage is applied some distance above the inflamed
area sufficiently tightly to obstruct the venous return from the distal
parts without arresting in any way the inflow of arterial blood (Fig. 6).
If the constricting band is correctly applied, the parts beyond
become swollen and dematous, and assume a bluish-red hue, but they
retain their normal temperature, the pulse is unchanged, and there is no
pain. If the part becomes blue, cold, or painful, or if any existing
pain is increased, the band has been applied too tightly. The hypermia
is kept up from twenty to twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four, and
in the intervals the limb is elevated to get rid of the dema and to
empty it of impure blood, and so make room for a fresh supply of healthy
blood when the bandage is re-applied. As the inflammation subsides, the
period during which the band is kept on each day is diminished; but the
treatment should be continued for some days after all signs of
inflammation have subsided.

This method of treating acute inflammatory conditions necessitates
close supervision until the correct degree of tightness of the band has
been determined.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Passive Hypermia of Finger induced by Klapp's
Suction Bell.]

_Klapp's Suction Bells._--In inflammatory conditions to which the
constricting band cannot be applied, as for example an acute mastitis, a
bubo in the groin, or a boil on the neck, the affected area may be
rendered hypermic by an appropriately shaped glass bell applied over it
and exhausted by means of a suction-pump, the rarefaction of the air in
the bell determining a flow of blood into the tissues enclosed within it
(Figs. 7 and 8). The edge of the bell is smeared with vaseline, and the
suction applied for from five to ten minutes at a time, with a
corresponding interval between the applications. Each sitting lasts for
from half an hour to an hour, and the treatment may be carried out once
or twice a day according to circumstances. This apparatus acts in the
same way as the old-fashioned _dry cup_, and is more convenient and
equally efficacious.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Passive Hypermia induced by Klapp's Suction
Bell for Inflammation of Inguinal Gland.]

_Active hypermia_ is induced by the local application of heat,
particularly by means of hot air. It has not proved so useful in acute
inflammation as passive hypermia, but is of great value in hastening
the absorption of inflammatory products and in overcoming adhesions and
stiffness in tendons and joints.

_General Treatment._--The patient should be kept at rest, preferably in
bed, to diminish the general tissue waste; and the diet should be
restricted to fluids, such as milk, beef-tea, meat juices or gruel, and
these may be rendered more easily assimilable by artificial digestion if
necessary. To counteract the general effect of toxins absorbed into
the circulation, specific antitoxic sera are employed in certain forms
of infection, such as diphtheria, streptococcal septicmia, and tetanus.
In other forms of infection, vaccines are employed to increase the
opsonic power of the blood. When such means are not available, the
circulating toxins may to some extent be diluted by giving plenty of
bland fluids by the mouth or normal salt solution by the rectum.

The elimination of the toxins is promoted by securing free action of the
emunctories. A saline purge, such as half an ounce of sulphate of
magnesium in a small quantity of water, ensures a free evacuation of the
bowels. The kidneys are flushed by such diluent drinks as equal parts of
milk and lime water, or milk with a dram of liquor calcis saccharatus
added to each tumblerful. Barley-water and "Imperial drink," which
consists of a dram and a half of cream of tartar added to a pint of
boiling water and sweetened with sugar after cooling, are also useful
and non-irritating diuretics. The skin may be stimulated by Dover's
powder (10 grains) or liquor ammoni acetatis in three-dram doses every
four hours.

Various drugs administered internally, such as quinine, salol,
salicylate of iron, and others, have a reputation, more or less
deserved, as internal antiseptics.

Weakness of the heart, as indicated by the condition of the pulse, is
treated by the use of such drugs as digitalis, strophanthus, or
strychnin, according to circumstances.

Gastro-intestinal disturbances are met by ordinary medical means.
Vomiting, for example, can sometimes be checked by effervescing drinks,
such as citrate of caffein, or by dilute hydrocyanic acid and bismuth.
In severe cases, and especially when the vomited matter resembles
coffee-grounds from admixture with altered blood--the so-called
post-operative hmatemesis--the best means of arresting the vomiting is
by washing out the stomach. Thirst is relieved by rectal injections of
saline solution. The introduction of saline solution into the veins or
by the rectum is also useful in diluting and hastening the elimination
of circulating toxins.

In surgical inflammations, as a rule, nothing is gained by lowering the
temperature, unless at the same time the cause is removed. When severe
or prolonged pyrexia becomes a source of danger, the use of hot or cold
sponging, or even the cold bath, is preferable to the administration of
drugs.

_Relief of Symptoms._--For the relief of _pain_, rest is essential. The
inflamed part should be placed in a splint or other appliance which will
prevent movement, and steps must be taken to reduce its functional
activity as far as possible. Locally, warm and moist dressings, such as
a poultice or fomentation, may be used. To make a fomentation, a piece
of flannel or lint is wrung out of very hot water or antiseptic lotion
and applied under a sheet of mackintosh. Fomentations should be renewed
as often as they cool. An ordinary india-rubber bag filled with hot
water and fixed over the fomentation, by retaining the heat, obviates
the necessity of frequently changing the application. The addition of a
few drops of laudanum sprinkled on the flannel has a soothing effect.
Lead and opium lotion is a useful, soothing application employed as a
fomentation. We prefer the application of lint soaked in a 10 per cent.
aqueous or glycerine solution of ichthyol, or smeared with ichthyol
ointment (1 in 3). Belladonna and glycerine, equal parts, may be used.

Dry cold obtained by means of icebags, or by Leiter's lead tubes through
which a continuous stream of ice-cold water is kept flowing, is
sometimes soothing to the patient, but when the vessels in the inflamed
part are greatly congested its use is attended with considerable risk,
as it not only contracts the arterioles supplying the part, but also
diminishes the outflow of venous blood, and so may determine gangrene of
tissues already devitalised.

A milder form of employing cold is by means of evaporating lotions: a
thin piece of lint or gauze is applied over the inflamed part and kept
constantly moist with the lotion, the dressing being left freely exposed
to allow of continuous evaporation. A useful evaporating lotion is made
up as follows: take of chloride of ammonium, half an ounce; rectified
spirit, one ounce; and water, seven ounces.

The administration of opiates may be necessary for the relief of pain.

The accumulation of an excessive amount of inflammatory exudate may
endanger the vitality of the tissues by pressing on the blood vessels to
such an extent as to cause stasis, and by concentrating the local action
of the toxins. Under such conditions the tension should be relieved and
the exudate with its contained toxins removed by making an incision into
the inflamed tissues, and applying a suction bell. When the exudate has
collected in a synovial cavity, such as a joint or bursa, it may be
withdrawn by means of a trocar and cannula. There are other methods of
withdrawing blood and exudate from an inflamed area, for example by
leeches or wet-cupping, but they are seldom employed now.

Before applying leeches the part must be thoroughly cleansed, and if
the leech is slow to bite, may be smeared with cream. The leech is
retained in position under an inverted wine-glass or wide test-tube till
it takes hold. After it has sucked its fill it usually drops off, having
withdrawn a dram or a dram and a half of blood. If it be desirable to
withdraw more blood, hot fomentations should be applied to the bite. As
it is sometimes necessary to employ considerable pressure to stop the
bleeding, leeches should, if possible, be applied over a bone which will
furnish the necessary resistance. The use of styptics may be called for.

_Wet-cupping_ has almost entirely been superseded by the use of Klapp's
suction bells.

_General blood-letting_ consists in opening a superficial vein
(venesection) and allowing from eight to ten ounces of blood to flow
from it. It is seldom used in the treatment of surgical forms of
inflammation.

_Counter-irritants._--In deep-seated inflammations, counter-irritants
are sometimes employed in the form of mustard leaves or blisters,
according to the degree of irritation required. A mustard leaf or
plaster should not be left on longer than ten or fifteen minutes, unless
it is desired to produce a blister. Blistering may be produced by a
_cantharides plaster_, or by painting with _liquor epispasticus_. The
plaster should be left on from eight to ten hours, and if it has failed
to raise a blister, a hot fomentation should be applied to the part.
_Liquor epispasticus_, alone or mixed with equal parts of collodion, is
painted on the part with a brush. Several paintings are often required
before a blister is raised. The preliminary removal of the natural
grease from the skin favours the action of these applications.

The treatment of inflammation in special tissues and organs will be
considered in the sections devoted to regional surgery.

#Chronic Inflammation.#--A variety of types of chronic and subacute
inflammation are met with which, owing to ignorance of their causations,
cannot at present be satisfactorily classified.

The best defined group is that of the _granulomata_, which includes such
important diseases as tuberculosis and syphilis, and in which different
types of chronic inflammation are caused by infection with a specific
organism, all having the common character, however, that abundant
granulation tissue is formed in which cellular changes are more in
evidence than changes in the blood vessels, and in which the subsequent
degeneration and necrosis of the granulation tissue results in the
breaking down and destruction of the tissue in which it is formed.
Another group is that in which chronic inflammation is due to mild or
attenuated forms of pyogenic infection affecting especially the lymph
glands and the bone marrow. In the glands of the groin, for example,
associated with various forms of irritation about the external genitals,
different types of _chronic lymphadenitis_ are met with; they do not
frankly suppurate as do the acute types, but are attended with a
hyperplasia of the tissue elements which results in enlargement of the
affected glands of a persistent, and sometimes of a relapsing character.
Similar varieties of _osteomyelitis_ are met with that do not, like the
acute forms, go on to suppuration or to death of bone, but result in
thickening of the bone affected, both on the surface and in the
interior, resulting in obliteration of the medullary canal.

A third group of chronic inflammations are those that begin as an acute
pyogenic inflammation, which, instead of resolving completely, persists
in a chronic form. It does so apparently because there is some factor
aiding the organisms and handicapping the tissues, such as the presence
of a foreign body, a piece of glass or metal, or a piece of dead bone;
in these circumstances the inflammation persists in a chronic form,
attended with the formation of fibrous tissue, and, in the case of bone,
with the formation of new bone in excess. It will be evident that in
this group, chronic inflammation and repair are practically
interchangeable terms.

There are other groups of chronic inflammation, the origin of which
continues to be the subject of controversy. Reference is here made to
the chronic inflammations of the synovial membrane of joints, of tendon
sheaths and of burs--_chronic synovitis_, _teno-synovitis_ and
_bursitis_; of the fibrous tissues of joints--chronic forms of
_arthritis_; of the blood vessels--chronic forms of _endarteritis_ and
of _phlebitis_ and of the peripheral nerves--_neuritis_. Also in the
breast and in the prostate, with the waning of sexual life there may
occur a formation of fibrous tissue--chronic _interstitial mastitis_,
_chronic prostatitis_, having analogies with the chronic interstitial
inflammations of internal organs like the kidney--_chronic interstitial
nephritis_; and in the breast and prostate, as in the kidney, the
formation of fibrous tissue leads to changes in the secreting epithelium
resulting in the formation of cysts.

Lastly, there are still other types of chronic inflammation attended
with the formation of fibrous tissue on such a liberal scale as to
suggest analogies with new growths. The best known of these are the
systematic forms of fibromatosis met with in the central nervous system
and in the peripheral nerves--_neuro-fibromatosis_; in the submucous
coat of the stomach--_gastric fibromatosis_; and in the
colon--_intestinal fibromatosis_.

These conditions will be described with the tissues and organs in which
they occur.

In the _treatment of chronic inflammations_, pending further knowledge
as to their causation, and beyond such obvious indications as to help
the tissues by removing a foreign body or a piece of dead bone, there
are employed--empirically--a number of procedures such as the induction
of hypermia, exposure to the X-rays, and the employment of blisters,
cauteries, and setons. Vaccines may be had recourse to in those of
bacterial origin.




CHAPTER IV

SUPPURATION


Definition--Pus--_Varieties_--Acute circumscribed abscess--_Acute
    suppuration in a wound_--_Acute Suppuration in a mucous
    membrane_--Diffuse cellulitis and diffuse suppuration--
    _Whitlow_--_Suppurative cellulitis in different situations_--Chronic
    suppuration--Sinus, Fistula--Constitutional manifestations of
    pyogenic infection--_Saprmia_--_Septicmia_--_Pymia_.

Suppuration, or the formation of pus, is one of the results of the
action of bacteria on the tissues. The invading organism is usually one
of the staphylococci, less frequently a streptococcus, and still less
frequently one of the other bacteria capable of producing pus, such as
the bacillus coli communis, the gonococcus, the pneumococcus, or the
typhoid bacillus.

So long as the tissues are in a healthy condition they are able to
withstand the attacks of moderate numbers of pyogenic bacteria of
ordinary virulence, but when devitalised by disease, by injury, or by
inflammation due to the action of other pathogenic organisms,
suppuration ensues.

It would appear, for example, that pyogenic organisms can pass through
the healthy urinary tract without doing any damage, but if the pelvis of
the kidney, the ureter, or the bladder is the seat of stone, they give
rise to suppuration. Similarly, a calculus in one of the salivary ducts
frequently results in an abscess forming in the floor of the mouth. When
the lumen of a tubular organ, such as the appendix or the Fallopian tube
is blocked also, the action of pyogenic organisms is favoured and
suppuration ensues.

#Pus.#--The fluid resulting from the process of suppuration is known
as _pus_. In its typical form it is a yellowish creamy substance, of
alkaline reaction, with a specific gravity of about 1030, and it has a
peculiar mawkish odour. If allowed to stand in a test-tube it does not
coagulate, but separates into two layers: the upper, transparent,
straw-coloured fluid, the _liquor puris_ or pus serum, closely
resembling blood serum in its composition, but containing less protein
and more cholestrol; it also contains leucin, tyrosin, and certain
albumoses which prevent coagulation.

The layer at the bottom of the tube consists for the most part of
polymorph leucocytes, and proliferated connective tissue and endothelial
cells (_pus corpuscles_). Other forms of leucocytes may be present,
especially in long-standing suppurations; and there are usually some red
corpuscles, dead bacteria, fat cells and shreds of tissue, cholestrol
crystals, and other detritus in the deposit.

If a film of fresh pus is examined under the microscope, the pus cells
are seen to have a well-defined rounded outline, and to contain a finely
granular protoplasm and a multi-partite nucleus; if still warm, the
cells may exhibit amboid movement. In stained films the nuclei take the
stain well. In older pus cells the outline is irregular, the protoplasm
coarsely granular, and the nuclei disintegrated, no longer taking the
stain.

_Variations from Typical Pus._--Pus from old-standing sinuses is often
watery in consistence (ichorous), with few cells. Where the granulations
are vascular and bleed easily, it becomes sanious from admixture with
red corpuscles; while, if a blood-clot be broken down and the debris
mixed with the pus, it contains granules of blood pigment and is said to
be "grumous." The _odour_ of pus varies with the different bacteria
producing it. Pus due to ordinary pyogenic cocci has a mawkish odour;
when putrefactive organisms are present it has a putrid odour; when it
forms in the vicinity of the intestinal canal it usually contains the
bacillus coli communis and has a fcal odour.

The _colour_ of pus also varies: when due to one or other of the
varieties of the bacillus pyocyaneus, it is usually of a blue or green
colour; when mixed with bile derivatives or altered blood pigment, it
may be of a bright orange colour. In wounds inflicted with rough iron
implements from which rust is deposited, the pus often presents the same
colour.

The pus may form and collect within a circumscribed area, constituting a
localised _abscess_; or it may infiltrate the tissues over a wide
area--_diffuse suppuration_.


ACUTE CIRCUMSCRIBED ABSCESS

Any tissue of the body may be the seat of an acute abscess, and there
are many routes by which the bacteria may gain access to the affected
area. For example: an abscess in the integument or subcutaneous
cellular tissue usually results from infection by organisms which have
entered through a wound or abrasion of the surface, or along the ducts
of the skin; an abscess in the breast from organisms which have passed
along the milk ducts opening on the nipple, or along the lymphatics
which accompany these. An abscess in a lymph gland is usually due to
infection passing by way of the lymph channels from the area of skin or
mucous membrane drained by them. Abscesses in internal organs, such as
the kidney, liver, or brain, usually result from organisms carried in
the blood-stream from some focus of infection elsewhere in the body.

A knowledge of the possible avenues of infection is of clinical
importance, as it may enable the source of a given abscess to be traced
and dealt with. In suppuration in the Fallopian tube (pyosalpynx), for
example, the fact that the most common origin of the infection is in the
genital passage, leads to examination for vaginal discharge; and if none
is present, the abscess is probably due to infection carried in the
blood-stream from some primary focus about the mouth, such as a gumboil
or an infective sore throat.

The exact location of an abscess also may furnish a key to its source;
in axillary abscess, for example, if the suppuration is in the lymph
glands the infection has come through the afferent lymphatics; if in the
cellular tissue, it has spread from the neck or chest wall; if in the
hair follicles, it is a local infection through the skin.

#Formation of an Abscess.#--When pyogenic bacteria are introduced into
the tissue there ensues an inflammatory reaction, which is characterised
by dilatation of the blood vessels, exudation of large numbers of
leucocytes, and proliferation of connective-tissue cells. These
wandering cells soon accumulate round the focus of infection, and form a
protective barrier which tends to prevent the spread of the organisms
and to restrict their field of action. Within the area thus
circumscribed the struggle between the bacteria and the phagocytes takes
place, and in the process toxins are formed by the organisms, a certain
number of the leucocytes succumb, and, becoming degenerated, set free
certain proteolytic enzymes or ferments. The toxins cause
coagulation-necrosis of the tissue cells with which they come in
contact, the ferments liquefy the exudate and other albuminous
substances, and in this way _pus_ is formed.

If the bacteria gain the upper hand, this process of liquefaction which
is characteristic of suppuration, extends into the surrounding tissues,
the protective barrier of leucocytes is broken down, and the
suppurative process spreads. A fresh accession of leucocytes, however,
forms a new barrier, and eventually the spread is arrested, and the
collection of pus so hemmed in constitutes an _abscess_.

Owing to the swelling and condensation of the parts around, the pus thus
formed is under considerable pressure, and this causes it to burrow
along the lines of least resistance. In the case of a subcutaneous
abscess the pus usually works its way towards the surface, and "points,"
as it is called. Where it approaches the surface the skin becomes soft
and thin, and eventually sloughs, allowing the pus to escape.

An abscess forming in the deeper planes is prevented from pointing
directly to the surface by the firm fasci and other fibrous structures.
The pus therefore tends to burrow along the line of the blood vessels
and in the connective-tissue septa, till it either finds a weak spot or
causes a portion of fascia to undergo necrosis and so reaches the
surface. Accordingly, many abscess cavities resulting from deep-seated
suppuration are of irregular shape, with pouches and loculi in various
directions--an arrangement which interferes with their successful
treatment by incision and drainage.

The relief of tension which follows the bursting of an abscess, the
removal of irritation by the escape of pus, and the casting off of
bacteria and toxins, allow the tissues once more to assert themselves,
and a process of repair sets in. The walls of the abscess fall in;
granulation tissue grows into the space and gradually fills it; and
later this is replaced by cicatricial tissue. As a result of the
subsequent contraction of the cicatricial tissue, the scar is usually
depressed below the level of the surrounding skin surface.

If an abscess is prevented from healing--for example, by the presence of
a foreign body or a piece of necrosed bone--a sinus results, and from it
pus escapes until the foreign body is removed.

#Clinical Features of an Acute Circumscribed Abscess.#--In the initial
stages the usual symptoms of inflammation are present. Increased
elevation of temperature, with or without a rigor, progressive
leucocytosis, and sweating, mark the transition between inflammation and
suppuration. An increasing leucocytosis is evidence that a suppurative
process is spreading.

The local symptoms vary with the seat of the abscess. When it is
situated superficially--for example, in the breast tissue--the affected
area is hot, the redness of inflammation gives place to a dusky purple
colour, with a pale, sometimes yellow, spot where the pus is near the
surface. The swelling increases in size, the firm brawny centre becomes
soft, projects as a cone beyond the level of the rest of the swollen
area, and is usually surrounded by a zone of induration.

By gently palpating with the finger-tips over the softened area, a fluid
wave may be detected--_fluctuation_--and when present this is a certain
indication of the existence of fluid in the swelling. Its recognition,
however, is by no means easy, and various fallacies are to be guarded
against in applying this test clinically. When, for example, the walls
of the abscess are thick and rigid, or when its contents are under
excessive tension, the fluid wave cannot be elicited. On the other hand,
a sensation closely resembling fluctuation may often be recognised in
dematous tissues, in certain soft, solid tumours such as fatty tumours
or vascular sarcomata, in aneurysm, and in a muscle when it is palpated
in its transverse axis.

When pus has formed in deeper parts, and before it has reached the
surface, dema of the overlying skin is frequently present, and the skin
pits on pressure.

With the formation of pus the continuous burning or boring pain of
inflammation assumes a throbbing character, with occasional sharp,
lancinating twinges. Should doubt remain as to the presence of pus,
recourse may be had to the use of an exploring needle.

_Differential Diagnosis of Acute Abscess._--A practical difficulty which
frequently arises is to decide whether or not pus has actually formed.
It may be accepted as a working rule in practice that when an acute
inflammation has lasted for four or five days without showing signs of
abatement, suppuration has almost certainly occurred. In deep-seated
suppuration, marked dema of the skin and the occurrence of rigors and
sweating may be taken to indicate the formation of pus.

There are cases on record where rapidly growing sarcomatous and
angiomatous tumours, aneurysms, and the bruises that occur in
hmophylics, have been mistaken for acute abscesses and incised, with
disastrous results.

#Treatment of Acute Abscesses.#--The dictum of John Bell, "Where there
is pus, let it out," summarises the treatment of abscess. The extent and
situation of the incision and the means taken to drain the cavity,
however, vary with the nature, site, and relations of the abscess. In a
superficial abscess, for example a bubo, or an abscess in the breast or
face where a disfiguring scar is undesirable, a small puncture should be
made where the pus threatens to point, and a Klapp's suction bell be
applied as already described (p. 39). A drain is not necessary, and in
the intervals between the applications of the bell the part is covered
with a moist antiseptic dressing.

In abscesses deeply placed, as for example under the gluteal or pectoral
muscles, one or more incisions should be made, and the cavity drained by
glass or rubber tubes or by strips of rubber tissue.

The wound should be dressed the next day, and the tube shortened, in the
case of a rubber tube, by cutting off a portion of its outer end. On the
second day or later, according to circumstances, the tube is removed,
and after this the dressing need not be repeated oftener than every
second or third day.

Where pus has formed in relation to important structures--as, for
example, in the deeper planes of the neck--_Hilton's method_ of opening
the abscess may be employed. An incision is made through the skin and
fascia, a grooved director is gently pushed through the deeper tissues
till pus escapes along its groove, and then the track is widened by
passing in a pair of dressing forceps and expanding the blades. A tube,
or strip of rubber tissue, is introduced, and the subsequent treatment
carried out as in other abscesses. When the drain lies in proximity to a
large blood vessel, care must be taken not to leave it in position long
enough to cause ulceration of the vessel wall by pressure.

In some abscesses, such as those in the vicinity of the anus, the cavity
should be laid freely open in its whole extent, stuffed with iodoform or
bismuth gauze, and treated by the open method.

It is seldom advisable to wash out an abscess cavity, and squeezing out
the pus is also to be avoided, lest the protective zone be broken down
and the infection be diffused into the surrounding tissues.

The importance of taking precautions against further infection in
opening an abscess can scarcely be exaggerated, and the rapidity with
which healing occurs when the access of fresh bacteria is prevented is
in marked contrast to what occurs when such precautions are neglected
and further infection is allowed to take place.

_Acute Suppuration in a Wound._--If in the course of an operation
infection of the wound has occurred, a marked inflammatory reaction soon
manifests itself, and the same changes as occur in the formation of an
acute abscess take place, modified, however, by the fact that the pus
can more readily reach the surface. In from twenty-four to forty-eight
hours the patient is conscious of a sensation of chilliness, or may
even have a rigor. At the same time he feels generally out of sorts,
with impaired appetite, headache, and it may be looseness of the bowels.
His temperature rises to 100 or 101 F., and the pulse quickens to 100
or 110.

On exposing the wound it is found that the parts for some distance
around are red, glazed, and dematous. The discoloration and swelling
are most intense in the immediate vicinity of the wound, the edges of
which are everted and moist. Any stitches that may have been introduced
are tight, and the deep ones may be cutting into the tissues. There is
heat, and a constant burning or throbbing pain, which is increased by
pressure. If the stitches be cut, pus escapes, the wound gapes, and its
surfaces are found to be inflamed and covered with pus.

The open method is the only safe means of treating such wounds. The
infected surface may be sponged over with pure carbolic acid, the excess
of which is washed off with absolute alcohol, and the wound either
drained by tubes or packed with iodoform gauze. The practice of scraping
such surfaces with the sharp spoon, squeezing or even of washing them
out with antiseptic lotions, is attended with the risk of further
diffusing the organisms in the tissue, and is only to be employed under
exceptional circumstances. Continuous irrigation of infected wounds or
their immersion in antiseptic baths is sometimes useful. The free
opening up of the wound is almost immediately followed by a fall in the
temperature. The surrounding inflammation subsides, the discharge of pus
lessens, and healing takes place by the formation of granulation
tissue--the so-called "healing by second intention."

Wound infection may take place from _catgut_ which has not been
efficiently prepared. The local and general reactions may be slight,
and, as a rule, do not appear for seven or eight days after the
operation, and, it may be, not till after the skin edges have united.
The suppuration is strictly localised to the part of the wound where
catgut was employed for stitches or ligatures, and shows little tendency
to spread. The infected part, however, is often long of healing. The
irritation in these cases is probably due to toxins in the catgut and
not to bacteria.

When suppuration occurs in connection with buried sutures of
unabsorbable materials, such as silk, silkworm gut, or silver wire, it
is apt to persist till the foreign material is cast off or removed.

Suppuration may occur in the track of a skin stitch, producing a _stitch
abscess_. The infection may arise from the material used, especially
catgut or silk, or, more frequently perhaps, from the growth of
staphylococcus albus from the skin of the patient when this has been
imperfectly disinfected. The formation of pus under these conditions may
not be attended with any of the usual signs of suppuration, and beyond
some induration around the wound and a slight tenderness on pressure
there may be nothing to suggest the presence of an abscess.

_Acute Suppuration of a Mucous Membrane._--When pyogenic organisms gain
access to a mucous membrane, such as that of the bladder, urethra, or
middle ear, the usual phenomena of acute inflammation and suppuration
ensue, followed by the discharge of pus on the free surface. It would
appear that the most marked changes take place in the submucous tissue,
causing the covering epithelium in places to die and leave small
superficial ulcers, for example in gonorrhal urethritis, the
cicatricial contraction of the scar subsequently leading to the
formation of stricture. When mucous glands are present in the membrane,
the pus is mixed with mucus--_muco-pus_.


DIFFUSE CELLULITIS AND DIFFUSE SUPPURATION

Cellulitis is an acute affection resulting from the introduction of some
organism--commonly the _streptococcus pyogenes_--into the cellular
connective tissue of the integument, intermuscular septa, tendon
sheaths, or other structures. Infection always takes place through a
breach of the surface, although this may be superficial and
insignificant, such as a pin-prick, a scratch, or a crack under a nail,
and the wound may have been healed for some time before the inflammation
becomes manifest. The cellulitis, also, may develop at some distance
from the seat of inoculation, the organisms having travelled by the
lymphatics.

The virulence of the organisms, the loose, open nature of the tissues in
which they develop, and the free lymphatic circulation by means of which
they are spread, account for the diffuse nature of the process.
Sometimes numbers of cocci are carried for a considerable distance from
the primary area before they are arrested in the lymphatics, and thus
several patches of inflammation may appear with healthy areas between.

The pus infiltrates the meshes of the cellular tissue, there is
sloughing of considerable portions of tissue of low vitality, such as
fat, fascia, or tendon, and if the process continues for some time
several collections of pus may form.

_Clinical Features._--The reaction in cases of diffuse cellulitis is
severe, and is usually ushered in by a distinct chill or even a rigor,
while the temperature rises to 103, 104, or 105 F. The pulse is
proportionately increased in frequency, and is small, feeble, and often
irregular. The face is flushed, the tongue dry and brown, and the
patient may become delirious, especially during the night. Leucocytosis
is present in cases of moderate severity; but in severe cases the
virulence of the toxins prevents reaction taking place, and leucocytosis
is absent.

The local manifestations vary with the relation of the seat of the
inflammation to the surface. When the superficial cellular tissue is
involved, the skin assumes a dark bluish-red colour, is swollen,
dematous, and the seat of burning pain. To the touch it is firm, hot,
and tender. When the primary focus is in the deeper tissues, the
constitutional disturbance is aggravated, while the local signs are
delayed, and only become prominent when pus forms and approaches the
surface. It is not uncommon for blebs containing dark serous fluid to
form on the skin. The infection frequently spreads along the line of the
main lymph vessels of the part (_septic lymphangitis_) and may reach the
lymph glands (_septic lymphadenitis_).

With the formation of pus the skin becomes soft and boggy at several
points, and eventually breaks, giving exit to a quantity of thick
grumous discharge. Sometimes several small collections under the skin
fuse, and an abscess is formed in which fluctuation can be detected.
Occasionally gases are evolved in the tissues, giving rise to emphysema.
It is common for portions of fascia, ligaments, or tendons to slough,
and this may often be recognised clinically by a peculiar crunching or
grating sensation transmitted to the fingers on making firm pressure on
the part.

If it is not let out by incision, the pus, travelling along the lines of
least resistance, tends to point at several places on the surface, or to
open into joints or other cavities.

_Prognosis._--The occurrence of _septicmia_ is the most serious risk,
and it is in cases of diffuse suppurative cellulitis that this form of
blood-poisoning assumes its most aggravated forms. The toxins of the
streptococci are exceedingly virulent, and induce local death of tissue
so rapidly that the protective emigration of leucocytes fails to take
place. In some cases the passage of masses of free cocci in the
lymphatics, or of infective emboli in the blood vessels, leads to the
formation of _pyogenic abscesses_ in vital organs, such as the brain,
lungs, liver, kidneys, or other viscera. _Hmorrhage_ from erosion of
arterial or venous trunks may take place and endanger life.

_Treatment._--The treatment of diffuse cellulitis depends to a large
extent on the situation and extent of the affected area, and on the
stage of the process.

_In the limbs_, for example, where the application of a constricting
band is practicable, Bier's method of inducing passive hypermia yields
excellent results. If pus is formed, one or more small incisions are
made and a light moist dressing placed over the wounds to absorb the
discharge, but no drain is inserted. The whole of the inflamed area
should be covered with gauze wrung out of a 1 in 10 solution of ichthyol
in glycerine. The dressing is changed as often as necessary, and in the
intervals when the band is off, gentle active and passive movements
should be carried out to prevent the formation of adhesions. After
incisions have been made, we have found the _immersion_ of the limb, for
a few hours at a time, in a water-bath containing warm boracic lotion or
eusol a useful adjuvant to the passive hypermia.

_Continuous irrigation_ of the part by a slow, steady stream of lotion,
at the body temperature, such as eusol, or Dakin's solution, or boracic
acid, or frequent washing with peroxide of hydrogen, has been found of
value.

A suitably arranged splint adds to the comfort of the patient; and the
limb should be placed in the attitude which, in the event of stiffness
resulting, will least interfere with its usefulness. The elbow, for
example, should be flexed to a little less than a right angle; at the
wrist, the hand should be dorsiflexed and the fingers flexed slightly
towards the palm.

Massage, passive movement, hot and cold douching, and other measures,
may be necessary to get rid of the chronic dema, adhesions of tendons,
and stiffness of joints which sometimes remain.

In situations where a constricting band cannot be applied, for example,
on the trunk or the neck, Klapp's suction bells may be used, small
incisions being made to admit of the escape of pus.

If these measures fail or are impracticable, it may be necessary to make
one or more free incisions, and to insert drainage-tubes, portions of
rubber dam, or iodoform worsted.

The general treatment of toxmia must be carried out, and in cases due
to infection by streptococci, anti-streptococcic serum may be used.

In a few cases, amputation well above the seat of disease, by removing
the source of toxin production, offers the only means of saving the
patient.


WHITLOW

The clinical term whitlow is applied to an acute infection, usually
followed by suppuration, commonly met with in the fingers, less
frequently in the toes. The point of infection is often trivial--a
pin-prick, a puncture caused by a splinter of wood, a scratch, or even
an imperceptible lesion of the skin.

Several varieties of whitlow are recognised, but while it is convenient
to describe them separately, it is to be clearly understood that
clinically they merge one into another, and it is not always possible to
determine in which connective-tissue plane a given infection has
originated.

_Initial Stage._--Attention is usually first attracted to the condition
by a sensation of tightness in the finger and tenderness when the part
is squeezed or knocked against anything. In the course of a few hours
the part becomes red and swollen; there is continuous pain, which soon
assumes a throbbing character, particularly when the hand is dependent,
and may be so severe as to prevent sleep, and the patient may feel
generally out of sorts.

If a constricting band is applied at this stage, the infection can
usually be checked and the occurrence of suppuration prevented. If this
fails, or if the condition is allowed to go untreated, the inflammatory
reaction increases and terminates in suppuration, giving rise to one or
other of the forms of whitlow to be described.

_The Purulent Blister._--In the most superficial variety, pus forms
between the rete Malpighii and the stratum corneum of the skin, the
latter being raised as a blister in which fluctuation can be detected
(Fig. 9, a). This is commonly met with in the palm of the hand of
labouring men who have recently resumed work after a spell of idleness.
When the blister forms near the tip of the finger, the pus burrows under
the nail--which corresponds to the stratum corneum--raising it from its
bed.

There is some local heat and discoloration, and considerable pain and
tenderness, but little or no constitutional disturbance. Superficial
lymphangitis may extend a short distance up the forearm. By clipping
away the raised epidermis, and if necessary the nail, the pus is allowed
to escape, and healing speedily takes place.

_Whitlow at the Nail Fold._--This variety, which is met with among those
who handle septic material, occurs in the sulcus between the nail and
the skin, and is due to the introduction of infective matter at the root
of the nail (Fig. 9, b). A small focus of suppuration forms under the
nail, with swelling and redness of the nail fold, causing intense pain
and discomfort, interfering with sleep, and producing a constitutional
reaction out of all proportion to the local lesion.

To allow the pus to escape, it is necessary, under local ansthesia, to
cut away the nail fold as well as the portion of nail in the infected
area, or, it may be, to remove the nail entirely. If only a small
opening is made in the nail it is apt to be blocked by granulations.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Diagram of various forms of Whitlow.
  a = Purulent blister.
  b = Suppuration at nail fold.
  c = Subcutaneous whitlow.
  d = Whitlow in sheath of flexor tendon (e). ]

_Subcutaneous Whitlow._--In this variety the infection manifests itself
as a cellulitis of the pulp of the finger (Fig. 9, c), which sometimes
spreads towards the palm of the hand. The finger becomes red, swollen,
and tense; there is severe throbbing pain, which is usually worst at
night and prevents sleep, and the part is extremely tender on pressure.
When the palm is invaded there may be marked dema of the back of the
hand, the dense integument of the palm preventing the swelling from
appearing on the front. The pus may be under such tension that
fluctuation cannot be detected. The patient is usually able to flex the
finger to a certain extent without increasing the pain--a point which
indicates that the tendon sheaths have not been invaded. The
suppurative process may, however, spread to the tendon sheaths, or even
to the bone. Sometimes the excessive tension and virulent toxins induce
actual gangrene of the distal part, or even of the whole finger. There
is considerable constitutional disturbance, the temperature often
reaching 101 or 102 F.

The treatment consists in applying a constriction band and making an
incision over the centre of the most tender area, care being taken to
avoid opening the tendon sheath lest the infection be conveyed to it.
Moist dressings should be employed while the suppuration lasts. Carbolic
fomentations, however, are to be avoided on account of the risk of
inducing gangrene.

_Whitlow of the Tendon Sheaths._--In this form the main incidence of the
infection is on the sheaths of the flexor tendons, but it is not always
possible to determine whether it started there or spread thither from
the subcutaneous cellular tissue (Fig. 9, d). In some cases both
connective tissue planes are involved. The affected finger becomes red,
painful, and swollen, the swelling spreading to the dorsum. The
involvement of the tendon sheath is usually indicated by the patient
being unable to flex the finger, and by the pain being increased when he
attempts to do so. On account of the anatomical arrangement of the
tendon sheaths, the process may spread into the forearm--directly in the
case of the thumb and little finger, and after invading the palm in the
case of the other fingers--and there give rise to a diffuse cellulitis
which may result in sloughing of fasci and tendons. When the infection
spreads into the common flexor sheath under the transverse carpal
(anterior annular) ligament, it is not uncommon for the intercarpal and
wrist joints to become implicated. Impaired movement of tendons and
joints is, therefore, a common sequel to this variety of whitlow.

The _treatment_ consists in inducing passive hypermia by Bier's method,
and, if this is done early, suppuration may be avoided. If pus forms,
small incisions are made, under local ansthesia, to relieve the tension
in the sheath and to diminish the risk of the tendons sloughing. No form
of drain should be inserted. In the fingers the incisions should be made
in the middle line, and in the palm they should be made over the
metacarpal bones to avoid the digital vessels and nerves. If pus has
spread under the transverse carpal ligament, the incision must be made
above the wrist. Passive movements and massage must be commenced as
early as possible and be perseveringly employed to diminish the
formation of adhesions and resulting stiffness.

_Subperiosteal Whitlow._--This form is usually an extension of the
subcutaneous or of the thecal variety, but in some cases the
inflammation begins in the periosteum--usually of the terminal phalanx.
It may lead to necrosis of a portion or even of the entire phalanx. This
is usually recognised by the persistence of suppuration long after the
acute symptoms have passed off, and by feeling bare bone with the probe.
In such cases one or more of the joints are usually implicated also, and
lateral mobility and grating may be elicited. Recovery does not take
place until the dead bone is removed, and the usefulness of the finger
is often seriously impaired by fibrous or bony ankylosis of the
interphalangeal joints. This may render amputation advisable when a
stiff finger is likely to interfere with the patient's occupation.


SUPPURATIVE CELLULITIS IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS

_Cellulitis of the forearm_ is usually a sequel to one of the deeper
varieties of whitlow.

In the _region of the elbow-joint_, cellulitis is common around the
olecranon. It may originate as an inflammation of the olecranon bursa,
or may invade the bursa secondarily. In exceptional cases the
elbow-joint is also involved.

Cellulitis of the _axilla_ may originate in suppuration in the lymph
glands, following an infected wound of the hand, or it may spread from a
septic wound on the chest wall or in the neck. In some cases it is
impossible to discover the primary seat of infection. A firm, brawny
swelling forms in the armpit and extends on to the chest wall. It is
attended with great pain, which is increased on moving the arm, and
there is marked constitutional disturbance. When suppuration occurs, its
spread is limited by the attachments of the axillary fascia, and the pus
tends to burrow on to the chest wall beneath the pectoral muscles, and
upwards towards the shoulder-joint, which may become infected. When the
pus forms in the axillary space, the treatment consists in making free
incisions, which should be placed on the thoracic side of the axilla to
avoid the axillary vessels and nerves. If the pus spreads on to the
chest wall, the abscess should be opened below the clavicle by Hilton's
method, and a counter opening may be made in the axilla.

Cellulitis of the _sole of the foot_ may follow whitlow of the toes.

In the _region of the ankle_ cellulitis is not common; but _around the
knee_ it frequently occurs in relation to the prepatellar bursa and to
the popliteal lymph glands, and may endanger the knee-joint. It is also
met with in the _groin_ following on inflammation and suppuration of the
inguinal glands, and cases are recorded in which the sloughing process
has implicated the femoral vessels and led to secondary hmorrhage.

Cellulitis of the scalp, orbit, neck, pelvis, and perineum will be
considered with the diseases of these regions.


CHRONIC SUPPURATION

While it is true that a chronic pyogenic abscess is sometimes met
with--for example, in the breast and in the marrow of long bones--in the
great majority of instances the formation of a chronic or cold abscess
is the result of the action of the tubercle bacillus. It is therefore
more convenient to study this form of suppuration with tuberculosis
(p. 139).


SINUS AND FISTULA

#Sinus.#--A sinus is a track leading from a focus of suppuration to a
cutaneous or mucous surface. It usually represents the path by which the
discharge escapes from an abscess cavity that has been prevented from
closing completely, either from mechanical causes or from the persistent
formation of discharge which must find an exit. A sinus is lined by
granulation tissue, and when it is of long standing the opening may be
dragged below the level of the surrounding skin by contraction of the
scar tissue around it. As a sinus will persist until the obstacle to
closure of the original abscess is removed, it is necessary that this
should be sought for. It may be a foreign body, such as a piece of dead
bone, an infected ligature, or a bullet, acting mechanically or by
keeping up discharge, and if the body is removed the sinus usually
heals. The presence of a foreign body is often suggested by a mass of
redundant granulations at the mouth of the sinus. If a sinus passes
through a muscle, the repeated contractions tend to prevent healing
until the muscle is kept at rest by a splint, or put out of action by
division of its fibres. The sinuses associated with empyema are
prevented from healing by the rigidity of the chest wall, and will only
close after an operation which admits of the cavity being obliterated.
In any case it is necessary to disinfect the track, and, it may be, to
remove the unhealthy granulations lining it, by means of the sharp
spoon, or to excise it bodily. To encourage healing from the bottom the
cavity should be packed with bismuth or iodoform gauze. The healing of
long and tortuous sinuses is often hastened by the injection of Beck's
bismuth paste (p. 145). If disfigurement is likely to follow from
cicatricial contraction--for example, in a sinus over the lower jaw
associated with a carious tooth--the sinus should be excised and the raw
surfaces approximated with stitches.

The _tuberculous sinus_ is described under Tuberculosis.

A #fistula# is an abnormal canal passing from a mucous surface to the
skin or to another mucous surface. Fistul resulting from suppuration
usually occur near the natural openings of mucous canals--for example,
on the cheek, as a salivary fistula; beside the inner angle of the eye,
as a lacrymal fistula; near the ear, as a mastoid fistula; or close to
the anus, as a fistula-in-ano. Intestinal fistul are sometimes met with
in the abdominal wall after strangulated hernia, operations for
appendicitis, tuberculous peritonitis, and other conditions. In the
perineum, fistul frequently complicate stricture of the urethra.

Fistul also occur between the bladder and vagina (_vesico-vaginal
fistula_), or between the bladder and the rectum (_recto-vesical
fistula_).

The _treatment_ of these various forms of fistula will be described in
the sections dealing with the regions in which they occur.

_Congenital fistul_, such as occur in the neck from imperfect closure
of branchial clefts, or in the abdomen from unobliterated ftal ducts
such as the urachus or Meckel's diverticulum, will be described in their
proper places.


CONSTITUTIONAL MANIFESTATIONS OF PYOGENIC INFECTION

We have here to consider under the terms Saprmia, Septicmia, and
Pymia certain general effects of pyogenic infection, which, although
their clinical manifestations may vary, are all associated with the
action of the same forms of bacteria. They may occur separately or in
combination, or one may follow on and merge into another.

#Saprmia#, or septic intoxication, is the name applied to a form of
poisoning resulting from the absorption into the blood of the toxic
products of pyogenic bacteria. These products, which are of the nature
of alkaloids, act immediately on their entrance into the circulation,
and produce effects in direct proportion to the amount absorbed. As the
toxins are gradually eliminated from the body the symptoms abate, and if
no more are introduced they disappear. Saprmia in these respects,
therefore, is comparable to poisoning by any other form of alkaloid,
such as strychnin or morphin.

_Clinical Features._--The symptoms of saprmia seldom manifest
themselves within twenty-four hours of an operation or injury, because
it takes some time for the bacteria to produce a sufficient dose of
their poisons. The onset of the condition is marked by a feeling of
chilliness, sometimes amounting to a rigor, and a rise of temperature to
102, 103, or 104 F., with morning remissions (Fig. 10). The heart's
action is markedly depressed, and the pulse is soft and compressible.
The appetite is lost, the tongue dry and covered with a thin
brownish-red fur, so that it has the appearance of "dried beef." The
urine is scanty and loaded with urates. In severe cases diarrha and
vomiting of dark coffee-ground material are often prominent features.
Death is usually impending when the skin becomes cold and clammy, the
mucous membranes livid, the pulse feeble and fluttering, the discharges
involuntary, and when a low form of muttering delirium is present.

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Charts of Acute saprmia from (a) case of
crushed foot, and (b) case of incomplete abortion.]

A local form of septic infection is always present--it may be an
abscess, an infected compound fracture, or an infection of the cavity of
the uterus, for example, from a retained portion of placenta.

_Treatment._--The first indication is the immediate and complete removal
of the infected material. The wound must be freely opened, all
blood-clot, discharge, or necrosed tissue removed, and the area
disinfected by washing with sterilised salt solution, peroxide of
hydrogen, or eusol. Stronger lotions are to be avoided as being likely
to depress the tissues, and so interfere with protective phagocytosis.
On account of its power of neutralising toxins, iodoform is useful in
these cases, and is best employed by packing the wound with iodoform
gauze, and treating it by the open method, if this is possible.

The general treatment is carried out on the same lines as for other
infective conditions.

#Chronic saprmia or Hectic Fever.#--Hectic fever differs from acute
saprmia merely in degree. It usually occurs in connection with
tuberculous conditions, such as bone or joint disease, psoas abscess, or
empyema, which have opened externally, and have thereby become infected
with pyogenic organisms. It is gradual in its development, and is of a
mild type throughout.

[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Chart of Hectic Fever.]

The pulse is small, feeble, and compressible, and the temperature rises
in the afternoon or evening to 102 or 103 F. (Fig. 11), the cheeks
becoming characteristically flushed. In the early morning the
temperature falls to normal or below it, and the patient breaks into a
profuse perspiration, which leaves him pale, weak, and exhausted. He
becomes rapidly and markedly emaciated, even although in some cases the
appetite remains good and is even voracious.

The poisons circulating in the blood produce _waxy degeneration_ in
certain viscera, notably the liver, spleen, kidneys, and intestines. The
process begins in the arterial walls, and spreads thence to the
connective-tissue structures, causing marked enlargement of the affected
organs. Albuminuria, ascites, dema of the lower limbs, clubbing of the
fingers, and diarrha are among the most prominent symptoms of this
condition.

The _prognosis_ in hectic fever depends on the completeness with which
the further absorption of toxins can be prevented. In many cases this
can only be effected by an operation which provides for free drainage,
and, if possible, the removal of infected tissues. The resulting wound
is best treated by the open method. Even advanced waxy degeneration does
not contra-indicate this line of treatment, as the diseased organs
usually recover if the focus from which absorption of toxic material is
taking place is completely eradicated.

[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Chart of case of Septicmia followed by
Pymia.]

#Septicmia.#--This form of blood-poisoning is the result of the action
of pyogenic bacteria, which not only produce their toxins at the primary
seat of infection, but themselves enter the blood-stream and are carried
to other parts, where they settle and produce further effects.

_Clinical Features._--There may be an incubation period of some hours
between the infection and the first manifestation of acute septicmia.
In such conditions as acute osteomyelitis or acute peritonitis, we see
the most typical clinical pictures of this condition. The onset is
marked by a chill, or a rigor, which may be repeated, while the
temperature rises to 103 or 104 F., although in very severe cases the
temperature may remain subnormal throughout, the virulence of the toxins
preventing reaction. It is in the general appearance of the patient and
in the condition of the pulse that we have our best guides as to the
severity of the condition. If the pulse remains firm, full, and regular,
and does not exceed 110 or even 120, while the temperature is moderately
raised, the outlook is hopeful; but when the pulse becomes small and
compressible, and reaches 130 or more, especially if at the same time
the temperature is low, a grave prognosis is indicated. The tongue is
often dry and coated with a black crust down the centre, while the sides
are red. It is a good omen when the tongue becomes moist again. Thirst
is most distressing, especially in septicmia of intestinal origin.
Persistent vomiting of dark-brown material is often present, and
diarrha with blood-stained stools is not uncommon. The urine is small
in amount, and contains a large proportion of urates. As the poisons
accumulate, the respiration becomes shallow and laboured, the face of a
dull ashy grey, the nose pinched, and the skin cold and clammy.
Capillary hmorrhages sometimes take place in the skin or mucous
membranes; and in a certain proportion of cases cutaneous eruptions
simulating those of scarlet fever or measles appear, and are apt to lead
to errors in diagnosis. In other cases there is slight jaundice. The
mental state is often one of complete apathy, the patient failing to
realise the gravity of his condition; sometimes there is delirium.

The _prognosis_ is always grave, and depends on the possibility of
completely eradicating the focus of infection, and on the reserve force
the patient has to carry him over the period during which he is
eliminating the poison already circulating in his blood.

The _treatment_ is carried out on the same lines as in saprmia, but it
is less likely to be successful owing to the organisms having entered
the circulation. When possible, the primary focus of infection should be
dealt with.

#Pymia# is a form of blood-poisoning characterised by the development
of secondary foci of suppuration in different parts of the body. Toxins
are thus introduced into the blood, not only at the primary seat of
infection, but also from each of these metastatic collections. Like
septicmia, this condition is due to pyogenic bacteria, the
_streptococcus pyogenes_ being the commonest organism found. The primary
infection is usually in a wound--for example, a compound fracture--but
cases occur in which the point of entrance of the bacteria is not
discoverable. The dissemination of the organisms takes place through the
medium of infected emboli which form in a thrombosed vein in the
vicinity of the original lesion, and, breaking loose, are carried
thence in the blood-stream. These emboli lodge in the minute vessels of
the lungs, spleen, liver, kidneys, pleura, brain, synovial membranes, or
cellular tissue, and the bacteria they contain give rise to secondary
foci of suppuration. Secondary abscesses are thus formed in those parts,
and these in turn may be the starting-point of new emboli which give
rise to fresh areas of pus formation. The organs above named are the
commonest situations of pymic abscesses, but these may also occur in
the bone marrow, the substance of muscles, the heart and pericardium,
lymph glands, subcutaneous tissue, or, in fact, in any tissue of the
body. Organisms circulating in the blood are prone to lodge on the
valves of the heart and give rise to endocarditis.

[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Chart of Pymia following on Acute
Osteomyelitis.]

_Clinical Features._--Before antiseptic surgery was practised, pymia
was a common complication of wounds. In the present day it is not only
infinitely less common, but appears also to be of a less severe type.
Its rarity and its mildness may be related as cause and effect, because
it was formerly found that pymia contracted from a pymic patient was
more virulent than that from other sources.

In contrast with saprmia and septicmia, pymia is late of developing,
and it seldom begins within a week of the primary infection. The first
sign is a feeling of chilliness, or a violent rigor lasting for perhaps
half an hour, during which time the temperature rises to 103, 104, or
105 F. In the course of an hour it begins to fall again, and the
patient breaks into a profuse sweat. The temperature may fall several
degrees, but seldom reaches the normal. In a few days there is a second
rigor with rise of temperature, and another remission, and such attacks
may be repeated at diminishing intervals during the course of the
illness (Figs. 12 and 13). The pulse is soft, and tends to remain
abnormally rapid even when the temperature falls nearly to normal.

The face is flushed, and wears a drawn, anxious expression, and the eyes
are bright. A characteristic sweetish odour, which has been compared to
that of new-mown hay, can be detected in the breath and may pervade the
patient. The appetite is lost; there may be sickness and vomiting and
profuse diarrha; and the patient emaciates rapidly. The skin is
continuously hot, and has often a peculiar pungent feel. Patches of
erythema sometimes appear scattered over the body. The skin may assume a
dull sallow or earthy hue, or a bright yellow icteric tint may appear.
The conjunctiv also may be yellow. In the latter stages of the disease
the pulse becomes small and fluttering; the tongue becomes dry and
brown; sordes collect on the teeth; and a low muttering form of delirium
supervenes.

Secondary infection of the parotid gland frequently occurs, and gives
rise to a suppurative parotitis. This condition is associated with
severe pain, gradually extending from behind the angle of the jaw on to
the face. There is also swelling over the gland, and eventually
suppuration and sloughing of the gland tissue and overlying skin.

Secondary abscesses in the lymph glands, subcutaneous tissue, or joints
are often so insidious and painless in their development that they are
only discovered accidentally. When the abscess is evacuated, healing
often takes place with remarkable rapidity, and with little impairment
of function.

The general symptoms may be simulated by an attack of malaria.

_Prognosis._--The prognosis in acute pymia is much less hopeless than
it once was, a considerable proportion of the patients recovering. In
acute cases the disease proves fatal in ten days or a fortnight, death
being due to toxmia. Chronic cases often run a long course, lasting for
weeks or even months, and prove fatal from exhaustion and waxy disease
following on prolonged suppuration.

_Treatment._--In such conditions as compound fractures and severe
lacerated wounds, much can be done to avert the conditions which lead to
pymia, by applying a Bier's constricting bandage as soon as there is
evidence of infection having taken place, or even if there is reason to
suspect that the wound is not aseptic.

If sepsis is already established, and evidence of general infection is
present, the wound should be opened up sufficiently to admit of thorough
disinfection and drainage, and the constricting bandage applied to aid
the defensive processes going on in the tissues. If these measures fail,
amputation of the limb may be the only means of preventing further
dissemination of infective material from the primary source of
infection.

Attempts have been made to interrupt the channel along which the
infective emboli spread, by ligating or resecting the main vein of the
affected part, but this is seldom feasible except in the case of the
internal jugular vein for infection of the transverse sinus.

Secondary abscesses must be aspirated or opened and drained whenever
possible.

The general treatment is conducted on the same lines as on other forms
of pyogenic infection.




CHAPTER V

ULCERATION AND ULCERS


Definitions--Clinical examination of an ulcer--The healing
    sore.--Classification of ulcers--A. According to cause:
    _Traumatism_, _Imperfect circulation_, _Imperfect nerve-supply_,
    _Constitutional causes_--B. According to condition: _Healing_,
    _Stationary_, _Spreading_.--Treatment.

The process of _ulceration_ may be defined as the molecular or cellular
death of tissue taking place on a free surface. It is essentially of the
same nature as the process of suppuration, only that the purulent
discharge, instead of collecting in a closed cavity and forming an
abscess, at once escapes on the surface.

An _ulcer_ is an open wound or sore in which there are present certain
conditions tending to prevent it undergoing the natural process of
repair. Of these, one of the most important is the presence of
pathogenic bacteria, which by their action not only prevent healing, but
so irritate and destroy the tissues as to lead to an actual increase in
the size of the sore. Interference with the nutrition of a part by dema
or chronic venous congestion may impede healing; as may also induration
of the surrounding area, by preventing the contraction which is such an
important factor in repair. Defective innervation, such as occurs in
injuries and diseases of the spinal cord, also plays an important part
in delaying repair. In certain constitutional conditions, too--for
example, Bright's disease, diabetes, or syphilis--the vitiated state of
the tissues is an impediment to repair. Mechanical causes, such as
unsuitable dressings or ill-fitting appliances, may also act in the same
direction.

#Clinical Examination of an Ulcer.#--In examining any ulcer, we
observe--(1) Its _base_ or _floor_, noting the presence or absence of
granulations, their disposition, size, colour, vascularity, and whether
they are depressed or elevated in relation to the surrounding parts. (2)
The _discharge_ as to quantity, consistence, colour, composition, and
odour. (3) The _edges_, noting particularly whether or not the marginal
epithelium is attempting to grow over the surface; also their shape,
regularity, thickness, and whether undermined or overlapping, everted or
depressed. (4) The _surrounding tissues_, as to whether they are
congested, dematous, inflamed, indurated, or otherwise. (5) Whether or
not there is _pain_ or tenderness in the raw surface or its
surroundings. (6) The _part of the body_ on which it occurs, because
certain ulcers have special seats of election--for example, the varicose
ulcer in the lower third of the leg, the perforating ulcer on the sole
of the foot, and so on.

#The Healing Sore.#--If a portion of skin be excised aseptically, and no
attempt made to close the wound, the raw surface left is soon covered
over with a layer of coagulated blood and lymph. In the course of a few
days this is replaced by the growth of _granulations_, which are of
uniform size, of a pinkish-red colour, and moist with a slight serous
exudate containing a few dead leucocytes. They grow until they reach the
level of the surrounding skin, and so fill the gap with a fine velvety
mass of granulation tissue. At the edges, the young epithelium may be
seen spreading in over the granulations as a fine bluish-white pellicle,
which gradually covers the sore, becoming paler in colour as it
thickens, and eventually forming the smooth, non-vascular covering of
the cicatrix. There is no pain, and the surrounding parts are healthy.

This may be used as a type with which to compare the ulcers seen at the
bedside, so that we may determine how far, and in what particulars,
these differ from the type; and that we may in addition recognise the
conditions that have to be counteracted before the characters of the
typical healing sore are assumed.

For purposes of contrast we may indicate the characters of an open sore
in which bacterial infection with pathogenic bacteria has taken place.
The layer of coagulated blood and lymph becomes liquefied and is thrown
off, and instead of granulations being formed, the tissues exposed on
the floor of the ulcer are destroyed by the bacterial toxins, with the
formation of minute sloughs and a quantity of pus.

The discharge is profuse, thin, acrid, and offensive, and consists of
pus, broken-down blood-clot, and sloughs. The edges are inflamed,
irregular, and ragged, showing no sign of growing epithelium--on the
contrary, the sore may be actually increasing in area by the
breaking-down of the tissues at its margins. The surrounding parts are
hot, red, swollen, and dematous; and there is pain and tenderness both
in the sore itself and in the parts around.

#Classification of Ulcers.#--The nomenclature of ulcers is much involved
and gives rise to great confusion, chiefly for the reason that no one
basis of classification has been adopted. Thus some ulcers are named
according to the causes at work in producing or maintaining them--for
example, the traumatic, the septic, and the varicose ulcer; some from
the constitutional element present, as the gouty and the diabetic ulcer;
and others according to the condition in which they happen to be when
seen by the surgeon, such as the weak, the inflamed, and the callous
ulcer.

So long as we retain these names it will be impossible to find a single
basis for classification; and yet many of the terms are so descriptive
and so generally understood that it is undesirable to abolish them. We
must therefore remain content with a clinical arrangement of ulcers,--it
cannot be called a classification,--considering any given ulcer from two
points of view: first its _cause_, and second its _present condition_.
This method of studying ulcers has the practical advantage that it
furnishes us with the main indications for treatment as well as for
diagnosis: the cause must be removed, and the condition so modified as
to convert the ulcer into an aseptic healing sore.

A. #Arrangement of Ulcers according to their Cause.#--Although any given
ulcer may be due to a combination of causes, it is convenient to
describe the following groups:

_Ulcers due to Traumatism._--Traumatism in the form of a _crush_ or
_bruise_ is a frequent cause of ulcer formation, acting either by
directly destroying the skin, or by so diminishing its vitality that it
is rendered a suitable soil for bacteria. If these gain access, in the
course of a few days the damaged area of skin becomes of a greyish
colour, blebs form on it, and it undergoes necrosis, leaving an
unhealthy raw surface when the slough separates.

_Heat_ and _prolonged exposure to the Rntgen rays_ or _to radium
emanations_ act in a similar way.

The _pressure_ of improperly padded splints or other appliances may so
far interfere with the circulation of the part pressed upon, that the
skin sloughs, leaving an open sore. This is most liable to occur in
patients who suffer from some nerve lesion--such as anterior
poliomyelitis, or injury of the spinal cord or nerve-trunks.
Splint-pressure sores are usually situated over bony prominences, such
as the malleoli, the condyles of the femur or humerus, the head of the
fibula, the dorsum of the foot, or the base of the fifth metatarsal
bone. On removing the splint, the skin of the part pressed upon is found
to be of a red or pink colour, with a pale grey patch in the centre,
which eventually sloughs and leaves an ulcer. Certain forms of
_bed-sore_ are also due to prolonged pressure.

Pressure sores are also known to have been produced artificially by
malingerers and hysterical subjects.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Leg Ulcers associated with Varicose Veins and
Pigmentation of the Skin.]

_Ulcers due to Imperfect Circulation._--Imperfect circulation is an
important causative factor in ulceration, especially when it is the
_venous return_ that is defective. This is best illustrated in the
so-called _leg ulcer_, which occurs most frequently on the front and
medial aspect of the lower third of the leg. At this point the
anastomosis between the superficial and deep veins of the leg is less
free than elsewhere, so that the extra stress thrown upon the surface
veins interferes with the nutrition of the skin (Hilton). The importance
of imperfect venous return in the causation of such ulcers is evidenced
by the fact that as soon as the condition of the circulation is improved
by confining the patient to bed and elevating the limb, the ulcer begins
to heal, even although all methods of local treatment have hitherto
proved ineffectual. In a considerable number of cases, but by no means
in all, this form of ulcer is associated with the presence of varicose
veins, and in such cases it is spoken of as the _varicose ulcer_ (Fig. 14).
The presence of varicose veins is frequently associated with a
diffuse brownish or bluish pigmentation of the skin of the lower third
of the leg, or with an obstinate form of dermatitis (_varicose eczema_),
and the scratching or rubbing of the part is liable to cause a breach of
the surface and permit of infection which leads to ulceration. Varicose
ulcers may also originate from the bursting of a small peri-phlebitic
abscess.

Varicose veins in immediate relation to the base of a large chronic
ulcer usually become thrombosed, and in time are reduced to fibrous
cords, and therefore in such cases hmorrhage is not a common
complication. In smaller and more superficial ulcers, however, the
destructive process is liable to implicate the wall of the vessel before
the occurrence of thrombosis, and to lead to profuse and it may be
dangerous bleeding.

These ulcers are at first small and superficial, but from want of care,
from continued standing or walking, or from injudicious treatment, they
gradually become larger and deeper. They are not infrequently multiple,
and this, together with their depth, may lead to their being mistaken
for ulcers due to syphilis. The base of the ulcer is covered with
imperfectly formed, soft, dematous granulations, which give off a thin
sero-purulent discharge. The edges are slightly inflamed, and show no
evidence of healing. The parts around are usually pigmented and slightly
dematous, and as a rule there is little pain. This variety of ulcer is
particularly prone to pass into the condition known as callous.

In _anmic_ patients, especially young girls, ulcers are occasionally
met with which have many of the clinical characters of those associated
with imperfect venous return. They are slow to heal, and tend to pass
into the condition known as weak.

_Ulcers due to Interference with Nerve-Supply._--Any interference with
the nerve-supply of the superficial tissues predisposes to ulceration.
For example, _trophic_ ulcers are liable to occur in injuries or
diseases of the spinal cord, in cerebral paralysis, in limbs weakened by
poliomyelitis, in ascending or peripheral neuritis, or after injuries of
nerve-trunks.

The _acute bed-sore_ is a rapidly progressing form of ulceration, often
amounting to gangrene, of portions of skin exposed to pressure when
their trophic nerve-supply has been interfered with.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Perforating Ulcers of Sole of Foot.

(From Photograph lent by Sir Montagu Cotterill.)]

The _perforating ulcer of the foot_ is a peculiar type of sore which
occurs in association with the different forms of peripheral neuritis,
and with various lesions of the brain and spinal cord, such as general
paralysis, locomotor ataxia, or syringo-myelia (Fig. 15). It also occurs
in patients suffering from glycosuria, and is usually associated with
arterio-sclerosis--local or general. Perforating ulcer is met with most
frequently under the head of the metatarsal bone of the great toe. A
callosity forms and suppuration occurs under it, the pus escaping
through a small hole in the centre. The process slowly and gradually
spreads deeper and deeper, till eventually the bone or joint is reached,
and becomes implicated in the destructive process--hence the term
"perforating ulcer." The flexor tendons are sometimes destroyed, the toe
being dorsiflexed by the unopposed extensors. The depth of the track
being so disproportionate to its superficial area, the condition closely
simulates a tuberculous sinus, for which it is liable to be mistaken.
The raw surface is absolutely insensitive, so that the probe can be
freely employed without the patient even being aware of it or suffering
the least discomfort--a significant fact in diagnosis. The cavity is
filled with effete and decomposing epidermis, which has a most offensive
odour. The chronic and intractable character of the ulcer is due to
interference with the trophic nerve-supply of the parts, and to the fact
that the epithelium of the skin grows in and lines the track leading
down to the deepest part of the ulcer and so prevents closure. While
they are commonest on the sole of the foot and other parts subjected to
pressure, perforating ulcers are met with on the sides and dorsum of the
foot and toes, on the hands, and on other parts where no pressure has
been exerted.

The _tuberculous ulcer_, so often seen in the neck, in the vicinity of
joints, or over the ribs and sternum, usually results from the bursting
through the skin of a tuberculous abscess. The base is soft, pale, and
covered with feeble granulations and grey shreddy sloughs. The edges are
of a dull blue or purple colour, and gradually thin out towards their
free margins, and in addition are characteristically undermined, so that
a probe can be passed for some distance between the floor of the ulcer
and the thinned-out edges. Thin, devitalised tags of skin often stretch
from side to side of the ulcer. The outline is irregular; small
perforations often occur through the skin, and a thin, watery discharge,
containing grey shreds of tuberculous debris, escapes.

_Bazin's Disease._--This term is applied to an affection of the skin and
subcutaneous tissue which bears certain resemblances to tuberculosis. It
is met with almost exclusively between the knee and the ankle, and it
usually affects both legs. It is commonest in girls of delicate
constitution, in whose family history there is evidence of a tuberculous
taint. The patient often presents other lesions of a tuberculous
character, notably enlarged cervical glands, and phlyctenular
ophthalmia. The tubercle bacillus has rarely been found, but we have
always observed characteristic epithelioid cells and giant cells in
sections made from the edge or floor of the ulcer.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.--Bazin's Disease in a girl t. 16.]

The condition begins by the formation in the skin and subcutaneous
tissue of dusky or livid nodules of induration, which soften and
ulcerate, forming small open sores with ragged and undermined edges, not
unlike those resulting from the breaking down of superficial syphilitic
gummata (Fig. 16). Fresh crops of nodules appear in the neighbourhood of
the ulcers, and in turn break down. While in the nodular stage the
affection is sometimes painful, but with the formation of the ulcer the
pain subsides.

The disease runs a chronic course, and may slowly extend over a wide
area in spite of the usual methods of treatment. After lasting for some
months, or even years, however, it may eventually undergo spontaneous
cure. The most satisfactory treatment is to excise the affected tissues
and fill the gap with skin-grafts.

[Illustration: FIG. 17.--Syphilitic Ulcers in region of Knee, showing
punched-out appearance and raised indurated edges.]

The _syphilitic ulcer_ is usually formed by the breaking down of a
cutaneous or subcutaneous gumma in the tertiary stage of syphilis. When
the gummatous tissue is first exposed by the destruction of the skin or
mucous membrane covering it, it appears as a tough greyish slough,
compared to "wash leather," which slowly separates and leaves a more or
less circular, deep, punched-out gap which shows a few feeble unhealthy
granulations and small sloughs on its floor. The edges are raised and
indurated; and the discharge is thick, glairy, and peculiarly offensive.
The parts around the ulcer are congested and of a dark brown colour.
There are usually several such ulcers together, and as they tend to heal
at one part while they spread at another, the affected area assumes a
sinuous or serpiginous outline. Syphilitic ulcers may be met with in any
part of the body, but are most frequent in the upper part of the leg
(Fig. 17), especially around the knee-joint in women, and over the ribs
and sternum. On healing, they usually leave a depressed and adherent
cicatrix.

The _scorbutic ulcer_ occurs in patients suffering from scurvy, and is
characterised by its prominent granulations, which show a marked
tendency to bleed, with the formation of clots, which dry and form a
spongy crust on the surface.

In _gouty_ patients small ulcers which are exceedingly irritable and
painful are liable to occur.

_Ulcers associated with Malignant Disease._--Cancer and sarcoma when
situated in the subcutaneous tissue may destroy the overlying skin so
that the substance of the tumour is exposed. The fungating masses thus
produced are sometimes spoken of as malignant ulcers, but as they are
essentially different in their nature from all other forms of ulcers,
and call for totally different treatment, it is best to consider them
along with the tumours with which they are associated. Rodent ulcer,
which is one form of cancer of the skin, will be discussed with new
growths of the skin.

B. #Arrangement of Ulcers according to their Condition.#--Having arrived
at an opinion as to the cause of a given ulcer, and placed it in one or
other of the preceding groups, the next question to ask is, In what
condition do I find this ulcer at the present moment?

Any ulcer is in one of three states--healing, stationary, or spreading;
although it is not uncommon to find healing going on at one part while
the destructive process is extending at another.

_The Healing Condition._--The process of healing in an ulcer has already
been studied, and we have learned that it takes place by the formation
of granulation tissue, which becomes converted into connective tissue,
and is covered over by epithelium growing in from the edges.

Those ulcers which are _stationary_--that is, neither healing nor
spreading--may be in one of several conditions.

_The Weak Condition._--Any ulcer may get into a weak state from
receiving a blood supply which is defective either in quantity or in
quality. The granulations are small and smooth, and of a pale yellow or
grey colour, the discharge is small in amount, and consists of thin
serum and a few pus cells, and as this dries on the edges it forms scabs
which interfere with the growth of epithelium.

Should the part become dematous, either from general causes, such as
heart or kidney disease, or from local causes, such as varicose veins,
the granulations share in the dema, and there is an abundant serous
discharge.

The excessive use of moist dressings leads to a third variety of weak
ulcer--namely, one in which the granulations become large, soft, pale,
and flabby, projecting beyond the level of the skin and overlapping the
edges, which become pale and sodden. The term "proud flesh" is popularly
applied to such redundant granulations.

[Illustration: FIG. 18.--Callous Ulcer, showing thickened edges and
indurated swelling of surrounding parts.]

_The Callous Condition._--This condition is usually met with in ulcers
on the lower third of the leg, and is often associated with the presence
of varicose veins. It is chiefly met with in hospital practice. The want
of healing is mainly due to impeded venous return and to dema and
induration of the surrounding skin and cellular tissues (Fig. 18). The
induration results from coagulation and partial organisation of the
inflammatory effusion, and prevents the necessary contraction of the
sore. The base of a callous ulcer lies at some distance below the level
of the swollen, thickened, and white edges, and presents a glazed
appearance, such granulations as are present being unhealthy and
irregular. The discharge is usually watery, and cakes in the dressing.
When from neglect and want of cleanliness the ulcer becomes inflamed,
there is considerable pain, and the discharge is purulent and often
offensive.

The prolonged hypermia of the tissues in relation to a callous ulcer of
the leg often leads to changes in the underlying bones. The periosteum
is abnormally thick and vascular, the superficial layers of the bone
become injected and porous, and the bones, as a whole, are thickened. In
the macerated bone "the surface is covered with irregular,
stalactite-like processes or foliaceous masses, which, to a certain
extent, follow the line of attachment of the interosseous membrane and
of the intermuscular septa" (Cathcart) (Fig. 19). When the whole
thickness of the soft tissues is destroyed by the ulcerative process,
the area of bone that comes to form the base of the ulcer projects as a
flat, porous node, which in its turn may be eroded. These changes as
seen in the macerated specimen are often mistaken for disease
originating in the bone.

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--Tibia and Fibula, showing changes due to
chronic ulcer of leg.]

The _irritable condition_ is met with in ulcers which occur, as a rule,
just above the external malleolus in women of neurotic temperament. They
are small in size and have prominent granulations, and by the aid of a
probe points of excessive tenderness may be discovered. These, Hilton
believed, correspond to exposed nerve filaments.

_Ulcers which are spreading_ may be met with in one of several
conditions.

_The Inflamed Condition._--Any ulcer may become acutely inflamed from
the access of fresh organisms, aided by mechanical irritation from
trauma, ill-fitting splints or bandages, or want of rest, or from
chemical irritants, such as strong antiseptics. The best clinical
example of an inflamed ulcer is the venereal soft sore. The base of the
ulcer becomes red and angry-looking, the granulations disappear, and a
copious discharge of thin yellow pus, mixed with blood, escapes. Sloughs
of granulation tissue or of connective tissue may form. The edges become
red, ragged, and everted, and the ulcer increases in size by spreading
into the inflamed and dematous surrounding tissues. Such ulcers are
frequently multiple. Pain is a constant symptom, and is often severe,
and there is usually some constitutional disturbance.

The _phagednic condition_ is the result of an ulcer being infected with
specially virulent bacteria. It occurs in syphilitic ulcers, and rapidly
leads to a widespread destruction of tissue. It is also met with in the
throat in some cases of scarlet fever, and may give rise to fatal
hmorrhage by ulcerating into large blood vessels. All the local and
constitutional signs of a severe septic infection are present.

#Treatment of Ulcers.#--An ulcer is not only an immediate cause of
suffering to the patient, crippling and incapacitating him for his work,
but is a distinct and constant menace to his health: the prolonged
discharge reduces his strength; the open sore is a possible source of
infection by the organisms of suppuration, erysipelas, or other specific
diseases; phlebitis, with formation of septic emboli, leading to pymia,
is liable to occur; and in old persons it is not uncommon for ulcers of
long standing to become the seat of cancer. In addition, the offensive
odour of many ulcers renders the patient a source of annoyance and
discomfort to others. The primary object of treatment in any ulcer is to
bring it into the condition of a healing sore. When this has been
effected, nature will do the rest, provided extraneous sources of
irritation are excluded.

Steps must be taken to facilitate the venous return from the ulcerated
part, and to ensure that a sufficient supply of fresh, healthy blood
reaches it. The septic element must be eliminated by disinfecting the
ulcer and its surroundings, and any other sources of irritation must be
removed.

If the patient's health is below par, good nourishing food, tonics, and
general hygienic treatment are indicated.

_Management of a Healing Sore._--Perhaps the best dressing for a healing
sore is a layer of Lister's perforated oiled-silk protective, which is
made to cover the raw surface and the skin for about a quarter of an
inch beyond the margins of the sore. Over this three or four thicknesses
of sterilised gauze, wrung out of eusol, creolin, or sterilised water,
are applied, and covered by a pad of absorbent wool. As far as possible
the part should be kept at rest, and the position should be adjusted so
as to favour the circulation in the affected area.

The dressing may be renewed at intervals, and care must be taken to
avoid any rough handling of the sore. Any discharge that lies on the
surface should be removed by a gentle stream of lotion rather than by
wiping. The area round the sore should be cleansed before the fresh
dressing is applied.

In some cases, healing goes on more rapidly under a dressing of weak
boracic ointment (one-quarter the strength of the pharmacopial
preparation). The growth of epithelium may be stimulated by a 6 to 8 per
cent. ointment of scarlet-red.

Dusting powders and poultice dressings are best avoided in the treatment
of healing sores.

In extensive ulcers resulting from recent burns, if the granulations are
healthy and aseptic, skin-grafts may safely be placed on them directly.
If, however, their asepticity cannot be relied upon, it is necessary to
scrape away the superficial layer of the granulations, the young fibrous
tissue underneath being conserved, as it is sufficiently vascular to
nourish the grafts placed on it.

#Treatment of Special Varieties of Ulcers.#--Before beginning to treat a
given ulcer, two questions have to be answered--first, What are the
causative conditions present? and second, In what condition do I find
the ulcer?--in other words, In what particulars does it differ from a
healthy healing sore?

If the cause is a local one, it must be removed; if a constitutional
one, means must be taken to counteract it. This done, the condition of
the ulcer must be so modified as to bring it into the state of a healing
sore, after which it will be managed on the lines already laid down.

#Treatment in relation to the Cause of the Ulcer.#--_Traumatic
Group._--The _prophylaxis_ of these ulcers consists in excluding
bacteria, by cleansing crushed or bruised parts, and applying sterilised
dressings and properly adjusted splints. If there is reason to fear that
the disinfection has not been complete, a Bier's constricting bandage
should be applied for some hours each day. These measures will often
prevent a grossly injured portion of skin dying, and will ensure
asepticity should it do so. In the event of the skin giving way, the
same form of dressing should be continued till the slough has separated
and a healthy granulating surface is formed. The protective dressing
appropriate to a healing sore is then substituted. _Pressure sores_ are
treated on the same lines.

The treatment of ulcers caused by _burns and scalds_ will be described
later.

In _ulcers of the leg due to interference with the venous return_, the
primary indication is to elevate the limb in order to facilitate the
flow of the blood in the veins, and so admit of fresh blood reaching the
part. The limb may be placed on pillows, or the foot of the bed raised
on blocks, so that the ulcer lies on a higher level than the heart.
Should varicose veins be present, the question of operative treatment
must be considered.

When an _imperfect nerve supply_ is the main factor underlying ulcer
formation, prophylaxis is the chief consideration. In patients suffering
from spinal injuries or diseases, cerebral paralysis, or affections of
the peripheral nerves, all sources of irritation, such as ill-fitting
splints, tight bandages, moist applications, and hot bottles, should be
avoided. Any part liable to pressure, from the position of the patient
or otherwise, must be carefully protected by pads of wool, air-cushions,
or water-bags, and must be kept absolutely dry. The skin should be
hardened by daily applications of methylated spirit.

Should an ulcer form in spite of these precautions, the mildest
antiseptics must be employed for bathing and dressing it, and as far as
possible all dressings should be dry.

The _perforating ulcer_ of the foot calls for special treatment. To
avoid pressure on the sole of the foot, the patient must be confined to
bed. As the main local obstacle to healing is the down-growth of
epithelium along the sides of the ulcer, this must be removed by the
knife or sharp spoon. The base also should be excised, and any bone
which may have become involved should be gouged away, so as to leave a
healthy and vascular surface. The cavity thus formed is stuffed with
bismuth or iodoform gauze and encouraged to heal from the bottom. As the
parts are insensitive an ansthetic is not required. After the ulcer has
healed, the patient should wear in his boot a thick felt sole with a
hole cut out opposite the situation of the cicatrix. When a joint has
been opened into, the difficulty of thoroughly getting rid of all
unhealthy and infected granulations is so great that amputation may be
advisable, but it is to be remembered that ulceration may recur in the
stump if pressure is put upon it. The treatment of any nervous disease
or glycosuria which may coexist is, of course, indicated.

Exposure of the plantar nerves by an incision behind the medial
malleolus, and subjecting them to forcible stretching, has been employed
by Chipault and others in the treatment of perforating ulcers of the
foot.

The ulcer that forms in relation to callosities on the sole of the foot
is treated by paring away all the thickened skin, after softening it
with soda fomentations, removing the unhealthy granulations, and
applying stimulating dressings.

_Treatment of Ulcers due to Constitutional Causes._--When ulcers are
associated with such diseases as tuberculosis, syphilis, diabetes,
Bright's disease, scurvy, or gout, these must receive appropriate
treatment.

The local treatment of the _tuberculous ulcer_ calls for special
mention. If the ulcer is of limited extent and situated on an exposed
part of the body, the most satisfactory method is complete removal, by
means of the knife, scissors, or sharp spoon, of the ulcerated surface
and of all the infected area around it, so as to leave a healthy surface
from which granulations may spring up. Should the raw surface left be
likely to result in an unsightly scar or in cicatricial contraction,
skin-grafting should be employed.

For extensive ulcers on the limbs, the chest wall, or on other covered
parts, or when operative treatment is contra-indicated, the use of
tuberculin and exposure to the Rntgen rays have proved beneficial. The
induction of passive hypermia, by Bier's or by Klapp's apparatus,
should also be used, either alone or supplementary to other measures.

No ulcerative process responds so readily to medicinal treatment as the
_syphilitic ulcer_ does to the intra-venous administration of arsenical
preparations of the "606" or "914" groups or to full doses of iodide of
potassium and mercury, and the local application of black wash. When the
ulceration has lasted for a long time, however, and is widespread and
deep, the duration of treatment is materially shortened by a thorough
scraping with the sharp spoon.

#Treatment in relation to the Condition of the Ulcer.#--_Ulcers in a
weak condition._--If the weak condition of the ulcer is due to anmia
or kidney disease, these affections must first be treated. Locally, the
imperfect granulations should be scraped away, and some stimulating
agent applied to the raw surface to promote the growth of healthy
granulations. For this purpose the sore may be covered with gauze
smeared with a 6 to 8 per cent. ointment of scarlet-red, the surrounding
parts being protected from the irritant action of the scarlet-red by a
layer of vaseline. A dressing of gauze moistened with eusol or of
boracic lint wrung out of red lotion (2 grains of sulphate of zinc, and
10 minims of compound tincture of lavender, to an ounce of water), and
covered with a layer of gutta-percha tissue, is also useful.

When the condition has resulted from the prolonged use of moist
dressings, these must be stopped, the redundant granulations clipped
away with scissors, the surface rubbed with silver nitrate or sulphate
of copper (blue-stone), and dry dressings applied.

When the ulcer has assumed the characters of a healing sore, skin-grafts
may be applied to hasten cicatrisation.

_Ulcers in a callous condition_ call for treatment in three
directions--(1) The infective element must be eliminated. When the ulcer
is foul, relays of charcoal poultices (three parts of linseed meal to
one of charcoal), maintained for thirty-six to forty-eight hours, are
useful as a preliminary step. The base of the ulcer and the thickened
edges should then be freely scraped with a sharp spoon, and the
resulting raw surface sponged over with undiluted carbolic acid or
iodine, after which an antiseptic dressing is applied, and changed daily
till healthy granulations appear. (2) The venous return must be
facilitated by elevation of the limb and massage. (3) The induration of
the surrounding parts must be got rid of before contraction of the sore
is possible. For this purpose the free application of blisters, as first
recommended by Syme, leaves little to be desired. Liquor epispasticus
painted over the parts, or a large fly-blister (emplastrum cantharidis)
applied all round the ulcer, speedily disperses the inflammatory
products which cause the induration. The use of elastic pressure or of
strapping, of hot-air baths, or the making of multiple incisions in the
skin around the ulcer, fulfils the same object.

As soon as the ulcer assumes the characters of a healing sore, it should
be covered with skin-grafts, which furnish a much better cicatrix than
that which forms when the ulcer is allowed to heal without such aid.

A more radical method of treatment consists in excising the whole
ulcer, including its edges and about a quarter of an inch of the
surrounding tissue, as well as the underlying fibrous tissue, and
grafting the raw surface.

_Ambulatory Treatment._--When the circumstances of the patient forbid
his lying up in bed, the healing of the ulcer is much delayed. He should
be instructed to take every possible opportunity of placing the limb in
an elevated position, and must constantly wear a firm bandage of
_elastic webbing_. This webbing is porous and admits of evaporation of
the skin and wound secretions--an advantage it has over Martin's rubber
bandage. The bandage should extend from the toes to well above the knee,
and should always be applied while the patient is in the recumbent
position with the leg elevated, preferably before getting out of bed in
the morning. Additional support is given to the veins if the bandage is
applied as a figure of eight.

We have found the following method satisfactory in out-patient
practice. The patient lying on a couch, the limb is raised about
eighteen inches and kept in this position for five minutes--till the
excess of blood has left it. With the limb still raised, the ulcer with
the surrounding skin is covered with a layer, about half an inch thick,
of finely powdered boracic acid, and the leg, from foot to knee,
excluding the sole, is enveloped in a thick layer of wood-wool wadding.
This is held in position by ordinary cotton bandages, painted over with
liquid starch; while the starch is drying the limb is kept elevated.
With this appliance the patient may continue to work, and the dressing
does not require to be changed oftener than once in three or four weeks
(W. G. Richardson).

When an ulcer becomes acutely _inflamed_ as a result of superadded
infection, antiseptic measures are employed to overcome the infection,
and ichthyol or other soothing applications may be used to allay the
pain.

The _phagednic ulcer_ calls for more energetic means of disinfection;
the whole of the affected surface is touched with the actual cautery at
a white heat, or is painted with pure carbolic acid. Relays of charcoal
poultices are then applied until the spread of the disease is arrested.

For the _irritable ulcer_ the most satisfactory treatment is complete
excision and subsequent skin-grafting.




CHAPTER VI

GANGRENE


Definition--Types: _Dry_, _Moist_--Varieties--Gangrene primarily due to
    interference with circulation: _Senile gangrene_; _Embolic
    gangrene_; _Gangrene following ligation of arteries_; _Gangrene
    from mechanical causes_; _Gangrene from heat, chemical agents, and
    cold_; _Diabetic gangrene_; _Gangrene associated with spasm of
    blood vessels_; _Raynaud's disease_; _Angio-sclerotic gangrene_;
    _Gangrene from ergot_. Bacterial varieties of gangrene.
    _Pathology_--clinical varieties--_Acute infective gangrene_;
    _Malignant dema_; _Acute emphysematous_ or _gas gangrene_;
    _Cancrum oris_, _etc_. Bed-sores: _Acute_; _chronic_.

Gangrene or mortification is the process by which a portion of tissue
dies _en masse_, as distinguished from the molecular or cellular death
which constitutes ulceration. The dead portion is known as a _slough_.

In this chapter we shall confine our attention to the process as it
affects the limbs and superficial parts, leaving gangrene of the viscera
to be described in regional surgery.


TYPES OF GANGRENE

Two distinct types of gangrene are met with, which, from their most
obvious point of difference, are known respectively as _dry_ and
_moist_, and there are several clinical varieties of each type.

Speaking generally, it may be said that dry gangrene is essentially due
to a simple _interference with the blood supply_ of a part; while the
main factor in the production of moist gangrene is _bacterial
infection_.

The cardinal signs of gangrene are: change in the colour of the part,
coldness, loss of sensation and motor power, and, lastly, loss of
pulsation in the arteries.

#Dry Gangrene# or #Mummification# is a comparatively slow form of local
death due, as a rule, to a diminution in the arterial blood supply of
the affected part, resulting from such causes as the gradual narrowing
of the lumen of the arteries by disease of their coats, or the blocking
of the main vessel by an embolus.

As the fluids in the tissues are lost by evaporation the part becomes
dry and shrivelled, and as the skin is usually intact, infection does
not take place, or if it does, the want of moisture renders the part an
unsuitable soil, and the organisms do not readily find a footing. Any
spread of the process that may take place is chiefly influenced by the
anatomical distribution of the blocked arteries, and is arrested as soon
as it reaches an area rich in anastomotic vessels. The dead portion is
then cast off, the irritation resulting from the contact of the dead
with the still living tissue inducing the formation of granulations on
the proximal side of the junction, and these by slowly eating into the
dead portion produce a furrow--the _line of demarcation_--which
gradually deepens until complete separation is effected. As the muscles
and bones have a richer blood supply than the integument, the death of
skin and subcutaneous tissues extends higher than that of muscles and
bone, with the result that the stump left after spontaneous separation
is conical, the end of the bone projecting beyond the soft parts.

_Clinical Features._--The part undergoing mortification becomes colder
than normal, the temperature falling to that of the surrounding
atmosphere. In many instances, but not in all, the onset of the process
is accompanied by severe neuralgic pain in the part, probably due to
anmia of the nerves, to neuritis, or to the irritation of the exposed
axis cylinders by the dead and dying tissues around them. This pain soon
ceases and gives place to a complete loss of sensation. The dead part
becomes dry, horny, shrivelled, and semi-transparent--at first of a dark
brown, but finally of a black colour, from the dissemination of blood
pigment throughout the tissues. There is no putrefaction, and therefore
no putrid odour; and the condition being non-infective, there is not
necessarily any constitutional disturbance. In itself, therefore, dry
gangrene does not involve immediate risk to life; the danger lies in the
fact that the breach of surface at the line of demarcation furnishes a
possible means of entrance for bacteria, which may lead to infective
complications.

#Moist Gangrene# is an acute process, the dead part retaining its fluids
and so affording a favourable soil for the development of bacteria. The
action of the organisms and their toxins on the adjacent tissues leads
to a rapid and wide spread of the process. The skin becomes moist and
macerated, and bull, containing dark-coloured fluid or gases, form
under the epidermis. The putrefactive gases evolved cause the skin to
become emphysematous and crepitant and produce an offensive odour. The
tissues assume a greenish-black colour from the formation in them of a
sulphide of iron resulting from decomposition of the blood pigment.
Under certain conditions the dead part may undergo changes resembling
more closely those of ordinary post-mortem decomposition. Owing to its
nature the spread of the gangrene is seldom arrested by the natural
protective processes, and it usually continues until the condition
proves fatal from the absorption of toxins into the circulation.

The _clinical features_ vary in the different varieties of moist
gangrene, but the local results of bacterial action and the
constitutional disturbance associated with toxin absorption are present
in all; the prognosis therefore is grave in the extreme.

From what has been said, it will be gathered that in dry gangrene there
is no urgent call for operation to save the patient's life, the primary
indication being to prevent the access of bacteria to the dead part, and
especially to the surface exposed at the line of demarcation. In moist
gangrene, on the contrary, organisms having already obtained a footing,
immediate removal of the dead and dying tissues, as a rule, offers the
only hope of saving life.


VARIETIES OF GANGRENE

#Varieties of Gangrene essentially due to Interference with the
Circulation#

While the varieties of gangrene included in this group depend primarily
on interference with the circulation, it is to be borne in mind that the
clinical course of the affection may be profoundly influenced by
superadded infection with micro-organisms. Although the bacteria do not
play the most important part in producing tissue necrosis, their
subsequent introduction is an accident of such importance that it may
change the whole aspect of affairs and convert a dry form of gangrene
into one of the moist type. Moreover, the low state of vitality of the
tissues, and the extreme difficulty of securing and maintaining asepsis,
make it a sequel of great frequency.

#Senile Gangrene.#--Senile gangrene is the commonest example of local
death produced by a _gradual_ diminution in the quantity of blood
passing through the parts, as a result of arterio-sclerosis or other
chronic disease of the arteries leading to diminution of their calibre.
It is the most characteristic example of the dry type of gangrene. As
the term indicates, it occurs in old persons, but the patient's age is
to be reckoned by the condition of his arteries rather than by the
number of his years. Thus the vessels of a comparatively young man who
has suffered from syphilis and been addicted to alcohol are more liable
to atheromatous degeneration leading to this form of gangrene than are
those of a much older man who has lived a regular and abstemious life.
This form of gangrene is much more common in men than in women. While it
usually attacks only one foot, it is not uncommon for the other foot to
be affected after an interval, and in some cases it is bilateral from
the outset. It must clearly be understood that any form of gangrene may
occur in old persons, the term senile being here restricted to that
variety which results from arterio-sclerosis.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Senile Gangrene of the Foot, showing line of
demarcation.]

_Clinical Features._--The commonest seat of the disease is in the toes,
especially the great toe, whence it spreads up the foot to the heel, or
even to the leg (Fig. 20). There is often a history of some slight
injury preceding its onset. The vitality of the tissues is so low that
the balance between life and death may be turned by the most trivial
injury, such as a cut while paring a toe-nail or a corn, a blister
caused by an ill-fitting shoe or the contact of a hot-bottle. In some
cases the actual gangrene is determined by thrombosis of the popliteal
or tibial arteries, which are already narrowed by obliterating
endarteritis.

It is common to find that the patient has been troubled for a long time
before the onset of definite signs of gangrene, with cold feet, with
tingling and loss of feeling, or a peculiar sensation as if walking on
cotton wool.

The first evidence of the death of the part varies in different cases.
Sometimes a dark-blue spot appears on the medial side of the great toe
and gradually increases in size; or a blister containing blood-stained
fluid may form. Streaks or patches of dark-blue mottling appear higher
up on the foot or leg. In other cases a small sore surrounded by a
congested areola forms in relation to the nail and refuses to heal. Such
sores on the toes of old persons are always to be looked upon with
suspicion and treated with the greatest care; and the urine should be
examined for sugar. There is often severe, deep-seated pain of a
neuralgic character, with cramps in the limb, and these may persist long
after a line of demarcation has formed. The dying part loses sensibility
to touch and becomes cold and shrivelled.

All the physical appearances and clinical symptoms associated with dry
gangrene supervene, and the dead portion is delimited by a line of
demarcation. If this forms slowly and irregularly it indicates a very
unsatisfactory condition of the circulation; while, if it forms quickly
and decidedly, the presumption is that the circulation in the parts
above is fairly good. The separation of the dead part is always attended
with the risk of infection taking place, and should this occur, the
temperature rises and other evidences of toxmia appear.

_Prophylaxis._--The toes and feet of old people, the condition of whose
circulation predisposes them to gangrene, should be protected from
slight injuries such as may be received while paring nails, cutting
corns, or wearing ill-fitting boots. The patient should also be warned
of the risk of exposure to cold, the use of hot-bottles, and of placing
the feet near a fire. Attempts have been made to improve the peripheral
circulation by establishing an anastomosis between the main artery of a
limb and its companion vein, so that arterial blood may reach the
peripheral capillaries--reversal of the circulation--but the clinical
results have proved disappointing. (See _Op. Surg._, p. 29.)

_Treatment._--When there is evidence that gangrene has occurred, the
first indication is to prevent infection by purifying the part, and
after careful drying to wrap it in a thick layer of absorbent and
antiseptic wool, retained in place by a loosely applied bandage. A
slight degree of elevation of the limb is an advantage, but it must not
be sufficient to diminish the amount of blood entering the part.
Hot-bottles are to be used with the utmost caution. As absolute dryness
is essential, ointments or other greasy dressings are to be avoided, as
they tend to prevent evaporation from the skin. Opium should be given
freely to alleviate pain. Stimulation is to be avoided, and the patient
should be carefully dieted.

When the gangrene is limited to the toes in old and feeble patients,
some surgeons advocate the expectant method of treatment, waiting for a
line of demarcation to form and allowing the dead part to be separated.
This takes place so slowly, however, that it necessitates the patient
being laid up for many weeks, or even months; and we agree with the
majority in advising early amputation.

In this connection it is worthy of note that there are certain points at
which gangrene naturally tends to become arrested--namely, at the highly
vascular areas in the neighbourhood of joints. Thus gangrene of the
great toe often stops when it reaches the metatarso-phalangeal joint; or
if it trespasses this limit it may be arrested either at the
tarso-metatarsal or at the ankle joint. If these be passed, it usually
spreads up the leg to just below the knee before signs of arrestment
appear. Further, it is seen from pathological specimens that the spread
is greater on the dorsal than on the plantar aspect, and that the death
of skin and subcutaneous tissues extends higher than that of bone and
muscle.

These facts furnish us with indications as to the seat and method of
amputation. Experience has proved that in senile gangrene of the lower
extremity the most reliable and satisfactory results are obtained by
amputating in the region of the knee, care being taken to perform the
operation so as to leave the prepatellar anastomosis intact by retaining
the patella in the anterior flap. The most satisfactory operation in
these cases is Gritti's supra-condylar amputation. Hmorrhage is easily
controlled by digital pressure, and the use of a tourniquet should be
dispensed with, as the constriction of the limb is liable to interfere
with the vitality of the flaps.

When the tibial vessels can be felt pulsating at the ankle it may be
justifiable, if the patient urgently desires it, to amputate lower than
the knee; but there is considerable risk of gangrene recurring in the
stump and necessitating a second operation.

That amputation for senile gangrene performed between the ankle and the
knee seldom succeeds, is explained by the fact that the vascular
obstruction is usually in the upper part of the posterior tibial artery,
and the operation is therefore performed through tissues with an
inadequate blood supply. It is not uncommon, indeed, on amputating above
the knee, to find even the popliteal artery plugged by a clot. This
should be removed at the amputation by squeezing the vessel from above
downward by a "milking" movement, or by "catheterising the artery" with
the aid of a cannula with a terminal aperture.

It is to be borne in mind that the object of amputation in these cases
is merely to remove the gangrenous part, and so relieve the patient of
the discomfort and the risks from infection which its presence involves.
While it is true that in many of these patients the operation is borne
remarkably well, it must be borne in mind that those who suffer from
senile gangrene are of necessity bad lives, and a guarded opinion should
be expressed as to the prospects of survival. The possibility of the
disease developing in the other limb has already been referred to.

[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Embolic Gangrene of Hand and Arm.]

#Embolic Gangrene# (Fig. 21).--This is the most typical form of gangrene
resulting from the _sudden_ occlusion of the main artery of a part,
whether by the impaction of an embolus or the formation of a thrombus in
its lumen, when the collateral circulation is not sufficiently free to
maintain the vitality of the tissues.

There is sudden pain at the site of impaction of the embolus, and the
pulses beyond are lost. The limb becomes cold, numb, insensitive, and
powerless. It is often pale at first--hence the term "white gangrene"
sometimes applicable to the early appearances, which closely resemble
those presented by the limb of a corpse.

If the part is aseptic it shrivels, and presents the ordinary features
of dry gangrene. It is liable, however, especially in the lower
extremity and when the veins also are obstructed, to become infected and
to assume the characters of the moist type.

The extent of the gangrene depends upon the site of impaction of the
embolus, thus if the _abdominal aorta_ becomes suddenly occluded by an
embolus at its bifurcation, the obstruction of the iliacs and femorals
induces symmetrical gangrene of both extremities as high as the inguinal
ligaments. When gangrene follows occlusion of the _external iliac_ or of
the _femoral artery_ above the origin of its deep branch, the death of
the limb extends as high as the middle or upper third of the thigh. When
the _femoral_ below the origin of its deep branch or the _popliteal
artery_ is obstructed, the veins remaining pervious, the anastomosis
through the profunda is sufficient to maintain the vascular supply, and
gangrene does not necessarily follow. The rupture of a popliteal
aneurysm, however, by compressing the vein and the articular branches,
usually determines gangrene. When an embolus becomes impacted at the
_bifurcation of the popliteal_, if gangrene ensues it usually spreads
well up the leg.

When the _axillary artery_ is the seat of embolic impaction, and
gangrene ensues, the process usually reaches the middle of the upper
arm. Gangrene following the blocking of the _brachial_ at its
bifurcation usually extends as far as the junction of the lower and
middle thirds of the forearm.

Gangrene due to thrombosis or embolism is sometimes met with in patients
recovering from typhus, typhoid, or other fevers, such as that
associated with child-bed. It occurs in peripheral parts, such as the
toes, fingers, nose, or ears.

_Treatment._--The general treatment of embolic gangrene is the same as
that for the senile form. Success has followed opening the artery and
removing the embolus. The artery is exposed at the seat of impaction
and, having been clamped above and below, a longitudinal opening is made
and the clot carefully extracted with the aid of forceps; it is
sometimes unexpectedly long (one recorded from the femoral artery
measured nearly 34 inches); the wound in the artery is then sewn up with
fine silk soaked in paraffin. When amputation is indicated, it must be
performed sufficiently high to ensure a free vascular supply to the
flaps.

#Gangrene following Ligation of Arteries.#--After the ligation of an
artery in its continuity--for example, in the treatment of aneurysm--the
limb may for some days remain in a condition verging on gangrene, the
distal parts being cold, devoid of sensation, and powerless. As the
collateral circulation is established, the vitality of the tissues is
gradually restored and these symptoms pass off. In some cases,
however,--and especially in the lower extremity--gangrene ensues and
presents the same characters as those resulting from embolism. It tends
to be of the dry type. The occlusion of the vein as well as the artery
is not found to increase the risk of gangrene.

#Gangrene from Mechanical Constriction of the Vessels of the part.#--The
application of a bandage or plaster-of-Paris case too tightly, or of a
tourniquet for too long a time, has been known to lead to death of the
part beyond; but such cases are rare, as are also those due to the
pressure of a fractured bone or of a tumour on a large artery or vein.
When gangrene occurs from such causes, it tends to be of the moist type.

Much commoner is it to meet with localised areas of necrosis due to the
excessive _pressure of splints_ over bony prominences, such as the
lateral malleolus, the medial condyle of the humerus, or femur, or over
the dorsum of the foot. This is especially liable to occur when the
nutrition of the skin is depressed by any interference with its
nerve-supply, such as follows injuries to the spine or peripheral
nerves, disease of the brain, or acute anterior poliomyelitis. When the
splint is removed the skin pressed upon is found to be of a pale yellow
or grey colour, and is surrounded by a ring of hypermia. If protected
from infection, the clinical course is that of dry gangrene.

Bed-sores, which are closely allied to pressure sores, will be described
at the end of this chapter.

When a localised portion of tissue, for example, a piece of skin, is so
severely _crushed_ or _bruised_ that its blood vessels are occluded and
its structure destroyed, it dies, and, if not infected with bacteria,
dries up, and the shrivelled brown skin is slowly separated by the
growth of granulation tissue beneath and around it.

Fingers, toes, or even considerable portions of limbs may in the same
way be suddenly destroyed by severe trauma, and undergo mummification.
If organisms gain access, typical moist gangrene may ensue, or changes
similar to those of ordinary post-mortem decomposition may take place.

_Treatment._--The first indication is to exclude bacteria by purifying
the damaged part and its surroundings, and applying dry, non-irritating
dressings.

When these measures are successful, dry gangrene ensues. The raw surface
left after the separation of the dead skin may be allowed to heal by
granulation, or may be covered by skin-grafts. In the case of a finger
or a limb it is not necessary to wait until spontaneous separation takes
place, as this is often a slow process. When a well-marked line of
demarcation has formed, amputation may be performed just sufficiently
far above it to enable suitable flaps to be made.

The end of a stump, after spontaneous separation of the gangrenous
portion, requires to be trimmed, sufficient bone being removed to permit
of the soft parts coming together.

If moist gangrene supervenes, amputation must be performed without
delay, and at a higher level.

#Gangrene from Heat, Chemical Agents, and Cold.#--Severe #burns# and
#scalds# may be followed by necrosis of tissue. So long as the parts are
kept absolutely dry--as, for example, by the picric acid method of
treatment--the grossly damaged portions of tissue undergo dry gangrene;
but when wet or oily dressings are applied and organisms gain access,
moist gangrene follows.

Strong #chemical agents#, such as caustic potash, nitric or sulphuric
acid, may also induce local tissue necrosis, the general appearances of
the lesions produced being like those of severe burns. The resulting
sloughs are slow to separate, and leave deep punched-out cavities which
are long of healing.

#Carbolic Gangrene.#--Carbolic acid, even in comparatively weak
solution, is liable to induce dry gangrene when applied as a fomentation
to a finger, especially in women and children. Thrombosis occurs in the
blood vessels of the part, which at first is pale and soft, but later
becomes dark and leathery. On account of the ansthetic action of
carbolic acid, the onset of the process is painless, and the patient
does not realise his danger. A line of demarcation soon forms, but the
dead part separates very slowly.

#Gangrene from Frost-bite.#--It is difficult to draw the line between
the third degree of chilblain and the milder forms of true frost-bite;
the difference is merely one of degree. Frost-bite affects chiefly the
toes and fingers--especially the great toe and the little finger--the
ears, and the nose. In this country it is seldom seen except in members
of the tramp class, who, in addition to being exposed to cold by
sleeping in the open air, are ill-fed and generally debilitated. The
condition usually manifests itself after the parts, having been
subjected to extreme cold, are brought into warm surroundings. The first
symptom is numbness in the part, followed by a sense of weight,
tingling, and finally by complete loss of sensation. The part attacked
becomes white and bleached-looking, feels icy cold, and is insensitive
to touch. Either immediately, or, it may be, not for several days, it
becomes discoloured and swollen, and finally contracts and shrivels.
Above the dead area the limb may be the seat of excruciating pain. The
dead portion is cast off, as in other forms of dry gangrene, by the
formation of a line of demarcation.

To prevent the occurrence of gangrene from frost-bite it is necessary to
avoid the sudden application of heat. The patient should be placed in a
cold room, and the part rubbed with snow, or put in a cold bath, and
have light friction applied to it. As the circulation is restored the
general surroundings and the local applications are gradually made
warmer. Elevation of the part, wrapping it in cotton wool, and removal
to a warmer room, are then permissible, and stimulants and warm drinks
may be given with caution. When by these means the occurrence of
gangrene is averted, recovery ensues, its onset being indicated by the
white parts assuming a livid red hue and becoming the seat of an acute
burning sensation.

A condition known as _Trench feet_ was widely prevalent amongst the
troops in France during the European War. Although allied to frost-bite,
cold appears to play a less important part in its causation than
humidity and constriction of the limbs producing ischmia of the feet.
Changes were found in the endothelium of the blood vessels, the axis
cylinders of nerves, and the muscles. The condition does not occur in
civil life.

#Diabetic Gangrene.#--This form of gangrene is prone to occur in persons
over fifty years of age who suffer from glycosuria. The arteries are
often markedly diseased. In some cases the existence of the glycosuria
is unsuspected before the onset of the gangrene, and it is only on
examining the urine that the cause of the condition is discovered. The
gangrenous process seldom begins as suddenly as that associated with
embolism, and, like senile gangrene, which it may closely simulate in
its early stages, it not infrequently begins after a slight injury to
one of the toes. It but rarely, however, assumes the dry, shrivelling
type, as a rule being attended with swelling, dema, and dusky redness
of the foot, and severe pain. According to Paget, the dead part remains
warm longer than in other forms of senile gangrene; there is a greater
tendency for patches of skin at some distance from the primary seat of
disease to become gangrenous, and for the death of tissue to extend
upwards in the subcutaneous planes, leaving the overlying skin
unaffected. The low vitality of the tissues favours the growth of
bacteria, and if these gain access, the gangrene assumes the characters
of the moist type and spreads rapidly.

The rules for amputation are the same as those governing the treatment
of senile gangrene, the level at which the limb is removed depending
upon whether the gangrene is of the dry or moist type. The general
treatment for diabetes must, of course, be employed whether amputation
is performed or not. Paget recommended that the dietetic treatment
should not be so rigid as in uncomplicated diabetes, and that opium
should be given freely.

The _prognosis_ even after amputation is unfavourable. In many cases the
patient dies with symptoms of diabetic coma within a few days of the
operation; or, if he survives this, he may eventually succumb to
diabetes. In others there is sloughing of the flaps and death results
from toxmia. Occasionally the other limb becomes gangrenous. On the
other hand, the glycosuria may diminish or may even disappear after
amputation.

#Gangrene associated with Spasm of Blood Vessels.#--#Raynaud's Disease#,
or symmetrical gangrene, is supposed to be due to spasm of the
arterioles, resulting from peripheral neuritis. It occurs oftenest in
women, between the ages of eighteen and thirty, who are the subjects of
uterine disorders, anmia, or chlorosis. Cold is an aggravating factor,
as the disease is commonest during the winter months. The digits of both
hands or the toes of both feet are simultaneously attacked, and the
disease seldom spreads beyond the phalanges or deeper than the skin.

The first evidence is that the fingers become cold, white, and
insensitive to touch and pain. These attacks of _local syncope_ recur at
varying intervals for months or even years. They last for a few minutes
or even for some hours, and as they pass off the parts become hypermic
and painful.

A more advanced stage of the disease is known as _local asphyxia_. The
circulation through the fingers becomes exceedingly sluggish, and the
parts assume a dull, livid hue. There is swelling and burning or
shooting pain. This may pass off in a few days, or may increase in
severity, with the formation of bull, and end in dry gangrene. As a
rule, the slough which forms is comparatively small and superficial,
but it may take some months to separate. The condition tends to recur in
successive winters.

The _treatment_ consists in remedying any nervous or uterine disorder
that may be present, keeping the parts warm by wrapping them in cotton
wool, and in the use of hot-air or electric baths, the parts being
immersed in water through which a constant current is passed. When
gangrene occurs, it is treated on the same lines as other forms of dry
gangrene, but if amputation is called for it is only with a view to
removing the dead part.

#Angio-sclerotic Gangrene.#--A form of gangrene due to _angio-sclerosis_
is occasionally met with in young persons, even in children. It bears
certain analogies to Raynaud's disease in that spasm of the vessels
plays a part in determining the local death.

The main arteries are narrowed by hyperplastic endarteritis followed by
thrombosis, and similar changes are found in the veins. The condition is
usually met with in the feet, but the upper extremity may be affected,
and is attended with very severe pain, rendering sleep impossible.

The patient is liable to sudden attacks of numbness, tingling and
weakness of the limbs which pass off with rest--_intermittent
claudication_. During these attacks the large arteries--femoral,
brachial, and subclavian--can be felt as firm cords, while pulsation is
lost in the peripheral vessels. Gangrene eventually ensues, is attended
with great pain and runs a slow course. It is treated on the same lines
as Raynaud's disease.

#Gangrene from Ergot.#--Gangrene may occur from interference with blood
supply, the result of tetanic contraction of the minute vessels, such as
results in ill-nourished persons who eat large quantities of coarse rye
bread contaminated with the _claviceps purpurea_ and containing the
ergot of rye. It has also occurred in the fingers of patients who have
taken ergot medicinally over long periods. The gangrene, which attacks
the toes, fingers, ears, or nose, is preceded by formication, numbness,
and pains in the parts to be affected, and is of the dry variety.

In this country it is usually met with in sailors off foreign ships,
whose dietary largely consists of rye bread. Trivial injuries may be the
starting-point, the ansthesia produced by the ergotin preventing the
patient taking notice of them. Alcoholism is a potent predisposing
cause.

As it is impossible to predict how far the process will spread, it is
advisable to wait for the formation of a line of demarcation before
operating, and then to amputate immediately above the dead part.


BACTERIAL VARIETIES OF GANGRENE

The acute bacillary forms of gangrene all assume the moist type from the
first, and, spreading rapidly, result in extensive necrosis of tissue,
and often end fatally.

The infection is usually a mixed one in which anarobic bacteria
predominate. The anarobe most constantly present is the _bacillus
rogenes capsulatus_, usually in association with other anarobes, and
sometimes with pyogenic diplo- and streptococci. According to the mode of
action of the associated organisms and the combined effects of their
toxins on the tissues, the gangrenous process presents different
pathological and clinical features. Some combinations, for example,
result in a rapidly spreading cellulitis with early necrosis of
connective tissue accompanied by thrombosis throughout the capillary and
venous circulation of the parts implicated; other combinations cause
great dema of the part, and others again lead to the formation of gases
in the tissues, particularly in the muscles.

These different effects do not appear to be due to a specific action of
any one of the organisms present, but to the combined effect of a
particular group living in symbiosis.

According as the cellulitic, the dematous, or the gaseous
characteristics predominate, the clinical varieties of bacillary
gangrene may be separately described, but it must be clearly understood
that they frequently overlap and cannot always be distinguished from one
another.

#Clinical Varieties of Bacillary Gangrene.#--#Acute infective gangrene#
is the form most commonly met with in civil practice. It may follow such
trivial injuries as a pin-prick or a scratch, the signs of acute
cellulitis rapidly giving place to those of a spreading gangrene. Or it
may ensue on a severe railway, machinery, or street accident, when
lacerated and bruised tissues are contaminated with gross dirt. Often
within a few hours of the injury the whole part rapidly becomes painful,
swollen, dematous, and tense. The skin is at first glazed, and perhaps
paler than normal, but soon assumes a dull red or purplish hue, and
bull form on the surface. Putrefactive gases may be evolved in the
tissues, and their presence is indicated by emphysematous crackling when
the part is handled. The spread of the disease is so rapid that its
progress is quite visible from hour to hour, and may be traced by the
occurrence of red lines along the course of the lymphatics of the limb.
In the most acute cases the death of the affected part takes place so
rapidly that the local changes indicative of gangrene have not time to
occur, and the fact that the part is dead may be overlooked.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--Gangrene of Terminal Phalanx of Index-Finger,
following cellulitis of hand resulting from a scratch on the palm of the
hand.]

Rigors may occur, but the temperature is not necessarily raised--indeed,
it is sometimes subnormal. The pulse is small, feeble, rapid, and
irregular. Unless amputation is promptly performed, death usually
follows within thirty-six or forty-eight hours. Even early operation
does not always avert the fatal issue, because the quantity of toxin
absorbed and its extreme virulence are often more than even a robust
subject can outlive.

_Treatment._--Every effort must be made to purify all such wounds as are
contaminated by earth, street dust, stable refuse, or other forms of
gross dirt. Devitalised and contaminated tissue is removed with the
knife or scissors and the wound purified with antiseptics of the
chlorine group or with hydrogen peroxide. If there is a reasonable
prospect that infection has been overcome, the wound may be at once
sutured, but if this is doubtful it is left open and packed or
irrigated.

When acute gangrene has set in no treatment short of amputation is of
any avail, and the sooner this is done, the greater is the hope of
saving the patient. The limb must be amputated well beyond the apparent
limits of the infected area, and stringent precautions must be taken to
avoid discharge from the already gangrenous area reaching the operation
wound. An assistant or nurse, who is to take no other part in the
operation, is told off to carry out the preliminary purification, and to
hold the limb during the operation.

#Malignant dema.#--This form of acute gangrene has been defined as
"a spreading inflammatory dema attended with emphysema, and ultimately
followed by gangrene of the skin and adjacent parts." The predominant
organism is the _bacillus of malignant dema_ or _vibrion septique_ of
Pasteur, which is found in garden soil, dung, and various putrefying
substances. It is anarobic, and occurs as long, thick rods with
somewhat rounded ends and several laterally placed flagella. Spores,
which have a high power of resistance, form in the centre of the rods,
and bulge out the sides so as to give the organisms a spindle-shaped
outline. Other pathogenic organisms are also present and aid the
specific bacillus in its action.

At the bedside it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish it
from acute infective gangrene. Both follow on the same kinds of injury
and run an exceedingly rapid course. In malignant dema, however, the
incidence of the disease is mainly on the superficial parts, which
become dematous and emphysematous, and acquire a marbled appearance
with the veins clearly outlined. Early disappearance of sensation is a
particularly grave symptom. Bull form on the skin, and the tissues
have "a peculiar heavy but not putrid odour." The constitutional effects
are extremely severe, and death may ensue within a few hours.

#Acute Emphysematous# or #Gas Gangrene# was prevalent in certain areas
at various periods during the European War. It follows infection of
lacerated wounds with the _bacillus rogenes capsulatus_, usually in
combination with other anarobes, and its main incidence is on the
muscles, which rapidly become infiltrated with gas that spreads
throughout the whole extent of the muscle, disintegrating its fibres and
leading to necrosis. The gangrenous process spreads with appalling
rapidity, the limb becoming enormously swollen, painful, and crepitant
or even tympanitic. Patches of coppery or purple colour appear on the
skin, and bull containing blood-stained serum form on the surface. The
toxmia is profound, and the face and lips assume a characteristic
cyanosis. The condition is attended with a high mortality. Only in the
early stages and when the infection is limited are local measures
successful in arresting the spread; in more severe cases amputation is
the only means of saving life.

#Cancrum Oris# or #Noma#.--This disease is believed to be due to a
specific bacillus, which occurs in long delicate rods, and is chiefly
found at the margin of the gangrenous area. It is prone to attack
unhealthy children from two to five years of age, especially during
their convalescence from such diseases as measles, scarlet fever, or
typhoid, but may attack adults when they are debilitated. It is most
common in the mouth, but sometimes occurs on the vulva. In the mouth it
begins as an ulcerative stomatitis, more especially affecting the gums
or inner aspect of the cheek. The child lies prostrated, and from the
open mouth foul-smelling saliva, streaked with blood, escapes; the face
is of an ashy-grey colour, the lips dark and swollen. On the inner
aspect of the cheek is a deeply ulcerated surface, with sloughy shreds
of dark-brown or black tissue covering its base; the edges are
irregular, firm, and swollen, and the surrounding mucous membrane is
infiltrated and dematous. In the course of a few hours a dark spot
appears on the outer aspect of the cheek, and rapidly increases in size;
towards the centre it is black, shading off through blue and grey into a
dark-red area which extends over the cheek (Fig. 23). The tissue
implicated is at first firm and indurated, but as it loses its vitality
it becomes doughy and sodden. Finally a slough forms, and, when it
separates, the cheek is perforated.

Meanwhile the process spreads inside the mouth, and the gums, the floor
of the mouth, or even the jaws, may become gangrenous and the teeth fall
out. The constitutional disturbance is severe, the temperature raised,
and the pulse feeble and rapid.

The extremely ftid odour which pervades the room or even the house the
patient occupies, is usually sufficient to suggest the diagnosis of
cancrum oris. The odour must not be mistaken for that due to
decomposition of sordes on the teeth and gums of a debilitated patient.

The _prognosis_ is always grave in the extreme, the main risks being
general toxmia and septic pneumonia. When recovery takes place there is
serious deformity, and considerable portions of the jaws may be lost by
necrosis.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--Cancrum oris.

(From a photograph lent by Sir George T. Beatson.)]

_Treatment._--The only satisfactory treatment is thorough removal under
an ansthetic of all the sloughy tissue, with the surrounding zone in
which the organisms are active. This is most efficiently accomplished by
the knife or scissors, cutting until the tissue bleeds freely, after
which the raw surface is painted with undiluted carbolic acid and
dressed with iodoform gauze. It may be necessary to remove large pieces
of bone when the necrotic process has implicated the jaws. The mouth
must be constantly sprayed with peroxide of hydrogen, and washed out
with a disinfectant and deodorant lotion, such as Condy's fluid. The
patient's general condition calls for free stimulation.

The deformity resulting from these necessarily heroic measures is not so
great as might be expected, and can be further diminished by plastic
operations, which should be undertaken before cicatricial contraction
has occurred.


BED-SORES

Bed-sores are most frequently met with in old and debilitated patients,
or in those whose tissues are devitalised by acute or chronic diseases
associated with stagnation of blood in the peripheral veins. Any
interference with the nerve-supply of the skin, whether from injury or
disease of the central nervous system or of the peripheral nerves,
strongly predisposes to the formation of bed-sores. Prolonged and
excessive pressure over a bony prominence, especially if the parts be
moist with skin secretions, urine, or wound discharges, determines the
formation of a sore. Excoriations, which may develop into true
bed-sores, sometimes form where two skin surfaces remain constantly
apposed, as in the region of the scrotum or labium, under pendulous
mamm, or between fingers or toes confined in a splint.

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--Acute Bed-Sores over Right Buttock.]

_Clinical Features._--Two clinical varieties are met with--the acute
and the chronic bed-sore.

The _acute_ bed-sore usually occurs over the sacrum or buttock. It
develops rapidly after spinal injuries and in the course of certain
brain diseases. The part affected becomes red and congested, while the
surrounding parts are dematous and swollen, blisters form, and the skin
loses its vitality (Fig. 24).

In advanced cases of general paralysis of the insane, a peculiar form of
acute bed-sore beginning as a blister, and passing on to the formation
of a black, dry eschar, which slowly separates, occurs on such parts as
the medial side of the knee, the angle of the scapula, and the heel.

The _chronic_ bed-sore begins as a dusky reddish purple patch, which
gradually becomes darker till it is almost black. The parts around are
dematous, and a blister may form. This bursts and exposes the papill
of the skin, which are of a greenish hue. A tough greyish-black slough
forms, and is slowly separated. It is not uncommon for the gangrenous
area to continue to spread both in width and in depth till it reaches
the periosteum or bone. Bed-sores over the sacrum sometimes implicate
the vertebral canal and lead to spinal meningitis, which usually proves
fatal.

In old and debilitated patients the septic absorption taking place from
a bed-sore often proves a serious complication of other surgical
conditions. From this cause, for example, old people may succumb during
the treatment of a fractured thigh.

The granulating surface left on the separation of the slough tends to
heal comparatively rapidly.

_Prevention of Bed-sores._--The first essential in the prevention of
bed-sores is the regular changing of the patient's position, so that no
one part of the body is continuously pressed upon for any length of
time. Ring-pads of wool, air-cushions, or water-beds are necessary to
remove pressure from prominent parts. Absolute dryness of the skin is
all-important. At least once a day, the sacrum, buttocks,
shoulder-blades, heels, elbows, malleoli, or other parts exposed to
pressure, must be sponged with soap and water, thoroughly dried, and
then rubbed with methylated spirit, which is allowed to dry on the skin.
Dusting the part with boracic acid powder not only keeps it dry, but
prevents the development of bacteria in the skin secretions.

In operation cases, care must be taken that irritating chemicals used to
purify the skin do not collect under the patient and remain in contact
with the skin of the sacrum and buttocks during the time he is on the
operating-table. There is reason to believe that the so-called
"post-operation bed-sore" may be due to such causes. A similar result
has been known to follow soiling of the sheets by the escape of a
turpentine enema.

_Treatment._--Once a bed-sore has formed, every effort must be made to
prevent its spread. Alcohol is used to cleanse the broken surface, and
dry absorbent dressings are applied and frequently changed. It is
sometimes found necessary to employ moist or oily substances, such as
boracic poultices, eucalyptus ointment, or balsam of Peru, to facilitate
the separation of sloughs, or to promote the growth of granulations. In
patients who are not extremely debilitated the slough may be excised,
the raw surface scraped, and then painted with iodine.

Skin-grafting is sometimes useful in covering in the large raw surface
left after separation or removal of sloughs.




CHAPTER VII

BACTERIAL AND OTHER WOUND INFECTIONS


_Erysipelas_--_Diphtheria_--_Tetanus_--_Hydrophobia_--_Anthrax_--
    _Glanders_--_Actinomycosis_--_Mycetoma_--_Delhi
    boil_--_Chigoe_--_Poisoning by insects_--_Snake-bites_.


ERYSIPELAS

Erysipelas, popularly known as "rose," is an acute spreading infective
disease of the skin or of a mucous membrane due to the action of a
streptococcus. Infection invariably takes place through an abrasion of
the surface, although this may be so slight that it escapes observation
even when sought for. The streptococci are found most abundantly in the
lymph spaces just beyond the swollen margin of the inflammatory area,
and in the serous blebs which sometimes form on the surface.

#Clinical Features.#--_Facial erysipelas_ is the commonest clinical
variety, infection usually occurring through some slight abrasion in the
region of the mouth or nose, or from an operation wound in this area.
From this point of origin the inflammation may spread all over the face
and scalp as far back as the nape of the neck. It stops, however, at the
chin, and never extends on to the front of the neck. There is great
dema of the face, the eyes becoming closed up, and the features
unrecognisable. The inflammation may spread to the meninges, the
intracranial venous sinuses, the eye, or the ear. In some cases the
erysipelas invades the mucous membrane of the mouth, and spreads to the
fauces and larynx, setting up an dema of the glottis which may prove
dangerous to life.

Erysipelas occasionally attacks an operation wound that has become
septic; and it may accompany septic infection of the genital tract in
puerperal women, or the separation of the umbilical cord in infants
(_erysipelas neonatorum_). After an incubation period, which varies from
fifteen to sixty hours, the patient complains of headache, pains in the
back and limbs, loss of appetite, nausea, and frequently there is
vomiting. He has a chill or slight rigor, initiating a rise of
temperature to 103, 104, or 105 F.; and a full bounding pulse of
about 100 (Fig. 25). The tongue is foul, the breath heavy, and, as a
rule, the bowels are constipated. There is frequently albuminuria, and
occasionally nocturnal delirium. A moderate degree of leucocytosis
(15,000 to 20,000) is usually present.

Around the seat of inoculation a diffuse red patch forms, varying in hue
from a bright scarlet to a dull brick-red. The edges are slightly raised
above the level of the surrounding skin, as may readily be recognised by
gently stroking the part from the healthy towards the affected area. The
skin is smooth, tense, and glossy, and presents here and there blisters
filled with serous fluid. The local temperature is raised, and the part
is the seat of a burning sensation and is tender to the touch, the most
tender area being the actively spreading zone which lies about half an
inch beyond the red margin.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Chart of Erysipelas occurring in a wound.]

The disease tends to spread spasmodically and irregularly, and the
direction and extent of its progress may be recognised by mapping out
the peripheral zone of tenderness. Red streaks appear along the lines of
the superficial lymph vessels, and the deep lymphatics may sometimes be
palpated as firm, tender cords. The neighbouring glands, also, are
generally enlarged and tender.

The disease lasts for from two or three days to as many weeks, and
relapses are frequent. Spontaneous resolution usually takes place, but
the disease may prove fatal from absorption of toxins, involvement of
the brain or meninges, or from general streptococcal infection.

#Complications.#--_Diffuse suppurative cellulitis_ is the most serious
local complication, and results from a mixed infection with other
pyogenic bacteria. Small _localised superficial abscesses_ may form
during the convalescent stage. They are doubtless due to the action of
skin bacteria, which attack the tissues devitalised by the erysipelas. A
persistent form of _dema_ sometimes remains after recurrent attacks of
erysipelas, especially when they affect the face or the lower extremity,
a condition which is referred to with elephantiasis.

#Treatment.#--The first indication is to endeavour to arrest the spread
of the process. We have found that by painting with linimentum iodi, a
ring half an inch broad, about an inch in front of the peripheral tender
zone--not the red margin--an artificial leucocytosis is produced, and
the advancing streptococci are thereby arrested. Several coats of the
iodine are applied, one after the other, and this is repeated daily for
several days, even although the erysipelas has not overstepped the ring.
Success depends upon using the liniment of iodine (the tincture is not
strong enough), and in applying it well in front of the disease. To
allay pain the most useful local applications are ichthyol ointment (1
in 6), or lead and opium fomentations.

The general treatment consists in attending to the emunctories, in
administrating quinine in small--two-grain--doses every four hours, or
salicylate of iron (25 gr. every three hours), and in giving plenty of
fluid nourishment. It is worthy of note that the anti-streptococcic
serum has proved of less value in the treatment of erysipelas than might
have been expected, probably because the serum is not made from the
proper strain of streptococcus.

It is not necessary to isolate cases of erysipelas, provided the usual
precautions against carrying infection from one patient to another are
rigidly carried out.


DIPHTHERIA

Diphtheria is an acute infective disease due to the action of a specific
bacterium, the _bacillus diphtheri_ or _Klebs-Lffler bacillus_. The
disease is usually transmitted from one patient to another, but it may
be contracted from cats, fowls, or through the milk of infected cows.
Cases have occurred in which the surgeon has carried the infection from
one patient to another through neglect of antiseptic precautions. The
incubation period varies from two to seven days.

#Clinical Features.#--In _pharyngeal diphtheria_, on the first or
second day of the disease, redness and swelling of the mucous membrane
of the pharynx, tonsils, and palate are well marked, and small, circular
greenish or grey patches of false membrane, composed of necrosed
epithelium, fibrin, leucocytes, and red blood corpuscles, begin to
appear. These rapidly increase in area and thickness, till they coalesce
and form a complete covering to the parts. In the pharynx the false
membrane is less adherent to the surface than it is when the disease
affects the air-passages. The diphtheritic process may spread from the
pharynx to the nasal cavities, causing blocking of the nares, with a
profuse ichorous discharge from the nostrils, and sometimes severe
epistaxis. The infection may spread along the nasal duct to the
conjunctiva. The middle ear also may become involved by spread along the
auditory (Eustachian) tube.

The lymph glands behind the angle of the jaw enlarge and become tender,
and may suppurate from superadded infection. There is pain on
swallowing, and often earache; and the patient speaks with a nasal
accent. He becomes weak and anmic, and loses his appetite. There is
often albuminuria. Leucocytosis is usually well marked before the
injection of antitoxin; after the injection there is usually a
diminution in the number of leucocytes. The false membrane may separate
and be cast off, after which the patient gradually recovers. Death may
take place from gradual failure of the heart's action or from syncope
during some slight exertion.

_Laryngeal Diphtheria._--The disease may arise in the larynx, although,
as a rule, it spreads thence from the pharynx. It first manifests itself
by a short, dry, croupy cough, and hoarseness of the voice. The first
difficulty in breathing usually takes place during the night, and once
it begins, it rapidly gets worse. Inspiration becomes noisy, sometimes
stridulous or metallic or sibilant, and there is marked indrawing of the
epigastrium and lower intercostal spaces. The hoarseness becomes more
marked, the cough more severe, and the patient restless. The difficulty
of breathing occurs in paroxysms, which gradually increase in frequency
and severity, until at length the patient becomes asphyxiated. The
duration of the disease varies from a few hours to four or five days.

After the acute symptoms have passed off, various localised
paralyses may develop, affecting particularly the nerves of the palatal
and orbital muscles, less frequently the lower limbs.

#Diagnosis.#--The finding of the Klebs-Lffler bacillus is the only
conclusive evidence of the disease. The bacillus may be obtained by
swabbing the throat with a piece of aseptic--not antiseptic--cotton wool
or clean linen rag held in a pair of forceps, and rotated so as to
entangle portions of the false membrane or exudate. The swab thus
obtained is placed in a test-tube, previously sterilised by having had
some water boiled in it, and sent to a laboratory for investigation. To
identify the bacillus a piece of the membrane from the swab is rubbed on
a cover glass, dried, and stained with methylene blue or other basic
stain; or cultures may be made on agar or other suitable medium. When a
bacteriological examination is impossible, or when the clinical features
do not coincide with the results obtained, the patient should always be
treated on the assumption that he suffers from diphtheria. So much doubt
exists as to the real nature of membranous croup and its relationship to
true diphtheria, that when the diagnosis between the two is uncertain
the safest plan is to treat the case as one of diphtheria.

In children, diphtheria may occur on the vulva, vagina, prepuce, or
glans penis, and give rise to difficulty in diagnosis, which is only
cleared up by demonstration of the bacillus.

#Treatment.#--An attempt may be made to destroy or to counteract the
organisms by swabbing the throat with strong antiseptic solutions, such
as 1 in 1000 corrosive sublimate or 1 in 30 carbolic acid, or by
spraying with peroxide of hydrogen.

The antitoxic serum is our sheet-anchor in the treatment of diphtheria,
and recourse should be had to its use as early as possible.

Difficulty of swallowing may be met by the use of a stomach tube passed
either through the mouth or nose. When this is impracticable, nutrient
enemata are called for.

In laryngeal diphtheria, the interference with respiration may call for
intubation of the larynx, or tracheotomy, but the antitoxin treatment
has greatly diminished the number of cases in which it becomes necessary
to have recourse to these measures.

Intubation consists in introducing through the mouth into the larynx a
tube which allows the patient to breathe freely during the period while
the membrane is becoming separated and thrown off. This is best done
with the apparatus of O'Dwyer; but when this instrument is not
available, a simple gum-elastic catheter with a terminal opening (as
suggested by Macewen and Annandale) may be employed.

When intubation is impracticable, the operation of tracheotomy is
called for if the patient's life is endangered by embarrassment of
respiration. Unless the patient is in hospital with skilled assistance
available, tracheotomy is the safer of the two procedures.


TETANUS

Tetanus is a disease resulting from infection of a wound by a specific
micro-organism, the _bacillus tetani_, and characterised by increased
reflex excitability, hypertonus, and spasm of one or more groups of
voluntary muscles.

_Etiology and Morbid Anatomy._--The tetanus bacillus, which is a perfect
anarobe, is widely distributed in nature and can be isolated from
garden earth, dung-heaps, and stable refuse. It is a slender rod-shaped
bacillus, with a single large spore at one end giving it the shape of a
drum-stick (Fig. 26). The spores, which are the active agents in
producing tetanus, are highly resistant to chemical agents, retain their
vitality in a dry condition, and even survive boiling for five minutes.

The organism does not readily establish itself in the human body, and
seems to flourish best when it finds a nidus in necrotic tissue and is
accompanied by arobic organisms, which, by using up the oxygen in the
tissues, provide for it a suitable environment. The presence of a
foreign body in the wound seems to favour its action. The infection is
for all practical purposes a local one, the symptoms of the disease
being due to the toxins produced in the wound of infection acting upon
the central nervous system.

The toxin acts principally on the nerve centres in the spinal medulla,
to which it travels from the focus of infection by way of the nerve
fibres supplying the voluntary muscles. Its first effect on the motor
ganglia of the cord is to render them hypersensitive, so that they are
excited by mild stimuli, which under ordinary conditions would produce
no reaction. As the toxin accumulates the reflex arc is affected, with
the result that when a stimulus reaches the ganglia a motor discharge
takes place, which spreads by ascending and descending collaterals to
the reflex apparatus of the whole cord. As the toxin spreads it causes
both motor hyper-tonus and hyper-excitability, which accounts for the
tonic contraction and the clonic spasms characteristic of tetanus.

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Bacillus of Tetanus from scraping of a wound of
finger,  1000 diam. Basic fuchsin stain.]

#Clinical Varieties of Tetanus.#--_Acute_ or _Fulminating
Tetanus_.--This variety is characterised by the shortness of the
incubation period, the rapidity of its progress, the severity of its
symptoms, and its all but universally fatal issue in spite of
treatment, death taking place in from one to four days. The
characteristic symptoms may appear within three or four days of the
infliction of the wound, but the incubation period may extend to three
weeks, and the wound may be quite healed before the disease declares
itself--_delayed tetanus_. Usually, however, the wound is inflamed and
suppurating, with ragged and sloughy edges. A slight feverish attack may
mark the onset of the tetanic condition, or the patient may feel
perfectly well until the spasms begin. If careful observations be made,
it may be found that the muscles in the immediate neighbourhood of the
wound are the first to become contracted; but in the majority of
instances the patient's first complaint is of pain and stiffness in the
muscles of mastication, notably the masseter, so that he has difficulty
in opening the mouth--hence the popular name "lock-jaw." The muscles of
expression soon share in the rigidity, and the face assumes a taut,
mask-like aspect. The angles of the mouth may be retracted, producing a
grinning expression known as the _risus sardonicus_.

The next muscles to become stiff and painful are those of the neck,
especially the sterno-mastoid and trapezius. The patient is inclined to
attribute the pain and stiffness to exposure to cold or rheumatism. At
an early stage the diaphragm and the muscles of the anterior abdominal
wall become contracted; later the muscles of the back and thorax are
involved; and lastly those of the limbs. Although this is the typical
order of involvement of the different groups of muscles, it is not
always adhered to.

To this permanent tonic contraction of the muscles there are soon added
clonic spasms. These spasms are at first slight and transient, with
prolonged intervals between the attacks, but rapidly tend to become more
frequent, more severe, and of longer duration, until eventually the
patient simply passes out of one seizure into another.

The distribution of the spasms varies in different cases: in some it is
confined to particular groups of muscles, such as those of the neck,
back, abdominal walls, or limbs; in others all these groups are
simultaneously involved.

When the muscles of the back become spasmodically contracted, the body
is raised from the bed, sometimes to such an extent that the patient
rests only on his heels and occiput--the position of _opisthotonos_.
Lateral arching of the body from excessive action of the muscles on one
side--_pleurosthotonos_--is not uncommon, the arching usually taking
place towards the side on which the wound of infection exists. Less
frequently the body is bent forward so that the knees and chin almost
meet (_emprosthotonos_). Sometimes all the muscles simultaneously become
rigid, so that the body assumes a statuesque attitude (_orthotonos_).
When the thoracic muscles, including the diaphragm, are thrown into
spasm, the patient experiences a distressing sensation as if he were
gripped in a vice, and has extreme difficulty in getting breath. Between
the attacks the limbs are kept rigidly extended. The clonic spasms may
be so severe as to rupture muscles or even to fracture one of the long
bones.

As time goes on, the clonic exacerbations become more and more frequent,
and the slightest external stimulus, such as the feeling of the pulse, a
whisper in the room, a noise in the street, a draught of cold air, the
effort to swallow, a question addressed to the patient or his attempt to
answer, is sufficient to determine an attack. The movements are so
forcible and so continuous that the nurse has great difficulty in
keeping the bedclothes on the patient, or even in keeping him in bed.

The general condition of the patient is pitiful in the extreme. He is
fully conscious of the gravity of the disease, and his mind remains
clear to the end. The suffering induced by the cramp-like spasms of the
muscles keeps him in a constant state of fearful apprehension of the
next seizure, and he is unable to sleep until he becomes utterly
exhausted.

The temperature is moderately raised (100 to 102 F.), or may remain
normal throughout. Shortly before death very high temperatures (110 F.)
have been recorded, and it has been observed that the thermometer
sometimes continues to rise after death, and may reach as high as
112 F. or more.

The pulse corresponds with the febrile condition. It is accelerated
during the spasms, and may become exceedingly rapid and feeble before
death, probably from paralysis of the vagus. Sudden death from cardiac
paralysis or from cardiac spasm is not uncommon.

The respiration is affected in so far as the spasms of the respiratory
muscles produce dyspna, and a feeling of impending suffocation which
adds to the horrors of the disease.

One of the most constant symptoms is a copious perspiration, the patient
being literally bathed in sweat. The urine is diminished in quantity,
but as a rule is normal in composition; as in other acute infective
conditions, albumen and blood may be present. Retention of urine may
result from spasm of the urethral muscles, and necessitate the use of
the catheter.

The fits may cease some time before death, or, on the other hand, death
may occur during a paroxysm from fixation of the diaphragm and arrest of
respiration.

_Differential Diagnosis._--There is little difficulty, as a rule, in
diagnosing a case of fulminating tetanus, but there are several
conditions with which it may occasionally be confused. In _strychnin
poisoning_, for example, the spasms come on immediately after the
patient has taken a toxic dose of the drug; they are clonic in
character, but the muscles are relaxed between the fits. If the dose is
not lethal, the spasms soon cease. In _hydrophobia_ a history of having
been bitten by a rabid animal is usually forthcoming; the spasms, which
are clonic in character, affect chiefly the muscles of respiration and
deglutition, and pass off entirely in the intervals between attacks.
Certain cases of _hmorrhage into the lateral ventricles_ of the brain
also simulate tetanus, but an analysis of the symptoms will prevent
errors in diagnosis. _Cerebro-spinal meningitis_ and _basal meningitis_
present certain superficial resemblances to tetanus, but there is no
trismus, and the spasms chiefly affect the muscles of the neck and
back. _Hysteria and catalepsy_ may assume characters resembling those
of tetanus, but there is little difficulty in distinguishing between
these diseases. Lastly, in the _tetany_ of children, or that following
operations on the thyreoid gland, the spasms are of a jerking character,
affect chiefly the hands and fingers, and yield to medicinal treatment.

#Chronic Tetanus.#--The difference between this and acute tetanus is
mainly one of degree. Its incubation period is longer, it is more slow
and insidious in its progress, and it never reaches the same degree of
severity. Trismus is the most marked and constant form of spasm; and
while the trunk muscles may be involved, those of respiration as a rule
escape. Every additional day the patient lives adds to the probability
of his ultimate recovery. When the disease does prove fatal, it is from
exhaustion, and not from respiratory or cardiac spasm. The usual
duration is from six to ten weeks.

#Delayed Tetanus.#--During the European War acute tetanus occasionally
developed many weeks or even months after a patient had been injured,
and when the original wound had completely healed. It usually followed
some secondary operation, _e.g._, for the removal of a foreign body, or
the breaking down of adhesions, which aroused latent organisms.

#Local Tetanus.#--This term is applied to a form of the disease in which
the hypertonus and spasms are localised to the muscles in the vicinity
of the wound. It usually occurs in patients who have had prophylactic
injections of anti-tetanic serum, the toxins entering the blood being
probably neutralised by the antibodies in circulation, while those
passing along the motor nerves are unaffected.

When it occurs in the _limbs_, attention is usually directed to the fact
by pain accompanying the spasms; the muscles are found to be hard and
there are frequent twitchings of the limb. A characteristic reflex is
present in the lower extremity, namely, extension of the foot and leg
when the sole is tickled.

_Cephalic Tetanus_ is another localised variety which follows injury in
the distribution of the facial nerve. It is characterised by the
occurrence on the same side as the injury, of facial spasm, rapidly
followed by more or less complete paralysis of the muscles of
expression, with unilateral trismus and difficulty in swallowing. Other
cranial nerves, particularly the oculomotor and the hypoglossal, may
also be implicated. A remarkable feature of this condition is that
although the muscles are irresponsive to ordinary physiological stimuli,
they are thrown into spasm by the abnormal impulses of tetanus.

_Trismus._--This term is used to denote a form of tetanic spasm limited
to the muscles of mastication. It is really a mild form of chronic
tetanus, and the prognosis is favourable. It must not be confused with
the fixation of the jaw sometimes associated with a wisdom-tooth
gumboil, with tonsillitis, or with affections of the temporo-mandibular
articulation.

_Tetanus neonatorum_ is a form of tetanus occurring in infants of about
a week old. Infection takes place through the umbilicus, and manifests
itself clinically by spasms of the muscles of mastication. It is almost
invariably fatal within a few days.

_Prophylaxis._--Experience in the European War has established the
fact that the routine injection of anti-tetanic serum to all patients
with lacerated and contaminated wounds greatly reduces the frequency of
tetanus. The sooner the serum is given after the injury, the more
certain is its effect; within twenty-four hours 1500 units injected
subcutaneously is sufficient for the initial dose; if a longer period
has elapsed, 2000 to 3000 units should be given intra-muscularly, as
this ensures more rapid absorption. A second injection is given a week
after the first.

The wound must be purified in the usual way, and all instruments and
appliances used for operations on tetanic patients must be immediately
sterilised by prolonged boiling.

_Treatment._--When tetanus has developed the main indications are to
prevent the further production of toxins in the wound, and to neutralise
those that have been absorbed into the nervous system. Thorough
purification with antiseptics, excision of devitalised tissues, and
drainage of the wound are first carried out. To arrest the absorption of
toxins intra-muscular injections of 10,000 units of serum are given
daily into the muscles of the affected limb, or directly into the nerve
trunks leading from the focus of infection, in the hope of "blocking"
the nerves with antitoxin and so preventing the passage of toxins
towards the spinal cord.

To neutralise the toxins that have already reached the spinal cord, 5000
units should be injected intra-thecally daily for four or five days, the
foot of the bed being raised to enable the serum to reach the upper
parts of the cord.

The quantity of toxin circulating in the blood is so small as to be
practically negligible, and the risk of anaphylactic shock attending
intra-venous injection outweighs any benefit likely to follow this
procedure.

Baccelli recommends the injection of 20 c.c. of a 1 in 100 solution of
carbolic acid into the subcutaneous tissues every four hours during the
period that the contractions persist. Opinions vary as to the
efficiency of this treatment. The intra-thecal injection of 10 c.c. of a
15 per cent. solution of magnesium sulphate has proved beneficial in
alleviating the severity of the spasms, but does not appear to have a
curative effect.

To conserve the patient's strength by preventing or diminishing the
severity of the spasms, he should be placed in a quiet room, and every
form of disturbance avoided. Sedatives, such as bromides, paraldehyde,
or opium, must be given in large doses. Chloral is perhaps the best, and
the patient should rarely have less than 150 grains in twenty-four
hours. When he is unable to swallow, it should be given by the rectum.
The administration of chloroform is of value in conserving the strength
of the patient, by abolishing the spasms, and enabling the attendants to
administer nourishment or drugs either through a stomach tube or by the
rectum. Extreme elevation of temperature is met by tepid sponging. It is
necessary to use the catheter if retention of urine occurs.


HYDROPHOBIA

Hydrophobia is an acute infective disease following on the bite of a
rabid animal. It most commonly follows the bite or lick of a rabid dog
or cat. The virus appears to be communicated through the saliva of the
animal, and to show a marked affinity for nerve tissues; and the disease
is most likely to develop when the patient is infected on the face or
other uncovered part, or in a part richly endowed with nerves.

A dog which has bitten a person should on no account be killed until its
condition has been proved one way or the other. Should rabies develop
and its destruction become necessary, the head and spinal cord should be
retained and forwarded, packed in ice, to a competent observer. Much
anxiety to the person bitten and to his friends would be avoided if
these rules were observed, because in many cases it will be shown that
the animal did not after all suffer from rabies, and that the patient
consequently runs no risk. If, on the other hand, rabies is proved to be
present, the patient should be submitted to the Pasteur treatment.

_Clinical Features._--There is almost always a history of the patient
having been bitten or licked by an animal supposed to suffer from
rabies. The incubation period averages about forty days, but varies from
a fortnight to seven or eight months, and is shorter in young than in
old persons. The original wound has long since healed, and beyond a
slight itchiness or pain shooting along the nerves of the part, shows no
sign of disturbance. A few days of general malaise, with chills and
giddiness precede the onset of the acute manifestations, which affect
chiefly the muscles of deglutition and respiration. One of the earliest
signs is that the patient has periodically a sudden catch in his
breathing "resembling what often occurs when a person goes into a cold
bath." This is due to spasm of the diaphragm, and is frequently
accompanied by a loud-sounding hiccough, likened by the laity to the
barking of a dog. Difficulty in swallowing fluids may be the first
symptom.

The spasms rapidly spread to all the muscles of deglutition and
respiration, so that the patient not only has the greatest difficulty in
swallowing, but has a constant sense of impending suffocation. To add to
his distress, a copious secretion of viscid saliva fills his mouth. Any
voluntary effort, as well as all forms of external stimuli, only serve
to aggravate the spasms which are always induced by the attempt to
swallow fluid, or even by the sound of running water.

The temperature is raised; the pulse is small, rapid, and intermittent;
and the urine may contain sugar and albumen.

The mind may remain clear to the end, or the patient may have delusions,
supposing himself to be surrounded by terrifying forms. There is always
extreme mental agitation and despair, and the sufferer is in constant
fear of his impending fate. Happily the inevitable issue is not long
delayed, death usually occurring in from two to four days from the
onset. The symptoms of the disease are so characteristic that there is
no difficulty in diagnosis. The only condition with which it is liable
to be confused is the variety of cephalic tetanus in which the muscles
of deglutition are specially involved--the so-called tetanus
hydrophobicus.

_Prophylaxis._--The bite of an animal suspected of being rabid should be
cauterised at once by means of the actual or Paquelin cautery, or by a
strong chemical escharotic such as pure carbolic acid, after which
antiseptic dressings are applied.

It is, however, to Pasteur's _preventive inoculation_ that we must look
for our best hope of averting the onset of symptoms. "It may now be
taken as established that a grave responsibility rests on those
concerned if a person bitten by a mad animal is not subjected to the
Pasteur treatment" (Muir and Ritchie).

This method is based on the fact that the long incubation period of the
disease admits of the patient being inoculated with a modified virus
producing a mild attack, which protects him from the natural disease.

_Treatment._--When the symptoms have once developed they can only be
palliated. The patient must be kept absolutely quiet and free from all
sources of irritation. The spasms may be diminished by means of chloral
and bromides, or by chloroform inhalation.


ANTHRAX

Anthrax is a comparatively rare disease, communicable to man from
certain of the lower animals, such as sheep, oxen, horses, deer, and
other herbivora. In animals it is characterised by symptoms of acute
general poisoning, and, from the fact that it produces a marked
enlargement of the spleen, is known in veterinary surgery as "splenic
fever."

The _bacillus anthracis_ (Fig. 27), the largest of the known pathogenic
bacteria, occurs in groups or in chains made up of numerous bacilli,
each bacillus measuring from 6 to 8  in length. The organisms are found
in enormous numbers throughout the bodies of animals that have died of
anthrax, and are readily recognised and cultivated. Sporulation only
takes place outside the body, probably because free oxygen is necessary
to the process. In the spore-free condition, the organisms are readily
destroyed by ordinary germicides, and by the gastric juice. The spores,
on the other hand, have a high degree of resistance. Not only do they
remain viable in the dry state for long periods, even up to a year, but
they survive boiling for five minutes, and must be subjected to dry heat
at 140 C. for several hours before they are destroyed.

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--Bacillus of Anthrax in section of skin, from a
case of malignant pustule; shows vesicle containing bacilli.  400 diam.
Gram's stain.]

_Clinical Varieties of Anthrax._--In man, anthrax may manifest itself in
one of three clinical forms.

It may be transmitted by means of spores or bacilli directly from a
diseased animal to those who, by their occupation or otherwise, are
brought into contact with it--for example, shepherds, butchers,
veterinary surgeons, or hide-porters. Infection may occur on the face by
the use of a shaving-brush contaminated by spores. The path of infection
is usually through an abrasion of the skin, and the primary
manifestations are local, constituting what is known as _the malignant
pustule_.

In other cases the disease is contracted through the inhalation of the
dried spores into the respiratory passages. This occurs oftenest in
those who work amongst wool, fur, and rags, and a form of acute
pneumonia of great virulence ensues. This affection is known as
_wool-sorter's disease_, and is almost universally fatal.

There is reason to believe that infection may also take place by means
of spores ingested into the alimentary canal in meat or milk derived
from diseased animals, or in infected water.

#Clinical Features of Malignant Pustule.#--We shall here confine
ourselves to the consideration of the local lesion as it occurs in the
skin--_the malignant pustule_.

The point of infection is usually on an uncovered part of the body, such
as the face, hands, arms, or back of the neck, and the wound may be
exceedingly minute. After an incubation period varying from a few hours
to several days, a reddish nodule resembling a small boil appears at the
seat of inoculation, the immediately surrounding skin becomes swollen
and indurated, and over the indurated area there appear a number of
small vesicles containing serum, which at first is clear but soon
becomes blood-stained (Fig. 28). Coincidently the subcutaneous tissue
for a considerable distance around becomes markedly dematous, and the
skin red and tense. Within a few hours, blood is extravasated in the
centre of the indurated area, the blisters burst, and a dark brown or
black eschar, composed of necrosed skin and subcutaneous tissue and
altered blood, forms (Fig. 29). Meanwhile the induration extends, fresh
vesicles form and in turn burst, and the eschar increases in size. The
neighbouring lymph glands soon become swollen and tender. The affected
part is hot and itchy, but the patient does not complain of great pain.
There is a moderate degree of constitutional disturbance, with headache,
nausea, and sometimes shivering.

If the infection becomes generalised--_anthracmia_--the temperature
rises to 103 or 104 F., the pulse becomes feeble and rapid, and other
signs of severe blood-poisoning appear: vomiting, diarrha, pains in the
limbs, headache and delirium, and the condition proves fatal in from
five to eight days.

_Differential Diagnosis._--When the malignant pustule is fully
developed, the central slough with the surrounding vesicles and the
widespread dema are characteristic. The bacillus can be obtained from
the peripheral portion of the slough, from the blisters, and from the
adjacent lymph vessels and glands. The occupation of the patient may
suggest the possibility of anthrax infection.

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Malignant Pustule, third day after infection
with Anthrax, showing great dema of upper extremity and pectoral region
(cf. Fig. 29).]

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--Malignant Pustule, fourteen days after
infection, showing black eschar in process of separation. The dema has
largely disappeared. Treated by Sclavo's serum (cf. Fig. 28).]

_Prophylaxis._--Any wound suspected of being infected with anthrax
should at once be cauterised with caustic potash, the actual cautery, or
pure carbolic acid.

_Treatment._--The best results hitherto obtained have followed the use
of the anti-anthrax serum introduced by Sclavo. The initial dose is 40
c.c., and if the serum is given early in the disease, the beneficial
effects are manifest in a few hours. Favourable results have also
followed the use of pyocyanase, a vaccine prepared from the bacillus
pyocyaneus.

By some it is recommended that the local lesion should be freely
excised; others advocate cauterisation of the affected part with solid
caustic potash till all the indurated area is softened. Grf has had
excellent results by the latter method in a large series of cases, the
dema subsiding in about twenty-four hours and the constitutional
symptoms rapidly improving. Wolff and Wiewiorowski, on the other hand,
have had equally good results by simply protecting the local lesion with
a mild antiseptic dressing, and relying upon general treatment.

The general treatment consists in feeding and stimulating the patient as
freely as possible. Quinine, in 5 to 10 grain doses every four hours,
and powdered ipecacuanha, in 40 to 60 grain doses every four hours, have
also been employed with apparent benefit.


GLANDERS

Glanders is due to the action of a specific bacterium, the _bacillus
mallei_, which resembles the tubercle bacillus, save that it is somewhat
shorter and broader, and does not stain by Gram's method. It requires
higher temperatures for its cultivation than the tubercle bacillus, and
its growth on potato is of a characteristic chocolate-brown colour, with
a greenish-yellow ring at the margin of the growth. The bacillus mallei
retains its vitality for long periods under ordinary conditions, but is
readily killed by heat and chemical agents. It does not form spores.

_Clinical Features._--Both in the lower animals and in man the bacillus
gives rise to two distinct types of disease--_acute glanders_, and
_chronic glanders_ or _farcy_.

Acute Glanders is most commonly met with in the horse and in other
equine animals, horned cattle being immune. It affects the septum of the
nose and adjacent parts, firm, translucent, greyish nodules containing
lymphoid and epithelioid cells appearing in the mucous membrane. These
nodules subsequently break down in the centre, forming irregular
ulcers, which are attended with profuse discharge, and marked
inflammatory swelling. The cervical lymph glands, as well as the lungs,
spleen, and liver, may be the seat of secondary nodules.

_In man_, acute glanders is commoner than the chronic variety. Infection
always takes place through an abraded surface, and usually on one of the
uncovered parts of the body--most commonly the skin of the hands, arms,
or face; or on the mucous membrane of the mouth, nose, or eye. The
disease has been acquired by accidental inoculation in the course of
experimental investigations in the laboratory, and proved fatal. The
incubation period is from three to five days.

The _local_ manifestations are pain and swelling in the region of the
infected wound, with inflammatory redness around it and along the lines
of the superficial lymphatics. In the course of a week, small, firm
nodules appear, and are rapidly transformed into pustules. These may
occur on the face and in the vicinity of joints, and may be mistaken for
the eruption of small-pox.

After breaking down, these pustules give rise to irregular ulcers, which
by their confluence lead to extensive destruction of skin. Sometimes the
nasal mucous membrane becomes affected, and produces a discharge--at
first watery, but later sanious and purulent. Necrosis of the bones of
the nose may take place, in which case the discharge becomes peculiarly
offensive. In nearly every case metastatic abscesses form in different
parts of the body, such as the lungs, joints, or muscles.

During the development of the disease the patient feels ill, complains
of headache and pains in the limbs, the temperature rises to 104 or
even to 106 F., and assumes a pymic type. The pulse becomes rapid and
weak. The tongue is dry and brown. There is profuse sweating,
albuminuria, and often insomnia with delirium. Death may take place
within a week, but more frequently occurs during the second or third
week.

_Differential Diagnosis._--There is nothing characteristic in the site
of the primary lesion in man, and the condition may, during the early
stages, be mistaken for a boil or carbuncle, or for any acute
inflammatory condition. Later, the disease may simulate acute articular
rheumatism, or may manifest all the symptoms of acute septicmia or
pymia. The diagnosis is established by the recognition of the bacillus.
Veterinary surgeons attach great importance to the mallein test as a
means of diagnosis in animals, but in the human subject its use is
attended with considerable risk and is not to be recommended.

_Treatment._--Excision of the primary nodule, followed by the
application of the thermo-cautery and sponging with pure carbolic acid,
should be carried out, provided the condition is sufficiently limited to
render complete removal practicable.

When secondary abscesses form in accessible situations, they must be
incised, disinfected, and drained. The general treatment is carried out
on the same lines as in other acute infective diseases.

#Chronic Glanders.#--_In the horse_ the chronic form of glanders is
known as _farcy_, and follows infection through an abrasion of the skin,
involving chiefly the superficial lymph vessels and glands. The
lymphatics become indurated and nodular, constituting what veterinarians
call _farcy pipes_ and _farcy buds_.

_In man_ also the clinical features of the chronic variety of the
disease are somewhat different from those of the acute form. Here, too,
infection takes place through a broken cutaneous surface, and leads to a
superficial lymphangitis with nodular thickening of the lymphatics
(_farcy buds_). The neighbouring glands soon become swollen and
indurated. The primary lesion meanwhile inflames, suppurates, and, after
breaking down, leaves a large, irregular ulcer with thickened edges and
a foul, purulent or bloody discharge. The glands break down in the same
way, and lead to wide destruction of skin, and the resulting sinuses and
ulcers are exceedingly intractable. Secondary deposits in the
subcutaneous tissue, the muscles, and other parts, are not uncommon, and
the nasal mucous membrane may become involved. The disease often runs a
chronic course, extending to four or five months, or even longer.
Recovery takes place in about 50 per cent. of cases, but the
convalescence is prolonged, and at any time the disease may assume the
characters of the acute variety and speedily prove fatal.

The _differential diagnosis_ is often difficult, especially in the
chronic nodules, in which it may be impossible to demonstrate the
bacillus. The ulcerated lesions of farcy have to be distinguished from
those of tubercle, syphilis, and other forms of infective granuloma.

_Treatment._--Limited areas of disease should be completely excised. The
general condition of the patient must be improved by tonics, good food,
and favourable hygienic surroundings. In some cases potassium iodide
acts beneficially.


ACTINOMYCOSIS

Actinomycosis is a chronic disease due to the action of an organism
somewhat higher in the vegetable scale than ordinary bacteria--the
_streptothrix actinomyces_ or _ray fungus_.

[Illustration: FIG. 30.--Section of Actinomycosis Colony in Pus from
Abscess of Liver, showing filaments and clubs of streptothrix
actinomyces.  400 diam. Gram's stain.]

_Etiology and Morbid Anatomy._--The actinomyces, which has never been
met with outside the body, gives rise in oxen, horses, and other animals
to tumour-like masses composed of granulation tissue; and in man to
chronic suppurative processes which may result in a condition resembling
chronic pymia. The actinomyces is more complex in structure than other
pathogenic organisms, and occurs in the tissues in the form of small,
round, semi-translucent bodies, about the size of a pin-head or less,
and consisting of colonies of the fungus. On account of their yellow
tint they are spoken of as "sulphur grains." Each colony is made up of a
series of thin, interlacing, and branching _filaments_, some of which
are broken up so as to form masses or chains of _cocci_; and around the
periphery of the colony are elongated, pear-shaped, hyaline, _club-like
bodies_ (Fig. 30).

Infection is believed to be conveyed by the husks of cereals, especially
barley; and the organism has been found adhering to particles of grain
embedded in the tissues of animals suffering from the disease. In the
human subject there is often a history of exposure to infection from
such sources, and the disease is said to be most common during the
harvesting months.

Around each colony of actinomyces is a zone of granulation tissue in
which suppuration usually occurs, so that the fungus comes to lie in a
bath of greenish-yellow pus. As the process spreads these purulent foci
become confluent and form abscess cavities. When metastasis takes place,
as it occasionally does, the fungus is transmitted by the blood vessels,
as in pymia.

_Clinical features._--In man the disease may be met with in the skin,
the organisms gaining access through an abrasion, and spreading by the
formation of new nodules in the same way as tuberculosis.

The region of the mouth and jaws is one of the commonest sites of
surgical actinomycosis. Infection takes place, as a rule, along the side
of a carious tooth, and spreads to the lower jaw. A swelling is slowly
and insidiously developed, but when the loose connective tissue of the
neck becomes infiltrated, the spread is more rapid. The whole region
becomes infiltrated and swollen, and the skin ultimately gives way and
free suppuration occurs, resulting in the formation of sinuses. The
characteristic greenish-grey or yellow granules are seen in the pus, and
when examined microscopically reveal the colonies of actinomyces.

Less frequently the maxilla becomes affected, and the disease may spread
to the base of the skull and brain. The vertebr may become involved by
infection taking place through the pharynx or sophagus, and leading to
a condition simulating tuberculous disease of the spine. When it
implicates the intestinal canal and its accessory glands, the lungs,
pleura, and bronchial tubes, or the brain, the disease is not amenable
to surgical treatment.

_Differential Diagnosis._--The conditions likely to be mistaken for
surgical actinomycosis are sarcoma, tubercle, and syphilis. In the early
stages the differential diagnosis is exceedingly difficult. In many
cases it is only possible when suppuration has occurred and the fungus
can be demonstrated.

The slow destruction of the affected tissue by suppuration, the absence
of pain, tenderness, and redness, simulate tuberculosis, but the absence
of glandular involvement helps to distinguish it.

Syphilitic lesions are liable to be mistaken for actinomycosis, all the
more that in both diseases improvement follows the administration of
iodides. When it affects the lower jaw, in its early stages,
actinomycosis may closely simulate a periosteal sarcoma.

[Illustration: FIG. 31.--Actinomycosis of Maxilla. The disease spread to
opposite side; finally implicated base of skull, and proved fatal.
Treated by radium.

(Mr. D. P. D. Wilkie's case.)]

The recognition of the fungus is the crucial point in diagnosis.

_Prognosis._--Spontaneous cure rarely occurs. When the disease
implicates internal organs, it is almost always fatal. On external parts
the destructive process gradually spreads, and the patient eventually
succumbs to superadded septic infection. When, from its situation, the
primary focus admits of removal, the prognosis is more favourable.

_Treatment._--The surgical treatment is early and free removal of the
affected tissues, after which the wound is cauterised by the actual
cautery, and sponged over with pure carbolic acid. The cavity is packed
with iodoform gauze, no attempt being made to close the wound.

Success has attended the use of a vaccine prepared from cultures of the
organism; and the X-rays and radium, combined with the administration of
iodides in large doses, or with intra-muscular injections of a 10 per
cent. solution of cacodylate of soda, have proved of benefit.

MYCETOMA, OR MADURA FOOT.--Mycetoma is a chronic disease due to
an organism resembling that of actinomycosis, but not identical with it.
It is endemic in certain tropical countries, and is most frequently met
with in India. Infection takes place through an abrasion of the skin,
and the disease usually occurs on the feet of adult males who work
barefooted in the fields.

_Clinical Features._--The disease begins on the foot as an indurated
patch, which becomes discoloured and permeated by black or yellow
nodules containing the organism. These nodules break down by
suppuration, and numerous minute abscesses lined by granulation tissues
are thus formed. In the pus are found yellow particles likened to
fish-roe, or black pigmented granules like gunpowder. Sinuses form, and
the whole foot becomes greatly swollen and distorted by flattening of
the sole and dorsiflexion of the toes. Areas of caries or necrosis occur
in the bones, and the disease gradually extends up the leg (Fig. 32).
There is but little pain, and no glandular involvement or constitutional
disturbance. The disease runs a prolonged course, sometimes lasting for
twenty or thirty years. Spontaneous cure never takes place, and the risk
to life is that of prolonged suppuration.

If the disease is localised, it may be removed by the knife or sharp
spoon, and the part afterwards cauterised. As a rule, amputation well
above the disease is the best line of treatment. Unlike actinomycosis,
this disease does not appear to be benefited by iodides.

[Illustration: FIG. 32.--Mycetoma, or Madura Foot. (Museum of Royal
College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.)]

DELHI BOIL.--_Synonyms_--Aleppo boil, Biskra button, Furunculus
orientalis, Natal sore.

Delhi boil is a chronic inflammatory disease, most commonly met with in
India, especially towards the end of the wet season. The disease occurs
oftenest on the face, and is believed to be due to an organism, although
this has not been demonstrated. The infection is supposed to be conveyed
through water used for washing, or by the bites of insects.

_Clinical Features._--A red spot, resembling the mark of a mosquito
bite, appears on the affected part, and is attended with itching. After
becoming papular and increasing to the size of a pea, desquamation takes
place, leaving a dull-red surface, over which in the course of several
weeks there develops a series of small yellowish-white spots, from which
serum exudes, and, drying, forms a thick scab. Under this scab the skin
ulcerates, leaving small oval sores with sharply bevelled edges, and an
uneven floor covered with yellow or sanious pus. These sores vary in
number from one to forty or fifty. They may last for months and then
heal spontaneously, or may continue to spread until arrested by suitable
treatment. There is no enlargement of adjacent glands, and but little
inflammatory reaction in the surrounding tissues; nor is there any
marked constitutional disturbance. Recovery is often followed by
cicatricial contraction leading to deformity of the face.

The _treatment_ consists in destroying the original papule by the actual
cautery, acid nitrate of mercury, or pure carbolic acid. The ulcers
should be scraped with the sharp spoon, and cauterised.

CHIGOE.--Chigoe or jigger results from the introduction of the
eggs of the sand-flea (_Pulex penetrans_) into the tissues. It occurs in
tropical Africa, South America, and the West Indies. The impregnated
female flea remains attached to the part till the eggs mature, when by
their irritation they cause localised inflammation with pustules or
vesicles on the surface. Children are most commonly attacked,
particularly about the toe-nails and on the scrotum. The treatment
consists in picking out the insect with a blunt needle, special care
being taken not to break it up. The puncture is then cauterised. The
application of essential oils to the feet acts as a preventive.

POISONING BY INSECTS.--The bites of certain insects, such as
mosquitoes, midges, different varieties of flies, wasps, and spiders,
may be followed by serious complications. The effects are mainly due to
the injection of an irritant acid secretion, the exact nature of which
has not been ascertained.

The local lesion is a puncture, surrounded by a zone of hypermia,
wheals, or vesicles, and is associated with burning sensations and
itching which usually pass off in a few hours, but may recur at
intervals, especially when the patient is warm in bed. Scratching also
reproduces the local signs and symptoms. Where the connective tissue is
loose--for example, in the eyelid or scrotum--there is often
considerable swelling; and in the mouth and fauces this may lead to
dema of the glottis, which may prove fatal.

The _treatment_ consists in the local application of dilute alkalies
such as ammonia water, solutions of carbonate or bicarbonate of soda, or
sal-volatile. Weak carbolic lotions, or lead and opium lotion, are
useful in allaying the local irritation. One of the best means of
neutralising the poison is to apply to the sting a drop of a mixture
containing equal parts of pure carbolic acid and liquor ammoni.

Free stimulation is called for when severe constitutional symptoms are
present.

SNAKE-BITES.--We are here only concerned with the injuries
inflicted by the venomous varieties of snakes, the most important of
which are the hooded snakes of India, the rattle-snakes of America, the
horned snakes of Africa, the viper of Europe, and the adder of the
United Kingdom.

While the virulence of these creatures varies widely, they are all
capable of producing in a greater or less degree symptoms of acute
poisoning in man and other animals. By means of two recurved fangs
attached to the upper jaw, and connected by a duct with poison-secreting
glands, they introduce into their prey a thick, transparent, yellowish
fluid, of acid reaction, probably of the nature of an albumose, and
known as the _venom_.

The _clinical features_ resulting from the injection of the venom vary
directly in intensity with the amount of the poison introduced, and the
rapidity with which it reaches the circulating blood, being most marked
when it immediately enters a large vein. The poison is innocuous when
taken into the stomach.

_Locally_ the snake inflicts a double wound, passing vertically into the
subcutaneous tissue; the edges of the punctures are ecchymosed, and the
adjacent vessels the seat of thrombosis. Immediately there is intense
pain, and considerable swelling with congestion, which tends to spread
towards the trunk. Extensive gangrene may ensue. There is no special
involvement of the lymphatics.

The _general symptoms_ may come on at once if the snake is a
particularly venomous one, or not for some hours if less virulent. In
the majority of viper or adder bites the constitutional disturbance is
slight and transient, if it appears at all. Snake-bites in children are
particularly dangerous.

The patient's condition is one of profound shock with faintness,
giddiness, dimness of sight, and a feeling of great terror. The pupils
dilate, the skin becomes moist with a clammy sweat, and nausea with
vomiting, sometimes of blood, ensues. High fever, cramps, loss of
sensation, hmaturia, and melna are among the other symptoms that may
be present. The pulse becomes feeble and rapid, the respiratory nerve
centres are profoundly depressed, and delirium followed by coma usually
precedes the fatal issue, which may take place in from five to
forty-eight hours. If the patient survives for two days the prognosis is
favourable.

_Treatment._--A broad ligature should be tied tightly round the limb
above the seat of infection, to prevent the poison passing into the
general circulation, and bleeding from the wound should be encouraged.
The application of an elastic bandage from above downward to empty the
blood out of the infected portion of the limb has been recommended. The
whole of the bite should at once be excised, and crystals of
permanganate of potash rubbed into the wound until it is black, or
peroxide of hydrogen applied with the object of destroying the poison by
oxidation.

The general treatment consists in free stimulation with whisky, brandy,
ammonia, digitalis, etc. Hypodermic injections of strychnin in doses
sufficiently large to produce a slight degree of poisoning by the drug
are particularly useful. The most rational treatment, when it is
available, is the use of the _antivenin_ introduced by Fraser and
Calmette.




CHAPTER VIII

TUBERCULOSIS


Tubercle bacillus--Methods of infection--Inherited and acquired
    predisposition--Relationship of tuberculosis to injury--Human and
    bovine tuberculosis--Action of the bacillus upon the
    tissues--Tuberculous granulation tissue--Natural cure--Recrudescence
    of the disease--THE TUBERCULOUS ABSCESS--Contents and wall of the
    abscess--Tuberculous sinuses.

Tuberculosis occurs more frequently in some situations than in others;
it is common, for example, in lymph glands, in bones and joints, in the
peritoneum, the intestine, the kidney, prostate and testis, and in the
skin and subcutaneous cellular tissue; it is seldom met with in the
breast or in muscles, and it rarely affects the ovary, the pancreas, the
parotid, or the thyreoid.

_Tubercle bacilli_ vary widely in their virulence, and they are more
tenacious of life than the common pyogenic bacteria. In a dry state, for
example, they can retain their vitality for months; and they can also
survive immersion in water for prolonged periods. They resist the action
of the products of putrefaction for a considerable time, and are not
destroyed by digestive processes in the stomach and intestine. They may
be killed in a few minutes by boiling, or by exposure to steam under
pressure, or by immersion for less than a minute in 1 in 20 carbolic
lotion.

#Methods of Infection.#--In marked contrast to what obtains in the
infective diseases that have already been described, tuberculosis rarely
results from the _infection of a wound_. In exceptional instances,
however, this does occur, and in illustration of the fact may be cited
the case of a servant who cut her finger with a broken spittoon
containing the sputum of her consumptive master; the wound subsequently
showed evidence of tuberculous infection, which ultimately spread up
along the lymph vessels of the arm. Pathologists, too, whose hands,
before the days of rubber gloves, were frequently exposed to the contact
of tuberculous tissues and pus, were liable to suffer from a form of
tuberculosis of the skin of the finger, known as _anatomical tubercle_.
Slight wounds of the feet in children who go about barefoot in towns
sometimes become infected with tubercle. Operation wounds made with
instruments contaminated with tuberculous material have also been known
to become infected. It is highly probable that the common form of
tuberculosis of the skin known as "lupus" arises by direct infection
from without.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.--Tubercle Bacilli in caseous material
 1000 diam. Z. Neilsen stain.]

In the vast majority of cases the tubercle bacillus gains entrance to
the body by way of the mucous surfaces, the organisms being either
inhaled or swallowed; those inhaled are mostly derived from the human
subject, those swallowed, from cattle. Bacilli, whether inhaled or
swallowed, are especially apt to lodge about the pharynx and pass to the
pharyngeal lymphoid tissue and tonsils, and by way of the lymph vessels
to the glands. The glands most frequently infected in this way are the
cervical glands, and those within the cavity of the chest--particularly
the bronchial glands at the root of the lung. From these, infection
extends at any later period in life to the bones, joints, and internal
organs.

There is reason to believe that the organisms may lie in a dormant
condition for an indefinite period in these glands, and only become
active long afterwards, when some depression of the patient's health
produces conditions which favour their growth. When the organisms become
active in this way, the tuberculous tissue undergoes softening and
disintegration, and the infective material, by bursting into an adjacent
vein, may enter the blood-stream, in which it is carried to distant
parts of the body. In this way a _general tuberculosis_ may be set up,
or localised foci of tuberculosis may develop in the tissues in which
the organisms lodge. Many tuberculous patients are to be regarded as
possessing in their bronchial glands, or elsewhere, an internal store of
bacilli, to which the disease for which advice is sought owes its
origin, and from which similar outbreaks of tuberculosis may originate
in the future.

_The alimentary mucous membrane_, especially that of the lower ileum and
ccum, is exposed to infection by swallowed sputum and by food
materials, such as milk, containing tubercle bacilli. The organisms may
lodge in the mucous membrane and cause tuberculous ulceration, or they
may be carried through the wall of the bowel into the lacteals, along
which they pass to the mesenteric glands where they become arrested and
give rise to tuberculous disease.

#Relationship of Tuberculosis to Trauma.#--Any tissue whose vitality has
been lowered by injury or disease furnishes a favourable nidus for the
lodgment and growth of tubercle bacilli. The injury or disease, however,
is to be looked upon as determining the _localisation_ of the
tuberculous lesion rather than as an essential factor in its causation.
In a person, for example, in whose blood tubercle bacilli are
circulating and reaching every tissue and organ of the body, the
occurrence of tuberculous disease in a particular part may be determined
by the depression of the tissues resulting from an injury of that part.
There can be no doubt that excessive movement and jarring of a limb
aggravates tuberculous disease of a joint; also that an injury may light
up a focus that has been long quiescent, but we do not agree with
those--Da Costa, for example--who maintain that injury may be a
determining cause of tuberculosis. The question is not one of mere
academic interest, but one that may raise important issues in the law
courts.

#Human and Bovine Tuberculosis.#--The frequency of the bovine bacillus
in the abdominal and in the glandular and osseous tuberculous lesions of
children would appear to justify the conclusion that the disease is
transmissible from the ox to the human subject, and that the milk of
tuberculous cows is probably a common vehicle of transmission.

#Changes in the Tissues following upon the successful Lodgment of
Tubercle Bacilli.#--The action of the bacilli on the tissues results in
the formation of granulation tissue comprising characteristic tissue
elements and with a marked tendency to undergo caseation.

The recognition of the characteristic elements, with or without
caseation, is usually sufficient evidence of the tuberculous nature of
any portion of tissue examined for diagnostic purposes. The recognition
of the bacillus itself by appropriate methods of staining makes the
diagnosis a certainty; but as it is by no means easy to identify the
organism in many forms of surgical tuberculosis, it may be necessary to
have recourse to experimental inoculation of susceptible animals such as
guinea-pigs.

The changes subsequent to the formation of tuberculous granulation
tissue are liable to many variations. It must always be borne in mind
that although the bacilli have effected a lodgment and have inaugurated
disease, the relation between them and the tissues remains one of mutual
antagonism; which of them is to gain and keep the upper hand in the
conflict depends on their relative powers of resistance.

If the tissues prevail, there ensues a process of repair. In the
immediate vicinity of the area of infection young connective tissue, and
later, fibrous tissue, is formed. This may replace the tuberculous
tissue and bring about repair--a fibrous cicatrix remaining to mark the
scene of the previous contest. Scars of this nature are frequently
discovered at the apex of the lung after death in persons who have at
one time suffered from pulmonary phthisis. Under other circumstances,
the tuberculous tissue that has undergone caseation, or even
calcification, is only encapsulated by the new fibrous tissue, like a
foreign body. Although this may be regarded as a victory for the
tissues, the cure, if such it may be called, is not necessarily a
permanent one, for at any subsequent period, if the part affected is
disturbed by injury or through some other influence, the encapsulated
tubercle may again become active and get the upper hand of the tissues,
and there results a relapse or recrudescence of the disease. This
_tendency to relapse_ after apparent cure is a notable feature of
tuberculous disease as it is met with in the spine, or in the
hip-joint, and it necessitates a prolonged course of treatment to give
the best chance of a lasting cure.

If, however, at the inauguration of the tuberculous disease the bacilli
prevail, the infection tends to spread into the tissues surrounding
those originally infected, and more and more tuberculous granulation
tissue is formed. Finally the tuberculous tissue breaks down and
liquefies, resulting in the formation of a cold abscess. In their
struggle with the tissues, tubercle bacilli receive considerable support
and assistance from any pyogenic organisms that may be present. A
tuberculous infection may exhibit its aggressive qualities in a more
serious manner by sending off detachments of bacilli, which are carried
by the lymphatics to the nearest glands, or by the blood-stream to more
distant, and it may be to all, parts of the body. When the infection is
thus generalised, the condition is called _general tuberculosis_.
Considering the extraordinary frequency of localised forms of surgical
tuberculosis, general dissemination of the disease is rare.

#The clinical features# of surgical tuberculosis will be described with
the individual tissues and organs, as they vary widely according to the
situation of the lesion.

#The general treatment# consists in combating the adverse influences
that have been mentioned as increasing the liability to tuberculous
infection. Within recent years the value of the "open-air" treatment has
been widely recognised. An open-air life, even in the centre of a city,
may be followed by marked improvement, especially in the hospital class
of patient, whose home surroundings tend to favour the progress of the
disease. The purer air of places away from centres of population is
still better; and, according to the idiosyncrasies of the individual
patient, mountain air or that of the sea coast may be preferred. In view
of the possible discomforts and gastric disturbance which may attend a
sea-voyage, this should be recommended to patients suffering from
tuberculous lesions with more caution than has hitherto been exercised.
The diet must be a liberal one, and should include those articles which
are at the same time easily digested and nourishing, especially proteids
and fats; milk obtained from a reliable source and underdone
butcher-meat are among the best. When the ordinary nourishment taken is
insufficient, it may be supplemented by such articles as malt extract,
stout, and cod-liver oil. The last is specially beneficial in patients
who do not take enough fat in other forms. It is noteworthy that many
tuberculous patients show an aversion to fat.

For _the use of tuberculin in diagnosis_ and for _the vaccine treatment
of tuberculosis_ the reader is referred to text-books on medicine.

In addition to increasing the resisting power of the patient, it is
important to enable the fluids of the body, so altered, to come into
contact with the tuberculous focus. One of the obstacles to this is that
the focus is often surrounded by tissues or fluids which have been
almost entirely deprived of bactericidal substances. In the case of
caseated glands in the neck, for example, it is obvious that the removal
of this inert material is necessary before the tissues can be irrigated
with fluids of high bactericidal value. Again, in tuberculous ascites
the abdominal cavity is filled with a fluid practically devoid of
anti-bacterial substances, so that the bacilli are able to thrive and
work their will on the tissues. When the stagnant fluid is got rid of by
laparotomy, the parts are immediately douched with lymph charged with
protective substances, the bactericidal power of which may be many times
that of the fluid displaced.

It is probable that the beneficial influence of _counter-irritants_,
such as blisters, and exposure to the _Finsen light_ and other forms of
_rays_, is to be attributed in part to the increased flow of blood to
the infected tissues.

_Artificial Hypermia._--As has been explained, the induction of
hypermia by the method devised by Bier, constitutes one of our most
efficient means of combating bacterial infection. The treatment of
tuberculosis on this plan has been proved by experience to be a valuable
addition to our therapeutic measures, and the simplicity of its
application has led to its being widely adopted in practice. It results
in an increase in the reactive changes around the tuberculous focus, an
increase in the immigration of leucocytes, and infiltration with the
lymphocytes.

The constricting bandage should be applied at some distance above the
seat of infection; for instance, in disease of the wrist, it is put on
above the elbow, and it must not cause pain either where it is applied
or in the diseased part. The bandage is only applied for a few hours
each day, either two hours at a time or twice a day for one hour, and,
while it is on, all dressings are removed save a piece of sterile gauze
over any wound or sinus that may be present. The process of cure takes a
long time--nine or even twelve months in the case of a severe joint
affection.

In cases in which a constricting bandage is inapplicable, for example,
in cold abscesses, tuberculous glands or tendon sheaths, Klapp's suction
bell is employed. The cup is applied for five minutes at a time and then
taken off for three minutes, and this is repeated over a period of
about three-quarters of an hour. The pus is allowed to escape by a small
incision, and no packing or drain should be introduced.

It has been found that tuberculous lesions tend to undergo cure
when the infected tissues are exposed to the rays of the
sun--_heliotherapy_--therefore whenever practicable this therapeutic
measure should be had recourse to.

Since the introduction of the methods of treatment described above, and
especially by their employment at an early stage in the disease, the
number of cases of tuberculosis requiring operative interference has
greatly diminished. There are still circumstances, however, in which an
operation is required; for example, in disease of the lymph glands for
the removal of inert masses of caseous material, in disease of bone for
the removal of sequestra, or in disease of joints to improve the
function of the limb. It is to be understood, however, that operative
treatment must always be preceded by and combined with other therapeutic
measures.


TUBERCULOUS ABSCESS

The caseation of tuberculous granulation tissue and its liquefaction is
a slow and insidious process, and is unattended with the classical signs
of inflammation--hence the terms "cold" and "chronic" applied to the
tuberculous abscess.

In a cold abscess, such as that which results from tuberculous disease
of the vertebr, the clinical appearances are those of a soft, fluid
swelling without heat, redness, pain, or fever. When toxic symptoms are
present, they are usually due to a mixed infection.

A tuberculous abscess results from the disintegration and liquefaction
of tuberculous granulation tissue which has undergone caseation. Fluid
and cells from the adjacent blood vessels exude into the cavity, and
lead to variations in the character of its contents. In some cases the
contents consist of a clear amber-coloured fluid, in which are suspended
fragments of caseated tissue; in others, of a white material like
cream-cheese. From the addition of a sufficient number of leucocytes,
the contents may resemble the pus of an ordinary abscess.

The wall of the abscess is lined with tuberculous granulation tissue,
the inner layers of which are undergoing caseation and disintegration,
and present a shreddy appearance; the outer layers consist of
tuberculous tissue which has not yet undergone caseation. The abscess
tends to increase in size by progressive liquefaction of the inner
layers, caseation of the outer layers, and the further invasion of the
surrounding tissues by tubercle bacilli. In this way a tuberculous
abscess is capable of indefinite extension and increase in size until it
reaches a free surface and ruptures externally. The direction in which
it spreads is influenced by the anatomical arrangement of the tissues,
and possibly to some extent by gravity, and the abscess may reach the
surface at a considerable distance from its seat of origin. The best
illustration of this is seen in the psoas abscess, which may originate
in the dorsal vertebr, extend downwards within the sheath of the psoas
muscle, and finally appear in the thigh.

#Clinical Features.#--The insidious development of the tuberculous
abscess is one of its characteristic features. The swelling may attain a
considerable size without the patient being aware of its existence, and,
as a matter of fact, it is often discovered accidentally. The absence of
toxmia is to be associated with the incapacity of the wall of the
abscess to permit of absorption; this is shown also by the fact that
when even a large quantity of iodoform is inserted into the cavity of
the abscess, there are no symptoms of poisoning. The abscess varies in
size from a small cherry to a cavity containing several pints of pus.
Its shape also varies; it is usually that of a flattened sphere, but it
may present pockets or burrows running in various directions. Sometimes
it is hour-glass or dumb-bell shaped, as is well illustrated in the
region of the groin in disease of the spine or pelvis, where there may
be a large sac occupying the venter ilii, and a smaller one in the
thigh, the two communicating by a narrow channel under Poupart's
ligament. By pressing with the fingers the pus may be displaced from one
compartment to the other. The usual course of events is that the abscess
progresses slowly, and finally reaches a free surface--generally the
skin. As it does so there may be some pain, redness, and local elevation
of temperature. Fluctuation becomes evident and superficial, and the
skin becomes livid and finally gives way. If the case is left to nature,
the discharge of pus continues, and the track opening on the skin
remains as a _sinus_. The persistence of suppuration is due to the
presence in the wall of the abscess and of the sinus, of tuberculous
granulation tissue, which, so long as it remains, continues to furnish
discharge, and so prevents healing. Sooner or later pyogenic organisms
gain access to the sinus, and through it to the wall of the abscess.
They tend further to depress the resisting power of the tissues, and
thereby aggravate and perpetuate the tuberculous disease. This
superadded infection with pyogenic organisms exposes the patient to the
further risks of septic intoxication, especially in the form of hectic
fever and septicmia, and increases the liability to general
tuberculosis, and to waxy degeneration of the internal organs. The mixed
infection is chiefly responsible for the pyrexia, sweating, and
emaciation which the laity associate with consumptive disease. A
tuberculous abscess may in one or other of these ways be a cause of
death.

_Residual abscess_ is the name given to an abscess that makes its
appearance months, or even years, after the apparent cure of tuberculous
disease--as, for example, in the hip-joint or spine. It is called
residual because it has its origin in the remains of the original
disease.

[Illustration: FIG. 34.--Tuberculous Abscess in right lumbar region in a
woman aged thirty.]

#Diagnosis.#--A cold abscess is to be diagnosed from a syphilitic gumma,
a cyst, and from lipoma and other soft tumours. The differential
diagnosis of these affections will be considered later; it is often made
easier by recognising the presence of a lesion that is likely to cause a
cold abscess, such as tuberculous disease of the spine or of the
sacro-iliac joint. When it is about to burst externally, it may be
difficult to distinguish a tuberculous abscess from one due to infection
with pyogenic organisms. Even when the abscess is opened, the
appearances of the pus may not supply the desired information, and it
may be necessary to submit it to bacteriological examination. When the
pus is found to be sterile, it is usually safe to assume that the
condition is tuberculous, as in other forms of suppuration the causative
organisms can usually be recognised. Experimental inoculation will
establish a definite diagnosis, but it implies a delay of two to three
weeks.

#Treatment.#--The tuberculous abscess may recede and disappear under
general treatment. Many surgeons advise that so long as the abscess is
quiescent it should be left alone. All agree, however, that if it shows
a tendency to spread, to increase in size, or to approach the skin or a
mucous membrane, something should be done to avoid the danger of its
bursting and becoming infected with pyogenic organisms. Simple
evacuation of the abscess by a hollow needle may suffice, or bismuth or
iodoform may be introduced after withdrawal of the contents.

_Evacuation of the Abscess and Injection of Iodoform._--The iodoform is
employed in the form of a 10 per cent. solution in ether or the same
proportion suspended in glycerin. Either form becomes sterile soon after
it is prepared. Its curative effects would appear to depend upon the
liberation of iodine, which restrains the activity of the bacilli, and
upon its capacity for irritating the tissues and so inducing a
protective leucocytosis, and also of stimulating the formation of scar
tissue. An ansthetic is rarely called for, except in children. The
abscess is first evacuated by means of a large trocar and cannula
introduced obliquely through the overlying soft parts, avoiding any part
where the skin is thin or red. If the cannula becomes blocked with
caseous material, it may be cleared with a probe, or a small quantity of
saline solution is forced in by the syringe. The iodoform is injected by
means of a glass-barrelled syringe, which is firmly screwed on to the
cannula. The amount injected varies with the size of the abscess and the
age of the patient; it may be said to range from two or three drams in
the case of children to several ounces in large abscesses in adults. The
cannula is withdrawn, the puncture is closed by a Michel's clip, and a
dressing applied so as to exert a certain amount of compression. If the
abscess fills up again, the procedure should be repeated; in doing so,
the contents show the coloration due to liberated iodine. When the
contents are semi-solid, and cannot be withdrawn even through a large
cannula, an incision must be made, and, after the cavity has been
emptied, the iodoform is introduced through a short rubber tube attached
to the syringe. Experience has shown that even large abscesses, such as
those associated with spinal disease, may be cured by iodoform
injection, and this even when rupture of the abscess on the skin surface
has appeared to be imminent.

Another method of treatment which is less popular now than it used to
be, and which is chiefly applicable in abscesses of moderate size, is by
_incision of the abscess and removal of the tuberculous tissue in its
wall_ with the sharp spoon. An incision is made which will give free
access to the interior of the abscess, so that outlying pockets or
recesses may not be overlooked. After removal of the pus, the wall of
the abscess is scraped with the Volkmann spoon or with Barker's flushing
spoon, to get rid of the tuberculous tissue with which it is lined. In
using the spoon, care must be taken that its sharp edge does not
perforate the wall of a vein or other important structure. Any debris
which may adhere to the walls is removed by rubbing with dry gauze. The
oozing of blood is arrested by packing the cavity for a few minutes with
gauze. After the packing is removed, iodoform powder is rubbed into the
raw surface. The soft parts divided by the incision are sutured in
layers so as to ensure primary union. If, on the other hand, there is
fear of a mixed infection, especially in abscesses near the rectum or
anus, it is safer to treat it by the open method, packing the cavity
with iodoform worsted or bismuth gauze, which is renewed at intervals of
a week or ten days as the cavity heals from the bottom.

Another method is to incise the abscess, cleanse the cavity with gauze,
irrigate with Carrel-Dakin solution and pack with gauze smeared with the
dilute non-toxic B.I.P.P. (bismuth and iodoform 2 parts, vaseline 12
parts, hard paraffin, sufficient to give the consistence of butter). The
wound is closed with "bipped" silk sutures; one of these--the "waiting
suture"--is left loose to permit of withdrawal of the gauze after
forty-eight hours; the waiting suture is then tied, and delayed primary
union is thus effected.

When the skin over the abscess is red, thin, and about to give way, as
is frequently the case when the abscess is situated in the subcutaneous
cellular tissue, any skin which is undermined and infected with tubercle
should be removed with the scissors at the same time that the abscess is
dealt with.

In abscesses treated by the open method, when the cavity has become
lined with healthy granulations, it may be closed by secondary suture,
or, if the granulating surface is flush with the skin, healing may be
hastened by skin-grafting.

If the tuberculous abscess has burst and left a _sinus_, this is apt to
persist because of the presence of tuberculous tissue in its wall, and
of superadded pyogenic infection, or because it serves as an avenue for
the escape of discharge from a focus of tubercle in a bone or a lymph
gland.

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--Tuberculous Sinus injected through its opening
in the forearm with bismuth paste.

(Mr. Pirie Watson's case--Radiogram by Dr. Hope Fowler.)]

The treatment varies with the conditions present, and must include
measures directed to the lesion from which the sinus has originated. The
extent and direction of any given sinus may be demonstrated by the use
of the probe, or, more accurately, by injecting the sinus with a paste
consisting of white vaseline containing 10 to 30 per cent. of bismuth
subcarbonate, and following its track with the X-rays (Fig. 35).

It was found by Beck of Chicago that the injection of bismuth paste is
frequently followed by healing of the sinus, and that, if one injection
fails to bring about a cure, repeating the injection every second day
may be successful. Some caution must be observed in this treatment, as
symptoms of poisoning have been observed to follow its use. If they
manifest themselves, an injection of warm olive oil should be given; the
oil, left in for twelve hours or so, forms an emulsion with the bismuth,
which can be withdrawn by aspiration. Iodoform suspended in glycerin may
be employed in a similar manner. When these and other non-operative
measures fail, and the whole track of the sinus is accessible, it should
be laid open, scraped, and packed with bismuth or iodoform gauze until
it heals from the bottom.

The _tuberculous ulcer_ is described in the chapter on ulcers.




CHAPTER IX

SYPHILIS


Definition.--Virus.--ACQUIRED SYPHILIS--Primary period:
    _Incubation, primary chancre, glandular enlargement_;
    _Extra-genital chancres_--Treatment--Secondary period: _General
    symptoms, skin affections, mucous patches, affections of bones,
    joints, eyes_, etc.--Treatment: _Salvarsan_--_Methods of
    administering mercury_--Syphilis and marriage--Intermediate
    stage--_Reminders_--Tertiary period: _General symptoms_,
    _gummata_, _tertiary ulcers_, _tertiary lesions of skin, mucous
    membrane, bones, joints_, etc.--Second attacks.--INHERITED
    SYPHILIS--Transmission--_Clinical features in infancy, in later
    life_--Contagiousness--Treatment.

Syphilis is an infective disease due to the entrance into the body of a
specific virus. It is nearly always communicated from one individual to
another by contact infection, the discharge from a syphilitic lesion
being the medium through which the virus is transmitted, and the seat of
inoculation is almost invariably a surface covered by squamous
epithelium. The disease was unknown in Europe before the year 1493, when
it was introduced into Spain by Columbus' crew, who were infected in
Haiti, where the disease had been endemic from time immemorial (Bloch).

The granulation tissue which forms as a result of the reaction of the
tissues to the presence of the virus is chiefly composed of lymphocytes
and plasma cells, along with an abundant new formation of capillary
blood vessels. Giant cells are not uncommon, but the endothelioid cells,
which are so marked a feature of tuberculous granulation tissue, are
practically absent.

When syphilis is communicated from one individual to another by contact
infection, the condition is spoken of as _acquired syphilis_, and the
first visible sign of the disease appears at the site of inoculation,
and is known as _the primary lesion_. Those who have thus acquired the
disease may transmit it to their offspring, who are then said to suffer
from _inherited syphilis_.

#The Virus of Syphilis.#--The cause of syphilis, whether acquired or
inherited, is the organism, described by Schaudinn and Hoffman, in 1905,
under the name of _spirochta pallida_ or _spironema pallidum_. It is a
delicate, thread-like spirilla, in length averaging from 8 to 10  and
in width about 0.25 , and is distinguished from other spirochtes by
its delicate shape, its dead-white appearance, together with its closely
twisted spiral form, with numerous undulations (10 to 26), which are
perfectly regular, and are characteristic in that they remain the same
during rest and in active movement (Fig. 36). In a fresh specimen, such
as a scraping from a hard chancre suspended in a little salt solution,
it shows active movements. The organism is readily destroyed by heat,
and perishes in the absence of moisture. It has been proved
experimentally that it remains infective only up to six hours after its
removal from the body. Noguchi has succeeded in obtaining pure cultures
from the infected tissues of the rabbit.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--Spirochta pallida from scraping of hard
Chancre of Prepuce.  1000 diam. Burri method.]

The spirochte may be recognised in films made by scraping the deeper
parts of the primary lesion, from papules on the skin, or from blisters
artificially raised on lesions of the skin or on the immediately
adjacent portion of healthy skin. It is readily found in the mucous
patches and condylomata of the secondary period. It is best stained by
Giemsa's method, and its recognition is greatly aided by the use of the
ultra-microscope.

The spirochte has been demonstrated in every form of syphilitic lesion,
and has been isolated from the blood--with difficulty--and from lymph
withdrawn by a hollow needle from enlarged lymph glands. The saliva of
persons suffering from syphilitic lesions of the mouth also contains the
organism.

[Illustration: FIG. 37.--Spirochta refrigerans from scraping of Vagina.
 1000 diam. Burri method.]

In tertiary lesions there is greater difficulty in demonstrating the
spirochte, but small numbers have been found in the peripheral parts of
gummata and in the thickened patches in syphilitic disease of the aorta.
Noguchi and Moore have discovered the spirochte in the brain in a
number of cases of general paralysis of the insane. The spirochte may
persist in the body for a long time after infection; its presence has
been demonstrated as long as sixteen years after the original
acquisition of the disease.

In inherited syphilis the spirochte is present in enormous numbers
throughout all the organs and fluids of the body.

Considerable interest attaches to the observations of Metchnikoff, Roux,
and Neisser, who have succeeded in conveying syphilis to the chimpanzee
and other members of the ape tribe, obtaining primary and secondary
lesions similar to those observed in man, and also containing the
spirochte. In animals the disease has been transmitted by material from
all kinds of syphilitic lesions, including even the blood in the
secondary and tertiary stages of the disease. The primary lesion is in
the form of an indurated papule, in every respect resembling the
corresponding lesion in man, and associated with enlargement and
induration of the lymph glands. The primary lesion usually appears about
thirty days after inoculation, to be followed, in about half the cases,
by secondary manifestations, which are usually of a mild character; in
no instance has any tertiary lesion been observed. The severity of the
affection amongst apes would appear to be in proportion to the nearness
of the relationship of the animal to the human subject. The eye of the
rabbit is also susceptible to inoculation from syphilitic lesions; the
material in a finely divided state is introduced into the anterior
chamber of the eye.

Attempts to immunise against the disease have so far proved negative,
but Metchnikoff has shown that the inunction of the part inoculated with
an ointment containing 33 per cent. of calomel, within one hour of
infection, suffices to neutralise the virus in man, and up to eighteen
hours in monkeys. He recommends the adoption of this procedure in the
prophylaxis of syphilis.

Noguchi has made an emulsion of dead spirochtes which he calls
_luetin_, and which gives a specific reaction resembling that of
tuberculin in tuberculosis, a papule or a pustule forming at the site of
the intra-dermal injection. It is said to be most efficacious in the
tertiary and latent forms of syphilis, which are precisely those forms
in which the diagnosis is surrounded with difficulties.


ACQUIRED SYPHILIS

In the vast majority of cases, infection takes place during the congress
of the sexes. Delicate, easily abraded surfaces are then brought into
contact, and the discharge from lesions containing the virus is placed
under favourable conditions for conveying the disease from one person to
the other. In the male the possibility of infection taking place is
increased if the virus is retained under cover of a long and tight
prepuce, and if there are abrasions on the surface with which it comes
in contact. The frequency with which infection takes place on the
genitals during sexual intercourse warrants syphilis being considered a
venereal disease, although there are other ways in which it may be
contracted.

Some of these imply direct contact--such, for example, as kissing, the
digital examination of syphilitic patients by doctors or nurses, or
infection of the surgeon's fingers while operating upon a syphilitic
patient. In suckling, a syphilitic wet nurse may infect a healthy
infant, or a syphilitic infant may infect a healthy wet nurse. In other
cases the infection is by indirect contact, the virus being conveyed
through the medium of articles contaminated by a syphilitic
patient--such, for example, as surgical instruments, tobacco pipes, wind
instruments, table utensils, towels, or underclothing. Physiological
secretions, such as saliva, milk, or tears, are not capable of
communicating the disease unless contaminated by discharge from a
syphilitic sore. While the saliva itself is innocuous, it can be, and
often is, contaminated by the discharge from mucous patches or other
syphilitic lesions in the mouth and throat, and is then a dangerous
medium of infection. Unless these extra-genital sources of infection are
borne in mind, there is a danger of failing to recognise the primary
lesion of syphilis in unusual positions, such as the lip, finger, or
nipple. When the disease is thus acquired by innocent transfer, it is
known as _syphilis insontium_.

#Stages or Periods of Syphilis.#--Following the teaching of Ricord, it
is customary to divide the life-history of syphilis into three periods
or stages, referred to, for convenience, as primary, secondary, and
tertiary. This division is to some extent arbitrary and artificial, as
the different stages overlap one another, and the lesions of one stage
merge insensibly into those of another. Wide variations are met with in
the manifestations of the secondary stage, and histologically there is
no valid distinction to be drawn between secondary and tertiary lesions.

_The primary period_ embraces the interval that elapses between the
initial infection and the first constitutional manifestations,--roughly,
from four to eight weeks,--and includes the period of incubation, the
development of the primary sore, and the enlargement of the nearest
lymph glands.

_The secondary period_ varies in duration from one to two years, during
which time the patient is liable to suffer from manifestations which are
for the most part superficial in character, affecting the skin and its
appendages, the mucous membranes, and the lymph glands.

_The tertiary period_ has no time-limit except that it follows upon the
secondary, so that during the remainder of his life the patient is
liable to suffer from manifestations which may affect the deeper tissues
and internal organs as well as the skin and mucous membranes.

#Primary Syphilis.#--_The period of incubation_ represents the interval
that elapses between the occurrence of infection and the appearance of
the primary lesion at the site of inoculation. Its limits may be stated
as varying from two to six weeks, with an average of from twenty-one to
twenty-eight days. While the disease is incubating, there is nothing to
show that infection has occurred.

_The Primary Lesion._--The incubation period having elapsed, there
appears at the site of inoculation a circumscribed area of infiltration
which represents the reaction of the tissues to the entrance of the
virus. The first appearance is that of a sharply defined papule, rarely
larger than a split pea. Its surface is at first smooth and shiny, but
as necrosis of the tissue elements takes place in the centre, it becomes
concave, and in many cases the epithelium is shed, and an ulcer is
formed. Such an ulcer has an elevated border, sharply cut edges, an
indurated base, and exudes a scanty serous discharge; its surface is at
first occupied by yellow necrosed tissue, but in time this is replaced
by smooth, pale-pink granulation tissue; finally, epithelium may spread
over the surface, and the ulcer heals. As a rule, the patient suffers
little discomfort, and may even be ignorant of the existence of the
lesion, unless, as a result of exposure to mechanical or septic
irritation, ulceration ensues, and the sore becomes painful and tender,
and yields a purulent discharge. The primary lesion may persist until
the secondary manifestations make their appearance, that is, for several
weeks.

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the induration of the primary
lesion, which has obtained for it the name of "hard chancre," is its
most important characteristic. It is best appreciated when the sore is
grasped from side to side between the finger and thumb. The sensation on
grasping it has been aptly compared to that imparted by a nodule of
cartilage, or by a button felt through a layer of cloth. The evidence
obtained by touch is more valuable than that obtained by inspection, a
fact which is made use of in the recognition of _concealed
chancres_--that is, those which are hidden by a tight prepuce. The
induration is due not only to the dense packing of the connective-tissue
spaces with lymphocytes and plasma cells, but also to the formation of
new connective-tissue elements. It is most marked in chancres situated
in the furrow between the glans and the prepuce.

_In the male_, the primary lesion specially affects certain
_situations_, and the appearances vary with these: (1) On the inner
aspect of the prepuce, and in the fold between the prepuce and the
glans; in the latter situation the induration imparts a "collar-like"
rigidity to the prepuce, which is most apparent when it is rolled back
over the corona. (2) At the orifice of the prepuce the primary lesion
assumes the form of multiple linear ulcers or fissures, and as each of
these is attended with infiltration, the prepuce cannot be pulled
back--a condition known as _syphilitic phimosis_. (3) On the glans penis
the infiltration may be so superficial that it resembles a layer of
parchment, but if it invades the cavernous tissue there is a dense mass
of induration. (4) On the external aspect of the prepuce or on the skin
of the penis itself. (5) At either end of the torn frnum, in the form
of a diamond-shaped ulcer raised above the surroundings. (6) In relation
to the meatus and canal of the urethra, in either of which situations
the swelling and induration may lead to narrowing of the urethra, so
that the urine is passed with pain and difficulty and in a minute
stream; stricture results only in the exceptional cases in which the
chancre has ulcerated and caused destruction of tissue. A chancre within
the orifice of the urethra is rare, and, being concealed from view, it
can only be recognised by the discharge from the meatus and by the
induration felt between the finger and thumb on palpating the urethra.

_In the female_, the primary lesion is not so typical or so easily
recognised as in men; it is usually met with on the labia; the
induration is rarely characteristic and does not last so long. The
primary lesion may take the form of condylomata. Indurated dema, with
brownish-red or livid discoloration of one or both labia, is diagnostic
of syphilis.

The hard chancre is usually solitary, but sometimes there are two or
more; when there are several, they are individually smaller than the
solitary chancre.

It is the exception for a hard chancre to leave a visible scar, hence,
in examining patients with a doubtful history of syphilis, little
reliance can be placed on the presence or absence of a scar on the
genitals. When the primary lesion has taken the form of an open ulcer
with purulent discharge, or has sloughed, there is a permanent scar.

_Infection of the adjacent lymph glands_ is usually found to have taken
place by the time the primary lesion has acquired its characteristic
induration. Several of the glands along Poupart's ligament, on one or on
both sides, become enlarged, rounded, and indurated; they are usually
freely movable, and are rarely sensitive unless there is superadded
septic infection. The term _bullet-bubo_ has been applied to them, and
their presence is of great value in diagnosis. In a certain number of
cases, one of the main _lymph vessels_ on the dorsum of the penis is
transformed into a fibrous cord easily recognisable on palpation, and
when grasped between the fingers appears to be in size and consistence
not unlike the vas deferens.

_Concealed chancre_ is the term applied when one or more chancres are
situated within the sac of a prepuce which cannot be retracted. If the
induration is well marked, the chancre can be palpated through the
prepuce, and is tender on pressure. As under these conditions it is
impossible for the patient to keep the parts clean, septic infection
becomes a prominent feature, the prepuce is dematous and inflamed, and
there is an abundant discharge of pus from its orifice. It occasionally
happens that the infection assumes a virulent character and causes
sloughing of the prepuce--a condition known as _phagedna_. The
discharge is then foul and blood-stained, and the prepuce becomes of a
dusky red or purple colour, and may finally slough, exposing the glans.

_Extra-genital or Erratic Chancres_ (Fig. 38).--Erratic chancre is the
term applied by Jonathan Hutchinson to the primary lesion of syphilis
when it appears on parts of the body other than the genitals. It differs
in some respects from the hard chancre as met with on the penis; it is
usually larger, the induration is more diffused, and the enlarged glands
are softer and more sensitive. The glands in nearest relation to the
sore are those first affected, for example, the epitrochlear or axillary
glands in chancre of the finger; the submaxillary glands in chancre of
the lip or mouth; or the pre-auricular gland in chancre of the eyelid or
forehead. In consequence of their divergence from the typical chancre,
and of their being often met with in persons who, from age,
surroundings, or moral character, are unlikely subjects of venereal
disease, the true nature of erratic chancres is often overlooked until
the persistence of the lesion, its want of resemblance to anything else,
or the onset of constitutional symptoms, determines the diagnosis of
syphilis. A solitary, indolent sore occurring on the lip, eyelid,
finger, or nipple, which does not heal but tends to increase in size,
and is associated with induration and enlargement of the adjacent
glands, is most likely to be the primary lesion of syphilis.

[Illustration: FIG. 38.--Primary Lesion on Thumb, with Secondary
Eruption on Forearm.[1]]

[1] From _A System of Syphilis_, vol. ii., edited by D'Arcy Power and
J. Keogh Murphy, Oxford Medical Publications.

#The Soft Sore, Soft Chancre, or Chancroid.#--The differential diagnosis
of syphilis necessitates the consideration of the _soft sore_, _soft
chancre_, or _chancroid_, which is also a common form of venereal
disease, and is due to infection with a virulent pus-forming bacillus,
first described by Ducrey in 1889. Ducrey's bacillus occurs in the form
of minute oval rods measuring about 1.5  in length, which stain readily
with any basic aniline dye, but are quickly decolorised by Gram's
method. They are found mixed with other organisms in the purulent
discharge from the sore, and are chiefly arranged in small groups or in
short chains. Soft sores are always contracted by direct contact from
another individual, and the incubation period is a short one of from two
to five days. They are usually situated in the vicinity of the frnum,
and, in women, about the labia minora or fourchette; they probably
originate in abrasions in these situations. They appear as pustules,
which are rapidly converted into small, acutely inflamed ulcers with
sharply cut, irregular margins, which bleed easily and yield an abundant
yellow purulent discharge. They are devoid of the induration of
syphilis, are painful, and nearly always multiple, reproducing
themselves in successive crops by auto-inoculation. Soft sores are often
complicated by phimosis and balanitis, and they frequently lead to
infection of the glands in the groin. The resulting bubo is ill-defined,
painful, and tender, and suppuration occurs in about one-fourth of the
cases. The overlying skin becomes adherent and red, and suppuration
takes place either in the form of separate foci in the interior of the
individual glands, or around them; in the latter case, on incision, the
glands are found lying bathed in pus. Ducrey's bacillus is found in pure
culture in the pus. Sometimes other pyogenic organisms are superadded.
After the bubo has been opened the wound may take on the characters of a
soft sore.

_Treatment._--Soft sores heal rapidly when kept clean. If concealed
under a tight prepuce, an incision should be made along the dorsum to
give access to the sores. They should be washed with eusol, and dusted
with a mixture of one part iodoform and two parts boracic or salicylic
acid, or, when the odour of iodoform is objected to, of equal parts of
boracic acid and carbonate of zinc. Immersion of the penis in a bath of
eusol for some hours daily is useful. The sore is then covered with a
piece of gauze kept in position by drawing the prepuce over it, or by a
few turns of a narrow bandage. Sublimed sulphur frequently rubbed into
the sore is recommended by C. H. Mills. If the sores spread in spite of
this, they should be painted with cocaine and then cauterised. When the
glands in the groin are infected, the patient must be confined to bed,
and a dressing impregnated with ichthyol and glycerin (10 per cent.)
applied; the repeated use of a suction bell is of great service.
Harrison recommends aspiration of a bubonic abscess, followed by
injection of 1 in 20 solution of tincture of iodine into the cavity;
this is in turn aspirated, and then 1 or 2 c.c. of the solution injected
and left in. This is repeated as often as the cavity refills. It is
sometimes necessary to let the pus out by one or more small incisions
and continue the use of the suction bell.

_Diagnosis of Primary Syphilis._--In cases in which there is a history
of an incubation period of from three to five weeks, when the sore is
indurated, persistent, and indolent, and attended with bullet-buboes in
the groin, the diagnosis of primary syphilis is not difficult. Owing,
however, to the great importance of instituting treatment at the
earliest possible stage of the infection, an effort should be made to
establish the diagnosis without delay by demonstrating the spirochte.
Before any antiseptic is applied, the margin of the suspected sore is
rubbed with gauze, and the serum that exudes on pressure is collected
in a capillary tube and sent to a pathologist for microscopical
examination. A better specimen can sometimes be obtained by puncturing
an enlarged lymph gland with a hypodermic needle, injecting a few minims
of sterile saline solution and then aspirating the blood-stained fluid.

The Wassermann test must not be relied upon for diagnosis in the early
stage, as it does not appear until the disease has become generalised
and the secondary manifestations are about to begin. The practice of
waiting in doubtful cases before making a diagnosis until secondary
manifestations appear is to be condemned.

Extra-genital chancres, _e.g._ sores on the fingers of doctors or
nurses, are specially liable to be overlooked, if the possibility of
syphilis is not kept in mind.

It is important to bear in mind _the possibility of a patient having
acquired a mixed infection_ with the virus of soft chancre, which will
manifest itself a few days after infection, and the virus of syphilis,
which shows itself after an interval of several weeks. This occurrence
was formerly the source of much confusion in diagnosis, and it was
believed at one time that syphilis might result from soft sores, but it
is now established that syphilis does not follow upon soft sores unless
the virus of syphilis has been introduced at the same time. The
practitioner must be on his guard, therefore, when a patient asks his
advice concerning a venereal sore which has appeared within a few days
of exposure to infection. Such a patient is naturally anxious to know
whether he has contracted syphilis or not, but neither a positive nor a
negative answer can be given--unless the spirochte can be identified.

Syphilis is also to be diagnosed from _epithelioma_, the common form of
cancer of the penis. It is especially in elderly patients with a tight
prepuce that the induration of syphilis is liable to be mistaken for
that associated with epithelioma. In difficult cases the prepuce must be
slit open.

Difficulty may occur in the diagnosis of primary syphilis from _herpes_,
as this may appear as late as ten days after connection; it commences as
a group of vesicles which soon burst and leave shallow ulcers with a
yellow floor; these disappear quickly on the use of an antiseptic
dusting powder.

Apprehensive patients who have committed sexual indiscretions are apt to
regard as syphilitic any lesion which happens to be located on the
penis--for example, acne pustules, eczema, psoriasis papules, boils,
balanitis, or venereal warts.

_The local treatment_ of the primary sore consists in attempting to
destroy the organisms _in situ_. An ointment made up of calomel 33
parts, lanoline 67 parts, and vaseline 10 parts (Metchnikoff's cream) is
rubbed into the sore several times a day. If the surface is unbroken, it
may be dusted lightly with a powder composed of equal parts of calomel
and carbonate of zinc. A gauze dressing is applied, and the penis and
scrotum should be supported against the abdominal wall by a triangular
handkerchief or bathing-drawers; if there is inflammatory dema the
patient should be confined to bed.

In _concealed chancres_ with phimosis, the sac of the prepuce should be
slit up along the dorsum to admit of the ointment being applied. If
phagedna occurs, the prepuce must be slit open along the dorsum, or if
sloughing, cut away, and the patient should have frequent sitz baths of
weak sublimate lotion. When the chancre is within the meatus, iodoform
bougies are inserted into the urethra, and the urine should be rendered
bland by drinking large quantities of fluid.

General treatment is considered on p. 149.

#Secondary Syphilis.#--The following description of secondary syphilis
is based on the average course of the disease in untreated cases. The
onset of constitutional symptoms occurs from six to twelve weeks after
infection, and the manifestations are the result of the entrance of the
virus into the general circulation, and its being carried to all parts
of the body. The period during which the patient is liable to suffer
from secondary symptoms ranges from six months to two years.

In some cases the general health is not disturbed; in others the patient
is feverish and out of sorts, losing appetite, becoming pale and anmic,
complaining of lassitude, incapacity for exertion, headache, and pains
of a rheumatic type referred to the bones. There is a moderate degree of
leucocytosis, but the increase is due not to the polymorpho-nuclear
leucocytes but to lymphocytes. In isolated cases the temperature rises
to 101 or 102 F. and the patient loses flesh. The lymph glands,
particularly those along the posterior border of the sterno-mastoid,
become enlarged and slightly tender. The hair comes out, eruptions
appear on the skin and mucous membranes, and the patient may suffer from
sore throat and affections of the eyes. The local lesions are to be
regarded as being of the nature of reactions against accumulations of
the parasite, lymphocytes and plasma cells being the elements chiefly
concerned in the reactive process.

_Affections of the Skin_ are among the most constant manifestations. An
evanescent macular rash, not unlike that of measles--_roseola_--is the
first to appear, usually in from six to eight weeks from the date of
infection; it is widely diffused over the trunk, and the original dull
rose-colour soon fades, leaving brownish stains, which in time
disappear. It is usually followed by a _papular eruption_, the
individual papules being raised above the surface of the skin, smooth or
scaly, and as they are due to infiltration of the skin they are more
persistent than the roseoles. They vary in size and distribution, being
sometimes small, hard, polished, and closely aggregated like lichen,
sometimes as large as a shilling-piece, with an accumulation of scales
on the surface like that seen in psoriasis. The co-existence of scaly
papules and faded roseoles is very suggestive of syphilis.

Other types of eruption are less common, and are met with from the third
month onwards. A _pustular_ eruption, not unlike that of acne, is
sometimes a prominent feature, but is not characteristic of syphilis
unless it affects the scalp and forehead and is associated with the
remains of the papular eruption. The term _ecthyma_ is applied when the
pustules are of large size, and, after breaking on the surface, give
rise to superficial ulcers; the discharge from the ulcer often dries up
and forms a scab or crust which is continually added to from below as
the ulcer extends in area and depth. The term _rupia_ is applied when
the crusts are prominent, dark in colour, and conical in shape, roughly
resembling the shell of a limpet. If the crust is detached, a sharply
defined ulcer is exposed, and when this heals it leaves a scar which is
usually circular, thin, white, shining like satin, and the surrounding
skin is darkly pigmented; in the case of deep ulcers, the scar is
depressed and adherent (Fig. 39).

[Illustration: FIG. 39.--Syphilitic Rupia, showing the limpet-shaped
crusts or scabs.]

In the later stages there may occur a form of creeping or _spreading
ulceration of the skin_ of the face, groin, or scrotum, healing at one
edge and spreading at another like tuberculous lupus, but distinguished
from this by its more rapid progress and by the pigmentation of the
scar.

_Condylomata_ are more characteristic of syphilis than any other type of
skin lesion. They are papules occurring on those parts of the body where
the skin is habitually moist, and especially where two skin surfaces are
in contact. They are chiefly met with on the external genitals,
especially in women, around the anus, beneath large pendulous mamm,
between the toes, and at the angles of the mouth, and in these
situations their development is greatly favoured by neglect of
cleanliness. They present the appearance of well-defined circular or
ovoid areas in which the skin is thickened and raised above the surface;
they are covered with a white sodden epidermis, and furnish a scanty but
very infective discharge. Under the influence of irritation and want of
rest, as at the anus or at the angle of the mouth, they are apt to
become fissured and superficially ulcerated, and the discharge then
becomes abundant and may crust on the surface, forming yellow scabs. At
the angle of the mouth the condylomatous patches may spread to the
cheek, and when they ulcerate may leave fissure-like scars radiating
from the mouth--an appearance best seen in inherited syphilis (Fig. 44).

_The Appendages of the Skin._--The _hair_ loses its gloss, becomes dry
and brittle, and readily falls out, either as an exaggeration of the
normal shedding of the hair, or in scattered areas over the scalp
(_syphilitic alopcia_). The hair is not re-formed in the scars which
result from ulcerated lesions of the scalp. The _nail-folds_
occasionally present a pustular eruption and superficial ulceration, to
which the name _syphilitic onychia_ has been applied; more commonly the
nails become brittle and ragged, and they may even be shed.

_The Mucous Membranes_, and especially those of the _mouth_ and
_throat_, suffer from lesions similar to those met with on the skin. On
a mucous surface the papular eruption assumes the form of _mucous
patches_, which are areas with a congested base covered with a thin
white film of sodden epithelium like wet tissue-paper. They are best
seen on the inner aspect of the cheeks, the soft palate, uvula, pillars
of the fauces, and tonsils. In addition to mucous patches, there may be
a number of small, _superficial, kidney-shaped ulcers_, especially along
the margins of the tongue and on the tonsils. In the absence of mucous
patches and ulcers, the sore throat may be characterised by a bluish
tinge of the inflamed mucous membrane and a thin film of shed epithelium
on the surface. Sometimes there is an elongated sinuous film which has
been likened to the track of a snail. In the _larynx_ the presence of
congestion, dema, and mucous patches may be the cause of persistent
hoarseness. The _tongue_ often presents a combination of lesions,
including ulcers, patches where the papill are absent, fissures, and
raised white papules resembling warts, especially towards the centre of
the dorsum. These lesions are specially apt to occur in those who smoke,
drink undiluted alcohol or spirits, or eat hot condiments to excess, or
who have irregular, sharp-cornered teeth. At a later period, and in
those who are broken down in health from intemperance or other cause,
the sore throat may take the form of rapidly spreading, penetrating
ulcers in the soft palate and pillars of the fauces, which may lead to
extensive destruction of tissue, with subsequent scars and deformity
highly characteristic of previous syphilis.

In the _Bones_, lesions occur which assume the clinical features of an
evanescent periostitis, the patient complaining of nocturnal pains over
the frontal bone, sternum, tibi, and uln, and localised tenderness on
tapping over these bones.

In the _Joints_, a serous synovitis or hydrops may occur, chiefly in the
knee, on one or on both sides.

_The Affections of the Eyes_, although fortunately rare, are of great
importance because of the serious results which may follow if they are
not recognised and treated. _Iritis_ is the commonest of these, and may
occur in one or in both eyes, one after the other, from three to eight
months after infection. The patient complains of impairment of sight and
of frontal or supraorbital pain. The eye waters and is hypersensitive,
the iris is discoloured and reacts sluggishly to light, and there is a
zone of ciliary congestion around the cornea. The appearance of minute
white nodules or flakes of lymph at the margin of the pupil is
especially characteristic of syphilitic iritis. When adhesions have
formed between the iris and the structures in relation to it, the pupil
dilates irregularly under atropin. Although complete recovery is to be
expected under early and energetic treatment, if neglected, _iritis_ may
result in occlusion of the pupil and permanent impairment or loss of
sight.

The other lesions of the eye are much rarer, and can only be discovered
on ophthalmoscopic examination.

The virus of syphilis exerts a special influence upon the _Blood
Vessels_, exciting a proliferation of the endothelial lining which
results in narrowing of their lumen, _endarteritis_, and a perivascular
infiltration in the form of accumulations of plasma cells around the
vessels and in the lymphatics that accompany them.

In the _Brain_, in the later periods of secondary and in tertiary
syphilis, changes occur as a result of the narrowing of the lumen of the
arteries, or of their complete obliteration by thrombosis. By
interfering with the nutrition of those parts of the brain supplied by
the affected arteries, these lesions give rise to clinical features of
which severe headache and paralysis are the most prominent.

Affections of the _Spinal Cord_ are extremely rare, but paraplegia from
myelitis has been observed.

Lastly, attention must be directed to the remarkable variations observed
in different patients. Sometimes the virulent character of the disease
can only be accounted for by an idiosyncrasy of the patient.
Constitutional symptoms, particularly pyrexia and anmia, are most often
met with in young women. Patients over forty years of age have greater
difficulty in overcoming the infection than younger adults. Malarial and
other infections, and the conditions attending life in tropical
countries, from the debility which they cause, tend to aggravate and
prolong the disease, which then assumes the characters of what has been
called _malignant syphilis_. All chronic ailments have a similar
influence, and alcoholic intemperance is universally regarded as a
serious aggravating factor.

_Diagnosis of Secondary Syphilis._--A routine examination should be made
of the parts of the body which are most often affected in this
disease--the scalp, mouth, throat, posterior cervical glands, and the
trunk, the patient being stripped and examined by daylight. Among the
_diagnostic features of the skin affections_ the following may be
mentioned: They are frequently, and sometimes to a marked degree,
symmetrical; more than one type of eruption--papules and pustules, for
example--are present at the same time; there is little itching; they are
at first a dull-red colour, but later present a brown pigmentation which
has been likened to the colour of raw ham; they exhibit a predilection
for those parts of the forehead and neck which are close to the roots of
the hair; they tend to pass off spontaneously; and they disappear
rapidly under treatment.

#Serum Diagnosis--Wassermann Reaction.#--Wassermann found that if an
extract of syphilitic liver rich in spirochtes is mixed with the serum
from a syphilitic patient, a large amount of complement is fixed. The
application of the test is highly complicated and can only be carried
out by an expert pathologist. For the purpose he is supplied with from 5
c.c. to 10 c.c. of the patient's blood, withdrawn under aseptic
conditions from the median basilic vein by means of a serum syringe, and
transferred to a clean and dry glass tube. There is abundant evidence
that the Wassermann test is a reliable means of establishing a diagnosis
of syphilis.

A definitely positive reaction can usually be obtained between the
fifteenth and thirtieth day after the appearance of the primary lesion,
and as time goes on it becomes more marked. During the secondary period
the reaction is practically always positive. In the tertiary stage also
it is positive except in so far as it is modified by the results of
treatment. In para-syphilitic lesions such as general paralysis and
tabes a positive reaction is almost always present. In inherited
syphilis the reaction is positive in every case. A positive reaction may
be present in other diseases, for example, frambesia, trypanosomiasis,
and leprosy.

As the presence of the reaction is an evidence of the activity of the
spirochtes, repeated applications of the test furnish a valuable means
of estimating the efficacy of treatment. The object aimed at is to
change a persistently positive reaction to a permanently negative one.

#Treatment of Syphilis.#--In the treatment of syphilis the two main
objects are to maintain the general health at the highest possible
standard, and to introduce into the system therapeutic agents which will
inhibit or destroy the invading parasite.

The second of these objects has been achieved by the researches of
Ehrlich, who, in conjunction with his pupil, Hata, has built up a
compound, the dihydrochloride of dioxydiamido-arseno-benzol, popularly
known as salvarsan or "606." Other preparations, such as kharsivan,
arseno-billon, and diarsenol, are chemically equivalent to salvarsan,
containing from 27 to 31 per cent. of arsenic, and are equally
efficient. The full dose is 0.6 grm. All these members of the "606"
group form an acid solution when dissolved in water, and must be
rendered alkaline before being injected. As subcutaneous and
intra-muscular injections cause considerable pain, and may cause
sloughing of the tissues, "606" preparations must be injected
intravenously. Ehrlich has devised a preparation--neo-salvarsan, or
"914," which is more easily prepared and forms a neutral solution. It
contains from 18 to 20 per cent. of arsenic. Neo-kharsivan,
novo-arseno-billon, and neo-diarsenol belong to the "914" group, the
full dosage of which is 0.9 grm. As subcutaneous and intra-muscular
injections of the "914" group are not painful, and even more efficient
than intravenous injections, the administration is simpler.

Galyl, luargol, and other preparations act in the same way as the "606"
and "914" groups.

The "606" preparations may be introduced into the veins by injection or
by means of an apparatus which allows the solution to flow in by
gravity. The left median basilic vein is selected, and a platino-iridium
needle with a short point and a bore larger than that of the ordinary
hypodermic syringe is used. The needle is passed for a few millimetres
along the vein, and the solution is then slowly introduced; before
withdrawing the needle some saline is run in to diminish the risk of
thrombosis.

The "914" preparations may be injected either into the subcutaneous
tissue of the buttock or into the substance of the gluteus muscle. The
part is then massaged for a few minutes, and the massage is repeated
daily for a few days.

No hard-and-fast rules can be laid down as to what constitutes a
complete course of treatment. Harrison recommends as a _minimum_ course
of one of the "914" preparations in _early primary cases_ an initial
dose of 0.45 grm. given intra-muscularly or into the deep subcutaneous
tissue; the same dose a week later; 0.6 grm. the following week; then
miss a week and give 9.6 grms. on two successive weeks; then miss two
weeks and give 0.6 grm. on two more successive weeks.

When a _positive Wassermann reaction_ is present before treatment is
commenced, the above course is prolonged as follows: for three weeks is
given a course of potassium iodide, after which four more weekly
injections of 0.6 grm. of "914" are given.

With each injection of "914" after the first, throughout the whole
course 1 grain of mercury is injected intra-muscularly.

In the course of a few hours, there is usually some indisposition, with
a feeling of chilliness and slight rise of temperature; these symptoms
pass off within twenty-four hours, and in a few days there is a decided
improvement of health. Three or four days after an intra-muscular
injection there may be pain and stiffness in the gluteal region.

These preparations are the most efficient therapeutic agents that have
yet been employed in the treatment of syphilis.

The manifestations of the disease disappear with remarkable rapidity.
Observations show that the spirochtes lose their capacity for movement
within an hour or two of the administration, and usually disappear
altogether in from twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Wassermann's
reaction usually yields a negative result in from three weeks to two
months, but later may again become positive. Subsequent doses of the
arsenical preparation are therefore usually indicated, and should be
given in from 7 to 21 days according to the dose.

When syphilis occurs in a _pregnant woman_, she should be given in the
early months an ordinary course of "914," followed by 10-grain doses of
potassium iodide twice daily. The injections may be repeated two months
later, and during the remainder of the pregnancy 2-grain mercury pills
are given twice daily (A. Campbell). The presence of albumen in the
urine contra-indicates arsenical treatment.

It need scarcely be pointed out that the use of powerful drugs like
"606" and "914" is not free from risk; it may be mentioned that each
dose contains nearly three grains of arsenic. Before the administration
the patient must be overhauled; its administration is contra-indicated
in the presence of disease of the heart and blood vessels, especially a
combination of syphilitic aortitis and sclerosis of the coronary
arteries, with degeneration of the heart muscle; in affections of the
central nervous system, especially advanced paralysis, and in such
disturbances of metabolism as are associated with diabetes and Bright's
disease. Its use is not contra-indicated in any lesion of active
syphilis.

The administration is controlled by the systematic examination of the
urine for arsenic.

_The Administration of Mercury._--The success of the arsenical
preparations has diminished the importance of mercury in the treatment
of syphilis, but it is still used to supplement the effect of the
injections. The amount of mercury to be given in any case must be
proportioned to the idiosyncrasies of the patient, and it is advisable,
before commencing the treatment, to test his urine and record his
body-weight. The small amount of mercury given at the outset is
gradually increased. If the body-weight falls, or if the gums become
sore and the breath foul, the mercury should be stopped for a time. If
salivation occurs, the drinking of hot water and the taking of hot baths
should be insisted upon, and half-dram doses of the alkaline sulphates
prescribed.

_Methods of Administering Mercury._--(1) _By the Mouth._--This was for
long the most popular method in this country, the preparation usually
employed being grey powder, in pills or tablets, each of which contains
one grain of the powder. Three of these are given daily in the first
instance, and the daily dose is increased to five or even seven grains
till the standard for the individual patient is arrived at. As the grey
powder alone sometimes causes irritation of the bowels, it should be
combined with iron, as in the following formula: Hydrarg. c. cret. gr. 1;
ferri sulph. exsiccat. gr. 1 or 2.

(2) _By Inunction._--Inunction consists in rubbing into the pores of the
skin an ointment composed of equal parts of 20 per cent. oleate of
mercury and lanolin. Every night after a hot bath, a dram of the
ointment (made up by the chemist in paper packets) is rubbed for fifteen
minutes into the skin where it is soft and comparatively free from
hairs. When the patient has been brought under the influence of the
mercury, inunction may be replaced by one of the other methods, of
administering the drug.

(3) _By Intra-muscular Injection._--This consists in introducing the
drug by means of a hypodermic syringe into the substance of the gluteal
muscles. The syringe is made of glass, and has a solid glass piston; the
needle of platino-iridium should be 5 cm. long and of a larger calibre
than the ordinary hypodermic needle. The preparation usually employed
consists of: metallic mercury or calomel 1 dram, lanolin and olive oil
each 2 drams; it must be warmed to allow of its passage through the
needle. Five minims--containing one grain of metallic mercury--represent
a dose, and this is injected into the muscles above and behind the great
trochanter once a week. The contents of the syringe are slowly
expressed, and, after withdrawing the needle, gentle massage of the
buttock should be employed. Four courses each of ten injections are
given the first year, three courses of the same number during the second
and third years, and two courses during the fourth year (Lambkin).

_The General Health._--The patient must lead a regular life and
cultivate the fresh-air habit, which is as beneficial in syphilis as in
tuberculosis. Anmia, malaria, and other sources of debility must
receive appropriate treatment. The diet should be simple and easily
digested, and should include a full supply of milk. Alcohol is
prohibited. The excretory organs are encouraged to act by the liberal
drinking of hot water between meals, say five or six tumblerfuls in the
twenty-four hours. The functions of the skin are further aided by
frequent hot baths, and by the wearing of warm underclothing. While the
patient should avoid exposure to cold, and taxing his energies by undue
exertion, he should be advised to take exercise in the open air. On
account of the liability to lesions of the mouth and throat, he should
use tobacco in moderation, his teeth should be thoroughly overhauled by
the dentist, and he should brush them after every meal, using an
antiseptic tooth powder or wash. The mouth and throat should be rinsed
out night and morning with a solution of chlorate of potash and alum, or
with peroxide of hydrogen.

_Treatment of the Local Manifestations._--_The skin lesions_ are treated
on the same lines as similar eruptions of other origin. As local
applications, preparations of mercury are usually selected, notably the
ointments of the red oxide of mercury, ammoniated mercury, or oleate of
mercury (5 per cent.), or the mercurial plaster introduced by Unna. In
the treatment of condylomata the greatest attention must be paid to
cleanliness and dryness. After washing and drying the affected patches,
they are dusted with a powder consisting of equal parts of calomel and
carbonate of zinc; and apposed skin surfaces, such as the nates or
labia, are separated by sublimate wool. In the ulcers of later secondary
syphilis, crusts are got rid of in the first instance by means of a
boracic poultice, after which a piece of lint or gauze cut to the size
of the ulcer and soaked in black wash is applied and covered with
oil-silk. If the ulcer tends to spread in area or in depth, it should be
scraped with a sharp spoon, and painted over with acid nitrate of
mercury, or a local hypermia may be induced by Klapp's suction
apparatus.

_In lesions of the mouth and throat_, the teeth should be attended to;
the best local application is a solution of chromic acid--10 grains to
the ounce--painted on with a brush once daily. If this fails, the
lesions may be dusted with calomel the last thing at night. For deep
ulcers of the throat the patient should gargle frequently with chlorine
water or with perchloride of mercury (1 in 2000); if the ulcer continues
to spread it should be painted with acid nitrate of mercury.

In the treatment of _iritis_ the eyes are shaded from the light and
completely rested, and the pupil is well dilated by atropin to prevent
adhesions. If there is much pain, a blister may be applied to the
temple.

_The Relations of Syphilis to Marriage._--Before the introduction of the
Ehrlich-Hata treatment no patient was allowed to marry until three years
had elapsed after the disappearance of the last manifestation. While
marriage might be entered upon under these conditions without risk of
the husband infecting the wife, the possibility of his conveying the
disease to the offspring cannot be absolutely excluded. It is
recommended, as a precautionary measure, to give a further mercurial
course of two or three months' duration before marriage, and an
intravenous injection of an arsenical preparation.

#Intermediate Stage.#--After the dying away of the secondary
manifestations and before the appearance of tertiary lesions, the
patient may present certain symptoms which Hutchinson called
_reminders_. These usually consist of relapses of certain of the
affections of the skin, mouth, or throat, already described. In the
skin, they may assume the form of peeling patches in the palms, or may
appear as spreading and confluent circles of a scaly papular eruption,
which if neglected may lead to the formation of fissures and superficial
ulcers. Less frequently there is a relapse of the eye affections, or of
paralytic symptoms from disease of the cerebral arteries.

#Tertiary Syphilis.#--While the manifestations of primary and secondary
syphilis are common, those of the tertiary period are by comparison
rare, and are observed chiefly in those who have either neglected
treatment or who have had their powers of resistance lowered by
privation, by alcoholic indulgence, or by tropical disease.

It is to be borne in mind that in a certain proportion of men and in a
larger proportion of women, the patient has no knowledge of having
suffered from syphilis. Certain slight but important signs may give the
clue in a number of cases, such as irregularity of the pupils or failure
to react to light, abnormality of the reflexes, and the discovery of
patches of leucoplakia on the tongue, cheek, or palate.

The _general character of tertiary manifestations_ may be stated as
follows: They attack by preference the tissues derived from the
mesoblastic layer of the embryo--the cellular tissue, bones, muscles,
and viscera. They are often localised to one particular tissue or organ,
such, for example, as the subcutaneous cellular tissue, the bones, or
the liver, and they are rarely symmetrical. They are usually aggressive
and persistent, with little tendency to natural cure, and they may be
dangerous to life, because of the destructive changes produced in such
organs as the brain or the larynx. They are remarkably amenable to
treatment if instituted before the stage which is attended with
destruction of tissue is reached. Early tertiary lesions may be
infective, and the disease may be transmitted by the discharges from
them; but the later the lesions the less is the risk of their containing
an infective virus.

The most prominent feature of tertiary syphilis consists in the
formation of granulation tissue, and this takes place on a scale
considerably larger than that observed in lesions of the secondary
period. The granulation tissue frequently forms a definite swelling or
tumour-like mass (syphiloma), which, from its peculiar elastic
consistence, is known as a _gumma_. In its early stages a gumma is a
firm, semi-translucent greyish or greyish-red mass of tissue; later it
becomes opaque, yellow, and caseous, with a tendency to soften and
liquefy. The gumma does harm by displacing and replacing the normal
tissue elements of the part affected, and by involving these in the
degenerative changes, of the nature of caseation and necrosis, which
produce the destructive lesions of the skin, mucous membranes, and
internal organs. This is true not only of the circumscribed gumma, but
of the condition known as _gummatous infiltration_ or _syphilitic
cirrhosis_, in which the granulation tissue is diffused throughout the
connective-tissue framework of such organs as the tongue or liver. Both
the gummatous lesions and the fibrosis of tertiary syphilis are directly
excited by the spirochtes.

The life-history of an untreated gumma varies with its environment. When
protected from injury and irritation in the substance of an internal
organ such as the liver, it may become encapsulated by fibrous tissue,
and persist in this condition for an indefinite period, or it may be
absorbed and leave in its place a fibrous cicatrix. In the interior of a
long bone it may replace the rigid framework of the shaft to such an
extent as to lead to pathological fracture. If it is near the surface of
the body--as, for example, in the subcutaneous or submucous cellular
tissue, or in the periosteum of a superficial bone, such as the palate,
the skull, or the tibia--the tissue of which it is composed is apt to
undergo necrosis, in which the overlying skin or mucous membrane
frequently participates, the result being an ulcer--the tertiary
syphilitic ulcer (Figs. 40 and 41).

_Tertiary Lesions of the Skin and Subcutaneous Cellular Tissue._--The
clinical features of a _subcutaneous gumma_ are those of an indolent,
painless, elastic swelling, varying in size from a pea to an almond or
walnut. After a variable period it usually softens in the centre, the
skin over it becomes livid and dusky, and finally separates as a slough,
exposing the tissue of the gumma, which sometimes appears as a mucoid,
yellowish, honey-like substance, more frequently as a sodden, caseated
tissue resembling wash-leather. The caseated tissue of a gumma differs
from that of a tuberculous lesion in being tough and firm, of a buff
colour like wash-leather, or whitish, like boiled fish. The degenerated
tissue separates slowly and gradually, and in untreated cases may be
visible for weeks in the floor of the ulcer.

[Illustration: FIG. 40.--Ulcerating Gumma of Lips.

(From a photograph lent by Dr. Stopford Taylor and Dr. R. W. Mackenna.)]

_The tertiary ulcer_ may be situated anywhere, but is most frequently
met with on the leg, especially in the region of the knee (Fig. 42) and
over the calf. There may be one or more ulcers, and also scars of
antecedent ulcers. The edges are sharply cut, as if punched out; the
margins are rounded in outline, firm, and congested; the base is
occupied by gummatous tissue, or, if this has already separated and
sloughed out, by unhealthy granulations and a thick purulent discharge.
When the ulcer has healed it leaves a scar which is depressed, and if
over a bone, is adherent to it. The features of the tertiary ulcer,
however, are not always so characteristic as the above description would
imply. It is to be diagnosed from the "leg ulcer," which occurs almost
exclusively on the lower third of the leg; from Bazin's disease (p. 74);
from the ulcers that result from certain forms of malignant disease,
such as rodent cancer, and from those met with in chronic glanders.

_Gummatous Infiltration of the Skin_ ("Syphilitic Lupus").--This is a
lesion, met with chiefly on the face and in the region of the external
genitals, in which the skin becomes infiltrated with granulation tissue
so that it is thickened, raised above the surface, and of a brownish-red
colour. It appears as isolated nodules, which may fuse together; the
epidermis becomes scaly and is shed, giving rise to superficial ulcers
which are usually covered by crusted discharge. The disease tends to
spread, creeping over the skin with a serpiginous, crescentic, or
horse-shoe margin, while the central portion may heal and leave a scar.
From the fact of its healing in the centre while it spreads at the
margin, it may resemble tuberculous disease of the skin. It can usually
be differentiated by observing that the infiltration is on a larger
scale; the progress is much more rapid, involving in the course of
months an area which in the case of tuberculosis would require as many
years; the scars are sounder and are less liable to break down again;
and the disease rapidly yields to anti-syphilitic treatment.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--Ulceration of nineteen year's duration
in a woman t. 24, the subject of inherited syphilis, showing active
ulceration, cicatricial contraction, and sabre-blade deformity of
tibi.]

_Tertiary lesions of mucous membrane and of the submucous cellular
tissue_ are met with chiefly in the tongue, nose, throat, larynx, and
rectum. They originate as gummata or as gummatous infiltrations, which
are liable to break down and lead to the formation of ulcers which may
prove locally destructive, and, in such situations as the larynx, even
dangerous to life. In the tongue the tertiary ulcer may prove the
starting-point of cancer; and in the larynx or rectum the healing of the
ulcer may lead to cicatricial stenosis.

Tertiary lesions of the _bones and joints_, of the _muscles_, and of the
_internal organs_, will be described under these heads. The part played
by syphilis in the production of disease of arteries and of aneurysm
will be referred to along with diseases of blood vessels.

[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Tertiary Syphilitic Ulceration in region of
Knee and on both Thumbs of woman t. 37.]

_Treatment._--The most valuable drugs for the treatment of the
manifestations of the tertiary period are the arsenical preparations and
the iodides of sodium and potassium. On account of their depressing
effects, the latter are frequently prescribed along with carbonate of
ammonium. The dose is usually a matter of experiment in each individual
case; 5 grains three times a day may suffice, or it may be necessary to
increase each dose to 20 or 25 grains. The symptoms of iodism which may
follow from the smaller doses usually disappear on giving a larger
amount of the drug. It should be taken after meals, with abundant water
or other fluid, especially if given in tablet form. It is advisable to
continue the iodides for from one to three months after the lesions for
which they are given have cleared up. If the potassium salt is not
tolerated, it may be replaced by the ammonium or sodium iodide.

_Local Treatment._--The absorption of a subcutaneous gumma is often
hastened by the application of a fly-blister. When a gumma has broken on
the surface and caused an ulcer, this is treated on general principles,
with a preference, however, for applications containing mercury or
iodine, or both. If a wet dressing is required to cleanse the ulcer,
black wash may be used; if a powder to promote dryness, one containing
iodoform; if an ointment is indicated, the choice lies between the red
oxide of mercury or the dilute nitrate of mercury ointment, and one
consisting of equal parts of lanolin and vaselin with 2 per cent. of
iodine. Deep ulcers, and obstinate lesions of the bones, larynx, and
other parts may be treated by excision or scraping with the sharp spoon.

#Second Attacks of Syphilis.#--Instances of re-infection of syphilis
have been recorded with greater frequency since the more general
introduction of arsenical treatment. A remarkable feature in such cases
is the shortness of the interval between the original infection and the
alleged re-infection; in a recent series of twenty-eight cases, this
interval was less than a year. Another feature of interest is that when
patients in the tertiary stage of syphilis are inoculated with the virus
from lesions from these in the primary and secondary stage lesions of
the tertiary type are produced.

Reference may be made to the #relapsing false indurated chancre#,
described by Hutchinson and by Fournier, as it may be the source of
difficulty in diagnosis. A patient who has had an infecting chancre one
or more years before, may present a slightly raised induration on the
penis at or close to the site of his original sore. This relapsed
induration is often so like that of a primary chancre that it is
impossible to distinguish between them, except by the history. If there
has been a recent exposure to venereal infection, it is liable to be
regarded as the primary lesion of a second attack of syphilis, but the
further progress shows that neither bullet-buboes nor secondary
manifestations develop. These facts, together with the disappearance of
the induration under treatment, make it very likely that the lesion is
really gummatous in character.


INHERITED SYPHILIS

One of the most striking features of syphilis is that it may be
transmitted from infected parents to their offspring, the children
exhibiting the manifestations that characterise the acquired form of the
disease.

The more recent the syphilis in the parent, the greater is the risk of
the disease being communicated to the offspring; so that if either
parent suffers from secondary syphilis the infection is almost
inevitably transmitted.

While it is certain that either parent may be responsible for
transmitting the disease to the next generation, the method of
transmission is not known. In the case of a syphilitic mother it is most
probable that the infection is conveyed to the ftus by the placental
circulation. In the case of a syphilitic father, it is commonly believed
that the infection is conveyed to the ovum through the seminal fluid at
the moment of conception. If a series of children, one after the other,
suffer from inherited syphilis, it is almost invariably the case that
the mother has been infected.

In contrast to the acquired form, inherited syphilis is remarkable for
the absence of any primary stage, the infection being a general one from
the outset. The spirochte is demonstrated in incredible numbers in the
liver, spleen, lung, and other organs, and in the nasal secretion, and,
from any of these, successful inoculations in monkeys can readily be
made. The manifestations differ in degree rather than in kind from those
of the acquired disease; the difference is partly due to the fact that
the virus is attacking developing instead of fully formed tissues.

The virus exercises an injurious influence on the ftus, which in many
cases dies during the early months of intra-uterine life, so that
miscarriage results, and this may take place in repeated pregnancies,
the date at which the miscarriage occurs becoming later as the virus in
the mother becomes attenuated. Eventually a child is carried to full
term, and it may be still-born, or, if born alive, may suffer from
syphilitic manifestations. It is difficult to explain such vagaries of
syphilitic inheritance as the infection of one twin and the escape of
the other.

_Clinical Features._--We are not here concerned with the severe forms of
the disease which prove fatal, but with the milder forms in which the
infant is apparently healthy when born, but after from two to six weeks
begins to show evidence of the syphilitic taint.

The usual phenomena are that the child ceases to thrive, becomes thin
and sallow, and suffers from eruptions on the skin and mucous membranes.
There is frequently a condition known as _snuffles_, in which the nasal
passages are obstructed by an accumulation of thin muco-purulent
discharge which causes the breathing to be noisy. It usually begins
within a month after birth and before the eruptions on the skin appear.
When long continued it is liable to interfere with the development of
the nasal bones, so that when the child grows up there results a
condition known as the "saddle-nose" deformity (Figs. 43 and 44).

[Illustration: FIG. 43.--Facies of Inherited Syphilis.

(From Dr. Byrom Bramwell's _Atlas of Clinical Medicine_.)]

_Affections of the Skin._--Although all types of skin affection are met
with in the inherited disease, the most important is a _papular_
eruption, the papules being of large size, with a smooth shining top and
of a reddish-brown colour. It affects chiefly the buttocks and thighs,
the genitals, and other parts which are constantly moist. It is
necessary to distinguish this specific eruption from a form of eczema
which occurs in these situations in non-syphilitic children, the points
that characterise the syphilitic condition being the infiltration of the
skin and the coppery colour of the eruption. At the anus the papules
acquire the characters of _condylomata_, also at the angles of the
mouth, where they often ulcerate and leave radiating scars.

_Affections of the Mucous Membranes._--The inflammation of the nasal
mucous membrane that causes snuffles has already been referred to. There
may be mucous patches in the mouth, or a stomatitis which is of
importance, because it results in interference with the development of
the permanent teeth. The mucous membrane of the larynx may be the seat
of mucous patches or of catarrh, and as a result the child's cry is
hoarse.

_Affections of the Bones._--Swellings at the ends of the long bones, due
to inflammation at the epiphysial junctions, are most often observed at
the upper end of the humerus and in the bones in the region of the
elbow. Partial displacement and mobility at the ossifying junction may
be observed. The infant cries when the part is touched; and as it does
not move the limb voluntarily, the condition is spoken of as _the
pseudo-paralysis of syphilis_. Recovery takes place under
anti-syphilitic treatment and immobilisation of the limb.

Diffuse thickening of the shafts of the long bones, due to a deposit of
new bone by the periosteum, is sometimes met with.

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Facies of Inherited Syphilis.]

The conditions of the skull known as Parrot's nodes or bosses, and
craniotabes, were formerly believed to be characteristic of inherited
syphilis, but they are now known to occur, particularly in rickety
children, from other causes. The _bosses_ result from the heaping up of
new spongy bone beneath the pericranium, and they may be grouped
symmetrically around the anterior fontanelle, or may extend along either
side of the sagittal suture, which appears as a deep groove--the
"natiform skull." The bosses disappear in time, but the skull may remain
permanently altered in shape, the frontal and parietal eminences
appearing unduly prominent. The term _craniotabes_ is applied when the
bone becomes thin and soft, reverting to its original membranous
condition, so that the affected areas dimple under the finger like
parchment or thin cardboard; its localisation in the posterior parts of
the skull suggests that the disappearance of the osseous tissue is
influenced by the pressure of the head on the pillow. Craniotabes is
recovered from as the child improves in health.

Between the ages of three and six months, certain other phenomena may be
met with, such as _effusion into the joints_, especially the knees;
_iritis_, in one or in both eyes, and enlargement of the spleen and
liver.

In the majority of cases the child recovers from these early
manifestations, especially when efficiently treated, and may enjoy an
indefinite period of good health. On the other hand, when it attains the
age of from two to four years, it may begin to manifest lesions which
correspond to those of the tertiary period of acquired syphilis.

#Later Lesions.#--In the skin and subcutaneous tissue, the later
manifestations may take the form of localised gummata, which tend to
break down and form ulcers, on the leg for example, or of a spreading
gummatous infiltration which is also liable to ulcerate, leaving
disfiguring scars, especially on the face. The palate and fauces may be
destroyed by ulceration. In the nose, especially when the ulcerative
process is associated with a putrid discharge--ozna--the destruction of
tissue may be considerable and result in unsightly deformity. The entire
palatal portions of the upper jaws, the vomer, turbinate, and other
bones bounding the nasal and oral cavities, may disappear, so that on
looking into the mouth the base of the skull is readily seen. Gummatous
disease is frequently observed also in the flat bones of the skull, in
the bones of the hand, as syphilitic dactylitis, and in the bones of the
forearm and leg. When the tibia is affected the disease is frequently
bilateral, and may assume the form of gummatous ulcers and sinuses. In
later years the tibia may present alterations in shape resulting from
antecedent gummatous disease--for example, nodular thickenings of the
shaft, flattening of the crest, or a more uniform increase in thickness
and length of the shaft of the bone, which, when it is curved in
addition, is described as the "sabre-blade" deformity. Among lesions of
the viscera, mention should be made of gumma of the testis, which causes
the organ to become enlarged, uneven, and indurated. This has even been
observed in infants a few months old.

Occasionally a syphilitic child suffers from a succession of these
gummatous lesions with resulting ill-health, and, it may be, waxy
disease of the internal organs; on the other hand, it may recover and
present no further manifestations of the inherited taint.

_Affections of the Eyes._--At or near puberty there is frequently
observed an affection of the eyes, known as _chronic interstitial
keratitis_, the relationship of which to inherited syphilis was first
established by Hutchinson. It occurs between the ages of six and sixteen
years, and usually affects one eye before the other. It commences as a
diffuse haziness or steaminess near the centre of the cornea, and as it
spreads the entire cornea assumes the appearance of ground glass. The
chief complaint is of dimness of sight, which may almost amount to
blindness, but there is little pain or photophobia; a certain amount of
conjunctival and ciliary congestion is usually present, and there may be
_iritis_ in addition. The cornea, or parts of it, may become of a deep
pink or salmon colour from the formation in it of new blood vessels. The
affection may last for from eighteen months to two years. Complete
recovery usually takes place, but slight opacities, especially in the
site of former salmon patches, may persist, and the disease occasionally
relapses. _Choroiditis_ and _retinitis_ may also occur, and leave
permanent changes easily recognised on examination with the
ophthalmoscope.

Among the rarer and more serious lesions of the inherited disease may be
mentioned gummatous disease in the _larynx and trachea_, attended with
ulceration and resulting in stenosis; and lesions of the _nervous
system_ which may result in convulsions, paralysis, or dementia.

In a limited number of cases, about the period of puberty there may
develop _deafness_, which is usually bilateral and may become absolute.

_Changes in the Permanent Teeth._--These affect specially the upper
central incisors, which are dwarfed and stand somewhat apart in the gum,
with their free edges converging towards one another. They are tapering
or peg-shaped, and present at their cutting margin a deep semilunar
notch. These appearances are commonly associated with the name of
Hutchinson, who first described them. Affecting as they do the
permanent teeth, they are not available for diagnosis until the child is
over eight years of age. Henry Moon drew attention to a change in the
first molars; these are reduced in size and dome-shaped through dwarfing
of the central tubercle of each cusp.

#Diagnosis of Inherited Syphilis.#--When there is a typical eruption on
the buttocks and snuffles there is no difficulty in recognising the
disease. When, however, the rash is scanty or is obscured by co-existing
eczema, most reliance should be placed on the distribution of the
eruption, on the brown stains which are left after it has passed off, on
the presence of condylomata, and of fissuring and scarring at the angles
of the mouth. The history of the mother relative to repeated
miscarriages and still-born children may afford confirmatory evidence.
In doubtful cases, the diagnosis may be aided by the Wassermann test and
by noting the therapeutic effects of grey powder, which, in syphilitic
infants, usually effects a marked and rapid improvement both in the
symptoms and in the general health.

While a considerable number of syphilitic children grow up without
showing any trace of their syphilitic inheritance, the majority retain
throughout life one or more of the following characteristics, which may
therefore be described as _permanent signs of the inherited disease_:
Dwarfing of stature from interference with growth at the epiphysial
junctions; the forehead low and vertical, and the parietal and frontal
eminences unduly prominent; the bridge of the nose sunken and rounded;
radiating scars at the angles of the mouth; perforation or destruction
of the hard palate; Hutchinson's teeth; opacities of the cornea from
antecedent keratitis; alterations in the fundus oculi from choroiditis;
deafness; depressed scars or nodes on the bones from previous gummata;
"sabre-blade" or other deformity of the tibi.

#The Contagiousness of Inherited Syphilis.#--In 1837, Colles of Dublin
stated his belief that, while a syphilitic infant may convey the disease
to a healthy wet nurse, it is incapable of infecting its own mother if
nursed by her, even although she may never have shown symptoms of the
disease. This doctrine, which is known as _Colles' law_, is generally
accepted in spite of the alleged occurrence of occasional exceptions.
The older the child, the less risk there is of its communicating the
disease to others, until eventually the tendency dies out altogether, as
it does in the tertiary period of acquired syphilis. It should be
added, however, that the contagiousness of inherited syphilis is denied
by some observers, who affirm that, when syphilitic infants prove
infective, the disease has been really acquired at or soon after birth.

There is general agreement that the subjects of inherited syphilis
cannot transmit the disease by inheritance to their offspring, and that,
although they very rarely acquire the disease _de novo_, it is possible
for them to do so.

#Prognosis of Inherited Syphilis.#--Although inherited syphilis is
responsible for a large but apparently diminishing mortality in infancy,
the subjects of this disease may grow up to be as strong and healthy as
their neighbours. Hutchinson insisted on the fact that there is little
bad health in the general community that can be attributed to inherited
syphilis.

#Treatment.#--Arsenical injections are as beneficial in the inherited as
in the acquired disease. An infant the subject of inherited syphilis
should, if possible, be nursed by its mother, and failing this it should
be fed by hand. In infants at the breast, the drug may be given to the
mother; in others, it is administered in the same manner as already
described--only in smaller doses. On the first appearance of syphilitic
manifestations it should be given 0.05 grm, novarsenbillon, injected
into the deep subcutaneous tissues every week for six weeks, followed by
one year's mercurial inunction--a piece of mercurial ointment the size
of a pea being inserted under the infant's binder. In older children the
dose is proportionately increased. The general health should be improved
in every possible direction; considerable benefit may be derived from
the use of cod-liver oil, and from preparations containing iron and
calcium. Surgical interference may be required in the destructive
gummatous lesions of the nose, throat, larynx, and bones, either with
the object of arresting the spread of the disease, or of removing or
alleviating the resulting deformities. In children suffering from
keratitis, the eyes should be protected from the light by smoked or
coloured glasses, and the pupils should be dilated with atropin from
time to time, especially in cases complicated with iritis.

#Acquired Syphilis in Infants and Young Children.#--When syphilis is met
with in infants and young children, it is apt to be taken for granted
that the disease has been inherited. It is possible, however, for them
to acquire the disease--as, for example, while passing through the
maternal passages during birth, through being nursed or kissed by
infected women, or through the rite of circumcision. The risk of
infection which formerly existed by the arm-to-arm method of
vaccination has been abolished by the use of calf lymph.

The clinical features of the acquired disease in infants and young
children are similar to those observed in the adult, with a tendency,
however, to be more severe, probably because the disease is often late
in being recognised and treated.




CHAPTER X

TUMOURS[2]


Definition--Etiology--General characters of innocent and malignant
    tumours. CLASSIFICATION OF TUMOURS: I. Connective-tissue tumours:
    (1) _Innocent_: _Lipoma_, _Xanthoma_, _Chondroma_, _Osteoma_,
    _Odontoma_, _Fibroma_, _Myxoma_, _Endothelioma_, etc.; (2)
    _Malignant_: _Sarcoma_--II. Epithelial tumours: (1) _Innocent_:
    _Papilloma_, _Adenoma_, _Cystic Adenoma_; (2) _Malignant_:
    _Epithelioma_, _Glandular Cancer_, _Rodent Cancer_, _Melanotic
    Cancer_--III. Dermoids--IV. Teratoma. Cysts: _Retention_,
    _Exudation_, _Implantation_, _Parasitic_, _Lymphatic or Serous_.
    Ganglion.

[2] For the histology of tumours the reader is referred to a text-book
of pathology.

A tumour or neoplasm is a localised swelling composed of newly formed
tissue which fulfils no physiological function. Tumours increase in size
quite independently of the growth of the body, and there is no natural
termination to their growth. They are to be distinguished from such
over-growths as are of the nature of simple hypertrophy or local
giantism, and also from inflammatory swellings, which usually develop
under the influence of a definite cause, have a natural termination, and
tend to disappear when the cause ceases to act.

The _etiology of tumours_ is imperfectly understood. Various factors,
acting either singly or in combination, may be concerned in their
development. Certain tumours, for example, are the result of some
congenital malformation of the particular tissue from which they take
origin. This would appear to be the case in many tumours of blood
vessels (angioma), of cartilage (chondroma), of bone (osteoma), and of
secreting gland tissue (adenoma). The theory that tumours originate from
ftal residues or "rests," is associated with the name of Cohnheim.
These rests are supposed to be undifferentiated embryonic cells which
remain embedded amongst fully formed tissue elements, and lie dormant
until they are excited into active growth and give rise to a tumour.
This mode of origin is illustrated by the development of dermoids from
sequestrated portions of epidermis.

Among the local factors concerned in the development of tumours,
reference must be made to the influence of irritation. This is probably
an important agent in the causation of many of the tumours met with in
the skin and in mucous membranes--for example, cancer of the skin, of
the lip, and of the tongue. The part played by injury is doubtful. It
not infrequently happens that the development of a tumour is preceded by
an injury of the part in which it grows, but it does not necessarily
follow that the injury and the tumour are related as cause and effect.
It is possible that an injury may stimulate into active growth
undifferentiated tissue elements or "rests," and so determine the growth
of a tumour, or that it may alter the characters of a tumour which
already exists, causing it to grow more rapidly.

The popular belief that there is some constitutional peculiarity
concerned in the causation of tumours is largely based on the fact that
certain forms of new growth--for example, cancer--are known to occur
with undue frequency in certain families. The same influence is more
striking in the case of certain innocent tumours--particularly multiple
osteomas and lipomas--which are hereditary in the same sense as
supernumerary or webbed fingers, and appear in members of the same
family through several generations.


INNOCENT AND MALIGNANT TUMOURS

For clinical purposes, tumours are arbitrarily divided into two
classes--the innocent and the malignant. The outstanding difference
between them is, that while the evil effects of innocent tumours are
entirely local and depend for their severity on the environment of the
growth, malignant tumours wherever situated, in addition to producing
similar local effects, injure the general health and ultimately cause
death.

_Innocent_, benign, or simple tumours present a close structural
resemblance to the normal tissues of the body. They grow slowly, and are
usually definitely circumscribed by a fibrous capsule, from which they
are easily enucleated, and they do not tend to recur after removal. In
their growth they merely push aside and compress adjacent parts, and
they present no tendency to ulcerate and bleed unless the overlying skin
or mucous membrane is injured. Although usually solitary, some are
multiple from the outset--for example, fatty, fibrous, and bony tumours,
warts, and fibroid tumours of the uterus. They produce no constitutional
disturbance. They only threaten life when growing in the vicinity of
vital organs, and then only in virtue of their situation--for example,
death may result from an innocent tumour in the air-passage causing
suffocation, in the intestine causing obstruction of the bowels, or in
the vertebral canal causing pressure on the spinal medulla.

_Malignant tumours_ usually show a marked departure from the structure
and arrangement of the normal tissues of the body. Although the cells of
which they are composed are derived from normal tissue cells, they tend
to take on a lower, more vegetative form; they may be regarded as
parasites living at the expense of the organism, multiplying
indefinitely and destroying everything with which they come in contact.

Malignant tumours grow more rapidly than innocent tumours, and tend to
infiltrate their surroundings by sending out prolongations or offshoots;
they are therefore liable to recur after an operation which is
restricted to the removal of the main tumour. They are not encapsulated,
although they may appear to be circumscribed by condensation of the
surrounding tissues; they are rarely multiple at the outset, but show a
marked tendency to spread to other parts of the body. Fragments of the
parent tumour may become separated and be carried off in the lymph or
blood-stream and deposited in other parts of the body, where they give
rise to secondary growths. Malignant tumours tend to invade and destroy
the overlying skin or mucous membrane, and thus give rise to bleeding
ulcers; if the tumour tissue protrudes through the gap in the skin, it
is said to _fungate_. In course of time they give rise to a condition of
ill-health or _cachexia_, the patient becoming pale, sallow, feverish,
and emaciated, probably as a result of chronic poisoning from the
absorption of toxic products from the tumour. They ultimately destroy
life, it may be by their local effects, such as ulceration and
hmorrhage, by favouring the entrance of septic infection, by
interfering with the function of organs which are essential to life, by
cachexia, or by a combination of these effects.

The situation of a malignant tumour exercises considerable influence on
the rapidity, as well as on the mode, in which it causes death. Some
cancers, such as that known as "rodent," show malignant features which
are entirely local, while others, such as melanotic cancer, exhibit a
malignancy characterised by rapid generalisation of growths throughout
the body. Tumours that are structurally alike may show variations in
malignancy, according to their situation and to the age of the patient,
as well as to other factors which are as yet unknown.

In attempting to arrive at a conclusion as to the innocence or
malignancy of any tumour, too much reliance must not be placed on its
histological features; its situation, rate of growth, and other clinical
features must also be taken into consideration. It cannot be too
emphatically stated that there is no hard-and-fast line between innocent
and malignant growths; there is an indefinite transition from one to the
other. The possibility of the transformation of a benign into a
malignant tumour must be admitted. Such a transformation implies a
change in the structure of the growth, and has been observed especially
in fibrous and cartilaginous tumours, in tumours of the thyreoid gland,
and in uterine fibroids. The alteration in character may take place
under the influence of injury, prolonged or repeated irritation,
incomplete removal of the benign tumour by operation, or the altered
physiological conditions of the tissues which attend upon advancing
years.

After a tumour has been removed by operation it should as a routine
measure be subjected to microscopical examination; the results are often
instructive and sometimes other than what was expected.

#Varieties of Tumours.#--In the following description, tumours are
classified on an anatomical basis, taking in order first the
connective-tissue group and subsequently those that originate in
epithelium.


INNOCENT CONNECTIVE-TISSUE TUMOURS

#Lipoma.#--A lipoma is composed of fat resembling that normally present
in the body. The commonest variety is the _subcutaneous lipoma_, which
grows from the subcutaneous fat, and forms a soft, irregularly lobulated
tumour (Fig. 45). The fat is arranged in lobules separated by
connective-tissue septa, which are continuous with the capsule
surrounding the tumour and with the overlying skin, which becomes
dimpled or puckered when an attempt is made to pinch it up. As the fat
is almost fluid at the body temperature, fluctuation can usually be
detected. These tumours vary greatly in size, occur at all ages, grow
slowly, and, while generally solitary, are sometimes multiple. They are
most commonly met with on the shoulder, buttock, or back. In certain
situations, such as the thigh and perineum, they tend to become
pedunculated (Fig. 46).

A fatty tumour is to be diagnosed from a cold abscess and from a cyst.
The distinguishing features of the lipoma are the tacking down and
dimpling of the overlying skin, the lobulation of the tumour, which is
recognised when it is pressed upon with the flat of the hand, and, more
reliable than either of these, the mobility, the tumour slipping away
when pressed upon at its margin.

[Illustration: FIG. 45.--Subcutaneous Lipoma showing lobulation.]

The prognosis is more favourable than in any other tumour as it never
changes its characters; the only reasons for its removal by operation
are its unsightliness and its probable increase in size in the course of
years. The operation consists in dividing the skin and capsule over the
tumour and shelling it out. Care must be taken that none of the outlying
lobules are left behind. If the overlying skin is damaged or closely
adherent, it should be removed along with the tumour.

[Illustration: FIG. 46.--Pedunculated Lipoma of Buttock of forty years'
duration in a woman t. 68.]

_Multiple subcutaneous lipomas_ are frequently symmetrical, and in a
certain group of cases, met with chiefly in women, pain is a prominent
symptom, hence the term _adiposis dolorosa_ (Dercum). These multiple
tumours show little or no tendency to increase in size, and the pain
which attends their development does not persist.

In the neck, axilla, and pubes a diffuse overgrowth of the subcutaneous
fat is sometimes met with, forming symmetrical tumour-like masses, known
as _diffuse lipoma_. As this is not, strictly speaking, a tumour, the
term _diffuse lipomatosis_ is to be preferred. A similar condition was
described by Jonathan Hutchinson as being met with in the domestic
animals. If causing disfigurement, the mass of fat may be removed by
operation.

[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Diffuse Lipomatosis of Neck.]

_Lipoma in other Situations._--The _periosteal lipoma_ is usually
congenital, and is most often met with in the hand; it forms a
projecting lobulated tumour, which, when situated in the palm, resembles
an angioma or a lymphangioma. The _subserous lipoma_ arises from the
extra-peritoneal fat in the posterior abdominal wall, in which case it
tends to grow forwards between the layers of the mesentery and to give
rise to an abdominal tumour; or it may grow from the extra-peritoneal
fat in the anterior abdominal wall and protrude from one of the hernial
openings or through an abnormal opening in the parietes, constituting a
_fatty hernia_. A _subsynovial lipoma_ grows from the fat surrounding
the synovial membrane of a joint, and projects into its interior, giving
rise to the symptoms of loose body. Lipomas are also met with growing
from the adipose connective tissue _between or in the substance of
muscles_, and, when situated beneath the deep fascia, such as the fascia
lata of the thigh, the characteristic signs are obscured and a
differential diagnosis is difficult. It may be differentiated from a
cold abscess by puncture with an exploring needle.

[Illustration: FIG. 48.--Zanthoma of Hands in a girl t. 14, showing
multiple subcutaneous tumours (cf. Fig. 49).

(Sir H. J. Stiles' case.)]

#Zanthoma# is a rare but interesting form of tumour, composed of a
fibrous and fatty tissue, containing a granular orange-yellow pigment,
resembling that of the corpus luteum. It originates in the corium and
presents two clinical varieties. In the first of these, it occurs in the
form of raised yellow patches, usually in the skin of the eyelids of
persons after middle life, and in many instances is associated with
chronic jaundice; the patches are often symmetrical, and as they
increase in size they tend to fuse with another.

The second form occurs in children and adolescents; it may affect
several generations of the same family, and is often multiple, there
being a combination of thickened yellow patches of skin and projecting
tumours, some of which may attain a considerable size (Figs. 48 and 49).
On section, the tumour tissue presents a brilliant orange or saffron
colour.

There is no indication for removing the tumours unless for the deformity
which they cause; exposure to the X-rays is to be preferred to
operation.

[Illustration: FIG. 49.--Zanthoma showing Subcutaneous Tumours on
Buttocks. From same patient as Fig. 48.]

#Chondroma.#--A chondroma is mainly composed of cartilage. Processes of
vascular connective tissue pass in between the nodules of cartilage
composing the tumour from the fibrous capsule which surrounds it. On
section it is of a greyish-blue colour and semi-translucent. The tumour
is firm and elastic in consistence, but certain portions may be densely
hard from calcification or ossification, while other portions may be
soft and fluctuating as a result of myxomatous degeneration and
liquefaction. These tumours grow slowly and painlessly, and may surround
nerves and arteries without injuring them. They may cause a deep hollow
in the bone from which they originate. All intermediate forms between
the innocent chondroma and the malignant chondro-sarcoma are met with.
Chondroma may occur in a multiple form, especially in relation to the
phalanges and metacarpal bones. When growing in the interior of a bone
it causes a spindle-shaped enlargement of the shaft, which in the case
of a phalanx or metacarpal bone may resemble the dactylitis resulting
from tubercle or syphilis. A chondroma appears as a clear area in a
skiagram.

A _skiagram_ of a bone in which there is a chondroma shows a clear
rounded area in the position of the tumour, which must be differentiated
from similar clear areas due to other kinds of tumour, especially the
myeloma; when it has undergone calcification or ossification, it gives a
shadow as dark as bone.

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--Chondroma growing from infraspinous fossa of
Scapula.]

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--Chondroma of Metacarpal Bone of Thumb.]

_Treatment._--In view of the unstable quality of the chondroma,
especially of its liability to become malignant, it should be removed as
soon as it is recognised. In those projecting from the surface of a
bone, both the tumour and its capsule should be removed. If in the
interior, a sufficient amount of the cortex should be removed to allow
of the tumour being scraped out, and care must be taken that no nodules
of cartilage are left behind. In multiple chondromas of the hand, when
the fingers are crippled and useless, exposure to the X-rays should be
given a trial, and in extreme cases the question of amputation may have
to be considered. When a cartilaginous tumour takes on active growth, it
must be treated as malignant.

The chondromas that are met with at the ends of the long bones in
children and young adults form a group by themselves. They are usually
related to the epiphysial cartilage, and it was suggested by Virchow
that they take origin from islands of cartilage which have not been used
up in the process of ossification. They are believed to occur more
frequently in those who have suffered from rickets. They have no
malignant tendencies and tend to undergo ossification concurrently with
the epiphysial cartilage from which they take origin, and constitute
what are known as _cartilaginous exostoses_. These are sometimes met
with in a multiple form, and may occur in several generations of the
same family. They are considered in greater detail in the chapter
dealing with tumours of bone.

Minute nodules of cartilage sometimes form in the synovial membrane of
joints and lining of tendon sheaths and burs: they tend to become
detached from the membrane and constitute loose bodies; they also
undergo a variable amount of calcification and ossification, so as to be
visible in skiagrams. They are further considered with loose bodies in
joints.

Cartilaginous tumours in the parotid, submaxillary gland, and testicle
belong to a class of "mixed tumours" that will be referred to later.

#Osteoma.#--The true osteoma is composed of bony tissue, and originates
from the skeleton. Two varieties are recognised--the spongy or
cancellous, and the ivory or compact. The _spongy_ or _cancellous
osteoma_ is really an ossified chondroma, and is met with at the ends of
the long bones (Fig. 52). From the fact that it projects from the
surface of the bone it is often spoken of as an _exostosis_. It grows
slowly, and rarely causes any discomfort unless it presses upon a
nerve-trunk or upon a bursa which has developed over it. The Rntgen
rays show a dark shadow corresponding to the ossified portion of the
tumour, and continuous with that of the bone from which it is growing
(Fig. 138). Operative interference is only indicated when the tumour is
giving rise to inconvenience. It is then removed, its base or neck being
divided by means of the chisel. The multiple variety of osteoma is
considered with the diseases of bone.

The bony outgrowth from the terminal phalanx of the great toe--known as
the _subungual exostosis_--is described and figured on p. 404. Bony
projections or "spurs" sometimes occur on the under surface of the
calcaneus, and, projecting downwards and forwards from the greater
process, cause pain on putting the heel to the ground.

[Illustration: FIG. 52.--Cancellous Osteoma of lower end of Femur.]

The _ivory_ or _compact osteoma_ is composed of dense bone, and usually
grows from the skull. It is generally sessile and solitary, and may grow
into the interior of the skull, into the frontal sinus, into the cavity
of the orbit or nose, or may fill up the external auditory meatus,
causing most unsightly deformity and interference with sight, breathing,
and hearing.

Bony formations occur in _muscles and tendons_, especially at their
points of attachment to the skeleton, and are known as false exostoses;
they are described with the diseases of muscles.

#Odontoma.#--An odontoma is composed of dental tissues in varying
proportions and different degrees of development, arising from
tooth-germs or from teeth still in process of growth (Bland Sutton).
Odontomas resemble teeth in so far that during their development they
remain hidden below the mucous membrane and give no evidence of their
existence. There then succeeds, usually between the twentieth and
twenty-fifth years, an eruptive stage, which is often attended with
suppuration, and this may be the means of drawing attention to the
tumour. Following Bland Sutton, several varieties of odontoma may be
distinguished according to the part of the tooth-germ concerned in their
formation.

The _epithelial odontoma_ is derived from persistent portions of the
epithelium of the enamel organ, and constitutes a multilocular cystic
tumour which is chiefly met with in the mandible. The cystic spaces of
the tumour contain a brownish glairy fluid. These tumours have been
described by Eve under the name of multilocular cystic epithelial
tumours of the jaw.

The _follicular odontoma_, also known as a _dentigerous cyst_, is
derived from the distension of a tooth follicle. It constitutes a cyst
containing a viscid fluid, and an imperfectly formed tooth is often
found embedded in its wall. The cyst usually forms in relation to one of
the permanent molars, and may attain considerable dimensions.

The _fibrous odontoma_ is the result of an overgrowth of fibrous tissue
surrounding the tooth sac, which encapsulates the tooth and prevents its
eruption. The thickened tooth sac is usually mistaken for a fibrous
tumour, until, after removal, the tooth is recognised in its interior.

_Composite Odontoma._--This is a convenient term to apply to certain
hard dental tumours which are met with in the jaws, and consist of
enamel, dentine, and cement. The tumour is to be regarded as being
derived from an abnormal growth of all the elements of a tooth germ, or
of two or more tooth germs, indiscriminately fused with one another. It
may appear in childhood, and form a smooth unyielding tumour, often of
considerable size, replacing the corresponding permanent tooth. It may
cause a purulent discharge, and in some cases it has been extruded after
sloughing of the overlying soft parts. Many examples of this variety of
odontoma, growing in the nasal cavity or in the maxillary sinus, have
been erroneously regarded as osteomas even after removal.

On section, the tumour is usually laminated, and is seen to consist
mainly of dentine with a partial covering of enamel and cement.

_Diagnosis._--Odontomas are often only diagnosed after removal. When
attended with suppuration, the condition has been mistaken for disease
of the jaw. Fibrous odontomas have been mistaken for sarcoma, and
portions of the maxilla removed unnecessarily. Any circumscribed tumour
of the jaw, particularly when met with in a young adult, should suggest
the possibility of an odontoma. Skiagrams often give useful information
both for diagnosis and for treatment.

_Treatment._--The solid varieties of odontoma can usually be shelled out
after dividing the overlying soft parts. In the follicular variety, it
is usually sufficient to excise a portion of the wall, scrape out the
interior, and remove any tooth that may be present. The cavity is then
packed and allowed to heal from the bottom.

#Fibroma.#--A fibroma is a tumour composed of fibrous connective tissue.
A distinction may be made between the _soft fibroma_, which is
comparatively rich in cells and blood vessels, and in which the fibres
are arranged loosely; and the _hard fibroma_, which is composed of
closely packed bundles of fibres often arranged in a concentric fashion
around the blood vessels. The cut surface of the soft fibroma presents a
pinkish-white, fleshy appearance, resembling the slowly growing forms of
sarcoma; that of a hard fibroma presents a dry, glistening appearance,
aptly compared to watered silk. The soft variety grows much more rapidly
than the hard. In certain fibromas--in those, for example, which grow
from the periosteum of the base of the skull and project into the
naso-pharynx--the blood vessels are dilated into sinuses and have no
proper sheaths; they therefore tend to remain open when divided, and to
bleed excessively. Transition forms between soft fibroma and sarcoma are
met with, so that in operating for their removal it is safer to take
away the capsule along with the tumour, and the patient should be kept
under observation in view of the risk of recurrence.

The skin--especially the skin of the buttock--is one of the favourite
seats of fibroma, and it may occur in a multiple form. It is met with
also in the subcutaneous and intermuscular cellular tissue, and in the
abdominal wall, where it sometimes attains considerable dimensions.
Various forms of fibroma are met with in the mamma and are described
with diseases of that organ. The fibrous overgrowths in the skin, known
as _keloid_ and _molluscum fibrosum_, and those met with in the _sheaths
of nerves_, are described elsewhere. Fibroid tumours of the uterus are
described with myoma.

_Diffuse fibroma_ or _Fibromatosis_, analogous to lipomatosis, is met
with in the connective tissue of the skin and sheaths of nerves, and
constitutes one form of neuro-fibromatosis; a similar change is also met
with in the stomach and colon.

#Myxoma.#--A myxoma is composed of tissue of a soft gelatinous,
semifluid consistence. The pure myxoma is extremely rare, and
clinically resembles the lipoma. Myxomatous tissue is, however,
frequently found in other connective-tissue tumours as a result of
degeneration, for example, in cartilaginous tumours and in sarcomas.
Myxomatous tissue is also a prominent constituent of the "innocent
parotid tumour." Mucous polypus of the nose, which is often described as
a myxoma, is merely a pendulous process of dematous mucous membrane.

[Illustration: FIG. 53.--Myeloma of Shaft of Humerus, causing
pathological fracture. (Mr. J. W. Struthers' case.)

(The unusual site of the tumour is to be noted.)]

#Myeloma.#--A myeloma is composed of large multinuclear giant cells
surrounded by round and spindle cells. The cut surface of the tumour
presents a deep red or maroon colour. While occasionally met with in
tendon sheaths and burs, and is then of an orange-yellow colour, the
myeloma occurs most frequently in the cancellous tissue at the ends of
the long bones, its favourite site being the upper end of the tibia.
Although formerly classified as a sarcoma, it is the exception for it to
present malignant features, and it can usually be extirpated by local
measures without fear of recurrence. The diagnosis, X-ray appearances,
and the method of removal are considered with the diseases of bone.
Sometimes the myeloma is met with in multiple form in the skeleton, in
association with an unusual form of protein in the urine (Bence Jones).

#Myoma.#--A myoma is composed of non-striped muscle fibres. A pure myoma
is very rare, and is met with in organs possessed of non-striped muscle,
such as the stomach, intestine, urinary bladder, and prostate. In the
uterus, which is the most common situation, these tumours contain a
considerable admixture of fibrous tissue, and are known as _fibroids_ or
_fibro-myomas_. They present on section a fasciculated appearance, which
may resemble that of a section of balls of cotton (Fig. 54). They are
encapsulated and vascular, frequently attain a large size, and may be
single or multiple. While they may occasion neither inconvenience nor
suffering, they frequently give rise to profuse hmorrhage from the
uterus, and may cause serious symptoms by pressing injuriously on the
ureters or the intestine, or by complicating pregnancy and parturition.

The #Rhabdomyoma# is an extremely rare form of tumour, met with in the
kidney, uterus, and testicle. It contains striped muscle fibres, and is
supposed to originate from a residue of muscular tissue which has become
sequestrated during development.

[Illustration: FIG. 54.--Fibro-myoma of Uterus.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

#Glioma.#--A glioma is a tumour composed of neuroglia. It is met with
exclusively in the central nervous system, retina, and optic nerve. It
is a slowly growing, soft, ill-defined tumour, which displaces the
adjacent nerve centres and nerve tracts, and is liable to become the
seat of hmorrhage and thus to give rise to pressure symptoms resembling
apoplexy. The glioma of the retina tends to grow into the vitreous
humour and to perforate the globe. It is usually of the nature of a
glio-sarcoma and is highly malignant.

#Endotheliomas# take origin from the endothelium of lymph vessels and
blood vessels, and serous cavities. They show great variation in type,
partly because of the number of different kinds of endothelium from
which they are derived, and partly because the new connective tissue
which is formed is liable to undergo transformation into other tissues.
They may be soft or hard, solid or cystic, diffuse or circumscribed;
they grow very slowly, and are almost always innocent, although
recurrence has been occasionally observed. Cases of multiple
endotheliomata of the skin have recently been described by Wise.

_Angioma_, _lymphangioma_, and _neuroma_ are described with the disease
of the individual tissues.


MALIGNANT CONNECTIVE-TISSUE TUMOURS--SARCOMA

The term sarcoma is applied to any connective-tissue tumour which
exhibits malignant characters. The essential structural feature is the
predominance of the cellular elements over the intercellular substance
or stroma, in which respect a sarcoma resembles the connective tissue of
the embryo. The typical sarcoma consists chiefly of immature or
embryonic connective tissue. It most frequently originates from fascia,
intermuscular connective tissue, periosteum, bone-marrow, and skin, and
forms a rounded or nodulated tumour which appears to be encapsulated,
but the capsule merely consists of the condensed surrounding tissues,
and usually contains sarcomatous elements. The consistence of the tumour
depends on the nature and amount of the stroma, and on the presence of
degenerative changes. The softer medullary forms are composed almost
exclusively of cells; while the harder forms--such as the fibro-,
chondro-, and osteo-sarcoma--are provided with an abundant stroma and
are relatively poor in cells. Degenerative changes may produce areas of
softening or liquefaction which result in the formation of cystic
cavities in the interior of the tumour. The colour depends on the amount
of blood in the tumour, and on the presence of the products of
degeneration.

The blood vessels are usually represented by mere chinks or spaces
between the cells. This peculiarity accounts for the facility with which
hmorrhage takes place into the substance of the tumour, the persistence
of the bleeding when it is incised or ulcerates through the skin, and
the readiness with which the sarcomatous cells are carried off and
infect distant parts through the blood-stream. Sarcomas are devoid of
lymphatics, and unless originating in lymphatic structures--for example,
in the tonsil--they rarely infect the lymph glands. Minute portions of
the tumour grow into the small veins, and, becoming detached, are
transported by the blood-current to distant organs, where they are
arrested in the capillaries and give rise to secondary growths. These
are most frequently situated in the lungs, except when the primary
growth lies within the territory of the portal circulation, in which
case they occur in the liver. The secondary growths closely resemble the
parent tumour. Sarcoma may invade an adjacent vein on such a scale that
if the invading portion becomes detached it may constitute a dangerous
embolus. This may be observed in sarcoma of the kidney, the growth
taking place along the renal vein until it projects into the vena cava.

[Illustration: FIG. 55.--Recurrent Sarcoma of Sciatic Nerve in a woman
t. 27. Recurrence twenty months after removal of primary growth.]

In its growth, a sarcoma compresses and destroys neighbouring parts,
surrounds vessels and nerves, and may lead to destruction of the skin,
either by invading it, or more commonly by causing sloughing from
pressure. Inflammatory and suppurative changes may take place as a
result of pyogenic infection following upon sloughing of the overlying
skin or upon an exploratory incision. Once the skin is broken the tumour
fungates through the opening. Sarcomas vary in malignancy, especially as
regards rapidity of growth and capacity for dissemination. Certain of
them, such as the so-called "recurrent fibroid of Paget," grow
comparatively slowly, and are only malignant in the sense that they tend
to recur locally after removal; others--especially the more cellular
ones--grow with extreme rapidity, and are early disseminated throughout
the body, resembling in these respects the most malignant forms of
cancer. They are usually solitary in the first instance, although
primary multiple growths are occasionally met with in the skin and in
the bones.

Many varieties of sarcoma are recognised, according to its structural
peculiarities. Thus, in virtue of the size and character of the cells,
we have the _small round-celled_ and the _large round-celled_ sarcoma,
the _small_ and the _large spindle-celled_, the _giant-celled_ and the
_mixed-celled_ sarcoma. The _lympho-sarcoma_ presents a structure
similar to that of lymph-follicular tissue, and the _alveolar sarcoma_
an arrangement of cells in alveoli resembling that seen in cancers. When
there is a considerable amount of intercellular fibrous tissue, the
tumour is called a _fibro-sarcoma_.

[Illustration: FIG. 56.--Fungating Sarcoma of Arm.

(Dr. J. M'Watt's case.)]

The term _lymphangio-sarcoma_ is applied when the cells of the tumour
are derived from the endothelium of lymph spaces and vessels. The
_angio-sarcomas_ are those in which blood vessels form a prominent
element in the structure of the tumour. They are sometimes derived from
innocent angiomas, and they may be so vascular as to pulsate and on
auscultation yield a blowing murmur like an aneurysm. The
_glio-sarcoma_, _myxo-sarcoma_, _chondro-sarcoma_, and _myo-sarcoma_ are
mixed forms which usually develop in pre-existing innocent tumours. The
_osteo-sarcoma_ is characterised by the formation in the tumour of bone,
the medullary spaces being occupied by sarcomatous cells in place of
marrow. The _osteoid sarcoma_ is characterised by the formation of a
tissue resembling bone but deficient in lime salts, and the _petrifying
sarcoma_ by the formation of calcified areas in the stroma. These
varieties, although met with chiefly in the bones, may occur in soft
tissues such as muscle, and in such organs as the mamma. The pigmented
varieties include the _chloroma_, which is of a light-green colour, and
the _melanotic sarcoma_, which is brown or black. The _psammoma_ is a
sarcoma containing a material resembling sand; it is chiefly met with in
the membranes of the brain. The _chordoma_ is a rare form of tumour
originating from the remains of the notochord in the region of the
spheno-occipital synchondrosis or in the sacro-coccygeal region.

_Diagnosis of Sarcoma._--A sarcoma is to be differentiated from an
inflammatory swelling such as results from tubercle, actinomycosis, or
syphilis, from an innocent tumour, and from a cancer. The points on
which the diagnosis is founded are discussed with the different tissues
and organs.

_Treatment._--The removal of the tumour by operation is the most
reliable method of treatment; in order to be successful it must be
undertaken before dissemination has taken place, and a considerable area
of healthy tissue beyond the apparent margin of the growth must be
removed, and in tumours near the surface of the body, the overlying skin
also.

In order to prevent recurrence, a tube of _radium_, to which a silk
thread is attached, is inserted into the space from which the tumour was
removed; the thread is brought out at the drain-opening, and at the end
of a week or ten days the tube of radium is removed by pulling on the
thread. Radium causes a reaction in the tissues attended with exudation
from the vessels, for the escape of which provision must be made. If
radium is not available, the affected area is repeatedly exposed to the
action of the _X-rays_ as soon as the wound has healed. The employment
of these measures has diminished to a remarkable degree the recurrence
of sarcoma after operation.

It will readily be understood that the less thoroughly or radically the
growth has been removed, the more do we depend upon radium or the X-rays
for bringing about a permanent cure, and that in advanced cases of
sarcoma and in cases in which, on account of their anatomical situation,
removal by operation is necessarily incomplete, the prospect of cure is
still more dependent on the use of radium or of the X-rays. Finally,
there are cases in which removal by operation is impossible, the
so-called _inoperable sarcoma_; a tube of radium, to which a silk thread
is attached, is inserted into the substance of the tumour, either
through an opening made by a large trocar, or, when necessary, by open
dissection. A second tube of radium is placed upon the skin over the
tumour and is secured there by a stitch or by a strip of plaster, thus
securing a cross-fire action of the radium rays, both from within and
without, as this is found to be much more efficacious in destroying or
inhibiting the cellular elements of the growth. The tubes of radium are
left _in situ_ for from eight to fourteen days, according to the power
of the radium employed, but are moved about every second day or so in
order that every part of the tumour may be efficiently radiated. If the
tumour shrinks in size after the use of radium and becomes operable, it
should be removed before time is given it to resume its growth. It will
depend upon the subsequent course of the disease, whether or not a
second, or it may be even a third, application of radium will be
required.

Where neither radium nor X-rays is available or applicable, recourse may
be had to the injection of Coley's fluid, a preparation containing the
mixed toxins of the streptococcus of erysipelas and the bacillus
prodigiosus; or of selenium.


EPITHELIAL TUMOURS

An excessive and erratic growth of epithelium is the essential and
distinguishing feature of these tumours. The innocent forms are the
papilloma and the adenoma; the malignant, the carcinoma or cancer.

#Papilloma.#--A papilloma is a tumour which projects from a cutaneous or
mucous surface, and consists of a central axis of vascular fibrous
tissue with a covering of epithelium resembling that of the surface from
which the tumour grows. In the papillomas of the skin--commonly known as
_warts_--the covering consists of epidermis; in those growing from
mucous surfaces it consists of the epithelium covering the mucous
membrane. When the surface epithelium projects as filiform processes,
the tumour is called a _villous papilloma_, the best-known example of
which is met with in the urinary bladder. Papillomatous growths are
also met with in the larynx, in the ducts of the breast, and in the
interior of certain cystic tumours of the breast and of the ovary.
Although papillomas are primarily innocent, they may become the
starting-point of cancer, especially in persons past middle life and if
the papilloma has been subjected to irritation and has ulcerated. The
clinical features and treatment of the various forms of papilloma are
considered with the individual tissues and organs.

#Adenoma.#--An adenoma is a tumour constructed on the type of, and
growing in connection with, a secreting gland. In the substance of such
glands as the mamma, parotid, thyreoid, and prostate, adenomas are met
with as encapsulated tumours. When they originate from the glands of the
skin or of a mucous membrane, they tend to project from the surface, and
form pedunculated tumours or polypi.

Adenomas may be single or multiple, and they vary greatly in size. The
tumour is seldom composed entirely of gland tissue; it usually contains
a considerable proportion of fibrous tissue, and is then called a
_fibro-adenoma_. When it contains myxomatous tissue it is called a
_myxo-adenoma_, and when the gland spaces of the tumour become distended
with accumulated secretion, a _cystic adenoma_, the best examples of
which are met with in the mamma and ovary. A characteristic feature of
the cystic variety is the tendency the tumour tissue exhibits to project
into the interior of the cysts, constituting what are known as
_intracystic growths_. They are essentially innocent, but intracystic
growths, especially in the mamma of women over fifty, should be regarded
with suspicion and therefore should be removed on radical lines.
Transition forms between adenoma and carcinoma are also met with in the
rectum and large intestine, and these should be treated on the same
lines as cancer.


CARCINOMA OR CANCER

A cancer is a malignant tumour which originates in epithelium. The
cancer cells are derived by proliferation from already existing
epithelium, and they invade the sub-epithelial connective tissue in the
form of simple or branching columns. These columns are enclosed in
spaces--termed alveoli--which are probably dilated lymph spaces, and
which communicate freely with the lymph vessels. The cells composing the
columns and filling the alveoli vary with the character of the
epithelium in which the cancer originates. The malignancy of cancer
depends on the tendency which the epithelium has of invading the tissues
in its neighbourhood, and on the capacity of the cells, when
transported elsewhere by the lymph or blood-stream, of giving rise to
secondary growths.

Cancer may arise on any surface covered by epithelium or in any of the
secreting glands of the body, but it is much more common in some
situations than in others. It is frequently met with, for example, in
the skin, in the stomach and large intestine, in the breast, the uterus,
and the external genitals; less frequently in the gall-bladder, larynx,
thyreoid, prostate, and urinary bladder.

Tissues appear to be most liable to cancer when, having attained
maturity, they enter upon the phase of decadence or involution, and this
phase is reached by different tissues at different periods. It is not so
much, therefore, the age of the person in whom it occurs, as the age of
the tissue in which it arises, that determines the maximum incidence of
cancer. Cancer of the stomach appears and attains a maximum frequency
earlier than cancer of the skin; cancer of the uterus and mamma is more
frequent towards the decline of reproductive activity than in the later
years of life; rectal cancer is not infrequently met with during the
second and third decades. There is evidence that the irritation caused
by alcohol and tobacco plays a part in the causation of cancer, in the
fact that a large proportion of those who become the subjects of cancer
of the mouth are excessive drinkers and smokers.

A cancer may appear as a papillary growth on a mucous or a skin surface,
as a nodule in the substance of an organ, or as a diffuse thickening of
a tubular organ such as the stomach or intestine. The absence of
definition in cancerous tumours explains the difficulty of completely
removing them by surgical measures, and has led to the practice of
complete extirpation of cancerous organs wherever this is possible. The
boundaries of the affected organ, moreover, are frequently transgressed
by the disease, and the epithelial infiltration implicates the
surrounding parts. In cancer of the breast, for example, the disease
often extends to the adjacent skin, fat, and muscle; in cancer of the
lip or tongue, to the mandible; in cancer of the uterus or intestine, to
the investing peritoneum.

In addition to its tendency to infiltrate adjacent tissues and organs,
cancer is also liable to give rise to _secondary growths_. These are
most often met with in the nearest lymph glands; those in the neck, for
example, becoming infected from cancer of the lip, tongue, or throat;
those in the axilla, from cancer of the breast; those along the
curvatures of the stomach, from cancer of the pylorus; and those in the
groin, from cancer of the external genitals. In lymph vessels the cancer
cells may merely accumulate so as to fill the lumen and form indurated
cords, or they may proliferate and give rise to secondary nodules along
the course of the vessels. When the lymphatic network in the skin is
diffusely infected, the appearance is either that of a multitude of
secondary nodules or of a diffuse thickening, so that the skin comes to
resemble coarse leather. On the wall of the chest this condition is
known as _cancer en cuirasse_. Although the cancer cells constantly
attack the walls of the adjacent veins and spread into their interior at
a comparatively early period, secondary growths due to dissemination by
the blood-stream rarely show themselves clinically until late in the
course of the disease. It is probable that many of the cancer cells
which are carried away in the blood or lymph stream undergo necrosis and
fail to give rise to secondary growths. Secondary growths present a
faithful reproduction of the structure of the primary tumour. Apart from
the lymph glands, the chief seats of secondary growths are the liver,
lungs, serous membranes, and bone marrow.

It is generally believed that the secondary growths in cancer that
develop at a distance from the primary tumour, those, for example, in
the medullary canal of the femur or in the diplo of the skull occurring
in advanced cases of cancer of the breast, are the result of
dissemination of cancer cells by way of the blood-stream and are to be
regarded as emboli. Sampson Handley disagrees with this view; he
believes that the dissemination is accomplished in a more subtle way,
namely, by the actual growth of cancer cells along the finer vessels of
the lymph plexuses that ramify in the deep fascia, a method of spread
which he calls _permeation_. It is maintained also that permeation
occurs as readily against the lymph stream as with it. He compares the
spread of cancer to that of an invisible annular ringworm. The growing
edge extends in a wider and wider circle, within which a healing process
may occur, so that the area of permeation is a ring, rather than a disc.
Healing occurs by a process of "peri-lymphatic fibrosis," but as the
natural process of healing may fail at isolated points, nodules of
cancer appear, which, although apparently separate from the primary
growth, have developed in continuity with it, peri-lymphatic fibrosis
having destroyed the cancer chain connecting the nodule with the primary
growth. This centrifugal spread of cancer is clearly seen in the
distribution of the subcutaneous secondary nodules so frequently met
with in the late stages of mammary cancer. The area within which the
secondary nodules occur is a circle of continually increasing diameter
with the primary growth in the centre.

In the rare cases in which the skin of the greater part of the body is
affected, the nodules rarely appear below the level of the deltoid or
the middle third of the thigh, the patient dying before the spread can
reach the distal portions of the limbs.

Handley argues against the embolic origin of the metastases in the bones
because of the rarity of these in the bones of the distal parts of the
limbs, because of the fact that secondary cancer of the femur nearly
always commences in the upper third of the shaft, which harmonises with
the intimate connection of the deep fascia with the periosteum over the
great trochanter, thus favouring invasion of the bone marrow when
permeation has spread thus far. He claims support for the permeation
theory from the fact that the humerus is rarely involved below the
insertion of the deltoid, and that spontaneous fracture of the femur is
three times more common on the side on which the breast cancer is
situated.

The tumour tissue may undergo necrosis, and when the overlying skin or
mucous membrane gives way an ulcer is formed. The margins of a
_cancerous ulcer_ (Fig. 57) are made up of tumour tissue which has not
broken down. Usually they are irregular, nodularly thickened or
indurated; sometimes they are raised and crater-like. The floor of the
ulcer is smooth and glazed, or occupied by necrosed tissue, and the
discharge is watery and blood-stained, and as a result of putrefactive
changes may become offensive. Hmorrhage is rarely a prominent feature,
but discharge of blood may constitute a symptom of considerable
diagnostic importance in cancer of internal organs such as the rectum,
the bladder, or the uterus.

[Illustration: FIG. 57.--Carcinoma of Breast with Cancerous Ulcer.]

_The Contagiousness of Cancer._--A limited number of cases are on record
in which a cancer appears to have been transferred by contact, as from
the lower to the upper lip, from one labium majus to the other, from the
tongue to the cheek, and from one vocal cord to the other; these being
all examples of cancer involving surfaces which are constantly or
frequently in contact. The transference of cancer from one human being
to another, whether by accident, as in the case of a surgeon wounding
his finger while operating for cancer, or by the deliberate introduction
of a portion of cancerous tumour into the tissues, has never been known
to occur. It is by no means infrequent, however, that when recurrence
takes place after an operation for the removal of cancer, the recurrent
nodules make their appearance in the main scar or in the scars of
stitches in its neighbourhood. In the lower animals the grafting of
cancer only succeeds in animals of the same species; for example, a
cancer taken from a mouse will not grow in the tissues of a rat, but
only in a mouse of the same variety as that from which the graft was
taken.

While cancer cannot be regarded as either contagious or infectious, it
is important to bear in mind the possibility of infection of a wound
with cancer when operating for the disease. A cancer should not be cut
into unless this is essential for purposes of diagnosis, and the wound
made for exploration should be tightly closed by stitches before the
curative operation is proceeded with; the instruments used for the
exploration must not be used again until they have been boiled. The
greatest care should be taken that a cancer which has softened or broken
down is not opened into during the operation.

Investigations regarding the cause of cancer have been prosecuted with
great energy during recent years, but as yet without positive result. It
is recognised that there are a number of conditions which favour the
development of cancer, such as prolonged irritation, and a considerable
number of cases have been recorded in which cancer of the skin of the
hands has followed prolonged and repeated exposure to the Rntgen rays.

_The Alleged Increase of Cancer._--Regarding the alleged increase of
cancer, it may be pointed out that it is impossible to ascertain how
much of the apparent increase is due to more accurate diagnosis and
improved registration. It is probable also that some increase has taken
place in consequence of the increased average duration of life; a larger
proportion of persons now reach the age at which cancer is frequent.

_The prognosis_ largely depends on the variety of cancer and on its
situation. Certain varieties--such as the atrophic cancer of the breast
which occurs in old people, and some forms of cancer in the rectum--are
so indolent in their progress that they can scarcely be said to shorten
life; while others--such as the softer varieties of mammary cancer
occurring in young women--are among the most malignant of tumours. The
mode in which cancer causes death depends to a large extent upon its
situation. In the gullet, for example, it usually causes death by
starvation; in the larynx or thyreoid, by suffocation; in the intestine,
by obstruction of the bowels; in the uterus, prostate, and bladder, by
hmorrhage or by implication of the ureters and kidneys. Independently
of their situation, however, cancers frequently cause death by giving
rise to a progressive impairment of health known as the _cancerous
cachexia_, a condition which is due to the continued absorption of
poisonous products from the tumour. The patient loses appetite, becomes
emaciated, pale, and feverish, and gradually loses strength until he
dies. In many cases, especially those in which ulceration has occurred,
the addition of pyogenic infection may also be concerned in the failure
of health.

_Treatment._--Removal by surgical means affords the best prospect of
cure. If carcinomatous disease is to be rooted out, its mode of spread
by means of the lymph vessels must be borne in mind, and as this occurs
at an early stage, and is not evident on examination, a wide area must
be included in the operation. The organ from which the original growth
springs should, if practicable, be altogether removed, because its lymph
vessels generally communicate freely with each other, and secondary
deposits have probably already taken place in various parts of it. In
addition, the nearest chain of lymph glands must also be removed, even
though they may not be noticeably enlarged, and in some cases--in cancer
of the breast, for example--the intervening lymph vessels should be
removed at the same time.

The treatment of cancer by other than operative methods has received a
great deal of attention within recent years, and many agents have been
put to the test, _e.g._ colloidal suspensions of selenium, but without
any positive results. Most benefit has resulted from the use of radium
and of the X-rays, and one or other should be employed as a routine
measure after every operation for cancer.

It has been demonstrated that cancer cells are more sensitive to radium
and to the Rntgen rays than the normal cells of the body, and are more
easily killed. The effect varies a good deal with the nature and seat of
the tumour. In rodent cancers of the skin, for example, both radium and
X-ray treatment are very successful, and are to be preferred to
operation because they yield a better cosmetic result. While small
epitheliomas of the skin may be cured by means of the rays, they are not
so amenable as rodent cancers.

Cancers of mucous membranes are less amenable to ray treatment because
they are less circumscribed and are difficult of access. In cancers
under the skin, the Rntgen rays are less efficient; if radium is
employed, the tube containing it should be inserted into the substance
of the tumour after the method described in connection with sarcoma--and
another tube should be placed on the overlying skin.

In the employment of X-rays and of radium in the treatment of cancer,
experience is required, not only to obtain the maximum effect of the
rays, but to avoid damage to the adjacent and overlying tissues.

Ray treatment is not to be looked upon as a rival but as a powerful
supplement to the operative treatment of cancer.


VARIETIES OF CANCER

The varieties of cancer are distinguished according to the character and
arrangement of the epithelial cells.

The _squamous epithelial cancer_ or _epithelioma_ originates from a
surface covered by squamous epithelium, such as the skin, or the mucous
membrane of the mouth, gullet, or larynx. The cancer cells retain the
characters of squamous epithelium, and, being confined within the lymph
spaces of the sub-epithelial connective tissue, become compressed and
undergo a horny change. This results in the formation of concentrically
laminated masses known as cell nests.

The clinical features are those of a slowly growing indurated tumour,
which nearly always ulcerates; there is a characteristic induration of
the edges and floor of the ulcer, and its surface is often covered with
warty or cauliflower-like outgrowths (Fig. 58). The infection of the
lymph glands is early and constant, and constitutes the most dangerous
feature of the disease; the secondary growths in the glands exhibit the
characteristic induration, and may themselves break down and lead to the
formation of ulcers.

[Illustration: FIG. 58.--Epithelioma of Lip.]

Epithelioma frequently originates in long-standing ulcers or sinuses,
and in scars, and probably results from the displacement and
sequestration of epithelial cells during the process of cicatrisation.

The _columnar epithelial cancer_ or _columnar epithelioma_ originates in
mucous membranes covered with columnar epithelium, and is chiefly met
with in the stomach and intestine. As it resembles an adenoma in
structure it is sometimes described as a _malignant adenoma_. Its
malignancy is shown by the proliferating epithelium invading the other
coats of the stomach or intestine, and by the development of secondary
growths.

_Glandular carcinoma_ originates in organs such as the breast, and in
the glands of mucous membranes and skin. The epithelial cells are not
arranged on any definite plan, but are closely packed in irregularly
shaped alveoli. If the alveoli are large and the intervening stroma is
scanty and delicate, the tumour is soft and brain-like, and is described
as a _medullary_ or _encephaloid cancer_. If the alveoli are small and
the intervening stroma is abundant and composed of dense fibrous tissue,
the tumour is hard, and is known as a _scirrhous cancer_--a form which
is most frequently met with in the breast. If the cells undergo
degeneration and absorption and the stroma contracts, the tumour becomes
still harder, and tends to shrink and to draw in the surrounding parts,
leading, in the breast, to retraction of the nipple and overlying skin,
and in the stomach and colon to narrowing of the lumen. When the cells
of the tumour undergo colloid degeneration, a _colloid cancer_ results;
if the degeneration is complete, as may occur in the breast, the
malignancy is thereby greatly diminished; if only partial, as is more
common in rectal cancer, the malignancy is not appreciably affected.
Melanin pigment is formed in relation to the cells and stroma of certain
epithelial tumours, giving rise to _melanotic cancer_, one of the most
malignant of all new growths. Cyst-like spaces may form in the tumour by
the accumulation of the secretion of the epithelial cells, or as a
result of their degeneration--_cystic carcinoma_. This is met with
chiefly in the breast and ovary, and the tumour resembles the cystic
adenoma, but it tends to infect its surroundings and gives rise to
secondary growths.

_Rodent cancer_ originates in the glands of the skin, and presents a
special tendency to break down and ulcerate on the surface (Figs. 102
and 103). It almost never infects the lymph glands.


DERMOIDS

A dermoid is a tumour containing skin or mucous membrane, occurring in a
situation where these tissues are not met under normal conditions.

The _skin dermoid_, or _derma-cyst_ as it has been called by Askanazy,
arises from a portion of epiblast, which has become sequestrated during
the process of coalescence of two cutaneous surfaces in development.
This form is therefore most frequently met with on the face and neck in
the situations which correspond to the various clefts and fissures of
the embryo. It occurs also on the trunk in situations where the lateral
halves of the body coalesce during development. Such a dermoid usually
takes the form of a globular cyst, the wall of which consists of skin,
and the contents of turbid fluid containing desquamated epithelium, fat
droplets, cholestrol crystals, and detached hairs. Delicate hairs may
also be found projecting from the epithelial lining of the cyst.

Faulty coalescence of the cutaneous covering of the back occurs most
frequently over the lower sacral vertebr, giving rise to small
congenital recesses, known as post-anal dimples and coccygeal sinuses.
These recesses are lined with skin, which is furnished with hairs,
sebaceous and sweat glands. If the external orifice becomes occluded,
there results a dermoid cyst.

_Tubulo-dermoids_ arise from embryonic ducts and passages that are
normally obliterated at birth, for example, _lingual dermoids_ develop
in relation to the thyreo-glossal duct; _rectal and post-rectal_
dermoids to the post-anal gut; and _branchial dermoids_ in relation to
the branchial clefts. Tubulo-dermoids present the same structure as skin
dermoids, save that mucous membrane takes the place of skin in the wall
of the cyst, and the contents consist of the pent-up secretion of mucous
glands.

_Clinical Features._--Although dermoids are of congenital origin, they
are rarely evident at birth, and may not give rise to visible tumours
until puberty, when the skin and its appendages become more active, or
not till adult life. Superficial dermoids, such as those met with at the
outer angle of the orbit, form rounded, definitely limited tumours over
which the skin is freely movable. They are usually adherent to the
deeper parts, and when situated over the skull may be lodged in a
depression or actual gap in the bone. Sometimes the cyst becomes
infected and suppurates, and finally ruptures on the surface. This may
lead to a natural cure, or a persistent sinus may form. Dermoids more
deeply placed, such as those within the thorax, or those situated
between the rectum and sacrum, give rise to difficulty in diagnosis,
even with the help of the X-rays, and their nature is seldom recognised
until the escape of the contents--particularly hairs--supplies the clue.
The literature of dermoid cysts is full of accounts of puzzling tumours
met with in all sorts of situations.

The treatment is to remove the cyst. When it is impossible to remove the
whole of the lining membrane by dissection, the portion that is left
should be destroyed with the cautery.

_Ovarian Dermoids._--Dermoids are not uncommon in the ovary (Fig. 59).
They usually take the form of unilocular or multilocular cysts, the
wall of which contains skin, mucous membrane, hair follicles, sebaceous,
sweat, and mucous glands, nails, teeth, nipples, and mammary glands. The
cavity of the cyst usually contains a pultaceous mixture of shed
epithelium, fluid fat, and hair. If the cyst ruptures, the epithelial
elements are diffused over the peritoneum, and may give rise to
secondary dermoids.

[Illustration: FIG. 59.--Dermoid Cyst of Ovary showing Teeth in its
interior.]

The ovarian dermoid appears clinically as an abdominal or pelvic tumour
provided with a pedicle; if the pedicle becomes twisted, the tumour
undergoes strangulation, an event which is attended with urgent
symptoms, not unlike those of strangulated hernia.

The treatment consists in removing the tumour by laparotomy.

#Teratoma.#--A teratoma is believed to result from partial dichotomy or
cleavage of the trunk axis of the embryo, and is found exclusively in
connection with the skull and vertebral column. It may take the form of
a monstrosity such as conjoined twins or a parasitic ftus, but more
commonly it is met with as an irregularly shaped tumour, usually growing
from the sacrum. On dissection, such a tumour is found to contain a
curious mixture of tissues--bones, skin, and portions of viscera, such
as the intestine or liver. The question of the removal of the tumour
requires to be considered in relation to the conditions present in each
individual case.


CYSTS[3]

[3] Cysts which form in relation to new-growths have been considered
with tumours.

Cysts are rounded sacs, the wall being composed of fibrous tissue lined
by epithelium or endothelium; the contents are fluid or semi-solid, and
vary in character according to the tissue in which the cyst has
originated.

_Retention and Exudation Cysts._--_Retention cysts_ develop when the
duct of a secreting gland is partly obstructed; the secretion
accumulates, and the gland and its duct become distended into a cyst.
They are met with in the mamma and in the salivary glands. Sebaceous
cysts or wens are described with diseases of the skin. _Exudation cysts_
arise from the distension of cavities which are not provided with
excretory ducts, such as those in the thyreoid.

_Implantation cysts_ are caused by the accidental transference of
portions of the epidermis into the underlying connective tissue, as may
occur in wounds by needles, awls, forks, or thorns. The implanted
epidermis proliferates and forms a small cyst. They are met with chiefly
on the palmar aspect of the fingers, and vary in size from a split pea
to a cherry. The treatment consists in removing them by dissection.

_Parasitic cysts_ are produced by the growth within the tissues of
cyst-forming parasites, the best known being the tnia echinococcus,
which gives rise to the _hydatid cyst_. The liver is by far the most
common site of hydatid cysts in the human subject.

With regard to the further life-history of hydatids, the living elements
of the cyst may die and degenerate, or the cyst may increase in size
until it ruptures. As a result of pyogenic infection the cyst may be
converted into an abscess.

The _clinical features_ of hydatids vary so much with their situation
and size, that they are best discussed with the individual organs. In
general it may be said that there is a slow formation of a globular,
elastic, fluctuating, painless swelling. Fluctuation is detected when
the cyst approaches the surface, and it is then also that percussion
may elicit the "hydatid thrill" or fremitus. This thrill is not often
obtainable, and in any case is not pathognomonic of hydatids, as it may
be elicited in ascites and in other abdominal cysts. Pressure of the
cyst upon adjacent structures, and the occurrence of suppuration, are
attended with characteristic clinical features.

The _diagnosis_ of hydatids will be considered with the individual
organs. The disease is more common in certain parts of Australia and in
Shetland and Iceland than in countries where the association of dogs in
the domestic life of the inhabitants is less intimate. Pfeiler, who has
worked at the _serum diagnosis of hydatid disease_, regards the
complement deviation method as the most reliable; he believes that a
positive reaction may almost be regarded as absolutely diagnostic of an
echinococcal lesion.

The _treatment_ is to excise the cyst completely, or to inject into it a
1 per cent. solution of formalin. In operating upon hydatids the utmost
care must be taken to avoid leakage of the contents of the cyst, as
these may readily disseminate the infection.

A _blood cyst_ or hmatoma results from the encapsulation of
extravasated blood in the tissues, from hmorrhage taking place into a
preformed cyst, or from the saccular pouching of a varicose vein.

A _lymph cyst_ usually results from a contusion in which the skin is
forcibly displaced from the subjacent tissues, and lymph vessels are
thereby torn across. The cyst is usually situated between the skin and
fascia, and contains clear or blood-stained serum. At first it is lax
and fluctuates readily, later it becomes larger and more tense. The
treatment consists in drawing off the contents through a hollow needle
and applying firm pressure. Apart from injury, lymph cysts are met with
as the result of the distension of lymph spaces and vessels
(_lymphangiectasis_); and in lymphangiomas, of which the best-known
example is the cystic hygroma or hydrocele of the neck.


GANGLION

This term is applied to a cyst filled with a clear colourless jelly or
colloid material, met with in the vicinity of a joint or tendon sheath.

The commonest variety--the _carpal ganglion_--popularly known as a
sprained sinew--is met with as a smooth, rounded, or oval swelling on
the dorsal aspect of the carpus, usually towards its radial side (Fig. 60).
It is situated over one of the intercarpal or other joints in this
region, and may be connected with one or other of the extensor tendons.
The skin and fascia are movable over the cyst. The cyst varies in size
from a pea to a pigeon's egg, and usually attains its maximum size
within a few months and then remains stationary. It becomes tense and
prominent when the hand is flexed towards the palm. Its appearance is
usually ascribed to some strain of the wrist--for example, in girls
learning gymnastics. It may cause no symptoms or it may interfere with
the use of the hand, especially in grasping movements and when the hand
is dorsiflexed. In girls it may give rise to pain which shoots up the
arm. Ganglia are also met with on the dorsum of the metacarpus and on
the palmar aspect of the wrist.

[Illustration: FIG. 60.--Carpal Ganglion in a woman t. 25.]

The _tarsal ganglion_ is situated on the dorsum of the foot over one or
other of the intertarsal joints. It is usually smaller, flatter, and
more tense than that met with over the wrist, so that it is sometimes
mistaken for a bony tumour. It rarely causes symptoms, unless so
situated as to be pressed upon by the boot.

_Ganglia in the region of the knee_ are usually situated over the
interval between the femur and tibia, most often on the lateral aspect
of the joint in front of the tendon of the biceps (Fig. 61). The
swelling, which may attain the size of half a walnut, is tense and hard
when the knee is extended, and becomes softer and more prominent when it
is flexed. They are met with in young adults who follow laborious
occupations or who indulge in athletics, and they cause stiffness,
discomfort, and impairment of the use of the limb. A ganglion is
sometimes met with on the median aspect of the head of the metatarsal
bone of the great toe and may be the cause of considerable suffering; it
is indistinguishable from the thickened and enlarged bursa so commonly
present in this situation in the condition known as bunion.

[Illustration: FIG. 61.--Ganglion on lateral aspect of Knee in a young
woman.]

Ganglionic cysts are met with in other situations than those mentioned,
but they are so rare as not to require separate description.

Ganglia are to be diagnosed by their situation and physical characters;
enlarged burs, synovial cysts, and new-growths are the swellings most
likely to be mistaken for them. The diagnosis is sometimes only cleared
up by withdrawing the clear, jelly-like contents through a hollow
needle.

_Pathological Anatomy._--The wall of the cyst is composed of fibrous
tissue closely adherent to or fused with the surrounding tissues, so
that it cannot be shelled out. There is no endothelial lining, and the
fibrous tissue of the wall is in immediate contact with the colloid
material in the interior, which appears to be derived by a process of
degeneration from the surrounding connective tissue. In the region of
the knee the ganglion is usually multilocular, and consists of a
meshwork of fibrous tissue, the meshes of which are occupied by colloid
material.

It is often stated that a ganglion originates from a hernial protrusion
of the synovial membrane of a joint or tendon sheath. We have not been
able to demonstrate any communication between the cavity of the cyst
and that of an adjacent tendon sheath or joint. It is possible, however,
that the cyst may originate from a minute portion of synovial membrane
being protruded and strangulated so that it becomes disconnected from
that to which it originally belonged; it may then degenerate and give
rise to colloid material, which accumulates and forms a cyst. Ledderhose
and others regard ganglia as entirely new formations in the
peri-articular tissues, resulting from colloid degeneration of the
fibrous tissue of the capsular ligament, occurring at first in numerous
small areas which later coalesce. Ganglia are probably, therefore, of
the nature of degeneration cysts arising in the capsule of joints, in
tendons, and in their sheaths.

_Treatment._--A ganglion can usually be got rid of by a modification of
the old-fashioned seton. The skin and cyst wall are transfixed by a
stout needle carrying a double thread of silkworm gut; some of the
colourless jelly escapes from the punctures; the ends of the thread are
tied and cut short, and a dressing is applied. A week later the threads
are removed and the minute punctures are sealed with collodion. The
action of the threads is to convert the cyst wall into granulation
tissue, which undergoes the usual conversion into scar tissue. If the
cyst re-forms, it should be removed by open dissection under local
ansthesia. Puncture with a tenotomy knife and scraping the interior,
and the injection of irritants, are alternative, but less satisfactory,
methods of treatment.

_Ganglia_ in the substance of _tendons_ are rare. The diagnosis rests on
the observation that the small tumour is cystic, and that it follows the
movements of the tendon. The cyst is at first multiple, but the
partitions disappear, and the spaces are thrown into one. The tendon is
so weakened that it readily ruptures. The best treatment is to resect
the affected segment of tendon.

The so-called "compound palmar ganglion" is a tuberculous disease of the
tendon sheaths, and is described with diseases of tendon sheaths.




CHAPTER XI

INJURIES


CONTUSIONS--WOUNDS: _Varieties_--WOUNDS BY FIREARMS AND
    EXPLOSIVES: _Pistol-shot wounds_; _Wounds by sporting guns_;
    _Wounds by rifle bullets_; _Wounds received in warfare_; _Shell
    wounds_. _Embedded foreign bodies_--BURNS AND
    SCALDS--INJURIES PRODUCED BY ELECTRICITY: _X-ray and
    radium_; _Electrical burns_; _Lightning stroke_.


CONTUSIONS

A contusion or bruise is a laceration of the subcutaneous soft tissues,
without solution of continuity of the skin. When the integument gives
way at the same time, a _contused-wound_ results. Bruising occurs when
force is applied to a part by means of a blunt object, whether as a
direct blow, a crush, or a grazing form of violence. If the force acts
at right angles to the part, it tends to produce localised lesions which
extend deeply; while, if it acts obliquely, it gives rise to lesions
which are more diffuse, but comparatively superficial. It is well to
remember that those who suffer from scurvy, or hmophilia (bleeders),
and fat and anmic females, are liable to be bruised by comparatively
trivial injuries.

_Clinical Features._--The less severe forms of contusion are associated
with _ecchymosis_, numerous minute and discrete punctate hmorrhages
being scattered through the superficial layers of the skin, which is
slightly dematous. The effused blood is soon reabsorbed.

The more severe forms are attended with _extravasation_, the
extravasated blood being widely diffused through the cellular tissue of
the part, especially where this is loose and lax, as in the region of
the orbit, the scrotum and perineum, and on the chest wall. A blue or
bluish-black discoloration occurs in patches, varying in size and depth
with the degree of force which produced the injury, and in shape with
the instrument employed. It is most intense in regions where the skin is
naturally thin and pigmented. In parts where the extravasated blood is
only separated from the oxygen of the air by a thin layer of epidermis
or by a mucous membrane, it retains its bright arterial colour. These
points are often well illustrated in cases of black eye, where the blood
effused under the conjunctiva is bright red, while that in the eyelids
is almost black. In severe contusions associated with great tension of
the skin--for example, over the front of the tibia or around the
ankle--blisters often form on the surface and constitute a possible
avenue of infection. When deeply situated, the blood tends to spread
along the lines of least resistance, partly under the influence of
gravity, passing under fasci, between muscles, along the sheaths of
vessels, or in connective-tissue spaces, so that it may only reach the
surface after some time, and at a considerable distance from the seat of
injury. This fact is sometimes of importance in diagnosis, as, for
example, in certain fractures of the base of the skull, where
discoloration appears under the conjunctiva or behind the mastoid
process some days after the accident.

Blood extravasated deeply in the tissues gives rise to a firm,
resistant, doughy swelling, in which there may be elicited on deep
palpation a peculiar sensation, not unlike the crepitus of fracture.

It frequently happens that, from the tearing of lymph vessels, serous
fluid is extravasated, and a _lymphatic_ or _serous cyst_ may form.

In all contusions accompanied by extravasation, there is marked swelling
of the area involved, as well as pain and tenderness. The temperature
may rise to 101 F., or, in the large extravasations that occur in
bleeders, even higher--a form of aseptic fever. The degree of shock is
variable, but sudden syncope frequently results from severe bruises of
the testicle, abdomen, or head, and occasionally marked nervous
depression follows these injuries.

Contusion of muscles or nerves may produce partial atrophy and paresis,
as is often seen after injuries in the region of the shoulder.

In alcoholic or other debilitated patients, suppuration is liable to
ensue in bruised parts, infection taking place from cocci circulating in
the blood, or through the overlying skin.

_Terminations of Contusions._--The usual termination is a complete
return to the normal, some of the extravasated blood being organised,
but most of it being reabsorbed. During the process characteristic
alterations in the colour of the effused blood take place as a result of
changes in the blood pigment. In from twenty-four to forty-eight hours
the margins of the blue area become of a violet hue, and as time goes on
the discoloured area increases in size, and becomes successively green,
yellow, and lemon-coloured at its margins, the central part being the
last to change. The rate at which this play of colours proceeds is so
variable, and depends on so many circumstances, that no time-limits can
be laid down. During the disintegration of the effused blood the
adjacent lymph glands may become enlarged, and on dissection may be
found to be pigmented. Sometimes the blood persists as a collection of
fluid with a newly formed connective-tissue capsule, constituting a
_hmatoma_ or _blood cyst_, more often met with in the scalp than in
other parts.

The impairment of the blood supply of the skin may lead to the formation
of _blisters_, or to _necrosis_. Death of skin is more liable to occur
in bleeders, and when the slough separates the blood-clot is exposed and
the reparative changes go on extremely slowly. _Suppuration_ may occur
and lead to the formation of an abscess as a result of direct infection
from the skin or through the circulation.

_Treatment._--If the patient is seen immediately after the accident,
elevation of the part, and firm pressure applied by means of a thick pad
of cotton wool and an elastic bandage, are useful in preventing effusion
of blood. Ice-bags and evaporating lotions are to be used with caution,
as they are liable to lower the vitality of the damaged tissues and lead
to necrosis of the skin.

When extravasation has already taken place, massage is the most speedy
and efficacious means of dispersing the effused blood. The part should
be massaged several times a day, unless the presence of blebs or
abrasions of the skin prevents this being done. When this is the case,
the use of antiseptic dressings is called for to prevent infection and
to promote healing, after which massage is employed.

When the tension caused by the extravasated blood threatens the vitality
of the skin, incisions may be made, if asepsis can be assured. The blood
from a hmatoma may be withdrawn by an exploring needle, and the
puncture sealed with collodion. Infective complications must be looked
for and dealt with on general principles.


WOUNDS

A wound is a solution in the continuity of the skin or mucous membrane
and of the underlying tissues, caused by violence.

Three varieties of wounds are described: incised, punctured, and
contused and lacerated.

#Incised Wounds.#--Typical examples of incised wounds are those made by
the surgeon in the course of an operation, wounds accidentally inflicted
by cutting instruments, and suicidal cut-throat wounds. It should be
borne in mind in connection with medico-legal inquiries, that wounds of
soft parts that closely overlie a bone, such as the skull, the tibia, or
the patella, although, inflicted by a blunt instrument, may have all the
appearances of incised wounds.

_Clinical Features._--One of the characteristic features of an incised
wound is its tendency to gape. This is evident in long skin wounds, and
especially when the cut runs across the part, or when it extends deeply
enough to divide muscular fibres at right angles to their long axis. The
gaping of a wound, further, is more marked when the underlying tissues
are in a state of tension--as, for example, in inflamed parts. Incised
wounds in the palm of the hand, the sole of the foot, or the scalp,
however, have little tendency to gape, because of the close attachment
of the skin to the underlying fascia.

Incised wounds, especially in inflamed tissues, tend to bleed profusely;
and when a vessel is only partly divided and is therefore unable to
contract, it continues to bleed longer than when completely cut across.

The _special risks_ of incised wounds are: (1) division of large blood
vessels, leading to profuse hmorrhage; (2) division of nerve-trunks,
resulting in motor and sensory disturbances; and (3) division of tendons
or muscles, interfering with movement.

_Treatment._--If hmorrhage is still going on, it must be arrested by
pressure, torsion, or ligature, as the accumulation of blood in a wound
interferes with union. If necessary, the wound should be purified by
washing with saline solution or eusol, and the surrounding skin painted
with iodine, after which the edges are approximated by sutures. The raw
surfaces must be brought into accurate apposition, care being taken that
no inversion of the cutaneous surface takes place. In extensive and deep
wounds, to ensure more complete closure and to prevent subsequent
stretching of the scar, it is advisable to unite the different
structures--muscles, fasci, and subcutaneous tissue--by separate series
of _buried sutures_ of catgut or other absorbable material. For the
approximation of the skin edges, stitches of horse-hair, fishing-gut, or
fine silk are the most appropriate. These _stitches of coaptation_ may
be interrupted or continuous. In small superficial wounds on exposed
parts, stitch marks may be avoided by approximating the edges with
strips of gauze fixed in position by collodion, or by subcutaneous
sutures of fine catgut. Where the skin is loose, as, for example, in the
neck, on the limbs, or in the scrotum, the use of Michel's clips is
advantageous in so far as these bring the deep surfaces of the skin into
accurate apposition, are introduced with comparatively little pain, and
leave only a slight mark if removed within forty-eight hours.

When there is any difficulty in bringing the edges of the wound into
apposition, a few interrupted _relaxation stitches_ may be introduced
wide of the margins, to take the strain off the coaptation stitches.
Stout silk, fishing-gut, or silver wire may be employed for this
purpose. When the tension is extreme, Lister's button suture may be
employed. The tension is relieved and death of skin prevented by scoring
it freely with a sharp knife. Relaxation stitches should be removed in
four or five days, and stitches of coaptation in from seven to ten days.
On the face and neck, wounds heal rapidly, and stitches may be removed
in two or three days, thus diminishing the marks they leave.

_Drainage._--In wounds in which no cavity has been left, and in which
there is no reason to suspect infection, drainage is unnecessary. When,
however, the deeper parts of an extensive wound cannot be brought into
accurate apposition, and especially when there is any prospect of oozing
of blood or serum--as in amputation stumps or after excision of the
breast--drainage is indicated. It is a wise precaution also to insert
drainage tubes into wounds in fat patients when there is the slightest
reason to suspect the presence of infection. Glass or rubber tubes are
the best drains; but where it is desirable to leave little mark, a few
strands of horse-hair, or a small roll of rubber, form a satisfactory
substitute. Except when infection occurs, the drain is removed in from
one to four days and the opening closed with a Michel's clip or a
suture.

#Punctured Wounds.#--Punctured wounds are produced by narrow, pointed
instruments, and the sharper and smoother the instrument the more does
the resulting injury resemble an incised wound; while from more rounded
and rougher instruments the edges of the wound are more or less contused
or lacerated. The depth of punctured wounds greatly exceeds their width,
and the damage to subcutaneous parts is usually greater than that to the
skin. When the instrument transfixes a part, the edges of the wound of
entrance may be inverted, and those of the exit wound everted. If the
instrument is a rough one, these conditions may be reversed by its
sudden withdrawal.

Punctured wounds neither gape nor bleed much. Even when a large vessel
is implicated, the bleeding usually takes place into the tissues rather
than externally.

The _risks_ incident to this class of wounds are: (1) the extreme
difficulty, especially when a dense fascia has been perforated, of
rendering them aseptic, on account of the uncertainty as to their depth,
and of the way in which the surface wound closes on the withdrawal of
the instrument; (2) different forms of aneurysm may result from the
puncture of a large vessel; (3) perforation of a joint, or of a serous
cavity, such as the abdomen, thorax, or skull, materially adds to the
danger.

_Treatment._--The first indication is to purify the whole extent of the
wound, and to remove any foreign body or blood-clot that may be in it.
It is usually necessary to enlarge the wound, freely dividing injured
fasci, paring away bruised tissues, and purifying the whole
wound-surface. Any blood vessel that is punctured should be cut across
and tied; and divided muscles, tendons, or nerves must be sutured. After
hmorrhage has been arrested, iodoform and bismuth paste is rubbed into
the raw surface, and the wound closed. If there is any reason to doubt
the asepticity of the wound, it is better treated by the open method,
and a Bier's bandage should be applied.

#Contused and Lacerated Wounds.#--These may be considered together, as
they so occur in practice. They are produced by crushing, biting, or
tearing forms of violence--such as result from machinery accidents,
firearms, or the bites of animals. In addition to the irregular wound of
the integument, there is always more or less bruising of the parts
beneath and around, and the subcutaneous lesions are much wider than
appears on the surface.

Wounds of this variety usually gape considerably, especially when there
is much laceration of the skin. It is not uncommon to have considerable
portions of skin, muscle, or tendon completely torn away.

Hmorrhage is seldom a prominent feature, as the crushing or tearing of
the vessel wall leads to the obliteration of the lumen.

The _special risks_ of these wounds are: (1) Sloughing of the bruised
tissues, especially when attempts to sterilise the wound have not been
successful. (2) Reactionary hmorrhage after the initial shock has
passed off. (3) Secondary hmorrhage as a result of infective processes
ensuing in the wound. (4) Loss of muscle or tendon, interfering with
motion. (5) Cicatricial contraction. (6) Gangrene, which may follow
occlusion of main vessels, or virulent infective processes. (7) It is
not uncommon to have particles of carbon embedded in the tissues after
lacerated wounds, leaving unsightly, pigmented scars. This is often seen
in coal-miners, and in those injured by firearms, and is to be prevented
by removing all gross dirt from the edges of the wound.

_Treatment._--In severe wounds of this class implicating the
extremities, the most important question that arises is whether or not
the limb can be saved. In examining the limb, attention should first be
directed to the state of the main blood vessels, in order to determine
if the vascular supply of the part beyond the lesion is sufficient to
maintain its vitality. Amputation is usually called for if there is
complete absence of pulsation in the distal arteries and if the part
beyond is cold. If at the same time important nerve-trunks are
lacerated, so that the function of the limb would be seriously impaired,
it is not worth running the risk of attempting to save it. If, in
addition, there is extensive destruction of large muscular masses or of
important tendons, or comminution of the bones, amputation is usually
imperative. Stripping of large areas of skin is not in itself a reason
for removing a limb, as much can be done by skin grafting, but when it
is associated with other lesions it favours amputation. In considering
these points, it must be borne in mind that the damage to the deeper
tissues is always more extensive than appears on the surface, and that
in many cases it is only possible to estimate the real extent of the
injury by administering an ansthetic and exploring the wound. In
doubtful cases the possibility of rendering the parts aseptic will often
decide the question for or against amputation. If thorough purification
is accomplished, the success which attends conservative measures is
often remarkable. It is permissible to run an amount of risk to save an
upper extremity which would be unjustifiable in the case of a lower
limb. The age and occupation of the patient must also be taken into
account.

It having been decided to try and save the limb, the question is only
settled for the moment; it may have to be reconsidered from day to day,
or even from hour to hour, according to the progress of the case.

When it is decided to make the attempt to save the limb, the wound must
be thoroughly purified. All bruised tissue in which gross dirt has
become engrained should be cut away with knife or scissors. The raw
surface is then cleansed with eusol, washed with sterilised salt
solution followed by methylated spirit, and rubbed all over with "bipp"
paste. If the purification is considered satisfactory the wound may be
closed, otherwise it is left open, freely drained or packed with gauze,
and the limb is immobilised by suitable splints.


WOUNDS BY FIREARMS AND EXPLOSIVES

It is not necessary here to do more than indicate the general characters
of wounds produced by modern weapons. For further details the reader is
referred to works on military surgery. Experience has shown that the
nature and severity of the injuries sustained in warfare vary widely in
different campaigns, and even in different fields of the same campaign.
Slight variations in the size, shape, and weight of rifle bullets, for
example, may profoundly modify the lesions they produce: witness the
destructive effect of the pointed bullet compared with that of the
conical form previously used. The conditions under which the fighting is
carried on also influence the wounds. Those sustained in the open,
long-range fighting of the South African campaign of 18991902 were very
different from those met with in the entrenched warfare in France in
19141918. It has been found also that the infective complications are
greatly influenced by the terrain in which the fighting takes place. In
the dry, sandy, uncultivated veldt of South Africa, bullet wounds seldom
became infected, while those sustained in the highly manured fields of
Belgium were almost invariably contaminated with putrefactive organisms,
and gaseous gangrene and tetanus were common complications. It has been
found also that wounds inflicted in naval engagements present different
characters from those sustained on land. Many other factors, such as the
physical and mental condition of the men, the facilities for affording
first aid, and the transport arrangements, also play a part in
determining the nature and condition of the wounds that have to be dealt
with by military surgeons.

Whatever the nature of the weapon concerned, the wound is of the
_punctured, contused, and lacerated_ variety. Its severity depends on
the size, shape, and velocity of the missile, the range at which the
weapon is discharged, and the part of the body struck.

Shock is a prominent feature, but its degree, as well as the time of its
onset, varies with the extent and seat of the injury, and with the
mental state of the patient when wounded. We have observed pronounced
shock in children after being shot even when no serious injury was
sustained. At the moment of injury the patient experiences a sensation
which is variously described as being like the lash of a whip, a blow
with a stick, or an electric shock. There is not much pain at first, but
later it may become severe, and is usually associated with intense
thirst, especially when much blood has been lost.

In all forms of wounds sustained in warfare, septic infection
constitutes the main risk, particularly that resulting from
streptococci. The presence of anarobic organisms introduces the
additional danger of gaseous forms of gangrene.

The earlier the wound is disinfected the greater is the possibility of
diminishing this risk. If cleansing is carried out within the first six
hours the chance of eliminating sepsis is good; with every succeeding
six hours it diminishes, until after twenty-four hours it is seldom
possible to do more than mitigate sepsis. (J. T. Morrison.)

The presence of a metallic foreign body having been determined and its
position localised by means of the X-rays, all devitalised and
contaminated tissue is excised, the foreign material, _e.g._, a missile,
fragments of clothing, gravel and blood-clot, removed, the wound
purified with antiseptics and closed or drained according to
circumstances.

#Pistol-shot Wounds.#--Wounds inflicted by pistols, revolvers, and small
air-guns are of frequent occurrence in civil practice, the weapon being
discharged usually by accident, but frequently with suicidal, and
sometimes with homicidal intent.

With all calibres and at all ranges, except actual contact, the wound of
entrance is smaller than the bullet. If the weapon is discharged within
a foot of the body, the skin surrounding the wound is usually stained
with powder and burned, and the hair singed. At ranges varying from six
inches to thirty feet, grains of powder may be found embedded in the
skin or lying loose on the surface, the greater the range the wider
being the area of spread. When black powder is used, the embedded grains
usually leave a permanent bluish-black tattooing of the skin. When the
weapon is placed in contact with the skin, the subcutaneous tissues are
lacerated over an area of two or three inches around the opening made by
the bullet and smoke and powder-staining and scorching are more marked
than at longer ranges.

When the bullet perforates, the exit wound is usually larger and more
extensively lacerated than the wound of entrance. Its margins are as a
rule everted, and it shows no marks of flame, smoke, or powder. These
features are common to all perforations caused by bullets.

Pistol wounds only produce dangerous effects when fired at close range,
and when the cavities of the skull, the thorax, or the abdomen are
implicated. In the abdomen a lethal injury may readily be caused even by
pistols of the "toy" order. These injuries will be described with
regional surgery.

Pistol-shot wounds of _joints_ and _soft parts_ are seldom of serious
import apart from the risk of hmorrhage and of infection.

_Treatment._--The treatment of wounds of the soft parts consists in
purifying the wounds of entrance and exit and the surrounding skin, and
in providing for drainage if this is indicated.

There being no urgency for the removal of the bullet, time should be
taken to have it localised by the X-rays, preferably by stereoscopic
plates. In some cases it is not necessary to remove the bullet.

#Wounds by Sporting Guns.#--In the common sporting or scatter gun, with
which accidents so commonly occur during the shooting season, the charge
of small shot or pellets leave the muzzle of the gun as a solid mass
which makes a single ragged wound having much the appearance of that
caused by a single bullet. At a distance of from four to five feet from
the muzzle the pellets begin to disperse so that there are separate
punctures around the main central wound. As the range increases, these
outlying punctures make a wider and wider pattern, until at a distance
of from eighteen to twenty feet from the muzzle, the scattering is
complete, there is no longer any central wound, and each individual
pellet makes its own puncture. From these elementary data, it is usually
possible, from the features of the wound, to arrive at an approximately
accurate conclusion regarding the range at which the gun was discharged,
and this may have an important bearing on the question of accident,
suicide, or murder.

As regards the effects on the tissues at close range, that is, within a
few feet, there is widespread laceration and disruption; if a bone is
struck it is shattered, and portions of bone may be displaced or even
driven out through the exit wound.

When the charge impinges over one of the large cavities of the body, the
shot may scatter widely through the contained viscera, and there is
often no exit wound. In the thorax, for example, if a rib is struck, the
charge and possibly fragments of bone, will penetrate the pleura, and be
dispersed throughout the lung; in the head, the skull may be shattered
and the brain torn up; and in the abdomen, the hollow viscera may be
perforated in many places and the solid organs lacerated.

On covered parts the clothing, by deflecting the shot, influences the
size and shape of the wound; the entrance wound is increased in size and
more ragged, and portions of the clothes may be driven into the tissues.

[Illustration: FIG. 62.--Radiogram showing Pellets embedded in Arm.

(Mr. J. W. Dowden's case.)]

A charge of small shot is much more destructive to blood vessels,
tendons, and ligaments than a single bullet, which in many cases pushes
such structures aside without dividing them. In the abdomen and chest,
also, the damage done by a full charge of shot is much more extensive
than that inflicted by a single bullet, the deflection of the pellets
leading to a greater number of perforations of the intestine and more
widespread laceration of solid viscera.

When the charge impinges on one of the extremities at close range, we
often have the opportunity of observing that the exit wound is larger,
more ragged than that of entrance, and that its edges are everted; the
extensive tearing and bruising of all the tissues, including the bones,
and the marked tendency to early and progressive septic infection,
render amputation compulsory in the majority of such cases.

At a range of from twenty to thirty feet, although the scatter is
complete, the pellets are still close together, so that if they
encounter the shaft of a long bone, even the femur, they fracture the
bone across, often along with some longitudinal splintering.

Individual pellets striking the shafts of long bones become flattened or
distorted, and when cancellated bone is struck they become embedded in
it (Fig. 62).

The skin, when it is closely peppered with shot, is liable to lose its
vitality, and with the addition of a little sepsis, readily necroses and
comes away as a slough.

When the shot have diverged so as to strike singly, they seldom do much
harm, but fatal damage may be done to the brain or to the aorta, or the
eye may be seriously injured by a single pellet.

Small shot fired at longer ranges--over about a hundred and fifty
feet--usually go through the skin, but seldom pierce the fascia, and lie
embedded in the subcutaneous tissue, from which they can readily be
extracted.

The wad of the cartridge behaves erratically: so long as it remains flat
it goes off with the rest of the charge, and is often buried in the
wound; but if it curls up or turns on its side, it is usually deflected
and flies clear of the shot. It may make a separate wound.

Wounds from sporting guns are to be _treated_ on the usual lines, the
early efforts being directed to the alleviation of shock and the
prevention of septic infection. There is rarely any urgency in the
removal of pellets from the tissues.

#Wounds by Rifle Bullets.#--The vast majority of wounds inflicted by
rifle bullets are met with in the field during active warfare, and fall
to be treated by military surgeons. They occasionally occur
accidentally, however, during range practice for example, and may then
come under the notice of the civil surgeon.

It is only necessary here to consider the effects of modern small-bore
rifle or machine-gun bullets.

The trajectory is practically flat up to 675 yards. In destructive
effect there is not much difference between the various high velocity
bullets used in different armies; they will kill up to a distance of two
miles. The hard covering is employed to enable the bullet to take the
grooves in the rifle, and to prevent it stripping as it passes through
the barrel. It also increases the penetrating power of the missile, but
diminishes its "stopping" power, unless a vital part or a long bone is
struck. By removing the covering from the point of the bullet, as is
done in the Dum-Dum bullet, or by splitting the end, the bullet is made
to expand or "mushroom" when it strikes the body, and its stopping power
is thereby greatly increased, the resulting wound being much more
severe. These "soft-nosed" expanding bullets are to be distinguished
from "explosive" bullets which contain substances which detonate on
impact. High velocity bullets are unlikely to lodge in the body unless
spent, or pulled up by a sandbag, or metal buckle on a belt, or a book
in the pocket, or the core and the case separating--"stripping" of the
bullet. Spent shot may merely cause bruising of the surface, or they may
pass through the skin and lodge in the subcutaneous tissue, or may even
damage some deeper structure such as a nerve trunk.

A blank cartridge fired at close range may cause a severe wound, and, if
charged with black powder, may leave a permanent bluish-black
pigmentation of the skin.

The lesions of individual tissues--bones, nerves, blood vessels--are
considered with these.

#Treatment of Gunshot Wounds under War Conditions.#--It is only
necessary to indicate briefly the method of dealing with gunshot wounds
in warfare as practised in the European War.

1. _On the Field._--Hmorrhage is arrested in the limbs by an improvised
tourniquet; in the head by a pad and bandage; in the thorax or abdomen
by packing if necessary, but this should be avoided if possible, as it
favours septic infection. If a limb is all but detached it should be
completely severed. A full dose of morphin is given hypodermically. The
ampoule of iodine carried by the wounded man is broken, and its contents
are poured over and around the wound, after which the field dressing is
applied. In extensive wounds, the "shell-dressing" carried by the
stretcher bearers is preferred. All bandages are applied loosely to
allow for subsequent swelling. The fragments of fractured bones are
immobilised by some form of emergency splint.

2. _At the Advanced Dressing Station_, after the patient has had a
liberal allowance of warm fluid nourishment, such as soup or tea, a full
dose of anti-tetanic serum is injected. The tourniquet is removed and
the wound inspected. Urgent amputations are performed. Moribund patients
are detained lest they die _en route_.

3. _In the Field Ambulance or Casualty Clearing Station_ further
measures are employed for the relief of shock, and urgent operations are
performed, such as amputation for gangrene, tracheotomy for dyspna, or
laparotomy for perforated or lacerated intestine. In the majority of
cases the main object is to guard against infection; the skin is
disinfected over a wide area and surrounded with towels; damaged tissue,
especially muscle, is removed with the knife or scissors, and foreign
bodies are extracted. Torn blood vessels, and, if possible, nerves and
tendons are repaired. The wound is then partly closed, provision being
made for free drainage, or some special method of irrigation, such as
that of Carrel, is adopted. Sometimes the wound is treated with bismuth,
iodoform, and paraffin paste (B.I.P.P.) and sutured.

4. _In the Base Hospital or Hospital Ship_ various measures may be
called for according to the progress of the wound and the condition of
the patient.

#Shell Wounds and Wounds produced by Explosions.#--It is convenient to
consider together the effects of the bursting of shells fired from heavy
ordnance and those resulting in the course of blasting operations from
the discharge of dynamite or other explosives, or from the bursting of
steam boilers or pipes, the breaking of machinery, and similar accidents
met with in civil practice.

Wounds inflicted by shell fragments and shrapnel bullets tend to be
extensive in area, and show great contusion, laceration, and destruction
of the tissues. The missiles frequently lodge and carry portions of the
clothing and, it may be, articles from the man's pocket, with them.
Shell wounds are attended with a considerable degree of shock. On
account of the wide area of contusion which surrounds the actual wound
produced by shell fragments, amputation, when called for, should be
performed some distance above the torn tissues, as there is considerable
risk of sloughing of the flaps.

Wounds produced by dynamite explosions and the bursting of boilers have
the same general characters as shell wounds. Fragments of stone, coal,
or metal may lodge in the tissues, and favour the occurrence of
infective complications.

All such injuries are to be treated on the general principles governing
contused and lacerated wounds.


EMBEDDED FOREIGN BODIES

In the course of many operations foreign substances are introduced into
the tissues and intentionally left there, for example, suture and
ligature materials, steel or aluminium plates, silver wire or ivory pegs
used to secure the fixation of bones, or solid paraffin employed to
correct deformities. Other substances, such as gauze, drainage tubes,
or metal instruments, may be unintentionally left in a wound.

Foreign bodies may also lodge in accidentally inflicted wounds, for
example, bullets, needles, splinters of wood, or fragments of clothing.
The needles of hypodermic syringes sometimes break and a portion remains
embedded in the tissues. As a result of explosions, particles of carbon,
in the form of coal-dust or gunpowder, or portions of shale, may lodge
in a wound.

The embedded foreign body at first acts as an irritant, and induces a
reaction in the tissues in which it lodges, in the form of hypermia,
local leucocytosis, proliferation of fibroblasts, and the formation of
granulation tissue. The subsequent changes depend upon whether or not
the wound is infected with pyogenic bacteria. If it is so infected,
suppuration ensues, a sinus forms, and persists until the foreign body
is either cast out or removed.

If the wound is aseptic, the fate of the foreign body varies with its
character. A substance that is absorbable, such as catgut or fine silk,
is surrounded and permeated by the phagocytes, which soften and
disintegrate it, the debris being gradually absorbed in much the same
manner as a fibrinous exudate. Minute bodies that are not capable of
being absorbed, such as particles of carbon, or of pigment used in
tattooing, are taken up by the phagocytes, and in course of time
removed. Larger bodies, such as needles or bullets, which are not
capable of being destroyed by the phagocytes, become encapsulated. In
the granulation tissue by which they are surrounded large multinuclear
giant-cells appear ("_foreign-body giant-cells_") and attach themselves
to the foreign body, the fibroblasts proliferate and a capsule of scar
tissue is eventually formed around the body. The tissues of the capsule
may show evidence of iron pigmentation. Sometimes fluid accumulates
around a foreign body within its capsule, constituting a cyst.

Substances like paraffin, strands of silk used to bridge a gap in a
tendon, or portions of calcined bone, instead of being encapsulated, are
gradually permeated and eventually replaced by new connective tissue.

Embedded bodies may remain in the tissues for an indefinite period
without giving rise to inconvenience. At any time, however, they may
cause trouble, either as a result of infective complications, or by
inducing the formation of a mass of inflammatory tissue around them,
which may simulate a gumma, a tuberculous focus, or a sarcoma. This
latter condition may give rise to difficulties in diagnosis,
particularly if there is no history forthcoming of the entrance of the
foreign body. The ignorance of patients regarding the possible lodgment
in the tissues of a foreign body--even of considerable size--is
remarkable. In such cases the X-rays will reveal the presence of the
foreign body if it is sufficiently opaque to cast a shadow. The heavy,
lead-containing varieties of glass throw very definite shadows little
inferior in sharpness and definition to those of metal; almost all the
ordinary forms of commercial glass also may be shown up by the X-rays.

Foreign bodies encapsulated in the peritoneal cavity are specially
dangerous, as the proximity of the intestine furnishes a constant
possibility of infection.

The question of removal of the foreign body must be decided according to
the conditions present in individual cases; in searching for a foreign
body in the tissues, unless it has been accurately located, a general
ansthetic is to be preferred.


BURNS AND SCALDS

The distinction between a burn which results from the action of dry heat
on the tissues of the body and a scald which results from the action of
moist heat, has no clinical significance.

In young and debilitated subjects hot poultices may produce injuries of
the nature of burns. In old people with enfeebled circulation mere
exposure to a strong fire may cause severe degrees of burning, the
clothes covering the part being uninjured. This may also occur about the
feet, legs, or knees of persons while intoxicated who have fallen asleep
before the fire.

The damage done to the tissues by strong caustics, such as fuming nitric
acid, sulphuric acid, caustic potash, nitrate of silver, or arsenical
paste, presents pathological and clinical features almost identical with
those resulting from heat. Electricity and the Rntgen rays also produce
lesions of the nature of burns.

_Pathology of Burns._--Much discussion has taken place regarding the
explanation of the rapidly fatal issue in extensive superficial burns.
On post-mortem examination the lesions found in these cases are: (1)
general hypermia of all the organs of the abdominal, thoracic, and
cerebro-spinal cavities; (2) marked leucocytosis, with destruction of
red corpuscles, setting free hmoglobin which lodges in the epithelial
cells of the tubules of the kidneys; (3) minute thrombi and
extravasations throughout the tissues of the body; (4) degeneration of
the ganglion cells of the solar plexus; (5) dema and degeneration of
the lymphoid tissue throughout the body; (6) cloudy swelling of the
liver and kidneys, and softening and enlargement of the spleen. Bardeen
suggests that these morbid phenomena correspond so closely to those met
with where the presence of a toxin is known to produce them, that in all
probability death is similarly due to the action of some poison produced
by the action of heat on the skin and on the proteins of the blood.

#Clinical Features--Local Phenomena.#--The most generally accepted
classification of burns is that of Dupuytren, which is based upon the
depth of the lesion. Six degrees are thus, recognised: (1) hypermia or
erythema; (2) vesication; (3) partial destruction of the true skin; (4)
total destruction of the true skin; (5) charring of muscles; (6)
charring of bones.

It must be observed, however, that burns met with at the bedside always
illustrate more than one of these degrees, the deeper forms always being
associated with those less deep, and the clinical picture is made up of
the combined characters of all. A burn is classified in terms of its
most severe portion. It is also to be remarked that the extent and
severity of a burn usually prove to be greater than at first sight
appears.

_Burns of the first degree_ are associated with erythema of the skin,
due to hypermia of its blood vessels, and result from scorching by
flame, from contact with solids or fluids below 212 F., or from
exposure to the sun's rays. They are characterised clinically by acute
pain, redness, transitory swelling from dema, and subsequent
desquamation of the surface layers of the epidermis. A special form of
pigmentation of the skin is seen on the front of the legs of women from
exposure to the heat of the fire.

_Burns of Second Degree--Vesication of the Skin._--These are
characterised by the occurrence of vesicles or blisters which are
scattered over the hypermic area, and contain a clear yellowish or
brownish fluid. On removing the raised epidermis, the congested and
highly sensitive papill of the skin are exposed. Unna has found that
pyogenic bacteria are invariably present in these blisters. Burns of the
second degree leave no scar but frequently a persistent discoloration.
In rare instances the burned area becomes the seat of a peculiar
overgrowth of fibrous tissue of the nature of keloid (p 401).

_Burns of Third Degree--Partial Destruction of the Skin._--The epidermis
and papill are destroyed in patches, leaving hard, dry, and insensitive
sloughs of a yellow or black colour. The pain in these burns is
intense, but passes off during the first or second day, to return again,
however, when, about the end of a week, the sloughs separate and expose
the nerve filaments of the underlying skin. Granulations spring up to
fill the gap, and are rapidly covered by epithelium, derived partly from
the margins and partly from the remains of skin glands which have not
been completely destroyed. These latter appear on the surface of the
granulations as small bluish islets which gradually increase in size,
become of a greyish-white colour, and ultimately blend with one another
and with the edges. The resulting cicatrix may be slightly depressed,
but otherwise exhibits little tendency to contract and cause deformity.

_Burns of Fourth Degree--Total Destruction of the Skin._--These follow
the more prolonged action of any form of intense heat. Large, black, dry
eschars are formed, surrounded by a zone of intense congestion. Pain is
less severe, and is referred to the parts that have been burned to a
less degree. Infection is liable to occur and to lead to wide
destruction of the surrounding skin. The amount of granulation tissue
necessary to fill the gap is therefore great; and as the epithelial
covering can only be derived from the margins--the skin glands being
completely destroyed--the healing process is slow. The resulting scars
are irregular, deep and puckered, and show a great tendency to contract.
Keloid frequently develops in such cicatrices. When situated in the
region of the face, neck, or flexures of joints, much deformity and
impairment of function may result (Fig. 63).

[Illustration: FIG. 63.--Cicatricial Contraction following Severe Burn.]

In _burns of the fifth degree_ the lesion extends through the
subcutaneous tissue and involves the muscles; while in those of the
_sixth degree_ it passes still more deeply and implicates the bones.
These burns are comparatively limited in area, as they are usually
produced by prolonged contact with hot metal or caustics. Burns of the
fifth and sixth degrees are met with in epileptics or intoxicated
persons who fall into the fire. Large blood vessels, nerve-trunks,
joints, or serous cavities may be implicated.

#General Phenomena.#--It is customary to divide the clinical history of
a severe burn into three periods; but it is to be observed that the
features characteristic of the periods have been greatly modified since
burns have been treated on the same lines as other wounds.

_The first period_ lasts for from thirty-six to forty-eight hours,
during which time the patient remains in a more or less profound state
of _shock_, and there is a remarkable absence of pain. When shock is
absent or little marked, however, the amount of suffering may be great.
When the injury proves fatal during this period, death is due to shock,
probably aggravated by the absorption of poisonous substances produced
in the burned tissues. In fatal cases there is often evidence of
cerebral congestion and dema.

The _second period_ begins when the shock passes off, and lasts till the
sloughs separate. The outstanding feature of this period is _toxmia_,
manifested by fever, the temperature rising to 102, 103, or 104 F.,
and congestive or inflammatory conditions of internal organs, giving
rise to such clinical complications as bronchitis, broncho-pneumonia, or
pleurisy--especially in burns of the thorax; or meningitis and
cerebritis, when the neck or head is the seat of the burn. Intestinal
catarrh associated with diarrha is not uncommon; and ulceration of the
duodenum leading to perforation has been met with in a few cases. These
phenomena are much more prominent when bacterial infection has taken
place, and it seems probable that they are to be attributed chiefly to
the infection, as they have become less frequent and less severe since
burns have been treated like other breaches of the surface. Albuminuria
is a fairly constant symptom in severe burns, and is associated with
congestion of the kidneys. In burns implicating the face, neck, mouth,
or pharynx, dema of the glottis is a dangerous complication, entailing
as it does the risk of suffocation.

The _third period_ begins when the sloughs separate, usually between
the seventh and fourteenth days, and lasts till the wound heals, its
duration depending upon the size, depth, and asepticity of the raw area.
The chief causes of death during this period are toxin absorption in any
of its forms; waxy disease of the liver, kidneys, or intestine; less
commonly erysipelas, tetanus, or other diseases due to infection by
specific organisms. We have seen nothing to substantiate the belief that
duodenal ulcers are liable to perforate during the third period.

The _prognosis_ in burns depends on (1) the superficial extent, and, to
a much less degree, the depth of the injury. When more than one-third of
the entire surface of the body is involved, even in a mild degree, the
prognosis is grave. (2) The situation of the burn is important. Burns
over the serous cavities--abdomen, thorax, or skull--are, other things
being equal, much more dangerous than burns of the limbs. The risk of
dema of the glottis in burns about the neck and mouth has already been
referred to. (3) Children are more liable to succumb to shock during the
early period, but withstand prolonged suppuration better than adults.
(4) When the patient survives the shock, the presence or absence of
infection is the all-important factor in prognosis.

#Treatment.#--The _general treatment_ consists in combating the shock.
When pain is severe, morphin must be injected.

_Local Treatment._--The local treatment must be carried out on
antiseptic lines, a general ansthetic being administered, if necessary,
to enable the purification to be carried out thoroughly. After carefully
removing the clothing, the whole of the burned area is gently, but
thoroughly, cleansed with peroxide of hydrogen or warm boracic lotion,
followed by sterilised saline solution. As pyogenic bacteria are
invariably found in the blisters of burns, these must be opened and the
raised epithelium removed.

The dressings subsequently applied should meet the following
indications: the relief of pain; the prevention of sepsis; and the
promotion of cicatrisation.

An application which satisfactorily fulfils these requirements is
_picric acid_. Pads of lint or gauze are lightly wrung out of a solution
made up of picric acid, 1 drams; absolute alcohol, 3 ounces;
distilled water, 40 ounces, and applied over the whole of the reddened
area. These are covered with antiseptic wool, _without_ any waterproof
covering, and retained in position by a many-tailed bandage. The
dressing should be changed once or twice a week, under the guidance of
the temperature chart, any portion of the original dressing which
remains perfectly dry being left undisturbed. The value of a general
ansthetic in dressing extensive burns, especially in children, can
scarcely be overestimated.

Picric acid yields its best results in superficial burns, and it is
useful as _a primary dressing_ in all. As soon as the sloughs separate
and a granulating surface forms, the ordinary treatment for a healing
sore is instituted. Any slough under which pus has collected should be
cut away with scissors to permit of free drainage.

An occlusive dressing of melted _paraffin_ has also been employed. A
useful preparation consists of: Paraffin molle 25 per cent., paraffin
durum 67 per cent., olive oil 5 per cent., oil of eucalyptus 2 per
cent., and beta-naphthol  per cent. It has a melting point of 48 C.
It is also known as _Ambrine_ and _Burnol_. After the burned area has
been cleansed and thoroughly dried, it is sponged or painted with the
melted paraffin, and before solidification takes place a layer of
sterilised gauze is applied and covered with a second coating of
paraffin. Further coats of paraffin are applied every other day to
prevent the gauze sticking to the skin.

An alternative method of treating extensive burns is by immersing the
part, or even the whole body when the trunk is affected, in a bath of
boracic lotion kept at the body temperature, the lotion being frequently
renewed.

If a burn is already infected when first seen, it is to be treated on
the same principles as govern the treatment of other infected wounds.

All moist or greasy applications, such as Carron oil, carbolic oil and
ointments, and all substances like collodion and dry powders, which
retain discharges, entirely fail to meet the indications for the
rational treatment of burns, and should be abandoned.

Skin-grafting is of great value in hastening healing after extensive
burns, and in preventing cicatricial contraction. The _deformities_
which are so liable to develop from contraction of the cicatrices are
treated on general principles. In the region of the face, neck, and
flexures of joints (Fig. 63), where they are most marked, the contracted
bands may be divided and the parts stretched, the raw surface left being
covered by Thiersch grafts or by flaps of skin raised from adjacent
surfaces or from other parts of the body (Fig. 1).


INJURIES PRODUCED BY ELECTRICITY

#Injuries produced by Exposure to X-Rays and Radium.#--In the routine
treatment of disease by radiations, injury is sometimes done to the
tissues, even when the greatest care is exercised as to dosage and
frequency of application. Robert Knox describes the following
ill-effects.

_Acute dermatitis_ varying in degree from a slight erythema to deep
ulceration or even necrosis of skin. When ulcers form they are extremely
painful and slow to heal. When hair-bearing areas are affected,
epilation may occur without destroying the hair follicles and the hairs
are reproduced, but if the reaction is excessive permanent alopecia may
result.

_Chronic dermatitis_, which results from persistence of the acute form,
is most intractable and may assume malignant characters. X-ray warts are
a late manifestation of chronic dermatitis and may become malignant.

Among the _late manifestations_ are neuritis, telangiectasis, and a
painful and intractable form of ulceration, any of which may come on
months or even years after the cessation of exposure. _Sterility_ may be
induced in X-ray workers who are imperfectly protected from the effects
of the rays.

#Electrical burns# usually occur in those who are engaged in industrial
undertakings where powerful electrical currents are employed.

The lesions--which vary from a slight superficial scorching to complete
charring of parts--are most evident at the points of entrance and exit
of the current, the intervening tissues apparently escaping injury.

The more superficial degrees of electrical burns differ from those
produced by heat in being almost painless, and in healing very slowly,
although as a rule they remain dry and aseptic.

The more severe forms are attended with a considerable degree of shock,
which is not only more profound, but also lasts much longer than the
shock in an ordinary burn of corresponding severity. The parts at the
point of entrance of the current are charred to a greater or lesser
depth. The eschar is at first dry and crisp, and is surrounded by a zone
of pallor. For the first thirty-six to forty-eight hours there is
comparatively little suffering, but at the end of that time the parts
become exceedingly painful. In a majority of cases, in spite of careful
purification, a slow form of moist gangrene sets in, and the slough
spreads both in area and in depth, until the muscles and often the
large blood vessels and nerves are exposed. A line of demarcation
eventually forms, but the sloughs are exceedingly slow to separate,
taking from three to five times as long as in an ordinary burn, and
during the process of separation there is considerable risk of secondary
hmorrhage from erosion of large vessels.

_Treatment._--Electrical burns are treated on the same lines as ordinary
burns, by thorough purification and the application of dry dressings,
with a view to avoiding the onset of moist gangrene. After granulations
have formed, skin-grafting is of value in hastening healing.

#Lightning-stroke.#--In a large proportion of cases lightning-stroke
proves instantly fatal. In non-fatal cases the patient suffers from a
profound degree of shock, and there may or may not be any external
evidence of injury. In the mildest cases red spots or wheals--closely
resembling those of urticaria--may appear on the body, but they usually
fade again in the course of twenty-four hours. Sometimes large patches
of skin are scorched or stained, the discoloured area showing an
arborescent appearance. In other cases the injured skin becomes dry and
glazed, resembling parchment. Appearances are occasionally met with
corresponding to those of a superficial burn produced by heat. The chief
difference from ordinary burns is the extreme slowness with which
healing takes place. Localised paralysis of groups of muscles, or even
of a whole limb, may follow any degree of lightning-stroke. Treatment is
mainly directed towards combating the shock, the surface-lesions being
treated on the same lines as ordinary burns.




CHAPTER XII

METHODS OF WOUND TREATMENT


Varieties of wounds--Modes of infection--Lister's work--Means taken to
    prevent infection of wounds: _heat_; _chemical antiseptics_;
    _disinfection of hands_; _preparation of skin of patient_;
    _instruments_; _ligatures_; _dressings_--Means taken to combat
    infection: _purification_; _open-wound method_.

The surgeon is called upon to treat two distinct classes of wounds: (1)
those resulting from injury or disease in which _the skin is already
broken_, or in which a communication with a mucous surface exists; and
(2) those that he himself makes _through intact skin_, no infected
mucous surface being involved.

Infection by bacteria must be assumed to have taken place in all wounds
made in any other way than by the knife of the surgeon operating through
unbroken skin. On this assumption the modern system of wound treatment
is based. Pathogenic bacteria are so widely distributed, that in the
ordinary circumstances of everyday life, no matter how trivial a wound
may be, or how short a time it may remain exposed, the access of
organisms to it is almost certain unless preventive measures are
employed.

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that rigid precautions are to be
taken to exclude fresh infection, not only in dealing with wounds that
are free of organisms, but equally in the management of wounds and other
lesions that are already infected. Any laxity in our methods which
admits of fresh organisms reaching an infected wound adds materially to
the severity of the infective process and consequently to the patient's
risk.

There are many ways in which accidental infection may occur. Take, for
example, the case of a person who receives a cut on the face by being
knocked down in a carriage accident on the street. Organisms may be
introduced to such a wound from the shaft or wheel by which he was
struck, from the ground on which he lay, from any portion of his
clothing that may have come in contact with the wound, or from his own
skin. Or, again, the hands of those who render first aid, the water used
to bathe the wound, the handkerchief or other extemporised dressing
applied to it, may be the means of conveying bacterial infection. Should
the wound open on a mucous surface, such as the mouth or nasal cavity,
the organisms constantly present in such situations are liable to prove
agents of infection.

Even after the patient has come under professional care the risks of his
wound becoming infected are not past, because the hands of the doctor,
his instruments, dressings, or other appliances may all, unless
purified, become the sources of infection.

In the case of an operation carried out through unbroken skin, organisms
may be introduced into the wound from the patient's own skin, from the
hands of the surgeon or his assistants, through the medium of
contaminated instruments, swabs, ligature or suture materials, or other
things used in the course of the operation, or from the dressings
applied to the wound.

Further, bacteria may gain access to devitalised tissues by way of the
blood-stream, being carried hither from some infected area elsewhere in
the body.

_The Antiseptic System of Surgery._--Those who only know the surgical
conditions of to-day can scarcely realise the state of matters which
existed before the introduction of the antiseptic system by Joseph
Lister in 1867. In those days few wounds escaped the ravages of pyogenic
and other bacteria, with the result that suppuration ensued after most
operations, and such diseases as erysipelas, pymia, and "hospital
gangrene" were of everyday occurrence. The mortality after compound
fractures, amputations, and many other operations was appalling, and
death from blood-poisoning frequently followed even the most trivial
operations. An operation was looked upon as a last resource, and the
inherent risk from blood-poisoning seemed to have set an impassable
barrier to the further progress of surgery. To the genius of Lister we
owe it that this barrier was removed. Having satisfied himself that the
septic process was due to bacterial infection, he devised a means of
preventing the access of organisms to wounds or of counteracting their
effects. Carbolic acid was the first antiseptic agent he employed, and
by its use in compound fractures he soon obtained results such as had
never before been attained. The principle was applied to other
conditions with like success, and so profoundly has it affected the
whole aspect of surgical pathology, that many of the infective diseases
with which surgeons formerly had to deal are now all but unknown. The
broad principles upon which Lister founded his system remain unchanged,
although the methods employed to put them into practice have been
modified.

#Means taken to Prevent Infection of Wounds.#--The avenues by which
infective agents may gain access to surgical wounds are so numerous and
so wide, that it requires the greatest care and the most watchful
attention on the part of the surgeon to guard them all. It is only by
constant practice and patient attention to technical details in the
operating room and at the bedside, that the carrying out of surgical
manipulations in such a way as to avoid bacterial infection will become
an instinctive act and a second nature. It is only possible here to
indicate the chief directions in which danger lies, and to describe the
means most generally adopted to avoid it.

To prevent infection, it is essential that everything which comes into
contact with a wound should be sterilised or disinfected, and to ensure
the best results it is necessary that the efficiency of our methods of
sterilisation should be periodically tested. The two chief agencies at
our disposal are heat and chemical antiseptics.

#Sterilisation by Heat.#--The most reliable, and at the same time the
most convenient and generally applicable, means of sterilisation is by
heat. All bacteria and spores are completely destroyed by being
subjected for fifteen minutes to _saturated circulating steam_ at a
temperature of 130 to 145 C. (= 266 to 293 F.). The articles to be
sterilised are enclosed in a perforated tin casket, which is placed in a
specially constructed steriliser, such as that of Schimmelbusch. This
apparatus is so arranged that the steam circulates under a pressure of
from two to three atmospheres, and permeates everything contained in it.
Objects so sterilised are dry when removed from the steriliser. This
method is specially suitable for appliances which are not damaged by
steam, such, for example, as gauze swabs, towels, aprons, gloves, and
metal instruments; it is essential that the efficiency of the steriliser
be tested from time to time by a self-registering thermometer or other
means.

The best substitute for circulating steam is _boiling_. The articles are
placed in a "fish-kettle steriliser" and boiled for fifteen minutes in a
1 per cent. solution of washing soda.

To prevent contamination of objects that have been sterilised they must
on no account be touched by any one whose hands have not been
disinfected and protected by sterilised gloves.

#Sterilisation by Chemical Agents.#--For the purification of the skin of
the patient, the hands of the surgeon, and knives and other instruments
that are damaged by heat, recourse must be had to chemical agents.
These, however, are less reliable than heat, and are open to certain
other objections.

#Disinfection of the Hands.#--It is now generally recognised that one of
the most likely sources of wound infection is the hands of the surgeon
and his assistants. It is only by carefully studying to avoid all
contact with infective matter that the hands can be kept surgically
pure, and that this source of wound infection can be reduced to a
minimum. The risk of infection from this source has further been greatly
reduced by the systematic use of rubber gloves by house-surgeons,
dressers, and nurses. The habitual use of gloves has also been adopted
by the great majority of surgeons; the minority, who find they are
handicapped by wearing gloves as a routine measure, are obliged to do so
when operating in infective cases or dressing infected wounds, and in
making rectal and vaginal examinations.

The gloves may be sterilised by steam, and are then put on dry, or by
boiling, in which case they are put on wet. The gauntlet of the glove
should overlap and confine the end of the sleeve of the sterilised
overall, and the gloved hands are rinsed in lotion before and at
frequent intervals during the operation. The hands are sterilised before
putting on the gloves, preferably by a method which dehydrates the skin.
Cotton gloves may be worn by the surgeon when tying ligatures, or
between operations, and by the ansthetist during operations on the
head, neck, and chest.

The first step in the disinfection of the hands is the mechanical
removal of gross surface dirt and loose epithelium by soap, a stream of
running water as hot as can be borne, and a loofah or nail-brush, that
has been previously sterilised by heat. The nails should be cut down
till there is no sulcus between the nail edge and the pulp of the finger
in which organisms may lodge. They are next washed for three minutes in
methylated spirit to dehydrate the skin, and then for two or three
minutes in 70 per cent. sublimate or biniodide alcohol (1 in 1000).
Finally, the hands are rubbed with dry sterilised gauze.

#Preparation of the Skin of the Patient.#--In the purification of the
skin of the patient before operation, reliance is to be placed chiefly
in the mechanical removal of dirt and grease by the same means as are
taken for the cleansing of the surgeon's hands. Hair-covered parts
should be shaved. The skin is then dehydrated by washing with methylated
spirit, followed by 70 per cent. sublimate or biniodide alcohol (1 in
1000). This is done some hours before the operation, and the part is
then covered with pads of dry sterilised gauze or a sterilised towel.
Immediately before the operation the skin is again purified in the same
way.

The _iodine method_ of disinfecting the skin introduced by Grossich is
simple, and equally efficient. The day before operation the skin, after
being washed with soap and water, is shaved, dehydrated by means of
methylated spirit, and then painted with a 5 per cent. solution of
iodine in rectified spirit. The painting with iodine is repeated just
before the operation commences, and again after it is completed. The
final application is omitted in the case of children. In emergency
operations the skin is shaved dry and dehydrated with spirit, after
which the iodine is applied as described above. The staining of the skin
is an advantage, as it enables the operator to recognise the area that
has been prepared.

If any acne pustules or infected sinuses are present, they should be
destroyed or purified by means of the thermo-cautery or pure carbolic
acid, after the patient is ansthetised.

#Appliances used at Operation.#--_Instruments_ that are not damaged by
heat must be boiled in a fish-kettle or other suitable steriliser for
fifteen minutes in a 1 per cent. solution of cresol or washing soda.
Just before the operation begins they are removed in the tray of the
steriliser and placed on a sterilised towel within reach of the surgeon
or his assistant. Knives and instruments that are liable to be damaged
by heat should be purified by being soaked in pure cresol for a few
minutes, or in 1 in 20 carbolic for at least an hour.

_Pads of Gauze_ sterilised by compressed circulating steam have almost
entirely superseded marine sponges for operative purposes. To avoid the
risk of leaving swabs in the peritoneal cavity, large square pads of
gauze, to one corner of which a piece of strong tape about a foot long
is securely stitched, should be employed. They should be removed from
the caskets in which they are sterilised by means of sterilised forceps,
and handed direct to the surgeon. The assistant who attends to the swabs
should wear sterilised gloves.

_Ligatures and Sutures._--To avoid the risk of implanting infective
matter in a wound by means of the materials used for ligatures and
sutures, great care must be taken in their preparation.

_Catgut._--The following methods of preparing catgut have proved
satisfactory: (1) The gut is soaked in juniper oil for at least a month;
the juniper oil is then removed by ether and alcohol, and the gut
preserved in 1 in 1000 solution of corrosive sublimate in alcohol
(Kocher). (2) The gut is placed in a brass receiver and boiled for
three-quarters of an hour in a solution consisting of 85 per cent.
absolute alcohol, 10 per cent. water, and 5 per cent. carbolic acid, and
is then stored in 90 per cent. alcohol. (3) Cladius recommends that the
catgut, just as it is bought from the dealers, be loosely rolled on a
spool, and then immersed in a solution of--iodine, 1 part; iodide of
potassium, 1 part; distilled water, 100 parts. At the end of eight days
it is ready for use. Moschcowitz has found that the tensile strength of
catgut so prepared is increased if it is kept dry in a sterile vessel,
instead of being left indefinitely in the iodine solution. If
Salkindsohn's formula is used--tincture of iodine, 1 part; proof spirit,
15 parts--the gut can be kept permanently in the solution without
becoming brittle. To avoid contamination from the hands, catgut should
be removed from the bottle with aseptic forceps and passed direct to the
surgeon. Any portion unused should be thrown away.

_Silk_ is prepared by being soaked for twelve hours in ether, for other
twelve in alcohol, and then boiled for ten minutes in 1 in 1000
sublimate solution. It is then wound on spools with purified hands
protected by sterilised gloves, and kept in absolute alcohol. Before an
operation the silk is again boiled for ten minutes in the same solution,
and is used directly from this (Kocher). Linen thread is sterilised in
the same way as silk.

Fishing-gut and silver wire, as well as the needles, should be boiled
along with the instruments. Horse-hair and fishing-gut may be sterilised
by prolonged immersion in 1 in 20 carbolic, or in the iodine solutions
employed to sterilise catgut.

The field of operation is surrounded by sterilised towels, clipped to
the edges of the wound, and securely fixed in position so that no
contamination may take place from the surroundings.

The surgeon and his assistants, including the ansthetist, wear
overalls sterilised by steam. To avoid the risk of infection from dust,
scurf, or drops of perspiration falling from the head, the surgeon and
his assistants may wear sterilised cotton caps. To obviate the risk of
infection taking place by drops of saliva projected from the mouth in
talking or coughing in the vicinity of a wound, a simple mask may be
worn.

The risk of infection from the _air_ is now known to be very small, so
long as there is no excess of floating dust. All sweeping, dusting, and
disturbing of curtains, blinds, or furniture must therefore be avoided
before or during an operation.

It has been shown that the presence of spectators increases the number
of organisms in the atmosphere. In teaching clinics, therefore, the risk
from air infection is greater than in private practice.

To facilitate primary union, all hmorrhage should be arrested, and the
accumulation of fluid in the wound prevented. When much oozing is
anticipated, a glass or rubber drainage-tube is inserted through a small
opening specially made for the purpose. In aseptic wounds the tube may
be removed in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and where it is
important to avoid a scar, the opening should be closed with a Michel's
clip; in infected wounds the tube must remain as long as the discharge
continues.

The fascia and skin should be brought into accurate apposition by
sutures. If any cavity exists in the deeper part of the wound it should
be obliterated by buried sutures, or by so adjusting the dressing as to
bring its walls into apposition.

If these precautions have been successful, the wound will heal under the
original dressing, which need not be interfered with for from seven to
ten days, according to the nature of the case.

#Dressings.#--_Gauze_, sterilised by heat, is almost universally
employed for the dressing of wounds. _Double cyanide gauze_ may be used
in such regions as the neck, axilla, or groin, where complete
sterilisation of the skin is difficult to attain, and where it is
desirable to leave the dressing undisturbed for ten days or more.
_Iodoform_ or _bismuth gauze_ is of special value for the packing of
wounds treated by the open method.

One variety or another of _wool_, rendered absorbent by the extraction
of its fat, and sterilised by heat, forms a part of almost every
surgical dressing, and various antiseptic agents may be added to it. Of
these, corrosive sublimate is the most generally used. Wood-wool
dressings are more highly and more uniformly absorbent than cotton
wools. As evaporation takes place through wool dressings, the discharge
becomes dried, and so forms an unfavourable medium for bacterial growth.

Pads of _sphagnum moss_, sterilised by heat, are highly absorbent, and
being economical are used when there is much discharge, and in cases
where a leakage of urine has to be soaked up.

#Means adopted to combat Infection.#--As has already been indicated, the
same antiseptic precautions are to be taken in dealing with infected as
with aseptic wounds.

In _recent injuries_ such as result from railway or machinery accidents,
with bruising and crushing of the tissues and grinding of gross dirt
into the wounds, the scissors must be freely used to remove the tissues
that have been devitalised or impregnated with foreign material.
Hair-covered parts should be shaved and the surrounding skin painted
with iodine. Crushed and contaminated portions of bone should be
chiselled away. Opinions differ as to the benefit derived from washing
such wounds with chemical antiseptics, which are liable to devitalise
the tissues with which they come in contact, and so render them less
able to resist the action of any organisms that may remain in them. All
are agreed, however, that free washing with normal salt solution is
useful in mechanically cleansing the injured parts. Peroxide of hydrogen
sprayed over such wounds is also beneficial in virtue of its oxidising
properties. Efficient drainage must be provided, and stitches should be
used sparingly, if at all.

The best way in which to treat such wounds is by the _open method_. This
consists in packing the wound with iodoform or bismuth gauze, which is
left in position as long as it adheres to the raw surface. The packing
may be renewed at intervals until the wound is filled by granulations;
or, in the course of a few days when it becomes evident that the
infection has been overcome, _secondary_ sutures may be introduced and
the edges drawn together, provision being made at the ends for further
packing or for drainage-tubes.

If earth or street dirt has entered the wound, the surface may with
advantage be painted over with pure carbolic acid, as virulent
organisms, such as those of tetanus or spreading gangrene, are liable to
be present. Prophylactic injection of tetanus antitoxin may be
indicated.




CHAPTER XIII

CONSTITUTIONAL EFFECTS OF INJURIES


SYNCOPE--SHOCK--COLLAPSE--FAT EMBOLISM--TRAUMATIC ASPHYXIA--DELIRIUM
    IN SURGICAL PATIENTS: _Delirium in general_; _Delirium tremens_;
    _Traumatic delirium_.


SYNCOPE, SHOCK, AND COLLAPSE

Syncope, shock, and collapse are clinical conditions which, although
depending on different causes, bear a superficial resemblance to one
another.

#Syncope or Fainting.#--Syncope is the result of a suddenly produced
anmia of the brain from temporary weakening or arrest of the heart's
action. In surgical practice, this condition is usually observed in
nervous persons who have been subjected to pain, as in the reduction of
a dislocation or the incision of a whitlow; or in those who have rapidly
lost a considerable quantity of blood. It may also follow the sudden
withdrawal of fluid from a large cavity, as in tapping an abdomen for
ascites, or withdrawing fluid from the pleural cavity. Syncope sometimes
occurs also during the administration of a general ansthetic,
especially if there is a tendency to sickness and the patient is not
completely under. During an operation the onset of syncope is often
recognised by the cessation of oozing from the divided vessels before
the general symptoms become manifest.

_Clinical Features._--When a person is about to faint he feels giddy,
has surging sounds in his ears, and haziness of vision; he yawns,
becomes pale and sick, and a free flow of saliva takes place into the
mouth. The pupils dilate; the pulse becomes small and almost
imperceptible; the respirations shallow and hurried; consciousness
gradually fades away, and he falls in a heap on the floor.

Sometimes vomiting ensues before the patient completely loses
consciousness, and the muscular exertion entailed may ward off the
actual faint. This is frequently seen in threatened syncopal attacks
during chloroform administration.

Recovery begins in a few seconds, the patient sighing or gasping, or, it
may be, vomiting; the strength of the pulse gradually increases, and
consciousness slowly returns. In some cases, however, syncope is fatal.

_Treatment._--The head should at once be lowered--in imitation of
nature's method--to encourage the flow of blood to the brain, the
patient, if necessary, being held up by the heels. All tight clothing,
especially round the neck or chest, must be loosened. The heart may be
stimulated reflexly by dashing cold water over the face or chest, or by
rubbing the face vigorously with a rough towel. The application of
volatile substances, such as ammonia or smelling-salts, to the nose; the
administration by the mouth of sal-volatile, whisky or brandy, and the
intra-muscular injection of ether, are the most speedily efficacious
remedies. In severe cases the application of hot cloths over the heart,
or of the faradic current over the line of the phrenic nerve, just above
the clavicle, may be called for.

#Surgical Shock.#--The condition known as surgical shock may be looked
upon as a state of profound exhaustion of the mechanism that exists in
the body for the transformation of energy. This mechanism consists of
(1) the _brain_, which, through certain special centres, regulates all
vital activity; (2) the _adrenal glands_, the secretion of
which--adrenalin--acting as a stimulant of the sympathetic system, so
controls the tone of the blood vessels as to maintain efficient
oxidation of the tissues; and (3) _the liver_, which stores and delivers
glycogen as it is required by the muscles, and in addition, deals with
the by-products of metabolism.

Crile and his co-workers have shown that in surgical shock histological
changes occur in the cells of the brain, the adrenals, and the liver,
and that these are identical, whatever be the cause that leads to the
exhaustion of the energy-transforming mechanism. These changes vary in
degree, and range from slight alterations in the structure of the
protoplasm to complete disorganisation of the cell elements.

The influences which contribute to bring about this form of exhaustion
that we call shock are varied, and include such emotional states as
fear, anxiety, or worry, physical injury and toxic infection, and the
effects of these factors are augmented by anything that tends to lower
the vitality, such as loss of blood, exposure, insufficient food, loss
of sleep or antecedent illness.

Any one or any combination of these influences may cause shock, but the
most potent, and the one which most concerns the surgeon, is physical
injury, _e.g._, a severe accident or an operation (_traumatic shock_).
This is usually associated with some emotional disturbance, such as fear
or anxiety (_emotional shock_), or with hmorrhage; and may be followed
by septic infection (_toxic shock_).

The exaggerated afferent impulses reaching the brain as a result of
trauma, inhibit the action of the nuclei in the region of the fourth
ventricle and cerebellum which maintain the muscular tone, with the
result that the muscular tone is diminished and there is a marked fall
in the arterial blood pressure. The capillaries dilate--the blood
stagnating in them and giving off its oxygen and transuding its fluid
elements into the tissues--with the result that an insufficient quantity
of oxygenated blood reaches the heart to enable it to maintain an
efficient circulation. As the sarco-lactic acid liberated in the muscles
is not oxygenated a condition of acidosis ensues.

The more highly the injured part is endowed with sensory nerves the more
marked is the shock; a crush of the hand, for example, is attended with
a more intense degree of shock than a correspondingly severe crush of
the foot; and injuries of such specially innervated parts as the testis,
the urethra, the face, or the spinal cord, are associated with severe
degrees, as are also those of parts innervated from the sympathetic
system, such as the abdominal or thoracic viscera. It is to be borne in
mind that a state of general ansthesia does not prevent injurious
impulses reaching the brain and causing shock during an operation. If
the main nerves of the part are "blocked" by injection of a local
ansthetic, however, the central nervous system is protected from these
impulses.

While the aged frequently manifest but few signs of shock, they have a
correspondingly feeble power of recovery; and while many young children
suffer little, even after severe operations, others with much less cause
succumb to shock.

When the injured person's mind is absorbed with other matters than his
own condition,--as, for example, during the heat of a battle or in the
excitement of a railway accident or a conflagration,--even severe
injuries may be unattended by pain or shock at the time, although when
the period of excitement is over, the severity of the shock is all the
greater. The same thing is observed in persons injured while under the
influence of alcohol.

_Clinical Features._--The patient is in a state of prostration. He is
roused from his condition of indifference with difficulty, but answers
questions intelligently, if only in a whisper. The face is pale, beads
of sweat stand out on the brow, the features are drawn, the eyes
sunken, and the cheeks hollow. The lips and ears are pallid; the skin of
the body of a greyish colour, cold, and clammy. The pulse is rapid,
fluttering, and often all but imperceptible at the wrist; the
respiration is irregular, shallow, and sighing; and the temperature may
fall to 96 F. or even lower. The mouth is parched, and the patient
complains of thirst. There is little sensibility to pain.

Except in very severe cases, shock tends towards recovery within a few
hours, the _reaction_, as it is called, being often ushered in by
vomiting. The colour improves; the pulse becomes full and bounding; the
respiration deeper and more regular; the temperature rises to 100 F. or
higher; and the patient begins to take notice of his surroundings. The
condition of neurasthenia which sometimes follows an operation may be
associated with the degenerative changes in nerve cells described by
Crile.

In certain cases the symptoms of traumatic shock blend with those
resulting from toxin absorption, and it is difficult to estimate the
relative importance of the two factors in the causation of the
condition. The conditions formerly known as "delayed shock" and
"prostration with excitement" are now generally recognised to be due to
toxmia.

_Question of Operating during Shock._--Most authorities agree that
operations should only be undertaken during profound shock when they are
imperatively demanded for the arrest of hmorrhage, the prevention of
infection of serous cavities, or for the relief of pain which is
producing or intensifying the condition.

_Prevention of Operation Shock._--In the preparation of a patient for
operation, drastic purgation and prolonged fasting must be avoided, and
about half an hour before a severe operation a pint of saline solution
should be slowly introduced into the rectum; this is repeated, if
necessary, during the operation, and at its conclusion. The
operating-room must be warm--not less than 70 F.--and the patient
should be wrapped in cotton wool and blankets, and surrounded by
hot-bottles. All lotions used must be warm (100 F.); and the operation
should be completed as speedily and as bloodlessly as possible. The
element of fear may to some extent be eliminated by the preliminary
administration of such drugs as scopolamin or morphin, and with a view
to preventing the passage of exciting afferent impulses, Crile advocates
"blocking" of the nerves by the injection of a 1 per cent. solution of
novocaine into their substance on the proximal side of the field of
operation. To prevent after-pain in abdominal wounds he recommends
injecting the edges with quinine and urea hydrochlorate before suturing,
the resulting ansthesia lasting for twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
To these preventive measures the term _anoci-association_ has been
applied. In selecting an ansthetic, it may be borne in mind that
chloroform lowers the blood pressure more than ether does, and that with
spinal ansthesia there is no lowering of the blood pressure.

_Treatment._--A patient suffering from shock should be placed in the
recumbent position, with the foot of the bed raised to facilitate the
return circulation in the large veins, and so to increase the flow of
blood to the brain. His bed should be placed near a large fire, and the
patient himself surrounded by cotton wool and blankets and hot-bottles.
If he has lost much blood, the limbs should be wrapped in cotton wool
and firmly bandaged from below upwards, to conserve as much of the
circulating blood as possible in the trunk and head. If the shock is
moderate in degree, as soon as the patient has been put to bed, about a
pint of saline solution should be introduced into the rectum, and 10 to
15 minims of adrenalin chloride (1 in 1000) may with advantage be added
to the fluid. The injection should be repeated every two hours until the
circulation is sufficiently restored. In severe cases, especially when
associated with hmorrhage, transfusion of whole blood from a compatible
donor, is the most efficient means (_Op. Surg._, p. 37). Cardiac
stimulants such as strychnin, digitalin, or strophanthin are
contra-indicated in shock, as they merely exhaust the already impaired
vaso-motor centre.

Artificial respiration may be useful in tiding a patient over the
critical period of shock, especially at the end of a severe operation.

Failing this, the introduction of saline solution at a temperature of
about 105 F. into a vein or into the subcutaneous tissue is useful
where much blood has been lost (p. 276). Two or three pints may be
injected into a vein, or smaller quantities under the skin.

Thirst is best met by giving small quantities of warm water by the
mouth, or by the introduction of saline solution into the rectum. Ice
only relieves thirst for a short time, and as it is liable to induce
flatulence should be avoided, especially in abdominal cases. Dryness of
the tongue may be relieved by swabbing the mouth with a mixture of
glycerine and lemon juice.

If severe pain calls for the use of morphin, 1/120th grain of atropin
should be added, or heroin alone may be given in doses of 1/24th to
1/12th grain.

#Collapse# is a clinical condition which comes on more insidiously than
shock, and which does not attain its maximum degree of severity for
several hours. It is met with in the course of severe illnesses,
especially such as are associated with the loss of large quantities of
fluid from the body--for example, by severe diarrha, notably in Asiatic
cholera; by persistent vomiting; or by profuse sweating, as in some
cases of heat-stroke. Severe degrees of collapse follow sudden and
profuse loss of blood.

Collapse often follows upon shock--for example, in intestinal
perforations, or after abdominal operations complicated by peritonitis,
especially if there is vomiting, as in cases of obstruction high up in
the intestine. The symptoms of collapse are aggravated if toxin
absorption is superadded to the loss of fluid.

The _clinical features_ of this condition are practically the same as
those of shock; and it is treated on the same lines.

FAT EMBOLISM.--After various injuries and operations, but
especially such as implicate the marrow of long bones--for example,
comminuted fractures, osteotomies, resections of joints, or the forcible
correction of deformities--fluid fat may enter the circulation in
variable quantity. In the vast majority of cases no ill effects follow,
but when the quantity is large or when the absorption is long continued
certain symptoms ensue, either immediately, or more frequently not for
two or three days. These are mostly referable to the lungs and brain.

In the lung the fat collects in the minute blood vessels and produces
venous congestion and dema, and sometimes pneumonia. Dyspna, with
cyanosis, a persistent cough and frothy or blood-stained sputum, a
feeble pulse and low temperature, are the chief symptoms.

When the fat lodges in the capillaries of the brain, the pulse becomes
small, rapid, and irregular, delirium followed by coma ensues, and the
condition is usually rapidly fatal.

Fat is usually to be detected in the urine, even in mild cases.

The _treatment_ consists in tiding the patient over the acute stage of
his illness, until the fat is eliminated from the blood vessels.

TRAUMATIC ASPHYXIA OR TRAUMATIC CYANOSIS.--This term has been
applied to a condition which results when the thorax is so forcibly
compressed that respiration is mechanically arrested for several
minutes. It has occurred from being crushed in a struggling crowd, or
under a fall of masonry, and in machinery accidents. When the patient is
released, the face and the neck as low down as the level of the
clavicles present an intense coloration, varying from deep purple to
blue-black. The affected area is sharply defined, and on close
inspection the appearance is found to be due to the presence of
countless minute reddish-blue or black spots, with small areas or
streaks of normal skin between them. The punctate nature of the
coloration is best recognised towards the periphery of the affected
area--at the junction of the brow with the hairy scalp, and where the
dark patch meets the normal skin of the chest (Beach and Cobb). Pressure
over the skin does not cause the colour to disappear as in ordinary
cyanosis. It has been shown by Wright of Boston, that the coloration is
due to stasis from mechanical over-distension of the veins and
capillaries; actual extravasation into the tissues is exceptional. The
sharply defined distribution of the coloration is attributed to the
absence of functionating valves in the veins of the head and neck, so
that when the increased intra-thoracic pressure is transmitted to these
veins they become engorged. Under the conjunctiv there are
extravasations of bright red blood; and sublingual hmatoma has been
observed (Beatson).

The discoloration begins to fade within a few hours, and after the
second or third day it disappears, without showing any of the chromatic
changes which characterise a bruise. The sub-conjunctival ecchymosis,
however, persists for several weeks and disappears like other
extravasations. Apart from combating the shock, or dealing with
concomitant injuries, no treatment is called for.


DELIRIUM IN SURGICAL PATIENTS

Delirium is a temporary disturbance of mind which occurs in the course
of certain diseases, and sometimes after injuries or operations. It may
be associated with any of the acute pyogenic infections; with
erysipelas, especially when it affects the head or face; or with chronic
infective diseases of the urinary organs. In the various forms of
meningitis also, and in some cases of injury to the head, it is common;
and it is sometimes met with after severe hmorrhage, and in cases of
poisoning by such drugs as iodoform, cocain, or alcohol. Delirium may
also, of course, be a symptom of insanity.

Often there is merely incoherent muttering regarding past incidents or
occupations, or about absent friends; or the condition may assume the
form of excitement, of dementia, or of melancholia; and the symptoms are
usually worst at night.

#Delirium Tremens# is seen in persons addicted to alcohol, who, as the
result of accident or operation, are suddenly compelled to lie in bed.
Although oftenest met with in habitual drunkards or chronic tipplers, it
is by no means uncommon in moderate drinkers, and has even been seen in
children.

_Clinical Features._--The delirium, which has been aptly described as
being of a "busy" character, usually manifests itself within a few days
of the patient being laid up. For two or three days he refuses food, is
depressed, suspicious, sleepless and restless, demanding to be allowed
up. Then he begins to mutter incoherently, to pull off the bedclothes,
and to attempt to get out of bed. There is general muscular tremor, most
marked in the tongue, the lips, and the hands. The patient imagines that
he sees all sorts of horrible beings around him, and is sometimes
greatly distressed because of rats, mice, beetles, or snakes, which he
fancies are crawling over him. The pulse is soft, rapid, and
compressible; the temperature is only moderately raised (100101 F.),
and as a rule there is profuse sweating. The digestion is markedly
impaired, and there is often vomiting. Patients in this condition are
peculiarly insensitive to pain, and may even walk about with a fractured
leg without apparent discomfort.

In most cases the symptoms begin to pass off in three or four days; the
patient sleeps, the hallucinations and tremors cease, and he gradually
recovers. In other cases the temperature rises, the pulse becomes rapid,
and death results from exhaustion.

The main indication in _treatment_ is to secure sleep, and this is done
by the administration of bromides, chloral, or paraldehyde, or of one or
other of the drugs of which sulphonal, trional, and veronal are
examples. Heroin in doses of from 1/24th to 1/12th grain is often of
service. Morphin must be used with great caution. In some cases hyoscin
(1/200 grain) injected hypodermically is found efficacious when all
other means have failed, but this drug must be used with great
discrimination. The patient must be encouraged to take plenty of easily
digested fluid food, supplemented, if necessary, by nutrient enemata and
saline infusions.

In the early stage a brisk mercurial purge is often of value. Alcohol
should be withheld, unless failing of the pulse strongly indicates its
use, and then it should be given along with the food.

A delirious patient must be constantly watched by a trained attendant or
other competent person, lest he get out of bed and do harm to himself or
others. Mechanical restraint is often necessary, but must be avoided if
possible, as it is apt to increase the excitement and exhaust the
patient. On account of the extreme restlessness, there is often great
difficulty in carrying out the proper treatment of the primary surgical
condition, and considerable modifications in splints and other
appliances are often rendered necessary.

A form of delirium, sometimes spoken of as #Traumatic Delirium#, may
follow on severe injuries or operations in persons of neurotic
temperament, or in those whose nervous system is exhausted by overwork.
It is met with apart from alcoholic intemperance. This form of delirium
seems to be specially prone to ensue on operations on the face, the
thyreoid gland, or the genito-urinary organs. The symptoms appear in
from two to five days after the operation, and take the form of
restlessness, sleeplessness, low incoherent muttering, and picking at
the bedclothes. It is not necessarily attended by fever or by muscular
tremors. The patient may show hysterical symptoms. This condition is
probably to be regarded as a form of insanity, as it is liable to merge
into mania or melancholia.

The _treatment_ is carried out on the same lines as that of delirium
tremens.




CHAPTER XIV

THE BLOOD VESSELS


Anatomy--INJURIES OF ARTERIES: _Varieties_--INJURIES OF
    VEINS: _Air Embolism_--Repair of blood vessels and natural
    arrest of hmorrhage--HMORRHAGE: _Varieties_;
    _Prevention_; _Arrest_--Constitutional effects of
    hmorrhage--Hmophilia--DISEASES OF BLOOD VESSELS:
    Thrombosis; Embolism--Arteritis: _Varieties_;
    Arterio-sclerosis--Thrombo-phlebitis--Phlebitis:
    _Varieties_--VARIX--ANGIOMATA--Nvus: _Varieties_;
    _Electrolysis_--Cirsoid aneurysm--ANEURYSM: _Varieties_;
    _Methods of treatment_--ANEURYSMS OF INDIVIDUAL ARTERIES.

#Surgical Anatomy.#--An _artery_ has three coats: an internal coat--the
_tunica intima_--made up of a single layer of endothelial cells lining
the lumen; outside of this a layer of delicate connective tissue; and
still farther out a dense tissue composed of longitudinally arranged
elastic fibres--the internal elastic lamina. The tunica intima is easily
ruptured. The middle coat, or _tunica media_, consists of non-striped
muscular fibres, arranged for the most part concentrically round the
vessel. In this coat also there is a considerable proportion of elastic
tissue, especially in the larger vessels. The thickness of the vessel
wall depends chiefly on the development of the muscular coat. The
external coat, or _tunica externa_, is composed of fibrous tissue,
containing, especially in vessels of medium calibre, some yellow elastic
fibres in its deeper layers.

In most parts of the body the arteries lie in a sheath of connective
tissue, from which fine fibrous processes pass to the tunica externa.
The connection, however, is not a close one, and the artery when divided
transversely is capable of retracting for a considerable distance within
its sheath. In some of the larger arteries the sheath assumes the form
of a definite membrane.

The arteries are nourished by small vessels--the _vasa vasorum_--which
ramify chiefly in the outer coat. They are also well supplied with
nerves, which regulate the size of the lumen by inducing contraction or
relaxation of the muscular coat.

The _veins_ are constructed on the same general plan as the arteries,
the individual coats, however, being thinner. The inner coat is less
easily ruptured, and the middle coat contains a smaller proportion of
muscular tissue. In one important point veins differ structurally from
arteries--namely, in being provided with valves which prevent reflux of
the blood. These valves are composed of semilunar folds of the tunica
intima strengthened by an addition of connective tissue. Each valve
usually consists of two semilunar flaps attached to opposite sides of
the vessel wall, each flap having a small sinus on its cardiac side.
The distension of these sinuses with blood closes the valve and
prevents regurgitation. Valves are absent from the superior and inferior
ven cav, the portal vein and its tributaries, the hepatic, renal,
uterine, and spermatic veins, and from the veins in the lower part of
the rectum. They are ill-developed or absent also in the iliac and
common femoral veins--a fact which has an important bearing on the
production of varix in the veins of the lower extremity.

The wall of _capillaries_ consists of a single layer of endothelial
cells.


HMORRHAGE

Various terms are employed in relation to hmorrhage, according to its
seat, its origin, the time at which it occurs, and other circumstances.

The term _external hmorrhage_ is employed when the blood escapes on the
surface; when the bleeding takes place into the tissues or into a cavity
it is spoken of as _internal_. The blood may infiltrate the connective
tissue, constituting an _extravasation_ of blood; or it may collect in a
space or cavity and form a _hmatoma_.

The coughing up of blood from the lungs is known as _hmoptysis_;
vomiting of blood from the stomach, as _hmatemesis_; the passage of
black-coloured stools due to the presence of blood altered by digestion,
as _melna_; and the passage of bloody urine, as _hmaturia_.

Hmorrhage is known as arterial, venous, or capillary, according to the
nature of the vessel from which it takes place.

In _arterial_ hmorrhage the blood is bright red in colour, and escapes
from the cardiac end of the divided vessel in pulsating jets
synchronously with the systole of the heart. In vascular parts--for
example the face--both ends of a divided artery bleed freely. The blood
flowing from an artery may be dark in colour if the respiration is
impeded. When the heart's action is weak and the blood tension low the
flow may appear to be continuous and not in jets. The blood from a
divided artery at the bottom of a deep wound, escapes on the surface in
a steady flow.

_Venous_ bleeding is not pulsatile, but occurs in a continuous stream,
which, although both ends of the vessel may bleed, is more copious from
the distal end. The blood is dark red under ordinary conditions, but may
be purplish, or even black, if the respiration is interfered with. When
one of the large veins in the neck is wounded, the effects of
respiration produce a rise and fall in the stream which may resemble
arterial pulsation.

In _capillary_ hmorrhage, red blood escapes from numerous points on the
surface of the wound in a steady ooze. This form of bleeding is serious
in those who are the subjects of hmophilia.


INJURIES OF ARTERIES

The following description of the injuries of arteries refers to the
larger, named trunks. The injuries of smaller, unnamed vessels are
included in the consideration of wounds and contusions.

#Contusion.#--An artery may be contused by a blow or crush, or by the
oblique impact of a bullet. The bruising of the vessel wall, especially
if it is diseased, may result in the formation of a thrombus which
occludes the lumen temporarily or even permanently, and in rare cases
may lead to gangrene of the limb beyond.

#Subcutaneous Rupture.#--An artery may be ruptured subcutaneously by a
blow or crush, or by a displaced fragment of bone. This injury has been
produced also during attempts to reduce dislocations, especially those
of old standing at the shoulder. It is most liable to occur when the
vessels are diseased. The rupture may be incomplete or complete.

_Incomplete Subcutaneous Rupture._--In the majority of cases the rupture
is incomplete--the inner and middle coats being torn, while the outer
remains intact. The middle coat contracts and retracts, and the
internal, because of its elasticity, curls up in the interior of the
vessel, forming a valvular obstruction to the blood-flow. In most cases
this results in the formation of a thrombus which occludes the vessel.
In some cases the blood-pressure gradually distends the injured segment
of the vessel wall and leads to the formation of an aneurysm.

The pulsation in the vessels beyond the seat of rupture is arrested--for
a time at least--owing to the occlusion of the vessel, and the limb
becomes cold and powerless. The pulsation seldom returns within five or
six weeks of the injury, if indeed it is not permanently arrested, but,
as a rule, a collateral circulation is rapidly established, sufficient
to nourish the parts beyond. If the pulsation returns within a week of
the injury, the presumption is that the occlusion was due to pressure
from without--for example, by hmorrhage into the sheath or the pressure
of a fragment of bone.

_Complete Subcutaneous Rupture._--When the rupture is complete, all the
coats of the vessel are torn and the blood escapes into the surrounding
tissues. If the original injury is attended with much shock, the
bleeding may not take place until the period of reaction. Rupture of the
popliteal artery in association with fracture of the femur, or of the
axillary or brachial artery with fracture of the humerus or dislocation
of the shoulder, are familiar examples of this injury.

Like incomplete rupture, this lesion is accompanied by loss of pulsation
and power, and by coldness of the limb beyond; a tense and excessively
painful swelling rapidly appears in the region of the injury, and, where
the cellular tissue is loose, may attain a considerable size. The
pressure of the effused blood occludes the veins and leads to congestion
and dema of the limb beyond. The interference with the circulation, and
the damage to the tissues, may be so great that gangrene ensues.

_Treatment._--When an artery has been contused or ruptured, the limb
must be placed in the most favourable condition for restoration of the
circulation. The skin is disinfected and the limb wrapped in cotton wool
to conserve its heat, and elevated to such an extent as to promote the
venous return without at the same time interfering with the inflow of
blood. A careful watch must be kept on the state of nutrition of the
limb, lest gangrene occurs.

If no complications supervene, the swelling subsides, and recovery may
be complete in six or eight weeks. If the extravasation is great and the
skin threatens to give way, or if the vitality of the limb is seriously
endangered, it is advisable to expose the injured vessel, and, after
clearing away the clots, to attempt to suture the rent in the artery,
or, if torn across, to join the ends after paring the bruised edges. If
this is impracticable, a ligature is applied above and below the
rupture. If gangrene ensues, amputation must be performed.

These descriptions apply to the larger arteries of the extremities. A
good illustration of subcutaneous rupture of the arteries of the head is
afforded by the tearing of the middle meningeal artery caused by the
application of blunt violence to the skull; and of the arteries of the
trunk--caused by the tearing of the renal artery in rupture of the
kidney.

#Open Wounds of Arteries--Laceration.#--Laceration of large arteries is
a common complication of machinery and railway accidents. The violence
being usually of a tearing, twisting, or crushing nature, such injuries
are seldom associated with much hmorrhage, as torn or crushed vessels
quickly become occluded by contraction and retraction of their coats and
by the formation of a clot. A whole limb even may be avulsed from the
body with comparatively little loss of blood. The risk in such cases is
secondary hmorrhage resulting from pyogenic infection.

The _treatment_ is that applicable to all wounds, with, in addition, the
ligation of the lacerated vessels.

#Punctured wounds# of blood vessels may result from stabs, or they may
be accidentally inflicted in the course of an operation.

The division of the coats of the vessel being incomplete, the natural
hmostasis that results from curling up of the intima and contraction of
the media, fails to take place, and bleeding goes on into the
surrounding tissues, and externally. If the sheath of the vessel is not
widely damaged, the gradually increasing tension of the extravasated
blood retained within it may ultimately arrest the hmorrhage. A clot
then forms between the lips of the wound in the vessel wall and projects
for a short distance into the lumen, without, however, materially
interfering with the flow through the vessel. The organisation of this
clot results in the healing of the wound in the vessel wall.

In other cases the blood escapes beyond the sheath and collects in the
surrounding tissues, and a traumatic aneurysm results. Secondary
hmorrhage may occur if the wound becomes infected.

The _treatment_ consists in enlarging the external wound to permit of
the damaged vessel being ligated above and below the puncture. In some
cases it may be possible to suture the opening in the vessel wall. When
circumstances prevent these measures being taken, the bleeding may be
arrested by making firm pressure over the wound with a pad; but this
procedure is liable to be followed by the formation of an aneurysm.

_Minute puncture of arteries_ such as frequently occur in the hypodermic
administration of drugs and in the use of exploring needles, are not
attended with any escape of blood, chiefly because of the elastic recoil
of the arterial wall; a tiny thrombus of platelets and thrombus forms at
the point where the intima is punctured.

#Incised Wounds.#--We here refer only to such incised wounds as partly
divide the vessel wall.

Longitudinal wounds show little tendency to gape, and are therefore not
attended with much bleeding. They usually heal rapidly, but, like
punctured wounds, are liable to be followed by the formation of an
aneurysm.

When, however, the incision in the vessel wall is oblique or transverse,
the retraction of the muscular coat causes the opening to gape, with the
result that there is hmorrhage, which, even in comparatively small
arteries, may be so profuse as to prove dangerous. When the associated
wound in the soft parts is valvular the hmorrhage is arrested and an
aneurysm may develop.

When a large arterial trunk, such as the external iliac, the femoral,
the common carotid, the brachial, or the popliteal, has been partly
divided, for example, in the course of an operation, the opening should
be closed with sutures--_arteriorrhaphy_. The circulation being
controlled by a tourniquet, or the artery itself occluded by a clamp,
fine silk or catgut stitches are passed through the outer and middle
coats after the method of Lembert, a fine, round needle being employed.
The sheath of the vessel or an adjacent fascia should be stitched
over the line of suture in the vessel wall. If infection be excluded,
there is little risk of thrombosis or secondary hmorrhage; and even if
thrombosis should develop at the point of suture, the artery is
obstructed gradually, and the establishment of a collateral circulation
takes place better than after ligation. In the case of smaller trunks,
or when suture is impracticable, the artery should be tied above and
below the opening, and divided between the ligatures.

#Gunshot Wounds of Blood Vessels.#--In the majority of cases injuries of
large vessels are associated with an external wound; the profusion of
the bleeding indicates the size of the damaged vessel, and the colour of
the blood and the nature of the flow denote whether an artery or a vein
is implicated.

When an artery is wounded a firm _hmatoma_ may form, with an expansile
pulsation and a palpable thrill--whether such a hmatoma remains
circumscribed or becomes diffuse depends upon the density or laxity of
the tissues around it. In course of time a _traumatic arterial aneurysm_
may develop from such a hmatoma.

When an artery and its companion vein are injured simultaneously an
_arterio-venous aneurysm_ (p. 310) may develop. This frequently takes
place without the formation of a hmatoma as the arterial blood finds
its way into the vein and so does not escape into the tissues. Even if a
hmatoma forms it seldom assumes a great size. In time a swelling is
recognised, with a palpable thrill and a systolic bruit, loudest at the
level of the communication and accompanied by a continuous venous hum.

If leakage occurs into the tissues, the extravasated blood may occlude
the vein by pressure, and the symptoms of arterial aneurysm replace
those of the arterio-venous form, the systolic bruit persisting, while
the venous hum disappears.

_Gangrene_ may ensue if the blood supply is seriously interfered with,
or the signs of _ischmia_ may develop; the muscles lose their
elasticity, become hard and paralysed, and ansthesia of the "glove" or
"stocking" type, with other alterations of sensation ensue. Apart from
ischmia, _reflex paralysis_ of motion and sensation of a transient kind
may follow injury of a large vessel.

_Treatment_ is carried out on the same lines as for similar injuries due
to other causes.


INJURIES OF VEINS

Veins are subject to the same forms of injury as arteries, and the
results are alike in both, such variations as occur being dependent
partly on the difference in their anatomical structure, and partly on
the conditions of the circulation through them.

#Subcutaneous rupture# of veins occur most frequently in association
with fractures and in the reduction of dislocations. The veins most
commonly ruptured are the popliteal, the axillary, the femoral, and the
subclavian. On account of the smaller amount of elastic and muscular
tissue in the wall of a vein, the contraction and retraction of its
walls are less than in an artery, and so bleeding may continue for a
longer period. On the other hand, owing to the lower blood-pressure the
outflow goes on more slowly, and the gradually increasing pressure
produced by the extravasated blood is usually sufficient to arrest the
hmorrhage before it becomes serious. As an aid in diagnosing the source
of the bleeding, it should be remembered that the rupture of a vein does
not affect the pulsation in the limb beyond. The risks are practically
the same as when an artery is ruptured, excepting that of aneurysm, and
the treatment is carried out on the same lines, but it is seldom
necessary to operate for the purpose of applying a ligature to the
injured vein.

#Wounds# of veins--punctured and incised--frequently occur in the course
of operations; for example, in the removal of tumours or diseased glands
from the neck, the axilla, or the groin. They are also met with as a
result of accidental stabs and of suicidal or homicidal injuries. The
hmorrhage from a large vein so damaged is usually profuse, but it is
more readily controlled by external pressure than that from an artery.
When a vein is merely punctured, the bleeding may be arrested by
pressure with a pad of gauze, or by a lateral ligature--that is, picking
up the margins of the rent in the wall and securing them with a
ligature without occluding the lumen. In the large veins, such as the
internal jugular, the femoral, or the axillary, it is usually possible
to suture the opening in the wall. This does not necessarily result in
thrombosis in the vessel, or in obliteration of its lumen.

When an _artery and vein are simultaneously wounded_, the features
peculiar to each are present in greater or less degree. In the limbs
gangrene may ensue, especially if the wound is infected. Punctured and
gun-shot wounds implicating both artery and vein are liable to be
followed by the development of arterio-venous aneurysm.

#Entrance of Air into Veins--Air Embolism.#--This serious, though
fortunately rare, accident is apt to occur in the course of operations
in the region of the thorax, neck, or axilla, if a large vein is opened
and fails to collapse on account of the rigidity of its walls, its
incorporation in a dense fascia, or from traction being made upon it. If
the wound in a vein is thus held open, the negative pressure during
inspiration sucks air into the right side of the heart. This is
accompanied by a hissing or gurgling sound, and with the next expiration
some frothy blood escapes from the wound. The patient instantly becomes
pale, the pupils dilate, respiration becomes laboured, and although the
heart may continue to beat forcibly, the peripheral pulse is weak, and
may even be imperceptible. On auscultating the heart, a churning sound
may be heard. Death may result in a few minutes; or the heart may slowly
regain its power and recovery take place.

_Prevention._--In operations in the "dangerous area"--as the region of
the root of the neck is called in this connection--care must be taken
not to cut or divide any vein before it has been secured by forceps, and
to apply ligatures securely and at once. Deep wounds in this region
should be kept filled with normal salt solution. Immediately a cut is
recognised in a vein, a finger should be placed over the vessel on the
cardiac side of the wound, and kept there until the opening is secured.

_Treatment._--Little can be done after the air has actually entered the
vein beyond endeavouring to maintain the heart's action by hypodermic
injections of ether or strychnin and the application of mustard or hot
cloths over the chest. The head at the same time should be lowered to
prevent syncope. Attempts to withdraw the air by suction, and the
employment of artificial respiration, have proved futile, and are, by
some, considered dangerous. In a desperate case massage of the heart
might be tried.


THE NATURAL ARREST OF HMORRHAGE AND THE REPAIR OF BLOOD
VESSELS

#Primary Hmorrhage.#--The term primary hmorrhage is applied to the
bleeding which follows immediately on the wounding of a blood vessel.
The natural process by which such hmorrhage is arrested varies with the
character of the wound in the vessel and may be modified by accidental
circumstances.

(a) _Repair of completely divided Artery._--When an artery is
_completely_ divided, the circular fibres of the muscular coat contract,
so that the lumen of the cut ends is diminished, and at the same time
each segment retracts within its sheath in virtue of the recoil of the
elastic elements in its walls, the tunica intima curls up in the
interior of the vessel, and the tunica externa collapses over the cut
ends. The blood that escapes from the injured vessel fills the
interstices of the tissues, and, coagulating, forms a clot which
temporarily arrests the bleeding. That part of the clot which lies
between the divided ends of the vessel and in the cellular tissue
outside, is known as the _external clot_, while the portion which
projects into the lumen of the vessel is known as the _internal clot_,
and it usually extends as far as the nearest collateral branch. These
processes constitute what is known as the _temporary arrest of
hmorrhage_, which, it will be observed, is effected by the contraction
and retraction of the divided artery and by clotting.

The _permanent arrest_ takes place by the transformation of the clot
into scar tissue. The internal clot plays the most important part in the
process; it becomes invaded by leucocytes and proliferating endothelial
and connective-tissue cells, and new blood vessels permeate the mass,
which is thus converted into granulation tissue. This is ultimately
replaced by fibrous tissue, which permanently occludes the end of the
vessel. Concurrently and by the same process the external clot is
converted into scar tissue.

If a divided artery is _ligated at its cut end_, the tension of the
ligature is usually sufficient to rupture the inner and middle coats,
which curl up within the lumen, the outer coat alone being held in the
grasp of the ligature. An internal clot forms and, becoming organised,
permanently occludes the vessel as above described. The ligature and the
small portion of vessel beyond it are subsequently absorbed.

In course of time the collateral branches of the vessel above and below
the level of section enlarge and their inter-communication becomes more
free, so that even when large trunks have been divided the vascular
supply of the parts beyond may be completely restored. This is known as
the development of the _collateral circulation_.

_Imperfect Collateral Circulation._--While the development of the
collateral circulation after the ligation or obstruction from other
cause of a main arterial trunk may be sufficient to prevent gangrene of
the limb, it may be insufficient for its adequate nourishment; it may be
cold, bluish in colour, and there may be necrosis of the skin over bony
points; this is notably the case in the lower extremity after ligation
of the femoral or popliteal artery, when patches of skin may die over
the prominence of the heel, the balls of the toes, the projecting base
of the fifth metatarsal and the external malleolus.

If, during the period of reaction, the blood-pressure rises
considerably, the occluding clot at the divided end of the vessel may be
washed away or the ligature displaced, permitting of fresh bleeding
taking place--_reactionary_ or _intermediary hmorrhage_ (p. 272).

In the event of the wound becoming infected with pyogenic organisms, the
occluding blood-clot or the young fibrous tissue may become
disintegrated in the suppurative process, and the bleeding start
afresh--_secondary hmorrhage_ (p. 273).

(b) If an artery is only _partly cut across_, the divided fibres of
the tunica muscularis contract and those of the tunica externa retract,
with the result that a more or less circular hole is formed in the wall
of the vessel, from which free bleeding takes place, as the conditions
are unfavourable for the formation of an occluding clot. Even if a clot
does form, when the blood-pressure rises it is readily displaced,
leading to reactionary hmorrhage. Should the wound become infected,
secondary hmorrhage is specially liable to occur. A further risk
attends this form of injury, in that the intra-vascular tension may in
time lead to gradual stretching of the scar tissue which closes the gap
in the vessel wall, with the result that a localised dilatation or
diverticulum forms, constituting a _traumatic aneurysm_.

(c) When the injury merely takes the form of a _puncture_ or _small
incision_ a blood-clot forms between the edges, becomes organised, and
is converted into cicatricial tissue which seals the aperture. Such
wounds may also be followed by reactionary or secondary hmorrhage, or
later by the formation of a traumatic aneurysm.

_Conditions which influence the Natural Arrest of Hmorrhage._--The
natural arrest of bleeding is favoured by tearing or crushing of the
vessel walls, owing to the contraction and retraction of the coats and
the tendency of blood to coagulate when in contact with damaged tissue.
Hence the primary hmorrhage following lacerated wounds is seldom
copious. The occurrence of syncope or of profound shock also helps to
stop bleeding by reducing the force of the heart's action.

On the other hand, there are conditions which retard the natural arrest.
When, for example, a vessel is only partly divided, the contraction and
retraction of the muscular coat, instead of diminishing the calibre of
the artery, causes the wound in the vessel to gape; by completing the
division of the vessel under these circumstances the bleeding can often
be arrested. In certain situations, also, the arteries are so intimately
connected with their sheaths, that when cut across they were unable to
retract and contract--for example, in the scalp, in the penis, and in
bones--and copious bleeding may take place from comparatively small
vessels. This inability of the vessels to contract and retract is met
with also in inflamed and dematous parts and in scar tissue. Arteries
divided in the substance of a muscle also sometimes bleed unduly. Any
increase in the force of the heart's action, such as may result from
exertion, excitement, or over-stimulation, also interferes with the
natural arrest. Lastly, in bleeders, there are conditions which
interfere with the natural arrest of hmorrhage.

#Repair of a Vessel ligated in its Continuity.#--When a ligature is
applied to an artery it should be pulled sufficiently tight to occlude
the lumen without causing rupture of its coats. It often happens,
however, that the compression causes rupture of the inner and middle
coats, so that only the outer coat remains in the grasp of the ligature.
While this weakens the wall of the vessel, it has the advantage of
hastening coagulation, by bringing the blood into contact with damaged
tissue. Whether the inner and middle coats are ruptured or not, blood
coagulates both above and below the ligature, the proximal clot being
longer and broader than that on the distal side. In small arteries these
clots extend as far as the nearest collateral branch, but in the larger
trunks their length varies. The permanent occlusion of those portions of
the vessel occupied by clot is brought about by the formation of
granulation tissue, and its replacement by cicatricial tissue, so that
the occluded segment of the vessel is represented by a fibrous cord. In
this process the coagulum only plays a passive rle by forming a
scaffolding on which the granulation tissue is built up. The ligature
surrounding the vessel, and the elements of the clot, are ultimately
absorbed.

#Repair of Veins.#--The process of repair in veins is the same as that
in arteries, but the thrombosed area may become canalised and the
circulation through the vessel be re-established.


HMORRHAGE IN SURGICAL OPERATIONS

The management of the hmorrhage which accompanies an operation includes
(a) preventive measures, and (b) the arrest of the bleeding.

#Prevention of Hmorrhage.#--Whenever possible, hmorrhage should be
controlled by _digital compression_ of the main artery supplying the
limb rather than by a tourniquet. If efficiently applied compression
reduces the immediate loss of blood to a minimum, and the bleeding from
small vessels that follows the removal of the tourniquet is avoided.
Further, the pressure of a tourniquet has been shown to be a material
factor in producing shock.

In selecting a point at which to apply digital compression, it is
essential that the vessel should be lying over a bone which will furnish
the necessary resistance. The common carotid, for example, is pressed
backward and medially against the transverse process (carotid tubercle)
of the sixth cervical vertebra; the temporal against the temporal
process (zygoma) in front of the ear; and the facial against the
mandible at the anterior edge of the masseter.

In the upper extremity, the subclavian is pressed against the first rib
by making pressure downwards and backwards in the hollow above the
clavicle; the axillary and brachial by pressing against the shaft of the
humerus.

In the lower extremity, the femoral is controlled by pressing in a
direction backward and slightly upward against the brim of the pelvis,
midway between the symphysis pubis and the anterior superior iliac
spine.

The abdominal aorta may be compressed against the bodies of the lumbar
vertebr opposite the umbilicus, if the spine is arched well forwards
over a pillow or sand-bag, or by the method suggested by Macewen, in
which the patient's spine is arched forwards by allowing the lower
extremities and pelvis to hang over the end of the table, while the
assistant, standing on a stool, applies his closed fist over the
abdominal aorta and compresses it against the vertebral column.
Momburg recommends an elastic cord wound round the body between the
iliac crest and the lower border of the ribs, but this procedure has
caused serious damage to the intestine.

When digital compression is not available, the most convenient and
certain means of preventing hmorrhage--say in an amputation--is by the
use of some form of _tourniquet_, such as the elastic tube of Esmarch or
of Foulis, or an elastic bandage, or the screw tourniquet of Petit.
Before applying any of these it is advisable to empty the limb of blood.
This is best done after the manner suggested by Lister: the limb is held
vertical for three or four minutes; the veins are thus emptied by
gravitation, and they collapse, and as a physiological result of this
the arteries reflexly contract, so that the quantity of blood entering
the limb is reduced to a minimum. With the limb still elevated the
tourniquet is firmly applied, a part being selected where the vessel can
be pressed directly against a bone, and where there is no risk of
exerting injurious pressure on the nerve-trunks. The tourniquet should
be applied over several layers of gauze or lint to protect the skin, and
the first turn of the tourniquet must be rapidly and tightly applied to
arrest completely the arterial flow, otherwise the veins only are
obstructed and the limb becomes congested. In the lower extremity the
best place to apply a tourniquet is the middle third of the thigh; in
the upper extremity, in the middle of the arm. A tourniquet should never
be applied tighter or left on longer than is absolutely necessary.

The screw tourniquet of Petit is to be preferred when it is desired to
intermit the flow through the main artery as in operations for aneurysm.

When a tourniquet cannot conveniently be applied, or when its presence
interferes with the carrying out of the operation--as, for example, in
amputations at the hip or shoulder--the hmorrhage may be controlled by
preliminary ligation of the main artery above the seat of operation--for
instance, the external iliac or the subclavian. For such contingencies
also the steel skewers used by Spence and Wyeth, or a special clamp or
forceps, such as that suggested by Lynn Thomas, may be employed. In the
case of vessels which it is undesirable to occlude permanently, such as
the common carotid, the temporary application of a ligature or clamp is
useful.

#Arrest of Hmorrhage.#--_Ligature._--This is the best means of securing
the larger vessels. The divided vessel having been caught with forceps
as near to its cut end as possible, a ligature of catgut or silk is tied
round it. When there is difficulty in applying a ligature securely, for
example in a dense tissue like the scalp or periosteum, or in a friable
tissue like the thyreoid gland or the mesentery, a stitch should be
passed so as to surround the bleeding vessel a short distance from its
end, in this way ensuring a better hold and preventing the ligature from
slipping.

If the hmorrhage is from a partly divided vessel, this should be
completely cut across to enable its walls to contract and retract, and
to facilitate the application of forceps and ligatures.

_Torsion._--This method is seldom employed except for comparatively
small vessels, but it is applicable to even the largest arteries. In
employing torsion, the end of the vessel is caught with forceps, and the
terminal portion twisted round several times. The object is to tear the
inner and middle coats so that they curl up inside the lumen, while the
outer fibrous coat is twisted into a cord which occludes the end of the
vessel.

_Forci-pressure._--Bleeding from the smallest arteries and from
arterioles can usually be arrested by firmly squeezing them for a few
minutes with artery forceps. It is usually found that on the removal of
the forceps at the end of an operation no further hmorrhage takes
place. By the use of specially strong clamps, such as the angiotribes of
Doyen, large trunks may be occluded by pressure.

_Cautery._--The actual cautery or Paquelin's thermo-cautery is seldom
employed to arrest hmorrhage, but is frequently useful in preventing
it, as, for example, in the removal of piles, or in opening the bowel in
colostomy. It is used at a dull-red heat, which sears the divided ends
of the vessel and so occludes the lumen. A bright-red or a white heat
cuts the vessel across without occluding it. The separation of the
slough produced by the charring of the tissues is sometimes attended
with secondary bleeding.

_Hmostatics_ or _Styptics_.--The local application of hmostatics is
seldom to be recommended. In the treatment of epistaxis or bleeding from
the nose, of hmorrhage from the socket of a tooth, and sometimes from
ulcerating or granulating surfaces, however, they may be useful. All
clots must be removed and the drug applied directly to the bleeding
surface. Adrenalin and turpentine are the most useful drugs for this
purpose.

Hmorrhage from bone, for example the skull, may be arrested by means of
Horsley's aseptic plastic wax. To stop persistent oozing from soft
tissues, Horsley successfully applied a portion of living vascular
tissue, such as a fragment of muscle, which readily adheres to the
oozing surface and yields elements that cause coagulation of the blood
by thrombo-kinetic processes. When examined after two or three days the
muscle has been found to be closely adherent and undergoing
organisation.

#Arrest of Accidental Hmorrhage.#--The most efficient means of
temporarily controlling hmorrhage is by pressure applied with the
finger, or with a pad of gauze, directly over the bleeding point. While
this is maintained an assistant makes digital pressure, or applies a
tourniquet, over the main vessel of the limb on the proximal side of the
bleeding point. A useful _emergency tourniquet_ may be improvised by
folding a large handkerchief _en cravatte_, with a cork or piece of wood
in the fold to act as a pad. The handkerchief is applied round the
limb, with the pad over the main artery, and the ends knotted on the
lateral aspect of the limb. With a strong piece of wood the handkerchief
is wound up like a Spanish windlass, until sufficient pressure is
exerted to arrest the bleeding.

When hmorrhage is taking place from a number of small vessels, its
arrest may be effected by elevation of the bleeding part, particularly
if it is a limb. By this means the force of the circulation is
diminished and the formation of coagula favoured. Similarly, in wounds
of the hand or forearm, or of the foot or leg, bleeding may be arrested
by placing a pad in the flexure and acutely flexing the limb at the
elbow or knee respectively.

#Reactionary Hmorrhage.#--Reactionary or intermediary hmorrhage
is really a recurrence of primary bleeding. As the name indicates, it
occurs during the period of reaction--that is, within the first twelve
hours after an operation or injury. It may be due to the increase in the
blood-pressure that accompanies reaction displacing clots which have
formed in the vessels, or causing vessels to bleed which did not bleed
during the operation; to the slipping of a ligature; or to the giving
way of a grossly damaged portion of the vessel wall. In the scrotum, the
relaxation of the dartos during the first few hours after operation
occasionally leads to reactionary hmorrhage.

As a rule, reactionary hmorrhage takes place from small vessels as a
result of the displacement of occluding clots, and in many cases the
hmorrhage stops when the bandages and soaked dressings are removed. If
not, it is usually sufficient to remove the clots and apply firm
pressure, and in the case of a limb to elevate it. Should the hmorrhage
recur, the wound must be reopened, and ligatures applied to the bleeding
vessels. Douching the wound with hot sterilised water (about 110 F.),
and plugging it tightly with gauze, are often successful in arresting
capillary oozing. When the bleeding is more copious, it is usually due
to a ligature having slipped from a large vessel such as the external
jugular vein after operations in the neck, and the wound must be opened
up and the vessel again secured. The internal administration of heroin
or morphin, by keeping the patient quiet, may prove useful in preventing
the recurrence of hmorrhage.

#Secondary Hmorrhage.#--The term secondary hmorrhage refers to
bleeding that is delayed in its onset and is due to pyogenic infection
of the tissues around an artery. The septic process causes softening and
erosion of the wall of the artery so that it gives way under the
pressure of the contained blood. The leakage may occur in drops, or as a
rush of blood, according to the extent of the erosion, the size of the
artery concerned, and the relations of the erosion to the surrounding
tissues. When met with as a complication of a wound there is an
interval--usually a week to ten days--between the receipt of the wound
and the first hmorrhage, this time being required for the extension of
the septic process to the wall of the artery and the consequent erosion
of its coats. When secondary hmorrhage occurs apart from a wound, there
is a similar septic process attacking the wall of the artery from the
outside; for example in sloughing sore-throat, the separation of a
slough may implicate the wall of an artery and be followed by serious
and it may be fatal hmorrhage. The mechanical pressure of a fragment of
bone or of a rubber drainage tube upon the vessel may aid the septic
process in causing erosion of the artery. In pre-Listerian days, the
silk ligature around the artery likewise favoured the changes that lead
to secondary hmorrhage, and the interesting observation was often made,
that when the collateral circulation was well established, the leakage
occurred on the _distal_ side of the ligature. While it may happen that
the initial hmorrhage is rapidly fatal, as for example when the
external carotid or one of its branches suddenly gives way, it is quite
common to have one, two or more _warning hmorrhages_ before the leakage
on a large scale, which is rapidly fatal.

The _appearances of the wound_ in cases complicated by secondary
hmorrhage are only characteristic in so far that while obviously
infected, there is an absence of all reaction; instead of frankly
suppurating, there is little or no discharge and the surrounding
cellular tissue and the limb beyond are dematous and pit on pressure.

The _general symptoms_ of septic poisoning in cases of secondary
hmorrhage vary widely in severity: they may be so slight that the
general health is scarcely affected and the convalescence from an
operation, for example, may be apparently normal except that the wound
does not heal satisfactorily. For example, a patient may be recovering
from an operation such as the removal of an epithelioma of the mouth,
pharynx or larynx and the associated lymph glands in the neck, and be
able to be up and going about his room, when, suddenly, without warning
and without obvious cause, a rush of blood occurs from the mouth or the
incompletely healed wound in the neck, causing death within a few
minutes.

On the other hand, the toxmia may be of a profound type associated with
marked pallor and progressive failure of strength, which, of itself,
even when the danger from hmorrhage has been overcome, may have a fatal
termination. The _prognosis_ therefore in cases of secondary hmorrhage
can never be other than uncertain and unfavourable; the danger from loss
of blood _per se_ is less when the artery concerned is amenable to
control by surgical measures.

_Treatment._--The treatment of secondary hmorrhage includes the use of
local measures to arrest the bleeding, the employment of general
measures to counteract the accompanying toxmia, and when the loss of
blood has been considerable, the treatment of the bloodless state.

_Local Measures to arrest the Hmorrhage._--The occurrence of even
slight hmorrhages from a septic wound in the vicinity of a large blood
vessel is to be taken seriously; it is usually necessary to _open up the
wound_, clear out the clots and infected tissues with a sharp spoon,
disinfect the walls of the cavity with eusol or hydrogen peroxide, and
_pack_ it carefully but not too tightly with gauze impregnated with some
antiseptic, such as "bipp," so that, if the bleeding does not recur, it
may be left undisturbed for several days. The packing should if possible
be brought into actual contact with the leaking point in the vessel, and
so arranged as to make pressure on the artery above the erosion. The
dressings and bandage are then applied, with the limb in the attitude
that will diminish the force of the stream through the main artery, for
example, flexion at the elbow in hmorrhage from the deep palmar arch.
Other measures for combating the local sepsis, such as the irrigation
method of Carrel, may be considered.

If the wound involves one of the extremities, it may be useful; and it
imparts confidence to the nurse, and, it may be, to the patient, if a
Petit's tourniquet is loosely applied above the wound, which the nurse
is instructed to tighten up in the event of bleeding taking place.

_Ligation of the Artery._--If the hmorrhage recurs in spite of packing
the wound, or if it is serious from the outset and likely to be critical
if repeated, ligation of the artery itself or of the trunk from which it
springs, at a selected spot higher up, should be considered. This is
most often indicated in wounds of the extremities.

As examples of proximal ligation for secondary hmorrhage may be cited
ligation of the hypogastric artery for hmorrhage in the buttock, of the
common iliac for hmorrhage in the thigh, of the brachial in the upper
arm for hmorrhage from the deep palmar arch, and of the posterior
tibial behind the medial malleolus for hmorrhage from the sole of the
foot.

_Amputation_ is the last resource, and should be decided upon if the
hmorrhage recurs after proximal ligation, or if this has been followed
by gangrene of the limb; it should also be considered if the nature of
the wound and the virulence of the sepsis would of themselves justify
removal of the limb. Every surgeon can recall cases in which a timely
amputation has been the means of saving life.

The _counteraction of the toxmia_ and the _treatment of the bloodless
state_, are carried out on the usual lines.

#Hmorrhage of Toxic Origin.#--Mention must also be made of hmorrhages
which depend upon infective or toxic conditions and in which no gross
lesion of the vessels can be discovered. The bleeding occurs as an
oozing, which may be comparatively slight and unimportant, or by its
persistence may become serious. It takes place into the superficial
layers of the skin, from mucous membranes, and into the substance of
such organs as the pancreas. Hmorrhage from the stomach and intestine,
attended with a brown or black discoloration of the vomit and of the
stools, is one of the best known examples: it is not uncommonly met with
in infective conditions originating in the appendix, intestine,
gall-bladder, and other abdominal organs. Hmorrhage from the mucous
membrane of the stomach after abdominal operations--apparently also due
to toxic causes and not to the operation--gives rise to the so-called
_post-operative hmatemesis_.

#Constitutional Effects of Hmorrhage.#--The severity of the symptoms
resulting from hmorrhage depends as much on the rapidity with which the
bleeding takes place as on the amount of blood lost. The sudden loss of
a large quantity, whether from an open wound or into a serous
cavity--for example, after rupture of the liver or spleen--is attended
with marked pallor of the surface of the body and coldness of the skin,
especially of the face, feet, and hands. The skin is moist with a cold,
clammy sweat, and beads of perspiration stand out on the forehead. The
pulse becomes feeble, soft, and rapid, and the patient is dull and
listless, and complains of extreme thirst. The temperature is usually
sub-normal; and the respiration rapid, shallow, and sighing in
character. Abnormal visual sensations, in the form of flashes of light
or spots before the eyes; and rushing, buzzing, or ringing sounds in the
ears, are often complained of.

In extreme cases, phenomena which have been aptly described as those of
"air-hunger" ensue. On account of the small quantity of blood
circulating through the body, and the diminished hmoglobin content of
the blood, the tissues are imperfectly oxygenated, and the patient
becomes extremely restless, gasping for breath, constantly throwing
about his arms and baring his chest in the vain attempt to breath more
freely. Faintness and giddiness are marked features. The diminished
supply of oxygen to the brain and to the muscles produces muscular
twitchings, and sometimes convulsions. Finally the pupils dilate, the
sphincters relax, and death ensues.

Young children stand the loss of blood badly, but they quickly recover,
as the regeneration of blood takes place rapidly. In old people also,
and especially when they are fat, the loss of blood is badly borne, and
the ill effects last longer. Women, on the whole, stand loss of blood
better than men, and in them the blood is more rapidly re-formed. A few
hours after a severe hmorrhage there is usually a leucocytosis of from
15,000 to 30,000.

#Treatment of the Bloodless State.#--The patient should be placed in a
warm, well-ventilated room, and the foot of the bed elevated. Cardiac
stimulants, such as strychnin or alcohol, must be judiciously
administered, over-stimulation being avoided. The inhalation of oxygen
has been found useful in relieving the urgent symptoms of dyspna.

The blood may be emptied from the limbs into the vessels of the trunk,
where it is more needed, by holding them vertically in the air for a few
minutes, and then applying a firm elastic bandage over a layer of cotton
wool, from the periphery towards the trunk.

_Introduction of Fluids into the Circulation._--The most valuable
measure for maintaining the circulation, however, is by transfusion of
blood (_Op. Surg._, p. 37). If this is not immediately available the
introduction of from one to three pints of physiological salt
solution (a teaspoonful of common salt to a pint of water) into a vein,
or a 6 per cent. solution of gum acacia, is a useful expedient. The
solution is sterilised by boiling, and cooled to a temperature of about
105 F. The addition of 5 to 10 minims of adrenalin solution (1 in 1000)
is advantageous in raising the blood-pressure (_Op. Surg._, p. 565).

When the intra-venous method is not available, one or two pints of
saline solution with adrenalin should be slowly introduced into the
rectum, by means of a long rubber tube and a filler. Satisfactory,
although less rapidly obtained results follow the introduction of saline
solution into the cellular tissue--for example, under the mamma, into
the axilla, or under the skin of the back.

If the patient can retain fluids taken by the mouth--such as hot coffee,
barley water, or soda water--these should be freely given, unless the
injury necessitates operative treatment under a general ansthetic.

Transfusion of blood is most valuable as _a preliminary to operation_ in
patients who are bloodless as a result of hmorrhage from gastric and
duodenal ulcers, and in bleeders.


HMOPHILIA

The term hmophilia is applied to an inherited disease which renders the
patient liable to serious hmorrhage from even the most trivial
injuries; and the subjects of it are popularly known as "bleeders."

The cause of the disease and its true nature are as yet unknown. There
is no proof of any structural defect in the blood vessels, and beyond
the fact that there is a diminution in the number of blood-plates, it
has not been demonstrated that there is any alteration in the
composition of the blood.

The affection is in a marked degree hereditary, all the branches of an
affected family being liable to suffer. Its mode of transmission to
individuals, moreover, is characteristic: the male members of the stock
alone suffer from the affection in its typical form, while the tendency
is transmitted through the female line. Thus the daughters of a father
who is a bleeder, whilst they do not themselves suffer from the disease,
transmit the tendency to their male offspring. The sons, on the other
hand, neither suffer themselves nor transmit the disease to their
children (Fig. 64). The female members of a hmophilic stock are often
very prolific, and there is usually a predominance of daughters in their
families.


FIG 64.--Genealogical Tree of a Hmophilic Family.

Great-Great-Grandmother                Great-Great-Grandfather
Mrs D. (Lancashire) F                  M (History not known
                   .|                  |  as to bleeding)
                   .|                  |
                   .+----------+-------+
                   ............|
                              .|
                           ....|
                           .+---------+--------+
         Great-Grandmother .|         |        |
           (Married three  .F        MB       MB
                times)     .|
                           .|
                           .|
      By First Husband     .|                  By Second           By Third
              ..............|                  Husband             Husband
   +-----------+------------+----------+-------+-------+-----------+------+
   |          .|            |          |       +-------+-----------+------+
   M          .F            F          F       |       |           +------+
   |          .|            |          |       MB      F Died in      No
Died       Grandmother      |          |               | Childbed    Family
 t.          .|            |     +-----------+   +----+---
 70           .|        +------+  |had family |   |
              .|        |      |  |but history|   |
              .|        MB    MB  |not known  |   MB
              .|
              .|
              .|.............................
+-----+----------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+
|     |          |            |            |.           |             |
|     |          |            |            |.           |             |
M     M          M            MB           F.           F             F
      |                                    |.           |             |
      |                                  Mother   +--+--+---+--+--+   |
    +----+                                 |.     |  |  |   |  |  |   |
    |    |                                 |.     M  M  MB  F  F  F   |
    M    F                                 |.                         |
     Not Married                           |.             +---+---+---+---+
                                           |.             |   |   |   |   |
                                           |.             MB  M   MB  M   M
                              .............|.
                         +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
                         |    .|    .|     |     |     |
                         |    .|*   .|*    |     |     |
                         M    MB    MB     F     F     F


F = Females.  M = Males (not bleeders).  MB = Males (bleeders)

 ** the patients observed by the authors. The dotted line shows the
    transmission of the disease to our patients through four
    generations.


The disease is met with in boys who are otherwise healthy, and usually
manifests itself during the first few years of life. In rare instances
profuse hmorrhage takes place when the umbilical cord separates. As a
rule the first evidence is the occurrence of long-continued and
uncontrollable bleeding from a comparatively slight injury, such as the
scratch of a pin, the extraction of a tooth, or after the operation of
circumcision. The blood oozes slowly from the capillaries; at first it
appears normal, but after flowing for some days, or it may be weeks, it
becomes pale, thin, and watery, and shows less and less tendency to
coagulate.

Female members of hmophilia families sometimes show a tendency to
excessive hmorrhage, but they seldom manifest the characteristic
features met with in the male members.

Sometimes the hmorrhage takes place apparently spontaneously from the
gums, the nasal or the intestinal mucous membrane. In other cases the
bleeding occurs into the cellular tissue under the skin or mucous
membrane, producing large areas of ecchymosis and discoloration. One of
the commonest manifestations of the disease is the occurrence of
hmorrhage into the cavities of the large joints, especially the knee,
elbow, or hip. The patient suffers repeatedly from such hmorrhages, the
determining injury being often so slight as to have passed unobserved.

There is evidence that the tendency to bleed is greater at certain times
than at others--in some cases showing almost a cyclical
character--although nothing is known as to the cause of the variation.

After a severe hmorrhage into the cellular tissue or into a joint, the
patient becomes pale and anmic, the temperature may rise to 102 or
103 F., the pulse become small and rapid, and hmic murmurs are
sometimes developed over the heart and large arteries. The swelling is
tense, fluctuating, and hot, and there is considerable pain and
tenderness.

In exceptional cases, blisters form over the seat of the effusion, or
the skin may even slough, and the clinical features may therefore come
to simulate closely those of an acute suppurative condition. When the
skin sloughs, an ulcer is formed with altered blood-clot in its floor
like that seen in scurvy, and there is a remarkable absence of any
attempt at healing.

The acute symptoms gradually subside, and the blood is slowly absorbed,
the discoloration of the skin passing through the same series of changes
as occur after an ordinary bruise. The patients seldom manifest the
symptoms of the bloodless state, and the blood is rapidly regenerated.

The _diagnosis_ is easy if the patient or his friends are aware of the
family tendency to hmorrhage and inform the doctor of it, but they are
often sensitive and reticent regarding the fact, and it may only be
elicited after close investigation. From the history it is usually easy
to exclude scurvy and purpura. Repeated hmorrhages into a joint may
result in appearances which closely simulate those of tuberculous
disease. Recent hmorrhages into the cellular tissue often present
clinical features closely resembling those of acute cellulitis or
osteomyelitis. A careful examination, however, may reveal ecchymoses on
other parts of the body which give a clue to the nature of the
condition, and may prevent the disastrous consequences that may follow
incision.

These patients usually succumb sooner or later to hmorrhage, although
they often survive several severe attacks. After middle life the
tendency to bleed appears to diminish.

_Treatment._--As a rule the ordinary means of arresting hmorrhage are
of little avail. From among the numerous means suggested, the following
may be mentioned: The application to the bleeding point of gauze soaked
in a 1 in 1000 solution of adrenalin; prolonged inhalation of oxygen;
freezing the part with a spray of ethyl-chloride; one or more
subcutaneous injections of gelatin--5 ounces of a 2 per cent.
solution of white gelatin in normal salt solution being injected at a
temperature of about 100 F.; the injection of pituitary extract. The
application of a pad of gauze soaked in the blood of a normal person
sometimes arrests the bleeding.

To prevent bleeding in hmophilics, intra-venous or subcutaneous
injections of fresh blood serum, taken from the human subject, the
sheep, the dog, or the horse, have proved useful. If fresh serum is not
available, anti-diphtheritic or anti-tetanic serum or trade
preparations, such as hemoplastin, may be employed. We have removed the
appendix and amputated through the thigh in hmophilic subjects without
excessive loss of blood after a course of fresh sheep's serum given by
the mouth over a period of several weeks.

The chloride and lactate of calcium, and extract of thymus gland have
been employed to increase the coagulability of the blood. The patient
should drink large quantities of milk, which also increases the
coagulability of the blood. Monro has observed remarkable results from
the hypodermic injection of emetin hydrochloride in -grain doses.


THROMBOSIS AND EMBOLISM

The processes known as thrombosis and embolism are so intimately
associated with the diseases of blood vessels that it is convenient to
define these terms in the first instance.

#Thrombosis.#--The term _thrombus_ is applied to a clot of blood formed
in the interior of the heart or of a blood vessel, and the process by
which such a clot forms is known as _thrombosis_. It would appear that
slowing or stagnation of the blood-stream, and interference with the
integrity of the lining membrane of the vessel wall, are the most
important factors determining the formation of the clot. Alterations in
the blood itself, such as occur, for example, in certain toxmias, also
favour coagulation. When the thrombus is formed slowly, it consists of
white blood cells with a small proportion of fibrin, and, being
deposited in successive layers, has a distinctly laminated appearance on
section. It is known as a _white thrombus_ or laminated clot, and is
often met with in the sac of an aneurysm (Fig. 72). When rapidly formed
in a vessel in which the blood is almost stagnant--as, for example, in a
pouched varicose vein--the blood coagulates _en masse_, and the clot
consists of all the elements of the blood, constituting a _red thrombus_
(Fig. 66). Sometimes the thrombus is _mixed_--a red thrombus being
deposited on a white one, it may be in alternate layers.

When aseptic, a thrombus may become detached and be carried off in the
blood-stream as an embolus; it may become organised; or it may
degenerate and undergo calcification. Occasionally a small thrombus
situated behind a valve in a varicose vein or in the terminal end of a
dilated vein--for example in a pile--undergoes calcification, and is
then spoken of as a _phlebolith_; it gives a shadow with the X-rays.

When infected with pyogenic bacteria, the thrombus becomes converted
into pus and a localised abscess forms; or portions of the thrombus may
be carried as emboli in the circulation to distant parts, where they
give rise to secondary foci of suppuration--pymic abscesses.

#Embolism.#--The term _embolus_ is applied to any body carried along in
the circulation and ultimately becoming impacted in a blood vessel. This
occurrence is known as _embolism_. The commonest forms of embolus are
portions of thrombi or of fibrinous formations on the valves of the
heart, the latter being usually infected with micro-organisms.

Embolism plays an important part in determining one form of gangrene, as
has already been described. Infective emboli are the direct cause of the
secondary abscesses that occur in pymia; and they are sometimes
responsible for the formation of aneurysm.

Portions of malignant tumours also may form emboli, and their impaction
in the vessels may lead to the development of secondary growths in
distant parts of the body.

Fat and air embolism have already been referred to.


ARTERITIS

_Pyogenic._--Non-suppurative inflammation of the coats of an artery may
so soften the wall of the vessel as to lead to aneurysmal dilatation. It
is not uncommon in children, and explains the occurrence of aneurysm in
young subjects.

When suppuration occurs, the vessel wall becomes disintegrated and gives
way, leading to secondary hmorrhage. If the vessel ruptures into an
abscess cavity, dangerous bleeding may occur when the abscess bursts or
is opened.

_Syphilitic._--The inflammation associated with syphilis results in
thickening of the tunica intima, whereby the lumen of the vessel becomes
narrowed, or even obliterated--_endarteritis obliterans_. The middle
coat usually escapes, but the tunica externa is generally thickened.
These changes cause serious interference with the nutrition of the parts
supplied by the affected arteries. In large trunks, by diminishing the
elasticity of the vessel wall, they are liable to lead to the formation
of aneurysm.

Changes in the arterial walls closely resembling those of syphilitic
arteritis are sometimes met with in _tuberculous_ lesions.

#Arterio-sclerosis# or #Chronic Arteritis#.--These terms are applied to
certain changes which result in narrowing of the lumen and loss of
elasticity in the arteries. The condition may affect the whole vascular
system or may be confined to particular areas. In the smaller arteries
there is more or less uniform thickening of the tunica intima from
proliferation of the endothelium and increase in the connective tissue
in the elastic lamina--a form of obliterative endarteritis. The
narrowing of the vessels may be sufficient to determine gangrene in the
extremities. In course of time, particularly in the larger arteries,
this new tissue undergoes degeneration, at first of a fatty nature, but
progressing in the direction of calcification, and this is followed by
the deposit of lime salts in the young connective tissue and the
formation of calcareous plates or rings over a considerable area of the
vessel wall. To this stage in the process the term _atheroma_ is
applied. The endothelium over these plates often disappears, leaving
them exposed to the blood-stream.

Changes of a similar kind sometimes occur in the middle coat, the lime
salts being deposited among the muscle fibres in concentric rings.

The primary cause of arterio-sclerosis is not definitely known, but its
almost constant occurrence, to a greater or less degree, in the aged
suggests that it is of the nature of a senile degeneration. It is
favoured by anything which throws excessive strain on the vessel walls,
such as heavy muscular work; by chronic alcoholism and syphilis; or by
such general diseases as tend to raise the blood-pressure--for example,
chronic Bright's disease or gout. It occurs with greater frequency and
with greater severity in men than in women.

Atheromatous degeneration is most common in the large arterial trunks,
and the changes are most marked at the arch of the aorta, opposite the
flexures of joints, at the mouths of large branches, and at parts where
the vessel lies in contact with bone. The presence of diseased patches
in the wall of an artery diminishes its elasticity and favours
aneurysmal dilatation. Such a vessel also is liable to be ruptured by
external violence and so give rise to traumatic aneurysm. Thrombosis is
liable to occur when calcareous plates are exposed in the lumen of the
vessel by destruction of the endothelium, and this predisposes to
embolism. Arterio-sclerosis also interferes with the natural arrest of
hmorrhage, and by rendering the vessels brittle, makes it difficult to
secure them by ligature. In advanced cases the accessible arteries--such
as the radial, the temporal or the femoral--may be felt as firm,
tortuous cords, which are sometimes so hard that they have been aptly
compared to "pipe-stems." The pulse is smaller and less compressible
than normal, and the vessel moves bodily with each pulsation. It must be
borne in mind, however, that the condition of the radial artery may fail
to afford a clue to that of the larger arteries. Calcified arteries are
readily identified in skiagrams (Fig. 65).

[Illustration: FIG. 65.--Radiogram showing Calcareous Degeneration
(Atheroma) of Arteries.]

We have met with a chronic form of arterial degeneration in elderly
women, affecting especially the great vessels at the root of the neck,
in which the artery is remarkably attenuated and dilated, and so friable
that the wall readily tears when seized with an artery-forceps,
rendering ligation of the vessel in the ordinary way well-nigh
impossible. Matas suggests infolding the wall of the vessel with
interrupted sutures that do not pierce the intima, and wrapping it
round with a strip of peritoneum or omentum.

The most serious form of arterial _thrombosis_ is that met with _in the
abdominal aorta_, which is attended with violent pains in the lower
limbs, rapidly followed by paralysis and arrest of the circulation.


THROMBO-PHLEBITIS AND THROMBOSIS IN VEINS

#Thrombosis# is more common in veins than in arteries, because slowing
of the blood-stream and irritation of the endothelium of the vessel wall
are, owing to the conditions of the venous circulation, more readily
induced in veins.

Venous thrombosis may occur from purely mechanical causes--as, for
example, when the wall of a vein is incised, or the vessel included in a
ligature, or when it is bruised or crushed by a fragment of a broken
bone or by a bandage too tightly applied. Under these conditions
thrombosis is essentially a reparative process, and has already been
considered in relation to the repair of blood vessels.

In other cases thrombosis is associated with certain constitutional
diseases--gout, for example; the endothelium of the veins undergoing
changes--possibly the result of irritation by abnormal constituents in
the blood--which favour the formation of thrombi.

Under these various conditions the formation of a thrombus is not
necessarily associated with the action of bacteria, although in any
of them this additional factor may be present.

The most common cause of venous thrombosis, however, is inflammation of
the wall of the vein--phlebitis.

#Phlebitis.#--Various forms of phlebitis are met with, but for practical
purposes they may be divided into two groups--one in which there is a
tendency to the formation of a thrombus; the other in which the
infective element predominates.

In surgical patients, the _thrombotic form_ is almost invariably met
with in the lower extremity, and usually occurs in those who are
debilitated and anmic, and who are confined to bed for prolonged
periods--for example, during the treatment of fractures of the leg or
pelvis, or after such operations as herniotomy, prostatectomy, or
appendectomy.

_Clinical Features._--The most typical example of this form of phlebitis
is that so frequently met with in the great saphena vein, especially
when it is varicose. The onset of the attack is indicated by a sudden
pain in the lower limb--sometimes below, sometimes above the knee. This
initial pain may be associated with shivering or even with a rigor, and
the temperature usually rises one or two degrees. There is swelling and
tenderness along the line of the affected vein, and the skin over it is
a dull-red or purple colour. The swollen vein may be felt as a firm
cord, with bead-like enlargements in the position of the valves. The
patient experiences a feeling of stiffness and tightness throughout the
limb. There is often dema of the leg and foot, especially when the limb
is in the dependent position. The acute symptoms pass off in a few days,
but the swelling and tenderness of the vein and the dema of the limb
may last for many weeks.

When the deep veins--iliac, femoral, popliteal--are involved, there is
great swelling of the whole limb, which is of a firm almost "wooden"
consistence, and of a pale-white colour; the dema may be so great that
it is impossible to feel the affected vein until the swelling has
subsided. This is most often seen in puerperal women, and is known as
_phlegmasia alba dolens_.

_Treatment._--The patient must be placed at absolute rest, with the foot
of the bed raised on blocks 10 or 12 inches high, and the limb
immobilised by sand-bags or splints. It is necessary to avoid handling
the parts, lest the clot be displaced and embolism occur. To avoid
frequent movement of the limb, the necessary dressings should be kept in
position by means of a many-tailed rather than a roller bandage.

To relieve the pain, warm fomentations or lead and opium lotion should
be applied. Later, ichthyol-glycerin, or glycerin and belladonna, may be
substituted.

When, at the end of three weeks, the danger of embolism is past,
douching and gentle massage may be employed to disperse the dema; and
when the patient gets up he should wear a supporting elastic bandage.

The _infective_ form usually begins as a peri-phlebitis arising in
connection with some focus of infection in the adjacent tissues. The
elements of the vessel wall are destroyed by suppuration, and the
thrombus in its lumen becomes infected with pyogenic bacteria and
undergoes softening.

_Occlusion of the inferior vena cava_ as a result of infective
thrombosis is a well-known condition, the thrombosis extending into the
main trunk from some of its tributaries, either from the femoral or
iliac veins below or from the hepatic veins above.

Portions of the softened thrombus are liable to become detached and to
enter the circulating blood, in which they are carried as emboli. These
may lodge in distant parts, and give rise to secondary foci of
suppuration--pymic abscesses.

_Clinical Features._--Infective phlebitis is most frequently met with in
the transverse sinus as a sequel to chronic suppuration in the mastoid
antrum and middle ear. It also occurs in relation to the peripheral
veins, but in these it can seldom be recognised as a separate entity,
being merged in the general infective process from which it takes
origin. Its occurrence may be inferred, if in the course of a
suppurative lesion there is a sudden rise of temperature, with pain,
redness, and swelling along the line of a venous trunk, and a rapidly
developed dema of the limb, with pitting of the skin on pressure. In
rare cases a localised abscess forms in the vein and points towards the
surface.

_Treatment._--Attention must be directed towards the condition with
which the phlebitis is associated. Ligation of the vein on the cardiac
side of the thrombus with a view to preventing embolism is seldom
feasible in the peripheral veins, although, as will be pointed out
later, the jugular vein is ligated with this object in cases of
phlebitis of the transverse sinus.


VARIX--VARICOSE VEINS

The term varix is applied to a condition in which veins are so altered
in structure that they remain permanently dilated, and are at the same
time lengthened and tortuous. Two types are met with: one in which
dilatation of a large superficial vein and its tributaries is the most
obvious feature; the other, in which bunches of distended and tortuous
vessels develop at one or more points in the course of a vein, a
condition to which Virchow applied the term _angioma racemosum venosum_.
The two types may occur in combination.

Any vein in the body may become varicose, but the condition is rare
except in the veins of the lower extremity, in the veins of the
spermatic cord (varicocele), and in the veins of the anal canal
(hmorrhoids).

We are here concerned with varix as it occurs in the veins of the lower
extremity.

_Etiology._--Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the
essential cause of varix. The weight of evidence is in favour of the
view that, when dilatation is the predominant element, it results from a
congenital deficiency in the number, size, and strength of the valves of
the affected veins, and in an inherent weakness in the vessel walls.
The _angioma racemosum venosum_ is probably also due to a congenital
alteration in the structure of the vessels, and is allied to tumours of
blood vessels. The view that varix is congenital in origin, as was first
suggested by Virchow, is supported by the fact that in a large
proportion of cases the condition is hereditary; not only may several
members of the same family in succeeding generations suffer from varix,
but it is often found that the same vein, or segment of a vein, is
involved in all of them. The frequent occurrence of varix in youth is
also an indication of its congenital origin.

In the majority of cases it is only when some exciting factor comes into
operation that the clinical phenomena associated with varix appear. The
most common exciting cause is increased pressure within the veins, and
this may be produced in a variety of ways. In certain diseases of the
heart, lungs, and liver, for example, the venous pressure may be so
raised as to cause a localised dilatation of such veins as are
congenitally weak. The direct pressure of a tumour, or of the gravid
uterus on the large venous trunks in the pelvis, may so obstruct the
flow as to distend the veins of the lower extremity. It is a common
experience in women that the signs of varix date from an antecedent
pregnancy. The importance of the wearing of tight garters as a factor in
the production of varicose veins has been exaggerated, although it must
be admitted that this practice is calculated to aggravate the condition
when it is once established. It has been proved experimentally that the
backward pressure in the veins may be greatly increased by straining, a
fact which helps to explain the frequency with which varicosity occurs
in the lower limbs of athletes and of those whose occupation involves
repeated and violent muscular efforts. There is reason to believe,
moreover, that a sudden strain may, by rupturing the valves and so
rendering them incompetent, induce varicosity independently of any
congenital defect. Prolonged standing or walking, by allowing gravity to
act on the column of blood in the veins of the lower limbs, is also an
important determining factor in the production of varix.

Thrombosis of the deep veins--in the leg, for example--may induce marked
dilatation of the superficial veins, by throwing an increased amount of
work upon them. This is to be looked upon rather as a compensatory
hypertrophy of the superficial vessels than as a true varix.

_Morbid Anatomy._--In the lower extremity the varicosity most commonly
affects the vessels of the great saphena system; less frequently those
of the small saphena system. Sometimes both systems are involved, and
large communicating branches may develop between the two.

The essential lesion is the absence or deficiency of valves, so that
they are incompetent and fail to support the column of blood which bears
back upon them. Normally the valves in the femoral and iliac veins and
in the inferior vena cava are imperfectly developed, so that in the
erect posture the great saphena receives a large share of the backward
pressure of the column of venous blood.

The whole length of the vein may be affected, but as a rule the disease
is confined to one or more segments, which are not only dilated, but are
also increased in length, so that they become convoluted. The adjacent
loops of the convoluted vein are often bound together by fibrous tissue.
All the coats are thickened, chiefly by an increased development of
connective tissue, and in some cases changes similar to those of
arterio-sclerosis occur. The walls of varicose veins are often
exceedingly brittle. In some cases the thickening is uniform, and in
others it is irregular, so that here and there thin-walled sacs or
pouches project from the side of the vein. These pouches vary in size
from a bean to a hen's egg, the larger forms being called _venous
cysts_, and being most commonly met with in the region of the saphenous
opening and of the opening in the popliteal fascia. Such pouches, being
exposed to injury, are frequently the seat of thrombosis (Fig. 66).

[Illustration: FIG. 66.--Thrombosis in Tortuous and Pouched Great
Saphena Vein, in longitudinal section.]

_Clinical Features._--Varix is most frequently met with between puberty
and the age of thirty, and the sexes appear to suffer about equally.

The amount of discomfort bears no direct proportion to the extent of
the varicosity. It depends rather upon the degree of pressure in the
veins, as is shown by the fact that it is relieved by elevation of the
limb. When the whole length of the main trunk of the great saphena is
implicated, the pressure in the vein is high and the patient suffers a
good deal of pain and discomfort. When, on the contrary, the upper part
of the saphena and its valves are intact, and only the more distal veins
are involved, the pressure is not so high and there is comparatively
little suffering. The usual complaint is of a sense of weight and
fulness in the limb after standing or walking, sometimes accompanied by
actual pain, from which relief is at once obtained by raising the limb.
Cramp-like pains in the muscles are often associated with varix of the
deep veins.

The dilated and tortuous vein can be readily seen and felt when the
patient is examined in the upright posture. In advanced cases, bead-like
swellings are sometimes to be detected over the position of the valves,
and, on running the fingers along the course of the vessel, a firm
ridge, due to periphlebitis, may be detected on each side of the vein.
When the limb is dematous, the outline of the veins is obscured, but
they can be identified on palpation as gutter-like tracks. When large
veins are implicated, a distinct impulse on coughing may be seen to pass
down as far as the knee; and if the vessel is sharply percussed a fluid
wave may be detected passing both up and down the vein.

If the patient is placed on a couch and the limb elevated, the veins are
emptied, and if pressure is then made over the region of the saphenous
opening and the patient allowed to stand up, so long as the great
saphena system alone is involved, the veins fill again very slowly from
below. If the small saphena system also is involved, and if
communicating branches are dilated, the veins fill up from below more
rapidly. When the pressure over the saphenous opening is removed, the
blood rapidly rushes into the varicose vessels from above; this is known
as Trendelenburg's test.

The most marked dilatation usually occurs on the medial side of the
limb, between the middle of the thigh and the middle of the calf, the
arrangement of the veins showing great variety (Fig. 67).

There are usually one or more bunches of enlarged and tortuous veins in
the region of the knee. Frequently a large branch establishes a
communication between the systems of the great and small saphenous veins
in the region of the popliteal space, or across the front of the upper
part of the tibia. The superficial position of this last branch and its
proximity to the bone render it liable to injury.

[Illustration: FIG. 67.--Extensive Varix of Internal Saphena System on
Left Leg, of many years' standing.]

The small veins of the skin of the ankle and foot often show as fine
blue streaks arranged in a stellate or arborescent manner, especially in
women who have borne children.

_Complications._--When the varix is of long standing, the skin in the
lower part of the leg sometimes assumes a mahogany-brown or bluish hue,
as a result of the _deposit of blood pigment_ in the tissues, and this
is frequently a precursor of ulceration.

_Chronic dermatitis_ (_varicose eczema_) is often met with in the lower
part of the leg, and is due to interference with the nutrition of the
skin. The incompetence of the valves allows the pressure in the varicose
veins to equal that in the arterioles, so that the capillary circulation
is impeded. From the same cause the blood in the deep veins is enabled
to enter the superficial veins, where the backward pressure is so great
that the blood flows down again, and so a vicious circle is established.
The blood therefore loses more and more of its oxygen, and so fails to
nourish the tissues.

The _ulcer_ of the leg associated with varicose veins has already been
described.

_Hmorrhage_ may take place from a varicose vein as a result of a wound
or of ulceration of its wall. Increased intra-venous pressure produced
by severe muscular strain may determine rupture of a vein exposed in the
floor of an ulcer. If the limb is dependent, the incompetency of the
valves permits of rapid and copious bleeding, which may prove fatal,
particularly if the patient is intoxicated when the rupture takes place
and no means are taken to arrest the hmorrhage. The bleeding may be
arrested at once by elevating the limb, or by applying pressure directly
over the bleeding point.

_Phlebitis and thrombosis_ are common sequel of varix, and may prove
dangerous, either by spreading into the large venous trunks or by giving
rise to emboli. The larger the varix the greater is the tendency for a
thrombus to spread upwards and to involve the deep veins. Thrombi
usually originate in venous cysts or pouches, and at acute bends on the
vessel, especially when these are situated in the vicinity of the knee,
and are subjected to repeated injuries--for example in riding.
Phleboliths sometimes form in such pouches, and may be recognised in a
radiogram. In a certain proportion of cases, especially in elderly
people, the occurrence of thrombosis leads to cure of the condition by
the thrombus becoming organised and obliterating the vein.

_Treatment._--At best the treatment of varicose veins is only
palliative, as it is obviously impossible to restore to the vessels
their normal structure. The patient must avoid wearing anything, such as
a garter, which constricts the limb, and any obvious cause of direct
pressure on the pelvic veins, such as a tumour, persistent
constipation, or an ill-fitting truss, should be removed. Cardiac,
renal, or pulmonary causes of venous congestion must also be treated,
and the functions of the liver regulated. Severe forms of muscular
exertion and prolonged standing or walking are to be avoided, and the
patient may with benefit rest the limb in an elevated position for a few
hours each day. To support the distended vessels, a closely woven silk
or worsted stocking, or a light and porous form of elastic bandage,
applied as a puttee, should be worn. These appliances should be put on
before the patient leaves his bed in the morning, and should only be
removed after he lies down at night. In this way the vessels are never
allowed to become dilated. Elastic stockings, and bandages made entirely
of india-rubber, are to be avoided. In early and mild cases these
measures are usually sufficient to relieve the patient's discomfort.

_Operative Treatment._--In aggravated cases, when the patient is
suffering pain, when his occupation is interfered with by repeated
attacks of phlebitis, or when there are large pouches on the veins,
operative treatment is called for. The younger the patient the clearer
is the indication to operate. It may be necessary to operate to enable a
patient to enter one of the public services, even although no symptoms
are present. The presence of an ulcer does not contra-indicate
operation; the ulcer should be excised, and the raw surface covered with
skin grafts, before dealing with the veins.

The _operation of Trendelenburg_ is especially appropriate to cases in
which the trunk of the great saphena vein in the thigh is alone
involved. It consists in exposing three or four inches of the vein in
its upper part, applying a ligature at the upper and lower ends of the
exposed portion, and, after tying all tributary branches, resecting this
portion of the vein.

The procedure of C. H. Mayo is adapted to cases in which it is desirable
to remove longer segments of the veins. It consists in the employment of
special instruments known as "ring-enucleators" or "vein-strippers," by
means of which long portions of the vein are removed through
comparatively small incisions.

An alternative procedure consists in avulsing segments of the vein by
means of Babcock's stylet, which consists of a flexible steel rod, 30
inches in length, with acorn-shaped terminals. The instrument is passed
along the lumen of the segment to be dealt with, and a ligature applied
around the vein above the bulbous end of the stylet enables nearly the
whole length of the great saphena vein to be dragged out in one piece.
These methods are not suitable when the veins are brittle, when there
are pouches or calcareous deposits in their walls, or where there has
been periphlebitis binding the coils together.

Mitchell of Belfast advises exposing the varices at numerous points by
half-inch incisions, and, after clamping the vein between two pairs of
forceps, cutting it across and twisting out the segments of the vein
between adjacent incisions. The edges of the incisions are sutured; and
the limb is firmly bandaged from below upwards, and kept in an elevated
position. We have employed this method with satisfactory results.

The treatment of the complications of varix has already been considered.


ANGIOMA[4]

[4] In the description of angiomas we have followed the teaching of the
late John Duncan.

Tumours of blood vessels may be divided, according to the nature of the
vessels of which they are composed, into the capillary, the venous, and
the arterial angiomas.


CAPILLARY ANGIOMA

The most common form of capillary angioma is the nvus or congenital
telangiectasis.

#Nvus.#--A nvus is a collection of dilated capillaries, the afferent
arterioles and the efferent venules of which often share in the
dilatation. Little is known regarding the _etiology_ of nvi beyond the
fact that they are of congenital origin. They often escape notice until
the child is some days old, but attention is usually drawn to them
within a fortnight of birth. For practical purposes the most useful
classification of nvi is into the cutaneous, the subcutaneous, and the
mixed forms.

_The cutaneous nvus_, "mother's mark," or "port-wine stain," consists
of an aggregation of dilated capillaries in the substance of the skin.
On stretching the skin the vessels can be seen to form a fine network,
or to run in leashes parallel to one another. A dilated arteriole or a
vein winding about among the capillaries may sometimes be detected.
These nvi occur on any part of the body, but they are most frequently
met with on the face. They may be multiple, and vary greatly in size,
some being no bigger than a pin-head, while others cover large areas of
the body. In colour they present every tint from purple to brilliant
red; in the majority there is a considerable dash of blue, especially in
cold weather.

Unlike the other forms of nvi, the cutaneous variety shows little
tendency to disappear, and it is especially persistent when associated
with overgrowth of the epidermis and of the hairs--_nvoid mole_.

The _treatment_ of the cutaneous nvus is unsatisfactory, owing to the
difficulty of removing the nvus without leaving a scar which is even
more disfiguring. Very small nvi may be destroyed by a fine pointed
Paquelin thermo-cautery, or by escharotics, such as nitric acid. For
larger nvi, radium and solidified carbon dioxide ("CO2 snow") may be
used. The extensive port-wine stains so often met with on the face are
best left alone.

The _subcutaneous nvus_ is comparatively rare. It constitutes a
well-defined, localised tumour, which may possess a distinct capsule,
especially when it has ceased to grow or is retrogressing. On section,
it presents the appearance of a finely reticulated sponge.

Although it may be noticed at, or within a few days of, birth, a
subcutaneous nvus is often overlooked, especially when on a covered
part of the body, and may not be discovered till the patient is some
years old. It forms a rounded, lobulated swelling, seldom of large size
and yielding a sensation like that of a sponge; the skin over it is
normal, or may exhibit a bluish tinge, especially in cold weather. In
some cases the tumour is diminished by pressing the blood out of it, but
slowly fills again when the pressure is relaxed, and it swells up when
the child struggles or cries. From a cold abscess it is diagnosed by the
history and progress of the swelling and by the absence of fluctuation.
When situated over one of the hernial openings, it closely simulates a
hernia; and when it occurs in the middle line of the face, head, or
back, it may be mistaken for such other congenital conditions as
meningocele or spina bifida. When other means fail, the use of an
exploring needle clears up the diagnosis.

_Mixed Nvus._--As its name indicates, the mixed nvus partakes of the
characters of the other two varieties; that is, it is a subcutaneous
nvus with involvement of the skin.

It is frequently met with on the face and head, but may occur on any
part of the body. It also affects parts covered by mucous membrane, such
as the cheek, tongue, and soft palate. The swelling is rounded or
lobulated, and projects beyond the level of its surroundings. Sometimes
the skin is invaded by the nvoid tissue over the whole extent of the
tumour, sometimes only over a limited area. Frequently the margin only
is of a bright-red colour, while the skin in the centre resembles a
cicatrix. The swelling is reduced by steady pressure, and increases in
size and becomes tense when the child cries.

[Illustration: FIG. 68.--Mixed Nvus of Nose which was subsequently
cured by Electrolysis.]

_Prognosis._--The rate of growth of the subcutaneous and mixed forms of
nvi varies greatly. They sometimes increase rapidly, especially during
the first few months of life; after this they usually grow at the same
rate as the child, or more slowly. There is a decided tendency to
disappearance of these varieties, fully 50 per cent. undergoing natural
cure by a process of obliteration, similar to the obliteration of
vessels in cicatricial tissue. This usually begins about the period of
the first dentition, sometimes at the second dentition, and sometimes at
puberty. On the other hand, an increased activity of growth may be shown
at these periods. The onset of natural cure is recognised by the tumour
becoming firmer and less compressible, and, in the mixed variety, by the
colour becoming less bright. Injury, infection, or ulceration of the
overlying skin may initiate the curative process.

Towards adult life the spaces in a subcutaneous nvus may become greatly
enlarged, leading to the formation of a cavernous angioma.

_Treatment._--In view of the frequency with which subcutaneous and mixed
nvi disappear spontaneously, interference is only called for when the
growth of the tumour is out of proportion to that of the child, or when,
from its situation--for example in the vicinity of the eye--any marked
increase in its size would render it less amenable to treatment.

The methods of treatment most generally applicable are the use of radium
and carbon dioxide snow, igni-puncture, electrolysis, and excision.

For nvi situated on exposed parts, where it is desirable to avoid a
scar, the use of _radium_ is to be preferred. The tube of radium is
applied at intervals to different parts of the nvus, the duration and
frequency of the applications varying with the strength of the
emanations and the reaction produced. The object aimed at is to induce
obliteration of the nvoid tissue by cicatricial contraction without
destroying the overlying skin. _Carbon-dioxide snow_ may be employed in
the same manner, but the results are inferior to those obtained by
radium.

_Igni-puncture_ consists in making a number of punctures at different
parts of the nvus with a fine-pointed thermo-cautery, with the object
of starting at each point a process of cicatrisation which extends
throughout the nvoid tissue and so obliterates the vessels.

_Electrolysis_ acts by decomposing the blood and tissues into their
constituent elements--oxygen and acids appearing at the positive,
hydrogen and bases at the negative electrode. These substances and gases
being given off in a nascent condition, at once enter into new
combinations with anything in the vicinity with which they have a
chemical affinity. In the nvus the practical result of this reaction is
that at the positive pole nitric acid, and at the negative pole caustic
potash, both in a state of minute subdivision, make their appearance.
The effect on the tissues around the positive pole, therefore, is
equivalent to that of an acid cauterisation, and on those round the
negative pole, to an alkaline cauterisation.

As the process is painful, a general ansthetic is necessary. The
current used should be from 20 to 80 milliampres, gradually increasing
from zero, without shock; three to six large Bunsen cells give a
sufficient current, and no galvanometer is required. Steel needles,
insulated with vulcanite to within an eighth of an inch of their points,
are the best. Both poles are introduced into the nvus, the positive
being kept fixed at one spot, while the negative is moved about so as to
produce a number of different tracks of cauterisation. On no account
must either pole be allowed to come in contact with the skin, lest a
slough be formed. The duration of the sitting is determined by the
effect produced, as indicated by the hardening of the tumour, the
average duration being from fifteen to twenty minutes. If pallor of the
skin appears, it indicates that the needles are too near the surface, or
that the blood supply to the integument is being cut off, and is an
indication to stop. To cauterise the track and so prevent bleeding, the
needles should be slowly withdrawn while the current is flowing. When
the skin is reached the current is turned off. The punctures are covered
with collodion. Six or eight weeks should be allowed to elapse before
repeating the procedure. From two to eight or ten sittings may be
necessary, according to the size and character of the nvus.

_Excision_ is to be preferred for nvi of moderate size situated on
covered parts of the body, where a scar is of no importance. Its chief
advantages over electrolysis are that a single operation is sufficient,
and that the cure is speedy and certain. The operation is attended with
much less hmorrhage than might be expected.

#Cavernous Angioma.#--This form of angioma consists of a series of large
blood spaces which are usually derived from the dilatation of the
capillaries of a subcutaneous nvus. The spaces come to communicate
freely with one another by the disappearance of adjacent capillary
walls. While the most common situation is in the subcutaneous tissue, a
cavernous angioma is sometimes met with in internal organs. It may
appear at any age from early youth to middle life, and is of slow growth
and may become stationary. The swelling is rounded or oval, there is no
pulsation or bruit, and the tumour is but slightly compressible. The
treatment consists in dissecting it out.

#Aneurysm by Anastomosis# is the name applied to a vascular tumour in
which the arteries, veins, and capillaries are all involved. It is met
with chiefly on the upper part of the trunk, the neck, and the scalp. It
tends gradually to increase in size, and may, after many years, attain
an enormous size. The tumour is ill-defined, and varies in consistence.
It is pulsatile, and a systolic bruit or a "thrilling" murmur may be
heard over it. The chief risk is hmorrhage from injury or ulceration.

[Illustration: FIG. 69.--Cirsoid Aneurysm of Forehead in a boy t. 10.

(Mr. J. W. Dowden's case.)]

The _treatment_ is conducted on the same lines as for nvus. When
electrolysis is employed, it should be directed towards the afferent
vessels; and if it fails to arrest the flow through these, it is useless
to persist with it. In some cases ligation of the afferent vessels has
been successful.

#Arterial Angioma# or #Cirsoid Aneurysm#.--This is composed of the
enlarged branches of an arterial trunk. It originates in the smaller
branches of an artery--usually the temporal--and may spread to the main
trunk, and may even involve branches of other trunks with which the
affected artery anastomoses.

The condition is probably congenital in origin, though its appearance is
frequently preceded by an injury. It almost invariably occurs in the
scalp, and is usually met with in adolescent young adults.

The affected vessels slowly increase in size, and become tortuous, with
narrowings and dilatations here and there. Grooves and gutters are
frequently found in the bone underlying the dilated vessels.

There is a constant loud bruit in the tumour, which greatly troubles the
patient and may interfere with sleep. There is no tendency either to
natural cure or to rupture, but severe and even fatal hmorrhage may
follow a wound of the dilated vessels.

[Illustration: FIG. 70.--Cirsoid Aneurysm of Orbit and Face, which
developed after a blow on the Orbit with a cricket ball.

(From a photograph lent by Sir Montagu Cotterill.)]

The condition may be treated by excision or by electrolysis. In excision
the hmorrhage is controlled by an elastic tourniquet applied
horizontally round the head, or by ligation of the feeding trunks. In
large tumours the bleeding is formidable. In many cases electrolysis is
to be preferred, and is performed in the same way as for nvus. The
positive pole is placed in the centre of the tumour, while the negative
is introduced into the main affluents one after another.


ANEURYSM

An aneurysm is a sac communicating with an artery, and containing fluid
or coagulated blood.

Two types are met with--the pathological and the traumatic. It is
convenient to describe in this section also certain conditions in which
there is an abnormal communication between an artery and a
vein--arterio-venous aneurysm.


PATHOLOGICAL ANEURYSM

In this class are included such dilatations as result from weakening of
the arterial coats, combined, in most cases, with a loss of elasticity
in the walls and increase in the arterial tension due to
arterio-sclerosis. In some cases the vessel wall is softened by
arteritis--especially the embolic form--so that it yields before the
pressure of the blood.

Repeated and sudden raising of the arterial tension, as a result, for
example, of violent muscular efforts or of excessive indulgence in
alcohol, plays an important part in the causation of aneurysm. These
factors probably explain the comparative frequency of aneurysm in those
who follow such arduous occupations as soldiers, sailors,
dock-labourers, and navvies. In these classes the condition usually
manifests itself between the ages of thirty and fifty--that is, when the
vessels are beginning to degenerate, although the heart is still
vigorous and the men are hard at work. The comparative immunity of women
may also be explained by the less severe muscular strain involved by
their occupations and recreations.

Syphilis plays an important part in the production of aneurysm, probably
by predisposing the patient to arterio-sclerosis and atheroma, and
inducing an increase in the vascular tension in the peripheral vessels,
from loss of elasticity of the vessel wall and narrowing of the lumen as
a result of syphilitic arteritis. It is a striking fact that aneurysm is
seldom met with in women who have not suffered from syphilis.

#Varieties--Fusiform Aneurysm.#--When the _whole circumference_ of an
artery has been weakened, the tension of the blood causes the walls to
dilate uniformly, so that a fusiform or tubular aneurysm results. All
the coats of the vessel are stretched and form the sac of the aneurysm,
and the affected portion is not only dilated but is also increased in
length. This form is chiefly met with in the arch of the aorta, but may
occur in any of the main arterial trunks. As the sac of the aneurysm
includes all three coats, and as the inner and outer coats are usually
thickened by the deposit in them of connective tissue, this variety
increases in size slowly and seldom gives rise to urgent symptoms.

As a rule a fusiform aneurysm contains fluid blood, but when the intima
is roughened by disease, especially in the form of calcareous plates,
shreds of clot may adhere to it.

It has little tendency to natural cure, although this is occasionally
effected by the emerging artery becoming occluded by a clot; it has also
little tendency to rupture.

#Sacculated Aneurysm.#--When a _limited area_ of the vessel wall is
weakened--for example by atheroma or by other form of arteritis--this
portion yields before the pressure of the blood, and a sacculated
aneurysm results. The internal and middle coats being already damaged,
or, it may be, destroyed, by the primary disease, the stress falls on
the external coat, which in the majority of cases constitutes the sac.
To withstand the pressure the external coat becomes thickened, and as
the aneurysm increases in size it forms adhesions to surrounding
tissues, so that fasci, tendons, nerves, and other structures may be
found matted together in its wall. The wall is further strengthened by
the deposit on its inner aspect of blood-clot, which may eventually
become organised.

The contents of the sac consist of fluid blood and a varying amount of
clot which is deposited in concentric layers on the inner aspect of the
sac, where it forms a pale, striated, firm mass, which constitutes a
laminated clot. Near the blood-current the clot is soft, red, and
friable (Fig. 72). The laminated clot not only strengthens the sac,
enabling it to resist the blood-pressure and so prevent rupture, but, if
it increases sufficiently to fill the cavity, may bring about cure. The
principle upon which all methods of treatment are based is to imitate
nature in producing such a clot.

Sacculated aneurysm, as compared with the fusiform variety, tends to
rupture and also to cure by the formation of laminated clot; natural
cure is sometimes all but complete when extension and rupture occur and
cause death.

An aneurysm is said to be _diffused_ when the sac ruptures and the blood
escapes into the cellular tissue.

#Clinical Features of Aneurysm.#--Surgically, the sacculated is by far
the most important variety. The outstanding feature is the existence in
the line of an artery of a globular swelling, which pulsates. The
pulsation is of an expansile character, which is detected by observing
that when both hands are placed over the swelling they are separated
with each beat of the heart. If the main artery be compressed on the
cardiac side of the swelling, the pulsation is arrested and the tumour
becomes smaller and less tense, and it may be still further reduced in
size by gentle pressure being made over it so as to empty it of fluid
blood. On allowing the blood again to flow through the artery, the
pulsation returns at once, but several beats are required before the sac
regains its former size. In most cases a distinct thrill is felt on
placing the hand over the swelling, and a blowing, systolic murmur may
be heard with the stethoscope. It is to be borne in mind that
occasionally, when the interchange of blood between an aneurysm and the
artery from which it arises is small, pulsation and bruit may be slight
or even absent. This is also the case when the sac contains a
considerable quantity of clot. When it becomes filled with
clot--_consolidated aneurysm_--these signs disappear, and the clinical
features are those of a solid tumour lying in contact with an artery,
and transmitting its pulsation.

A comparison of the pulse in the artery beyond the seat of the aneurysm
with that in the corresponding artery on the healthy side, shows that on
the affected side the wave is smaller in volume, and delayed in time. A
pulse tracing shows that the normal impulse and dicrotic waves are lost,
and that the force and rapidity of the tidal wave are diminished.

[Illustration: FIG. 71.--Radiogram of Aneurysm of Aorta, showing
laminated clot and erosion of bodies of vertebr. The intervertebral
discs are intact.]

An aneurysm exerts pressure on the surrounding structures, which are
usually thickened and adherent to it and to one another. Adjacent veins
may be so compressed that congestion and dema of the parts beyond are
produced. Pain, disturbances of sensation, and muscular paralyses may
result from pressure on nerves. Such bones as the sternum and vertebr
undergo erosion and are absorbed by the gradually increasing pressure of
the aneurysm. Cartilage, on the other hand, being elastic, yields before
the pressure, so that the intervertebral discs or the costal cartilages
may escape while the adjacent bones are destroyed (Fig. 71). The skin
over the tumour becomes thinned and stretched, until finally a slough
forms, and when it separates hmorrhage takes place.

[Illustration: FIG. 72.--Sacculated Aneurysm of Abdominal Aorta nearly
filled with laminated clot. Note greater density of clot towards
periphery.]

In the progress of an aneurysm towards rupture, timely clotting may
avert death for the moment, but while extension in one direction has
been arrested there is apt to be extension in another, with imminence of
rupture, or it may be again postponed.

#Differential Diagnosis.#--The diagnosis is to be made from other
pulsatile swellings. Pulsation is sometimes transmitted from a large
artery to a tumour, a mass of enlarged lymph glands, or an inflammatory
swelling which lies in its vicinity, but the pulsation is not
expansile--a most important point in differential diagnosis. Such
swellings may, by appropriate manipulation, be moved from the artery and
the pulsation ceases, and compression of the artery on the cardiac side
of the swelling, although it arrests the pulsation, does not produce any
diminution in the size or tension of the swelling, and when the pressure
is removed the pulsation is restored immediately.

Fluid swellings overlying an artery, such as cysts, abscesses, or
enlarged burs, may closely simulate aneurysm. An apparent expansion may
accompany the pulsation, but careful examination usually enables this to
be distinguished from the true expansion of an aneurysm. Compression of
the artery makes no difference in the size or tension of the swelling.

Vascular tumours, such as sarcoma and goitre, may yield an expansile
pulsation and a soft, whifling bruit, but they differ from an aneurysm
in that they are not diminished in size by compression of the main
artery, nor can they be emptied by pressure.

The exaggerated pulsation sometimes observed in the abdominal aorta, the
"pulsating aorta" seen in women, should not be mistaken for aneurysm.

#Prognosis.#--When _natural cure_ occurs it is usually brought about by
the formation of laminated clot, which gradually increases in amount
till it fills the sac. Sometimes a portion of the clot in the sac is
separated and becomes impacted as an embolus in the artery beyond,
leading to thrombosis which first occludes the artery and then extends
into the sac.

The progress of natural cure is indicated by the aneurysm becoming
smaller, firmer, less expansile, and less compressible; the murmur and
thrill diminish and the pressure effects become less marked. When the
cure is complete the expansile pulsation is lost, and there remains a
firm swelling attached to the vessel (_consolidated aneurysm_). While
these changes are taking place the collateral arteries become enlarged,
and an anastomotic circulation is established.

An aneurysm may prove _fatal_ by exerting pressure on important
structures, by causing syncope, by rupture, or from the occurrence of
suppuration. _Pressure_ symptoms are usually most serious from aneurysms
situated in the neck, thorax, or skull. Sudden fatal _syncope_ is not
infrequent in cases of aneurysm of the thoracic aorta.

_Rupture_ may take place through the skin, on a mucous or serous
surface, or into the cellular tissue. The first hmorrhage is often
slight and stops naturally, but it soon recurs, and is so profuse,
especially when the blood escapes externally, that it rapidly proves
fatal. When the bleeding takes place into the cellular tissue, the
aneurysm is said to become _diffused_, and the extravasated blood
spreads widely through the tissues, exerting great pressure on the
surrounding structures.

The _clinical features_ associated with rupture are sudden and severe
pain in the part, and the patient becomes pale, cold, and faint. If a
comparatively small escape of blood takes place into the tissues, the
sudden alteration in the size, shape, and tension of the aneurysm,
together with loss of pulsation, may be the only local signs. When the
bleeding is profuse, however, the parts beyond the aneurysm become
greatly swollen, livid, and cold, and the pulse beyond is completely
lost. The arrest of the blood supply may result in gangrene. Sometimes
the pressure of the extravasated blood causes the skin to slough and,
later, give way, and fatal hmorrhage results.

The _treatment_ is carried out on the same lines as for a ruptured
artery (p. 261), it being remembered, however, that the artery is
diseased and does not lend itself to reconstructive procedures.

_Suppuration_ may occur in the vicinity of an aneurysm, and the aneurysm
may burst into the abscess which forms, so that when the latter points
the pus is mixed with broken-down blood-clot, and finally free
hmorrhage takes place. It has more than once happened that a surgeon
has incised such an abscess without having recognised its association
with aneurysm, with tragic results.

#Treatment.#--In treating an aneurysm, the indications are to imitate
Nature's method of cure by means of laminated clot.

_Constitutional treatment_ consists in taking measures to reduce the
arterial tension and to diminish the force of the heart's action. The
patient must be kept in bed. A dry and non-stimulating diet is
indicated, the quantity being gradually reduced till it is just
sufficient to maintain nutrition. Saline purges are employed to reduce
the vascular tension. The benefit derived from potassium iodide
administered in full doses, as first recommended by George W. Balfour,
probably depends on its depressing action on the heart and its
therapeutic benefit in syphilis. Pain or restlessness may call for the
use of opiates, of which heroin is the most efficient.

_Local Treatment._--When constitutional treatment fails, local measures
must be adopted, and many methods are available.

#Endo-aneurysmorrhaphy.#--The operation devised by Rudolf Matas in 1888
aims at closing the opening between the sac and its feeding artery, and
in addition, folding the wall of the sac in such a way as to leave no
vacant space. If there is marked disease of the vessel, Matas' operation
is not possible and recourse is then had to ligation of the artery just
above the sac.

_Extirpation of the Sac--The Old Operation._--The procedure which goes
by this name consists in exposing the aneurysm, incising the sac,
clearing out the clots, and ligating the artery above and below the sac.
This method is suitable to sacculated aneurysm of the limbs, so long as
they are circumscribed and free from complications. It has been
successfully practised also in aneurysm of the subclavian, carotid, and
external iliac arteries. It is not applicable to cases in which there is
such a degree of atheroma as would interfere with the successful
ligation of the artery. The continuity of the artery may be restored by
grafting into the gap left after excision of the sac a segment of the
great saphena vein.

_Ligation of the Artery._--The object of tying the artery is to diminish
or to arrest the flow of blood through the aneurysm so that the blood
coagulates both in the sac and in the feeding artery. The ligature may
be applied on the cardiac side of the aneurysm--proximal ligation, or to
the artery beyond--distal ligation.

_Proximal Ligation._--The ligature may be applied immediately above the
sac (Anel, 1710) or at a distance above (John Hunter, 1785). The
_Hunterian operation_ ensures that the ligature is applied to a part of
the artery that is presumably healthy and where relations are
undisturbed by the proximity of the sac; the best example is the
ligation of the superficial femoral artery in Scarpa's triangle or in
Hunter's canal for popliteal aneurysm; it is on record that Syme
performed this operation with cure of the aneurysm on thirty-nine
occasions.

It is to be noted that the Hunterian ligature does not aim at
_arresting_ the flow of blood through the sac, but is designed so to
diminish its volume and force as to favour the deposition within the sac
of laminated clot. The development of the collateral circulation which
follows upon ligation of the artery at a distance above the sac may be
attended with just that amount of return stream which favours the
deposit of laminated clot, and consequently the cure of the aneurysm;
the return stream may, however, be so forcible as to prevent coagulation
of the blood in the sac, or only to allow of the formation of a red
thrombus which may in its turn be dispersed so that pulsation in the sac
recurs. This does not necessarily imply failure to cure, as the
recurrent pulsation may only be temporary; the formation of laminated
clot may ultimately take place and lead to consolidation of the
aneurysm.

The least desirable result of the Hunterian ligature is met with in
cases where, owing to widespread arterial disease, the collateral
circulation does not develop and gangrene of the limb supervenes.

_Anel's ligature_ is only practised as part of the operation which deals
with the sac directly.

_Distal Ligation._--The tying of the artery beyond the sac, or of its
two branches where it bifurcates (Brasdor, 1760, and Wardrop, 1825), may
arrest or only diminish the flow of blood through the sac. It is less
successful than the proximal ligature, and is therefore restricted to
aneurysms so situated as not to be amenable to other methods; for
example, in aneurysm of the common carotid near its origin, the artery
may be ligated near its bifurcation, or in aneurysm of the innominate
artery, the carotid and subclavian arteries are tied at the seat of
election.

_Compression._--Digital compression of the feeding artery has been given
up except as a preparation for operations on the sac with a view to
favouring the development of a collateral circulation.

_Macewen's acupuncture or "needling"_ consists in passing one or more
fine, highly tempered steel needles through the tissues overlying the
aneurysm, and through its outer wall. The needles are made to touch the
opposite wall of the sac, and the pulsation of the aneurysm imparts a
movement to them which causes them to scarify the inner surface of the
sac. White thrombus forms on the rough surface produced, and leads to
further coagulation. The needles may be left in position for some hours,
being shifted from time to time, the projecting ends being surrounded
with sterile gauze.

The _Moore-Corradi method_ consists in introducing through the wall of
the aneurysm a hollow insulated needle, through the lumen of which from
10 to 20 feet of highly drawn silver or other wire is passed into the
sac, where it coils up into an open meshwork (Fig. 73). The positive
pole of a galvanic battery is attached to the wire, and the negative
pole placed over the patient's back. A current, varying in strength from
20 to 70 milliampres, is allowed to flow for about an hour. The hollow
needle is then withdrawn, but the wire is left _in situ_. The results
are somewhat similar to those obtained by needling, but the clot formed
on the large coil of wire is more extensive.

[Illustration: FIG. 73.--Radiogram of Innominate Aneurysm after
treatment by the Moore-Corradi method. Two feet of finely drawn silver
wire were introduced. The patient, a woman, t. 47, lived for ten months
after operation, free from pain (cf. Fig. 75).]

Colt's method of wiring has been mainly used in the treatment of
abdominal aneurysm; gilt wire in the form of a wisp is introduced
through the cannula and expands into an umbrella shape.

_Subcutaneous Injections of Gelatin._--Three or four ounces of a 2 per
cent. solution of white gelatin in sterilised water, at a temperature of
about 100 F., are injected into the subcutaneous tissue of the abdomen
every two, three, or four days. In the course of a fortnight or three
weeks improvement may begin. The clot which forms is liable to soften
and be absorbed, but a repetition of the injection has in several cases
established a permanent cure.

_Amputation of the limb_ is indicated in cases complicated by
suppuration, by secondary hmorrhage after excision or ligation, or by
gangrene. Amputation at the shoulder was performed by Fergusson in a
case of subclavian aneurysm, as a means of arresting the blood-flow
through the sac.


TRAUMATIC ANEURYSM

The essential feature of a traumatic aneurysm is that it is produced by
some form of injury which divides all the coats of the artery. The walls
of the injured vessel are presumably healthy, but they form no part of
the sac of the aneurysm. The sac consists of the condensed and thickened
tissues around the artery.

The injury to the artery may be a subcutaneous one such as a tear by a
fragment of bone: much more commonly it is a punctured wound from a stab
or from a bullet.

The aneurysm usually forms soon after the injury is inflicted; the blood
slowly escapes into the surrounding tissues, gradually displacing and
condensing them, until they form a sac enclosing the effused blood.

Less frequently a traumatic aneurysm forms some considerable time after
the injury, from gradual stretching of the fibrous cicatrix by which the
wound in the wall of the artery has been closed. The gradual stretching
of this cicatrix results in condensation of the surrounding structures
which form the sac, on the inner aspect of which laminated clot is
deposited.

A traumatic aneurysm is almost always sacculated, and, so long as it
remains circumscribed, has the same characters as a pathological
sacculated aneurysm, with the addition that there is a scar in the
overlying skin. A traumatic aneurysm is liable to become diffuse--a
change which, although attended with considerable risk of gangrene, has
sometimes been the means of bringing about a cure.

The treatment is governed by the same principles as apply to the
pathological varieties, but as the walls of the artery are not diseased,
operative measures dealing with the sac and the adjacent segment of the
affected artery are to be preferred.


ARTERIO-VENOUS ANEURYSM

An abnormal communication between an artery and a vein constitutes an
arterio-venous aneurysm. Two varieties are recognised--one in which the
communication is direct--_aneurysmal varix_; the other in which the
vein communicates with the artery through the medium of a sac--_varicose
aneurysm_.

Either variety may result from pathological causes, but in the majority
of cases they are traumatic in origin, being due to such injuries as
stabs, punctured wounds, and gun-shot injuries which involve both artery
and vein. In former times the most common situation was at the bend of
the elbow, the brachial artery being accidentally punctured in
blood-letting from the median basilic vein. Arterio-venous aneurysm is a
frequent result of injuries by modern high-velocity bullets--for
example, in the neck or groin.

In _aneurysmal varix_ the higher blood pressure in the artery forces
arterial blood into the vein, which near the point of communication with
the artery tends to become dilated, and to form a thick-walled sac,
beyond which the vessel and its tributaries are distended and tortuous.
The clinical features resemble those associated with varicose veins, but
the entrance of arterial blood into the dilated veins causes them to
pulsate, and produces in them a vibratory thrill and a loud murmur. In
those at the groin, the distension of the veins may be so great that
they look like sinuses running through the muscles, a feature that must
be taken into account in any operation.

As the condition tends to remain stationary, the support of an elastic
bandage is all that is required; but when the condition progresses and
causes serious inconvenience, it may be necessary to cut down and expose
the communication between the artery and vein, and, after separating the
vessels, to close the opening in each by suture; this may be difficult
or impossible if the parts are matted from former suppuration. If it is
impossible thus to obliterate the communication, the artery should be
ligated above and below the point of communication; although the risk of
gangrene is considerable unless means are taken to develop the
collateral circulation beforehand (Makins).

_Varicose aneurysm_ usually develops in relation to a traumatic
aneurysm, the sac becoming adherent to an adjacent vein, and ultimately
opening into it. In this way a communication between the artery and the
vein is established, and the clinical features are those of a
combination of aneurysm and aneurysmal varix.

As there is little tendency to spontaneous cure, and as the aneurysm is
liable to increase in size and finally to rupture, operative treatment
is usually called for. This is carried out on the same lines as for
aneurysmal varix, and at the same time incising the sac, turning out the
clots, and ligating any branches which open into the sac. If it can be
avoided, the vein should not be ligated.


ANEURYSMS OF INDIVIDUAL ARTERIES

#Thoracic Aneurysm.#--All varieties of aneurysm occur in the aorta, the
fusiform being the most common, although a sacculated aneurysm
frequently springs from a fusiform dilatation.

The _clinical features_ depend chiefly on the direction in which the
aneurysm enlarges, and are not always well marked even when the sac is
of considerable size. They consist in a pulsatile swelling--sometimes in
the supra-sternal notch, but usually towards the right side of the
sternum--with an increased area of dulness on percussion. With the
X-rays a dark shadow is seen corresponding to the sac. Pain is usually a
prominent symptom, and is largely referable to the pressure of the
aneurysm on the vertebr or the sternum, causing erosion of these bones.
Pressure on the thoracic veins and on the air-passage causes cyanosis
and dyspna. When the sophagus is pressed upon, the patient may have
difficulty in swallowing. The left recurrent nerve may be stretched or
pressed upon as it hooks round the arch of the aorta, and hoarseness of
the voice and a characteristic "brassy" cough may result from paralysis
of the muscles of the larynx which it supplies. The vagus, the phrenic,
and the spinal nerves may also be pressed upon. When the aneurysm is on
the transverse part of the arch, the trachea is pulled down with each
beat of the heart--a clinical phenomena known as the "tracheal tug."
Aneurysm of the descending aorta may, after eroding the bodies of the
vertebr (Fig. 71) and posterior portions of the ribs, form a swelling
in the back to the left of the spine.

Inasmuch as obliteration of the sac and the feeding artery is out of the
question, surgical treatment is confined to causing coagulation of the
blood in an extension or pouching of the sac, which, making its way
through the parietes of the chest, threatens to rupture externally. This
may be achieved by Macewen's needles or by the introduction of wire into
the sac. We have had cases under observation in which the treatment
referred to has been followed by such an amount of improvement that the
patient has been able to resume a laborious occupation for one or more
years. Christopher Heath found that improvement followed ligation of the
left common carotid in aneurysm of the transverse part of the aortic
arch.

[Illustration: FIG. 74.--Thoracic Aneurysm, threatening to rupture
externally, but prevented from doing so by Macewen's needling. The
needles were left in for forty-eight hours.]

#Abdominal Aneurysm.#--Aneurysm is much less frequent in the abdominal
than in the thoracic aorta. While any of the large branches in the
abdomen may be affected, the most common seats are in the aorta itself,
just above the origin of the cliac artery and at the bifurcation.

The _clinical features_ vary with the site of the aneurysm and with its
rapidity and direction of growth. A smooth, rounded swelling, which
exhibits expansile pulsation, forms, usually towards the left of the
middle line. It may extend upwards under cover of the ribs, downwards
towards the pelvis, or backward towards the loin. On palpation a
systolic thrill may be detected, but the presence of a murmur is neither
constant nor characteristic. Pain is usually present; it may be
neuralgic in character, or may simulate renal colic. When the aneurysm
presses on the vertebr and erodes them, the symptoms simulate those of
spinal caries, particularly if, as sometimes happens, symptoms of
compression paraplegia ensue. In its growth the swelling may press upon
and displace the adjacent viscera, and so interfere with their
functions.

The _diagnosis_ has to be made from solid or cystic tumours overlying
the artery; from a "pulsating aorta"; and from spinal caries; much help
is obtained by the use of the X-rays.

The condition usually proves fatal, either by the aneurysm bursting into
the peritoneal cavity, or by slow leakage into the retro-peritoneal
tissue.

The Moore-Corradi method has been successfully employed, access to the
sac having been obtained by opening the abdomen. Ligation of the aorta
has so far been unsuccessful, but in one case operated upon by Keen the
patient survived forty-eight days.

#Innominate aneurysm# may be of the fusiform or of the sacculated
variety, and is frequently associated with pouching of the aorta. It
usually grows upwards and laterally, projecting above the sternum and
right clavicle, which may be eroded or displaced (Fig. 75). Symptoms of
pressure on the structures in the neck, similar to those produced by
aortic aneurysm, occur. The pulses in the right upper extremity and in
the right carotid and its branches are diminished and delayed. Pressure
on the right brachial plexus causes shooting pain down the arm and
muscular paresis on that side. Vaso-motor disturbances and contraction
of the pupil on the right side may result from pressure on the
sympathetic. Death may take place from rupture, or from pressure on the
air-passage.

[Illustration: FIG. 75.--Innominate Aneurysm in a woman, t. 47, eight
months after treatment by Moore-Corradi method (cf. Fig. 73).]

The available methods of treatment are ligation of the right common
carotid and third part of the right subclavian (Wardrop's operation), of
which a number of successful cases have been recorded. Those most
suitable for ligation are cases in which the aneurysm is circumscribed
and globular (Sheen). If ligation is found to be impracticable, the
Moore-Corradi method or Macewen's needling may be tried.

#Carotid Aneurysms.#--Aneurysm of the _common carotid_ is more frequent
on the right than on the left side, and is usually situated either at
the root of the neck or near the bifurcation. It is the aneurysm most
frequently met with in women. From its position the swelling is liable
to press on the vagus, recurrent and sympathetic nerves, on the
air-passage, and on the sophagus, giving rise to symptoms referable to
such pressure. There may be cerebral symptoms from interference with the
blood supply of the brain.

Aneurysm near the origin has to be diagnosed from subclavian,
innominate, and aortic aneurysm, and from other swellings--solid or
fluid--met with in the neck. It is often difficult to determine with
precision the trunk from which an aneurysm at the root of the neck
originates, and not infrequently more than one vessel shares in the
dilatation. A careful consideration of the position in which the
swelling first appeared, of the direction in which it has progressed, of
its pressure effects, and of the condition of the pulses beyond, may
help in distinguishing between aortic, innominate, carotid, and
subclavian aneurysms. Skiagraphy is also of assistance in recognising
the vessel involved.

Tumours of the thyreoid, enlarged lymph glands, and fatty and
sarcomatous tumours can usually be distinguished from aneurysm by the
history of the swelling and by physical examination. Cystic tumours and
abscesses in the neck are sometimes more difficult to differentiate on
account of the apparently expansile character of the pulsation
transmitted to them. The fact that compression of the vessel does not
affect the size and tension of these fluid swellings is useful in
distinguishing them from aneurysm.

_Treatment._--Digital compression of the vessel against the transverse
process of the sixth cervical vertebra--the "carotid tubercle"--has been
successfully employed in the treatment of aneurysm near the bifurcation.
Proximal ligation in the case of high aneurysms, or distal ligation in
those situated at the root of the neck, is more certain. Extirpation of
the sac is probably the best method of treatment, especially in those of
traumatic origin. These operations are attended with considerable risk
of hemiplegia from interference with the blood supply of the brain.

The _external carotid_ and the cervical portion of the _internal
carotid_ are seldom the primary seat of aneurysm, although they are
liable to be implicated by the upward spread of an aneurysm at the
bifurcation of the common trunk. In addition to the ordinary signs of
aneurysm, the clinical manifestations are chiefly referable to pressure
on the pharynx and larynx, and on the hypoglossal nerve. Aneurysm of the
internal carotid is of special importance on account of the way in which
it bulges into the pharynx in the region of the tonsil, in some cases
closely simulating a tonsillar abscess. Cases are on record in which
such an aneurysm has been mistaken for an abscess and incised, with
disastrous results.

_Aneurysmal varix_ may occur in the neck as a result of stabs or bullet
wounds. The communication is usually between the common carotid artery
and the internal jugular vein. The resulting interference with the
cerebral circulation causes headache, giddiness, and other brain
symptoms, and a persistent loud murmur is usually a source of annoyance
to the patient and may be sufficient indication for operative treatment.

#Intracranial aneurysm# involves the internal carotid and its branches,
or the basilar artery, and appears to be more frequently associated with
syphilis and with valvular disease of the heart than are external
aneurysms. It gives rise to symptoms similar to those of other
intracranial tumours, and there is sometimes a loud murmur. It usually
proves fatal by rupture, and intracranial hmorrhage. The treatment is
to ligate the common carotid or the vertebral artery in the neck,
according to the seat of the aneurysm.

#Orbital Aneurysm.#--The term pulsating exophthalmos is employed to
embrace a number of pathological conditions, including aneurysm, in
which the chief symptoms are pulsation in the orbit and protrusion of
the eyeball. There may be, in addition, congestion and dema of the
eyelids, and a distinct thrill and murmur, which can be controlled by
compression of the common carotid in the neck. Varying degrees of ocular
paralysis and of interference with vision may also be present.

These symptoms are due, in the majority of cases, to an aneurysmal varix
of the internal carotid artery and cavernous sinus, which is often
traumatic in origin, being produced either by fracture of the base of
the skull or by a punctured wound of the orbit. In other cases they are
due to aneurysm of the ophthalmic artery, to thrombosis of the cavernous
sinus, and, in rare instances, to cirsoid aneurysm.

If compression of the common carotid is found to arrest the pulsation,
ligation of this vessel is indicated.

#Subclavian Aneurysm.#--Subclavian aneurysm is usually met with in men
who follow occupations involving constant use of the shoulder--for
example, dock-porters and coal-heavers. It is more common on the right
side.

The aneurysm usually springs from the third part of the artery, and
appears as a tense, rounded, pulsatile swelling just above the clavicle
and to the outer side of the sterno-mastoid muscle. It occasionally
extends towards the thorax, where it may become adherent to the pleura.
The radial pulse on the same side is small and delayed. Congestion and
dema of the arm, with pain, numbness, and muscular weakness, may result
from pressure on the veins and nerves as they pass under the clavicle;
and pressure on the phrenic nerve may induce hiccough. The aneurysm is
of slow growth, and occasionally undergoes spontaneous cure.

The conditions most likely to be mistaken for it are a soft, rapidly
growing sarcoma, and a normal artery raised on a cervical rib.

On account of the relations of the artery and of its branches, treatment
is attended with greater difficulty and danger in subclavian than in
almost any other form of external aneurysm. The available operative
measures are proximal ligation of the innominate, and distal ligation.
In some cases it has been found necessary to combine distal ligation
with amputation at the shoulder-joint, to prevent the collateral
circulation maintaining the flow through the aneurysm. Matas' operation
has been successfully performed by Hogarth Pringle.

#Axillary Aneurysm.#--This is usually met with in the right arm of
labouring men and sailors, and not infrequently follows an injury in the
region of the shoulder. The vessel may be damaged by the head of a
dislocated humerus or in attempts to reduce the dislocation, by the
fragments of a fractured bone, or by a stab or cut. Sometimes the vein
also is injured and an arterio-venous aneurysm established.

Owing to the laxity of the tissues, it increases rapidly, and it may
soon attain a large size, filling up the axilla, and displacing the
clavicle upwards. This renders compression of the third part of the
subclavian difficult or impossible. It may extend beneath the clavicle
into the neck, or, extending inwards may form adhesions to the chest
wall, and, after eroding the ribs, to the pleura.

The usual symptoms of aneurysm are present, and the pressure effects on
the veins and nerves are similar to those produced by an aneurysm of the
subclavian. Intra-thoracic complications, such as pleurisy or pneumonia,
are not infrequent when there are adhesions to the chest wall and
pleura. Rupture may take place externally, into the shoulder-joint, or
into the pleura.

Extirpation of the sac is the operation of choice, but, if this is
impracticable, ligation of the third part of the subclavian may be had
recourse to.

#Brachial aneurysm# usually occurs at the bend of the elbow, is of
traumatic origin, and is best treated by excision of the sac.

_Aneurysmal varix_, which was frequently met with in this situation in
the days of the barber-surgeons,--usually as a result of the artery
having been accidentally wounded while performing venesection of the
median basilic vein,--may be treated, according to the amount of
discomfort it causes, by a supporting bandage, or by ligation of the
artery above and below the point of communication.

Aneurysms of the vessels of the #forearm and hand# call for no special
mention; they are almost invariably traumatic, and are treated by
excision of the sac.

#Inguinal Aneurysm# (_Aneurysm of the Iliac and Femoral
Arteries_).--Aneurysms appearing in the region of Poupart's ligament may
have their origin in the external or common iliac arteries or in the
upper part of the femoral. On account of the tension of the fascia lata,
they tend to spread upwards towards the abdomen, and, to a less extent,
downwards into the thigh. Sometimes a constriction occurs across the
sac at the level of Poupart's ligament.

The pressure exerted on the nerves and veins of the lower extremity
causes pain, congestion, and dema of the limb. Rupture may take place
externally, or into the cellular tissue of the iliac fossa.

These aneurysms have to be diagnosed from pulsating sarcoma growing from
the pelvic bones, and from an abscess or a mass of enlarged lymph glands
overlying the artery and transmitting its pulsation.

The method of treatment that has met with most success is ligation of
the common or external iliac, reached either by reflecting the
peritoneum from off the iliac fossa (extra-peritoneal operation), or by
going through the peritoneal cavity (trans-peritoneal operation).

#Gluteal Aneurysm.#--An aneurysm in the buttock may arise from the
superior or from the inferior gluteal artery, but by the time it forms a
salient swelling it is seldom possible to recognise by external
examination in which vessel it takes origin. The special symptoms to
which it gives rise are pain down the limb from pressure on the sciatic
nerve, and interference with the movements at the hip.

Ligation of the hypogastric (internal iliac) by the trans-peritoneal
route is the most satisfactory method of treatment. Extirpation of the
sac is difficult and dangerous, especially when the aneurysm has spread
into the pelvis.

#Femoral Aneurysm.#--Aneurysm of the femoral artery beyond the origin of
the profunda branch is usually traumatic in origin, and is more common
in Scarpa's triangle than in Hunter's canal. Any of the methods already
described is available for their treatment--the choice lying between
Matas' operation and ligation of the external iliac.

Aneurysm of the _profunda femoris_ is distinguished from that of the
main trunk by the fact that the pulses beyond are, in the former,
unaffected, and by the normal artery being felt pulsating over or
alongside the sac.

In _aneurysmal varix_, a not infrequent result of a bullet wound or a
stab, the communication with the vein may involve the main trunk of the
femoral artery. Should operative interference become necessary as a
result of progressive increase in size of the tumour, or progressive
distension of the veins of the limb, an attempt should be made to
separate the vessels concerned and to close the opening in each by
suture. If this is impracticable, the artery is tied above and below the
communication; gangrene of the limb may supervene, and we have observed
a case in which the gangrene extended up to the junction of the middle
and lower thirds of the thigh, and in which recovery followed upon
amputation of the thigh.

#Popliteal Aneurysm.#--This is the most common surgical aneurysm, and is
not infrequently met with in both limbs. It is generally due to disease
of the artery, and repeated slight strains, which are so liable to occur
at the knee, play an important part in its formation. In former times it
was common in post-boys, from the repeated flexion and extension of the
knee in riding.

The aneurysm is usually of the sacculated variety, and may spring from
the front or from the back of the vessel. It may exert pressure on the
bones and ligaments of the joint, and it has been known to rupture into
the articulation. The pain, stiffness, and effusion into the joint which
accompany these changes often lead to an erroneous diagnosis of joint
disease. The sac may press upon the popliteal artery or vein and their
branches, causing congestion and dema of the leg, and lead to gangrene.
Pressure on the tibial and common peroneal nerves gives rise to severe
pain, muscular cramp, and weakness of the leg.

The differential diagnosis is to be made from abscess, bursal cyst,
enlarged glands, and sarcoma, especially pulsating sarcoma of one of the
bones entering into the knee joint.

The choice of operation lies between ligation of the femoral artery in
Hunter's canal, and Matas' operation of aneurysmo-arteriorrhaphy. The
success which attends the Hunterian operation is evidenced by the fact
that Syme performed it thirty-seven times without a single failure. If
it fails, the old operation should be considered, but it is a more
serious operation, and one which is more liable to be followed by
gangrene of the limb. Experience shows that ligation of the vein, or
even the removal of a portion of it, is not necessarily followed by
gangrene. The risk of gangrene is diminished by a course of digital
compression of the femoral artery, before operating on the aneurysm.

_Aneurysmal varix_ is sometimes met with in the region of the popliteal
space. It is characterised by the usual symptoms, and is treated by
palliative measures, or by ligation of the artery above and below the
point of communication.

_Aneurysm_ in the #leg and foot# is rare. It is almost always traumatic,
and is treated by excision of the sac.




CHAPTER XV

THE LYMPH VESSELS AND GLANDS


Anatomy and Physiology--INJURIES OF LYMPH VESSELS--_Wounds of
    thoracic duct_--DISEASES OF LYMPH VESSELS--Lymphangitis:
    _Varieties_--Lymphangiectasis--Filarial
    disease--Lymphangioma--DISEASES OF LYMPH
    GLANDS--Lymphadenitis: _Septic_; _Tuberculous_;
    _Syphilitic_--Lymphadenoma--Leucocythmia--TUMOURS.

#Surgical Anatomy and Physiology.#--Lymph is essentially blood plasma,
which has passed through the walls of capillaries. After bathing
and nourishing the tissues, it is collected by lymph vessels, which
return it to the blood stream by way of the thoracic duct. These lymph
vessels take origin in the lymph spaces of the tissues and in the
walls of serous cavities, and they usually run alongside blood
vessels--_perivascular lymph vessels_. They have a structure similar to
that of veins, but are more abundantly provided with valves. Along the
course of the lymph trunks are the _lymph glands_, which possess a
definite capsule and are composed of a reticulated connective tissue,
the spaces of which are packed with leucocytes. The glands act as
filters, arresting not only inert substances, such as blood pigment
circulating in the lymph, but also living elements, such as cancer cells
or bacteria. As it passes through a gland the lymph is brought into
intimate contact with the leucocytes, and in bacterial infections there
is always a struggle between the organisms and the leucocytes, so that
the glands may be looked upon as an important line of defence, retarding
or preventing the passage of bacteria and their products into the
general circulation. The infective agent, moreover, in order to reach
the blood stream, must usually overcome the resistance of several
glands.

Lymph glands are, for the most part, arranged in groups or chains, such
as those in the axilla, neck, and groin. In any given situation they
vary in number and size in different individuals, and fresh glands may
be formed on comparatively slight stimulus, and disappear when the
stimulus is withdrawn. The best-known example of this is the increase in
the number of glands in the axilla which takes place during lactation;
when this function ceases, many of the glands become involuted and are
transformed into fat, and in the event of a subsequent lactation they
are again developed. After glands have been removed by operation, new
ones may be formed.

The following are the more important groups of glands, and the areas
drained by them in the head and neck and in the extremities.

#Head and Neck.#--_The anterior auricular (parotid and pre-auricular)
glands_ lie beneath the parotid fascia in front of the ear, and some
are partly embedded in the substance of the parotid gland; they drain
the parts about the temple, cheek, eyelids, and auricle, and are
frequently the seat of tuberculous disease. _The occipital gland_,
situated over the origin of the trapezius from the superior curved line,
drains the top and back of the head; it is rarely infected. _The
posterior auricular (mastoid) glands_ lie over the mastoid process, and
drain the side of the head and auricle. These three groups pour their
lymph into the superficial cervical glands. _The submaxillary_--two to
six in number--lie along the lower order of the mandible from the
symphysis to the angle, the posterior ones (paramandibular) being
closely connected with the submaxillary salivary gland. They receive
lymph from the face, lips, floor of the mouth, gums, teeth, anterior
part of tongue, and the al nasi, and from the pre-auricular glands. The
lymph passes from them into the deeper cervical glands. They are
frequently infected with tubercle, with epithelioma which has spread to
them from the mouth, and also with pyogenic organisms. _The submental
glands_ lie in or close to the median line between the anterior bellies
of the digastric muscles, and receive lymph from the lips. It is rare
for them to be the seat of tubercle, but in epithelioma of the lower lip
and floor of the mouth they are infected at an early stage of the
disease. _The supra-hyoid gland_ lies a little farther back, immediately
above the hyoid bone, and receives lymph from the tongue. _The
superficial cervical (external jugular) glands_, when present, lie along
the external jugular vein, and receives lymph from the occipital and
auricular glands and from the auricle. _The sterno-mastoid
glands_--glandul concatinat--form a chain along the posterior edge of
the sterno-mastoid muscle, some of them lying beneath the muscle. They
are commonly enlarged in secondary syphilis. _The superior deep cervical
(internal jugular) glands_--from six to twenty in number--form a
continuous chain along the internal jugular vein, beneath the
sterno-mastoid muscle. They drain the various groups of glands which lie
nearer the surface, also the interior of the skull, the larynx, trachea,
thyreoid, and lower part of the pharynx, and pour their lymph into the
main trunks at the root of the neck. Belonging to this group is one
large gland (the tonsillar gland) which lies behind the posterior belly
of the digastric, and rests in the angle between the internal jugular
and common facial veins. It is commonly enlarged in affections of the
tonsil and posterior part of the tongue. In the same group are three or
four glands which lie entirely under cover of the upper end of the
sterno-mastoid muscle, and surround the accessory nerve before it
perforates the muscle. The deep cervical glands are commonly infected by
tubercle and also by epithelioma secondary to disease in the tongue or
throat. _The inferior deep cervical (supra-clavicular) glands_ lie in
the posterior triangle, above the clavicle. They receive lymph from the
lowest cervical glands, from the upper part of the chest wall, and from
the highest axillary glands. They are frequently infected in cancer of
the breast; those on the left side also in cancer of the stomach. The
removal of diseased supra-clavicular glands is not to be lightly
undertaken, as difficulties are liable to ensue in connection with the
thoracic duct, the pleura, or the junction of the subclavian and
internal jugular veins. _The retro-pharyngeal glands_ lie on each side
of the median line upon the rectus capitis anticus major muscle and in
front of the pre-vertebral layer of the cervical fascia. They receive
part of the lymph from the posterior wall of the pharynx, the interior
of the nose and its accessory cavities, the auditory (Eustachian) tube,
and the tympanum. When they are infected with pyogenic organisms or
with tubercle bacilli, they may lead to the formation of one form of
retro-pharyngeal abscess.

#Upper Extremity.#--_The epi-trochlear and cubital glands_ vary in
number, that most commonly present lying about an inch and a half above
the medial epi-condyle, and other and smaller glands may lie along the
medial (internal) bicipital groove or at the bend of the elbow. They
drain the ulnar side of the hand and forearm, and pour their lymph into
the axillary group. The epi-trochlear gland is sometimes enlarged in
syphilis. _The axillary glands_ are arranged in groups: a central group
lies embedded in the axillary fascia and fat, and is often related to an
opening in it; a posterior or subscapular group lies along the line of
the subscapular vessels; anterior or pectoral groups lie behind the
pectoralis minor, along the medial side of the axillary vein, and an
inter-pectoral group, between the two pectoral muscles. The axillary
glands receive lymph from the arm, mamma, and side of the chest, and
pass it on into the lowest cervical glands and the main lymph trunk.
They are frequently the seat of pyogenic, tuberculous, and cancerous
infection, and their complete removal is an essential part of the
operation for cancer of the breast.

#Lower Extremity.#--_The popliteal glands_ include one superficial gland
at the termination of the small saphenous vein, and several deeper ones
in relation to the popliteal vessels. They receive lymph from the toes
and foot, and transmit it to the inguinal glands. _The femoral glands_
lie vertically along the upper part of the great saphenous vein, and
receive lymph from the leg and foot; from them the lymph passes to the
deep inguinal and external iliac glands. The femoral glands often
participate in pyogenic infections entering through the skin of the toes
and sole of the foot. _The superficial inguinal glands_ lie along the
inguinal (Poupart's) ligament, and receive lymph from the external
genitals, anus, perineum, buttock, and anterior abdominal wall. The
lymph passes on to the deep inguinal and external iliac glands. The
superficial glands through their relations to the genitals are
frequently the subject of venereal infection, and also of epithelioma
when this disease affects the genitals or anus; they are rarely the seat
of tuberculosis. _The deep inguinal glands_ lie on the medial side of
the femoral vein, and sometimes within the femoral canal. They receive
lymph from the deep lymphatics of the lower limb, and some of the
efferent vessels from the femoral and superficial inguinal glands. The
lymph then passes on through the femoral canal to the external iliac
glands. The extension of malignant disease, whether cancer or sarcoma,
can often be traced along these deeper lymphatics into the pelvis, and
as the obstruction to the flow of lymph increases there is a
corresponding increase in the swollen dropsical condition of the lower
limb on the same side.

The glands of the _thorax_ and _abdomen_ will be considered with the
surgery of these regions.


INJURIES OF LYMPH VESSELS

Lymph vessels are divided in all wounds, and the lymph that escapes from
them is added to any discharge that may be present. In injuries of
larger trunks the lymph may escape in considerable quantity as a
colourless, watery fluid--_lymphorrhagia_; and the opening through which
it escapes is known as a _lymphatic fistula_. This has been observed
chiefly after extensive operation for the removal of malignant glands in
the groin where there already exists a considerable degree of
obstruction to the lymph stream, and in such cases the lymph, including
that which has accumulated in the vessels of the limb, may escape in
such abundance as to soak through large dressings and delay healing.
Ultimately new lymph channels are formed, so that at the end of from
four to six weeks the discharge of lymph ceases and the wound heals.

_Lymphatic dema._--When the lymphatic return from a limb has been
seriously interfered with,--as, for example, when the axillary contents
has been completely cleared out in operating for cancer of the
breast,--a condition of lymphatic dema may result, the arm becoming
swollen, tight, and heavy.

Various degrees of the conditions are met with; in the severe forms,
there is pain, as well as incapacity of the limb. As in ordinary dema,
the condition is relieved by elevation of the limb, but not nearly to
the same degree; in time the tissues become so hard and tense as
scarcely to pit on pressure; this is in part due to the formation of new
connective tissue and hypertrophy of the skin; in advanced cases there
is a gradual transition into one form of elephantiasis.

Handley has devised a method of treatment--_lymphangioplasty_--the
object of which is to drain the lymph by embedding a number of silk
threads in the subcutaneous cellular tissue.

#Wounds of the Thoracic Duct.#--The thoracic duct usually opens at the
angle formed by the junction of the left internal jugular and subclavian
veins, but it may open into either of these vessels by one or by several
channels, or the duct may be double throughout its course. There is a
smaller duct on the right side--the right lymphatic duct. The duct or
ducts may be displaced by a tumour or a mass of enlarged glands, and may
be accidentally wounded in dissections at the root of the neck; jets of
milky fluid--chyle--may at once escape from it. The jets are rhythmical
and coincide with expiration. The injury may, however, not be observed
at the time of operation, but later through the dressings being soaked
with chyle--_chylorrha_. If the wound involves the only existing main
duct and all the chyle escapes, the patient suffers from intense thirst,
emaciation, and weakness, and may die of inanition; but if, as is
usually the case, only one of several collateral channels is implicated,
the loss of chyle may be of little moment, as the discharge usually
ceases. If the wound heals so that the chyle is prevented from escaping,
a fluctuating swelling may form beneath the scar; in course of time it
gradually disappears.

An attempt should be made to close the wound in the duct by means of a
fine suture; failing this, the duct must be occluded by a ligature as if
it were a bleeding artery. The tissues are then stitched over it and the
skin wound accurately closed, so as to obtain primary union, firm
pressure being applied by dressings and an elastic webbing bandage. Even
if the main duct is obliterated, a collateral circulation is usually
established. A wound of the right lymphatic duct is of less importance.

_Subcutaneous rupture of the thoracic duct_ may result from a crush of
the thorax. The chyle escapes and accumulates in the cellular tissue of
the posterior mediastinum, behind the peritoneum, in the pleural cavity
(_chylo-thorax_), or in the peritoneal cavity (_chylous ascites_). There
are physical signs of fluid in one or other of these situations, but, as
a rule, the nature of the lesion is only recognised when chyle is
withdrawn by the exploring needle.


DISEASES OF LYMPH VESSELS

#Lymphangitis.#--Inflammation of peripheral lymph vessels usually
results from some primary source of pyogenic infection in the skin. This
may be a wound or a purulent blister, and the streptococcus pyogenes is
the organism most frequently present. _Septic_ lymphangitis is commonly
met with in those who, from the nature of their occupation, handle
infective material. A _gonococcal_ form has been observed in those
suffering from gonorrha.

The inflammation affects chiefly the walls of the vessels, and is
attended with clotting of the lymph. There is also some degree of
inflammation of the surrounding cellular tissue--_peri-lymphangitis_.
One or more abscesses may form along the course of the vessels, or a
spreading cellulitis may supervene.

The _clinical features_ resemble those of other pyogenic infections, and
there are wavy red lines running from the source of infection towards
the nearest lymph glands. These correspond to the inflamed vessels, and
are the seat of burning pain and tenderness. The associated glands are
enlarged and painful. In severe cases the symptoms merge into those of
septicmia. When the deep lymph vessels alone are involved, the
superficial red lines are absent, but the limb becomes greatly swollen
and pits on pressure.

In cases of extensive lymphangitis, especially when there are repeated
attacks, the vessels are obliterated by the formation of new connective
tissue and a persistent solid dema results, culminating in one form of
elephantiasis.

_Treatment._--The primary source of infection is dealt with on the usual
lines. If the lymphangitis affects an extremity, Bier's elastic bandage
is applied, and if suppuration occurs, the pus is let out through one or
more small incisions; in other parts of the body Klapp's suction bells
are employed. An autogenous vaccine may be prepared and injected. When
the condition has subsided, the limb is massaged and evenly bandaged to
promote the disappearance of dema.

_Tuberculous Lymphangitis._--Although lymph vessels play an important
rle in the spread of tuberculosis, the clinical recognition of the
disease in them is exceptional. The infection spreads upwards along the
superficial lymphatics, which become nodularly thickened; at one or more
points, larger, peri-lymphangitic nodules may form and break down into
abscesses and ulcers; the nearest group of glands become infected at an
early stage. When the disease is widely distributed throughout the
lymphatics of the limb, it becomes swollen and hard--a condition
illustrated by lupus elephantiasis.

_Syphilitic lymphangitis_ is observed in cases of primary syphilis, in
which the vessels of the dorsum of the penis can be felt as indurated
cords.

In addition to acting as channels for the conveyance of bacterial
infection, _lymph vessels frequently convey the cells of malignant
tumours_, and especially cancer, from the seat of the primary disease to
the nearest lymph glands, and they may themselves become the seat of
cancerous growth forming nodular cords. The permeation of cancer by way
of the lymphatics, described by Sampson Handley, has already been
referred to.

#Lymphangiectasis# is a dilated or varicose condition of lymph vessels.
It is met with as a congenital affection in the tongue and lips, or it
may be acquired as the result of any condition which is attended with
extensive obliteration or blocking of the main lymph trunks. An
interesting type of lymphangiectasis is that which results from the
presence of the _filaria Bancrofti_ in the vessels, and is observed
chiefly in the groin, spermatic cord, and scrotum of persons who have
lived in the tropics.

_Filarial disease in the lymphatics of the groin_ appears as a soft,
doughy swelling, varying in size from a walnut to a cocoa-nut; it may
partly disappear on pressure and when the patient lies down.

The patient gives a history of feverish attacks of the nature of
lymphangitis during which the swelling becomes painful and tender. These
attacks may show a remarkable periodicity, and each may be followed by
an increase in the size of the swelling, which may extend along the
inguinal canal into the abdomen, or down the spermatic cord into the
scrotum. On dissection, the swelling is found to be made up of dilated,
tortuous, and thickened lymph vessels in which the parent worm is
sometimes found, and of greatly enlarged lymph glands which have
undergone fibrosis, with giant-cell formation and eosinophile
aggregations. The fluid in the dilated vessels is either clear or
turbid, in the latter case resembling chyle. The affection is frequently
bilateral, and may be associated with lymph scrotum, with elephantiasis,
and with chyluria.

The _diagnosis_ is to be made from such other swellings in the groin as
hernia, lipoma, or cystic pouching of the great saphenous vein. It is
confirmed by finding the recently dead or dying worms in the inflamed
lymph glands.

_Treatment._--When the disease is limited to the groin or scrotum,
excision may bring about a permanent cure, but it may result in the
formation of lymphatic sinuses and only afford temporary relief.

#Lymphangioma.#--A lymphangioma is a swelling composed of a series of
cavities and channels filled with lymph and freely communicating with
one another. The cavities result either from the new formation of lymph
spaces or vessels, or from the dilatation of those which already exist;
their walls are composed of fibro-areolar tissue lined by endothelium
and strengthened by non-striped muscle. They are rarely provided with a
definite capsule, and frequently send prolongations of their substance
between and into muscles and other structures in their vicinity. They
are of congenital origin and usually make their appearance at or shortly
after birth. When the tumour is made up of a meshwork of caverns and
channels, it is called a _cavernous lymphangioma_; when it is composed
of one or more cysts, it is called a _cystic lymphangioma_. It is
probable that the cysts are derived from the caverns by breaking down
and absorption of the intervening septa, as transition forms between the
cavernous and cystic varieties are sometimes met with.

The _cavernous lymphangioma_ appears as an ill-defined, soft swelling,
presenting many of the characters of a subcutaneous hmangioma, but it
is not capable of being emptied by pressure, it does not become tense
when the blood pressure is raised, as in crying, and if the tumour is
punctured, it yields lymph instead of blood. It also resembles a lipoma,
especially the congenital variety which grows from the periosteum, and
the differential diagnosis between these is rarely completed until the
swelling is punctured or explored by operation. If treatment is called
for, it is carried out on the same lines as for hmangioma, by means of
electrolysis, igni-puncture, or excision. Complete excision is rarely
possible because of the want of definition and encapsulation, but it is
not necessary for cure, as the parts that remain undergo cicatrisation.

[Illustration: FIG. 76.--Congenital Cystic Tumour or Hygroma of Axilla.

(From a photograph lent by Dr. Lediard.)]

The _cystic lymphangioma_, _lymphatic cyst_, or _congenital cystic
hygroma_ is most often met with in the neck--_hydrocele of the neck_; it
is situated beneath the deep fascia, and projects either in front of or
behind the sterno-mastoid muscle. It may attain a large size, the
overlying skin and cyst wall may be so thin as to be translucent, and it
has been known to cause serious impairment of respiration through
pressing on the trachea. In the axilla also the cystic tumour may attain
a considerable size (Fig. 76); less frequent situations are the groin,
and the floor of the mouth, where it constitutes one form of ranula.

The nature of these swellings is to be recognised by their situation, by
their having existed from infancy, and, if necessary, by drawing off
some of the contents of the cyst through a fine needle. They are usually
remarkably indolent, persisting often for a long term of years without
change, and, like the hmangioma, they sometimes undergo spontaneous
cicatrisation and cure. Sometimes the cystic tumour becomes infected and
forms an abscess--another, although less desirable, method of cure.
Those situated in the neck are most liable to suppurate, probably
because of pyogenic organisms being brought to them by the lymphatics
taking origin in the scalp, ear, or throat.

If operative interference is called for, the cysts may be tapped and
injected with iodine, or excised; the operation for removal may entail a
considerable dissection amongst the deeper structures at the root of the
neck, and should not be lightly undertaken; parts left behind may be
induced to cicatrise by inserting a tube of radium and leaving it for a
few days.

Lymphangiomas are met with in the abdomen in the form of _omental
cysts_.


DISEASES OF LYMPH GLANDS

#Lymphadenitis.#--Inflammation of lymph glands results from the advent
of an irritant, usually bacterial or toxic, brought to the glands by the
afferent lymph vessels. These vessels may share in the inflammation and
be the seat of lymphangitis, or they may show no evidence of the passage
of the noxa. It is exceptional for the irritant to reach the gland
through the blood-stream.

A strain or other form of trauma is sometimes blamed for the onset of
lymphadenitis, especially in the glands of the groin (bubo), but it is
usually possible to discover some source of pyogenic infection which is
responsible for the mischief, or to obtain a history of some antecedent
infection such as gonorrha. It is possible for gonococci to lie latent
in the inguinal glands for long periods, and only give rise to
lymphadenitis if the glands be subsequently subjected to injury. The
glands most frequently affected are those in the neck, axilla, and
groin.

The characters of the lymphadenitis vary with the nature of the
irritant. Sometimes it is mild and evanescent, as in the glandular
enlargement in the neck which attends tonsillitis and other forms of
sore throat. Sometimes it is more persistent, as in the enlargement
that is associated with adenoids, hypertrophied tonsils, carious teeth,
eczema of the scalp, and otorrha; and it is possible that this indolent
enlargement predisposes to tuberculous infection. A similar enlargement
is met with in the axilla in cases of chronic interstitial mastitis, and
in the groin as a result of chronic irritation about the external
genitals, such as balanitis.

Sometimes the lymphadenitis is of an acute character, and the tendency
is towards the formation of an abscess. This is illustrated in the
axillary glands as a result of infected wounds of the fingers; in the
femoral glands in infected wounds or purulent blisters on the foot; in
the inguinal glands in gonorrha and soft sore; and in the cervical
glands in the severer forms of sore throat associated with diphtheria
and scarlet fever. The most acute suppurations result from infection
with streptococci.

Superficial glands, when inflamed and suppurating, become enlarged,
tender, fixed, and matted to one another. In the glands of the groin the
suppurative process is often remarkably sluggish; purulent foci form in
the interior of individual glands, and some time may elapse before the
pus erupts through their respective capsules. In the deeply placed
cervical glands, especially in cases of streptococcal throat infections,
the suppuration rapidly involves the surrounding cellular tissue, and
the clinical features are those of an acute cellulitis and deeply seated
abscess. When this is incised the necrosed glands may be found lying in
the pus, and on bacteriological examination are found to be swarming
with streptococci. In suppuration of the axillary glands the abscess may
be quite superficial, or it may be deeply placed beneath the strong
fascia and pectoral muscles, according to the group of glands involved.

The _diagnosis_ of septic lymphadenitis is usually easy. The indolent
enlargements are not always to be distinguished, however, from
commencing tuberculous disease, except by the use of the tuberculin
test, and by the fact that they usually disappear on removing the
peripheral source of irritation.

_Treatment._--The first indication is to discover and deal with the
source of infection, and in the indolent forms of lymphadenitis this
will usually be followed by recovery. In the acute forms following on
pyogenic infection, the best results are obtained from the hypermic
treatment carried out by means of suction bells. If suppuration is not
thereby prevented, or if it has already taken place, each separate
collection of pus is punctured with a narrow-bladed knife and the use of
the suction bell is persevered with. If there is a large periglandular
abscess, as is often the case, in the neck and axilla, the opening may
require to be made by Hilton's method, and it may be necessary to insert
a drainage-tube.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--Tuberculous Cervical Gland with abscess
formation in subcutaneous cellular tissue, in a boy t. 10.]

#Tuberculous Disease of Glands.#--This is a disease of great frequency
and importance. The tubercle bacilli usually gain access to the gland
through the afferent lymph vessels, which convey them from some lesion
of the surface within the area drained by them. Tuberculous infection
may supervene in glands that are already enlarged as a result of chronic
septic irritation. While any of the glands in the body may be affected,
the disease is most often met with in the cervical groups which derive
their lymph from the mouth, nose, throat, and ear.

_The appearance of the glands on section_ varies with the stage of the
disease. In the early stages the gland is enlarged, it may be to many
times its natural size, is normal in appearance and consistence, and as
there is no peri-adenitis it is easily shelled out from its
surroundings. On microscopical examination, however, there is evidence
of infection in the shape of bacilli and of characteristic giant and
epithelioid cells. At a later stage, the gland tissue is studded with
minute yellow foci which tend to enlarge and in time to become
confluent, so that the whole gland is ultimately converted into a
caseous mass. This caseous material is surrounded by the thickened
capsule which, as a result of peri-adenitis, tends to become adherent to
and fused with surrounding structures, and particularly with layers of
fascia and with the walls of veins. The caseated tissue often remains
unchanged for long periods; it may become calcified, but more frequently
it breaks down and liquefies.

#Tuberculous disease in the cervical glands# is a common accompaniment
or sequel of adenoids, enlarged tonsils, carious teeth, pharyngitis,
middle-ear disease, and conjunctivitis. These lesions afford the bacilli
a chance of entry into the lymph vessels, in which they are carried to
the glands, where they give rise to disease.

The enlargement may affect only one gland, usually below the angle of
the mandible, and remain confined to it, the gland reaching the size of
a hazel-nut, and being ovoid, firm, and painless. More commonly the
disease affects several glands, on one or on both sides of the neck.
When the disease commences in the pre-auricular or submaxillary glands,
it tends to spread to those along the carotid sheath: when the posterior
auricular and occipital glands are first involved, the spread is to
those along the posterior border of the sterno-mastoid. In many cases
all the chains in front of, beneath, and behind this muscle are
involved, the enlarged glands extending from the mastoid to the
clavicle. They are at first discrete and movable, and may even vary in
size from time to time; but with the addition of peri-adenitis they
become fixed and matted together, forming lobulated or nodular masses
(Fig. 78). They become adherent not only to one another, but also to the
structures in their vicinity,--and notably to the internal jugular
vein,--a point of importance in regard to their removal by operation.

At any stage the disease may be arrested and the glands remain for long
periods without further change. It is possible that the tuberculous
tissue may undergo cicatrisation. More commonly suppuration ensues, and
a cold abscess forms, but if there is a mixed infection, the pyogenic
factor being usually derived from the throat, it may take on active
features.

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--Mass of Tuberculous Glands removed from Axilla
(cf. Fig. 79).]

The transition from the solid to the liquefied stage is attended with
pain and tenderness in the gland, which at the same time becomes fixed
and globular, and finally fluctuation can be elicited.

If left to itself, the softened tubercle erupts through the capsule of
the gland and infects the cellular tissue. The cervical fascia is
perforated and a cold abscess, often much larger than the gland from
which it took origin, forms between the fascia and the overlying skin.
The further stages--reddening, undermining of skin and external rupture,
with the formation of ulcers and sinuses--have been described with
tuberculous abscess. The ulcers and sinuses persist indefinitely, or
they heal and then break out again; sometimes the skin becomes infected,
and a condition like lupus spreads over a considerable area. Spontaneous
healing finally takes place after the caseous tubercle has been
extruded; the resulting scars are extremely unsightly, being puckered or
bridled, or hypertrophied like keloid.

While the disease is most common in childhood and youth, it may be met
with even in advanced life; and although often associated with impaired
health and unhealthy surroundings, it may affect those who are
apparently robust and are in affluent circumstances.

_Diagnosis._--The chief importance lies in differentiating tuberculous
disease from lympho-sarcoma and from lymphadenoma, and this is usually
possible from the history and from the nature of the enlargement. Signs
of liquefaction and suppuration support the diagnosis of tubercle. If
any doubt remains, one of the glands should be removed and submitted to
microscopical examination. Other forms of sarcoma, and the enlargement
of an accessory thyreoid, are less likely to be confused with
tuberculous glands. Calcified tuberculous glands give definite shadows
with the X-rays.

Enlargement of the cervical glands from secondary cancer may simulate
tuberculosis, but is differentiated by its association with cancer in
the mouth or throat, and by the characteristic, stone-like induration of
epithelioma.

The cold abscess which results from tuberculous glands is to be
distinguished from that due to disease in the cervical spine,
retro-pharyngeal abscess, as well as from congenital and other cystic
swellings in the neck.

_Prognosis._--Next to lupus, glandular disease is of all tuberculous
lesions the least dangerous to life; but while it is the rule to recover
from tuberculous disease of glands with or without an operation, it is
unfortunately quite common for such persons to become the subjects of
tuberculosis in other parts of the body at any subsequent period of
life.

_Treatment._--There is considerable difference of opinion regarding the
treatment of glandular tuberculosis. Some authorities, impressed with
the undoubted possibility of natural cure, are satisfied with promoting
this by measures directed towards improving the general health, by the
prolonged administration of tuberculin, and by repeated exposures to the
X-rays and to sunlight. Others again, influenced by the risk of
extension of the disease and by the destruction of tissue and
disfigurement caused by breaking down of the tuberculous tissue and
mixed infection, advocate the removal of the glands by operation.

The conditions vary widely in different cases, and the treatment should
be adapted to the individual requirements. If the disease remains
confined to the glands originally infected and there are no signs of
breaking down, "expectant measures" may be persevered with.

[Illustration: FIG. 79.--Tuberculous Axillary Glands (cf. Fig. 78).]

If, on the other hand, the disease exhibits aggressive tendencies, the
question of operation should be considered. The undesirable results of
the breaking down and liquefaction of the diseased gland may be avoided
by the timely withdrawal of the fluid contents through a hollow needle.

_The excision of tuberculous glands_ is often a difficult operation,
because of the number and deep situation of the glands to be removed,
and of the adhesions to surrounding structures. The skin incision must
be sufficiently extensive to give access to the whole of the affected
area, and to avoid disfigurement should, whenever possible, be made in
the line of the natural creases of the skin. In exposing the glands the
common facial and other venous trunks may require to be clamped and
tied. Care must be taken not to injure the important nerves,
particularly the accessory, the vagus, and the phrenic. The
inframaxillary branches of the facial, the hypoglossal and its
descending branches, and the motor branches of the deep cervical plexus,
are also liable to be injured. The dissection is rendered easier and is
attended with less risk of injury to the nerves, if the patient is
placed in the sitting posture so as to empty the veins, and, instead of
a knife, the conical scissors of Mayo are employed. When the glands are
extensively affected on both sides of the neck, it is advisable to allow
an interval to elapse rather than to operate on both sides at one
sitting. (_Op. Surg._, p. 189.)

If the tonsils are enlarged they should not be removed at the same time,
as, by so doing, there is a risk of pyogenic infection from the throat
being carried to the wound in the neck, but they should be removed,
after an interval, to prevent relapse of disease in the glands.

_When the skin is broken_ and caseous tuberculous tissue is exposed,
healing is promoted by cutting away diseased skin, removing the
granulation tissue with the spoon, scraping sinuses, and packing the
cavity with iodoform worsted and treating it by the open method and
secondary suture if necessary. Exposure to the sunshine on the seashore
and to the X-rays is often beneficial in these cases.

#Tuberculous disease in the axillary glands# may be a result of
extension from those in the neck, from the mamma, ribs, or sternum, or
more rarely from the upper extremity. We have seen it from an infected
wound of a finger. In some cases no source of infection is discoverable.
The individual glands attain a considerable size, and they fuse together
to form a large tumour which fills up the axillary space. The disease
progresses more rapidly than it does in the cervical glands, and almost
always goes on to suppuration with the formation of sinuses.
Conservative measures need not be considered, as the only satisfactory
treatment is excision, and that without delay.

#Tuberculous disease in the glands of the groin# is comparatively rare.
We have chiefly observed it in the femoral glands as a result of
inoculation tubercle on the toes or sole of the foot. The affected
glands nearly always break down and suppurate, and after destroying the
overlying skin give rise to fungating ulcers. The treatment consists in
excising the glands and the affected skin. The dissection may be
attended with troublesome hmorrhage from the numerous veins that
converge towards the femoral trunk.

Tuberculous disease in the _mesenteric_ and _bronchial glands_ is
described with the surgery of regions.

#Syphilitic Disease of Glands.#--Enlargement of lymph glands is a
prominent feature of acquired syphilis, especially in the form of the
indolent or bullet-bubo which accompanies the primary lesion, and the
general enlargement of glands that occurs in secondary syphilis.
Gummatous disease in glands is extremely rare; the affected gland
rapidly enlarges to the size of a walnut, and may then persist for a
long period without further change; if it breaks down, the overlying
skin is destroyed and the caseated tissue of the gumma exposed.

#Lymphadenoma.#--_Hodgkin's Disease_ (Pseudo-leukmia of German
authors).--This is a rare disease, the origin of which is as yet
unknown, but analogy would suggest that it is due to infection with a
slowly growing micro-organism. It is chiefly met with in young subjects,
and is characterised by a painless enlargement of a particular group of
glands, most commonly those in the cervical region (Fig. 80).

[Illustration: FIG. 80.--Chronic Hodgkin's Disease in a boy t. 11.]

The glands are usually larger than in tuberculosis, and they remain
longer discrete and movable; they are firm in consistence, and on
section present a granular appearance due to overgrowth of the
connective-tissue framework. In time the glandular masses may form
enormous projecting tumours, the swelling being added to by lymphatic
dema of the overlying cellular tissue and skin.

The enlargement spreads along the chain of glands to those above the
clavicle, to those in the axilla, and to those of the opposite side
(Fig. 81). Later, the glands in the groin become enlarged, and it is
probable that the infection has spread from the neck along the
mediastinal, bronchial, retro-peritoneal, and mesenteric glands, and has
branched off to the iliac and inguinal groups.

Two clinical types are recognised, one in which the disease progresses
slowly and remains confined to the cervical glands for two or more
years; the other, in which the disease is more rapidly disseminated and
causes death in from twelve to eighteen months.

[Illustration: FIG. 81.--Lymphadenoma (Hodgkin's Disease) affecting left
side of neck and left axilla, in a woman t. 44. Three years' duration.]

In the acute form, the health suffers, there is fever, and the glands
may vary in size with variations in the temperature; the blood presents
the characters met with in secondary anmia. The spleen, liver, testes,
and mamm may be enlarged; the glandular swellings press on important
structures, such as the trachea, sophagus, or great veins, and symptoms
referable to such pressure manifest themselves.

_Diagnosis._--Considerable difficulty attends the diagnosis of
lymphadenoma at an early stage. The negative results of tuberculin tests
may assist in the differentiation from tuberculous disease, but the more
certain means of excising one of the suspected glands and submitting it
to microscopical examination should be had recourse to. The sections
show proliferation of endothelial cells, the formation of numerous giant
cells quite unlike those of tuberculosis and a progressive fibrosis.
Lympho-sarcoma can usually be differentiated by the rapid assumption of
the local features of malignant disease, and in a gland removed for
examination, a predominance of small round cells with scanty protoplasm.
The enlargement associated with leucocythmia is differentiated by the
characteristic changes in the blood.

_Treatment._--In the acute form of lymphadenoma, treatment is of little
avail. Arsenic may be given in full doses either by the mouth or by
subcutaneous injection; the intravenous administration of neo-salvarsan
may be tried. Exposure to the X-rays and to radium has been more
successful than any other form of treatment. Excision of glands,
although sometimes beneficial, seldom arrests the progress of the
disease. The ease and rapidity with which large masses of glands may be
shelled out is in remarkable contrast to what is observed in tuberculous
disease. Surgical interference may give relief when important structures
are being pressed upon--tracheotomy, for example, may be required where
life is threatened by asphyxia.

#Leucocythmia.#--This is a disease of the blood and of the
blood-forming organs, in which there is a great increase in the number,
and an alteration of the character, of the leucocytes present in the
blood. It may simulate lymphadenoma, because, in certain forms of the
disease, the lymph glands, especially those in the neck, axilla, and
groin, are greatly enlarged.


TUMOURS OF LYMPH GLANDS

#Primary Tumours.#--_Lympho-sarcoma_, which may be regarded as a sarcoma
starting in a lymph gland, appears in the neck, axilla, or groin as a
rapidly growing tumour consisting of one enlarged gland with numerous
satellites. As the tumour increases in size, the sarcomatous tissue
erupts through the capsule of the gland, and infiltrates the surrounding
tissues, whereby it becomes fixed to these and to the skin.

[Illustration: FIG. 82.--Lympho-Sarcoma removed from Groin. It will be
observed that there is one large central parent tumour surrounded by
satellites.]

The prognosis is grave in the extreme, and the only hope is in early
excision, followed by the use of radium and X-rays. We have observed a
case of lympho-sarcoma above the clavicle, in which excision of all that
was removable, followed by the insertion of a tube of radium for ten
days, was followed by a disappearance of the disease over a period which
extended to nearly five years, when death resulted from a tumour in the
mediastinum. In a second case in which the growth was in the groin, the
patient, a young man, remained well for over two years and was then lost
sight of.

#Secondary Tumours.#--Next to tuberculosis, _secondary cancer_ is the
most common disease of lymph glands. In the neck it is met with in
association with epithelioma of the lip, tongue, or fauces. The glands
form tumours of variable size, and are often larger than the primary
growth, the characters of which they reproduce. The glands are at first
movable, but soon become fixed both to each other and to their
surroundings; when fixed to the mandible they form a swelling of
bone-like hardness; in time they soften, liquefy, and burst through the
skin, forming foul, fungating ulcers. A similar condition is met with in
the groin from epithelioma of the penis, scrotum, or vulva. In cancer of
the breast, the infection of the axillary glands is an important
complication.

In _pigmented_ or _melanotic cancers_ of the skin, the glands are early
infected and increase rapidly, so that, when the primary growth is still
of small size--as, for example, on the sole of the foot--the femoral
glands may already constitute large pigmented tumours.

[Illustration: FIG. 83.--Cancerous Glands in Neck secondary to
Epithelioma of Lip.

(Mr. G. L. Chiene's case.)]

The implication of the glands in other forms of cancer will be
considered with regional surgery.

_Secondary sarcoma_ is seldom met with in the lymph glands except when
the primary growth is a lympho-sarcoma and is situated in the tonsil,
thyreoid, or testicle.




CHAPTER XVI

THE NERVES


Anatomy--INJURIES OF NERVES: Changes in nerves after division;
    Repair and its modifications; Clinical features; _Primary and
    secondary suture_--SUBCUTANEOUS INJURIES OF
    NERVES--DISEASES: _Neuritis_; _Tumours_--Surgery of
    the individual nerves: _Brachial neuralgia_; _Sciatica_;
    _Trigeminal neuralgia_.

#Anatomy.#--A nerve-trunk is made up of a variable number of bundles of
nerve fibres surrounded and supported by a framework of connective
tissue. The nerve fibres are chiefly of the medullated type, and they
run without interruption from a nerve cell or _neuron_ in the brain or
spinal medulla to their peripheral terminations in muscle, skin, and
secretory glands.

Each nerve fibre consists of a number of nerve fibrils collected into a
central bundle--the axis cylinder--which is surrounded by an envelope,
the neurolemma or sheath of Schwann. Between the neurolemma and the axis
cylinder is the medullated sheath, composed of a fatty substance known
as myelin. This medullated sheath is interrupted at the nodes of
Ranvier, and in each internode is a nucleus lying between the myelin and
the neurolemma. The axis cylinder is the essential conducting structure
of the nerve, while the neurolemma and the myelin act as insulating
agents. The axis cylinder depends for its nutrition on the central
neuron with which it is connected, and from which it originally
developed, and it degenerates if it is separated from its neuron.

The connective-tissue framework of a nerve-trunk consists of the
_perineurium_, or general sheath, which surrounds all the bundles; the
_epineurium_, surrounding individual groups of bundles; and the
_endoneurium_, a delicate connective tissue separating the individual
nerve fibres. The blood vessels and lymphatics run in these
connective-tissue sheaths.

According to Head and his co-workers, Sherren and Rivers, the afferent
fibres in the peripheral nerves can be divided into three systems:--

1. Those which subserve _deep sensibility_ and conduct the impulses
produced by pressure as well as those which enable the patient to
recognise the position of a joint on passive movement (joint-sensation),
and the kinsthetic sense, which recognises that active contraction of
the muscle is taking place (active muscle-sensation). The fibres of this
system run with the motor nerves, and pass to muscles, tendons, and
joints. Even division of both the ulnar and the median nerves above the
wrist produces little loss of deep sensibility, unless the tendons are
also cut through. The failure to recognise this form of sensibility has
been largely responsible for the conflicting statements as to the
sensory phenomena following operations for the repair of divided nerves.

2. Those which subserve _protopathic_ sensibility--that is, are capable
of responding to painful cutaneous stimuli and to the extremes of heat
and cold. These also endow the hairs with sensibility to pain. They are
the first to regenerate after division.

3. Those which subserve _epicritic_ sensibility, the most highly
specialised, capable of appreciating light touch, _e.g._ with a wisp of
cotton wool, as a well-localised sensation, and the finer grades of
temperature, called cool and warm (72104 F.), and of discriminating
as separate the points of a pair of compasses 2 cms. apart. These are
the last to regenerate.

A nerve also exerts a trophic influence on the tissues in which it is
distributed.

The researches of Stoffel on the minute anatomy of the larger nerves,
and the disposition in them of the bundles of nerve fibres supplying
different groups of muscles, have opened up what promises to be a
fruitful field of clinical investigation and therapeutics. He has shown
that in the larger nerve-trunks the nerve bundles for special groups of
muscles are not, as was formerly supposed, arranged irregularly and
fortuitously, but that on the contrary the nerve fibres to a particular
group of muscles have a typical and practically constant position within
the nerve.

In the large nerve-trunks of the limbs he has worked out the exact
position of the bundles for the various groups of muscles, so that in a
cross section of a particular nerve the component bundles can be
labelled as confidently and accurately as can be the cortical areas in
the brain. In the living subject, by using a fine needle-like electrode
and a very weak galvanic current, he has been able to differentiate the
nerve bundles for the various groups of muscles. In several cases of
spastic paralysis he succeeded in picking out in the nerve-trunk of the
affected limb the nerve bundles supplying the spastic muscles, and, by
resecting portions of them, in relieving the spasm. In a case of spastic
contracture of the pronator muscles of the forearm, for example, an
incision is made along the line of the median nerve above the bend of
the elbow. At the lateral side of the median nerve, where it lies in
contact with the biceps muscle, is situated a well-defined and easily
isolated bundle of fibres which supplies the pronator teres, the flexor
carpi radialis, and the palmaris longus muscles. On incising the sheath
of the nerve this bundle can be readily dissected up and its identity
confirmed by stimulating it with a very weak galvanic current. An inch
or more of the bundle is then resected.


INJURIES OF NERVES

Nerves are liable to be cut or torn across, bruised, compressed,
stretched, or torn away from their connections with the spinal medulla.

#Complete Division of a Mixed Nerve.#--Complete division is a common
result of accidental wounds, especially above the wrist, where the
ulnar, median, and radial nerves are frequently cut across, and in
gun-shot injuries.

_Changes in Structure and Function._--The mere interruption of the
continuity of a nerve results in degeneration of its fibres, the myelin
being broken up into droplets and absorbed, while the axis cylinders
swell up, disintegrate, and finally disappear. Both the conducting and
the insulating elements are thus lost. The degeneration in the central
end of the divided nerve is usually limited to the immediate proximity
of the lesion, and does not even involve all the nerve fibres. In the
distal end, it extends throughout the entire peripheral distribution of
the nerve, and appears to be due to the cutting off of the fibres from
their trophic nerve cells in the spinal medulla. Immediate suturing of
the ends does not affect the degeneration of the distal segment. The
peripheral end undergoes complete degeneration in from six weeks to two
months.

The physiological effects of complete division are that the muscles
supplied by the nerve are immediately paralysed, the area to which it
furnishes the sole cutaneous supply becomes insensitive, and the other
structures, including tendons, bones, and joints, lose sensation, and
begin to atrophy from loss of the trophic influence.

#Nerves divided in Amputation.#--In the case of nerves divided in an
amputation, there is an active, although necessarily abortive, attempt
at regeneration, which results in the formation of bulbous swellings at
the cut ends of the nerves. When there has been suppuration, and
especially if the nerves have been cut so as to be exposed in the wound,
these bulbous swellings may attain an abnormal size, and are then known
as "amputation" or "stump neuromas" (Fig. 84).

When the nerves in a stump have not been cut sufficiently short, they
may become involved in the cicatrix, and it may be necessary, on account
of pain, to free them from their adhesions, and to resect enough of the
terminal portions to prevent them again becoming adherent. When this is
difficult, a portion may be resected from each of the nerve-trunks at a
higher level; and if this fails to give relief, a fresh amputation may
be performed. When there is agonising pain dependent upon an ascending
neuritis, it may be necessary to resect the corresponding posterior
nerve roots within the vertebral canal.

[Illustration: FIG. 84.--Stump Neuromas of Sciatic Nerve, excised forty
years after the original amputation by Mr. A. G. Miller.]

#Other Injuries of Nerves.#--_Contusion_ of a nerve-trunk is attended
with extravasation of blood into the connective-tissue sheaths, and is
followed by degeneration of the contused nerve fibres. Function is
usually restored, the conducting paths being re-established by the
formation of new nerve fibres.

When a nerve is _torn across_ or badly _crushed_--as, for example, by a
fractured bone--the changes are similar to those in a divided nerve, and
the ultimate result depends on the amount of separation between the ends
and the possibility of the young axis cylinders bridging the gap.

_Involvement of Nerves in Scar Tissue._--Pressure or traction may be
exerted upon a nerve by contracting scar tissue, or a process of
neuritis or perineuritis may be induced.

When terminal filaments are involved in a scar, it is best to dissect
out the scar, and along with it the ends of the nerves pressed upon.
When a nerve-trunk, such as the sciatic, is involved in cicatricial
tissue, the nerve must be exposed and freed from its surroundings
(_neurolysis_), and then stretched so as to tear any adhesions that may
be present above or below the part exposed. It may be advisable to
displace the liberated nerve from its original position so as to
minimise the risk of its incorporation in the scar of the original wound
or in that resulting from the operation--for example, the radial nerve
may be buried in the substance of the triceps, or it may be surrounded
by a segment of vein or portion of fat-bearing fascia.

_Injuries of nerves resulting from_ #gun-shot wounds# include: (1) those
in which the nerve is directly damaged by the bullet, and (2) those in
which the nerve-trunk is involved secondarily either by scar tissue in
its vicinity or by callus following fracture of an adjacent bone. The
primary injuries include contusion, partial or complete division, and
perforation of the nerve-trunk. One of the most constant symptoms is the
early occurrence of severe neuralgic pain, and this is usually
associated with marked hypersthesia.

#Regeneration.#--_Process of Repair when the Ends are in Contact._--_If
the wound is aseptic_, and the ends of the divided nerve are sutured or
remain in contact, they become united, and the conducting paths are
re-established by a regeneration of nerve fibres. There is a difference
of opinion as to the method of regeneration. The Wallerian doctrine is
that the axis cylinders in the central end grow downwards, and enter the
nerve sheaths of the distal portion, and continue growing until they
reach the peripheral terminations in muscle and skin, and in course of
time acquire a myelin sheath; the cells of the neurolemma multiply and
form long chains in both ends of the nerve, and are believed to provide
for the nourishment and support of the actively lengthening axis
cylinders. Another view is that the formation of new axis cylinders is
not confined to the central end, but that it goes on also in the
peripheral segment, in which, however, the new axis cylinders do not
attain maturity until continuity with the central end has been
re-established.

_If the wound becomes infected_ and suppuration occurs, the young nerve
fibres are destroyed and efficient regeneration is prevented; the
formation of scar tissue also may constitute a permanent obstacle to new
nerve fibres bridging the gap.

_When the ends are not in contact_, reunion of the divided nerve fibres
does not take place whether the wound is infected or not. At the
proximal end there forms a bulbous swelling, which becomes adherent to
the scar tissue. It consists of branching axis cylinders running in all
directions, these having failed to reach the distal end because of the
extent of the gap. The peripheral end is completely degenerated, and is
represented by a fibrous cord, the cut end of which is often slightly
swollen or bulbous, and is also incorporated with the scar tissue of
the wound.

#Clinical Features.#--The symptoms resulting from division and non-union
of a nerve-trunk necessarily vary with the functions of the affected
nerve. The following description refers to a mixed sensori-motor trunk,
such as the median or radial (musculo-spiral) nerve.

_Sensory Phenomena._--Superficial touch is tested by means of a wisp of
cotton wool stroked gently across the skin; the capacity of
discriminating two points as separate, by a pair of blunt-pointed
compasses; the sensation of pressure, by means of a pencil or other
blunt object; of pain, by pricking or scratching with a needle; and of
sensibility to heat and cold, by test-tubes containing water at
different temperatures. While these tests are being carried out, the
patient's eyes are screened off.

After division of a nerve containing sensory fibres, there is an area of
absolute cutaneous insensibility to touch (ansthesia), to pain
(analgesia), and to all degrees of temperature--_loss of protopathic
sensibility_; surrounded by an area in which there is loss of sensation
to light touch, inability to recognise minor differences of temperature
(72104 F.), and to appreciate as separate impressions the contact of
the two points of a compass--_loss of epicritic sensibility_ (Head and
Sherren) (Figs. 91, 92).

_Motor Phenomena._--There is immediate and complete loss of voluntary
power in the muscles supplied by the divided nerve. The muscles rapidly
waste, and within from three to five days, they cease to react to the
faradic current. When tested with the galvanic current, it is found that
a stronger current must be used to call forth contraction than in a
healthy muscle, and the contraction appears first at the closing of the
circuit when the anode is used as the testing electrode. The loss of
excitability to the interrupted current, and the specific alteration in
the type of contraction with the constant current, is known as the
_reaction of degeneration_. After a few weeks all electric excitability
is lost. The paralysed muscles undergo fatty degeneration, which attains
its maximum three or four months after the division of the nerve.
Further changes may take place, and result in the transformation of the
muscle into fibrous tissue, which by undergoing shortening may cause
deformity known as _paralytic contracture_.

_Vaso-motor Phenomena._--In the majority of cases there is an initial
rise in the temperature of the part (2 to 3 F.), with redness and
increased vascularity. This is followed by a fall in the local
temperature, which may amount to 8 or 10 F., the parts becoming pale
and cold. Sometimes the hypermia resulting from vaso-motor paralysis is
more persistent, and is associated with swelling of the parts from
dema--the so-called _angio-neurotic dema_. The vascularity varies with
external influences, and in cold weather the parts present a bluish
appearance.

_Trophic Phenomena._--Owing to the disappearance of the subcutaneous
fat, the skin is smooth and thin, and may be abnormally dry. The hair is
harsh, dry, and easily shed. The nails become brittle and furrowed, or
thick and curved, and the ends of the fingers become club-shaped. Skin
eruptions, especially in the form of blisters, occur, or there may be
actual ulcers of the skin, especially in winter. In aggravated cases the
tips of the fingers disappear from progressive ulceration, and in the
sole of the foot a perforating ulcer may develop. Arthropathies are
occasionally met with, the joints becoming the seat of a painless
effusion or hydrops, which is followed by fibrous thickening of the
capsular and other ligaments, and terminates in stiffness and fibrous
ankylosis. In this way the fingers are seriously crippled and deformed.

#Treatment of Divided Nerves.#--The treatment consists in approximating
the divided ends of the nerve and placing them under the most favourable
conditions for repair, and this should be done at the earliest possible
opportunity. (_Op. Surg._, pp. 45, 46.)

#Primary Suture.#--The reunion of a recently divided nerve is spoken of
as primary suture, and for its success asepsis is essential. As the
suturing of the ends of the nerve is extremely painful, an ansthetic is
required.

When the wound is healed and while waiting for the restoration of
function, measures are employed to maintain the nutrition of the damaged
nerve and of the parts supplied by it. The limb is exercised, massaged,
and douched, and protected from cold and other injurious influences. The
nutrition of the paralysed muscles is further improved by electricity.
The galvanic current is employed, using at first a mild current of not
more than 5 milliampres for about ten minutes, the current being made
to flow downwards in the course of the nerve, with the positive
electrode applied to the spine, and the negative over the affected nerve
near its termination. It is an advantage to have a metronome in the
circuit whereby the current is opened and closed automatically at
intervals, so as to cause contraction of the muscles.

_The results_ of primary suture, when it has been performed under
favourable conditions, are usually satisfactory. In a series of cases
investigated by Head and Sherren, the period between the operation and
the first return of sensation averaged 65 days. According to Purves
Stewart protopathic sensation commences to appear in about six weeks and
is completely restored in six months; electric sensation and motor power
reappear together in about six months, and restoration is complete in a
year. When sensation returns, the area of insensibility to pain steadily
diminishes and disappears; sensibility to extremes of temperature
appears soon after; and last of all, after a considerable interval,
there is simultaneous return of appreciation of light touch, moderate
degrees of temperature, and the points of a compass.

A clinical means of estimating how regeneration in a divided nerve is
progressing has been described by Tinel. He found that a tingling
sensation, similar to that experienced in the foot, when it is
recovering from the "sleeping" condition induced by prolonged pressure
on the sciatic nerve from sitting on a hard bench, can be elicited on
percussing over _growing_ axis cylinders. Tapping over the proximal end
of a _newly divided nerve_, _e.g._ the common peroneal behind the head
of the fibula, produces no tingling, but when in about three weeks
axis cylinders begin to grow in the proximal end-bulb, local tingling is
induced by tapping there. The downward growth of the axis cylinders can
be traced by tapping over the distal segment of the nerve, the tingling
sensation being elicited as far down as the young axis cylinders have
reached. When the regeneration of the axis cylinders is complete,
tapping no longer causes tingling. It usually takes about one hundred
days for this stage to be reached.

Tinel's sign is present before voluntary movement, muscular tone, or the
normal electrical reactions reappear.

In cases of complete nerve paralysis that have not been operated upon,
the tingling test is helpful in determining whether or not regeneration
is taking place. Its detection may prevent an unnecessary operation
being performed.

Primary suture should not be attempted so long as the wound shows signs
of infection, as it is almost certain to end in failure. The ends should
be sutured, however, as soon as the wound is aseptic or has healed.

#Secondary Suture.#--The term secondary suture is applied to the
operation of stitching the ends of the divided nerve after the wound has
healed.

_Results of Secondary Suture._--When secondary suture has been performed
under favourable conditions, the prognosis is good, but a longer time is
required for restoration of function than after primary suture. Purves
Stewart says protopathic sensation is sometimes observed much earlier
than in primary suture, because partial regeneration of axis cylinders
in the peripheral segment has already taken place. Sensation is
recovered first, but it seldom returns before three or four months.
There then follows an improvement or disappearance of any trophic
disturbances that may be present. Recovery of motion may be deferred for
long periods--rather because of the changes in the muscles than from
want of conductivity in the nerve--and if the muscles have undergone
complete degeneration, it may never take place at all. While waiting for
recovery, every effort should be made to maintain the nutrition of the
damaged nerve, and of the parts which it supplies.

When suture is found to be impossible, recourse must be had to other
methods, known as nerve bridging and nerve implantation.

#Incomplete Division of a Mixed Nerve.#--The effects of partial division
of a mixed nerve vary according to the destination of the nerve bundles
that have been interrupted. Within their area of distribution the
paralysis is as complete as if the whole trunk had been cut across. The
uninjured nerve-bundles continue to transmit impulses with the result
that there is a _dissociated paralysis_ within the distribution of the
affected nerve, some muscles continuing to act and to respond normally
to electric stimulation, while others behave as if the whole nerve-trunk
had been severed.

In addition to vasomotor and trophic changes, there is often severe pain
of a burning kind (_causalgia_ or _thermalgia_) which comes on about a
fortnight after the injury and causes intense and continuous suffering
which may last for months. Paroxysms of pain may be excited by the
slightest touch or by heat, and the patient usually learns for himself
that the constant application of cold wet cloths allays the pain. The
thermalgic area sweats profusely.

Operative treatment is indicated where there is no sign of improvement
within three months, when recovery is arrested before complete
restoration of function is attained, or when thermalgic pain is
excessive.

#Subcutaneous Injuries of Nerves.#--Several varieties of subcutaneous
injuries of nerves are met with. One of the best known is the
compression paralysis of the nerves of the upper arm which results from
sleeping with the arm resting on the back of a chair or the edge of a
table--the so-called "drunkard's palsy"; and from the pressure of a
crutch in the axilla--"crutch paralysis." In some of these injuries,
notably "drunkard's palsy," the disability appears to be due not to
damage of the nerve, but to overstretching of the extensors of the wrist
and fingers (Jones). A similar form of paralysis is sometimes met with
from the pressure of a tourniquet, from tight bandages or splints, from
the pressure exerted by a dislocated bone or by excessive callus, and
from hyper-extension of the arm during ansthesia.

In all these forms there is impaired sensation, rarely amounting to
ansthesia, marked muscular wasting, and diminution or loss of voluntary
motor power, while--and this is a point of great importance--the normal
electrical reactions are preserved. There may also develop trophic
changes such as blisters, superficial ulcers, and clubbing of the tips
of the fingers. The prognosis is usually favourable, as recovery is the
rule within from one to three months. If, however, neuritis supervenes,
the electrical reactions are altered, the muscles degenerate, and
recovery may be retarded or may fail to take place.

Injuries which act abruptly or instantaneously are illustrated in the
crushing of a nerve by the sudden displacement of a sharp-edged fragment
of bone, as may occur in comminuted fractures of the humerus. The
symptoms include perversion or loss of sensation, motor paralysis, and
atrophy of muscles, which show the reaction of degeneration from the
eighth day onwards. The presence of the reaction of degeneration
influences both the prognosis and the treatment, for it implies a lesion
which is probably incapable of spontaneous recovery, and which can only
be remedied by operation.

The _treatment_ varies with the cause and nature of the lesion. When,
for example, a displaced bone or a mass of callus is pressing upon the
nerve, steps must be taken to relieve the pressure, by operation if
necessary. When there is reason to believe that the nerve is severely
crushed or torn across, it should be exposed by incision, and, after
removal of the damaged ends, should be united by sutures. When it is
impossible to make a definite diagnosis as to the state of the nerve, it
is better to expose it by operation, and thus learn the exact state of
affairs without delay; in the event of the nerve being torn, the ends
should be united by sutures.

#Dislocation of Nerves.#--This injury, which resembles the dislocation
of tendons from their grooves, is seldom met with except in the ulnar
nerve at the elbow, and is described with injuries of that nerve.


DISEASES OF NERVES

#Traumatic Neuritis.#--This consists in an overgrowth of the
connective-tissue framework of a nerve, which causes irritation and
pressure upon the nerve fibres, sometimes resulting in their
degeneration. It may originate in connection with a wound in the
vicinity of a nerve, as, for example, when the brachial nerves are
involved in scar tissue subsequent to an operation for clearing out the
axilla for cancer; or in contusion and compression of a nerve--for
example, by the pressure of the head of the humerus in a dislocation of
the shoulder. Some weeks or months after the injury, the patient
complains of increasing hypersthesia and of neuralgic pains in the
course of the nerve. The nerve is very sensitive to pressure, and, if
superficial, may be felt to be swollen. The associated muscles are
wasted and weak, and are subject to twitchings. There are also trophic
disturbances. It is rare to have complete sensory and motor paralysis.
The disease is commonest in the nerves of the upper extremity, and the
hand may become crippled and useless.

_Treatment._--Any constitutional condition which predisposes to
neuritis, such as gout, diabetes, or syphilis, must receive appropriate
treatment. The symptoms may be relieved by rest and by soothing
applications, such as belladonna, ichthyol, or menthol, by the use of
hot-air and electric baths, and in obstinate cases by blistering or by
the application of Corrigan's button. When such treatment fails the
nerve may be stretched, or, in the case of a purely sensory trunk, a
portion may be excised. Local causes, such as involvement of the nerve
in a scar or in adhesions, may afford indications for operative
treatment.

#Multiple Peripheral Neuritis.#--Although this disease mainly comes
under the cognizance of the physician, it may be attended with phenomena
which call for surgical interference. In this country it is commonly due
to alcoholism, but it may result from diabetes or from chronic poisoning
with lead or arsenic, or from bacterial infections and intoxications
such as occur in diphtheria, gonorrha, syphilis, leprosy, typhoid,
influenza, beri-beri, and many other diseases.

It is, as a rule, widely distributed throughout the peripheral nerves,
but the distribution frequently varies with the cause--the alcoholic
form, for example, mainly affecting the legs, the diphtheritic form the
soft palate and pharynx, and that associated with lead poisoning the
forearms. The essential lesion is a degeneration of the conducting
fibres of the affected nerves, and the prominent symptoms are the result
of this. In alcoholic neuritis there is great tenderness of the muscles.
When the legs are affected the patient may be unable to walk, and the
toes may droop and the heel be drawn up, resulting in one variety of pes
equino-varus. Pressure sores and perforating ulcer of the foot are the
most important trophic phenomena.

Apart from the medical _treatment_, measures must be taken to prevent
deformity, especially when the legs are affected. The bedclothes are
supported by a cage, and the foot maintained at right angles to the leg
by sand-bags or splints. When the disease is subsiding, the nutrition of
the damaged nerves and muscles should be maintained by massage, baths,
passive movements, and the use of the galvanic current. When deformity
has been allowed to take place, operative measures may be required for
its correction.


NEUROMA[5]

[5] We have followed the classification adopted by Alexis Thomson in his
work _On Neuroma, and Neuro-fibromatosis_ (Edinburgh: 1900).

Neuroma is a clinical term applied to all tumours, irrespective of their
structure, which have their seat in nerves.

A tumour composed of newly formed nerve tissue is spoken of as a #true
neuroma#; when ganglionic cells are present in addition to nerve fibres,
the name _ganglionic neuroma_ is applied. These tumours are rare, and
are chiefly met with in the main cords or abdominal plexuses of the
sympathetic system of children or young adults. They are quite
insensitive, and their removal is only called for if they cause pain or
show signs of malignancy.

A #false neuroma# is an overgrowth of the sheath of a nerve. This
overgrowth may result in the formation of a circumscribed tumour, or may
take the form of a diffuse fibromatosis.

_The circumscribed or solitary tumour_ grows from the sheath of a nerve
which is otherwise healthy, and it may be innocent or malignant.

_The innocent_ form is usually fibrous or myxomatous, and is definitely
encapsulated. It may become cystic as a result of hmorrhage or of
myxomatous degeneration. It grows very slowly, is usually elliptical in
shape, and the solid form is rarely larger than a hazel-nut. The nerve
fibres may be spread out all round the tumour, or may run only on one
side of it. When subcutaneous and related to the smaller unnamed
cutaneous nerves, it is known as a _painful subcutaneous nodule_ or
_tubercle_. It is chiefly met with about the ankle, and most often in
women. It is remarkably sensitive, even gentle handling causing intense
pain, which usually radiates to the periphery of the nerve affected.
When related to a deeper, named nerve-trunk, it is known as a
_trunk-neuroma_. It is usually less sensitive than the "subcutaneous
nodule," and rarely gives rise to motor symptoms unless it involves the
nerve roots where they pass through bony canals.

A trunk-neuroma is recognised clinically by its position in the line of
a nerve, by the fact that it is movable in the transverse axis of the
nerve but not in its long axis, and by being unduly painful and
sensitive.

[Illustration: FIG. 85.--Amputation Stump of Upper Arm, showing bulbous
thickening of the ends of the nerves, embedded in scar tissue at the
apex of the stamp.]

_Treatment._--If the tumour causes suffering it should be removed,
preferably by shelling it out from the investing nerve sheath or
capsule. In the subcutaneous nodule the nerve is rarely recognisable,
and is usually sacrificed. When removal of the tumour is incomplete, a
tube of radium should be inserted into the cavity, to prevent recurrence
of the tumour in a malignant form.

_The malignant neuroma_ is a sarcoma growing from the sheath of a nerve.
It has the same characters and clinical features as the innocent
variety, only it grows more rapidly, and by destroying the nerve fibres
causes motor symptoms--jerkings followed by paralysis. The sarcoma tends
to spread along the lymph spaces in the long axis of the nerve, as well
as to implicate the surrounding tissues, and it is liable to give rise
to secondary growths. The malignant neuroma is met with chiefly in the
sciatic and other large nerves of the limbs.

The _treatment_ is conducted on the same lines as sarcoma in other
situations; the insertion of a tube of radium after removal of the
tumour diminishes the tendency to recurrence; a portion of the
nerve-trunk being sacrificed, means must be taken to bridge the gap. In
inoperable cases it may be possible to relieve pain by excising a
portion of the nerve above the tumour, or, when this is impracticable,
by resecting the posterior nerve roots and their ganglia within the
vertebral canal.

The so-called _amputation neuroma_ has already been referred to (p. 344).

_Diffuse or Generalised Neuro-Fibromatosis--Recklinghausen's
Disease._--These terms are now used to include what were formerly known
as "multiple neuromata," as well as certain other overgrowths related to
nerves. The essential lesion is an overgrowth of the endoneural
connective tissue throughout the nerves of both the cerebro-spinal and
sympathetic systems. The nerves are diffusely and unequally thickened,
so that small twigs may become enlarged to the size of the median, while
at irregular intervals along their course the connective-tissue
overgrowth is exaggerated so as to form tumour-like swellings similar to
the trunk-neuroma already described. The tumours, which vary greatly in
size and number--as many as a thousand have been counted in one
case--are enclosed in a capsule derived from the perineurium. The
fibromatosis may also affect the cranial nerves, the ganglia on the
posterior nerve roots, the nerves within the vertebral canal, and the
sympathetic nerves and ganglia, as well as the continuations of the
motor nerves within the muscles. The nerve fibres, although mechanically
displaced and dissociated by the overgrown endoneurium, undergo no
structural change except when compressed in passing through a bony
canal.

The disease probably originates before birth, although it may not make
its appearance till adolescence or even till adult life. It is sometimes
met with in several members of one family. It is recognised clinically
by the presence of multiple tumours in the course of the nerves, and
sometimes by palpable enlargement of the superficial nerve-trunks
(Fig. 86). The tumours resemble the solitary trunk-neuroma, are usually
quite insensitive, and many of them are unknown to the patient. As a
result of injury or other exciting cause, however, one or other tumour
may increase in size and become extremely sensitive; the pain is then
agonising; it is increased by handling, and interferes with sleep. In
these conditions, a malignant transformation of the fibroma into sarcoma
is to be suspected. Motor disturbances are exceptional, unless in the
case of tumours within the vertebral canal, which press on the spinal
medulla and cause paraplegia.

[Illustration: FIG. 86.--Diffuse enlargement of Nerves in generalised
Neuro-fibromatosis.

(After R. W. Smith.)]

Neuro-fibromatosis is frequently accompanied by _pigmentation of the
skin_ in the form of brown spots or patches scattered over the trunk.

The disease is often stationary for long periods. In progressive cases
the patient becomes exhausted, and usually dies of some intercurrent
affection, particularly phthisis. The treatment is restricted to
relieving symptoms and complications; removal of one of the tumours is
to be strongly deprecated.

In a considerable proportion of cases one of the multiple tumours takes
on the characters of a malignant growth ("secondary malignant neuroma,"
Garr). This malignant transformation may follow upon injury, or on an
unsuccessful attempt to remove the tumour. The features are those of a
rapidly growing sarcoma involving a nerve-trunk, with agonising pain
and muscular cramps, followed by paralysis from destruction of the
nerve fibres. The removal of the tumour is usually followed by
recurrence, so that high amputation is the only treatment to be
recommended. Metastasis to internal organs is exceptional.

[Illustration: FIG. 87.--Plexiform Neuroma of small Sciatic Nerve, from
a girl t. 16.

(Mr. Annandale's case.)]

There are other types of neuro-fibromatosis which require brief mention.

_The plexiform neuroma_ (Fig. 87) is a fibromatosis confined to the
distribution of one or more contiguous nerves or of a plexus of nerves,
and it may occur either by itself or along with multiple tumours of the
nerve-trunks and with pigmentation of the skin. The clinical features
are those of an ill-defined swelling composed of a number of tortuous,
convoluted cords, lying in a loose areolar tissue and freely movable on
one another. It is rarely the seat of pain or tenderness. It most often
appears in the early years of life, sometimes in relation to a pigmented
or hairy mole. It is of slow growth, may remain stationary for long
periods, and has little or no tendency to become malignant. It is
usually subcutaneous, and is frequently situated on the head or neck in
the distribution of the trigeminal or superficial cervical nerves. There
is no necessity for its removal, but this may be indicated because of
disfigurement, especially on the face or scalp or because its bulk
interferes with function. When involving the ophthalmic division of the
trigeminus, for example, it may cause enlargement of the upper lid and
proptosis, with danger to the function of the globe. The results of
excision are usually satisfactory, even if the removal is not complete.

[Illustration: FIG. 88.--Multiple Neuro-fibromas of Skin (Molluscum
fibrosum, or Recklinghausen's disease).]

_The cutaneous neuro-fibroma_ or _molluscum fibrosum_ has been shown by
Recklinghausen to be a soft fibroma related to the terminal filaments of
one of the cutaneous nerves (Fig. 88). The disease appears in the form
of multiple, soft, projecting tumours, scattered all over the body,
except the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. The tumours are of
all sizes, some being no larger than a pin's head, whilst many are as
big as a filbert and a few even larger. Many are sessile and others are
distinctly pedunculated, but all are covered with skin. They are mobile,
soft to the touch, and of the consistence of firm fat. In exceptional
cases one of the skin tumours may attain an enormous size and cause a
hideous deformity, hanging down by its own weight in lobulated or folded
masses (pachy-dermatocele). The treatment consists in removing the
larger swellings. In some cases molluscum fibrosum is associated with
pigmentation of the skin and with multiple tumours of the nerve-trunks.
The small multiple tumours rarely call for interference.

[Illustration: FIG. 89.--Elephantiasis Neuromatosa in a woman t. 28]

_Elephantiasis neuromatosa_ is the name applied by Virchow to a
condition in which a limb is swollen and misshapen as a result of the
extension of a neuro-fibromatosis to the skin and subcutaneous cellular
tissue of the extremity as a whole (Fig. 89). It usually begins in early
life without apparent cause, and it may be associated with multiple
tumours of the nerve-trunks. The inconvenience caused by the bulk and
weight of the limb may justify its removal.


SURGERY OF THE INDIVIDUAL NERVES[6]

[6] We desire here to acknowledge our indebtedness to Mr. James
Sherren's work on _Injuries of Nerves and their Treatment_.

#The Brachial Plexus.#--Lesions of the brachial plexus may be divided
into those above the clavicle and those below that bone.

In the #supra-clavicular injuries#, the violence applied to the head or
shoulder causes over-stretching of the anterior branches (primary
divisions) of the cervical nerves, the fifth, or the fifth and sixth
being those most liable to suffer. Sometimes the traction is exerted
upon the plexus from below, as when a man in falling from a height
endeavours to save himself by clutching at some projection, and the
lesion then mainly affects the first dorsal nerve. There is tearing of
the nerve sheaths, with hmorrhage, but in severe cases partial or
complete severance of nerve fibres may occur and these give way at
different levels. During the healing process an excess of fibrous tissue
is formed, which may interfere with regeneration.

_Post-ansthetic paralysis_ occurs in patients in whom, during the
course of an operation, the arm is abducted and rotated laterally or
extended above the head, causing over-stretching of the plexus,
especially of the fifth, or fifth and sixth, anterior branches.

A _cervical rib_ may damage the plexus by direct pressure, the part
usually affected being the medial cord, which is made up of fibres from
the eighth cervical and first dorsal nerves.

When a lesion of the plexus complicates a _fracture of the clavicle_,
the nerve injury is due, not to pressure on or laceration of the nerves
by fragments of bone, but to the violence causing the fracture, and this
is usually applied to the point of the shoulder.

Penetrating _wounds_, apart from those met with in military practice,
are rare.

In the #infra-clavicular injuries#, the lesion most often results from
the pressure of the dislocated head of the humerus; occasionally from
attempts made to reduce the dislocation by the heel-in-the-axilla
method, or from fracture of the upper end of the humerus or of the neck
of the scapula. The whole plexus may suffer, but more frequently the
medial cord is alone implicated.

_Clinical Features._--Three types of lesion result from indirect
violence: the whole plexus; the upper-arm type; and the lower-arm type.

_When the whole plexus is involved_, sensibility is lost over the entire
forearm and hand and over the lateral surface of the arm in its distal
two-thirds. All the muscles of the arm, forearm, and hand are paralysed,
and, as a rule, also the pectorals and spinati, but the rhomboids and
serratus anterior escape. There is paralysis of the sympathetic fibres
to the eye and orbit, with narrowing of the palpebral fissure, recession
of the globe, and the pupil is slow to dilate when shaded from the
light.

The _upper-arm type_--Erb-Duchenne paralysis--is that most frequently
met with, and it is due to a lesion of the fifth anterior branch, or, it
may be, also of the sixth. The position of the upper limb is typical:
the arm and forearm hang close to the side, with the forearm extended
and pronated; the deltoid, spinati, biceps, brachialis, and supinators
are paralysed, and in some cases the radial extensors of the wrist and
the pronator teres are also affected. The patient is unable to supinate
the forearm or to abduct the arm, and in most cases to flex the forearm.
He may, however, regain some power of flexing the forearm when it is
fully pronated, the extensors of the wrist becoming feeble flexors of
the elbow. There is, as a rule, no loss of sensibility, but complaint
may be made of tickling and of pins-and-needles over the lateral aspect
of the arm. The abnormal position of the limb may persist although the
muscles regain the power of voluntary movement, and as the condition
frequently follows a fall on the shoulder, great care is necessary in
diagnosis, as the condition is apt to be attributed to an injury to the
axillary (circumflex) nerve.

The _lower-arm type_ of paralysis, associated with the name of Klumpke,
is usually due to over-stretching of the plexus, and especially affects
the anterior branch of the first dorsal nerve. In typical cases all the
intrinsic muscles of the hand are affected, and the hand assumes the
claw shape. Sensibility is usually altered over the medial side of the
arm and forearm, and there is paralysis of the sympathetic.

_Infra-clavicular injuries_, as already stated, are most often produced
by a sub-coracoid dislocation of the humerus; the medial cord is that
most frequently injured, and the muscles paralysed are those supplied by
the ulnar nerve, with, in addition, those intrinsic muscles of the hand
supplied by the median. Sensibility is affected over the medial surface
of the forearm and ulnar area of the hand. Injury of the lateral and
posterior cords is very rare.

_Treatment_ is carried out on the lines already laid down for nerve
injuries in general. It is impossible to diagnose between complete and
incomplete rupture of the nerve cords, until sufficient time has elapsed
to allow of the establishment of the reaction of degeneration. If this
is present at the end of fourteen days, operation should not be delayed.
Access to the cords of the plexus is obtained by a dissection similar to
that employed for the subclavian artery, and the nerves are sought for
as they emerge from under cover of the scalenus anterior, and are then
traced until the seat of injury is found. In the case of the first
dorsal nerve, it may be necessary temporarily to resect the clavicle.
The usual after-treatment must be persisted in until recovery ensues,
and care must be taken that the paralysed muscles do not become
over-stretched. The prognosis is less favourable in the supra-clavicular
lesions than in those below the clavicle, which nearly always recover
without surgical intervention.

In the _brachial birth-paralysis_ met with in infants, the lesion is due
to over-stretching of the plexus, and is nearly always of the
Erb-Duchenne type. The injury is usually unilateral, it occurs with
almost equal frequency in breech and in vertex presentations, and the
left arm is more often affected than the right. The lesion is seldom
recognised at birth. The first symptom noticed is tenderness in the
supra-clavicular region, the child crying when this part is touched or
the arm is moved. The attitude may be that of the Erb-Duchenne type, or
the whole of the muscles of the upper limb may be flaccid, and the arm
hangs powerless. A considerable proportion of the cases recover
spontaneously. The arm is to be kept at rest, with the affected muscles
relaxed, and, as soon as tenderness has disappeared, daily massage and
passive movements are employed. The reaction of degeneration can rarely
be satisfactorily tested before the child is three months old, but if it
is present, an operation should be performed. After operation, the
shoulder should be elevated so that no traction is exerted on the
affected cords.

#The long thoracic nerve# (nerve of Bell), which supplies the serratus
anterior, is rarely injured. In those whose occupation entails carrying
weights upon the shoulder it may be contused, and the resulting
paralysis of the serratus is usually combined with paralysis of the
lower part of the trapezius, the branches from the third and fourth
cervical nerves which supply this muscle also being exposed to pressure
as they pass across the root of the neck. There is complaint of pain
above the clavicle, and winging of the scapula; the patient is unable to
raise the arm in front of the body above the level of the shoulder or to
perform any forward pushing movements; on attempting either of these the
winging of the scapula is at once increased. If the scapula is compared
with that on the sound side, it is seen that, in addition to the lower
angle being more prominent, the spine is more horizontal and the lower
angle nearer the middle line. The majority of these cases recover if the
limb is placed at absolute rest, the elbow supported, and massage and
galvanism persevered with. If the paralysis persists, the sterno-costal
portion of the pectoralis major may be transplanted to the lower angle
of the scapula.

The long thoracic nerve may be cut across while clearing out the axilla
in operating for cancer of the breast. The displacement of the scapula
is not so marked as in the preceding type, and the patient is able to
perform pushing movements below the level of the shoulder. If the
reaction of degeneration develops, an operation may be performed, the
ends of the nerve being sutured, or the distal end grafted into the
posterior cord of the brachial plexus.

#The Axillary (Circumflex) Nerve.#--In the majority of cases in which
paralysis of the deltoid follows upon an injury of the shoulder, it is
due to a lesion of the fifth cervical nerve, as has already been
described in injuries of the brachial plexus. The axillary nerve itself
as it passes round the neck of the humerus is most liable to be injured
from the pressure of a crutch, or of the head of the humerus in
sub-glenoid dislocation, or in fracture of the neck of the scapula or of
the humerus. In miners, who work for long periods lying on the side, the
muscle may be paralysed by direct pressure on the terminal filaments of
the nerve, and the nerve may also be involved as a result of disease in
the sub-deltoid bursa.

The deltoid is wasted, and the acromion unduly prominent. In recent
cases paralysis of the muscle is easily detected. In cases of long
standing it is not so simple, because other muscles, the spinati, the
clavicular fibres of the pectoral and the serratus, take its place and
elevate the arm; there is always loss of sensation on the lateral aspect
of the shoulder. There is rarely any call for operative treatment, as
the paralysis is usually compensated for by other muscles.

When the _supra-scapular nerve_ is contused or stretched in injuries of
the shoulder, the spinati muscles are paralysed and wasted, the spine of
the scapula is unduly prominent, and there is impairment in the power of
abducting the arm and rotating it laterally.

The _musculo-cutaneous nerve_ is very rarely injured; when cut across,
there is paralysis of the coraco-brachialis, biceps, and part of the
brachialis, but no movements are abolished, the forearm being flexed, in
the pronated position, by the brachio-radialis and long radial extensor
of the wrist; in the supinated position, by that portion of the
brachialis supplied by the radial nerve. Supination is feebly performed
by the supinator muscle. Protopathic and epicritic sensibility are lost
over the radial side of the forearm.

#Radial (Musculo-Spiral) Nerve.#--From its anatomical relationships this
trunk is more exposed to injury than any other nerve in the body. It is
frequently compressed against the humerus in sleeping with the arm
resting on the back of a chair, especially in the deep sleep of
alcoholic intoxication (drunkard's palsy). It may be pressed upon by a
crutch in the axilla, by the dislocated head of the humerus, or by
violent compression of the arm, as when an elastic tourniquet is applied
too tightly. The most serious and permanent injuries of this nerve are
associated with fractures of the humerus, especially those from direct
violence attended with comminution of the bone. The nerve may be crushed
or torn by one of the fragments at the time of the injury, or at a later
period may be compressed by callus.

_Clinical Features._--Immediately after the injury it is impossible to
tell whether the nerve is torn across or merely compressed. The patient
may complain of numbness and tingling in the distribution of the
superficial branch of the nerve, but it is a striking fact, that so long
as the nerve is divided below the level at which it gives off the dorsal
cutaneous nerve of the forearm (external cutaneous branch), there is no
loss of sensation. When it is divided above the origin of the dorsal
cutaneous branch, or when the dorsal branch of the musculo-cutaneous
nerve is also divided, there is a loss of sensibility on the dorsum
of the hand.

The motor symptoms predominate, the muscles affected being the extensors
of the wrist and fingers, and the supinators. There is a characteristic
"drop-wrist"; the wrist is flexed and pronated, and the patient is
unable to dorsiflex the wrist or fingers (Fig. 90). If the hand and
proximal phalanges are supported, the second and third phalanges may be
partly extended by the interossei and lumbricals. There is also
considerable impairment of power in the muscles which antagonise those
that are paralysed, so that the grasp of the hand is feeble, and the
patient almost loses the use of it; in some cases this would appear to
be due to the median nerve having been injured at the same time.

[Illustration: FIG. 90.--Drop-wrist following Fracture of Shaft of
Humerus.]

If the lesion is high up, as it is, for example, in crutch paralysis,
the triceps and anconeus may also suffer.

_Treatment._--The slighter forms of injury by compression recover under
massage, douching, and electricity. If there is drop-wrist, the hand and
forearm are placed on a palmar splint, with the hand dorsiflexed to
nearly a right angle, and this position is maintained until voluntary
dorsiflexion at the wrist returns to the normal. Recovery is sometimes
delayed for several months.

In the more severe injuries associated with fracture of the humerus and
attended with the reaction of degeneration, it is necessary to cut down
upon the nerve and free it from the pressure of a fragment of bone or
from callus or adhesions. If the nerve is torn across, the ends must be
sutured, and if this is impossible owing to loss of tissue, the gap may
be bridged by a graft taken from the superficial branch of the radial
nerve, or the ends may be implanted into the median.

Finally, in cases in which the paralysis is permanent and incurable, the
disability may be relieved by operation. A fascial graft can be employed
to act as a ligament permanently extending the wrist; it is attached to
the third and fourth metacarpal bones distally and to the radius or ulna
proximally. The flexor carpi radialis can then be joined up with the
extensor digitorum communis by passing its tendon through an aperture in
the interosseous membrane, or better still, through the pronator
quadratus, as there is less likelihood of the formation of adhesions
when the tendon passes through muscle than through interosseous
membrane. The palmaris longus is anastomosed with the abductor pollicis
longus (extensor ossis metacarpi pollicis), thus securing a fair amount
of abduction of the thumb. The flexor carpi ulnaris may also be
anastomosed with the common extensor of the fingers. The extensors of
the wrist may be shortened, so as to place the hand in the position of
dorsal flexion, and thus improve the attitude and grasp of the hand.

_The superficial branch of the radial_ (radial nerve) _and the deep
branch_ (posterior interosseous), apart from suffering in lesions of the
radial, are liable to be contused or torn is dislocation of the head of
the radius, and in fracture of the neck of the bone. The deep branch may
be divided as it passes through the supinator in operations on old
fractures and dislocations in the region of the elbow. Division of the
superficial branch in the upper two-thirds of the forearm produces no
loss of sensibility; division in the lower third after the nerve has
become associated with branches from the musculo-cutaneous is followed
by a loss of sensibility on the radial side of the hand and thumb. Wounds
on the dorsal surface of the wrist and forearm are often followed by
loss of sensibility over a larger area, because the musculo-cutaneous
nerve is divided as well, and some of the fibres of the lower lateral
cutaneous branch of the radial.

[Illustration: FIG. 91.--To illustrate the Loss of Sensation produced by
Division of the Median Nerve. The area of complete cutaneous
insensibility is shaded black. The parts insensitive to light touch and
to intermediate degrees of temperature are enclosed within the dotted
line.

(After Head and Sherren.)]

#The Median Nerve# is most frequently injured in wounds made by broken
glass in the region of the wrist. It may also be injured in fractures of
the lower end of the humerus, in fractures of both bones of the forearm,
and as a result of pressure by splints. After _division at the elbow_,
there is impairment of mobility which affects the thumb, and to a less
extent the index finger: the terminal phalanx of the thumb cannot be
flexed owing to the paralysis of the flexor pollicis longus, and the
index can only be flexed at its metacarpo-phalangeal joint by the
interosseous muscles attached to it. Pronation of the forearm is feeble,
and is completed by the weight of the hand. After _division at the
wrist_, the abductor-opponens group of muscles and the two lateral
lumbricals only are affected; the abduction of the thumb can be feebly
imitated by the short extensor and the long abductor (ext. ossis
metacarpi pollicis), while opposition may be simulated by contraction of
the long flexor and the short abductor of the thumb; the paralysis of
the two medial lumbricals produces no symptoms that can be recognised.
It is important to remember that when the median nerve is divided at the
wrist, deep touch can be appreciated over the whole of the area
supplied by the nerve; the injury, therefore, is liable to be over
looked. If, however, the tendons are divided as well as the nerve, there
is insensibility to deep touch. The areas of epicritic and of
protopathic insensibility are illustrated in Fig. 91. The division of
the nerve at the elbow, or even at the axilla, does not increase the
extent of the loss of epicritic or protopathic sensibility, but usually
affects deep sensibility.

[Illustration: FIG. 92.--To illustrate Loss of Sensation produced by
complete Division of Ulnar Nerve. Loss of all forms of cutaneous
sensibility is represented by the shaded area. The parts insensitive to
light touch and to intermediate degrees of heat and cold are enclosed
within the dotted line.

(Head and Sherren.)]

#The Ulnar Nerve.#--The most common injury of this nerve is its division
in transverse accidental wounds just above the wrist. In the arm it may
be contused, along with the radial, in crutch paralysis; in the region
of the elbow it may be injured in fractures or dislocations, or it may
be accidentally divided in the operation for excising the elbow-joint.

When it is injured _at or above the elbow_, there is paralysis of the
flexor carpi ulnaris, the ulnar half of the flexor digitorum profundus,
all the interossei, the two medial lumbricals, and the adductors of the
thumb. The hand assumes a characteristic attitude: the index and middle
fingers are extended at the metacarpo-phalangeal joints owing to
paralysis of the interosseous muscles attached to them; the little and
ring fingers are hyper-extended at these joints in consequence of the
paralysis of the lumbricals; all the fingers are flexed at the
inter-phalangeal joints, the flexion being most marked in the little and
ring fingers--claw-hand or _main en griffe_. On flexing the wrist, the
hand is tilted to the radial side, but the paralysis of the flexor carpi
ulnaris is often compensated for by the action of the palmaris longus.
The little and ring fingers can be flexed to a slight degree by the
slips of the flexor sublimis attached to them and supplied by the median
nerve; flexion of the terminal phalanx of the little finger is almost
impossible. Adduction and abduction movements of the fingers are lost.
Adduction of the thumb is carried out, not by the paralysed adductor
pollicis, but the movement may be simulated by the long flexor and
extensor muscles of the thumb. Epicritic sensibility is lost over the
little finger, the ulnar half of the ring finger, and that part of the
palm and dorsum of the hand to the ulnar side of a line drawn
longitudinally through the ring finger and continued upwards.
Protopathic sensibility is lost over an area which varies in different
cases. Deep sensibility is usually lost over an area almost as extensive
as that of protopathic insensibility.

When the nerve is _divided at the wrist_, the adjacent tendons are also
frequently severed. If divided below the point at which its dorsal
branch is given off, the sensory paralysis is much less marked, and the
injury is therefore liable to be overlooked until the wasting of muscles
and typical _main en griffe_ ensue. The loss of sensibility after
division of the nerve before the dorsal branch is given off resembles
that after division at the elbow, except that in uncomplicated cases
deep sensibility is usually retained. If the tendons are divided as
well, however, deep touch is also lost.

Care must be taken in all these injuries to prevent deformity; a splint
must be worn, at least during the night, until the muscles regain their
power of voluntary movement, and then exercises should be instituted.

#Dislocation of the ulnar nerve# at the elbow results from sudden and
violent flexion of the joint, the muscular effort causing stretching or
laceration of the fascia that holds the nerve in its groove; it is
predisposed to if the groove is shallow as a result of imperfect
development of the medial condyle of the humerus, and by cubitus valgus.

The nerve slips forward, and may be felt lying on the medial aspect of
the condyle. It may retain this position, or it may slip backwards and
forwards with the movements of the arm. The symptoms at the time of the
displacement are some disability at the elbow, and pain and tingling
along the nerve, which are exaggerated by movement and by pressure. The
symptoms may subside altogether, or a neuritis may develop, with severe
pain shooting up the nerve.

The dislocated nerve is easily replaced, but is difficult to retain in
position. In recent cases the arm may be placed in the extended position
with a pad over the condyle, care being taken to avoid pressure on the
nerve. Failing relief, it is better to make a bed for the nerve by
dividing the deep fascia behind the medial condyle and to stitch the
edges of the fascia over the nerve. This operation has been successful
in all the recorded cases.

#The Sciatic Nerve.#--When this nerve is compressed, as by sitting on a
fence, there is tingling and powerlessness in the limb as a whole, known
as "sleeping" of the limb, but these phenomena are evanescent. _Injuries
to the great sciatic nerve_ are rare except in war. Partial division is
more common than complete, and it is noteworthy that the fibres destined
for the peroneal nerve are more often and more severely injured than
those for the tibial (internal popliteal). After complete division, all
the muscles of the leg are paralysed; if the section is in the upper
part of the thigh, the hamstrings are also paralysed. The limb is at
first quite powerless, but the patient usually recovers sufficiently to
be able to walk with a little support, and although the hamstrings are
paralysed the knee can be flexed by the sartorius and gracilis. The
chief feature is drop-foot. There is also loss of sensation below the
knee except along the course of the long saphenous nerve on the medial
side of the leg and foot. Sensibility to deep touch is only lost over a
comparatively small area on the dorsum of the foot.

#The Common Peroneal (external popliteal) nerve# is exposed to injury
where it winds round the neck of the fibula, because it is superficial
and lies against the unyielding bone. It may be compressed by a
tourniquet, or it may be bruised or torn in fractures of the upper end
of the bone. It has been divided in accidental wounds,--by a scythe, for
example,--in incising for cellulitis, and in performing subcutaneous
tenotomy of the biceps tendon. Cases have been observed of paralysis of
the nerve as a result of prolonged acute flexion of the knee in certain
occupations.

When the nerve is divided, the most obvious result is "drop-foot"; the
patient is unable to dorsiflex the foot and cannot lift his toes off the
ground, so that in walking he is obliged to jerk the foot forwards and
laterally. The loss of sensibility depends upon whether the nerve is
divided above or below the origin of the large cutaneous branch which
comes off just before it passes round the neck of the fibula. In course
of time the foot becomes inverted and the toes are pointed--pes
equino-varus--and trophic sores are liable to form.

#The Tibial (internal popliteal) nerve# is rarely injured.

#The Cranial nerves# are considered with affections of the head and neck
(Vol. II.).


NEURALGIA

The term neuralgia is applied clinically to any pain which follows the
course of a nerve, and is not referable to any discoverable cause. It
should not be applied to pain which results from pressure on a nerve by
a tumour, a mass of callus, an aneurysm, or by any similar gross lesion.
We shall only consider here those forms of neuralgia which are amenable
to surgical treatment.

#Brachial Neuralgia.#--The pain is definitely located in the
distribution of one of the branches or nerve roots, is often
intermittent, and is usually associated with tingling and disturbance of
tactile sensation. The root of the neck should be examined to exclude
pressure as the cause of the pain by a cervical rib, a tumour, or an
aneurysm. When medical treatment fails, the nerve-trunks may be injected
with saline solution or recourse may be had to operative measures, the
affected cords being exposed and stretched through an incision in the
posterior triangle of the neck. If this fails to give relief, the more
serious operation of resecting the posterior roots of the affected
nerves within the vertebral canal may be considered.

_Neuralgia of the sciatic nerve_--#sciatica#--is the most common form of
neuralgia met with in surgical practice.

It is chiefly met with in adults of gouty or rheumatic tendencies who
suffer from indigestion, constipation, and oxaluria--in fact, the same
type of patients who are liable to lumbago, and the two affections are
frequently associated. In hospital practice it is commonly met with in
coal-miners and others who assume a squatting position at work. The
onset of the pain may follow over-exertion and exposure to cold and wet,
especially in those who do not take regular exercise. Any error of diet
or indulgence in beer or wine may contribute to its development.

The essential symptom is paroxysmal or continuous pain along the course
of the nerve in the buttock, thigh, or leg. It may be comparatively
slight, or it may be so severe as to prevent sleep. It is aggravated by
movement, so that the patient walks lame or is obliged to lie up. It is
aggravated also by any movement which tends to put the nerve on the
stretch, as in bending down to put on the shoes, such movements also
causing tingling down the nerve, and sometimes numbness in the foot.
This may be demonstrated by flexing the thigh on the abdomen, the knee
being kept extended; there is no pain if the same manuvre is repeated
with the knee flexed. The nerve is sensitive to pressure, the most
tender points being its emergence from the greater sciatic foramen, the
hollow between the trochanter and the ischial tuberosity, and where the
common peroneal nerve winds round the neck of the fibula. The muscles of
the thigh are often wasted and are liable to twitch.

The clinical features vary a good deal in different cases; the affection
is often obstinate, and may last for many weeks or even months.

In the sciatica that results from neuritis and perineuritis, there is
marked tenderness on pressure due to the involvement of the nerve
filaments in the sheath of the nerve, and there may be patches of
cutaneous ansthesia, loss of tendon reflexes, localised wasting of
muscles, and vaso-motor and trophic changes. The presence of the
reaction of degeneration confirms the diagnosis of neuritis. In
long-standing cases the pain and discomfort may lead to a postural
scoliosis (_ischias-scoliotica_).

_Diagnosis._--Pain referred along the course of the sciatic nerve on one
side, or, as is sometimes the case, on both sides, is a symptom of
tumours of the uterus, the rectum, or the pelvic bones. It may result
also from the pressure of an abscess or an aneurysm either inside the
pelvis or in the buttock, and is sometimes associated with disease of
the spinal medulla, such as tabes. Gluteal fibrositis may be mistaken
for sciatica. It is also necessary to exclude such conditions as disease
in the hip or sacro-iliac joint, especially tuberculous disease and
arthritis deformans, before arriving at a diagnosis of sciatica. A
digital examination of the rectum or vagina is of great value in
excluding intra-pelvic tumours.

_Treatment_ is both general and local. Any constitutional tendency, such
as gout or rheumatism, must be counteracted, and indigestion, oxaluria,
and constipation should receive appropriate treatment. In acute cases
the patient is confined to bed between blankets, the limb is wrapped in
thermogene wool, and the knee is flexed over a pillow; in some cases
relief is experienced from the use of a long splint, or slinging the leg
in a Salter's cradle. A rubber hot-bottle may be applied over the seat
of greatest pain. The bowels should be well opened by castor oil or by
calomel followed by a saline. Salicylate of soda in full doses, or
aspirin, usually proves effectual in relieving pain, but when this is
very intense it may call for injections of heroin or morphin. Potassium
iodide is of benefit in chronic cases.

Relief usually results from bathing, douching, and massage, and from
repeated gentle stretching of the nerve. This may be carried out by
passive movements of the limb--the hip being flexed while the knee is
kept extended; and by active movements--the patient flexing the limb at
the hip, the knee being maintained in the extended position. These
exercises, which may be preceded by massage, are carried out night and
morning, and should be practised systematically by those who are liable
to sciatica.

Benefit has followed the injection into the nerve itself, or into the
tissues surrounding it, of normal saline solution; from 70100 c.c. are
injected at one time. If the pain recurs, the injection may require to
be repeated on many occasions at different points up and down the nerve.
Needling or acupuncture consists in piercing the nerve at intervals in
the buttock and thigh with long steel needles. Six or eight needles are
inserted and left in position for from fifteen to thirty minutes.

In obstinate and severe cases the nerve may be _forcibly stretched_.
This may be done bloodlessly by placing the patient on his back with the
hip flexed to a right angle, and then gradually extending the knee until
it is in a straight line with the thigh (Billroth). A general ansthetic
is usually required. A more effectual method is to expose the nerve
through an incision at the fold of the buttock, and forcibly pull upon
it. This operation is most successful when the pain is due to the nerve
being involved in adhesions.

#Trigeminal Neuralgia.#--A severe form of epileptiform neuralgia occurs
in the branches of the fifth nerve, and is one of the most painful
affections to which human flesh is liable. So far as its pathology is
known, it is believed to be due to degenerative changes in the semilunar
(Gasserian) ganglion. It is met with in adults, is almost invariably
unilateral, and develops without apparent cause. The pain, which occurs
in paroxysms, is at first of moderate severity, but gradually becomes
agonising. In the early stages the paroxysms occur at wide intervals,
but later they recur with such frequency as to be almost continuous.
They are usually excited by some trivial cause, such as moving the jaws
in eating or speaking, touching the face as in washing, or exposure to a
draught of cold air. Between the paroxysms the patient is free from
pain, but is in constant terror of its return, and the face wears an
expression of extreme suffering and anxiety. When the paroxysm is
accompanied by twitching of the facial muscles, it is called _spasmodic
tic_.

The skin of the affected area may be glazed and red, or may be pale and
moist with inspissated sweat, the patient not daring to touch or wash
it.

There is excessive tenderness at the points of emergence of the
different branches on the face, and pressure over one or other of these
points may excite a paroxysm. In typical cases the patient is unable to
take any active part in life. The attempt to eat is attended with such
severe pain that he avoids taking food. In some cases the suffering is
so great that the patient only obtains sleep by the use of hypnotics,
and he is often on the verge of suicide.

_Diagnosis._--There is seldom any difficulty in recognising the disease.
It is important, however, to exclude the hysterical form of neuralgia,
which is characterised by its occurrence earlier in life, by the pain
varying in situation, being frequently bilateral, and being more often
constant than paroxysmal.

_Treatment._--Before having recourse to the measures described below, it
is advisable to give a thorough trial to the medical measures used in
the treatment of neuralgia.

_The Injection of Alcohol into the Nerve._--The alcohol acts by
destroying the nerve fibres, and must be brought into direct contact
with them; if the nerve has been properly struck the injection is
followed by complete ansthesia in the distribution of the nerve. The
relief may last for from six months to three years; if the pain returns,
the injection may be repeated. The strength of the alcohol should be 85
per cent., and the amount injected about 2 c.c.; a general, or
preferably a local, ansthetic (novocain) should be employed
(Schlsser); the needle is 8 cm. long, and 0.7 mm. in diameter. The
severe pain which the alcohol causes may be lessened, after the needle
has penetrated to the necessary depth, by passing a few cubic
centimetres of a 2 per cent. solution of _novocain-suprarenin_ through
it before the alcohol is injected. The treatment by injection of alcohol
is superior to the resection of branches of the nerve, for though
relapses occur after the treatment with alcohol, renewed freedom from
pain may be obtained by its repetition. The ophthalmic division should
not, however, be treated in this manner, for the alcohol may escape into
the orbit and endanger other nerves in this region. Harris recommends
the injection of alcohol into the semilunar ganglion.

_Operative Treatment._--This consists in the removal of the affected
nerve or nerves, either by resection--_neurectomy_; or by a combination
of resection with twisting or tearing of the nerve from its central
connections--_avulsion_. To prevent the regeneration of the nerve after
these operations, the canal of exit through the bone should be
obliterated; this is best accomplished by a silver screw-nail driven
home by an ordinary screw-driver (Charles H. Mayo).

When the neuralgia involves branches of two or of all three trunks, or
when it has recurred after temporary relief following resection of
individual branches, the _removal of the semilunar ganglion_, along with
the main trunks of the maxillary and mandibular divisions, should be
considered.

The operation is a difficult and serious one, but the results are
satisfactory so far as the cure of the neuralgia is concerned. There is
little or no disability from the unilateral paralysis of the muscles of
mastication; but on account of the insensitiveness of the cornea, the
eye must be protected from irritation, especially during the first month
or two after the operation; this may be done by fixing a large
watch-glass around the edge of the orbit with adhesive plaster.

If the ophthalmic branch is not involved, neither it nor the ganglion
should be interfered with; the maxillary and mandibular divisions should
be divided within the skull, and the foramen rotundum and foramen ovale
obliterated.




CHAPTER XVII

THE SKIN AND SUBCUTANEOUS TISSUE


Structure of skin--_Blisters_--_Callosities_--_Corns_--_Chilblains_
    --_Boils_--_Carbuncle_--_Abscess_--_Veldt sores_--Tuberculosis of
    skin: _Inoculation tubercle_--_Lupus_: _Varieties_--Sporotrichosis
    --Elephantiasis--Sebaceous cysts or wens--Moles--Horns--New growths:
    _Fibroma_; _Papilloma_; _Adenoma_; _Epithelioma_; _Rodent cancer_;
    _Melanotic cancer_; _Sarcoma_--AFFECTIONS OF CICATRICES--_Varieties
    of scars_--_Keloid_--_Tumours_--AFFECTIONS OF NAILS.

#Structure of Skin.#--The skin is composed of a superficial cellular
layer--the epidermis, and the corium or true skin. The _epidermis_ is
differentiated from without inwards into the stratum corneum, the
stratum lucidum, the stratum granulosum, and the rete Malpighii or
germinal layer, from which all the others are developed. The _corium_ or
_true skin_ consists of connective tissue, in which ramify the blood
vessels, lymphatics, and nerves. That part of the corium immediately
adjoining the epidermis is known as the papillary portion, and contains
the terminal loops of the cutaneous blood vessels and the terminations
of the cutaneous nerves. The deeper portion of the true skin is known as
the reticular portion, and is largely composed of adipose tissue.

#Blisters# result from the exudation of serous fluid beneath the horny
layer of the epidermis. The fluid may be clear, as in the blisters of a
recent burn, or blood-stained, as in the blisters commonly accompanying
fractures of the leg. It may become purulent as a result of infection,
and this may be the starting-point of lymphangitis or cellulitis.

The skin should be disinfected and the blisters punctured. When
infected, the separated horny layer must be cut away with scissors to
allow of the necessary purification.

#Callosities# are prominent, indurated masses of the horny layer of the
epidermis, where it has been exposed to prolonged friction and pressure.
They occur on the fingers and hand as a result of certain occupations
and sports, but are most common under the balls of the toes or heel. A
bursa may form beneath a callosity, and if it becomes inflamed may cause
considerable suffering; if suppuration ensues, a sinus may form,
resembling a perforating ulcer of the foot.

The _treatment_ of callosities on the foot consists in removing pressure
by wearing properly fitting boots, and in applying a ring pad around the
callosity; another method is to fit a sock of spongiopilene with a hole
cut out opposite the callosity. After soaking in hot water, the
overgrown horny layer is pared away, and the part painted daily with a
saturated solution of salicylic acid in flexile collodion.

[Illustration: FIG. 93.--Callosities and Corns on the Sole and Plantar
Aspect of the Toes in a woman who was also the subject of flat-foot.]

#Corns.#--A corn is a localised overgrowth of the horny layer of the
epidermis, which grows downwards, pressing upon and displacing the
sensitive papill of the corium. Corns are due to the friction and
pressure of ill-fitting boots, and are met with chiefly on the toes and
sole of the foot. A corn is usually hard, dry, and white; but it may be
sodden from moisture, as in "soft corns" between the toes. A bursa may
form beneath a corn, and if inflamed constitutes one form of bunion.
When suppuration takes place in relation to a corn, there is great pain
and disability, and it may prove the starting-point of lymphangitis.

The _treatment_ consists in the wearing of properly fitting boots and
stockings, and, if the symptoms persist, the corn should be removed.
This is done after the manner of chiropodists by digging out the corn
with a suitably shaped knife. A more radical procedure is to excise,
under local ansthesia, the portion of skin containing the corn and
the underlying bursa. The majority of so-called corn solvents consist of
a solution of salicylic acid in collodion; if this is painted on daily,
the epidermis dies and can then be pared away. The unskilful paring of
corns may determine the occurrence of senile gangrene in those who are
predisposed to it by disease of the arteries.

[Illustration: FIG. 94.--Ulcerated Chilblains on Fingers of a Child.]

#Chilblains.#--Chilblain or _erythema pernio_ is a vascular disturbance
resulting from the alternate action of cold and heat on the distal parts
of the body. Chilblains are met with chiefly on the fingers and toes in
children and anmic girls. In the mild form there is a sensation of
burning and itching, the part becomes swollen, of a dusky red colour,
and the skin is tense and shiny. In more severe cases the burning and
itching are attended with pain, and the skin becomes of a violet or
wine-red colour. There is a third degree, closely approaching
frost-bite, in which the skin tends to blister and give way, leaving an
indolent raw surface popularly known as a "broken chilblain."

Those liable to chilblains should take open-air exercise, nourishing
food, cod-liver oil, and tonics. Woollen stockings and gloves should be
worn in cold weather, and sudden changes of temperature avoided. The
symptoms may be relieved by ichthyol ointment, glycerin and belladonna,
or a mixture of Venice turpentine, castor oil, and collodion applied on
lint which is wrapped round the toe. Another favourite application is
one of equal parts of tincture of capsicum and compound liniment of
camphor, painted over the area night and morning. Balsam of Peru or
resin ointment spread on gauze should be applied to broken chilblains.
The most effective treatment is Bier's bandage applied for about six
hours twice daily; it can be worn while the patient is following his
occupation; in chronic cases this may be supplemented with hot-air
baths.

#Boils and Carbuncles.#--These result from infection with the
staphylococcus aureus, which enters the orifices of the ducts of the
skin under the influence of friction and pressure, as was demonstrated
by the well-known experiment of Garr, who produced a crop of pustules
and boils on his own forearm by rubbing in a culture of the
staphylococcus aureus.

A #boil# results when the infection is located in a hair follicle or
sebaceous gland. A hard, painful, conical swelling develops, to which,
so long as the skin retains its normal appearance, the term "blind
boil" is applied. Usually, however, the skin becomes red, and after a
time breaks, giving exit to a drop or two of thick pus. After an
interval of from six to ten days a soft white slough is discharged; this
is known as the "core," and consists of the necrosed hair follicle or
sebaceous gland. After the separation of the core the boil heals
rapidly, leaving a small depressed scar.

Boils are most frequently met with on the back of the neck and the
buttocks, and on other parts where the skin is coarse and thick and is
exposed to friction and pressure. The occurrence of a number or a
succession of boils is due to spread of the infection, the cocci from
the original boil obtaining access to adjacent hair follicles. The
spread of boils may be unwittingly promoted by the use of a domestic
poultice or the wearing of infected underclothing.

While boils are frequently met with in debilitated persons, and
particularly in those suffering from diabetes or Bright's disease, they
also occur in those who enjoy vigorous health. They seldom prove
dangerous to life except in diabetic subjects, but when they occur on
the face there is a risk of lymphatic and of general pyogenic infection.
Boils may be differentiated from syphilitic lesions of the skin by
their acute onset and progress, and by the absence of other evidence of
syphilis; and from the malignant or anthrax pustule by the absence of
the central black eschar and of the circumstances which attend upon
anthrax infection.

_Treatment._--The skin of the affected area should be painted with
iodine, and a Klapp's suction bell applied thrice daily. If pus forms,
the skin is frozen with ethyl-chloride and a small incision made, after
which the application of the suction bell is persevered with. The
further treatment consists in the use of diluted boracic or resin
ointment. In multiple boils on the trunk and limbs, lysol or boracic
baths are of service; the underclothing should be frequently changed,
and that which is discarded must be disinfected. In patients with
recurrence of boils about the neck, re-infection frequently takes place
from the scalp, to which therefore treatment should be directed.

Any impaired condition of health should be corrected; when, there is
sugar or albumen in the urine the conditions on which these depend must
receive appropriate treatment. When there are successive crops of boils,
recourse should be had to vaccines. In refractory cases benefit has
followed the subcutaneous injection of lipoid solution containing tin.

#Carbuncle# may be looked upon as an aggregation of boils, and is
characterised by a densely hard base and a brownish-red discoloration of
the skin. It is usually about the size of a crown-piece, but it may
continue to enlarge until it attains the size of a dinner-plate. The
patient is ill and feverish, and the pain may be so severe as to prevent
sleep. As time goes on several points of suppuration appear, and when
these burst there are formed a number of openings in the skin, giving it
a cribriform appearance; these openings exude pus. The different
openings ultimately fuse and the large adherent greyish-white slough is
exposed. The separation of the slough is a tedious process, and the
patient may become exhausted by pain, discharge, and toxin absorption.
When the slough is finally thrown off, a deep gap is left, which takes a
long time to heal. A large carbuncle is a grave disease, especially in a
weakly person suffering from diabetes or chronic alcoholism; we have on
several occasions seen diabetic coma supervene and the patient die
without recovering consciousness. In the majority of cases the patient
is laid aside for several months. It is most common in male adults over
forty years of age, and is usually situated on the back between the
shoulders. When it occurs on the face or anterior part of the neck it is
especially dangerous, because of the greater risk of dissemination of
the infection.

A carbuncle is to be differentiated from an ulcerated gumma and from
anthrax pustule.

[Illustration: FIG. 95.--Carbuncle of seventeen days' duration in a
woman t. 57.]

_Treatment._--Pain is relieved by full doses of opium or codein, and
these drugs are specially indicated when sugar is present in the urine.
Vaccines may be given a trial. The diet should be liberal and easily
digested, and strychnin and other stimulants may be of service. Locally
the treatment is carried out on the same lines as for boils.

In some cases it is advisable to excise the carbuncle or to make
incisions across it in different directions, so that the resulting wound
presents a stellate appearance.

#Acute Abscesses of the Skin and Subcutaneous Tissue in Young
Children.#--In young infants, abscesses are not infrequently met with
scattered over the trunk and limbs, and are probably the result of
infection of the sebaceous glands from dirty underclothing. The
abscesses should be opened, and the further spread of infection
prevented by cleansing of the skin and by the use of clean under-linen.
Similar abscesses are met with on the scalp in association with eczema,
impetigo, and pediculosis.

#Veldt Sore.#--This sore usually originates in an abrasion of the
epidermis, such as a sun blister, the bite of an insect, or a scratch. A
pustule forms and bursts, and a brownish-yellow scab forms over it. When
this is removed, an ulcer is left which has little tendency to heal.
These sores are most common about the hands, arms, neck, and feet, and
are most apt to occur in those who have had no opportunities of washing,
and who have lived for a long time on tinned foods.

#Tuberculosis of the Skin.#--Interest attaches chiefly to the primary
forms of tuberculosis of the skin in which the bacilli penetrate from
without--inoculation tubercle and lupus.

#Inoculation Tubercle.#--The appearances vary with the conditions under
which the inoculation takes place. As observed on the fingers of adults,
the affection takes the form of an indolent painless swelling, the
epidermis being red and glazed, or warty, and irregularly fissured.
Sometimes the epidermis gives way, forming an ulcer with flabby
granulations. The infection rarely spreads to the lymphatics, but we
have seen inoculation tubercle of the index-finger followed by a large
cold abscess on the median side of the upper arm and by a huge mass of
breaking down glands in the axilla.

In children who run about barefooted in towns, tubercle may be
inoculated into wounds in the sole or about the toes, and although the
local appearances may not be characteristic, the nature of the infection
is revealed by its tendency to spread up the limb along the lymph
vessels, giving rise to abscesses and fungating ulcers in relation to
the femoral glands.

#Tuberculous Lupus.#--This is an extremely chronic affection of the
skin. It rarely extends to the lymph glands, and of all tuberculous
lesions is the least dangerous to life. The commonest form of
lupus--_lupus vulgaris_--usually commences in childhood or youth, and is
most often met with on the nose or cheek. The early and typical
appearance is that of brownish-yellow or pink nodules in the skin, about
the size of hemp seed. Healing frequently occurs in the centre of the
affected area while the disease continues to extend at the margin.

When there is actual destruction of tissue and ulceration--the so-called
"_lupus excedens_" or "_ulcerans_"--healing is attended with
cicatricial contraction, which may cause unsightly deformity. When the
cheek is affected, the lower eyelid may be drawn down and everted; when
the lips are affected, the mouth may be distorted or seriously
diminished in size. When the nose is attacked, both the skin and mucous
surfaces are usually involved, and the nasal orifices may be narrowed or
even obliterated; sometimes the soft parts, including the cartilages,
are destroyed, leaving only the bones covered by tightly stretched scar
tissue.

The disease progresses slowly, healing in some places and spreading at
others. The patient complains of a burning sensation, but little of
pain, and is chiefly concerned about the disfigurement. Nothing is more
characteristic of lupus than the appearance of fresh nodules in parts
which have already healed. In the course of years large tracts of the
face and neck may become affected. From the lips it may spread to the
gum and palate, giving to the mucous membrane the appearance of a
raised, bright-red, papillary or villous surface. When the disease
affects the gums, the teeth may become loose and fall out.

[Illustration: FIG. 96.--Tuberculous Elephantiasis in a woman t. 35.]

On parts of the body other than the face, the disease is even more
chronic, and is often attended with a considerable production of dense
fibrous tissue--the so-called _fibroid lupus_. Sometimes there is a
warty thickening of the epidermis--_lupus verrucosus_. In the fingers
and toes it may lead to a progressive destruction of tissue like that
observed in leprosy, and from the resulting loss of portions of the
digits it has been called _lupus mutilans_. In the lower extremity a
remarkable form of the disease is sometimes met with, to which the term
_lupus elephantiasis_ (Fig. 96) has been applied. It commences as an
ordinary lupus of the toes or dorsum of the foot, from which the
tuberculous infection spreads to the lymph vessels, and the limb as a
whole becomes enormously swollen and unshapely.

Finally, a long-standing lupus, especially on the cheek, may become the
seat of epithelioma--_lupus epithelioma_--usually of the exuberant or
cauliflower type, which, like other epitheliomas that originate in scar
tissue, presents little tendency to infect the lymphatics.

The _diagnosis_ of lupus is founded on the chronic progress and long
duration, and the central scarring with peripheral extension of the
disease. On the face it is most liable to be confused with syphilis and
with rodent cancer. The syphilitic lesion belongs to the tertiary
period, and although presenting a superficial resemblance to
tuberculosis, its progress is more rapid, so that within a few months it
may involve an area of skin as wide as would be affected by lupus in as
many years. Further, it readily yields to anti-syphilitic treatment. In
cases of tertiary syphilis in which the nose is destroyed, it will be
noticed that the bones have suffered most, while in lupus the
destruction of tissue involves chiefly the soft parts.

Rodent cancer is liable to be mistaken for lupus, because it affects the
same parts of the face; it is equally chronic, and may partly heal. It
begins later in life, however, the margin of the ulcer is more sharply
defined, and often presents a "rolled" appearance.

_Treatment._--When the disease is confined to a limited area, the most
rapid and certain cure is obtained by _excision_; larger areas are
scraped with the sharp spoon. The _ray treatment_ includes the use of
luminous, Rntgen, or radium rays, and possesses the advantage of being
comparatively painless and of being followed by the least amount of
scarring and deformity.

Encouraging results have also been obtained by the application of carbon
dioxide snow.

#Multiple subcutaneous tuberculous nodules# are met with chiefly in
children. They are indolent and painless, and rarely attract attention
until they break down and form abscesses, which are usually about the
size of a cherry, and when these burst sinuses or ulcers result. If the
overlying skin is still intact, the best treatment is excision. If the
abscess has already infected the skin, each focus should be scraped and
packed.

#Sporotrichosis# is a mycotic infection due to the sporothrix Shenkii.
It presents so many features resembling syphilis and tubercle that it is
frequently mistaken for one or other of these affections. It occurs
chiefly in males between fifteen and forty-five, who are farmers, fruit
and vegetable dealers, or florists. There is usually a history of trauma
of the nature of a scratch or a cut, and after a long incubation period
there develop a series of small, hard, round nodules in the skin and
subcutaneous tissue which, without pain or temperature, soften into
cold abscesses and leave indolent ulcers or sinuses. The infection is
of slow progress and follows the course of the lymphatics. From the
gelatinous pus the organism is cultivated without difficulty, and this
is the essential step in arriving at a diagnosis. The disease yields in
a few weeks to full doses of iodide of potassium.

#Elephantiasis.#--This term is applied to an excessive enlargement of a
part depending upon an overgrowth of the skin and subcutaneous cellular
tissue, and it may result from a number of causes, acting independently
or in combination. The condition is observed chiefly in the extremities
and in the external organs of generation.

_Elephantiasis from Lymphatic or Venous Obstruction._--Of this the
best-known example is _tropical elephantiasis_ (E. arabum), which is
endemic in Samoa, Barbadoes, and other places. It attacks the lower
extremity or the genitals in either sex (Figs. 97, 98). The disease is
usually ushered in with fever, and signs of lymphangitis in the part
affected. After a number of such attacks, the lymph vessels appear to
become obliterated, and the skin and subcutaneous cellular tissue, being
bathed in stagnant lymph--which possibly contains the products of
streptococci--take on an overgrowth, which continues until the part
assumes gigantic proportions. In certain cases the lymph trunks have
been found to be blocked with the parent worms of the filaria Bancrofti.
Cases of elephantiasis of the lower extremity are met with in this
country in which there are no filarial parasites in the lymph vessels,
and these present features closely resembling the tropical variety, and
usually follow upon repeated attacks of lymphangitis or erysipelas.

The part affected is enormously increased in size, and causes
inconvenience from its bulk and weight. In contrast to ordinary dropsy,
there is no pitting on pressure, and the swelling does not disappear on
elevation of the limb. The skin becomes rough and warty, and may hang
down in pendulous folds. Blisters form on the surface and yield an
abundant exudate of clear lymph. From neglect of cleanliness, the skin
becomes the seat of eczema or even of ulceration attended with foul
discharge.

Samson Handley has sought to replace the blocked lymph vessels by
burying in the subcutaneous tissue of the swollen part a number of stout
silk threads--_lymphangioplasty_. By their capillary action they drain
the lymph to a healthy region above, and thus enable it to enter the
circulation. It has been more successful in the face and upper limb than
in the lower extremity. If the tissues are infected with pus organisms,
a course of vaccines should precede the operation.

[Illustration: FIG. 97.--Elephantiasis in a woman t. 45.]

A similar type of elephantiasis may occur after extirpation of the lymph
glands in the axilla or groin; in the leg in long-standing standing
varix and phlebitis with chronic ulcer; in the arm as a result of
extensive cancerous disease of the lymphatics in the axilla secondarily
to cancer of the breast; and in extensive tuberculous disease of the
lymphatics. The last-named is chiefly observed in the lower limb in
young adult women, and from its following upon lupus of the toes or foot
it has been called _lupus elephantiasis_. The tuberculous infection
spreads slowly up the limb by way of the lymph vessels, and as these are
obliterated the skin and cellular tissues become hypertrophied, and the
surface is studded over with fungating tuberculous masses of a livid
blue colour. As the more severe forms of the disease may prove dangerous
to life by pyogenic complications inducing gangrene of the limb, the
question of amputation may have to be considered.

[Illustration: FIG. 98.--Elephantiasis of Penis and Scrotum in native of
Demerara.

(Mr. Annandale's case.)]

Belonging to this group also is a form of _congenital elephantiasis_
resulting from the circular constriction of a limb _in utero_ by
amniotic bands.

_Elephantiasis occurring apart from lymphatic or venous obstruction_ is
illustrated by _elephantiasis nervorum_, in which there is an overgrowth
of the skin and cellular tissue of an extremity in association with
neuro-fibromatosis of the cutaneous nerves (Fig. 89); and by
_elephantiasis Grcorum_--a form of leprosy in which the skin of the
face becomes the seat of tumour-like masses consisting of leprous
nodules. It is also illustrated by _elephantiasis involving the scrotum_
as a result of prolonged irritation by the urine in cases in which the
penis has been amputated and the urine has infiltrated the scrotal
tissues over a period of years.

#Sebaceous Cysts.#--Atheromatous cysts or wens are formed in relation to
the sebaceous glands and hair follicles. They are commonly met with in
adults, on the scalp (Fig. 99), face, neck, back, and external genitals.
Sometimes they are multiple, and they may be met with in several members
of the same family. They are smooth, rounded, or discoid cysts, varying
in size from a split-pea to a Tangerine orange. In consistence they are
firm and elastic, or fluctuating, and are incorporated with the
overlying skin, but movable on the deeper structures. The orifice of the
partly blocked sebaceous follicle is sometimes visible, and the contents
of the cyst can be squeezed through the opening. The wall of the cyst is
composed of a connective-tissue capsule lined by stratified squamous
epithelium. The contents consist of accumulated epithelial cells, and
are at first dry and pearly white in appearance, but as a result of
fatty degeneration they break down into a greyish-yellow pultaceous and
semi-fluid material having a peculiar stale odour. It is probable that
the decomposition of the contents is the result of the presence of
bacteria, and that from the surgical point of view they should be
regarded as infective. A sebaceous cyst may remain indefinitely without
change, or may slowly increase in size, the skin over it becoming
stretched and closely adherent to the cyst wall as a result of friction
and pressure. The contents may ooze from the orifice of the duct and dry
on the skin surface, leading to the formation of a sebaceous horn
(Fig. 100). As a result of injury the cyst may undergo sudden
enlargement from hmorrhage into its interior.

Recurrent attacks of inflammation frequently occur, especially in wens
of the face and scalp. Suppuration may ensue and be followed by cure of
the cyst, or an offensive fungating ulcer forms which may be mistaken
for epithelioma. True cancerous transformation is rare.

Wens are to be _diagnosed_ from dermoids, from fatty tumours, and from
cold abscesses. Dermoids usually appear before adult life, and as they
nearly always lie beneath the fascia, the skin is movable over them. A
fatty tumour is movable, and is often lobulated. The confusion with a
cold abscess is most likely to occur in wens of the neck or back, and it
may be impossible without the use of an exploring needle to
differentiate between them.

[Illustration: FIG. 99.--Multiple Sebaceous Cysts or Wens; the larger
ones are of many years' duration.]

_Treatment._--The removal of wens is to be recommended while they are
small and freely movable, as they are then easily shelled out after
incising the overlying skin; sometimes splitting the cyst makes its
removal easier. Local ansthesia is to be preferred. It is important
that none of the cyst wall be left behind. In large and adherent wens an
ellipse of skin is removed along with the cyst. When inflamed, it may be
impossible to dissect out the cyst, and the wall should be destroyed
with carbolic acid, the resulting wound being treated by the open
method.

#Moles.#--The term mole is applied to a pigmented, and usually hairy,
patch of skin, present at or appearing shortly after birth. The colour
varies from brown to black, according to the amount of melanin pigment
present. The lesion consists in an overgrowth of epidermis which often
presents an alveolar arrangement. Moles vary greatly in size: some are
mere dots, others are as large as the palm of the hand, and occasionally
a mole covers half the face. In addition to being unsightly, they bleed
freely when abraded, are liable to ulcerate from friction and pressure,
and occasionally become the starting-point of melanotic cancer. Rodent
cancer sometimes originates in the slightly pigmented moles met with on
the face. Overgrowths in relation to the cutaneous nerves, especially
the plexiform neuroma, occasionally originate in pigmented moles. Soldau
believes that the pigmentation and overgrowth of the epidermis in moles
are associated with, and probably result from, a fibromatosis of the
cutaneous nerves.

_Treatment._--The quickest way to get rid of a mole is to excise it; if
the edges of the gap cannot be brought together with sutures, recourse
should be had to grafting. In large hairy moles of the face whose size
forbids excision, radium or the X-rays should be employed. Excellent
results have been obtained by refrigeration with solid carbon dioxide.
In children and women with delicate skin, applications of from ten to
thirty seconds suffice. In persons with coarse skin an application of
one minute may be necessary, and it may have to be repeated.

#Horns.#--The _sebaceous_ horn results from the accumulation of the
dried contents of a wen on the surface of the skin: the sebaceous
material after drying up becomes cornified, and as fresh material is
added to the base the horn increases in length (Fig. 100). The _wart_
horn grows from a warty papilloma of the skin. _Cicatrix_ horns are
formed by the heaping up of epidermis in the scars that result from
burns. _Nail_ horns are overgrown nails (keratomata of the nail bed),
and are met with chiefly in the great toe of elderly bedridden patients.
If an ulcer forms at the base of a horn, it may prove the starting-point
of epithelioma, and for this reason, as well as for others, horns should
be removed.

[Illustration: FIG. 100.--Sebaceous Horn growing from Auricle.

(Dr. Kenneth Maclachan's case.)]

#New Growths in the Skin and Subcutaneous Tissue.#--The _Angioma_ has
been described with diseases of blood vessels. _Fibroma._--Various types
of fibroma occur in the skin. A soft pedunculated fibroma, about the
size of a pea, is commonly met with, especially on the neck and trunk;
it is usually solitary, and is easily removed with scissors. The
multiple, soft fibroma known as _molluscum fibrosum_, which depends upon
a neuro-fibromatosis of the cutaneous nerves, is described with the
tumours of nerves. Hard fibromas occurring singly or in groups may be
met with, especially in the skin of the buttock, and may present a local
malignancy, recurring after removal like the "recurrent fibroid" of
Paget. The "painful subcutaneous nodule" is a solitary fibroma related
to one of the cutaneous nerves. The hard fibroma known as _keloid_ is
described with the affections of scars.

#Papilloma.#--The _common wart_ or verruca is an outgrowth of the
surface epidermis. It may be sessile or pedunculated hard or soft. The
surface may be smooth, or fissured and foliated like a cauliflower, or
it may be divided up into a number of spines. Warts are met with chiefly
on the hands, and are often multiple, occurring in clusters or in
successive crops. Multiple warts appear to result from some contagion,
the nature of which is unknown; they sometimes occur in an epidemic form
among school-children, and show a remarkable tendency to disappear
spontaneously. The solitary flat-topped wart which occurs on the face
of old people may, if irritated, become the seat of epithelioma. A warty
growth of the epidermis is a frequent accompaniment of moles and of that
variety of lupus known as _lupus verrucosus_.

_Treatment._--In the multiple warts of children the health should be
braced up by a change to the seaside. A dusting-powder, consisting of
boracic acid with 5 per cent. salicylic acid, may be rubbed into the
hands after washing and drying. The persistent warts of young adults
should be excised after freezing with chloride of ethyl. When cutting is
objected to, they may be painted night and morning with salicylic
collodion, the epidermis being dehydrated with alcohol before each
application.

_Venereal warts_ occur on the genitals of either sex, and may form large
cauliflower-like masses on the inner surface of the prepuce or of the
labia majora. Although frequently co-existing with gonorrha or
syphilis, they occur independently of these diseases, being probably
acquired by contact with another individual suffering from warts
(C. W. Cathcart). They give rise to considerable irritation and
suffering, and when cleanliness is neglected there may be an offensive
discharge.

In the female, the cauliflower-like masses are dissected from the labia;
in the male, the prepuce is removed and the warts on the glans are
snipped off with scissors. In milder cases, the warts usually disappear
if the parts are kept absolutely dry and clean. A useful dusting-powder
is one consisting of calamine and 5 per cent. salicylic acid; the
exsiccated sulphate of iron, in the form of a powder, may be employed in
cases which resist this treatment.

#Adenoma.#--This is a comparatively rare tumour growing from the glands
of the skin. One variety, known as the "tomato tumour," which apparently
originates from _the sweat glands_, is met with on the scalp and face in
women past middle life. These growths are often multiple; the individual
tumours vary in size, and the skin, which is almost devoid of hairs, is
glistening and tightly stretched over them. A similar tumour may occur
on the nose. The _sebaceous adenoma_, which originates from the
sebaceous glands, forms a projecting tumour on the face or scalp, and
when the skin is irritated it may ulcerate and fungate. The treatment
consists in the removal of the tumour along with the overlying skin.

The exuberant masses on the nose known as "rhinophyma," "lipoma nasi,"
or "potato nose" are of the nature of sebaceous adenoma, and are removed
by shaving them off with a knife until the normal shape of the nose is
restored Healing takes place with remarkable rapidity.

#Cancer.#--There are several types of primary cancer of the skin, the
most important being squamous epithelioma, rodent cancer, and melanotic
cancer.

[Illustration: FIG. 101.--Paraffin Epithelioma.]

#Epithelioma# occurs in a variety of forms. When originating in a small
ulcer or wart-for example on the face in old people--it presents the
features of a chronic indurated ulcer. A more exuberant and rapidly
growing form of epithelial cancer, described by Hutchinson as the
_crateriform ulcer_, commences on the face as a small red pimple which
rapidly develops into an elevated mass shaped like a bee-hive, and
breaks down in the centre. Epithelioma may develop anywhere on the body
in relation to long-standing ulcers, especially that resulting from a
burn or from lupus; this form usually presents an exuberant outgrowth of
epidermis not unlike a cauliflower. An interesting example of
epithelioma has been described by Neve of Kashmir. The natives in that
province are in the habit of carrying a fire-basket suspended from the
waist, which often burns the skin and causes a chronic ulcer, and many
of these ulcers become the seat of epithelioma, due, in Neve's opinion,
to the actual contact of the sooty pan with the skin.

The term _trade epithelioma_ has been applied to that form met with in
those who follow certain occupations, such as paraffin workers and
chimney-sweeps. The most recent member of this group is the _X-ray
carcinoma_, which is met with in those who are constantly exposed to the
irritation of the X-rays; there is first a chronic dermatitis with warty
overgrowth of the surface epithelium, pigmentation, and the formation of
fissures and warts. The trade epithelioma varies a good deal in
malignancy, but it tends to cause death in the same manner as other
epitheliomas.

Epithelial cancer has also been observed in those who have taken arsenic
over long periods for medicinal purposes.

[Illustration: FIG. 102.--Rodent Cancer of Inner Canthus.]

#Rodent Cancer# (Rodent Ulcer).--This is a cancer originating in the
sweat glands or sebaceous follicles, or in the ftal residues of
cutaneous glands. The cells are small and closely packed together in
alveoli or in reticulated columns; cell nests are rare. It is remarkably
constant in its seat of origin, being nearly always located on the
lateral aspect of the nose or in the vicinity of the lower eyelid
(Fig. 102). It is rare on the trunk or limbs. It commences as a small
flattened nodule in the skin, the epidermis over it being stretched and
shining. The centre becomes depressed, while the margins extend in the
form of an elevated ridge. Sooner or later the epidermis gives way in
the centre, exposing a smooth raw surface devoid of granulations.

[Illustration: FIG. 103.--Rodent Cancer of fifteen years' duration,
which has destroyed the contents of the Orbit.

(Sir Montagu Cotterill's case)]

The margin, while in parts irregular, is typically represented by a
well-defined "rolled" border which consists of the peripheral portion of
the cancer that has not broken down. The central ulcer may temporarily
heal. There is itching but little pain, and the condition progresses
extremely slowly; rodent cancers which have existed for many years are
frequently met with. The disease attacks and destroys every structure
with which it comes in contact, such as the eyelids, the walls of the
nasal cavities, and the bones of the face; hence it may produce the most
hideous deformities (Fig. 103). The patient may succumb to hmorrhage or
to infective complications such as erysipelas or meningitis.

Secondary growths in the lymph glands, while not unknown, are extremely
rare. We have only seen them once--in a case of rodent cancer in the
groin.

_Diagnosis._--Lupus is the disease most often mistaken for rodent
cancer. Lupus usually begins earlier in life, it presents apple-jelly
nodules, and lacks the rounded, elevated border. Syphilitic lesions
progress more rapidly, and also lack the characteristic margin. The
differentiation from squamous epithelioma is of considerable importance,
as the latter affection spreads more rapidly, involves the lymph glands
early, and is much more dangerous to life.

_Treatment._--In rodent cancers of limited size--say less than one inch
in diameter--free excision is the most rapid and certain method of
treatment. The alternative is the application of radium or of the
Rntgen rays, which, although requiring many exposures, results in cure
with the minimum of disfigurement. If the cancer already covers an
extensive area, or has invaded the cavity of the orbit or nose, radium
or X-rays yield the best results. The effect is soon shown by the
ingrowth of healthy epithelium from the surrounding skin, and at the
same time the discharge is lessened. Good results are also reported from
the application of carbon dioxide snow, especially when this follows
upon a course of X-ray treatment.

#Paget's disease# of the nipple is an epithelioma occurring in women
over forty years of age: a similar form of epithelioma is sometimes met
with at the umbilicus or on the genitals.

#Melanotic Cancer.#--Under this head are included all new growths which
contain an excess of melanin pigment. Many of these were formerly
described as melanotic sarcoma. They nearly always originate in a
pigmented mole which has been subjected to irritation. The primary
growth may remain so small that its presence is not even suspected, or
it may increase in size, ulcerate, and fungate. The amount of pigment
varies: when small in amount the growth is brown, when abundant it is a
deep black. The most remarkable feature is the rapidity with which the
disease becomes disseminated along the lymphatics, the first evidence of
which is an enlargement of the lymph glands. As the primary growth is
often situated on the sole of the foot or in the matrix of the nail of
the great toe, the femoral and inguinal glands become enlarged in
succession, forming tumours much larger than the primary growth.
Sometimes the dissemination involves the lymph vessels of the limb,
forming a series of indurated pigmented cords and nodules (Fig. 104).
Lastly, the dissemination may be universal throughout the body, and this
usually occurs at a comparatively early stage. The secondary growths are
deeply pigmented, being usually of a coal-black colour, and melanin
pigment may be present in the urine. When recurrence takes place in or
near the scar left by the operation, the cancer nodules are not
necessarily pigmented.

[Illustration: FIG. 104.--Diffuse Melanotic Cancer of Lymphatics of Skin
secondary to a Growth in the Sole of the Foot.]

To extirpate the disease it is necessary to excise the tumour, with a
zone of healthy skin around it and a somewhat large zone of the
underlying subcutaneous tissue and deep fascia. Hogarth Pringle
recommends that a broad strip of subcutaneous fascia up to and including
the nearest anatomical group of glands should be removed with the tumour
in one continuous piece.

#Secondary Cancer of the Skin.#--Cancer may spread to the skin from a
subjacent growth by direct continuity or by way of the lymphatics. Both
of these processes are so well illustrated in cases of mammary cancer
that they will be described in relation to that disease.

#Sarcoma# of various types is met with in the skin. The fibroma, after
excision, may recur as a fibro-sarcoma. The alveolar sarcoma commences
as a hard lump and increases in size until the epidermis gives way and
an ulcer is formed.

[Illustration: FIG. 105.--Melanotic Cancer of Forehead with Metastases
in Lymph Vessels and Glands.

(Mr. D. P. D. Wilkie's case.)]

A number of fresh tumours may spring up around the original growth.
Sometimes the primary growth appears in the form of multiple nodules
which tend to become confluent. Excision, unless performed early, is of
little avail, and in any case should be followed up by exposure to
radium.


AFFECTIONS OF CICATRICES

A cicatrix or scar consists of closely packed bundles of white fibres
covered by epidermis; the skin glands and hair follicles are usually
absent. The size, shape, and level of the cicatrix depend upon the
conditions which preceded healing.

A healthy scar, when recently formed, has a smooth, glossy surface of a
pinkish colour, which tends to become whiter as a result of obliteration
of the blood vessels concerned in its formation.

_Weak Scars._--A scar is said to be weak when it readily breaks down as
a result of irritation or pressure. The scars resulting from severe
burns and those over amputation stumps are especially liable to break
down from trivial causes. The treatment is to excise the weak portion of
the scar and bring the edges of the gap together.

_Contracted scars_ frequently cause deformity either by displacing
parts, such as the eyelid or lip, or by fixing parts and preventing the
normal movements--for example, a scar on the flexor aspect of a joint
may prevent extension of the forearm (Fig. 63). These are treated by
dividing the scar, correcting the deformity, and filling up the gap with
epithelial grafts, or with a flap of the whole thickness of the skin.
When deformity results from _depression of a scar_, as is not uncommon
after the healing of a sinus, the treatment is to excise the scar.
Depressed scars may be raised by the injection of paraffin into the
subcutaneous tissue.

_Painful Scars._--Pain in relation to a scar is usually due to nerve
fibres being compressed or stretched in the cicatricial tissue; and in
some cases to ascending neuritis. The treatment consists in excising the
scar or in stretching or excising a portion of the nerve affected.

_Pigmented or Discoloured Scars._--The best-known examples are the blue
coloration which results from coal-dust or gunpowder, the brown scars
resulting from chronic ulcer with venous congestion of the leg, and the
variously coloured scars caused by tattooing. The only satisfactory
method of getting rid of the coloration is to excise the scar; the edges
are brought together by sutures, or the raw surface is covered with
skin-grafts according to the size of the gap.

_Hypertrophied Scars._--Scars occasionally broaden out and become
prominent, and on exposed parts this may prove a source of
disappointment after operations such as those for goitre or tuberculous
glands in the neck. There is sometimes considerable improvement from
exposure to the X-rays.

_Keloid._--This term is applied to an overgrowth of scar tissue which
extends beyond the area of the original wound, and the name is derived
from the fact that this extension occurs in the form of radiating
processes, suggesting the claws of a crab. It is essentially a fibroma
or new growth of fibrous tissue, which commences in relation to the
walls of the smaller blood vessels; the bundles of fibrous tissue are
for the most part parallel with the surface, and the epidermis is
tightly stretched over them. It is more frequent in the negro and in
those who are, or have been, the subjects of tuberculous disease.

[Illustration: FIG. 106.--Recurrent Keloid in scar left by operation for
tuberculous glands in a girl t. 7.]

Keloid may attack scars of any kind, such as those resulting from
leech-bites, acne pustules, boils or blisters; those resulting from
operation or accidental wounds; and the scars resulting from burns,
especially when situated over the sternum, appear to be specially
liable. The scar becomes more and more conspicuous, is elevated above
the surface, of a pinkish or brownish-pink pink colour, and sends out
irregular prolongations around its margins. The patient may complain of
itching and burning, and of great sensitiveness of the scar, even to
contact with the clothing.

There is a natural hesitation to excise keloid because of the fear of
its returning in the new scar. The application of radium is, so far as
we know, the only means of preventing such return. The irritation
associated with keloid may be relieved by the application of salicylic
collodion or of salicylic and creosote plaster.

_Epithelioma_ is liable to attack scars in old people, especially those
which result from burns sustained early in childhood and have never
really healed. From the absence of lymphatics in scar tissue, the
disease does not spread to the glands until it has invaded the tissues
outside the scar; the prognosis is therefore better than in epithelioma
in general. It should be excised widely; in the lower extremity when
there is also extensive destruction of tissue from an antecedent chronic
ulcer or osteomyelitis, it may be better to amputate the limb.


AFFECTION OF THE NAILS

_Injuries._--When a nail is contused or crushed, blood is extravasated
beneath it, and the nail is usually shed, a new one growing in its
place. A splinter driven underneath the nail causes great pain, and if
organisms are carried in along with it, may give rise to infective
complications. The free edge of the nail should be clipped away to allow
of the removal of the foreign body and the necessary disinfection.

_Trophic Changes._--The growth of the nails may be interfered with in
any disturbance of the general health. In nerve lesions, such as a
divided nerve-trunk, the nails are apt to suffer, becoming curved,
brittle, or furrowed, or they may be shed.

_Onychia_ is the term applied to an infection of the soft parts around
the nail or of the matrix beneath it. The commonest form of onychia has
already been referred to with whitlow. There is a superficial variety
resulting from the extension of a purulent blister beneath the nail
lifting it up from its bed, the pus being visible through the nail. The
nail as well as the raised horny layer of the epidermis should be
removed. A deeper and more troublesome onychia results from infection at
the nail-fold; the infection spreads slowly beneath the fold until it
reaches the matrix, and a drop or two of pus forms beneath the nail,
usually in the region of the lunule. This affection entails a
disability of the finger which may last for weeks unless it is properly
treated. Treatment by hypermia, using a suction bell, should first be
tried, and, failing improvement, the nail-fold and lunule should be
frozen, and a considerable portion removed with the knife; if only a
small portion of the nail is removed, the opening is blocked by
granulations springing from the matrix. A new nail is formed, but it is
liable to be misshapen.

_Tuberculous onychia_ is met with in children and adolescents. It
appears as a livid or red swelling at the root of the nail and spreading
around its margins. The epidermis, which is thin and shiny, gives way,
and the nail is usually shed.

[Illustration: FIG. 107.--Subungual Exostosis growing from Distal
Phalanx of Great Toe, showing Ulceration of Skin and Displacement of
Nail.

_a._ Surface view.   _b._ On section.]

_Syphilitic_ affections of the nails assume various aspects. A primary
chancre at the edge of the nail may be mistaken for a whitlow,
especially if it is attended with much pain. Other forms of onychia
occur during secondary syphilis simultaneously with the skin eruptions,
and may prove obstinate and lead to shedding of the nails. They also
occur in inherited syphilis. In addition to general treatment, an
ointment containing 5 per cent. of oleate of mercury should be applied
locally.

_Ingrowing Toe-nail._--This is more accurately described as an
overgrowth of the soft tissues along the edge of the nail. It is most
frequently met with in the great toe in young adults with flat-foot
whose feet perspire freely, who wear ill-fitting shoes, and who cut
their toe-nails carelessly or tear them with their fingers. Where the
soft tissues are pressed against the edge of the nail, the skin gives
way and there is the formation of exuberant granulations and of
discharge which is sometimes ftid. The affection is a painful one and
may unfit the patient for work. In mild cases the condition may be
remedied by getting rid of contributing causes and by disinfecting the
skin and nail; the nail is cut evenly, and the groove between it and the
skin packed with an antiseptic dusting-powder, such as boracic acid. In
more severe cases it may be necessary to remove an ellipse of tissue
consisting of the edge of the nail, together with the subjacent matrix
and the redundant nail-fold.

_Subungual exostosis_ is an osteoma growing from the terminal phalanx of
the great toe (Fig. 107). It raises the nail and may be accompanied by
ulceration of the skin over the most prominent part of the growth. The
soft parts, including the nail, should be reflected towards the dorsum
in the form of a flap, the base of the exostosis divided with the
chisel, and the exostosis removed.

_Malignant disease_ in relation to the nails is rare. Squamous
epithelioma and melanotic cancer are the forms met with. Treatment
consists in amputating the digit concerned, and in removing the
associated lymph glands.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE MUSCLES, TENDONS, AND TENDON SHEATHS


INJURIES: _Contusion_; _Sprain_; _Rupture_--Hernia of
    muscle--Dislocation of tendons--Wounds--Avulsion of tendon.
    DISEASES OF MUSCLE AND OF TENDONS: _Atrophy_; _"Muscular
    rheumatism"_--_Fibrositis_; _Contracture_; _Myositis_;
    _Calcification and Ossification_; _Tumours_. DISEASES OF TENDON
    SHEATHS: _Teno-synovitis_.


INJURIES

#Contusion of Muscle.#--Contusion of muscle, which consists in bruising
of its fibres and blood vessels, may be due to violence acting from
without, as in a blow, a kick, or a fall; or from within, as by the
displacement of bone in a fracture or dislocation.

The symptoms are those common to all contusions, and the patient
complains of severe pain on attempting to use the muscle, and maintains
an attitude which relaxes it. If the sheath of the muscle also is torn,
there is subcutaneous ecchymosis, and the accumulation of blood may
result in the formation of a hmatoma.

Restoration of function is usually complete; but when the nerve
supplying the muscle is bruised at the same time, as may occur in the
deltoid, wasting and loss of function may be persistent. In exceptional
cases the process of repair may be attended with the formation of bone
in the substance of the muscle, and this may likewise impair its
function.

A contused muscle should be placed at rest and supported by cotton wool
and a bandage; after an interval, massage and appropriate exercises are
employed.

#Sprain and Partial Rupture of Muscle.#--This lesion consists in
overstretching and partial rupture of the fibres of a muscle or its
aponeurosis. It is of common occurrence in athletes and in those who
follow laborious occupations. It may follow upon a single or repeated
effort--especially in those who are out of training. Familiar examples
of muscular sprain are the "labourer's" or "golfer's back," affecting
the latissimus dorsi or the sacrospinalis (erector spin); the
"tennis-player's elbow," and the "sculler's sprain," affecting the
muscles and ligaments about the elbow; the "angler's elbow," affecting
the common origin of the extensors and supinators; the "sprinter's
sprain," affecting the flexors of the hip; and the "jumper's and
dancer's sprain," affecting the muscles of the calf. The patient
complains of pain, often sudden in onset, of tenderness on pressure, and
of inability to carry out the particular movement by which the sprain
was produced. The disability varies in different cases, and it may
incapacitate the patient from following his occupation or sport for
weeks or, if imperfectly treated, even for months.

The _treatment_ consists in resting the muscle from the particular
effort concerned in the production of the sprain, in gently exercising
it in other directions, in the use of massage, and the induction of
hypermia by means of heat. In neglected cases, that is, where the
muscle has not been exercised, the patient shrinks from using it and the
disablement threatens to be permanent; it is sometimes said that
adhesions have formed and that these interfere with the recovery of
function. The condition may be overcome by graduated movements or by a
sudden forcible movement under an ansthetic. These cases afford a
fruitful field for the bone-setter.

#Rupture of Muscle or Tendon.#--A muscle or a tendon may be ruptured in
its continuity or torn from its attachment to bone. The site of rupture
in individual muscles is remarkably constant, and is usually at the
junction of the muscular and tendinous portions. When rupture takes
place through the belly of a muscle, the ends retract, the amount of
retraction depending on the length of the muscle, and the extent of its
attachment to adjacent aponeurosis or bone. The biceps in the arm, and
the sartorius in the thigh, furnish examples of muscles in which the
separation between the ends may be considerable.

The gap in the muscle becomes filled with blood, and this in time is
replaced by connective tissue, which forms a bond of union between the
ends. When the space is considerable the connecting medium consists of
fibrous tissue, but when the ends are in contact it contains a number of
newly formed muscle fibres. In the process of repair, one or both ends
of the muscle or tendon may become fixed by adhesions to adjacent
structures, and if the distal portion of a muscle is deprived of its
nerve supply it may undergo degeneration and so have its function
impaired.

Rupture of a muscle or tendon is usually the result of a sudden, and
often involuntary, movement. As examples may be cited the rupture of
the quadriceps extensor in attempting to regain the balance when falling
backwards; of the gastrocnemius, plantaris, or tendo-calcaneus in
jumping or dancing; of the adductors of the thigh in gripping a horse
when it swerves--"rider's sprain"; of the abdominal muscles in vomiting,
and of the biceps in sudden movements of the arm. Sometimes the effort
is one that would scarcely be thought likely to rupture a muscle, as in
the case recorded by Pagenstecher, where a professional athlete, while
sitting at table, ruptured his biceps in a sudden effort to catch a
falling glass. It would appear that the rupture is brought about not so
much by the contraction of the muscle concerned, as by the contraction
of the antagonistic muscles taking place before that of the muscle which
undergoes rupture is completed. The violent muscular contractions of
epilepsy, tetanus, or delirium rarely cause rupture.

The _clinical features_ are usually characteristic. The patient
experiences a sudden pain, with the sensation of being struck with a
whip, and of something giving way; sometimes a distant snap is heard.
The limb becomes powerless. At the seat of rupture there is tenderness
and swelling, and there may be ecchymosis. As the swelling subsides, a
gap may be felt between the retracted ends, and this becomes wider when
the muscle is thrown into contraction. If untreated, a hard, fibrous
cord remains at the seat of rupture.

_Treatment._--The ends are approximated by placing the limb in an
attitude which relaxes the muscle, and the position is maintained by
bandages, splints, or special apparatus. When it is impossible thus to
approximate the ends satisfactorily, the muscle or tendon is exposed by
incision, and the ends brought into accurate contact by catgut sutures.
This operation of primary suture yields the most satisfactory results,
and is most successful when it is done within five or six days of the
accident. Secondary suture after an interval of months is rendered
difficult by the retraction of the ends and by their adhesion to
adjacent structures.

_Rupture of the biceps of the arm_ may involve the long or the short
head, or the belly of the muscle. Most interest attaches to rupture of
the long tendon of origin. There is pain and tenderness in front of the
upper end of the humerus, the patient is unable to abduct or to elevate
the arm, and he may be unable to flex the elbow when the forearm is
supinated. The long axis of the muscle, instead of being parallel with
the humerus, inclines downwards and outwards. When the patient is asked
to contract the muscle, its belly is seen to be drawn towards the
elbow.

The _adductor longus_ may be ruptured, or torn from the pubes, by a
violent effort to adduct the limb. A swelling forms in the upper and
medial part of the thigh, which becomes smaller and harder when the
muscle is thrown into contraction.

The _quadriceps femoris_ is usually ruptured close to its insertion into
the patella, in the attempt to avoid falling backwards. The injury is
sometimes bilateral. The injured limb is rendered useless for
progression, as it suddenly gives way whenever the knee is flexed.
Treatment is conducted on the same lines as in transverse fracture of
the patella; in the majority of cases the continuity of the quadriceps
should be re-established by suture within five or six days of the
accident.

The _tendo calcaneus_ (Achillis) is comparatively easily ruptured, and
the symptoms are sometimes so slight that the nature of the injury may
be overlooked. The limb should be put up with the knee flexed and the
toes pointed. This may be effected by attaching one end of an elastic
band to the heel of a slipper, and securing the other to the lower third
of the thigh. If this is not sufficient to bring the ends into
apposition they should be approximated by an open operation.

The _plantaris_ is not infrequently ruptured from trivial causes, such
as a sudden movement in boxing, tennis, or hockey. A sharp stinging pain
like the stroke of a whip is felt in the calf; there is marked
tenderness at the seat of rupture, and the patient is unable to raise
the heel without pain. The injury is of little importance, and if the
patient does not raise the heel from the ground in walking, it is
recovered from in a couple of weeks or so, without it being necessary to
lay him up.

#Hernia of Muscle.#--This is a rare condition, in which, owing to the
fascia covering a muscle becoming stretched or torn, the muscular
substance is protruded through the rent. It has been observed chiefly in
the adductor longus. An oval swelling forms in the upper part of the
thigh, is soft and prominent when the muscle is relaxed, less prominent
when it is passively extended, and disappears when the muscle is thrown
into contraction. It is liable to be mistaken, according to its
situation, for a tumour, a cyst, a pouched vein, or a femoral or
obturator hernia. Treatment is only called for when it is causing
inconvenience, the muscle being exposed by a suitable incision, the
herniated portion excised, and the rent in the sheath closed by sutures.

#Dislocation of Tendons.#--Tendons which run in grooves may be displaced
as a result of rupture of the confining sheath. This injury is met with
chiefly in the tendons at the ankle and in the long tendon of the
biceps.

Dislocation of the _peronei tendons_ may occur, for example, from a
violent twist of the foot. There is severe pain and considerable
swelling on the lateral aspect of the ankle; the peroneus longus by
itself, or together with the brevis, can be felt on the lateral aspect
or in front of the lateral malleolus; the patient is unable to move the
foot. By a little manipulation the tendons are replaced in their
grooves, and are retained there by a series of strips of plaster. At the
end of three weeks massage and exercises are employed.

In other cases there is no history of injury, but whenever the foot is
everted the tendon of the peroneus longus is liable to be jerked
forwards out of its groove, sometimes with an audible snap. The patient
suffers pain and is disabled until the tendon is replaced. Reduction is
easy, but as the displacement tends to recur, an operation is required
to fix the tendon in its place. An incision is made over the tendon; if
the sheath is slack or torn, it is tightened up or closed with catgut
sutures; or an artificial sheath is made by raising up a quadrilateral
flap of periosteum from the lateral aspect of the fibula, and stitching
it over the tendon.

Similarly the _tibialis posterior_ may be displaced over the medial
malleolus as a result of inversion of the foot.

The _long tendon of the biceps_ may be dislocated laterally--or more
frequently medially--as a result of violent or repeated rotation
movements of the arm, such as are performed in wringing clothes. The
patient is aware of the displacement taking place, and is unable to
extend the forearm until the displaced tendon has been reduced by
abducting the arm. In recurrent cases the patient may be able to
dislocate the tendon at will, but the disability is so inconsiderable
that there is rarely any occasion for interference.

#Wounds of Muscles and Tendons.#--When a muscle is cut across in a
wound, its ends should be brought together with sutures. If the ends are
allowed to retract, and especially if the wound suppurates, they become
united by scar tissue and fixed to bone or other adjacent structure. In
a limb this interferes with the functions of the muscle; in the
abdominal wall the scar tissue may stretch, and so favour the
development of a ventral hernia.

Tendons may be cut across accidentally, especially in those wounds so
commonly met with above the wrist as a result, for example, of the hand
being thrust through a pane of glass. It is essential that the ends
should be sutured to each other, and as the proximal end is retracted
the original wound may require to be enlarged in an upward direction.
When primary suture has been omitted, or has failed in consequence of
suppuration, the separated ends of the tendon become adherent to
adjacent structures, and the function of the associated muscle is
impaired or lost. Under these conditions the operation of secondary
suture is indicated.

A free incision is necessary to discover and isolate the ends of the
tendon; if the interval is too wide to admit of their being approximated
by sutures, means must be taken to lengthen the tendon, or one from some
other part may be inserted in the gap. A new sheath may be provided for
the tendon by resecting a portion of the great saphenous vein.

_Injuries of the tendons of the fingers_ are comparatively common. One
of the best known is the partial or complete rupture of the aponeurosis
of the extensor tendon close to its insertion into the terminal
phalanx--_drop-_ or _mallet-finger_. This may result from comparatively
slight violence, such as striking the tip of the extended finger against
an object, or the violence may be more severe, as in attempting to catch
a cricket ball or in falling. The terminal phalanx is flexed towards the
palm and the patient is unable to extend it. The treatment consists in
putting up the finger with the middle joint strongly flexed. In
neglected cases, a perfect functional result can only be obtained by
operation; under a local ansthetic, the ruptured tendon is exposed and
is sutured to the base of the phalanx, which may be drilled for the
passage of the sutures.

_Subcutaneous rupture_ of one or other _of the digital tendons_ in the
hand or at the wrist can be remedied only by operation. When some time
has elapsed since the accident, the proximal end may be so retracted
that it cannot be brought down into contact with the distal end, in
which case a slip may be taken from an adjacent tendon; in the case of
one of the extensors of the thumb, the extensor carpi radialis longus
may be detached from its insertion and stitched to the distal end of the
tendon of the thumb.

Subcutaneous _rupture of the tendon of the extensor pollicis longus_ at
the wrist takes place just after its emergence from beneath the annular
ligament; the actual rupture may occur painlessly, more frequently a
sharp pain is felt over the back of the wrist. The prominence of the
tendon, which normally forms the ulnar border of the snuff-box,
disappears. This lesion is chiefly met with in drummer-boys and is the
cause of drummer's palsy. The only chance of restoring function is in
uniting the ruptured tendon by open operation.

[Illustration: FIG. 108.--Avulsion of Tendon with Terminal Phalanx of
Thumb.

(Surgical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

_Avulsion of Tendons._--This is a rare injury, in which the tendons of a
finger or toe are torn from their attachments along with a portion of
the digit concerned. In the hand, it is usually brought about by the
fingers being caught in the reins of a runaway horse, or being seized in
a horse's teeth, or in machinery. It is usually the terminal phalanx
that is separated, and with it the tendon of the deep flexor, which
ruptures at its junction with the belly of the muscle (Fig. 108). The
treatment consists in disinfecting the wound, closing the tendon-sheath,
and trimming the mutilated finger so as to provide a useful stump.


DISEASES OF MUSCLES AND TENDONS

_Congenital absence_ of muscles is sometimes met with, usually in
association with other deformities. The pectoralis major, for example,
may be absent on one or on both sides, without, however, causing any
disability, as other muscles enlarge and take on its functions.

_Atrophy of Muscle._--Simple atrophy, in which the muscle elements are
merely diminished in size without undergoing any structural alteration,
is commonly met with as a result of disuse, as when a patient is
confined to bed for a long period.

In cases of joint disease, the muscles acting on the joint become
atrophied more rapidly than is accounted for by disuse alone, and this
is attributed to an interference with the trophic innervation of the
muscles reflected from centres in the spinal medulla. It is more marked
in the extensor than in the flexor groups of muscles. Those affected
become soft and flaccid, exhibit tremors on attempted movement, and
their excitability to the faradic current is diminished.

_Neuropathic atrophy_ is associated with lesions of the nervous system.
It is most pronounced in lesions of the motor nerve-trunks, probably
because vaso-motor and trophic fibres are involved as well as those that
are purely motor in function. It is attended with definite structural
alterations, the muscle elements first undergoing fatty degeneration,
and then being absorbed, and replaced to a large extent by ordinary
connective tissue and fat. At a certain stage the muscles exhibit the
reaction of degeneration. In the common form of paralysis resulting from
poliomyelitis, many fibres undergo fatty degeneration and are replaced
by fat, while at the same time there is a regeneration of muscle fibres.

#Fibrositis# or "#Muscular Rheumatism#."--This clinical term is applied
to a group of affections of which lumbago is the best-known example. The
group includes lumbago, stiff-neck, and pleurodynia--conditions which
have this in common, that sudden and severe pain is excited by movement
of the affected part. The lesion consists in inflammatory hyperplasia of
the connective tissue; the new tissue differs from normal fibrous tissue
in its tendency to contract, in being swollen, painful and tender on
pressure, and in the fact that it can be massaged away (Stockman). It
would appear to involve mainly the fibrous tissue of muscles, although
it may extend from this to aponeuroses, ligaments, periosteum, and the
sheaths of nerves. The term _fibrositis_ was applied to it by Gowers in
1904.

In _lumbago_--_lumbo-sacral fibrositis_--the pain is usually located
over the sacrum, the sacro-iliac joint, or the aponeurosis of the lumbar
muscles on one or both sides. The amount of tenderness varies, and so
long as the patient is still he is free from pain. The slightest
attempt to alter his position, however, is attended by pain, which may
be so severe as to render him helpless for the moment. The pain is most
marked on rising from the stooping or sitting posture, and may extend
down the back of the hip, especially if, as is commonly the case,
lumbago and gluteal fibrosis coexist. Once a patient has suffered from
lumbago, it is liable to recur, and an attack may be determined by
errors of diet, changes of weather, exposure to cold or unwonted
exertion. It is met with chiefly in male adults, and is most apt to
occur in those who are gouty or are the subjects of oxaluric dyspepsia.

_Gluteal fibrositis_ usually follows exposure to wet, and affects the
gluteal muscles, particularly the medius, and their aponeurotic
coverings. When the condition has lasted for some time, indurated
strands or nodules can be detected on palpating the relaxed muscles. The
patient complains of persistent aching and stiffness over the buttock,
and sometimes extending down the lateral aspect of the thigh. The pain
is aggravated by such movements as bring the affected muscles into
action. It is not referred to the line of the sciatic nerve, nor is
there tenderness on pressing over the nerve, or sensations of tingling
or numbness in the leg or foot.

If untreated, the morbid process may implicate the sheath of the sciatic
nerve and cause genuine sciatic neuralgia (Llewellyn and Jones). A
similar condition may implicate the fascia lata of the thigh, or the
calf muscles and their aponeuroses--_crural fibrositis_.

In _painful stiff-neck_, or "rheumatic torticollis," the pain is located
in one side of the neck, and is excited by some inadvertent movement.
The head is held stiffly on one side as in wry-neck, the patient
contracting the sterno-mastoid. There may be tenderness over the
vertebral spines or in the lines of the cervical nerves, and the
sterno-mastoid may undergo atrophy. This affection is more often met
with in children.

In _pleurodynia_--_intercostal fibrositis_--the pain is in the line of
the intercostal nerves, and is excited by movement of the chest, as in
coughing, or by any bodily exertion. There is often marked tenderness.

A similar affection is met with in the _shoulder and arm_--_brachial
fibrositis_--especially on waking from sleep. There is acute pain on
attempting to abduct the arm, and there may be localised tenderness in
the region of the axillary nerve.

_Treatment._--The general treatment is concerned with the diet,
attention to the stomach, bowels, and kidneys and with the correction
of any gouty tendencies that may be present. Remedies such as
salicylates are given for the relief of pain, and for this purpose drugs
of the aspirin type are to be preferred, and these may be followed by
large doses of iodide of potassium. Great benefit is derived from
massage, and from the induction of hypermia by means of heat. Cupping
or needling, or, in exceptional cases, hypodermic injections of
antipyrin or morphin, may be called for. To prevent relapses of lumbago,
the patient must take systematic exercises of all kinds, especially such
as bring out the movements of the vertebral column and hip-joints.

[Illustration: FIG. 109.--Volkmann's Ischmic Contracture. When the
wrist is flexed to a right angle it is possible to extend the fingers.

(Photographs lent by Mr. Lawford Knaggs)]

#Contracture of Muscles.#--Permanent shortening of muscles results from
the prolonged approximation of their points of attachment, or from
structural changes in their substance produced by injury or by disease.
It is a frequent accompaniment and sometimes a cause of deformities, in
the treatment of which lengthening of the shortened muscles or their
tendons may be an essential step.

#Myositis.#--_Ischmic Myositis._--Volkmann was the first to describe a
form of myositis followed by contracture, resulting from interference
with the arterial blood supply. It is most frequently observed in the
flexor muscles of the forearm in children and young persons under
treatment for fractures in the region of the elbow, the splints and
bandages causing compression of the blood vessels. There is considerable
effusion of blood, the skin is tense, and the muscles, vessels, and
nerves are compressed; this is further increased if the elbow is flexed
and splints and tight bandages are applied. The muscles acquire a
board-like hardness and no longer contract under the will, and passive
motion is painful and restricted. Slight contracture of the fingers is
usually the first sign of the malady; in time the muscles undergo
further contraction, and this brings about a claw-like deformity of the
hand. The affected muscles usually show the reaction of degeneration. In
severe cases the median and ulnar nerves are also the seat of
cicatricial changes (ischmic neuritis).

By means of splints, the interphalangeal, metacarpo-phalangeal, and
wrist joints should be gradually extended until the deformity is
over-corrected (R. Jones). Murphy advises resection of the radius and
ulna sufficient to admit of dorsiflexion of the joints and lengthening
of the flexor tendons.

Various forms of _pyogenic_ infection are met with in muscle, most
frequently in relation to pymia and to typhoid fever. These may result
in overgrowth of the connective-tissue framework of the muscle and
degeneration of its fibres, or in suppuration and the formation of one
or more abscesses in the muscle substance. Repair may be associated with
contracture.

A _gonorrhal_ form of myositis is sometimes met with; it is painful,
but rarely goes on to suppuration.

In the early secondary period of _syphilis_, the muscles may be the seat
of dull, aching, nocturnal pains, especially in the neck and back.
_Syphilitic contracture_ is a condition which has been observed chiefly
in the later secondary period; the biceps of the arm and the hamstrings
in the thigh are the muscles more commonly affected. The striking
feature is a gradually increasing difficulty of extending the limb at
the elbow or knee, and progressive flexion of the joint. The affected
muscle is larger and firmer than normal, and its electric excitability
is diminished. In tertiary syphilis, individual muscles may become the
seat of interstitial myositis or of gummata, and these affections
readily yield to anti-syphilitic remedies.

_Tuberculous disease_ in muscle, while usually due to extension from
adjacent tissues, is sometimes the result of a primary infection through
the blood-stream. Tuberculous nodules are found disseminated throughout
the muscle; the surrounding tissues are indurated, and central caseation
may take place and lead to abscess formation and sinuses. We have
observed this form of tuberculous disease in the gastrocnemius and in
the psoas--in the latter muscle apart from tuberculous disease in the
vertebr.

#Tendinitis.#--German authors describe an inflammation of tendon as
distinguished from inflammation of its sheath, and give it the name
tendinitis. It is met with most frequently in the tendo-calcaneus in
gouty and rheumatic subjects who have overstrained the tendon,
especially during cold and damp weather. There is localised pain which
is aggravated by walking, and the tendon is sensitive and swollen from a
little above its insertion to its junction with the muscle. Gouty
nodules may form in its substance. Constitutional measures, massage, and
douching should be employed, and the tendon should be protected from
strain.

#Calcification and Ossification in Muscles, Tendons, and
Fasci.#--_Myositis ossificans._--Ossifications in muscles, tendons,
fasci, and ligaments, in those who are the subjects of arthritis
deformans, are seldom recognised clinically, but are frequently met with
in dissecting-rooms and museums. Similar localised ossifications are met
with in Charcot's disease of joints, and in fractures which have
repaired with exuberant callus. The new bone may be in the form of
spicules, plates, or irregular masses, which, when connected with a
bone, are called _false exostoses_ (Fig. 110).

[Illustration: FIG. 110.--Ossification in Tendon of Ilio-psoas Muscle.]

_Traumatic Ossification in Relation to Muscle._--Various forms of
ossification are met with in muscle as the result of a single or of
repeated injury. Ossification in the crureus or vastus lateralis muscle
has been frequently observed as a result of a kick from a horse. Within
a week or two a swelling appears at the site of injury, and becomes
progressively harder until its consistence is that of bone. If the mass
of new bone moves with the affected muscle, it causes little
inconvenience. If, as is commonly the case, it is fixed to the femur,
the action of the muscle is impaired, and the patient complains of pain
and difficulty in flexing the knee. A skiagram shows the extent of the
mass and its relationship to the femur. The treatment consists in
excising the bony mass.

Difficulty may arise in differentiating such a mass of bone from
sarcoma; the ossification in muscle is uniformly hard, while the sarcoma
varies in consistence at different parts, and the X-ray picture shows a
clear outline of the bone in the vicinity of the ossification in
muscle, whereas in sarcoma the involvement of the bone is shown by
indentations and irregularity in its contour.

A similar ossification has been observed in relation to the insertion of
the brachialis muscle as a sequel of dislocation of the elbow. After
reduction of the dislocation, the range of movement gradually diminishes
and a hard swelling appears in front of the lower end of the humerus.
The lump continues to increase in size and in three to four weeks the
disability becomes complete. A radiogram shows a shadow in the muscle,
attached at one part as a rule to the coronoid process. During the next
three or four months, the lump in front of the elbow remains stationary
in size; a gradual decrease then ensues, but the swelling persists, as a
rule, for several years.

[Illustration: FIG. 111.--Calcification and Ossification in Biceps and
Triceps.

(From a radiogram lent by Dr. C. A. Adair Dighton.)]

Ossification in the adductor longus was first described by Billroth
under the name of "rider's bone." It follows bruising and partial
rupture of the muscle, and has been observed chiefly in cavalry
soldiers. If it causes inconvenience the bone may be removed by
operation.

Ossification in the deltoid and pectoral muscles has been observed in
foot-soldiers in the German army, and has received the name of
"drill-bone"; it is due to bruising of the muscle by the recoil of the
rifle.

_Progressive Ossifying Myositis._--This is a rare and interesting
disease, in which the muscles, tendons, and fasci throughout the body
become the seat of ossification. It affects almost exclusively the male
sex, and usually begins in childhood or youth, sometimes after an
injury, sometimes without apparent cause. The muscles of the back,
especially the trapezius and latissimus, are the first to be affected,
and the initial complaint is limitation of movement.

[Illustration: FIG. 112.--Ossification in Muscles of Trunk in a case of
generalised Ossifying Myositis.

(Photograph lent by Dr. Rustomjee.)]

The affected muscles show swellings which are rounded or oval, firm and
elastic, sharply defined, without tenderness and without discoloration
of the overlying skin. Skiagrams show that a considerable deposit of
lime salts may precede the formation of bone, as is seen in Fig. 111. In
course of time the vertebral column becomes rigid, the head is bent
forward, the hips are flexed, and abduction and other movements of the
arms are limited. The disease progresses by fits and starts, until all
the striped muscles of the body are replaced by bone, and all movements,
even those of the jaws, are abolished. The subjects of this disease
usually succumb to pulmonary tuberculosis.

There is no means of arresting the disease, and surgical treatment is
restricted to the removal or division of any mass of bone that
interferes with an important movement.

A remarkable feature of this disease is the frequent presence of a
deformity of the great toe, which usually takes the form of hallux
valgus, the great toe coming to lie beneath the second one; the
shortening is usually ascribed to absence of the first phalanx, but it
has been shown to depend also on a synostosis and imperfect development
of the phalanges. A similar deformity of the thumb is sometimes met
with.

Microscopical examination of the muscles shows that, prior to the
deposition of lime salts and the formation of bone, there occurs a
proliferation of the intra-muscular connective tissue and a gradual
replacement and absorption of the muscle fibres. The bone is spongy in
character, and its development takes place along similar lines to those
observed in ossification from the periosteum.

#Tumours of Muscle.#--With the exception of congenital varieties, such
as the rhabdomyoma, tumours of muscle grow from the connective-tissue
framework and not from the muscle fibres. Innocent tumours, such as the
fibroma, lipoma, angioma, and neuro-fibroma, are rare. Malignant tumours
may be primary in the muscle, or may result from extension from adjacent
growths--for example, implication of the pectoral muscle in cancer of
the breast--or they may be derived from tumours situated elsewhere. The
diagnosis of an intra-muscular tumour is made by observing that the
swelling is situated beneath the deep fascia, that it becomes firm and
fixed when the muscle contracts, and that, when the muscle is relaxed,
it becomes softer, and can be moved in the transverse axis of the
muscle, but not in its long axis.

Clinical interest attaches to that form of slowly growing
fibro-sarcoma--_the recurrent fibroid of Paget_--which is most
frequently met with in the muscles of the abdominal wall. A rarer
variety is the ossifying chondro-sarcoma, which undergoes ossification
to such an extent as to be visible in skiagrams.

In primary sarcoma the treatment consists in removing the muscle. In the
limbs, the function of the muscle that is removed may be retained by
transplanting an adjacent muscle in its place.

_Hydatid cysts_ of muscle resemble those developing in other tissues.


DISEASES OF TENDON SHEATHS

Tendon sheaths have the same structure and function as the synovial
membranes of joints, and are liable to the same diseases. Apart from the
tendon sheaths displayed in anatomical dissections, there is a loose
peritendinous and perimuscular cellular tissue which is subject to the
same pathological conditions as the tendon sheaths proper.

#Teno-synovitis.#--The toxic or infective agent is conveyed to the
tendon sheaths through the blood-stream, as in the gouty, gonorrhal,
and tuberculous varieties, or is introduced directly through a wound, as
in the common pyogenic form of teno-synovitis.

_Teno-synovitis Crepitans._--In the simple or traumatic form of
teno-synovitis, although the most prominent etiological factor is a
strain or over-use of the tendon, there would appear to be some other,
probably a toxic, factor in its production, otherwise the affection
would be much more common than it is: only a small proportion of those
who strain or over-use their tendons become the subjects of
teno-synovitis. The opposed surfaces of the tendon and its sheath are
covered with fibrinous lymph, so that there is friction when they move
on one another.

The _clinical features_ are pain on movement, tenderness on pressure
over the affected tendon, and a sensation of crepitation or friction
when the tendon is moved in its sheath. The crepitation may be soft like
the friction of snow, or may resemble the creaking of new
leather--"saddle-back creaking." There may be swelling in the long axis
of the tendon, and redness and dema of the skin. If there is an
effusion of fluid into the sheath, the swelling is more marked and
crepitation is absent. There is little tendency to the formation of
adhesions.

In the upper extremity, the sheath of the long tendon of the biceps may
be affected, but the condition is most common in the tendons about the
wrist, particularly in the extensors of the thumb, and it is most
frequently met with in those who follow occupations which involve
prolonged use or excessive straining of these tendons--for example,
washerwomen or riveters. It also occurs as a result of excessive
piano-playing, fencing, or rowing.

At the ankle it affects the peronei, the extensor digitorum longus, or
the tibialis anterior. It is most often met with in relation to the
tendo-calcaneus--_Achillo-dynia_--and results from the pressure of
ill-fitting boots or from the excessive use and strain of the tendon in
cycling, walking, or dancing. There is pain in raising the heel from the
ground, and creaking can be felt on palpation.

The _treatment_ consists in putting the affected tendon at rest, and
with this object a splint may be helpful; the usual remedies for
inflammation are indicated: Bier's hypermia, lead and opium
fomentations, and ichthyol and glycerine. The affection readily subsides
under treatment, but is liable to relapse on a repetition of the
exciting cause.

_Gouty Teno-synovitis._--A deposit of urate of soda beneath the
endothelial covering of tendons or of that lining their sheaths is
commonly met with in gouty subjects. The accumulation of urates may
result in the formation of visible nodular swellings, varying in size
from a pea to a cherry, attached to the tendon and moving with it. They
may be merely unsightly, or they may interfere with the use of the
tendon. Recurrent attacks of inflammation are prone to occur. We have
removed such gouty masses with satisfactory results.

_Suppurative Teno-synovitis._--This form usually follows upon infected
wounds of the fingers--especially of the thumb or little finger--and is
a frequent sequel to whitlow; it may also follow amputation of a finger.
Once the infection has gained access to the sheath, it tends to spread,
and may reach the palm or even the forearm, being then associated with
cellulitis. In moderately acute cases the tendon and its sheath become
covered with granulations, which subsequently lead to the formation of
adhesions; while in more acute cases the tendon sloughs. The pus may
burst into the cellular tissue outside the sheath, and the suppuration
is liable to spread to neighbouring sheaths or to adjacent bones or
joints--for example, those of the wrist.

The _treatment_ consists in inducing hypermia and making small
incisions for the escape of pus. The site of incision is determined by
the point of greatest tenderness on pressure. After the inflammation has
subsided, active and passive movements are employed to prevent the
formation of adhesions between the tendon and its sheath. If the tendon
sloughs, the dead portion should be cut away, as its separation is
extremely slow and is attended with prolonged suppuration.

_Gonorrhal Teno-synovitis._--This is met with especially in the tendon
sheaths about the wrist and ankle. It may occur in a mild form, with
pain, impairment of movement, and dema, and sometimes an elongated,
fluctuating swelling, the result of serous effusion into the sheath.
This condition may alternate with a gonorrhal affection of one of the
larger joints. It may subside under rest and soothing applications, but
is liable to relapse. In the more severe variety the skin is red, and
the swelling partakes of the characters of a phlegmon with threatening
suppuration; it may result in crippling from adhesions. Even if pus
forms in the sheath, the tendon rarely sloughs. The treatment consists
in inducing hypermia by Bier's method; and a vaccine may be employed
with satisfactory results.

#Tuberculous Disease of Tendon Sheaths.#--This is a comparatively common
affection, and is analogous to tuberculous disease of the synovial
membrane of joints. It may originate in the sheath, or may spread to it
from an adjacent bone.

The commonest form--hydrops--is that in which the synovial sheath is
distended with a viscous fluid, and the fibrinous material on the free
surface becomes detached and is moulded into melon-seed bodies by the
movement of the tendon. The sheath itself is thickened by the growth of
tuberculous granulation tissue. The bodies are smooth and of a
dull-white colour, and vary greatly in size and shape. There may be an
overgrowth of the fatty fringes of the synovial sheath, a condition
described as "arborescent lipoma."

The _clinical features_ vary with the tendon sheath affected. In the
common flexor sheath of the hand an hour-glass-shaped swelling is
formed, bulging above and below the transverse carpal (anterior annular)
ligament--formerly known as _compound palmar ganglion_. There is little
or no pain, but the fingers tend to be stiff and weak, and to become
flexed. On palpation, it is usually possible to displace the contents of
the sheath from one compartment to the other, and this may yield
fluctuation, and, what is more characteristic, a peculiar soft crepitant
sensation from the movement of the melon-seed bodies. In the sheath of
the peronei or other tendons about the ankle, the swelling is
sausage-shaped, and is constricted opposite the annular ligament.

The onset and progress of the affection are most insidious, and the
condition may remain stationary for long periods. It is aggravated by
use or strain of the tendons involved. In exceptional cases the skin is
thinned and gives way, resulting in the formation of a sinus.

_Treatment._--In the common flexor sheath of the palm, an attempt may be
made to cure the condition by removing the contents through a small
incision and filling the cavity with iodoform glycerine, followed by the
use of Bier's bandage. If this fails, the distended sheath is laid open,
the contents removed, the wall scraped, and the wound closed.

A less common form of tuberculous disease is that in which the sheath
becomes the seat of _a diffuse tuberculous thickening_, not unlike the
white swelling met with in joints, and with a similar tendency to
caseation. A painless swelling of an elastic character forms in relation
to the tendon sheath. It is hour-glass-shaped in the common flexor
sheath of the palm, elongated or sausage-shaped in the extensors of the
wrist and in the tendons at the ankle. The tuberculous granulation
tissue is liable to break down and lead to the formation of a cold
abscess and sinuses, and in our experience is often associated with
disease in an adjacent bone or joint. In the peronei tendons, for
example, it may result from disease of the fibula or of the ankle-joint.

When conservative measures fail, excision of the affected sheath should
be performed; the whole of the diseased area being exposed by free
incision of the overlying soft parts, the sheath is carefully isolated
from the surrounding tissues and is cut across above and below. Any
tuberculous tissue on the tendon itself is removed with a sharp spoon.
Associated bone or joint lesions are dealt with at the same time. In the
after-treatment the functions of the tendons must be preserved by
voluntary and passive movements.

#Syphilitic Affections of Tendon Sheaths.#--These closely resemble the
syphilitic affections of the synovial membrane of joints. During the
secondary period the lesion usually consists in effusion into the
sheath; gummata are met with during the tertiary period.

Arborescent lipoma has been found in the sheaths of tendons about the
wrist and ankle, sometimes in a multiple and symmetrical form,
unattended by symptoms and disappearing under anti-syphilitic treatment.

#Tumours of Tendon Sheaths.#--Innocent tumours, such as _lipoma_,
_fibroma_, and _myxoma_, are rare. Special mention should be made of the
_myeloma_ which is met with at the wrist or ankle as an elongated
swelling of slow development, or over the phalanx of a finger as a small
rounded swelling. The tumour tissue, when exposed by dissection, is of a
chocolate or chamois-yellow colour, and consists almost entirely of
giant cells. The treatment consists in dissecting the tumour tissue off
the tendons, and this is usually successful in bringing about a
permanent cure.

All varieties of _sarcoma_ are met with, but their origin from tendon
sheaths is not associated with special features.




CHAPTER XIX

THE BURS


Anatomy--Normal and adventitious burs--Injuries: Bursal
    hmatoma--DISEASES: Infective bursitis; Traumatic or trade
    bursitis; Bursal hydrops; Solid bursal tumour; Gonorrhal and
    suppurative forms of bursitis; Tuberculous and syphilitic
    disease--Tumours--_Diseases of individual burs in the upper and
    lower extremities_.

A bursa is a closed sac lined by endothelium and containing synovia.
Some are normally present--for instance, that between the skin and the
patella, and that between the aponeurosis of the gluteus maximus and the
great trochanter. _Adventitious burs_ are developed as a result of
abnormal pressure--for example, over the tarsal bones in cases of
club-foot.

#Injuries of Burs.#--As a result of contusion, especially in bleeders,
hmorrhage may occur into the cavity of a bursa and give rise to a
_bursal hmatoma_. Such a hmatoma may mask a fracture of the bone
beneath--for example, fracture of the olecranon.

#Diseases of Burs.#--The lining membrane of burs resembles that of
joints and tendon sheaths, and is liable to the same forms of disease.

#Infective bursitis# frequently follows abrasions, scratches, and wounds
of the skin over the prepatellar or olecranon bursa, and in neglected
cases the infection transgresses the wall of the bursa and gives rise to
a spreading cellulitis.

#Traumatic or Trade Bursitis.#--This term may be conveniently applied to
those affections of burs which result from repeated slight traumatism
incident to particular occupations. The most familiar examples of these
are the enlargement of the prepatellar bursa met with in housemaids--the
"housemaid's knee" (Fig. 113); the enlargement of the olecranon
bursa--"miner's elbow"; and of the ischial bursa--"weaver's" or
"tailor's bottom" (Fig. 116). These affections are characterised by an
effusion of fluid into the sac of the bursa with thickening of its
lining membrane. While friction and pressure are the most evident
factors in their production, it is probable that there is also some
toxic agent concerned, otherwise these affections would be much more
common than they are. Of the countless housemaids in whom the
prepatellar bursa is subjected to friction and pressure, only a small
proportion become the subjects of housemaid's knee.

_Clinical Features._--As these are best illustrated in the different
varieties of prepatellar bursitis, it is convenient to take this as the
type. In a number of cases the inflammation is acute and the patient is
unable to use the limb; the part is hot, swollen, and tender, and
fluctuation can be detected in the bursa. In the majority the condition
is chronic, and the chief feature is the gradual accumulation of fluid
constituting the _bursal hydrops_ or _hygroma_. When the affection has
lasted some time, or has frequently relapsed, the wall of the bursa
becomes thickened by fibrous tissue, which may be deposited irregularly,
so that septa, bands, or fringes are formed, not unlike those met with
in arthritis deformans. These fringes may be detached and form loose
bodies like those met with in joints; less frequently there are
fibrinous bodies of the melon-seed type, sometimes moulded into circular
discs like wafers. The presence of irregular thickenings of the wall, or
of loose bodies, may be recognised on palpation, especially in
superficial burs, if the sac is not tensely filled with fluid. The
thickening of the wall may take place in a uniform and concentric
fashion, resulting in the formation of a fibrous tumour--_the solid
bursal tumour_--a small cavity remaining in the centre which serves to
distinguish it from a new growth or neoplasm.

[Illustration: FIG. 113.--Hydrops of Prepatellar Bursa in a housemaid.]

The _treatment_ varies according to the variety and stage of the
affection. In recent cases the symptoms subside under rest and the
application of fomentations. Hydrops may be got rid of by blistering,
by tapping, or by incision and drainage. When the wall is thickened, the
most satisfactory treatment is to excise the bursa; the overlying skin
being reflected in the shape of a horse-shoe flap or being removed along
with the bursa.

#Other Diseases of Burs# are associated with _gonorrhal infection_,
and with _rheumatism_, especially that following scarlet fever, and are
apt to be persistent or to relapse after apparent cure. In the _gouty_
form, urate of soda is deposited in the wall of the bursa, and may
result in the formation of chalky tumours, sometimes of considerable
size (Fig. 114).

[Illustration: FIG. 114.--Section through Bursa over external malleolus,
showing deposit of urate of soda. (Cf. Fig. 117.)]

_Tuberculous disease_ of burs closely resembles that of tendon sheaths.
It may occur as an independent affection, or may be associated with
disease in an adjacent bone or joint. It is met with chiefly in the
prepatellar and subdeltoid burs, or in one of the burs over the great
trochanter. The clinical features are those of an indolent hydrops, with
or without melon-seed bodies, or of uniform thickening of the wall of
the bursa; the tuberculous granulation tissue may break down into a cold
abscess, and give rise to sinuses. The best treatment is to excise the
affected bursa, or, when this is impracticable, to lay it freely open,
remove the tuberculous tissue with the sharp spoon or knife, and treat
the cavity by the open method.

_Syphilitic disease_ is rarely recognised except in the form of bursal
and peri-bursal gummata in front of the knee-joint.

_New growths_ include the fibroma, the myxoma, the myeloma or
giant-celled tumour, and various forms of sarcoma.

#Diseases of Individual Burs.#--The _olecranon bursa_ is frequently
the seat of pyogenic infection and of traumatic or trade bursitis, the
latter being known as "miner's" or "student's elbow."

[Illustration: FIG. 115.--Tuberculous Disease of Sub-deltoid Bursa.

(From a photograph lent by Sir George T. Beatson.)]

The _sub-deltoid_ or _sub-acromial bursa_, which usually presents a
single cavity and does not normally communicate with the shoulder-joint,
is indispensable in abduction and rotation of the humerus. When the arm
is abducted, the fixed lower part or floor of the bursa is carried under
the acromion, and the upper part or roof is rolled up in the same
direction, hence tenderness over the inflamed bursa may disappear when
the arm is abducted (Dawbarn's sign). It is liable to traumatic
affections from a fall on the shoulder, pressure, or over-use of the
limb. Pain, located commonly at the insertion of the deltoid, is a
constant symptom and is especially annoying at night, the patient being
unable to get into a comfortable position. Tenderness may be elicited
over the anatomical limits of the bursa, and is usually most marked over
the great tuberosity, just external to the inter-tubercular (bicipital)
groove. When adhesions are present, abduction beyond 10 degrees is
impossible. Demonstrable effusion is not uncommon, but is disguised by
the overlying tissues. If left to himself, the patient tends to maintain
the limb in the "sling position," and resists movements in the direction
of abduction and rotation. In the treatment of this affection the arm
should be maintained at a right angle to the body, the arm being rotated
medially (Codman). When pain does not prevent it, movements of the arm
and massage are persevered with. In neglected cases, when adhesions have
formed and the shoulder is fixed, it may be necessary to break down the
adhesions under an ansthetic.

The bursa is also liable to infective conditions, such as acute
rheumatism, gonorrha, suppuration, or tubercle. In tuberculous disease
a large fluctuating swelling may form and acquire the characters of a
cold abscess (Fig. 115).

The bursa underneath the tendon of the _subscapularis_ muscle when
inflamed causes alteration in the attitude of the shoulder and
impairment of its movements.

An adventitious bursa forms over the _acromion_ process in porters and
others who carry weights on the shoulder, and may be the seat of
traumatic bursitis.

The bursa under the _tendon of insertion of the biceps_, when the seat
of disease, is attended with pain and swelling about a finger's breadth
below the bend of the elbow; there is pain and difficulty in effecting
the combined movement of flexion and supination, slight limitation of
extension, and restriction of pronation.

In the lower extremity, a large number of normal and adventitious burs
are met with and may be the seat of bursitis. That over the _tuberosity
of the ischium_, when enlarged as a trade disease, is known as
"weaver's" or "tailor's bottom." It may form a fluctuating swelling of
great size, projecting on the buttock and extending down the thigh, and
causing great inconvenience in sitting (Fig. 116). It sometimes contains
a number of loose bodies.

There are two burs over the _great trochanter_, one superficial to, the
other beneath the aponeurosis of the gluteus maximus; the latter is not
infrequently infected by tuberculous disease that has spread from the
trochanter.

The bursa _between the psoas muscle and the capsule of the hip-joint_
may be the seat of tuberculous disease, and give rise to clinical
features not unlike those of disease of the hip-joint. The limb is
flexed, abducted and rotated out; there is a swelling in the upper part
of Scarpa's triangle, but the movements are not restricted in directions
which do not entail putting the ilio-psoas muscle on the stretch.

Cartilaginous and partly ossified loose bodies may accumulate in the
ilio-psoas bursa and distend it, both in a downward direction towards
the hip-joint, with which it communicates, and upwards, projecting
towards the abdomen.

The bursa beneath the quadriceps extensor--_subcrural bursa_--usually
communicates with the knee-joint and shares in its diseases. When shut
off from the joint it may suffer independently, and when distended with
fluid forms a horse-shoe swelling above the patella.

In front of the patella and its ligament is the _prepatellar bursa_,
which may have one, two, or three compartments, usually communicating
with one another. It is the seat of the affection known as "housemaid's
knee," which is very common and is sometimes bilateral, and, less
frequently, of tuberculous disease which usually originates in the
patella.

[Illustration: FIG. 116.--Great Enlargement of the Ischial Bursa.

(Mr. Scot-Skirving's case.)]

The bursa _between the ligamentum patell and the tibia_ is rarely the
seat of disease. When it is, there is pain and tenderness referred to
the ligament, the patient is unable to extend the limb completely, the
tuberosity of the tibia is apparently enlarged, and there is a
fluctuating swelling on either side of the ligament, most marked in the
extended position of the limb.

Of the numerous burs in the popliteal space, that _between the
semi-membranosus and the medial head of the gastrocnemius_ is most
frequently the seat of disease, which is usually of the nature of a
simple hydrops, forming a fluctuating egg-or sausage-shaped swelling at
the medial side of the popliteal space. It is flaccid in the flexed, and
tense in the extended position. As a rule it causes little
inconvenience, and may be left alone. Otherwise it should be dissected
out, and if, as is frequently the case, there is a communication with
the knee-joint, this should be closed with sutures.

[Illustration: FIG. 117.--Gouty Disease of Burs in a tailor. The bursal
tumours were almost entirely composed of urate of soda. (Cf. Fig. 114.)]

An adventitious bursa may form over the _lateral malleolus_, especially
in tailors, giving rise to the condition known as "tailor's ankle"
(Fig. 117).

The bursa _between the tendo-calcaneus (Achillis) and the upper part of
the calcaneus_ may become inflamed--especially as a result of
post-scarlatinal rheumatism or gonorrha. The affection is known as
Achillo-bursitis. There is severe pain in the region of the insertion of
the tendo-calcaneus, the movements at the ankle-joint are restricted,
and the patient may be unable to walk. There is a tender swelling on
either side of the tendon. When, in spite of palliative treatment, the
affection persists or relapses, it is best to excise the bursa. The
tendo-calcaneus is detached from the calcaneus, the bursa dissected out,
and the tendon replaced. If there is a bony projection from the
calcaneus, it should be shaved off with the chisel.

The bursa that is sometimes met with on the under aspect of the
calcaneus--_the subcalcanean bursa_--when inflamed, gives rise to pain
and tenderness in the sole of the foot. This affection may be associated
with a spinous projection from the bone, which is capable of being
recognised in a skiagram. The soft parts of the heel are turned forwards
as a flap, the bursa is dissected out, and the projection of bone, if
present, is removed.

The enlargement of adventitious burs over the head of the first
metatarsal in hallux valgus; over the tarsus, metatarsus, and digits in
the different forms of club-foot; over the angular projection in Pott's
disease of the spine; over the end of the bone in amputation stumps, and
over hard tumours such as chondroma and osteoma, are described
elsewhere.




CHAPTER XX

DISEASES OF BONE


Anatomy and physiology--Regeneration of bone--Transplantation of bone.
    DISEASES OF BONE--Definition of terms--Pyogenic diseases:
    _Acute osteomyelitis and periostitis_; _Chronic and relapsing
    osteomyelitis_; _Abscess of bone_--Tuberculous disease--Syphilitic
    disease--Hydatids; Rickets; Osteomalacia--Ostitis deformans of
    Paget--Osteomyelitis fibrosa--Affections of bones in diseases of
    the nervous system--Fragilitas ossium--Tumours and cysts of bone.

#Surgical Anatomy.#--During the period of growth, a long bone such as
the tibia consists of a shaft or _diaphysis_, and two extremities or
_epiphyses_. So long as growth continues there intervenes between the
shaft and each of the epiphyses a disc of actively growing
cartilage--_the epiphysial cartilage_; and at the junction of this
cartilage with the shaft is a zone of young, vascular, spongy bone known
as the _metaphysis_ or _epiphysial junction_. The shaft is a cylinder of
compact bone enclosing the medullary canal, which is filled with yellow
marrow. The extremities, which include the ossifying junctions, consist
of spongy bone, the spaces of which are filled with red marrow. The
articular aspect of the epiphysis is invested with a thick layer of
hyaline cartilage, known as the _articular cartilage_, which would
appear to be mainly nourished from the synovia.

The external investment--the _periosteum_--is thick and vascular during
the period of growth, but becomes thin and less vascular when the
skeleton has attained maturity. Except where muscles are attached it is
easily separated from the bone; at the extremities it is intimately
connected with the epiphysial cartilage and with the epiphysis, and at
the margin of the latter it becomes continuous with the capsule of the
adjacent joint. It consists of two layers, an outer fibrous and an inner
cellular layer; the cells, which are called osteoblasts, are continuous
with those lining the Haversian canals and the medullary cavity.

The arrangement of the _blood vessels_ determines to some extent the
incidence of disease in bone. The nutrient artery, after entering the
medullary canal through a special foramen in the cortex, bifurcates, and
one main division runs towards each of the extremities, and terminates
at the ossifying junction in a series of capillary loops projected
against the epiphysial cartilage. This arrangement favours the lodgment
of any organisms that may be circulating in the blood, and partly
accounts for the frequency with which diseases of bacterial origin
develop in the region of the ossifying junction. The diaphysis is also
nourished by numerous blood vessels from the periosteum, which penetrate
the cortex through the Haversian canals and anastomose with those
derived from the nutrient artery. The epiphyses are nourished by a
separate system of blood vessels, derived from the arteries which supply
the adjacent joint. The veins of the marrow are of large calibre and are
devoid of valves.

The _nerves_ enter the marrow along with the arteries, and, being
derived from the sympathetic system, are probably chiefly concerned with
the innervation of the blood vessels, but they are also capable of
transmitting sensory impulses, as pain is a prominent feature of many
bone affections.

It has long been believed that _the function of the periosteum_ is to
form new bone, but this view has been questioned by Sir William Macewen,
who maintains that its chief function is to limit the formation of new
bone. His experimental observations appear to show that new bone is
exclusively formed by the cellular elements or osteoblasts: these are
found on the surface of the bone, lining the Haversian canals and in the
marrow. We believe that it will avoid confusion in the study of the
diseases of bone if the osteoblasts on the surface of the bone are still
regarded as forming the deeper layer of the periosteum.

The formation of new bone by the osteoblasts may be _defective_ as a
result of physiological conditions, such as old age and disease of a
part, and defective formation is often associated with atrophy, or more
strictly speaking, absorption, of the existing bone, as is well seen in
the edentulous jaw and in the neck of the femur of a person advanced in
years. Defective formation associated with atrophy is also illustrated
in the bones of the lower limbs of persons who are unable to stand or
walk, and in the distal portion of a bone which is the seat of an
ununited fracture. The same combination is seen in an exaggerated degree
in the bones of limbs that are paralysed; in the case of adults, atrophy
of bone predominates; in children and adolescents, defective formation
is the more prominent feature, and the affected bones are attenuated,
smooth on the surface, and abnormally light.

On the other hand, the formation of new bone may be _exaggerated_, the
osteoblasts being excited to abnormal activity by stimuli of different
kinds: for example, the secretion of certain glandular organs, such as
the pituitary and thyreoid; the diluted toxins of certain
micro-organisms, such as the staphylococcus aureus and the spirochte of
syphilis; a condition of hypermia, such as that produced artificially
by the application of a Bier's bandage or that which accompanies a
chronic leg-ulcer.

The new bone is laid down on the surface, in the Haversian canals, or
in the cancellous spaces and medullary canal, or in all three
situations. The new bone on the surface sometimes takes the form of a
diffuse _encrustation_ of porous or spongy bone as in secondary
syphilis, sometimes as a uniform increase in the girth of the
bone--_hyperostosis_, sometimes as a localised heaping up of bone or
_node_, and sometimes in the form of spicules, spoken of as
_osteophytes_. When the new bone is laid down in the Haversian canals,
cancellous spaces and medulla, the bone becomes denser and heavier, and
is said to be _sclerosed_; in extreme instances this may result in
obliteration of the medullary canal. Hyperostosis and sclerosis are
frequently met with in combination, a condition that is well illustrated
in the femur and tibia in tertiary syphilis; if the subject of this
condition is confined to bed for several months before his death, the
sclerosis may be undone, and rarefaction may even proceed beyond the
normal, the bone becoming lighter and richer in fat, although retaining
its abnormal girth.

The _function of the epiphysial cartilage_ is to provide for the growth
of the shaft in length. While all epiphysial cartilages contribute to
this result, certain of them functionate more actively and for a longer
period than others. Those at the knee, for example, contribute more to
the length of limb than do those at the hip or ankle, and they are also
the last to unite. In the upper limb the more active epiphyses are at
the shoulder and wrist, and these also are the last to unite.

The activity of the epiphysial cartilage may be modified as a result of
disease. In rickets, for example, the formation of new bone may take
place unequally, and may go on more rapidly in one half of the disc than
in the other, with the result that the axis of the shaft comes to
deviate from the normal, giving rise to knock-knee or bow-knee. In
bacterial diseases originating in the marrow, if the epiphysial junction
is directly involved in the destructive process, its bone-forming
functions may be retarded or abolished, and the subsequent growth of the
bone be seriously interfered with. On the other hand, if it is not
directly involved but is merely influenced by the proximity of an
infective focus, its bone-forming functions may be stimulated by the
diluted toxins and the growth of the bone in length exaggerated. In
paralysed limbs the growth from the epiphyses is usually little short of
the normal. The result of interference with growth is more injurious in
the lower than in the upper limb, because, from the functional point of
view, it is essential that the lower extremities should be approximately
of equal length. In the forearm or leg, where there are two parallel
bones, if the growth of one is arrested the continued growth of the
other results in a deviation of the hand or foot to one side.

In certain diseases, such as rickets and inherited syphilis, and in
developmental anomalies such as achondroplasia, _dwarfing_ of the
skeleton results from defective growth of bone at the ossifying
junctions. Conversely, excessive growth of bone at the ossifying
junctions results in abnormal height of the skeleton or _giantism_ as a
result, for example, of increased activity of the pituitary in
adolescents, and in eunuchs who have been castrated in childhood or
adolescence; in the latter, union of the epiphyses at the ends of the
long bones is delayed beyond the usual period at which the skeleton
attains maturity.

#Regeneration of Bone.#--When bone has been lost or destroyed as a
result of injury or disease, it is capable of being reproduced, the
extent to which regeneration takes place varying under different
conditions. The chief part in the regeneration of bone is played by the
osteoblasts in the adjacent marrow and in the deeper layer of the
periosteum. The shaft of a long bone may be reproduced after having been
destroyed by disease or removed by operation. The flat bones of the
skull and the bones of the face, which are primarily developed in
membrane, have little capacity of regeneration; hence, when bone has
been lost or removed in these situations, there results a permanent
defect.

Wounds or defects in articular cartilage are repaired by fibrous or
osseous tissue derived from the subjacent cancellous spaces.

_Transplantation of Bone--Bone-grafting._--Clinical experience is
conclusive that a portion of bone which has been completely detached
from its surroundings--for example, a trephine circle, or a flap of bone
detached with the saw, or the loose fragments in a compound
fracture--may become, if replaced in position, firmly and permanently
incorporated with the surrounding bone. Embedded foreign bodies, on the
other hand, such as ivory pegs or decalcified bone, exhibit, on removal
after a sufficient interval, evidence of having been eroded, in the
shape of worm-eaten depressions and perforations, and do not become
united or fused to the surrounding bone. It follows from this that the
implanting of living bone is to be preferred to the implanting of dead
bone or of foreign material. We believe that transplanted living bone
when placed under favourable conditions survives and becomes
incorporated with the bone with which it is in contact, and does not
merely act as a scaffolding. We believe also that the retention of the
periosteum on the graft is not essential, but, by favouring the
establishment of vascular connections, it contributes to the survival of
the graft and the success of the transplantation. Macewen maintains that
bone grafts "take" better if broken up into small fragments; we regard
this as unnecessary. Bone grafts yield better functional results when
they are immovably fixed to the adjacent bone by suture, pegs, or
plates. As in all grafting procedures, asepsis is essential.

Transplanted bone retains its vitality when embedded in the soft parts,
but is gradually absorbed and replaced by fibrous tissue.


DISEASES OF BONE

The morbid processes met with in bone originate in the same way and lead
to the same results as do similar processes in other tissues. The
structural peculiarities of bone, however, and the important changes
which take place in the skeleton during the period of growth, modify
certain of the clinical and pathological features.

_Definition of Terms._--Any diseased process that affects the periosteum
is spoken of as _periostitis_; the term _osteomyelitis_ is employed when
it is located in the marrow. The term _epiphysitis_ has been applied to
an inflammatory process in two distinct situations--namely, the
ossifying nucleus in the epiphysis, and the ossifying junction or
metaphysis between the epiphysial cartilage and the diaphysis. We shall
restrict the term to inflammation in the first of these situations.
Inflammation at the ossifying junction is included under the term
osteomyelitis.

The term _rarefying ostitis_ is applied to any process that is attended
with excessive absorption of the framework of a bone, whereby it becomes
more porous or spongy than it was before, a condition known as
_osteoporosis_.

The term _caries_ is employed to indicate any diseased process
associated with crumbling away of the trabecular framework of a bone. It
may be considered as the equivalent of ulceration or molecular
destruction in the soft parts. The carious process is preceded by the
formation of granulation tissue in the marrow or periosteum, which eats
away and replaces the bone in contact with it. The subsequent
degeneration and death of the granulation tissue under the necrotic
influence of bacterial toxins results in disintegration and crumbling
away of the trabecular framework of the portion of bone affected.
Clinically, carious bone yields a soft grating sensation under the
pressure of the probe. The macerated bone presents a rough, eroded
surface.

The term _dry caries_ (_caries sicca_) is applied to that variety which
is unattended with suppuration.

_Necrosis_ is the term applied to the death of a tangible portion of
bone, and the dead portion when separated is called a _sequestrum_. The
term _exfoliation_ is sometimes employed to indicate the separation or
throwing off of a superficial sequestrum. The edges and deep surface of
the sequestrum present a serrated or worm-eaten appearance due to the
process of erosion by which the dead bone has been separated from the
living.


BACTERIAL DISEASES

The most important diseases in this group are the pyogenic, the
tuberculous, and the syphilitic.

PYOGENIC DISEASES OF BONE.--These diseases result from
infection with pyogenic organisms, and two varieties or types are
recognised according to whether the organisms concerned reach their seat
of action by way of the blood-stream, or through an infection of the
soft parts in contact with the bone.


INFECTIONS THROUGH THE BLOOD-STREAM

#Diseases caused by the Staphylococcus Aureus.#--As the majority of
pyogenic diseases are due to infection with the staphylococcus aureus,
these will be described first.

#Acute osteomyelitis# is a suppurative process beginning in the marrow
and tending to spread to the periosteum. The disease is common in
children, but is rare after the skeleton has attained maturity. Boys are
affected more often than girls, in the proportion of three to one,
probably because they are more liable to exposure, to injury, and to
violent exertion.

_Etiology._--Staphylococci gain access to the blood-stream in various
ways, it may be through the skin or through a mucous surface.

Such conditions as, for example, a blow, some extra exertion such as a
long walk, or exposure to cold, as in wading, may act as localising
factors.

The long bones are chiefly affected, and the commonest sites are: either
end of the tibia and the lower end of the femur; the other bones of the
skeleton are affected in rare instances.

_Pathology._--The disease commences and is most intense in the marrow of
the ossifying junction at one end of the diaphysis; it may commence at
both ends simultaneously--_bipolar osteomyelitis_; or, commencing at one
end, may spread to the other.

The changes observed are those of intense engorgement of the marrow,
going on to greenish-yellow purulent infiltration. Where the process is
most advanced--that is, at the ossifying junction--there are evidences
of absorption of the framework of the bone; the marrow spaces and
Haversian canals undergo enlargement and become filled with
greenish-yellow pus. This rarefaction of the spongy bone is the earliest
change seen with the X-rays.

The process may remain localised to the ossifying junction, but usually
spreads along the medullary canal for a varying distance, and also
extends to the periosteum by way of the enlarged Haversian canals. The
pus accumulates under the periosteum and lifts it up from the bone. The
extent of spread in the medullary canal and beneath the periosteum is in
close correspondence. The periosteum of the diaphysis is easily
separated--hence the facility with which the pus spreads along the
shaft; but in the region of the ossifying junction it is raised with
difficulty because of its intimate connection with the epiphysial
cartilage. Less frequently there is more than one collection of pus
under the periosteum, each being derived from a focus of suppuration in
the subjacent marrow. The pus perforates the periosteum, and makes its
way to the surface by the easiest anatomical route, and discharges
externally, forming one or more sinuses through which fresh infection
may take place. The infection may spread to the adjacent joint, either
directly through the epiphysis and articular cartilage, or along the
deep layer of the periosteum and its continuation--the capsular
ligament. When the epiphysis is intra-articular, as, for example, in the
head of the femur, the pus when it reaches the surface of the bone
necessarily erupts directly into the joint.

While the occurrence of purely periosteal suppuration is regarded as
possible, we are of opinion that the embolic form of staphylococcal
osteomyelitis always originates in the marrow.

The portion of the diaphysis which has sustained the action of the
concentrated toxins has its vitality further impaired as a result of the
stripping of the periosteum and thrombosis of the blood vessels of the
marrow, so that _necrosis_ of bone is one of the most striking results
of the disease, and as this takes place rapidly, that is, in a day or
two, the term _acute necrosis_, formerly applied to the disease, was
amply justified.

When there is marked rarefaction of the bone at the ossifying junction,
the epiphysis is liable to be separated--_epiphysiolysis_. The
separation usually takes place through the young bone of the ossifying
junction, and the surfaces of the diaphysis and epiphysis are opposed to
each other by irregular eroded surfaces bathed in pus. The separated
epiphysis may be kept in place by the periosteum, but when this has been
detached by the formation of pus beneath it, the epiphysis is liable to
be displaced by muscular action or by some movement of the limb, or it
is the diaphysis that is displaced, for example, the lower end of the
diaphysis of the femur may be projected into the popliteal space.

The epiphysial cartilage usually continues its bone-forming functions,
but when it has been seriously damaged or displaced, the further growth
of the bone in length may be interfered with. Sometimes the separated
and displaced epiphysis dies and constitutes a sequestrum.

The adjacent joint may become filled at an early stage with a serous
effusion, which may be sterile. When the cocci gain access to the joint,
the lesion assumes the characters of a purulent arthritis, which, from
its frequency during the earlier years of life, has been called _the
acute arthritis of infants_.

Separation of an epiphysis nearly always results in infection and
destruction of the adjacent joint.

Osteomyelitis is rare in the bones of the carpus and tarsus, and the
associated joints are usually infected from the outset. In flat bones,
such as the skull, the scapula, or the ilium, suppuration usually occurs
on both aspects of the bone as well as in the marrow.

_Clinical Features._--The constitutional symptoms, which are due to the
associated toxmia, vary considerably in different cases. In mild cases
they may be so slight as to escape recognition. In exceptionally severe
cases the patient may succumb before there are obvious signs of the
localisation of the staphylococci in the bone marrow. In average cases
the temperature rises rapidly with a rigor and runs an irregular course
with morning remissions, there is marked general illness accompanied by
headache, vomiting, and sometimes delirium.

The local manifestations are pain and tenderness in relation to one of
the long bones; the pain may be so severe as to prevent sleep and to
cause the child to cry out. Tenderness on pressure over the bone is the
most valuable diagnostic sign. At a later stage there is an ill-defined
swelling in the region of the ossifying junction, with dema of the
overlying skin and dilatation of the superficial veins.

The swelling appears earlier and is more definite in superficial bones
such as the tibia, than in those more deeply placed such as the upper
end of the femur. It may be less evident to the eye than to the fingers,
and is best appreciated by gently stroking the bone from the middle of
its shaft towards the end. The maximum thickening and tenderness usually
correspond to the junction of the diaphysis with the epiphysis, and the
swelling tails off gradually along the shaft. As time goes on there is
redness of the skin, especially over a superficial bone, such as the
tibia, the swelling becomes softer, and gives evidence of fluctuation.
This stage may be reached at the end of twenty-four hours, or not for
some days.

Suppuration spreads towards the surface, until, some days later, the
skin sloughs and pus escapes, after which the fever usually remits and
the pain and other symptoms are relieved. The pus may contain blood and
droplets of fat derived from the marrow, and in some cases minute
particles of bone are present also. The presence of fat and bony
particles in the pus confirms the medullary origin of the suppuration.

If an incision is made, the periosteum is found to be raised from the
bone; the extent of the bare bone will be found to correspond fairly
accurately with the extent of the lesion in the marrow.

_Local Complications._--The adjacent joint may exhibit symptoms which
vary from those of a simple effusion to those of a purulent _arthritis_.
The joint symptoms may count for little in the clinical picture, or, as
in the case of the hip, may so predominate as to overshadow those of the
bone lesion from which they originated.

_Separation and displacement of the epiphysis_ usually reveals itself by
an alteration in the attitude of the limb; it is nearly always
associated with suppuration in the adjacent joint.

When _pathological fracture_ of the shaft occurs, as it may do, from
some muscular effort or strain, it is attended with the usual signs of
fracture.

_Dislocation_ of the adjacent joint has been chiefly observed at the
hip; it may result from effusion into the joint and stretching of the
ligaments, or may be the sequel of a purulent arthritis; the signs of
dislocation are not so obvious as might be expected, but it is attended
with an alteration in the attitude of the limb, and the displacement of
the head of the bone is readily shown in a skiagram.

_General Complications._--In some cases a _multiplicity of lesions_ in
the bones and joints imparts to the disease the features of pymia. The
occurrence of endocarditis, as indicated by alterations in the heart
sounds and the development of murmurs, may cause widespread infective
embolism, and metastatic suppurations in the kidneys, heart-wall, and
lungs, as well as in other bones and joints than those primarily
affected. The secondary suppurations are liable to be overlooked unless
sought for, as they are rarely attended with much pain.

In these multiple forms of osteomyelitis the toxmic symptoms
predominate; the patient is dull and listless, or he may be restless and
talkative, or actually delirious. The tongue is dry and coated, the lips
and teeth are covered with sordes, the motions are loose and offensive,
and may be passed involuntarily. The temperature is remittent and
irregular, the pulse small and rapid, and the urine may contain blood
and albumen. Sometimes the skin shows erythematous and purpuric rashes,
and the patient may cry out as in meningitis. The post-mortem
appearances are those of pymia.

_Differential Diagnosis._--Acute osteomyelitis is to be diagnosed from
infections of the soft parts, such as erysipelas and cellulitis, and, in
the case of the tibia, from erythema nodosum. Tenderness localised to
the ossifying junction is the most valuable diagnostic sign of
osteomyelitis.

When there is early and pronounced general intoxication, there is likely
to be confusion with other acute febrile illnesses, such as scarlet
fever. In all febrile conditions in children and adolescents, the
ossifying junctions of the long bones should be examined for areas of
pain and tenderness.

Osteomyelitis has many features in common with acute articular
rheumatism, and some authorities believe them to be different forms of
the same disease (Kocher). In acute rheumatism, however, the joint
symptoms predominate, there is an absence of suppuration, and the pains
and temperature yield to salicylates.

The _prognosis_ varies with the type of the disease, with its
location--the vertebr, skull, pelvis, and lower jaw being specially
unfavourable--with the multiplicity of the lesions, and with the
development of endocarditis and internal metastases.

_Treatment._--This is carried out on the same lines as in other pyogenic
infections.

In the earliest stages of the disease, the induction of hypermia is
indicated, and should be employed until the diagnosis is definitely
established, and in the meantime preparations for operation should be
made. An incision is made down to and through the periosteum, and
whether pus is found or not, the bone should be opened in the vicinity
of the ossifying junction by means of a drill, gouge, or trephine. If
pus is found, the opening in the bone is extended along the shaft as far
as the periosteum has been separated, and the infected marrow is removed
with the spoon. The cavity is then lightly packed with rubber dam, or,
as recommended by Bier, the skin edges are brought together by sutures
which are loosely tied to afford sufficient space between them for the
exit of discharge, and the hypermic treatment is continued.

When there is widespread suppuration in the marrow, and the shaft is
extensively bared of periosteum and appears likely to die, it may be
resected straight away or after an interval of a day or two. Early
resection of the shaft is also indicated if the opening of the medullary
canal is not followed by relief of symptoms. In the leg and forearm, the
unaffected bone maintains the length and contour of the limb; in the
case of the femur and humerus, extension with weight and pulley along
with some form of moulded gutter splint is employed with a similar
object.

Amputation of the limb is reserved for grave cases, in which life is
endangered by toxmia, which is attributed to the primary lesion. It may
be called for later if the limb is likely to be useless, as, for
example, when the whole shaft of the bone is dead without the formation
of a new case, when the epiphyses are separated and displaced, and the
joints are disorganised.

Flat bones, such as the skull or ilium, must be trephined and the pus
cleared out from both aspects of the bone. In the vertebr, operative
interference is usually restricted to opening and draining the
associated abscess.

#Nature's Effort at Repair.#--_In cases which are left to nature_, and
in which necrosis of bone has occurred, those portions of the periosteum
and marrow which have retained their vitality resume their osteogenetic
functions, often to an exaggerated degree. Where the periosteum has been
lifted up by an accumulation of pus, or is in contact with bone that is
dead, it proceeds to form new bone with great activity, so that the dead
shaft becomes surrounded by a sheath or case of new bone, known as the
_involucrum_ (Fig. 118). Where the periosteum has been perforated by pus
making its way to the surface, there are defects or holes in the
involucrum, called _cloac_. As these correspond more or less in
position to the sinuses in the skin, in passing a probe down one of the
sinuses it usually passes through a cloaca and strikes the dead bone
lying in the interior. If the periosteum has been extensively
destroyed, new bone may only be formed in patches, or not at all. The
dead bone is separated from the living by the agency of granulation
tissue with its usual complements of phagocytes and osteoclasts, so that
the sequestrum presents along its margins and on its deep surface a
pitted, grooved, and worm-eaten appearance, except on the periosteal
aspect, which is unaltered. Ultimately the dead bone becomes loose and
lies in a cavity a little larger than itself; the wall of the cavity is
formed by the new case, lined with granulation tissue. The separation of
the sequestrum takes place more rapidly in the spongy bone of the
ossifying junction than in the compact bone of the shaft.

When foci of suppuration have been scattered up and down the medullary
cavity, and the bone has died in patches, several sequestra may be
included by the new case; each portion of dead bone is slowly separated,
and comes to lie in a cavity lined by granulations.

Even at a distance from the actual necrosis there is formation of new
bone by the marrow; the medullary canal is often obliterated, and the
bone becomes heavier and denser--sclerosis; and the new bone which is
deposited on the original shaft results in an increase in the girth of
the bone--hyperostosis.

[Illustration: FIG. 118.--Shaft of Femur after Acute Osteomyelitis. The
shaft has undergone extensive necrosis, and a shell of new bone has been
formed by the periosteum.]

_Pathological fracture_ of the shaft may occur at the site of necrosis,
when the new case is incapable of resisting the strain put upon it, and
is most frequently met with in the shaft of the femur. Short of
fracture, there may be bending or curving of the new case, and this
results in deformity and shortening of the limb (Fig. 119).

The _extrusion of a sequestrum_ may occur, provided there is a cloaca
large enough to allow of its escape, but the surgeon has usually to
interfere by performing the operation of sequestrectomy. Displacement or
partial extrusion of the dead bone may cause complications, as when a
sequestrum derived from the trigone of the femur perforates the
popliteal artery or the cavity of the knee-joint, or a sequestrum of the
pelvis perforates the wall of the urinary bladder.

The extent to which bone which has been lost is reproduced varies in
different parts of the skeleton: while the long bones, the scapula, the
mandible, and other bones which are developed in cartilage are almost
completely re-formed, bones which are entirely developed in membrane,
such as the flat bones of the skull and the maxilla, are not reproduced.

[Illustration: FIG. 119.--Femur and Tibia showing results of Acute
Osteomyelitis affecting Trigone of Femur; sequestrum partly surrounded
by new case; backward displacement of lower epiphysis and implication of
knee-joint.]

It may be instructive to describe _the X-ray appearances of a long bone
that has passed through an attack of acute osteomyelitis_ severe enough
to have caused necrosis of part of the diaphysis. The shadow of the dead
bone is seen in the position of the original shaft which it represents;
it is of the same shape and density as the original shaft, while its
margins present an irregular contour from the erosion concerned in its
separation. The sequestrum is separated from the living bone by a clear
zone which corresponds to the layer of granulations lining the cavity in
which it lies. This clear zone separating the shadow of the dead bone
from that of the living bone by which it is surrounded is conclusive
evidence of a sequestrum. The medullary canal in the vicinity of the
sequestrum being obliterated, is represented by a shadow of varying
density, continuous with that of the surrounding bone. The shadow of the
new case or involucrum with its wavy contour is also in evidence, with
its openings or cloac, and is mainly responsible for the increase in
the diameter of the bone.

The skiagram may also show separation and displacement of the adjacent
epiphysis and destruction of the articular surfaces or dislocation of
the joint.

_Sequel of Acute Suppurative Osteomyelitis._--The commonest sequel is
the presence of a sequestrum with one or more discharging sinuses; owing
to the abundant formation of scar tissue these sinuses have rigid edges
which are usually depressed and adherent to the bone.

_The Recognition and Removal of Sequestra._--So long as there is dead
bone there will be suppuration from the granulations lining the cavity
in which it lies, and a discharge of pus from the sinuses, so that the
mere persistence of discharge after an attack of osteomyelitis, is
presumptive evidence of the occurrence of necrosis. Where there are one
or more sinuses, the passage of a probe which strikes bare bone affords
corroboration of the view that the bone has perished. When the dead bone
has been separated from the living, the X-rays yield the most exact
information.

The traditional practice is to wait until the dead bone is entirely
separated before undertaking an operation for its removal, from fear, on
the one hand, of leaving portions behind which may keep up the
discharge, and, on the other, of removing more bone than is necessary.
This practice need not be adhered to, as by operating at an earlier
stage healing is greatly hastened. If it is decided to wait for
separation of the dead bone, drainage should be improved, and the
infective element combated by the induction of hypermia.

_The operation_ for the removal of the dead bone (_sequestrectomy_)
consists in opening up the periosteum and the new case sufficiently to
allow of the removal of all the dead bone, including the most minute
sequestra. The limb having been rendered bloodless, existing sinuses are
enlarged, but if these are inconveniently situated--for example, in the
centre of the popliteal space in necrosis of the femoral trigone--it is
better to make a fresh wound down to the bone on that aspect of the
limb which affords best access, and which entails the least injury of
the soft parts. The periosteum, which is thick and easily separable, is
raised from the new case with an elevator, and with the chisel or gouge
enough of the new bone is taken away to allow of the removal of the
sequestrum. Care must be taken not to leave behind any fragment of dead
bone, as this will interfere with healing, and may determine a relapse
of suppuration.

The dead bone having been removed, the lining granulations are scraped
away with a spoon, and the cavity is disinfected.

There are different ways of dealing with a _bone cavity_. It may be
packed with gauze (impregnated with "bipp" or with iodoform), which is
changed at intervals until healing takes place from the bottom; it may
be filled with a flap of bone and periosteum raised from the vicinity,
or with bone grafts; or the wall of bone on one side of the cavity may
be chiselled through at its base, so that it can be brought into contact
with the opposite wall. The method of filling bone cavities devised by
Mosetig-Moorhof, consists in disinfecting and drying the cavity by a
current of hot air, and filling it with a mixture of powdered iodoform
(60 parts) and oil of sesame and spermaceti (each 40 parts), which is
fluid at a temperature of 112 F.; the soft parts are then brought
together without drainage. As the cavity fills up with new bone the
iodoform is gradually absorbed. Iodoform gives a dark shadow with the
X-rays, so that the process of its absorption can be followed in
skiagrams taken at intervals.

These procedures may be carried out at the same time as the sequestrum
is removed, or after an interval. In all of them, asepsis is essential
for success.

The _deformities_ resulting from osteomyelitis are more marked the
earlier in life the disease occurs. Even under favourable conditions,
and with the continuous effort at reconstruction of the bone by Nature's
method, the return to normal is often far from perfect, and there
usually remains a variable amount of hyperostosis and sclerosis and
sometimes curving of the bone. Under less favourable conditions, the
late results of osteomyelitis may be more serious. _Shortening_ is not
uncommon from interference with growth at the ossifying junction.
_Exaggerated growth_ in the length of a bone is rare, and has been
observed chiefly in the bones of the leg. Where there are two parallel
bones--as in the leg, for example--the growth of the diseased bone may
be impaired, and the other continuing its normal growth becomes
disproportionately long; less frequently the growth of the diseased
bone is exaggerated, and it becomes the longer of the two. In either
case, the longer bone becomes curved. An _obliquity_ of the bone may
result when one half of the epiphysial cartilage is destroyed and the
other half continues to form bone, giving rise to such deformities as
knock-knee and club-hand.

Deformity may also result from vicious union of a pathological fracture,
permanent displacement of an epiphysis, contracture, ankylosis, or
dislocation of the adjacent joint.

#Relapsing Osteomyelitis.#--As the term indicates, the various forms of
relapsing osteomyelitis date back to an antecedent attack, and their
occurrence depends on the capacity of staphylococci to lie latent in the
marrow.

Relapse may take place within a few months of the original attack, or
not for many years. Cases are sometimes met with in which relapses recur
at regular intervals for several years, the tendency, however, being for
the attacks to become milder as the virulence of the organisms becomes
more and more attenuated.

_Clinical Features._--Osteomyelitis in a patient over twenty-five is
nearly always of the relapsing variety. In some cases the bone becomes
enlarged, with pain and tenderness on pressure; in others there are the
usual phenomena which attend suppuration, but the pus is slow in coming
to the surface, and the constitutional symptoms are slight. The pus may
escape by new channels, or one of the old sinuses may re-open.
Radiograms usually furnish useful information as to the condition of the
bone, both as it is altered by the original attack and by the changes
that attend the relapse of the infective process.

_Treatment._--In cases of thickening of the bone with persistent and
severe pain, if relief is not afforded by the repeated application of
blisters, the thickened periosteum should be incised, and the bone
opened up with the chisel or trephine. In cases attended with
suppuration, the swelling is incised and drained, and if there is a
sequestrum, it must be removed.

#Circumscribed Abscess of Bone--"Brodie's Abscess."#--The most important
form of relapsing osteomyelitis is the circumscribed abscess of bone
first described by Benjamin Brodie. It is usually met with in young
adults, but we have met with it in patients over fifty. Several years
may intervene between the original attack of osteomyelitis and the onset
of symptoms of abscess.

_Morbid Anatomy._[7]--The abscess is nearly always situated in the
central axis of the bone in the region of the ossifying junction,
although cases are occasionally met with in which it lies nearer the
middle of the shaft. In exceptional cases there is more than one abscess
(Fig. 120). The tibia is the bone most commonly affected, but the lower
end of the femur, or either end of the humerus, may be the seat of the
abscess. In the quiescent stage the lesion is represented by a small
cavity in the bone, filled with clear serum, and lined by a fibrous
membrane which is engaged in forming bone. Around the cavity the bone is
sclerosed, and the medullary canal is obliterated. When the infection
becomes active, the contents of the cavity are transformed into a
greenish-yellow pus from which the staphylococcus can be isolated, and
the cavity is lined by a thin film of granulation tissue which erodes
the surrounding bone and so causes the abscess to increase in size. If
the erosion proceeds uniformly, the cavity is spherical or oval; if it
is more active at some points than others, diverticula or tunnels are
formed, and one of these may finally erupt through the shell of the bone
or into an adjacent joint. Small irregular sequestra are occasionally
found within the abscess cavity. In long-standing cases it is common to
find extensive obliteration of the medullary canal, and a considerable
increase in the girth of the bone.

[7] Alexis Thomson, _Edin. Med. Journ._, 1906.

[Illustration: FIG. 120.--Segment of Tibia resected for Brodie's
Abscess. The specimen shows two separate abscesses in the centre of the
shaft, the lower one quiescent, the upper one active and increasing in
size.]

The size of the abscess ranges from that of a cherry to that of a
walnut, but specimens in museums show that, if left to Nature, the
abscess may attain much greater dimensions.

The affected bone is not only thicker and heavier than normal, but may
also be curved or otherwise deformed as a result of the original attack
of osteomyelitis.

The _clinical features_ are almost exclusively local. Pain, due to
tension within the abscess, is the dominant symptom. At first it is
vague and difficult to localise, later it is referred to the interior of
the bone, and is described as "boring." It is aggravated by use of the
limb, and there are often, especially during the night, exacerbations in
which the pain becomes excruciating. In the early stages there are
periods of days or weeks during which the symptoms abate, but as the
abscess increases these become shorter, until the patient is hardly ever
free from pain. Localised tenderness can almost always be elicited by
percussion, or by compressing the bone between the fingers and thumb.
The pain induced by the traction of muscles attached to the bone, or by
the weight of the body, may interfere with the function of the limb, and
in the lower extremity cause a limp in walking. The limb may be disabled
from _involvement of the adjacent joint_, in which there may be an
intermittent hydrops which comes and goes coincidently with
exacerbations of pain; or the abscess may perforate the joint and set up
an acute arthritis.

The _diagnosis_ of Brodie's abscess from other affections met with at
the ends of long bones, and particularly from tuberculosis, syphilis,
and new growths, is made by a consideration of the previous history,
especially with reference to an antecedent attack of osteomyelitis. When
the adjacent joint is implicated, the surgeon may be misled by the
patient referring all the symptoms to the joint.

The X-ray picture is usually diagnostic chiefly because all the lesions
which are liable to be confused with Brodie's abscess--gumma, tubercle,
myeloma, chondroma, and sarcoma--give a well-marked central clear area;
the sclerosis around Brodie's abscess gives a dense shadow in which the
central clear area is either not seen at all or only faintly (Fig. 121).

_Treatment._--If an abscess is suspected, there should be no hesitation
in exploring the interior of the bone. It is exposed by a suitable
incision; the periosteum is reflected and the bone is opened up by a
trephine or chisel, and the presence of an abscess may be at once
indicated by the escape of pus. If, owing to the small size of the
abscess or the density of the bone surrounding it, the pus is not
reached by this procedure, the bone should be drilled in different
directions.

[Illustration: FIG. 121.--Radiogram of Brodie's Abscess in Lower End of
Tibia.]

#Other Forms of Acute Osteomyelitis.#--Among the less severe forms of
osteomyelitis resulting from the action of attenuated organisms are the
_serous_ variety, in which an effusion of serous fluid forms under the
periosteum; and _growth fever_, in which the child complains of vague
evanescent pains (growing pains), and of feeling tired and disinclined
to play; there may be some rise of temperature in the evening.

Infection with the _staphylococcus albus_, the _streptococcus_, or the
_pneumococcus_ also causes a mild form of osteomyelitis which may go on
to suppuration.

_Necrosis without suppuration_, described by Paget under the name "quiet
necrosis," is a rare disease, and would appear to be associated with an
attenuated form of staphylococcal infection (Tavel). It occurs in
adults, being met with up to the age of fifty or sixty, and is
characterised by the insidious development of a swelling which involves
a considerable extent of a long bone. The pain varies in intensity, and
may be continuous or intermittent, and there is tenderness on pressure.
The shaft is increased in girth as a result of its being surrounded by a
new case of bone. The resemblance to sarcoma may be very close, but the
swelling is not as defined as in sarcoma, nor does it ever assume the
characteristic "leg of mutton" shape. In both diseases there is a
tendency to pathological fracture. It is difficult also in the absence
of skiagrams to differentiate the condition from syphilitic and from
tuberculous disease. If the diagnosis is not established after
examination with the X-rays, an exploratory incision should be made; if
dead bone is found, it is removed.

In typhoid fever the bone marrow is liable to be invaded by _the typhoid
bacillus_, which may set up osteomyelitis soon after its lodgment, or it
may lie latent for a considerable period before doing so. The lesions
may be single or multiple, they involve the marrow or the periosteum or
both, and they may or may not be attended with suppuration. They are
most commonly met with in the tibia and in the ribs at the
costo-chondral junctions.

The bone lesions usually occur during the seventh or eighth week of the
fever, but have been known to occur much later. The chief complaint is
of vague pains, at first referred to several bones, later becoming
localised in one; they are aggravated by movement, or by handling the
bone, and are worst at night. There is redness and dema of the
overlying soft parts, and swelling with vague fluctuation, and on
incision there escapes a yellow creamy pus, or a brown syrupy fluid
containing the typhoid bacillus in pure culture. Necrosis is
exceptional.

When the abscess develops slowly, the condition resembles tuberculous
disease, from which it may be diagnosed by the history of typhoid fever,
and by obtaining a positive Widal reaction.

The prognosis is favourable, but recovery is apt to be slow, and relapse
is not uncommon.

It is usually sufficient to incise the periosteum, but when the disease
occurs in a rib it may be necessary to resect a portion of bone.

#Pyogenic Osteomyelitis due to Spread of Infection from the Soft
Parts.#--There still remain those forms of osteomyelitis which result
from infection through a wound involving the bone--for example, compound
fractures, gun-shot injuries, osteotomies, amputations, resections, or
operations for un-united fracture. In all of these the marrow is exposed
to infection by such organisms as are present in the wound. A similar
form of osteomyelitis may occur apart from a wound--for example,
infection may spread to the jaws from lesions of the mouth; to the
skull, from lesions of the scalp or of the cranial bones
themselves--such as a syphilitic gumma or a sarcoma which has fungated
externally; or to the petrous temporal, from suppuration in the middle
ear.

The most common is an osteomyelitis commencing in the marrow exposed in
a wound infected with pyogenic organisms. In amputation stumps,
fungating granulations protrude from the sawn end of the bone, and if
necrosis takes place, the sequestrum is annular, affecting the
cross-section of the bone at the saw-line; or tubular, extending up the
shaft, and tapering off above. The periosteum is more easily detached,
is thicker than normal, and is actively engaged in forming bone. In the
macerated specimen, the new bone presents a characteristic coral-like
appearance, and may be perforated by cloac (Fig. 122).

[Illustration: FIG. 122.--Tubular Sequestrum resulting from Septic
Osteomyelitis in Amputation Stump.]

Like other pyogenic infections, it may terminate in pymia, as a result
of septic phlebitis in the marrow.

The _clinical features_ of osteomyelitis in _an amputation stump_ are
those of ordinary pyogenic infection; the involvement of the bone may be
suspected from the clinical course, the absence of improvement from
measures directed towards overcoming the sepsis in the soft parts, and
the persistence of suppuration in spite of free drainage, but it is not
recognised unless the bone is exposed by opening up the stump or the
changes in the bone are shown by the X-rays. The first change is due to
the deposit of new bone on the periosteal surface; later, there is the
shadow of the sequestrum.

Healing does not take place until the sequestrum is extruded or removed
by operation.

_In compound fractures_, if a fragment dies and forms a sequestrum, it
is apt to be walled in by new bone; the sinuses continue to discharge
until the sequestrum is removed. Even after healing has taken place,
relapse is liable to occur, especially in gun-shot injuries. Months or
years afterwards, the bone may become painful and tender. The symptoms
may subside under rest and elevation of the limb and the application of
a compress, or an abscess forms and bursts with comparatively little
suffering. The contents may be clear yellow serum or watery pus;
sometimes a small spicule of bone is discharged. Valuable information,
both for diagnosis and treatment, is afforded by skiagrams.

[Illustration: FIG. 123.--New Periosteal Bone on surface of Femur from
Amputation Stump. Osteomyelitis supervened on the amputation, and
resulted in necrosis at the sawn section of the bone. (Anatomical
Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]


TUBERCULOUS DISEASE

The tuberculous diseases of bone result from infection of the marrow or
periosteum by tubercle bacilli conveyed through the arteries; it is
exceedingly rare for tubercle to appear in bone as a primary infection,
the bacilli being usually derived from some pre-existing focus in the
bronchial glands or elsewhere. According to the observations of John
Fraser, 60 per cent. of the cases of bone and joint tubercle in children
are due to the bovine bacillus, 37 per cent. to the human variety, and
in 3 per cent. both types are present.

Tuberculous disease in bone is characterised by its insidious onset and
slow progress, and by the frequency with which it is associated with
disease of the adjacent joint.

#Periosteal tuberculosis# is met with in the ribs, sternum, vertebral
column, skull, and less frequently in the long bones of the limbs. It
may originate in the periosteum, or may spread thence from the marrow,
or from synovial membrane.

_In superficial bones_, such as the sternum, the formation of
tuberculous granulation tissue in the deeper layer of the periosteum,
and its subsequent caseation and liquefaction, is attended by the
insidious development of a doughy swelling, which is not as a rule
painful, although tender on pressure. While the swelling often remains
quiescent for some time, it tends to increase in size, to become boggy
or fluctuating, and to assume the characters of a cold abscess. The pus
perforates the fibrous layer of the periosteum, invading and infecting
the overlying soft parts, its spread being influenced by the anatomical
arrangement of the tissues. The size of the abscess affords no
indication of the extent of the bone lesion from which it originates. As
the abscess reaches the surface, the skin becomes of a dusky red or
livid colour, is gradually thinned out, and finally sloughs, forming a
sinus. A probe passed into the sinus strikes carious bone. Small
sequestra may be found embedded in the granulation tissue. The sinus
persists as long as any active tubercle remains in the tissues, and is
apt to form an avenue for pyogenic infection.

_In deeply seated bones_, such as the upper end of the femur, the
formation of a cold abscess in the soft parts is often the first
evidence of the disease.

_Diagnosis._--Before the stage of cold abscess is reached, the localised
swelling is to be differentiated from a gumma, from chronic forms of
staphylococcal osteomyelitis, from enlarged bursa or ganglion, from
sub-periosteal lipoma, and from sarcoma. Most difficulty is met with in
relation to periosteal sarcoma, which must be differentiated either by
the X-ray appearances or by an exploratory incision.

_X-ray appearances in periosteal tubercle_: the surface of the cortical
bone in the area of disease is roughened and irregular by erosion, and
in the vicinity there may be a deposit of new bone on the surface,
particularly if a sinus is present and mixed infection has occurred; in
_syphilis_ the shadow of the bone is denser as a result of sclerosis,
and there is usually more new bone on the surface--hyperostosis; in
_periosteal sarcoma_ there is greater erosion and consequently greater
irregularity in the contour of the cortical bone, and frequently there
is evidence of formation of bone in the form of characteristic spicules
projecting from the surface at a right angle.

The early recognition of periosteal lesions in the articular ends of
bones is of importance, as the disease, if left to itself, is liable to
spread to the adjacent joint.

The _treatment_ is that of tuberculous lesions in general; if
conservative measures fail, the choice lies between the injection of
iodoform, and removal of the infected tissues with the sharp spoon. In
the ribs it is more satisfactory to remove the diseased portion of bone
along with the wall of the associated abscess or sinus. If all the
tubercle has been removed and there is no pyogenic infection, the wound
is stitched up with the object of obtaining primary union; otherwise it
is treated by the open method.

#Tuberculous Osteomyelitis.#--Tuberculous lesions in the marrow occur as
isolated or as multiple foci of granulation tissue, which replace the
marrow and erode the trabecul of bone in the vicinity (Fig. 124). The
individual focus varies in size from a pea to a walnut. The changes that
ensue resemble in character those in other tissues, and the extent of
the destruction varies according to the way in which the tubercle
bacillus and the marrow interact upon one another. The granulation
tissue may undergo caseation and liquefaction, or may become
encapsulated by fibrous tissue--"encysted tubercle."

[Illustration: FIG. 124.--Tuberculous Osteomyelitis of Os Magnum,
excised from a boy t. 8. Note well-defined caseous focus, with several
minute foci in surrounding marrow.]

Sometimes the tuberculous granulation tissue spreads in the marrow,
assuming the characters of a diffuse infiltration--diffuse tuberculous
osteomyelitis. The trabecular framework of the bone undergoes erosion
and absorption--rarefying ostitis--and either disappears altogether or
only irregular fragments or sequestra of microscopic dimensions remain
in the area affected. Less frequently the trabecular framework is added
to by the formation of new bone, resulting in a remarkable degree of
sclerosis, and if, following upon this, there is caseation of the
tubercle and death of the affected portion of bone, there results a
sequestrum often of considerable size and characteristic shape, which,
because of the sclerosis and surrounding endarteritis, is exceedingly
slow in separating. When the sequestrum involves an articular surface it
is often wedge-shaped; in other situations it is rounded or truncated
and lies in the long axis of the medullary canal (Fig. 125). Finally,
the sequestrum lies loose in a cavity lined by tuberculous granulation
tissue, and is readily identified in a radiogram. This type of sclerosis
preceding death of the bone is highly characteristic of tuberculosis.

[Illustration: FIG. 125.--Tuberculous Disease of Child's Tibia,
showing sequestrum in medullary cavity, and increase in girth from
excess of new bone.]

_Clinical Features._--As a rule, it is only in superficially placed
bones, such as the tibia, ulna, clavicle, mandible, or phalanges, that
tuberculous disease in the marrow gives rise to signs sufficiently
definite to allow of its clinical recognition. In the vertebr, or in
the bones of deeply seated joints, such as the hip or shoulder, the
existence of tuberculous lesions in the marrow can only be inferred from
indirect signs--such, for example, as rigidity and curvature in the case
of the spine, or from the symptoms of grave and persistent joint-disease
in the case of the hip or shoulder.

With few exceptions, tuberculous disease in the interior of a bone does
not reveal its presence until by extension it reaches one or other of
the surfaces of the bone. In the shaft of a long bone its eruption on
the periosteal surface is usually followed by the formation of a cold
abscess in the overlying soft parts. When situated in the articular ends
of bones, the disease more often erupts in relation to the reflection of
the synovial membrane or directly on the articular surface--in either
case giving rise to disease of the joint (Fig. 156).

[Illustration: Fig. 126.--Diffuse Tuberculous Osteomyelitis of Right
Tibia.

(Photograph lent by Sir H. J. Stiles.)]

#Diffuse Tuberculous Osteomyelitis in the shaft of a long bone# is
comparatively rare, and has been observed chiefly in the tibia and the
ulna in children (Fig. 126). It commences at the growing extremity of
the diaphysis, and spreads along the medulla to a variable extent; it is
attended by the formation of vascular and porous bone on the surface,
which causes thickening of the diaphysis; this is most marked at the
ossifying junction and tapers off along the shaft. The infection not
only spreads along the medulla, but it invades the spongy bone
surrounding this, and then the cortical bone, and is only prevented from
reaching the soft parts by the new bone formed by the periosteum. The
bone is replaced by granulation tissue, and disappears, or part of it
may become sclerosed and in time form a sequestrum. In the macerated
specimen, the sequestrum appears small in proportion to the large cavity
in which it lies. All these changes are revealed in a good skiagram,
which not only confirms the diagnosis, but, in many instances,
demonstrates the extent of the disease, the presence or absence of a
sequestrum, and the amount of new bone on the surface. Finally the
periosteum gives way, and an abscess forms in the soft parts; and if
left to itself ruptures externally, leaving a sinus. The most
satisfactory _treatment_ is to resect sub-periosteally the diseased
portion of the diaphysis.

_In cancellous bones, such as those of the tarsus_, there is a similar
caseous infiltration in the marrow, and this may be attended with the
formation of a sequestrum either in the interior of the bone or
involving its outer shell, as shown in Fig. 127. The situation and
extent of the disease are shown in X-ray photographs. After the
tuberculous granulation tissue erupts through the cortex of the bone, it
gives rise to a cold abscess or infects adjacent joints or tendon
sheaths.

[Illustration: FIG. 127.--Advanced Tuberculous Disease in region of
Ankle. The ankle-joint is ankylosed, and there is a large sequestrum in
the calcaneus.

(Specimen in Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

If an exact diagnosis is made at an early stage of the disease--and this
is often possible with the aid of X-rays--the affected bone is excised
sub-periosteally or its interior is cleared out with the sharp spoon and
gouge, the latter procedure being preferred in the case of the
_calcaneus_ to conserve the stability of the heel. When several bones
and joints are simultaneously affected, and there are sinuses with
mixed infection, amputation is usually indicated, especially in adults.

#Tuberculous dactylitis# is the name applied to a diffuse form of the
disease as it affects the phalanges, metacarpal or metatarsal bones. The
lesion presents, on a small scale, all the anatomical changes that have
been described as occurring in the medulla of the tibia or ulna, and
they are easily followed in skiagrams. A periosteal type of dactylitis
is also met with.

The _clinical features_ are those of a spindle-shaped swelling of a
finger or toe, indolent, painless, and interfering but little with the
function of the digit. Recovery may eventually occur without
suppuration, but it is common to have the formation of a cold abscess,
which bursts and forms one or more sinuses. It may be difficult to
differentiate tuberculous dactylitis from the enlargement of the
phalanges in inherited syphilis (syphilitic dactylitis), especially when
the tuberculous lesion occurs in a child who is the subject of inherited
syphilis.

[Illustration: FIG. 128.--Tuberculous Dactylitis.]

In the syphilitic lesion, skiagrams usually show a more abundant
formation of new bone, but in many cases the doubt is only cleared up by
observing the results of the tuberculin test or the effects of
anti-syphilitic treatment.

Sarcoma of a phalanx or metacarpal bone may closely resemble a
dactylitis both clinically and in skiagrams, but it is rare.

_Treatment._--Recovery under conservative measures is not uncommon, and
the functional results are usually better than those following upon
operative treatment, although in either case the affected finger is
liable to be dwarfed (Fig. 129). The finger should be immobilised in a
splint, and a Bier's bandage applied to the upper arm. Operative
interference is indicated if a cold abscess develops, if there is a
persistent sinus, or if a sequestrum has formed, a point upon which
information is obtained by examination with the X-rays. When a toe is
affected, amputation is the best treatment, but in the case of a finger
it is rarely called for. In the case of a metacarpal or metatarsal bone,
sub-periosteal resection is the procedure of choice, saving the
articular ends if possible.

[Illustration: FIG. 129.--Shortening of Middle Finger of Adult, the
result of Tuberculous Dactylitis in childhood.]


SYPHILITIC DISEASE

Syphilitic affections of bone may be met with at any period of the
disease, but the graver forms occur in the tertiary stage of acquired
and inherited syphilis. The virus is carried by the blood-stream to all
parts of the skeleton, but the local development of the disease appears
to be influenced by a predisposition on the part of individual bones.

Syphilitic diseases of bone are much less common in practice than those
due to pyogenic and tuberculous infectious, and they show a marked
predilection for the tibia, sternum, and skull. They differ from
tuberculous affections in the frequency with which they attack the
shafts of bones rather than the articular ends, and in the comparative
rarity of joint complications.

_Evanescent periostitis_ is met with in acquired syphilis during the
period of the early skin eruptions. The patient complains, especially at
night, of pains over the frontal bone, ribs, sternum, tibi, or uln.
Localised tenderness is elicited on pressure, and there is slight
swelling, which, however, rarely amounts to what may be described as a
_periosteal node_.

In the later stages of acquired syphilis, _gummatous periostitis and
osteomyelitis_ occur, and are characterised by the formation in the
periosteum and marrow of circumscribed gummata or of a diffuse gummatous
infiltration. The framework of the bone is rarefied in the area
immediately involved, and sclerosed in the parts beyond. If the
gummatous tissue degenerates and breaks down, and especially if the
overlying skin is perforated and septic infection is superadded, the
bone disintegrates and exhibits the condition known as _syphilitic
caries_; sometimes a portion of bone has its blood supply so far
interfered with that it dies--_syphilitic necrosis_. Syphilitic
sequestra are heavier and denser than normal bone, because sclerosis
usually precedes death of the bone. The bones especially affected by
gummatous disease are: the skull, the septum of the nose, the nasal
bones, palate, sternum, femur, tibia, and the bones of the forearm.

_In the bones of the skull_, gummata may form in the peri-cranium,
diplo, or dura mater. An isolated gumma forms a firm elastic swelling,
shading off into the surroundings. In the macerated bone there is a
depression or an actual perforation of the calvaria; multiple gummata
tend to fuse with one another at their margins, giving the appearance of
a combination of circles: these sometimes surround an area of bone and
cut it off from its blood supply (Fig. 130). If the overlying skin is
destroyed and septic infection superadded, such an isolated area of bone
is apt to die and furnish a sequestrum; the separation of the dead bone
is extremely slow, partly from the want of vascularity in the sclerosed
bone round about, and partly from the density of the sequestrum. In
exceptional cases the necrosis involves the entire vertical plate of the
frontal bone. Pus is formed between the bone and the dura (suppurative
pachymeningitis), and this may be followed by cerebral abscess or by
pymia. Gummatous disease in the wall of the orbit may cause
displacement of the eye and paralysis of the ocular muscles.

[Illustration: FIG. 130.--Syphilitic Disease of Skull, showing a
sequestrum in process of separation.]

On the inner surface of the skull, the formation of gummatous tissue may
cause pressure on the brain and give rise to intense pain in the head,
Jacksonian epilepsy, or paralysis, the symptoms varying with the seat
and extent of the disease. The cranial nerves may be pressed upon at the
base, especially at their points of exit, and this gives rise to
symptoms of irritation or paralysis in the area of distribution of the
nerves affected.

_In the septum of the nose, the nasal bones, and the hard palate_,
gummatous disease causes ulceration, which, beginning in the mucous
membrane, spreads to the bones, and being complicated with septic
infection leads to caries and necrosis. In the nose, the disease is
attended with stinking discharge (ozna), the extrusion of portions of
dead bone, and subsequently with deformity characterised by loss of the
bridge of the nose; in the palate, it is common to have a perforation,
so that the air escapes through the nose in speaking, giving to the
voice a characteristic nasal tone.

_Syphilitic disease of the tibia_ may be taken as the type of the
affection as it occurs _in the long bones_. Gummatous disease in the
periosteum may be localised and result in the formation of a
well-defined node, or the whole shaft may become the seat of an
irregular nodular enlargement (Fig. 132). If the bone is macerated, it
is found to be heavier and bulkier than normal; there is diffuse
sclerosis with obliteration of the medullary canal, and the surface is
uneven from heaping up of new bone--hyperostosis (Fig. 131). If a
periosteal gumma breaks down and invades the skin, a syphilitic ulcer is
formed with carious bone at the bottom. A central gumma may eat away the
surrounding bone to such an extent that the shaft undergoes pathological
fracture. In the rare cases in which it attacks the articular end of a
long bone, gummatous disease may implicate the adjacent joint and give
rise to syphilitic arthritis.

[Illustration: FIG. 131.--Syphilitic Hyperostosis and Sclerosis of
Tibia, on section and on surface view.]

_Clinical Features._--There is severe boring pain--as if a gimlet were
being driven into the bone. It is worst at night, preventing sleep, and
has been ascribed to compression of the nerves in the narrowed Haversian
canals.

The _periosteal gumma_ appears as a smooth, circumscribed swelling which
is soft and elastic in the centre and firm at the margins, and shades
off into the surrounding bone. The gumma may be completely absorbed or
it may give place to a hard node. In some cases the gumma softens in the
centre, the skin becomes adherent, thin, and red, and finally gives way.
The opening in the skin persists as a sinus, or develops into a typical
ulcer with irregular, crescentic margins; in either case a probe reveals
the presence of carious bone or of a sequestrum. The health may be
impaired as a result of mixed infection, and the absorption of toxins
and waxy degeneration in the viscera may ultimately be induced.

A _central gumma_ in a long bone may not reveal its presence until it
erupts through the shell and reaches the periosteal surface or invades
an adjacent joint. Sometimes the first manifestation is a fracture of
the bone produced by slight violence.

In radiograms the appearance of syphilitic bones is usually
characteristic. When there is hyperostosis and sclerosis, the shaft
appears denser and broader than normal, and the contour is uneven or
wavy. When there is a central gumma, the shadow is interrupted by a
rounded clear area, like that of a chondroma or myeloma, but there is
sclerosis round about.

_Diagnosis._--The conditions most liable to be mistaken for syphilitic
disease of bone are chronic staphylococcal osteomyelitis, tuberculosis,
and sarcoma; and the diagnosis is to be made by the history and progress
of the disease, the result of examination with the X-rays, and the
results of specific tests and treatment.

_Treatment._--The general health is to be improved by open air, by
nourishing food, and by the administration of cod-liver oil, iron, and
arsenic. Anti-syphilitic remedies should be given, and if they are
administered before there is any destruction of tissue, the benefit
derived from them is usually marked.

Radiograms show the rapid absorption of the new bone both on the surface
and in the marrow, and are of value in establishing the therapeutic
diagnosis.

In certain cases, and particularly when there are destructive changes in
the bone complicated with pyogenic infection, specific remedies have
little effect. In cases of persistent or relapsing gummatous disease
with ulceration of skin, it is often necessary to remove the diseased
soft parts with the sharp spoon and scissors, and to gouge or chisel
away the unhealthy bone, on the same lines as in tuberculous disease.
When hyperostosis and sclerosis of the bone is attended with severe pain
which does not yield to blistering, the periosteum may be incised and
the sclerosed bone perforated with a drill or trephine.

#Lesions of Bone in Inherited Syphilis.#--_Craniotabes_, in which the
flat bones of the skull undergo absorption in patches, was formerly
regarded as syphilitic, but it is now known to result from prolonged
malnutrition from any cause. _Bossing of the skull_ resulting in the
formation of Parrot's nodes is also being withdrawn from the category of
syphilitic affections. The lesions in infancy--epiphysitis, bossing of
the skull, and craniotabes--have been referred to in the chapter on
inherited syphilis.

_Epiphysitis or Syphilitic Perichondritis._--The first of these terms is
misleading, because the lesion involves the ossifying junction and the
shaft of the bone, and the epiphysis only indirectly. The young bone is
replaced by granulation tissue, so that large clear areas are seen with
the X-rays. The symptoms are referred to the joint, because it is there
that the muscles are inserted and drag on the perichondrium when
movement occurs; swelling is most marked in the vicinity of the joint,
and it may be added to by effusion into the synovial cavity. The baby,
usually under six months, is noticed to be feverish and fretful and to
cry when touched. The mother discovers that the pain is caused by moving
a particular limb, usually the arm, as the humerus, radius, and ulna are
the bones most commonly affected; the limb, moreover, hangs useless at
the side as if paralysed, and the condition was formerly described as
_syphilitic pseudo-paralysis_.

The lesions met with later correspond to those of the tertiary period of
the acquired disease, but as they affect bones which are still actively
growing, the effects are more striking. Gummatous disease may come and
go over periods of many years, with the result that the external
appearance and architectural arrangement of a long bone come to be
profoundly altered. In the tibia, for example, the shaft is bowed
forward in a gentle curve, which is compared to the curve of a
sabre--"sabre-blade" deformity (Fig. 132). The diffuse thickening all
round the bone obscures the sharp margins so that the bone becomes
circular in section and the anterior and mesial edges are blunted, and
the comparison to a cucumber is deserved. In some cases the tibia is
actually increased in length as well as in girth.

[Illustration: FIG. 132.--Sabre-blade Deformity of Left Tibia in
Inherited Syphilis.

(From a photograph lent by Sir George T. Beatson.)]

The contrast between the grossly enlarged and misshapen tibia and the
normal or even attenuated fibula is a striking one.

_Treatment_ is carried out on lines similar to those recommended in the
acquired disease. When curving of the tibia causes disability in
walking, the bone may be straightened by a cuneiform resection.

_Syphilitic dactylitis_ is met with chiefly in children. It may affect
any of the fingers or toes, but is commonest in the first phalanx of the
index-finger or of the thumb. Several fingers may be attacked at the
same time or in succession. The lesion consists in a gummatous
infiltration of the soft parts surrounding the phalanx, or a gummatous
osteomyelitis, but there is practically no tendency to break down and
discharge, or to the formation of a sequestrum as is so common in
tuberculous dactylitis.

The finger becomes the seat of a swelling, which is more evident on the
dorsal aspect, and, according to the distribution and extent of the
disease, it is acorn-shaped, fusiform, or cylindrical. It is firm and
elastic, and usually painless. The movements are impaired, especially if
the joints are involved. In its early stages the disease is amenable to
anti-syphilitic treatment, and complete recovery is the rule.


HYDATID DISEASE

This rare disease results from the lodgment of the embryos of the tnia
echinoccus, which are conveyed to the marrow by the blood-stream. The
cysts are small, usually about the size of a pin-head, and they are
present in enormous numbers scattered throughout the marrow. The parts
of the skeleton most often affected are the articular ends of the long
bones, the bodies of the vertebr, and the pelvis.

As the cysts increase in number and in size, the framework of the bone
is gradually absorbed, and there result excavations or cavities. The
marrow and spongy bone first disappear, the compact tissue then becomes
thin, and pathological fracture may result. The bone becomes expanded,
and the cysts may escape through perforations into the surrounding
cellular tissue, and when thus freed from confinement may attain
considerable dimensions. Suppuration from superadded pyogenic infection
may be attended with extensive necrosis, and lead to disorganisation of
the adjacent joint.

_Clinical Features._--The patient complains of deep-seated pains. In
superficial bones, such as the tibia, there is enlargement, and it may
be possible to recognise egg-shell crackling, or unequal consistence of
the bone, which is hard in some parts, and doughy and elastic in others.
The disease may pursue an indolent course during months or years until
some complication occurs, such as suppuration or fracture. With the
occurrence of suppuration the disease becomes more active, and abscesses
may form in the soft parts and in the adjacent joint. In the vertebral
column, hydatids give rise to angular deformity and paraplegia. In the
pelvis, there is usually great enlargement of the bones, and when
suppuration occurs it is apt to infect the hip-joint and to terminate
fatally.

Examination with the X-rays shows the characteristic excavations of the
bone caused by the cysts. The disease is liable to be mistaken for
central tumour, gumma, tuberculosis, or abscess of bone.

The _treatment_ consists in thorough eradication of the parasite by
operation. The bone is laid open and scraped or resected according to
the extent of the disease, and the raw surfaces swabbed with 1 per cent.
formalin. In advanced cases complicated with spontaneous fracture or
with suppuration, amputation affords the best chance of recovery.

The lesions in the bones resulting from _actinomycosis_ and from
_mycetoma_, have been described with these diseases.


CONSTITUTIONAL DISEASES ATTENDED WITH LESIONS IN THE BONES

These include rickets, scurvy-rickets, osteomalacia, ostitis deformans,
osteomyelitis fibrosa, fragilitas ossium, and diseases of the nervous
system.


RICKETS

Rickets or rachitis is a constitutional disease associated with
disturbance of nutrition, and attended with changes in the skeleton.
The disease is most common and most severe among the children of the
poorer classes in large cities, who are improperly fed and are brought
up in unhealthy surroundings. There is evidence that the most important
factors in the causation of rickets are ill-health of the mother during
pregnancy, and the administration to the child after its birth of food
which is defective in animal fat, proteids, and salts of lime, or which
contains these in such a form that they are not readily assimilated. The
occurrence of the disease is favoured, and its features are aggravated,
by imperfect oxygenation of the blood as the result of a deficiency of
fresh air and sunlight, want of exercise, and by other conditions which
prevail in the slums of large towns.

_Pathological Anatomy._--The most striking feature is the softness
(malacia) of the bones, due to excessive absorption of osseous tissue,
and the formation of an imperfectly calcified tissue at the sites of
ossification. The affected bones lose their rigidity, so that they are
bent under the weight of the body, by the traction of muscles, and by
other mechanical forces.

The _periosteum_ is thick and vascular, and when detached carries with
it plates and spicules of soft porous bone. The new bone may be so
abundant that it forms a thick crust on the surface, and in the flat
bones of the skull this may be heaped up in the form of bosses or ridges
resembling those ascribed to inherited syphilis.

In the epiphysial cartilages and at the ossifying junctions, all the
processes concerned in ossification, excepting the deposition of lime
salts, occur to an exaggerated degree. The cartilage of the epiphysial
disc proliferates actively and irregularly, so that it becomes softer,
thicker, and wider, and gives rise to a visible swelling, best seen at
the lower end of the radius and lower end of the tibia, and at the
costo-chondral junctions where the series of beaded swellings is known
as the "rickety rosary."

The ossifying zone is increased in depth; the marrow is abnormally
vascular; and the new bone that is formed is imperfectly calcified. The
result is that the bones may never attain their normal length, and they
remain stunted throughout life as in rickety dwarfs (Fig. 133), or the
shafts may grow unequally and come to deviate from their normal axes as
in knock-knee and bow-knee.

[Illustration: FIG. 133.--Skeleton of Rickety Dwarf, known as
"Bowed Joseph," leader of the Meal Riots in Edinburgh, who died in 1780.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

These changes are well brought out in skiagrams; instead of the
well-defined narrow line which represents the epiphysial cartilage,
there is an ill-defined, blurred zone of considerable depth.

In the shafts of the long bones, owing to the excessive absorption of
bone, the cortex becomes porous, the spongy bone is rarefied, and the
bones readily bend or break under mechanical influences. When the
disease is arrested, a process of repair sets in which often results in
the bones becoming denser and heavier than normal. In the flat bones of
the skull, the absorption may result in the entire disappearance of
areas of bone, leaving a membrane which dimples like thin cardboard
under the pressure of the finger--a condition known as _craniotabes_.

_Changes in the Skeleton before the Child is able to walk._--The
fontanelles remain open until the end of the second year or longer, and
the frontal and parietal eminences are unduly prominent. There is
sometimes hydrocephalus, and the head is characteristically enlarged.
The jaws are altered so that while the upper jaw is contracted into the
shape of a #V#, the lower jaw is square instead of rounded in outline,
and the teeth do not oppose one another. In the _thorax_, the chief
feature may be the beading at the costo-chondral junctions, principally
of the fifth and sixth ribs or its walls may be contracted,
particularly if respiration is interfered with as a result of bronchial
catarrh or adenoids. The contraction may take the form of a vertical
groove on each side, or of a horizontal groove at the level of the upper
end of the xiphi-sternum; when the sternum and cartilages form a
projection in front, the deformity is known as "pigeon-breast."

The _spine_ may be curved backwards--_kyphosis_--throughout its
whole extent or only in one part; or it may be curved to one
side--_scoliosis_.

In the _limbs_, the prominent features are the deficient growth in
length of the long bones, the enlargements at the epiphysial junctions,
and the bending, and occasional greenstick fracture, of the shafts. The
degree of enlargement of the epiphysial junctions is directly
proportionate to the amount of movement to which the bone is subjected
(John Thomson). The curves at this stage depend on the attitude of the
child while sitting or being carried--for example, the arm bones become
bent in children who paddle about the floor with the aid of their arms;
and in a child who lies on its back with the lower limbs everted, the
weight of the limb may lead to curvature of the neck of the femur--coxa
vara. The clavicle or humerus may sustain greenstick fracture from the
child being lifted by the arms; the femur, by a fall. From the extreme
laxity of the ligaments, the joints can be moved beyond the normal
limits, and the child is often observed to twist its limbs into abnormal
attitudes.

_In Children who have walked._--In these children the most important
deformities occur in the spine, pelvis, and lower extremities, and
result for the most part from yielding of the softened bones under the
weight of the body. Scoliosis is the usual type of spinal curvature, and
in extreme cases it may lead to a pronounced form of hump-back. The
pelvis may remain small (_justo-minor pelvis_), or it may be contracted
in the sagittal plane (_flat pelvis_); when the bones are unusually
soft, the acetabular portions are pushed inwards by the femora bearing
the weight of the body, and the pelvis assumes the shape of a trefoil,
as in the malacia of women. The shaft of the femur is curved forwards
and laterally; the bones of the leg laterally as in bow-leg, or
forwards, or forwards and laterally just above the ankle. The
deformities at the knee (genu valgum, genu varum, and genu recurvatum),
and at the hip (coxa vara), will be described in the volume dealing with
the Extremities.

The majority of cases seen in surgical practice suffer from the
deformities resulting from rickets rather than from the active disease.
The examination of a large series of children at different ages shows
that the deformities become less and less frequent with each year. Those
who recover may ultimately show no trace of rickets, and this is
especially true of children who grow at the average rate; in those,
however, in whom growth is retarded, especially from the fifth to the
seventh year, the deformities are apt to be permanent. It may be noted
that the scoliosis due to rickets has little tendency towards recovery.

_Treatment._--The treatment of the disease consists in regulating the
diet, improving the surroundings, and preventing deformity. Phosphorus
in doses of 100th grain may be given dissolved in cod-liver oil, and
preparations of iron and lime may be added with advantage. To avoid
those postures which predispose to deformities, the child should lie as
much as possible. In the well-to-do classes this is readily accomplished
by the aid of a nurse and the use of a perambulator. In hospital
out-patients the child is kept off its feet by the use of a light wooden
splint applied to the lateral aspect of each lower extremity, and
extending from the pelvis to 6 inches beyond the sole.

When deformities are already present, the treatment depends upon whether
or not there is any prospect of the bone straightening naturally. Under
five years of age this may, as a rule, be confidently expected; the
child should be kept off its feet, and the limbs bathed and massaged. In
children of five or six and upwards, the prospect of natural
straightening is a diminishing one, and it is more satisfactory to
correct the deformity by operation. In rickety curvature of the spine,
the child should lie on a firm mattress, or, to allow of its being taken
into the open air, upon a double Thomas' splint extending from the
occiput to the heels; the muscles acting on the trunk should be braced
up by massage and appropriate exercises.

#Late Rickets# or #Rachitis Adolescentium# is met with at any age from
nine to seventeen, and is generally believed to be due to a
recrudescence of rickets which had been present in childhood. The
disease is not attended with any disturbance of the general health; the
pathological changes are the same as in infantile rickets, but are for
the most part confined to the ossifying junctions, especially those
which are most active during adolescence, for example at the knee-joint.
The patient is easily tired, complains of pain in the bones, and, unless
care is taken, deformity is liable to ensue. There can be no doubt that
adolescent rickets plays an important part in the production of the
deformities which occur at or near puberty, especially knock-knee and
bow-knee.

#Scurvy-Rickets# or #Infantile Scurvy#.--This disease, described by
Barlow and Cheadle, is met with in infants under two years who have been
brought up upon sterilised or condensed milk and other proprietary
foods, and is most common in the well-to-do classes. The hmorrhages,
which are so characteristic of the disease, are usually preceded for
some weeks by a cachectic condition, with listlessness and debility and
disinclination for movement. Very commonly the child ceases to move one
of his lower limbs--pseudo-paralysis--and screams if it is touched; a
swelling is found over one of the bones, usually the femur, accompanied
by exquisite tenderness; the skin is tense and shiny, and there may be
some dema. These symptoms are due to a sub-periosteal hmorrhage, and
associated with this there may be crepitus from separation of an
epiphysis, rarely from fracture of the shaft of the bone. X-ray
photographs show enlargement of the bone, the periosteum being raised
from the shaft and new bone formed in relation to it. Hmorrhages also
occur into the skin, presenting the appearance of bruises, into the
orbit and conjunctiva, and from the mucous membranes.

The _treatment_ consists in correcting the errors in diet. The infant
should have a wet nurse or a plentiful supply of cow's milk in its
natural state. Anti-scorbutics in the form of orange, lemon, or grape
juice, and of potatoes bruised down in milk, may be given.

#Osteomalacia.#--The term osteomalacia includes a group of conditions,
closely allied to rickets, in which the bones of adults become soft and
yielding, so that they are unduly liable to bend or break.

One form occurs in _pregnant and puerperal women_, affecting most
commonly the pelvis and lumbar vertebr, but sometimes the entire
skeleton. The lime salts are absorbed, the bones lose their rigidity and
bend under the weight of the body and other mechanical influences, with
the result that gross deformities are produced, particularly in the
pelvis, the lumbar spine, and the hip-joints.

_Neuropathic_ forms occur in certain chronic diseases of the brain and
cord; in some cases the bones lose their lime salts and bend, in others
they become brittle.

_Osteomalacia associated with New Growths in the Skeleton._--When
_secondary cancer_ is widely distributed throughout the skeleton, it is
associated with softening of the bones, as a result of which they
readily bend or break, and after death are easily cut with a knife. In
the disease known as _multiple myeloma_, the interior of the ribs,
sternum, and bodies of the vertebr is occupied by a reddish gelatinous
pulp, the structure of which resembles sarcoma; the bones are reduced to
a mere shell, and may break on the slightest pressure; the urine
contains albumose, a substance resembling albumen but coagulating at a
comparatively low temperature (140 F.), and the coagulum is
re-dissolved on boiling, and it is readily precipitated by hydrochloric
acid (Bence-Jones).

#Ostitis Deformans--Paget's Disease of Bone.#--This rare disease was
first described by Sir James Paget in 1877. In the early stages, the
marrow is transformed into a vascular connective tissue; its bone-eating
functions are exaggerated, and the framework of the bone becomes
rarefied, so that it bends under pressure as in osteomalacia. In course
of time, however, new bone is formed in great abundance; it is at first
devoid of lime salts, but later becomes calcified, so that the bones
regain their rigidity. This formation of new bone is much in excess of
the normal, the bones become large and bulky, their surfaces rough and
uneven, their texture sclerosed in parts, and the medullary canal is
frequently obliterated. These changes are well brought out in X-ray
photographs. The curving of the long bones, which is such a striking
feature of the disease, may be associated with actual lengthening, and
the changes are sometimes remarkably symmetrical (Fig. 135). The bones
forming the cranium may be enormously thickened, the sutures are
obliterated, the distinction into tables and diplo is lost, and, while
the general texture is finely porous, there may be areas as dense as
ivory (Fig. 134).

[Illustration: FIG. 134.--Changes in the Skull resulting from Ostitis
Deformans.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

_Clinical Features._--The disease is usually met with in persons over
fifty years of age. It is insidious in its onset, and, the patient's
attention may be first attracted by the occurrence of vague pains in the
back or limbs; by the enlargement and bending of such bones as the tibia
or femur; or by a gradual increase in the size of the head,
necessitating the wearing of larger hats. When the condition is fully
developed, the attitude and general appearance are eminently
characteristic. The height is diminished, and, owing to the curving of
the lower limbs and spine, the arms appear unnaturally long; the head
and upper part of the spine are bent forwards; the legs are held apart,
slightly flexed at the knees, and are rotated out as well as curved; the
whole appearance suggests that of one of the large anthropoid apes. The
muscles of the limbs may waste to such an extent as to leave the large,
curved, misshapen bones covered only by the skin (Fig. 135). In the
majority of cases the bones of the lower extremities are much earlier
and more severely affected than those of the upper extremity, but the
capacity of walking is usually maintained even in the presence of great
deformity. In a case observed by Byrom Bramwell, the patient suffered
from a succession of fractures over a period of years.

[Illustration: FIG. 135.--Cadaver, illustrating the alterations in the
Lower Limbs resulting from Ostitis Deformans.]

The disease may last for an indefinite period, the general health
remaining long unaffected. In a considerable number of the recorded
cases one of the bones became the seat of sarcoma.

#Osteomyelitis Fibrosa.#--This comparatively rare disease, which was
first described by Recklinghausen, presents many interesting features.
Because of its causing deformities of the bones and an undue liability
to fracture, and being chiefly met with in adolescents, it is regarded
by some authors as a juvenile form of Paget's disease. It may be
diffused throughout the skeleton--we have seen it in the skull and in
the bones of the extremities--or it may be confined to a single bone,
usually the femur, or, what is more remarkable, the condition may affect
a portion only of the shaft of a long bone and be sharply defined from
the normal bone in contact with it.

[Illustration: FIG. 136.--Osteomyelitis Fibrosa affecting Femora in a
man t. 19. The curving of the bones is due to multiple fractures.]

On longitudinal section of a long bone during the active stage of the
disease, the marrow is seen to be replaced by a vascular young
connective tissue which encroaches on the surrounding spongy bone,
reducing it to the slenderest proportions; the formation of bone from
the periosteum does not keep pace with the absorption and replacement
going on in the interior, and the cortex may be reduced to a thin shell
of imperfectly calcified bone which can be cut with a knife. The young
connective tissue which replaces the marrow is not unlike that seen in
osteomalacia; it is highly vascular and may show hmorrhages of various
date; there are abundant giant cells of the myeloma type, and
degeneration and liquefaction of tissue may result in the formation of
cysts, which, when they constitute a prominent feature, are responsible
for the name--_osteomyelitis fibrosa cystica_--sometimes applied to the
condition.

It would appear that most of the recorded cases of _cysts of bone_ owe
their origin to this disease, while the abundance of giant cells with
occasional islands of cartilage in the wall of such cysts is responsible
for the view formerly held that they owed their origin to the
liquefaction of a solid tumour, such as a myeloma, a chondroma, or even
a sarcoma. Although the tissue elements in this disease resemble those
of a new growth arising in the marrow, they differ in their arrangement
and in their method of growth; there is no tendency to erupt through the
cortex of the bone, to invade the soft parts, or to give rise to
secondary growths.

_Clinical Features._--The onset of the disease is insidious, and
attention is usually first directed to it by the occurrence of fracture
of the shaft of one of the long bones--usually the femur--from violence
that would be insufficient to break a healthy bone. Apart from fracture,
the great increase in the size of one of the long bones and its uneven
contour are sufficiently remarkable to suggest examination with the
X-rays, by means of which the condition is at once recognised. A
systematic examination of the other long bones will often reveal the
presence of the disease at a stage before the bone is altered
externally.

Symmetrical bossing of the skull was present in the case shown in
Figs. 136 and 137, and there were also scattered patches of brown
pigmentation of the skin of the face, neck, and trunk, similar to those
met with in generalised neuro-fibromatosis. Apart from fracture, the
disease is recognised by the thickening and usually also by the curving
of the shafts of the long bones. It is easy to understand the curvature
of bones that have passed through a soft stage and also of those that
have been broken and badly united, but it is difficult to account for
the curvatures that have no such cause; for example, we have seen
marked curve of the radius in a forearm of which the ulna was quite
straight. The curvature probably resulted from exaggerated growth in
length.

[Illustration: FIG. 137.--Radiogram of Upper End of Femur showing
appearances in Osteomyelitis Fibrosa.]

The X-ray appearances vary with the stage of the malady, not estimated
in time, for the condition is chronic and may become stationary, but
according to whether it is progressive or undergoing repair. The shadow
of the bone presents a poor contrast to the soft parts, and no trace of
its original architecture; in extreme cases the shadow of the femur
resembles an unevenly filled sausage (Fig. 137); there is no cortical
layer, the interior shows no trabecular structure, and some of the many
clear areas are probably cysts. The condition extends right up to the
articular cartilage, or, in the case of adolescent bones, up to the
epiphysial cartilage.

_Prognosis._--The condition does not appear to affect the general
health. The future is concerned with the local conditions, and,
especially in the case of the femur, with its liability to fracture; so
far as we know there is no time limit to this.

_Treatment_ is confined to protecting the affected bone--usually the
femur--from injury. Operative treatment may be required for lameness due
to a badly united fracture.

#Neuropathic Atrophy of Bone.#--The conditions included under this
heading occur in association with diseases of the nervous system.

Most importance attaches to the fragility of the bones met with in
general paralysis of the insane, locomotor ataxia, and other chronic
diseases of the brain and spinal cord. The bones are liable to be
fractured by forces which would be insufficient to break a healthy bone.
In _locomotor ataxia_ the fractures affect especially the bones of the
lower extremity, and may occur before there are any definite nerve
symptoms, but they are more often met with in the ataxic stage, when the
abrupt and uncontrolled movements of the limbs may play a part in their
causation. They may be unattended with pain, and may fail to unite; when
repair does take place, it is sometimes attended with an excessive
formation of callus. Joint lesions of the nature of Charcot's disease
may occur simultaneously with the alterations in the bones. In
_syringomyelia_ pathological fracture is not so frequent as in locomotor
ataxia; it is more likely to occur in the bones of the upper extremity,
and especially in the humerus. In some cases of _epilepsy_ the bones
break when the patient falls in a fit, and there is usually an
exaggerated amount of comminution.

In these affections the bones present no histological or chemical
alterations, and the X-ray shadow does not differ from the normal. It is
maintained, therefore, that the disposition to fracture does not depend
upon a fragility of the bone, but on the loss of the muscular sense and
of common sensation in the bones, as a result of which there is an
inability properly to throw the muscles into action and dispose the
limbs so as to place them under the most favourable conditions to meet
external violence.

#Osteogenesis Imperfecta#, #Fragilitas Ossium#, or #Congenital
Osteopsathyrosis#.--These terms are used to describe a condition in
which an undue fragility of the bones dates from intra-uterine life. It
may occur in several members of the same family. In severe cases,
intra-uterine fractures occur, and during parturition fresh fractures
are almost sure to be produced, so that at birth there is a combination
of recent fractures and old fractures united and partly united, with
bendings and thickenings of the bones. Large areas of the cranial vault
may remain membranous.

After birth the predisposition to fracture continues, the bones are
easily broken, the fractures are attended with little or no pain, the
crepitus is soft, and although union may take place, it may be delayed
and be attended with excess of callus. Cases have been observed in which
a child has sustained over a hundred fractures.

The bones show a feeble shadow with the X-rays, and appear thin and
atrophied; the medullary canal is increased at the expense of the
cortex.

In young infants in whom multiple fractures occur the prognosis as to
life is unfavourable, and no satisfactory treatment of the disease has
been formulated. If the patient survives, the tendency to fracture
gradually disappears.

#Hypertrophic Pulmonary Osteo-Arthropathy.#--This condition, which was
described by Marie in 1890, is secondary to disease in the chest, such
as chronic phthisis, empyema, bronchiectasis, or sarcoma of the lung.
There is symmetrical enlargement and deformity of the hands and feet;
the shafts of the bones are thickened, and the soft tissues of the
terminal segments of the digits hypertrophied. The fingers come to
resemble drum-sticks, and the thumb the clapper of a bell. The nails are
convex, and incurved at their free ends, suggesting a resemblance to the
beak of a parrot. There is also enlargement of the lower ends of the
bones of the forearm and leg, and effusion into the wrist and
ankle-joints. Skiagrams of the hands and feet show a deposit of new bone
along the shafts of the phalanges.


TUMOURS OF BONE

New growths which originate in the skeleton are spoken of as _primary
tumours_; those which invade the bones, either by metastasis from other
parts of the body or by spread from adjacent tissues, as _secondary_. A
tumour of bone may grow from the cellular elements of the periosteum,
the marrow, or the epiphysial cartilage.

Primary tumours are of the connective-tissue type, and are usually
solitary, although certain forms, such as the chondroma, may be multiple
from the outset.

_Periosteal tumours_ are at first situated on one side of the bone, but
as they grow they tend to surround it completely. Innocent periosteal
tumours retain the outer fibrous layer as a capsule. Malignant tumours
tend to perforate the periosteal capsule and invade the soft parts.

_Central_ or _medullary tumours_ as they increase in size replace the
surrounding bone, and simultaneously new bone is formed on the surface;
as this is in its turn absorbed, further bone is formed beneath the
periosteum, so that in time the bone is increased in girth, and is said
to be "expanded" by the growth in its interior.

#Primary Tumours--Osteoma.#--When the tumour projects from the surface
of a bone it is called an _exostosis_. When growing from bones developed
in membrane, such as the flat bones of the skull, it is usually dense
like ivory, and the term _ivory exostosis_ is employed. When derived
from hyaline cartilage--for example, at the ends of the long bones--it
is known as a _cartilaginous exostosis_. This is invested with a cap of
cartilage from which it continues to grow until the skeleton attains
maturity.

An exostosis forms a rounded or mushroom-shaped tumour of limited size,
which may be either sessile or pedunculated, and its surface is smooth
or nodulated (Figs. 138 and 139). A cartilaginous exostosis in the
vicinity of a joint may be invested with a synovial sac or bursa--the
so-called _exostosis bursata_. The bursa may be derived from the
synovial membrane of the adjacent joint with which its cavity sometimes
communicates, or it may be of adventitious origin; when it is the seat
of bursitis and becomes distended with fluid, it may mask the underlying
exostosis, which then requires a radiogram for its demonstration.

[Illustration: FIG. 138.--Radiogram of Right Knee showing Multiple
Exostoses.]

_Clinically_, the osteoma forms a hard, indolent tumour attached to a
bone. The symptoms to which it gives rise depend on its situation. In
the vicinity of a joint, it may interfere with movement; on the medial
side of the knee it may incapacitate the patient from riding. When
growing from the dorsum of the terminal phalanx of the great
toe--_subungual exostosis_--it displaces the nail, and may project
through its matrix at the point of the toe, while the soft parts over it
may be ulcerated from pressure (Fig. 107). It incapacitates the patient
from wearing a boot. When it presses on a nerve-trunk it causes pains
and cramps. In the orbit it displaces the eyeball; in the nasal foss
and in the external auditory meatus it causes obstruction, which may be
attended with ulceration and discharge. In the skull it may project
from the outer table, forming a smooth rounded swelling, or it may
project from the inner table and press upon the brain.

The diagnosis is to be made by the slow growth of the tumour, its
hardness, and by the shadow which it presents with the X-rays (Fig. 138).

An osteoma which does not cause symptoms may be left alone, as it ceases
to grow when the skeleton is mature and has no tendency to change its
benign character. If causing symptoms, it is removed by dividing the
neck or base of the tumour with a chisel, care being taken to remove the
whole of the overlying cartilage. The dense varieties met with in the
bones of the skull present greater difficulties; if it is necessary to
remove them, the base or neck of the tumour is perforated in many
directions with highly tempered drills rotated by some form of engine,
and the division is completed with the chisel.

[Illustration: FIG. 139.--Multiple Exotoses of both limbs.

(Photograph lent by Sir George T. Beatson.)]

#Multiple Exostoses.#--This disease, which, by custom, is still placed
in the category of tumours, is to be regarded as a disorder of growth,
dating from intra-uterine life and probably due to a disturbance in the
function of the glands of internal secretion, the thyreoid being the one
which is most likely to be at fault (Arthur Keith). The disorder of
growth is confined to those elements of the skeleton where a core of
bone formed in cartilage comes to be encased in a sheath of bone formed
beneath the periosteum. To indicate this abnormality the name
_diaphysial aclasis_ has been employed by Arthur Keith at the suggestion
of Morley Roberts.

Bones formed entirely in cartilage are exempt, namely, the tarsal and
carpal bones, the epiphyses of the long bones, the sternum, and the
bodies of the vertebr. Bones formed entirely in membrane, that is,
those of the face and of the cranial vault, are also exempt. The
disorder mainly affects the ossifying junctions of the long bones of the
extremities, the vertebral border of the scapula, and the cristal border
of the ilium.

_Clinically_ the disease is attended with the gradual and painless
development during childhood or adolescence of a number of tumours or
irregular projections of bone, at the ends of the long bones, the
vertebral border of the scapula, and the cristal border of the ilium.
They exhibit a rough symmetry; they rarely attain any size; and they
usually cease growing when the skeleton attains maturity--the conversion
of cartilage into bone being then completed. While they originate from
the ossifying junctions of the long bones, they tend, as the shaft
increases in length, to project from the surface of the bone at some
distance from the ossifying junction and to "point" away from it. They
may cause symptoms by "locking" the adjacent joint or by pressing upon
nerve-trunks or blood vessels.

In a considerable proportion of cases, the disturbance of growth is
further manifested by dwarfing of the long bones; these are not only
deficient in length but are sometimes also curved and misshapen, which
accounts for the condition being occasionally confused with the
disturbances of growth resulting from rickets. In about one-third of the
recorded cases there is a dislocation of the head of the radius on one
or on both sides, a result of unequal growth between the bones of the
forearm.

[Illustration: FIG. 140.--Multiple Cartilaginous Exostoses in a
man t. 27. The scapular tumour projecting above the right clavicle has
taken on active growth and pressed injuriously on the cords of the
brachial plexus.]

In early adult life, one of the tumours, instead of undergoing
ossification, may take on active growth and exhibit the features of a
chondro-sarcoma, pressing injuriously upon adjacent structures (Fig. 140)
and giving rise later to metastases in the lungs.

The _X-ray appearances_ of the bones affected are of a striking
character; apart from the outgrowths of bone or "tumours" there is
evident a widespread alteration in the internal architecture of the
bones, which suggests analogies with other disturbances of ossification
such as achondroplasia and osteomyelitis fibrosa. The condition is one
that runs in families, sometimes through several generations; we have
more than once seen a father and son together in the hospital
waiting-room.

As regards _treatment_, there is no indication for surgical interference
except when one or other tumour is a source of disability as by pressing
upon a nerve-trunk or by locking a joint, in which case it is easily
removed by chiselling through its neck.

[Illustration: FIG. 141.--Multiple Cartilaginous Exostoses in a
man t. 27, the same as in Fig. 140.]

_Diffuse Osteoma, Leontiasis Ossea._--This rare affection was described
by Virchow, and named leontiasis ossea because of the disfigurement to
which it gives rise. It usually commences in adolescence as a diffuse
overgrowth first of one and then of both maxill; these bones are
enlarged in all directions and project on the face, and the nasal foss
and the maxillary and frontal sinuses become filled up with bone, which
encroaches also on the orbital cavities. In addition to the hideous
deformity, the patient suffers from blocking of the nose, loss of smell,
and protrusion of the eyes, sometimes followed by loss of sight. The
condition is liable to spread to the zygomatic and frontal bones, the
vault of the skull, and to the mandible. The base of the skull is not
affected. The disease is of slow progress and may become arrested; life
may be prolonged for many years, or may be terminated by brain
complications or by intercurrent affections. In certain cases it is
possible to remove some of the more disfiguring of the bony masses.

A less aggressive form, confined to the maxilla on one side, is
sometimes met with, and, in a case of this variety under our own
observation, the disfigurement, which was the only subject of complaint,
was removed, after reflecting the soft parts, by paring away the excess
of bone; this is easily done as the bone is spongy, and at an early
stage, imperfectly calcified.

A remarkable form of _unilateral hypertrophy and diffuse osteoma of the
skull_, following the distribution of the fifth nerve, has seen
described by Jonathan Hutchinson and Alexis Thomson.

#Chondroma.#--Cartilaginous tumours, apart from those giving rise to
multiple exostoses, grow from the long bones and from the scapula,
ilium, ribs, or jaws. They usually project from the surface of the bone,
and may attain an enormous size; sometimes they grow in the interior of
a bone, the so-called _enchondroma_.

The hyaline cartilage composing the tumour frequently undergoes
myxomatous degeneration, resulting in the formation of a glairy,
semi-fluid jelly, and if this change takes place throughout the tumour
it comes to resemble a cyst. On the other hand, the cartilage may
undergo calcification or ossification. The most important transition of
all is that into sarcoma, the so-called _malignant chondroma_ or
_chondro-sarcoma_, which is associated with rapid increase in size,
and parts of the tumour may be carried off in the blood-stream and give
rise to secondary growths, especially in the lungs.

Cases have been met with in which certain parts of the skeleton--only
those developed in cartilage--were so uniformly permeated with cartilage
that the condition has been described as a "chondromatosis" and is
regarded as dating from an early period of ftal life. Unlike the
condition known as multiple cartilaginous exostoses, it is a malignant
disease.

[Illustration: FIG. 142.--Multiple Chondromas of Phalanges and
Metacarpals in a boy t. 10 (cf. Fig. 143).]

The chondroma is met with as a slowly growing tumour which is specially
common in the bones of the hand, often in a multiple form (Figs. 142 and
144). The surface is smooth or lobulated, and in consistence the tumour
may be dense and elastic like normal cartilage, or may present areas of
softening, or of bony hardness. The skin moves freely over it, except in
relation to the bones of the fingers, where it may become adherent and
ulcerate, simulating the appearance of a malignant tumour. Large tumours
growing from the bones of the extremities may implicate the main
vessels and nerves, either surrounding them or pressing on them.

Portions of a chondroma, which have undergone calcification or
ossification, throw a dark shadow with the X-rays; unaltered cartilage
and myxomatous tissue appear as clear areas.

[Illustration: FIG. 143.--Skiagram of Multiple Chondromas shown
in Fig. 142.]

_Treatment._--It is necessary to remove the whole tumour, and in
chondromas growing from the surface of the bone, especially if they are
pedunculated, this is comparatively easy. When a bone, such as the
scapula or mandible, is involved, it is better to excise the bone, or at
least the part of it which bears the tumour. In the case of central
tumours the shell of bone is removed over an area sufficient to allow of
the enucleation of the tumour, or the affected portion of bone is
resected. Should there be evidence of malignancy, such as increased rate
of growth, a tube of radium should be inserted, and in advanced cases
with destruction of tissue, amputation may be called for.

[Illustration: FIG. 144.--Multiple Chondromas in Hand of boy t. 8]

In multiple chondromas of the hand in young subjects, it was formerly
the custom to amputate the limb; an attempt should be made to avoid this
by shelling out the larger tumours individually, and persevering with
the application of the X-rays or of radium to inhibit the growth of the
smaller ones.

Chondromas springing from the pelvic bones usually arise in the region
of the sacro-iliac joint; they project into the pelvis and press on the
bladder and rectum, and on the sciatic and obturator nerves; sometimes
also on the iliac veins, causing dema of the legs. They are liable to
take on malignant characters, and rarely lend themselves to complete
removal by operation.

#Fibroma# is met with chiefly as a periosteal growth in relation to the
mouth and pharynx, the _simple epulis_ of the alveolar margin and the
_naso-pharyngeal polypus_ being the most common examples. We have met
with a fibroma in the interior of the lower end of the femur of an
adult, causing expansion of the bone with decided increase in girth and
liability to pathological fracture; it is possible that this represents
the cured stage of osteomyelitis fibrosa.

_Myxoma_, _lipoma_, and _angioma_ of bone are all rare.

#Myeloma.#--The myeloid tumour, which is sometimes classified with the
sarcomas, contains as its chief elements large giant cells, like those
normally present in the marrow. On section these tumours present a
brownish-red or chocolate colour, and, being highly vascular, are liable
to hmorrhages, and therefore also to pigmentation, and to the formation
of blood cysts. Sometimes the arterial vessels are so dilated as to
impart to the tumour an aneurysmal pulsation and bruit. The enlargement
or "expansion" of the bone results in the cortex being represented by a
thin shell of bone, which may crackle on pressure--parchment or
egg-shell crackling.

The myeloma is most often met with between the ages of twenty-five and
forty in the upper end of the tibia or lower end of the femur. It grows
slowly and causes little pain, and may long escape recognition unless an
examination is made with the X-rays. Although these tumours have been
known to give rise to metastases, they are, as a rule, innocent and are
to be treated as such. When located in the shaft of a long bone,
pathological fracture is liable to occur.

_Diagnosis and X-ray Appearances of Myeloma._--The early diagnosis of
myeloma is made with the aid of the X-rays: the typical appearance is
that of a rounded or oval clear area bounded by a shell of bone of
diminishing thickness (Fig. 145). The inflammatory lesions at the ends
of the long bones--tubercle, syphilitic gumma, and Brodie's abscess,
that resemble myeloma, are all attended with the formation of new bone
in greater or lesser amount. The myeloma is also to be diagnosed from
chondroma, from sarcoma, and from osteomyelitis fibrosa cystica.

[Illustration: FIG. 145.--Radiogram of Myeloma of Humerus.

(Mr. J. W. Struthers' case.)]

_Treatment._--In early cases the cortex is opened up to give free access
to the tumour tissue, which is scraped out with the spoon. Bloodgood
advises the use of Esmarch's tourniquet, and that the curetting be
followed by painting with pure carbolic acid and then rinsing with
alcohol; a rod of bone is inserted to fill the gap. In advanced cases
the segment of bone is resected and a portion of the tibia or fibula
from the other limb inserted into the gap; a tube of radium should also
be introduced.

The coexistence of diffuse myelomatosis of the skeleton and albumosuria
(Bence-Jones) is referred to on p. 474. Myeloma occurs in the jaws,
taking origin in the marrow or from the periosteum of the alveolar
process, and is described elsewhere.

#Sarcoma# and #endothelioma# are the commonest tumours of bone, and
present wide variations in structure and in clinical features.
Structurally, two main groups may be differentiated: (1) the soft,
rapidly growing cellular tumours, and (2) those containing fully formed
fibrous tissue, cartilage, or bone.

(1) The _soft cellular tumours_ are composed mainly of spindle or round
cells; they grow from the marrow of the spongy ends or from the
periosteum of the long bones, the diplo of the skull, the pelvis,
vertebr, and jaws. As they grow they may cause little alteration in the
contour of the bone, but they eat away its framework and replace it, so
that the continuity of the bone is maintained only by tumour tissue, and
pathological fracture is a frequent result. The small round-celled
sarcomas are among the most malignant tumours of bone, growing with
great rapidity, and at an early stage giving rise to secondary growths.

(2) The second group includes the _fibro-_, _osteo-_, and
_chondro-sarcomas_, and combinations of these; in all of them fully
formed tissues or attempts at fully formed tissues predominate over the
cellular elements. They grow chiefly from the deeper layer of the
periosteum, and at first form a projection on the surface, but later
tend to surround the bone (Fig. 150), and to invade its interior,
filling up the marrow spaces with a white, bone-like substance; in the
flat bones of the skull they may traverse the diplo and erupt on the
inner table. The tumour tissue next the shaft consists of a dense,
white, homogeneous material, from which there radiate into the softer
parts of the tumour, spicules, needles, and plates, often exhibiting a
fan-like arrangement (Fig. 151). The peripheral portion consists of soft
sarcomatous tissue, which invades the overlying soft parts. The
articular cartilage long resists destruction. The ossifying sarcoma is
met with most often in the femur and tibia, less frequently in the
humerus, skull, pelvis, and jaws. In the long bones it may grow from the
shaft, while the chondro-sarcoma more often originates at the
extremities. Sometimes they are multiple, several tumours appearing
simultaneously or one after another. Secondary growths are met with
chiefly in the lungs, metastasis taking place by way of the veins.

[Illustration: FIG. 146.--Periosteal Sarcoma of Femur in a young
subject.]

[Illustration: FIG. 147.--Periosteal Sarcoma of Humerus, after
maceration.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

_Clinical Features._--Sarcoma is usually met with before the age of
thirty, and is comparatively common in children. Males suffer oftener
than females, in the proportion of two to one.

In _periosteal sarcoma_ the presence of a swelling is usually the first
symptom; the tumour is fusiform, firm, and regular in outline, and when
it occurs near the end of a long bone the limb frequently assumes a
characteristic "leg of mutton" shape (Fig. 146). The surface may be
uniform or bossed, the consistence varies at different parts, and the
swelling gradually tapers off along the shaft. On firm pressure, fine
crepitation may be felt from crushing of the delicate framework of new
bone.

[Illustration: FIG. 148.--Chondro-Sarcoma of Scapula in a man t. 63;
removal of the scapula was followed two years later by metastases and
death.]

In _central sarcoma_ pain is the first symptom, and it is usually
constant, dull, and aching; is not obviously increased by use of the
limb, but is often worse at night. Swelling occurs late, and is due to
expansion of the bone; it is fusiform or globular, and is at first
densely hard, but in time there may be parchment-like or egg-shell
crackling from yielding of the thin shell. The swelling may pulsate, and
a bruit may be heard over it. In advanced cases it may be impossible to
differentiate between a periosteal and a central tumour, either
clinically or after the specimen has been laid open.

Pathological fracture is more common in central tumours, and sometimes
is the first sign that calls attention to the condition. Consolidation
rarely takes place, although there is often an attempt at union by the
formation of cartilaginous callus.

[Illustration: FIG. 149.--Central Sarcoma of Lower End of Femur,
invading the knee-joint.

(Museum of Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 150.--Osseous Shell of Osteo-Sarcoma of Upper Third
of Femur, after maceration.]

The soft parts over the tumour for a long time preserve their normal
appearance; or they become dematous, and the subcutaneous venous
network is evident through the skin. Elevation of the temperature over
the tumour, which may amount to two degrees or more, is a point of
diagnostic significance, as it suggests an inflammatory lesion.

The adjacent joint usually remains intact, although its movements may be
impaired by the bulk of the tumour or by effusion into the cavity.

Enlargement of the neighbouring lymph glands does not necessarily imply
that they have become infected with sarcoma for the enlargement may
disappear after removal of the primary growth; actual infection of the
glands, however, does sometimes occur, and in them the histological
structure of the parent tumour is reproduced.

To obtain a reasonable prospect of cure, the _diagnosis_ must be made at
an early stage. Great reliance is to be placed on information gained by
examination with the X-rays.

[Illustration: FIG. 151.--Radiogram of Osteo-Sarcoma of Upper Third
of Femur.]

_X-ray Appearances._--In periosteal tumours that do not ossify, there is
merely erosion of bone, and the shadow is not unlike that given by
caries; in ossifying tumours, the arrangement of the new bone on the
surface is characteristic, and when it takes the form of spicules at
right angles to the shaft, it is pathognomic.

In soft central tumours, there is disappearance of bone shadow in the
area of the tumour, while above and below or around this, the shadow is
that of normal bone right up to the clear area. In many respects the
X-ray appearances resemble those of myeloma. In tumours in which there
is a considerable amount of imperfectly formed new bone, this gives a
shadow which barely replaces that of the original bone, in parts it may
even add to it--the resulting picture differing widely in different
cases; but it is usually possible to differentiate it from that caused
by bacterial infections of the bone and from lesions of the adjacent
joint.

[Illustration: FIG. 152.--Radiogram of Chondro-Sarcoma of Upper End of
Humerus in a woman t. 29.]

Skiagraphy is not only of assistance in differentiating new growths from
other diseases of bone, but may also yield information as to the
situation and nature of the tumour, which may have important bearings on
its treatment by operation.

When fracture of a long bone takes place in an adolescent or young adult
from comparatively slight violence, disease of the bone should be
suspected and an X-ray examination made.

In difficult cases the final appeal is to exploratory incision and
microscopical examination of a portion of the tumour; this should be
done when the major operation has been arranged for, the surgeon waiting
until the examination is completed.

The _prognosis_ varies widely. In general, it may be said that
periosteal tumours are less favourable than central ones, because they
are more liable to give rise to metastases. Permanent cures are
unfortunately the exception.

_Treatment._--When one of the bones of a limb is involved, the usual
practice has been to perform amputation well above the growth, and this
may still be recommended as a routine procedure. There are reasons,
however, which may be urged against its continuance. High amputation is
unnecessary in the more benign sarcomas, and in the more malignant forms
is usually unavailing to prevent a fatal issue either from local
recurrence or from metastases in the lungs or elsewhere. Following
the lead of Mikulicz, a considerable number of permanent cures have been
obtained by resecting the portion of bone which is the seat of the
tumour, and substituting for it a corresponding portion from the tibia
or fibula of the other limb. In a cellular sarcoma of the humerus of a
boy we resected the shaft and inserted his fibula ten years ago, and he
shows no sign of recurrence. When resection is impracticable, a
subcapsular enucleation is performed, followed by the insertion of
radium.

#Pulsating Hmatoma# or #Aneurysm of Bone#.--A limited number of these
are innocent cavernous tumours dating from a congenital angioma. The
majority would appear to be the result of changes in a sarcoma,
endothelioma, or myeloma. The tumour tissue largely disappears, while
the vessels and vascular spaces undergo a remarkable development. The
tumour may come to be represented by one large blood-containing space
communicating with the arteries of the limb; the walls of the space
consist of the remains of the original tumour, plus a shell of bone of
varying thickness. The most common seats of the condition are the lower
end of the femur, the upper end of the tibia, and the bones of the
pelvis.

The _clinical features_ are those of a pulsating tumour of slow
development, and as in true aneurysm, the pulsation and bruit disappear
on compression of the main artery. The origin of the tumour from bone
may be revealed by the presence of egg-shell crackling, and by
examination with the X-rays.

If the condition is believed to be innocent, the treatment is the same
as for aneurysm--preferably by ligation of the main artery; if
malignant, it is the same as for sarcoma.

#Secondary Tumours of Bone.#--These embrace two groups of new growth,
those which give rise to secondary growths in the marrow of bones and
those which spread to bone by direct continuity.

_Metastatic Tumours._--Excepting certain cancers which give rise to
metastases by lymphatic permeation (Handley), the common metastases
arising in the bone-marrow reach their destination through the
blood-stream.

[Illustration: FIG. 153.--Epitheliomatous Ulcer of Leg with direct
extension to Tibia.

(Lord Lister's specimen. Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

Secondary cancer is a comparatively common disease, and, as in
metastases in other tissues, the secondary growths resemble the parent
tumour. The soft forms grow rapidly, and eat away the bone, without
altering its shape or form. In slowly growing forms there may be
considerable formation of imperfectly formed bone, often deficient in
lime salts; this condition may be widely diffused throughout the
skeleton, and, as it is associated with softening and bending of the
bones, it is known as _cancerous osteomalacia_. Secondary cancer of bone
is attended with pain, or it suddenly attracts notice by the occurrence
of pathological fracture--as, for example, in the shaft of the femur or
humerus. In the vertebr, it is attended with a painful form of
paraplegia, which may involve the lower or all four extremities. On the
other hand, the disease may show itself clinically as a tumour of bone,
which may attain a considerable size, and may be mistaken for a sarcoma,
unless the existence of the primary cancer is discovered.

The cancers most liable to give rise to metastasis in bone are those of
the breast, liver, uterus, prostate, colon, and rectum; hyper-nephroma
of the kidney may also give rise to metastases in bone.

_Secondary tumours derived from the thyreoid gland_ require special
mention, because they are peculiar in that neither the primary growth in
the thyreoid nor the secondary growth in the bones is necessarily
malignant. They are therefore amenable to operative treatment.

_Secondary sarcoma_, whether derived from a primary growth in the bone
or in the soft parts, is much rarer than secondary cancer. Its removal
by operation is usually contra-indicated, but we have known of cases
terminating fatally in which the _section_ revealed only one metastasis,
the removal of which would have benefited the patient.

In all of these conditions, examination of the bones with the X-rays
gives valuable information and often disclose unsuspected metastases.

_Cancer of Bone resulting from Direct Extension from Soft Parts._--In
this group there are also two clinical types. The first is met with in
relation to _epithelioma of a mucous surface_--for example, the palate,
tongue, gums, antrum, frontal sinus, auditory meatus, or middle ear.
They will be described under these special regions.

The second type is met with in relation to _epithelioma occurring in a
sinus_, the sequel of suppurative osteomyelitis, compound fracture, or
tuberculous disease. The patient has usually had a discharging sinus for
a great number of years: we have known it to last as many as fifty. The
epithelioma originates at the skin orifice of the sinus, and spreads to
the bone and into its interior, where the progress of the cancer is
resisted by dense bone, which obliterates the medullary canal. Although
its progress is slow, the infiltration of the bone is usually more
extensive than appears externally. It is recognised clinically by the
characteristic cauliflower growth at the orifice of the sinus, and by
the offensive nature of the discharge. A similar epithelioma may arise
in connection with a _chronic ulcer of the leg_. The cancer may infect
the femoral lymph glands. The operative treatment is influenced by the
extent of the disease in the soft parts overlying the bone, and consists
in wide removal of the diseased tissues and resection of the bone, or in
amputation.

#Cysts of Bone.#--With the exception of hydatid cysts, cysts in the
interior of bone are the result of the liquefaction of solid tissue;
this may be that of chondroma, myeloma, or sarcoma, but more commonly of
the marrow in osteomyelitis fibrosa.




CHAPTER XXI

DISEASES OF JOINTS


Definition of terms--Ankylosis. DISEASES: Errors of
    development--Bacterial diseases: _Pyogenic_; _Gonorrhal_;
    _Tuberculous_; _Syphilitic_; _Acute rheumatism_--Diseases
    associated with certain constitutional conditions: _Gout_; _Chronic
    articular rheumatism_; _Arthritis deformans_;
    _Hmophilia_--Diseases associated with affections of the nervous
    system: _Neuro-arthropathies_; _Charcot's disease_--Hysterical or
    mimetic affections of joints--Tumours and cysts--Loose bodies.

#Definition of Terms.#--The term _synovitis_ is applied to any reaction
which affects the synovial membrane of a joint. It is usually associated
with effusion of fluid, and this may be serous, sero-fibrinous, or
purulent. As the term synovitis merely refers to the tissue involved, it
should always be used with an adjective--such as gouty, gonorrhal, or
tuberculous--which indicates its pathological nature.

The terms _hydrops_, _hydrarthrosis_, and _chronic serous synovitis_ are
synonymous, and are employed when a serous effusion into the joint is
the prominent clinical feature. Hydrops may occur apart from
disease--for example, in the knee-joint from repeated sprains, or when
there is a loose body in the joint--but is met with chiefly in the
chronic forms of synovitis which result from gonorrha, tuberculosis,
syphilis, arthritis deformans, or arthropathies of nerve origin.

_Arthritis_ is the term applied when not only the synovial membrane but
the articular surfaces, and it may be also the ends of the bones, are
involved, and it is necessary to prefix a qualifying adjective which
indicates its nature. When effusion is present, it may be serous, as in
arthritis deformans, or sero-fibrinous or purulent, as in certain forms
of pyogenic and tuberculous arthritis. Wasting of the muscles,
especially the extensors, in the vicinity of the joint is a constant
accompaniment of arthritis. On account of the involvement of the
articular surfaces, arthritis is apt to be followed by ankylosis.

The term _empyema_ is sometimes employed to indicate that the cavity of
the joint contains pus. This is observed chiefly in chronic disease of
pyogenic or tuberculous origin, and is usually attended with the
formation of abscesses outside the joint.

_Ulceration of cartilage_ and _caries of the articular surfaces_ are
common accompaniments of the more serious and progressive forms of joint
disease, especially those of bacterial origin. The destruction of
cartilage may be secondary to disease of the synovial membrane or of the
subjacent bone. When the disease begins as a synovitis, the synovial
membrane spreads over the articular surface, fuses with the cartilage
and eats into it, causing defects or holes which are spoken of as
ulcers. When the disease begins in the bone, the marrow is converted
into granulation tissue, which eats into the cartilage and separates it
from the bone. Following on the destruction of the cartilage, the
articular surface of the bone undergoes disintegration, a condition
spoken of as _caries of the articular surface_. The occurrence of
ulceration of cartilage and of articular caries is attended with the
clinical signs of fixation of the joint from involuntary muscular
contraction, wasting of muscles, and starting pains. These _starting
pains_ are the result of sudden involuntary movements of the joint. They
occur most frequently as the patient is dropping off to sleep; the
muscles becoming relaxed, the sensitive ulcerated surfaces jar on one
another, which causes sudden reflex contraction of the muscles, and the
resulting movement being attended with severe pain, wakens the patient
with a start. Advanced articular caries is usually associated with some
abnormal attitude and with shortening of the limb. It may be possible to
feel the bony surfaces grate upon one another. When all its constituent
elements are damaged or destroyed, a joint is said to be _disorganised_.
Should recovery take place, repair is usually attended with union of the
opposing articular surfaces either by fibrous tissue or by bone.

#Conditions of Impaired Mobility of Joints.#--There are four conditions
of impaired mobility in joints: rigidity, contracture, ankylosis, and
locking. _Rigidity_ is the fixation of a joint by involuntary
contraction of muscles, and is of value as a sign of disease in
deep-seated joints, such as the hip. It disappears under ansthesia.

_Contracture_ is the term applied when the fixation is due to permanent
shortening of the soft parts around a joint--muscles, tendons,
ligaments, fasci, or skin. As the structures on the flexor aspect are
more liable to undergo such shortening, contracture is nearly always
associated with flexion. Contracture may result from disease of the
joint, or from conditions outside it--for example, disease in one of
the adjacent bones, or lesions of the nerves.

_Ankylosis_ is the term applied when impaired mobility results from
changes involving the articular surfaces. It is frequently combined with
contracture. Three anatomical varieties of ankylosis are
recognised--(a) The _fibrous_, in which there are adhesions between
the opposing surfaces, which may be in the form of loose isolated bands
of fibrous tissue, or may bind the bones so closely together as to
obliterate the cavity of the joint. The resulting stiffness, therefore,
varies from a mere restriction of the normal range of movement, up to a
close union of the bones which prevents movement. Fibrous ankylosis may
follow upon injury, especially dislocation or fracture implicating a
joint, or it may result from any form of arthritis. (b) _Cartilaginous
ankylosis_ implies the fusion of two apposed cartilaginous surfaces. It
is often found between the patella and the trochlear surface of the
femur in tuberculous disease of the knee. The fusion of the
cartilaginous surfaces is preceded by the spreading of a vascular
connective tissue, derived from the synovial membrane, over the
articular cartilage. Clinically, it is associated with absolute
immobility, (c) _Bony ankylosis_ or _synostosis_ is an osseous union
between articulating surfaces (Figs. 154 and 155). It may follow upon
fibrous or cartilaginous ankylosis, or may result from the fusion of two
articular surfaces which have lost their cartilage and become covered
with granulations. In the majority of cases it is to be regarded as a
reparative process, presenting analogies with the union of fracture.

[Illustration: FIG. 154.--Osseous Ankylosis of Femur and Tibia in
position of flexion.]

The term _arthritis ossificans_ has been applied by Joseph Griffiths to
a condition in which the articular surfaces become fused without evident
cause.

The occurrence of ankylosis in a joint before the skeleton has attained
maturity does not appear to impair the growth in length of the bones
affected; ankylosis of the temporo-maxillary joints, however, greatly
impairs the growth of the mandible. When there is arrest of growth
accompanying ankylosis, it usually depends on changes in the ossifying
junctions caused by the original disease.

To differentiate by manipulation between muscular fixation and
ankylosis, it may be necessary to ansthetise the patient. The nature
and extent of ankylosis may be learned by skiagraphy; in osseous
ankylosis the shadow of the two bones is a continuous one. In fibrous as
contrasted with osseous ankylosis mobility may be elicited, although
only to a limited extent; while in osseous ankylosis the joint is
rigidly fixed, and attempts to move it are painless.

[Illustration: FIG. 155.--Osseous Ankylosis of Knee in the flexed
position following upon Tuberculous Arthritis.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

The _treatment_ is influenced by the nature of the original lesion, the
variety of the ankylosis, and the attitude of the joint. When there is
restriction of movement due to fibrous adhesions, these may be elongated
or ruptured. Elongation of the adhesions may be effected by
manipulations, exercises, and the use of special forms of
apparatus--such as the application of weights to the limb. It may be
necessary to administer an ansthetic before rupturing strong fibrous
adhesions, and this procedure must be carried out with caution, in view
of such risks as fracture of the bone--which is often rarefied--or
separation of an epiphysis. There is also the risk of fat embolism, and
of re-starting the original disease. The giving way of adhesions may be
attended with an audible crack; and the procedure is often followed by
considerable pain and effusion into the joint, which necessitate rest
for some days before exercises and manipulations can be resumed.

_Operative treatment_ may be called for in cases in which the bones are
closely bound to one another by fibrous or by osseous tissue.

_Arthrolysis_, which consists in opening the joint and dividing the
fibrous adhesions, is almost inevitably followed by their reunion.

_Arthroplasty._--Murphy of Chicago devised this operation for restoring
movement to an ankylosed joint. It consists in transplanting between the
bones a flap of fat-bearing tissue, from which a bursal cavity lined
with endothelium and containing a fluid rich in mucin is ultimately
formed.

Arthroplasty is most successful in ankylosis following upon injury; when
the ankylosis results from some infective condition such as tuberculosis
or gonorrha, it is liable to result in failure either because of a
fresh outbreak of the infection or because the ankylosis recurs.

When arthroplasty is impracticable, and a movable joint is desired--for
example at the elbow--a considerable amount of bone, and it may be also
of periosteum and capsular ligament, is resected to allow of the
formation of a false joint.

When bony ankylosis has occurred with the joint in an undesirable
attitude--for example flexion at the hip or knee--it can sometimes be
remedied by osteotomy or by a wedge-shaped resection of the bone, with
or without such additional division of the contracted soft parts as will
permit of the limb being placed in the attitude desired.

Bony ankylosis of the joints of a finger, whether the result of injury
or disease, is difficult to remedy by any operative procedure, for while
it is possible to restore mobility, the new joint is apt to be
flail-like.

_Locking._--A joint is said to lock when its movements are abruptly
arrested by the coming together of bony outgrowths around the joint. It
is best illustrated in arthritis deformans of the hip in which new bone
formed round the rim of the acetabulum mechanically arrests the
excursions of the head of the femur. The new bone, which limits the
movements, is readily demonstrated in skiagrams; it may be removed by
operative means. Locking of joints is more often met with as a result of
injuries, especially in fractures occurring in the region of the elbow.
In certain injuries of the semilunar menisci of the knee, also, the
joint is liable to a variety of locking, which differs, however, in many
respects from that described above.

#Errors of Development.#--These include congenital dislocations and
other deformities of intra-uterine origin, such as abnormal laxity of
joints, absence, displacement, or defective growth of one or other of
the essential constituents of a joint. The more important of these are
described along with the surgery of the Extremities.


DISEASES OF JOINTS

#Bacterial Diseases.#--In most bacterial diseases the organisms are
carried to the joint in the blood-stream, and they lodge either in the
synovial membrane or in one of the bones, whence the disease
subsequently spreads to the other structures of the joint. Organisms may
also be introduced through accidental wounds. It has been shown
experimentally that joints are among the most susceptible parts of the
body to infection, and this would appear to be due to the viscid
character of the synovial fluid, which protects organisms from
bactericidal agents in the tissues and fluids.


PYOGENIC DISEASES

The commoner pyogenic diseases are the result of infection of one or
other of the joint structures with _staphylococci_ or _streptococci_,
which may be demonstrated in the exudate in the joint and in the
substance of the synovial membrane. The mode of infection is the same as
in the pyogenic diseases of bone, the metastasis occurring most
frequently from the mucous membrane of the pharynx (J. B. Murphy). The
localisation of the infection in a particular joint is determined by
injury, exposure to cold, antecedent disease of the joint, or other
factors, the nature of which is not always apparent.

The effects on the joint vary in severity. In the milder forms, there is
engorgement and infiltration of the synovial membrane, and an effusion
into the cavity of the joint of serous fluid mixed with flakes of
fibrin--_serous synovitis_. In more severe infections the exudate
consists of pus mixed with fibrin, and, it may be, red blood
corpuscles--_purulent_ or _suppurative synovitis_; the synovial membrane
and the ligaments are softened, and the surface of the membrane presents
granulations resembling those on an ulcer; foci of suppuration may
develop in the peri-articular cellular tissue and result in abscesses.
In _acute arthritis_, all the structures of the joint are involved; the
articular cartilage is invaded by granulation tissue derived from the
synovial membrane, and from the marrow of the subjacent bone; it
presents a worm-eaten or ulcerated appearance, or it may undergo
necrosis and separate, exposing the subjacent bone and leading to
disintegration of the osseous trabecul--_caries_. With the destruction
of the ligaments, the stability of the joint is lost, and it becomes
disorganised.

The _clinical features_ vary with the extent of the infection. When
this is confined to the synovial and peri-synovial tissues--_acute
serous_ and _purulent synovitis_--there is the usual general reaction,
associated with pyrexia and great pain in the joint. The part is hot and
swollen, the swelling assuming the shape of the distended synovial sac,
fluctuation can usually be elicited, and the joint is held in the flexed
position.

When the joint is infected by extension from the surrounding cellular
tissue, the joint lesion may not be recognised at an early stage because
of the swollen condition of the limb, and because there are already
symptoms of toxmia. We have observed a case in which both the hip and
knee joints were infected from the cellular tissue.

If the infection involves all the joint structures--_acute
arthritis_--the general and local phenomena are intensified, the
temperature rises quickly, often with a rigor, and remains high; the
patient looks ill, and is either unable to sleep or the sleep is
disturbed by starting pains. The joint is held rigid in the flexed
position, and the least attempt at movement causes severe pain; the
slightest jar--even the shaking of the bed--may cause agony. The joint
is hot, tensely distended, and there may be dema of the peri-articular
tissues or of the limb as a whole. If the pus perforates the joint
capsule, there are signs of abscess or of diffuse suppuration in the
cellular tissue. The final disorganisation of the joint is indicated by
abnormal mobility and grating of the articular surfaces, or by
spontaneous displacement of the bones, and this may amount to
dislocation. In the acute arthritis of infants, the epiphysis concerned
may be separated and displaced.

When the _joint is infected through an external wound_, the anatomical
features are similar to those observed when the infection has reached
the joint by the blood-stream, but the destructive changes tend to be
more severe and are more likely to result in disorganisation.

The _terminations_ vary with the gravity of the infection and with the
stage at which treatment is instituted. In the milder forms recovery is
the rule, with more or less complete restoration of function. In more
severe forms the joint may be permanently damaged as a result of fibrous
or bony ankylosis, or from displacement or dislocation. From changes in
the peri-articular structures there may be contracture in an undesirable
position, and in young subjects the growth of the limb may be interfered
with. The persistence of sinuses is usually due to disease in one or
other of the adjacent bones. In the most severe forms, and especially
when several joints are involved, death may result from toxmia.

The _treatment_ is carried out on the same principles as in other
pyogenic infections. The limb is immobilised in such an attitude that
should stiffness occur there will be the least interference with
function. Extension by weight and pulley is the most valuable means of
allaying muscular spasm and relieving intra-articular tension and of
counteracting the tendency to flexion; as much as 15 or 20 pounds may be
required to relieve the pain.

The induction of hypermia is sometimes remarkably efficacious in
relieving pain and in arresting the progress of the infection. If the
fluid in the joint is in sufficient quantity to cause tension, if it
persists, or if there is reason to suspect that it is purulent, it
should be withdrawn without delay; an exploring syringe usually
suffices, the skin being punctured with a tenotomy knife, and, as
practised by Murphy, 5 to 15 c.c. of a 2 per cent. solution of formalin
in glycerin are injected and the wound is closed. In virulent infections
the injection may be repeated in twenty-four hours. Drainage by tube or
otherwise is to be condemned (Murphy). A vaccine may be prepared from
the fluid in the joint and injected into the subcutaneous cellular
tissue.

Suppuration in the peri-articular soft parts or in one of the adjacent
bones must be looked for and dealt with.

When convalescence is established, attention is directed to the
restoration of the functions of the limb, and to the prevention of
stiffness and deformity by movements and massage, and the use of hot-air
and other baths.

At a later stage, and especially in neglected cases, operative and other
measures may be required for deformity or ankylosis.


#Metastatic Forms of Pyogenic Infection#

In #pymia#, one or more joints may fill with pus without marked
symptoms or signs, and if the pus is aspirated without delay the joint
often recovers without impairment of function.

In #typhoid fever#, joint lesions result from infection with the typhoid
bacillus alone or along with pyogenic organisms, and run their course
with or without suppuration; there is again a remarkable absence of
symptoms, and attention may only be called to the condition by the
occurrence of dislocation.

Joint lesions are comparatively common in #scarlet fever#, and were
formerly described as scarlatinal rheumatism. The most frequent clinical
type is that of a serous synovitis, occurring within a week or ten days
from the onset of the fever. Its favourite seat is in the hand and
wrist, the sheaths of the extensor tendons as well as the synovial
membrane of the joints being involved. It does not tend to migrate to
other joints, and rarely lasts longer than a few days. It is probably
due to the specific virus of scarlet fever.

At a later stage, especially in children and in cases in which the
throat lesion is severe, an arthritis is sometimes observed that is
believed to be a metastasis from the throat; it may be acute and
suppurative, affect several joints, and exhibit a septicmic or pymic
character.

The joints of the lower extremity are especially apt to suffer; the
child is seriously ill, is delirious at night, develops bed-sores over
the sacrum and, it may happen that, not being expected to recover, the
legs are allowed to assume contracture deformities with ankylosis or
dislocation at the hip and flexion ankylosis at the knees; should the
child survive, the degree of crippling may be pitiable in the extreme;
prolonged orthopdic treatment and a series of operations--arthroplasty,
osteotomies, and resections--may be required to restore even a limited
capacity of locomotion.

#Pneumococcal affections of joints#, the result of infection with the
pneumococcus of Fraenkel, are being met with in increasing numbers. The
local lesion varies from a _synovitis_ with infiltration of the synovial
membrane and effusion of serum or pus, to an _acute arthritis_ with
erosion of cartilage, caries of the articular surfaces, and
disorganisation of the joint. The knee is most frequently affected, but
several joints may suffer at the same time. In most cases the joint
affection makes its appearance a few days after the commencement of a
pneumonia, but in a number of instances, especially among children, the
lung is not specially involved, and the condition is an indication of a
generalised pneumococcal infection, which may manifest itself by
endocarditis, empyema, meningitis, or peritonitis, and frequently has a
fatal termination. The differential diagnosis from other forms of
pyogenic infection is established by bacteriological examination of the
fluid withdrawn from the joint. The treatment is carried out on the same
lines as in other pyogenic infections, considerable reliance being
placed on the use of autogenous vaccines.

In #measles#, #diphtheria#, #smallpox#, #influenza#, and #dysentery#,
similar joint lesions may occur.

The joint lesions which accompany #acute rheumatism# or "rheumatic
fever" are believed to be due to a diplococcus. In the course of a
general illness in which there is moderate pyrexia and profuse sweating,
some of the larger joints, and not infrequently the smaller ones also,
become swollen and extremely sensitive, so that the sufferer lies in bed
helpless, dreading the slightest movement. From day to day fresh joints
are attacked, while those first affected subside, often with great
rapidity. Affections of the heart-valves and of the pericardium are
commonly present. On recovery from the acute illness, it may be found
that the joints have entirely recovered, but in a small proportion of
cases certain of them remain stiff and pass into the crippled condition
described under chronic rheumatism. There is no call for operative
interference.

#Gonococcal Affections of Joints.#--These include all forms of joint
lesion occurring in association with gonorrhal urethritis,
vulvo-vaginitis, or gonorrhal ophthalmia. They may develop at any stage
of the urethritis, but are most frequently met with from the eighteenth
to the twenty-second day after the primary infection, when the organisms
have reached the posterior urethra; they have been observed, however,
after the discharge has ceased. There is no connection between the
severity of the gonorrha and the incidence of joint disease. In women,
the gonorrhal nature of the discharge must be established by
bacteriological examination.

As a complication of ophthalmia, the joint lesions are met with in
infants, and occur more commonly towards the end of the second or during
the third week.

The gonococcus is carried to the joint in the blood-stream and is first
deposited in the synovial membrane, in the tissues of which it can
usually be found; it may be impossible to find it in the exudate within
the joint. The joint lesions may be the only evidence of metastasis, or
they may be part of a general infection involving the endocardium,
pleura, and tendon sheaths.

The joints most frequently affected are the knee, elbow, ankle, wrist,
and fingers. Usually two or more joints are affected.

Several clinical types are differentiated. (1) A _dry poly-arthritis_
met with in the joints and tendon sheaths of the wrist and hand,
formerly described as gonorrhal rheumatism, which in some cases is
trifling and evanescent, and in others is persistent and progressive,
and results in stiffness of the affected joints and permanent crippling
of the hand and fingers.

(2) The commonest type is a _chronic synovitis_ or _hydrops_, in which
the joint--very often the knee--becomes filled with a serous or
sero-fibrinous exudate. There are no reactive changes in the synovial
membrane, cellular tissue, or skin, nor is there any fever or
disturbance of health. The movements are free except in so far as they
are restricted by the amount of fluid in the joint. It usually subsides
in two or three weeks under rest, but tends to relapse.

(3) An _acute synovitis_ with peri-articular phlegmon is most often met
with in the elbow, but it occurs also in the knee and ankle. There is a
sudden onset of severe pain and swelling in and around the joint, with
considerable fever and disturbance of health. The slightest movement
causes pain, and the part is sensitive to touch. The skin is hot and
tense, and in the case of the elbow may be red and fiery as in
erysipelas.

The deposit of fibrin on the synovial membrane and on the articular
surfaces may lead to the formation of adhesions, sometimes in the form
of isolated bands, sometimes in the form of a close fibrous union
between the bones.

(4) A _suppurative arthritis_, like that caused by ordinary pus
microbes, may be the result of gonococcal infection alone or of a mixed
infection. Usually only one joint is affected, but the condition may be
multiple. The articular cartilages are destroyed, the ends of the bones
are covered with granulations, extra-articular abscesses form, and
complete osseous ankylosis results.

The _diagnosis_ is often missed because the possibility of gonorrha is
not suspected.

The denial of the disease by the patient is not always to be relied
upon, especially in the case of women, as they may be ignorant of its
presence. The chief points in the differential diagnosis from acute
articular rheumatism are, that the gonorrhal affection is more often
confined to one or two joints, has little tendency to wander from joint
to joint, and its progress is not appreciably influenced by salicylates,
although these drugs may relieve pain. The conclusive point is the
recognition of a gonorrhal discharge or of threads in the urine.

The disease may persist or may relapse, and the patient may be laid up
for weeks or months, and may finally be crippled in one or in several
joints.

The _treatment_--besides that of the urethral disease or of the
ophthalmia--consists in rest until all pain and sensitiveness have
disappeared. The pain is relieved by salicylates, but most benefit
follows weight extension, the induction of hypermia by the rubber
bandage and hot-air baths; if the joint is greatly distended, the fluid
may be withdrawn by a needle and syringe. Detoxicated vaccines should be
given from the first, and in afebrile cases the injection of a foreign
protein, such as anti-typhoid vaccine, is beneficial (Harrison).

Murphy has found benefit from the introduction into the joint, in the
early stages, of from 5 to 15 c.c. of a 2 per cent. solution of formalin
in glycerin. This may be repeated within a week, the patient being kept
in bed with light weight extension. In the chronic hydrops the fluid is
withdrawn, and about an ounce of a 1 per cent. solution of protargol
injected; the patient should be warned of the marked reaction which
follows.

After all symptoms have settled down, but not till then, for fear of
exciting relapse or metastasis, the joint is massaged and exercised.
Stiffness from adhesions is most intractable, and may, in spite of every
attention, terminate in ankylosis even in cases where there has been no
suppuration. Forcible breaking down of adhesions under ansthesia is
not recommended, as it is followed by great suffering and the adhesions
re-form. Operation for ankylosis--arthroplasty--should not be
undertaken, as the ankylosis recurs.


TUBERCULOUS DISEASE

Tuberculous disease of joints results from bacillary infection through
the arteries. The disease may commence in the synovial membrane or in
the marrow of one of the adjacent bones, and the relative frequency of
these two seats of infection has been the subject of considerable
difference of opinion. The traditional view of Knig is that in the knee
and most of the larger joints the disease arises in the bone and in the
synovial membrane in about equal proportion, and that in the hip the
number of cases beginning in the bones is about five times greater than
that originating in the membrane. This estimate, so far as the actual
frequency of bone lesions is concerned, has been generally accepted, but
recent observers, notably John Fraser, do not accept the presence of
bone lesions as necessarily proving that the disease commenced in the
bones; he maintains, and we think with good grounds, that in many cases
the disease having commenced in the synovial membrane, slowly spreads to
the bone by way of the blood vessels and lymphatics, and gives rise to
lesions in the marrow.

#Morbid Anatomy.#--Tuberculous disease in the articular end of a long
bone may give rise to _reactive changes_ in the adjacent joint,
characterised by effusion and by the extension of the synovial membrane
over the articular surfaces. This may result in the formation of
adhesions which obliterate the cavity of the joint or divide it into
compartments. These lesions are comparatively common, and are not
necessarily due to actual tuberculous infection of the joint.

The _infection of the joint_ by tubercle originating in the adjacent
bone may take place at the periphery, the osseous focus reaching the
surface of the bone at the site of reflection of the synovial membrane,
and the infection which begins at this point then spreads to the rest of
the membrane. Or it may take place in the central area, by the
projection of tuberculous granulation tissue into the joint following
upon erosion of the cartilage (Fig. 156).

[Illustration: FIG. 156.--Section of Upper End of Fibula, showing
caseating focus in marrow, erupting on articular surface and infecting
joint.]

_Changes in the Synovial Membrane._--In the majority of cases there is a
_diffuse thickening of the synovial membrane_, due to the formation of
granulation tissue, or of young connective tissue, in its substance.
This new tissue is arranged in two layers--the outer composed of fully
formed connective or fibrous tissue, the inner of embryonic tissue,
usually permeated with miliary tubercles. On opening the joint, these
tubercles may be seen on the surface of the membrane, or the surface may
be covered with a layer of fibrinous or caseating tissue. Where there is
greater resistance on the part of the tissues, there is active formation
of young connective tissue which circumscribes or encapsulates the
tubercles, so that they remain embedded in the substance of the
membrane, and are only seen on cutting into it.

The thickened synovial membrane is projected into the cavity of the
joint, filling up its pouches and recesses, and spreading over the
surface of the articular cartilage "like ivy growing on a wall."
Wherever the synovial tissue covers the cartilage it becomes adherent to
and fused with it. The morbid process may be arrested at this stage, and
fibrous adhesions form between the opposing articular surfaces, or it
may progress, in which case further changes occur, resulting in
destruction of the articular cartilage and exposure of the subjacent
bone.

In rare instances the synovial membrane presents nodular masses or
lumps, resembling the tuberculous tumours met with in the brain; they
project into the cavity of the joint, are often pedunculated, and may
give rise to the symptoms of loose body. The fringes of synovial
membrane may also undergo a remarkable development, like that observed
in arthritis deformans, and described as arborescent lipoma. Both these
types are almost exclusively met with in the knee.

_The Contents of Tuberculous Joints._--In a large proportion of cases of
synovial tuberculosis the joint is entirely filled up by the diffuse
thickening of the synovial membrane. In a small number there is an
abundant serous exudate, and with this there may be a considerable
formation of fibrin, covering the surface of the membrane and floating
in the fluid as flakes or masses; under the influence of movement it may
assume the shape of melon-seed bodies. More rarely the joint contains
pus, and the surface of the synovial membrane resembles the wall of a
cold abscess.

_Ulceration and Necrosis of Cartilage._--The synovial tissue covering
the cartilage causes pitting and perforation of the cartilage and makes
its way through it, and often spreads widely between it and the
subjacent bone; the cartilage may be detached in portions of
considerable size. It may be similarly ulcerated or detached as a result
of disease in the bone.

_Caries of Articular Surfaces._--Tuberculous infiltration of the marrow
in the surface cancelli breaks up the spongy framework of the bone into
minute irregular fragments, so that it disintegrates or crumbles
away--caries. When there is an absence of caseation and suppuration, the
condition is called _caries sicca_.

The pressure of the articular surfaces against one another favours the
progress of ulceration of cartilage and of articular caries. These
processes are usually more advanced in the areas most exposed to
pressure--for example, in the hip-joint, on the superior aspect of the
head of the femur, and on the posterior and upper segment of the
acetabulum.

The occurrence of _pathological dislocation_ is due to softening and
stretching of the ligaments which normally retain the bones in position,
and to some factor causing displacement, which may be the accumulation
of fluid or of granulations in the joint, the involuntary contraction of
muscles, or some movement or twist of the limb. The occurrence of
dislocation is also favoured by destructive changes in the bones.

_Peri-articular tubercle and abscess_ may result from the spread of
disease from the bone or joint into the surrounding tissues, either
directly or by way of the lymphatics. A peri-articular abscess may
spread in several directions, sometimes invading tendon sheaths or
burs, and finally reaching the skin surface by tortuous sinuses.

Reactive changes in the vicinity of tuberculous joints are of common
occurrence, and play a considerable part in the production of what is
clinically known as _white swelling_. New connective tissue forms in the
peri-articular fat and between muscles and tendons. It may be tough and
fibrous, or soft, vascular, and dematous, and the peri-articular fat
becomes swollen and gelatinous, constituting a layer of considerable
thickness. The fat disappears and is replaced by a mucoid effusion
between the fibrous bundles of connective tissue. This is what was
formerly known as _gelatinous degeneration_ of the synovial membrane. In
the case of the wrist the newly formed connective tissue may fix the
tendons in their sheaths, interfering with the movements of the fingers.
In relation to the bones also there may be reactive changes, resulting
in the formation of spicules of new bone on the periosteal surfaces and
at the attachment of the capsular and other ligaments; these are only
met with where pyogenic infection has been superadded.

_Terminations and Sequel._--A natural process of cure may occur at any
stage, the tuberculous tissue being replaced by scar tissue. Recovery is
apt to be attended with impairment of movement due to adhesions,
ankylosis, or contracture of the peri-articular structures. Caseous foci
in the interior of the bones may become encapsulated, and a cure be thus
effected, or they may be the cause of a relapse of the disease at a
later date. Interference with growth is comparatively common, and may
involve only the epiphysial junctions in the immediate vicinity of the
joint affected, or those of all the bones of the limb. This is well seen
in adults who have suffered from severe disease of the hip in
childhood--the entire limb, including the foot, being shorter and
smaller than the corresponding parts of the opposite side.

Atrophic conditions are also met with, the bones undergoing fatty
atrophy, so that in extreme cases they may be cut with a knife or be
easily fractured. These atrophic conditions are most marked in bedridden
patients, and are largely due to disuse of the limb; they are recovered
from if it is able to resume its functions.

#Clinical Features.#--These vary with the different anatomical forms of
the disease, and with the joint affected.

Sometimes the disease is ushered in by a febrile attack attended with
pains in several joints--described by John Duncan as _tuberculous
arthritic fever_. This is liable to be mistaken for rheumatic fever,
from which, however, it differs in that there is no real migration from
joint to joint; there is an absence of sweating and of cardiac
complications; and no benefit follows the administration of salicylates.

In exceptional cases, tuberculous joint disease follows an acute course
resembling that of the pyogenic arthritis of infants. This has been
observed in children, especially in the knee, the lesion being in the
synovial membrane, and attended with an accumulation of pus in the
joint. If promptly treated by incision and drainage, recovery is rapid,
and free movement of the joint, may be preserved.

The onset and early stages of tuberculous disease, however, are more
often insidious, and are attended with so few symptoms that the disease
may have obtained a considerable hold before it attracts notice. It is
not uncommon for patients or their friends to attribute the condition to
injury, as it often first attracts attention after some slight trauma or
excessive use of the limb. The symptoms usually subside under rest, only
to relapse again with use of the limb.

The initial local symptoms may be due to the presence of a focus in the
neighbouring bone, perhaps causing neuralgic pains in the joint, or
weakness, tiredness, stiffness, and inability to use the limb, these
symptoms improving with rest and being aggravated by exertion.

It is rarely possible by external examination to recognise deep-seated
osseous foci in the vicinity of joints; but if they are near the surface
in a superficial bone--such as the head of the tibia--there may be local
thickening of the periosteum, dema, pain, and tenderness on pressure
and on percussion.

_X-ray Appearances of Tuberculous Joints._--Gross lesions such as
caseous foci in the marrow of the adjacent bone show as clear areas with
an ill-defined margin; a sclerosed focus gives a denser shadow than the
surrounding bone, and a sequestrum presents a dark shadow of irregular
contour, and a clear interval between it and the surrounding bone.

Caries of the articular surface imparts a woolly appearance or irregular
contour in place of the well-defined outline of the articular end of the
bone. In bony ankylosis the shadow of the two bones is a continuous one,
the joint interval having been filled up. The minor changes are best
appreciated on comparison with the normal joint of the other limb.

_Wasting of muscles_ is a constant accompaniment of tuberculous joint
disease. It is to be attributed partly to want of use, but chiefly to
reflex interference with the trophic innervation of the muscles. It is
specially well seen in the extensor and adductor muscles of the thigh in
disease of the knee, and in the deltoid in disease of the shoulder. The
muscles become soft and flaccid, they exhibit tremors on attempted
movement, and their excitability to the faradic current is diminished.
The muscular tissue may be largely replaced by fat.

_Impairment of the normal movements_ is one of the most valuable
diagnostic signs, particularly in deeply seated joints such as the
shoulder, hip, and spine. It is due to a protective contraction of the
muscles around the joint, designed to prevent movement. This muscular
fixation disappears under ansthesia.

_Abnormal attitudes of the limb_ occur earlier, and are more pronounced
in cases in which pain and other irritative symptoms of articular
disease are well marked, and are best illustrated by the attitudes
assumed in disease of the hip. They are due to reflex or involuntary
contraction of the muscles acting on the joint, with the object of
placing it in the attitude of greatest ease; they also disappear under
ansthesia. With the lapse of time they not only become exaggerated, but
may become permanent from ankylosis or from contracture of the soft
parts round the joint.

_Startings at night_ are to be regarded as an indication that there is
progressive disease involving the articular surfaces.

_The formation of extra-articular abscess_ may take place early, or it
may not occur till long after the disease has subsided. The abscess may
develop so insidiously that it does not attract attention until it has
attained considerable size, especially when associated with disease of
the spine, pelvis, or hip. The position of the abscess in relation to
different joints is fairly constant and is determined by the anatomical
relationships of the capsule and synovial membrane to the surrounding
tissues. The burs and tendon sheaths in the vicinity may influence the
direction of spread of the abscess and the situation of resulting
sinuses. When the abscess is allowed to burst, or is opened and becomes
infected with pyogenic bacteria, there is not only the risk of
aggravation of the disease and persistent suppuration, but there is a
greater liability to general tuberculosis.

The sinuses may be so tortuous that a probe cannot be passed to the
primary focus of disease, and their course and disposition can only be
demonstrated by injecting the sinuses with an emulsion of bismuth and
taking X-ray photographs.

Tuberculous infection of the lymph glands of the limb is exceptional,
but may follow upon infection of the skin around the orifice of a sinus.

A slight rise of temperature in the evening may be induced in quiescent
joint lesions by injury or by movement of the joint under ansthesia, or
by the fatigue of a railway journey. When sinuses have formed and become
infected with pyogenic bacteria, there may be a diurnal variation in the
temperature of the type known as hectic fever (Fig. 11).

_Relative Frequency of Tuberculous Disease in Different
Joints._--Hospital statistics show that joints are affected in the
following order of frequency: Spine, knee, hip, ankle and tarsus, elbow,
wrist, shoulder. The hip and spine are most often affected in childhood
and youth, the shoulder and wrist in adults; the knee, ankle, and elbow
show little age preference.

_Clinical Variations of Tuberculous Joint Disease._--The above
description applies to tuberculous joint disease in general; it must be
modified to include special manifestations or varieties.

When the main incidence of the infection affects the synovial membrane,
the clinical picture may assume the form of a _hydrops_, or of an
_empyema_ in which the joint is filled with pus. More common than either
of these is the well-known _white swelling_ or _tumor albus_ (Wiseman,
1676) which is the clinical manifestation of diffuse thickening of the
synovial membrane along with mucoid degeneration of the peri-synovial
cellular tissue. It is well seen in joints which are superficial--such
as the knee, ankle, elbow, and wrist. The swelling, which is the first
and most prominent clinical feature, develops gradually and painlessly,
obliterating the bony prominences by filling up the natural hollows. It
appears greater to the eye than is borne out by measurement, being
thrown into relief by the wasting of the muscles above and below the
joint. In the early stage the swelling is elastic, doughy, and
non-sensitive, and corresponds to the superficial area of the synovial
membrane involved, and there is comparatively little complaint on the
part of the patient, because the articular surfaces and ligaments are
still intact. There may be a feeling of weight in the limb, and in the
case of the knee and ankle the patient tires on walking and drags the
leg with more or less of a limp. Movements of the joint are permitted,
but are limited in range. The disability is increased by use and
exertion, but, for a time at least, it improves under rest.

If the disease is not arrested, there follow the symptoms and signs of
involvement of the articular surfaces.

_Influence of Tuberculous Joint Disease on the General
Health._--Experience shows that the early stages of tuberculous joint
disease are compatible with the appearance of good health. As a rule,
however, and especially if there is mixed infection, the health suffers,
the appetite is impaired, the patient is easily tired, and there may be
some loss of weight.

#Treatment.#--In addition to the general treatment of tuberculosis,
local measures are employed. These may be described under two heads--the
conservative and the operative.

_Conservative treatment_ is almost always to be employed in the first
instance, as by it a larger proportion of cures is obtained with a
smaller mortality and with better functional results than by operation.

_Treatment by rest_ implies the immobilisation of the diseased limb
until pain and tenderness have disappeared. The attitude in which the
limb is immobilised should be that in which, in the event of subsequent
stiffness, it will be most serviceable to the patient. Immobilisation
may be secured by bandages, splints, extension, or other apparatus.
_Extension_ with weight and pulley is of value in securing rest,
especially in disease of the hip or knee; it eliminates muscular spasm,
relieves pain and startings at night, and prevents abnormal attitudes of
the limb. If, when the patient first comes under observation, the limb
is in a deformed attitude which does not readily yield to extension, the
deformity should be corrected under an ansthetic.

_The induction of hypermia_ is often helpful, the rubber bandage or the
hot-air chamber being employed for an hour or so morning and evening.

_Injection of Iodoform._--This is carried out on the same lines as have
been described for tuberculous abscess. After the fluid contents of the
joint are withdrawn, the iodoform is injected; and this may require to
be repeated in a month or six weeks.

After the injection of iodoform there is usually considerable reaction,
attended with fever (101 F.), headache, and malaise, and considerable
pain and swelling of the joint. In some cases there is sickness, and
there may be blood pigment in the urine. The severity of these phenomena
diminishes with each subsequent injection.

The use of Scott's dressing and of blisters and of the actual cautery
has largely gone out of fashion, but the cautery may still be employed
with benefit for the relief of pain in cases in which ulceration of
cartilage is a prominent feature.

The application of the X-rays has proved beneficial in synovial lesions
in superficial joints such as the wrist or elbow; prolonged exposures
are made at fortnightly intervals, and on account of the cicatricial
contraction which attends upon recovery, the joint must be kept in good
position.

Conservative treatment is only abandoned if improvement does not show
itself after a thorough trial, or if the disease relapses after apparent
cure.

_Operative Treatment._--Other things being equal, operation is more
often indicated in adults than in children, because after the age of
twenty there is less prospect of recovery under conservative treatment,
there is more tendency for the disease to relapse and to invade the
internal organs, and there is no fear of interfering with the growth of
the bones. The state of the general health may necessitate operation as
the most rapid method of removing the disease. The social status of the
patient must also be taken into account; the bread-winner, under
existing social conditions, may be unable to give up his work for a
sufficient time to give conservative measures a fair trial.

The _local conditions_ which decide for or against operation are
differently regarded by different surgeons, but it may be said in
general terms that operative interference is indicated in cases in which
the disease continues to progress in spite of a fair trial of
conservative measures; in cases unsuited for conservative
treatment--that is to say, where there are severe bone lesions.
Operative interference is indicated also when the functional result will
be better than that likely to be obtained by conservative measures, as
is often the case in the knee and elbow. Cold abscesses should, if
possible, be dealt with before operating on the joint.

In many cases the extent of the operation can only be decided after
exploration. The aim is to remove all the disease with the least
impairment of function and the minimum sacrifice of healthy tissue. The
more open the method of operating the better, so that all parts of the
joint may be available for inspection. The methods of Kocher, which
permit of dislocating the joint, are specially to be recommended, as
this procedure affords the freest possible access. Diseased synovial
membrane is removed with the scissors or knife. If the cartilages are
sound, and if a movable joint is aimed at, they may be left; but if
ankylosis is desired, they must be removed. Localised disease of the
cartilage should be removed with the spoon or gouge, and the bone
beneath investigated. If the articular surface is extensively diseased,
a thin slice of bone should be removed, and if foci in the marrow are
then revealed, it is better to gouge them out than to remove further
slices of bone, as this involves sacrifice of the cortex and periosteum.

Operative treatment of deformities resulting from tuberculous joint
disease has almost entirely replaced reduction by force; the contracted
soft parts are divided, and the bone is resected.

_Amputation_ for tuberculous joint disease has become one of the rare
operations of surgery, and is only justified when less radical measures
have failed and the condition of the limb is affecting the general
health. Amputation is more frequently called for in persons past middle
life who are the subjects of pulmonary tuberculosis.


SYPHILITIC DISEASE

Syphilitic affections of joints are comparatively rare. As in
tuberculosis, the disease may be first located in the synovial membrane,
or it may spread to the joint from one of the bones.

In #acquired syphilis#, at an early stage and before the skin eruptions
appear, one of the large joints, such as the shoulder or knee, may be
the seat of pain--_arthralgia_--which is worse at night. In the
secondary stage, a _synovitis_ with serous effusion is not uncommon, and
may affect several joints. Syphilitic _hydrops_ is met with almost
exclusively in the knee; it is frequently bilateral, and is insidious in
its onset and progress, the patient usually being able to go about.

In the _tertiary stage_ the joint lesions are persistent and
destructive, and result from the formation of gummata, either in the
deeper layers of the synovial membrane or in the adjacent bone or
periosteum.

_Peri-synovial_ and _peri-bursal gummata_ are met with in relation to
the knee-joint of middle-aged adults, especially women. They are usually
multiple, develop slowly, and are rarely sensitive or painful. One or
more of the gummata may break down and give rise to tertiary ulcers. The
co-existence of indolent swellings, ulcers, and depressed scars in the
vicinity of the knee is characteristic of tertiary syphilis.

The disease spreads throughout the capsule and synovial membrane, which
becomes diffusely thickened and infiltrated with granulation tissue
which eats into and replaces the articular cartilage. Clinically, the
condition resembles tuberculous disease of the synovial membrane, for
which it is probably frequently mistaken, but in the syphilitic
affection the swelling is nodular and uneven, and the subjective
symptoms are slight, mobility is little impaired, and yet the deformity
is considerable.

_Syphilitic osteo-arthritis_ results from a gumma in the periosteum or
marrow of one of the adjacent bones. There is gradual enlargement of one
of the bones, the patient complains of pains, which are worst at night.
The disease may extend to the synovial membrane and be attended with
effusion into the joint, or it may erupt on the periosteal surface and
invade the skin, forming one or more sinuses. The further progress is
complicated by the occurrence of pyogenic infection leading to necrosis
of bone, in the knee-joint, for example, the patella or one of the
condyles of the femur or tibia, may furnish a sequestrum. In such cases,
anti-syphilitic treatment must be supplemented by operation for the
removal of the diseased tissues. In the knee, excision is rarely
necessary; but in the elbow it may be called for to obtain a movable
joint.

In #inherited syphilis# the earliest joint affections are those in which
there is an effusion into the joint, especially the knee or elbow; and
in exceptional cases pyogenic infection may be superadded, and pus form
in the joint.

In older children, a gummatous synovitis is met with of which the most
striking features are: its insidious development, its chronic course,
symmetrical distribution, freedom from pain, the free mobility of the
joint, its tendency to relapse, and its association with other
syphilitic stigmata, especially in the eyes. The knees are the joints
most frequently affected, and the condition usually yields readily to
anti-syphilitic treatment without impairment of function.


JOINT DISEASES ACCOMPANYING CERTAIN CONSTITUTIONAL CONDITIONS

#Gout.#--_Arthritis Urica._--One of the manifestations of gout is that
certain joints are liable to attacks of inflammation associated with the
deposit of a chalk-like material composed of sodium biurate, chiefly in
the matrix of the articular cartilage, it may be in streaks or patches
towards the central area of the joint, or throughout the entire extent
of the cartilage, which appears as if it had been painted over with
plaster of Paris. As a result of this uratic infiltration, the cartilage
loses its vitality and crumbles away, leading to the formation of what
are known as gouty ulcers, and these may extend through the cartilage
and invade the bone. The deposit of urates in the synovial membrane is
attended with effusion into the joint and the formation of adhesions,
while in the ligaments and peri-articular structures it leads to the
formation of scar tissue. The metatarso-phalangeal joint of the great
toe, on one or on both sides, is that most frequently affected. The
disease is met with in men after middle life, and while common enough in
England and Ireland, is almost unknown in hospital practice in Scotland.

The _clinical features_ are characteristic. There is a sudden onset of
excruciating pain, usually during the early hours of the morning, the
joint becomes swollen, red, and glistening, with engorgement of the
veins and some fever and disturbance of health and temper. In the course
of a week or ten days there is a gradual return to the normal. Such
attacks may recur only once a year or they may be more frequent; the
successive attacks tend to become less acute but last longer, and the
local phenomena persist, the joint remaining permanently swollen and
stiff. Masses of chalk form in and around the joint, and those in the
subcutaneous tissue may break through the skin, forming indolent ulcers
with exposure of the chalky masses (_tophi_). The hands may become
seriously crippled, especially when the tendon sheaths and burs also
are affected; the crippling resembles that resulting from arthritis
deformans but it differs in not being symmetrical.

The local _treatment_ consists in employing soothing applications and a
Bier's bandage for two or three hours twice daily while the symptoms are
acute; later, hot-air baths, massage, and exercises are indicated. It is
remarkable how completely even the most deformed joints may recover
their function. Dietetic and medicinal treatment must also be employed.

#Chronic Rheumatism.#--This term is applied to a condition which
sometimes follows upon acute articular rheumatism in persons presenting
a family tendency to acute rheumatism or to inflammations of serous
membranes, and manifesting other evidence of the rheumatic taint, such
as chorea or rheumatic nodules.

The changes in the joints involve almost exclusively the synovial
membrane and the ligaments; they consist in cellular infiltration and
exudation, resulting in the formation of new connective tissue which
encroaches on the cavity of the joint and gives rise to adhesions, and
by contracting causes stiffness and deformity. The articular cartilages
may subsequently be transformed into connective tissue, with consequent
fibrous ankylosis and obliteration of the joint. The bones are affected
only in so far as they undergo fatty atrophy from disuse of the limb, or
alteration in their configuration as a result of partial dislocation.
Osseous ankylosis may occur, especially in the small joints of the hand
and foot.

The disease is generally poly-articular and may be met with in childhood
and youth as well as in adult life. In some cases pain is so severe that
the patient resists the least attempt at movement. In others, the
joints, although stiff, can be moved but exhibit pronounced crackings.
When there is much connective tissue formed in relation to the synovial
membrane, the joint is swollen, and as the muscles waste above and
below, the swelling is spindle-shaped. Subacute exacerbations occur from
time to time, with fever and aggravation of the local symptoms and
implication of other joints. After repeated recurrences, there is
ankylosis with deformity, the patient becoming a helpless cripple. On
account of the tendency to visceral complications, the tenure of life is
uncertain.

From the nature of the disease, _treatment_ is for the most part
palliative. Salicylates are only of service during the exacerbations
attended with pyrexia. The application of soda fomentations, turpentine
cloths, or electric or hot-air baths may be useful. Improvement may
result from the general and local therapeutics available at such places
as Bath, Buxton, Harrogate, Strathpeffer, Wiesbaden, or Aix. In selected
cases, a certain measure of success has followed operative interference,
which consists in a modified excision. The deformities resulting from
chronic rheumatism are but little amenable to surgical treatment, and
forcible attempts to remedy stiffness or deformity are to be avoided.

#Arthritis Deformans# (_Osteo-arthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Rheumatic
Gout, Malum Senile, Traumatic or Mechanical Arthritis_).--Under the term
arthritis deformans, which was first employed by Virchow, it is
convenient to include a number of joint affections which have many
anatomical and clinical features in common.

The disease is widely distributed in the animal kingdom, both in
domestic species and in wild animals in the natural state such as the
larger carnivora and the gorilla; evidence of it has also been found in
the bones of animals buried with prehistoric man.

The morbid changes in the joints present a remarkable combination of
atrophy and degeneration on the one hand and overgrowth on the other,
indicating a profound disturbance of nutrition in the joint structures.
The nature of this disturbance and its etiology are imperfectly known.
By many writers it is believed to depend upon some form of
auto-intoxication, the toxins being absorbed from the gastro-intestinal
tract, and those who suffer are supposed to possess what has been called
an "arthritic diathesis."

The localisation of the disease in a particular joint may be determined
by several factors, of which trauma appears to be the most important.
The condition is frequently observed to follow, either directly or after
an interval, upon a lesion which involves gross injury of the joint or
of one of the neighbouring bones. It occurs with greater frequency after
repeated minor injuries affecting the joint and its vicinity, such as
sprains and contusions, and particularly those sustained in laborious
occupations. This connection between trauma and arthritis deformans led
Arbuthnot Lane to apply to it the term _traumatic_ or _trade arthritis_.

The traumatic or strain factor in the production of the disease may be
manifested in a less obvious fashion. In the lower extremity, for
example, _any condition which disturbs the static equilibrium of the
limb as a whole_ would appear to predispose to the disease in one or
other of the joints. The static equilibrium may be disturbed by such
deformities as flat-foot or knock-knee, and badly united fractures of
the lower extremity. In hallux valgus, the metatarso-phalangeal joint of
the great toe undergoes changes characteristic of arthritis deformans.

A number of cases have been recorded in which arthritis deformans has
followed upon antecedent disease of the joint, such as pyogenic or
gonorrhal synovitis, upon repeated hmorrhages into the knee-joint in
bleeders, and in unreduced dislocations in which a new joint has been
established.

[Illustration: FIG. 157.--Arthritis Deformans of Elbow, showing
destruction of articular surfaces and masses of new bone around the
articular margins.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

Lastly, Poncet and other members of the Lyons school regard arthritis
deformans as due to an attenuated form of tuberculous infection, and
draw attention to the fact that a tuberculous family history is often
met with in the subjects of the disease.

[Illustration: FIG. 158.--Arthritis Deformans of Knee, showing
eburnation and grooving of articular surfaces.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

_Morbid Anatomy._--The commonest type is that in which the articular
surfaces undergo degenerative changes. The primary change involves the
articular cartilage, which becomes softened and fibrillated and is worn
away until the subjacent bone is exposed. If the bone is rarefied, the
enlarged cancellous spaces are opened into and an eroded and worm-eaten
appearance is brought about; with further use of the joint, the bone is
worn away, so that in a ball-and-socket joint like the hip, the head of
the femur and the acetabulum are markedly altered in size and shape.
More commonly, the bone exposed as a result of disappearance of the
cartilage is denser than normal, and under the influence of the
movements of the joint, becomes smooth and polished--a change described
as _eburnation_ of the articular surfaces (Fig. 158). In hinge-joints
such as the knee and elbow, the influence of movement is shown by a
series of parallel grooves corresponding to the lines of friction
(Fig. 158).

[Illustration: FIG. 159.--Hypertrophied Fringes of Synovial Membrane in
Arthritis Deformans of Knee.

(Museum of Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.)]

While these degenerative changes are gradually causing destruction of
the articular surfaces, reparative and hypertrophic changes are taking
place at the periphery. Along the line of the junction between the
cartilage and synovial membrane, the proliferation of tissue leads to
the formation of nodules or masses of cartilage--_ecchondroses_--which
are subsequently converted into bone (Fig. 157). Gross alterations in
the ends of the bone are thus brought about which can be recognised
clinically and in skiagrams, and which tend to restrict the normal range
of movement. The extension of the ossification into the synovial
reflection and capsular ligament adds a collar or "lip" of new bone,
known as "lipping" of the articular margins, and also into other
ligaments, insertions of tendons and intermuscular septa giving rise to
bony outgrowths or osteophytes not unlike those met with in the
neuro-arthropathies.

Proliferative changes in the synovial membrane are attended with
increased vascularity and thickening of the membrane and an enlargement
of its villi and fringes. When the fatty fringes are developed to an
exaggerated degree, the condition is described as an _arborescent
lipoma_ (Fig. 159). Individual fringes may attain the size of a hazel
nut, and the fibro-fatty tissue of which they are composed may be
converted into cartilage and bone; such a body may remain attached by a
narrow pedicle or stalk, or this may be torn across and the body becomes
loose and, unless confined in a recess of the joint, it wanders about
and may become impacted between the articular surfaces. These changes in
the synovial membrane are often associated with an abundant exudate or
hydrops. These degenerative and hypertrophic changes, while usually
attended with marked restriction of movement and sometimes by "locking"
of the joint, practically never result in ankylosis.

The _ankylosing type_ of chronic arthritis is fortunately much rarer
than those described above, and is chiefly met with in the joints of the
fingers and toes and in those of the vertebral column. The synovial
membrane proliferates, grows over the cartilage, and replaces it, and
when two such articular surfaces are in contact they tend to adhere,
thus obliterating the joint, cavity, and resulting in fibrous or bony
ankylosis. The changes progress slowly and, before they result in
ankylosis, various sub-luxations and dislocations may occur with
distortion and deformity which, in the case of the fingers, is extremely
disabling and unsightly (Fig. 160).

_Clinical Features._--It is usually observed that in patients who are
still young the tendency is for the disease to advance with considerable
rapidity, so that in the course of months it may cause crippling of
several joints. The course of the disease as met with in persons past
middle life is more chronic; it begins insidiously, and many years may
pass before there is pronounced disability. The earliest symptom is
stiffness, especially in the morning after rest, which passes off
temporarily with use of the limb. As time goes on, the range of movement
becomes restricted, and crackings occur. This stage of the disease may
be prolonged indefinitely; if it progresses, stiffness becomes more
pronounced, certain movements are lost, others develop in abnormal
directions, and deformed attitudes add to the disablement. The disease
is compatible with long life, but not with any active occupation, hence
those of the hospital class who suffer from it tend to accumulate in
workhouse infirmaries.

_Hydrops_ is most marked in the knee, and may affect also the adjacent
burs. As the joint becomes distended with fluid, the ligaments are
stretched, the limb becomes weak and unstable, and the patient complains
of a feeling of weight, of insecurity, and of tiredness. Pain is
occasional and evanescent, and is usually the result of some extra
exertion, or exposure to cold and wet. This form of the disease is
extremely chronic, and may last for an indefinite number of years. It is
to be diagnosed from the other forms of hydrops already considered--the
purely traumatic, the pyogenic, gonorrhal, tuberculous, and
syphilitic--and from that associated with Charcot's disease.

_Hypertrophied fringes and pedunculated or loose bodies_ often co-exist
with hydrops, and give rise to characteristic clinical features,
particularly in the knee. The fringes, especially when they assume the
type of the arborescent lipoma, project into the cavity of the joint,
filling up its recesses and distending its capsule so that the joint is
swollen and slightly flexed. Pain is not a prominent feature, and the
patient may walk fairly well. On grasping the joint while it is being
actively flexed and extended, the fringes may be felt moving under the
fingers. Symptoms from impaction of a loose body are exceptional.

[Illustration: FIG. 160.--Arthritis Deformans of Hands, showing
symmetry of lesions, ulnar deviation of fingers, and nodular thickening
at inter-phalangeal joints.]

_The dry form of arthritis deformans_, although specially common in the
knee, is met with in other joints, either as a mon-articular or
poly-articular disease; and it is also met with in the joints of the
spine and of the fingers as well as in the temporo-mandibular joint. In
the joints of the fingers the disease is remarkably symmetrical, and
tends to assume a nodular type (Heberden's nodes) (Fig. 160); in younger
subjects it assumes a more painful and progressive fusiform type
(Fig. 161). In the larger joints the subjective symptoms usually precede
any palpable evidence of disease, the patient complaining of stiffness,
crackings, and aching, aggravated by changes in the weather. The
roughness due to fibrillation of the articular cartilages causes coarse
friction on moving the joint, or, in the knee, on moving the patella on
the condyles of the femur. It may be months or even years before the
lipping and other hypertrophic changes in the ends of the bones are
recognisable, and before the joint assumes the deformed features which
the name of the disease suggests.

The capsular ligament, except in hydrops, is the seat of
connective-tissue overgrowth, and tends to become contracted and rigid.
Intra-articular ligaments, such as the ligamentum teres in the hip, are
usually worn away and disappear. The surrounding muscles undergo
atrophy, tendons become adherent to their sheaths and may be ossified,
and the sheaths of nerves may be involved by the cicatricial changes in
the surrounding tissues.

_The X-ray appearances of arthritis deformans_ necessarily vary with the
type of the disease and the joint affected; in the joints of the fingers
there is a narrowing of the spaces between the articular ends of the
bones as a result of absorption of the articular cartilage, and
rarefaction of the cancellous tissue in the vicinity of the joints; in
the larger joints there is "lipping" of the articular margins,
osteophytes, and other evidence of abnormal ossification in and around
the joint. Eburnation of the articular surfaces is shown by increase in
the density of the shadow of the bone in the areas affected.

[Illustration: FIG. 161.--Arthritis Deformans affecting several
Joints, in a boy t. 10.

(Dr. Dickson's case.)]

_Treatment._--Treatment is for the most part limited to the relief of
symptoms. On no account should the affected joints be kept at rest by
means of splints or other apparatus. Active movements and exercises of
all kinds are to be persevered with. When pain is a prominent feature,
it may be relieved either by douches of iodine and hot water (tincture
of iodine 1 oz. to the quart), or by the application of lint saturated
with a lotion made up of chloral hydrate, gr. v, glycerin ?j, water ?j,
and covered with oil-silk. Strain and over-use of the joint and sudden
changes of temperature are to be avoided. The induction of hypermia by
means of massage, the elastic bandage, and hot-air baths is often of
service. Operative interference is indicated when the disease is of a
severe type, when it is mon-articular, and when the general condition of
the patient is otherwise favourable. Excision has been practised with
success in the hip, knee, elbow, and temporo-mandibular joints.
Limitation of movement and locking at the hip-joint when due to new bone
round the edge of the acetabulum may be greatly relieved by removal of
the bone--a procedure known as _cheilotomy_. Loose bodies and
hypertrophied fringes if causing symptoms may also be removed by
operation.

When stiffness and grating on movement are prominent features we have
found the injection of from half to one ounce of sterilised white
vaseline afford decided relief.

The patient should be nourished well, and there need be no restriction
in the diet such as is required in gouty patients, so long as the
digestion is not impaired. Benefit is also derived from the
administration of cod-liver oil, and of tonics, such as strychnin,
arsenic, and iron, and in some cases of iodide of potassium. Luff
recommends the administration over long periods of guaiacol carbonate,
in cachets beginning with doses of 510 grs. and increased to 1520 grs.
thrice daily. A course of treatment at one of the reputed spas--Aix,
Bath, Buxton, Gastein, Harrogate, Strathpeffer, Wiesbaden, Wildbad--is
often beneficial.

In some cases benefit has followed the prolonged internal administration
of liquid paraffin.

On the assumption that the condition is the result of an
auto-intoxication from the intestinal tract, saline purges and
irrigation of the colon are indicated, and Arbuthnot Lane claims to have
brought about improvement by short-circuiting or by resecting the colon.

Residence in a warm and dry climate, with an open-air life, has been
known to arrest the disease when other measures have failed to give
relief.

The application of radium and the ingestion of radio-active waters have
also been recommended.

#Hmophilic# or #Bleeder's Joint#.--This is a rare but characteristic
affection met with chiefly in the knee-joint of boys who are the
subjects of hmophilia. After some trivial injury, or even without
apparent cause, a hmorrhage takes place into the joint. The joint is
tensely swollen, cannot be completely extended, and is so painful that
the patient is obliged to lie up. The temperature is often raised (101
to 102 F.), especially if there are also hmorrhages elsewhere. The
blood in the joint is slowly re-absorbed, and by the end of a fortnight
or so, the symptoms completely disappear. As a rule these attacks are
repeated; the pain attending them diminishes, but the joint becomes the
seat of permanent changes: the synovial membrane is thickened,
abnormally vascular, and coloured brown from the deposit of blood
pigment; on its surface, and in parts of the articular cartilage, there
is a deposit of rust-coloured fibrin; there may be extensive adhesions,
and in some cases changes occur like those observed in arthritis
deformans with erosion and ulceration of the cartilage and a form of dry
caries of the articular surfaces, which may terminate in ankylosis.

As the swelling of the joint is associated with wasting of the muscles,
with stiffness, and with flexion, the condition closely resembles
tuberculous disease of the synovial membrane. From errors in diagnosis
such joints have been operated upon, with disastrous results due to
hmorrhage.

The treatment of a recent hmorrhage consists in securing absolute rest
and applying elastic compression. The introduction of blood-serum (1015
c.c.) into a vein may assist in arresting the hmorrhage;
anti-diphtheritic serum is that most readily obtainable.

After an interval, measures should be adopted to promote the absorption
of blood and to prevent stiffness and flexion; these include massage,
movements, and extension with weight and pulley.


JOINT DISEASES ASSOCIATED WITH LESIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
NEURO-ARTHROPATHIES

_In Lesions of Peripheral Nerves._--In the hand, and more rarely in the
foot, when one or other of the main nerve-trunks has been divided or
compressed, the joints may become swollen and painful and afterwards
become stiff and deformed. Bony ankylosis has been observed.

_In Affections of the Spinal Medulla._--In myelitis, progressive
muscular atrophy, poliomyelitis, insular sclerosis, and in traumatic
lesions, joint affections are occasionally met with.

The occurrence of joint lesions in _locomotor ataxia_ (tabes dorsalis)
was first described by Charcot in 1868--hence the term "Charcot's
disease" applied to them. Although they usually develop in the ataxic
stage, one or more years after the initial spinal symptoms, they may
appear before there is any evidence of tabes. The onset is frequently
determined by some injury. The joints of the lower extremity are most
commonly affected, and the disease is bilateral in a considerable
proportion of cases--both knees or both hips, for instance, being
implicated.

Among the theories suggested in explanation of these arthropathies the
most recent is that by Babinski and Barr, which traces the condition to
vascular lesions of a syphilitic type in the articular arteries.

The first symptom is usually a swelling of the joint and its vicinity.
There is no redness or heat and no pain on movement. The peri-articular
swelling, unlike ordinary dema, scarcely pits even on firm pressure.

[Illustration: FIG. 162.--Bones of Knee-joint in advanced stage of
Charcot's Disease. The medial part of the head of the tibia has
disappeared.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh).]

In mild cases this condition of affairs may persist for months; in
severe cases destructive changes ensue with remarkable rapidity. The
joint becomes enormously swollen, loses its normal contour, and the ends
of the bones become irregularly deformed (Fig. 162). Sometimes, and
especially in the knee, the clinical features are those of an enormous
hydrops with fibrinous and other loose bodies and hypertrophied
fringes--and great dema of the peri-articular tissues (Fig. 163). The
joint is wobbly or flail-like from stretching and destruction of the
controlling ligaments, and is devoid of sensation. In other cases,
wearing down and total disappearance of the ends of the bones is the
prominent feature, attended with flail-like movements and with coarse
grating. Dislocation is observed chiefly at the hip, and is rather a
gross displacement with unnatural mobility than a typical dislocation,
and it is usually possible to move the bones freely upon one another and
to reduce the displacement. A striking feature is the extensive
formation of new bone in the capsular ligament and surrounding muscles.
The enormous swelling and its rapid development may suggest the growth
of a malignant tumour. The most useful factor in diagnosis is the entire
absence of pain, of tenderness, and of common sensibility. The freedom
with which a tabetic patient will allow his disorganised joint to be
handled requires to be seen to be appreciated.

[Illustration: FIG. 163.--Charcot's Disease of Left Knee. The joint is
distended with fluid and the whole limb is dematous.]

The rapidity of the destructive changes in certain cases of tabes, and
the entire absence of joint lesions in others, would favour the view
that special parts of the spinal medulla must be implicated in the
former group.

In _syringomyelia_, joint affections (gliomatous arthropathies) are more
frequent than in tabes, and they usually involve the upper extremity in
correspondence with the seat of the spinal lesion, which usually affects
the lower cervical and upper thoracic segments. Except that the joint
disease is seldom symmetrical, it closely resembles the arthropathy of
tabes. The completeness of the analgesia of the articular structures
and of the overlying soft parts is illustrated by the fact that in one
case the patient himself was in the habit of letting out the fluid from
his elbow with the aid of a pair of scissors, and that in another the
joint was painlessly excised without an ansthetic.

[Illustration: FIG. 164.--Charcot's Disease of both Ankles: front view.
Man, t. 32.]

The disease may become arrested or may go on to complete
disorganisation; suppuration may ensue from infection through a breach
of the surface, and in rare cases the joint has become the seat of
tuberculosis.

[Illustration: FIG. 165.--Charcot's Disease of both Ankles: back view.
Man, t. 32.]

_Treatment_, in addition to that of the nerve lesion underlying the
arthropathy, consists in supporting and protecting the joint by means of
bandages, splints, and other apparatus. In the lower extremity, the use
of crutches is helpful in taking the strain off the affected limb. When
there is much distension of the joint, considerable relief follows upon
withdrawal of fluid. The best possible result being rigid ankylosis in a
good position, it may be advisable to bring this about artificially by
arthrodesis or resection. Operation is indicated when only one joint is
affected and when the cord lesion is such as will permit of the patient
using the limb. The wounds heal well, but the victims of tabes are
unfavourable subjects for operative interference, on account of their
liability to intercurrent complications. When the limb is quite useless,
amputation may be the best course.

_In cerebral lesions_ attended with hemiplegia, joint affections,
characterised by evanescent pain, redness, and swelling, are
occasionally met with. The secondary changes in joints which are the
seat of paralytic contracture are considered with the surgery of the
Extremities.

In cases of _hysteria_ and other _functional affections of the
nervous system_, an intermittent neuropathic hydrops has been
observed--especially in the knee. Without apparent cause, the joint
fills with fluid and its movements become restricted, and after from two
to eight days the swelling subsides and the joint returns to normal. A
remarkable feature of the condition is that the effusion into the joint
recurs at regular intervals, it may be over a period of years. Psychic
conditions have been known to induce attacks, and sometimes to abort
them or even to cause their disappearance. Hence it has been recommended
that treatment by suggestion should be employed along with tonic doses
of quinine and arsenic.


HYSTERICAL OR MIMETIC JOINT AFFECTIONS

Under this heading, Sir Benjamin Brodie, in 1822, described an affection
of joints, characterised by the prominence of subjective symptoms and
the absence of pathological changes. Although most frequently met with
in young women with an impressionable nervous system, and especially
among those in good social circumstances, it occurs occasionally in men.
The onset may be referred to injury or exposure to cold, or may be
associated with some disturbance of the emotions or of the generative
organs; or the condition may be an involuntary imitation of the symptoms
of organic joint disease presented by a relative or friend.

It is characteristic that the symptoms develop abruptly without
satisfactory cause, that they are exaggerated and wanting in harmony
with one another, and that they do not correspond with the features of
any of the known forms of organic disease. In some cases the only
complaint is of severe pain; more often this is associated with
excessive tenderness and with impairment of the functions of the joint.
On examination the joint presents a normal appearance, but the skin
over it is remarkably sensitive. A light touch is more likely to excite
pain than deep and firm pressure. Stiffness is a variable feature--in
some cases amounting to absolute rigidity, so that no ordinary force
will elicit movement. It is characteristic of this, as of other
neuroses, that the symptoms come and go without sufficient cause. When
the patient's attention is diverted, the pain and stiffness may
disappear. There is no actual swelling of the joint, although there may
be an appearance of this from wasting of the muscles above and below. If
the joint is kept rigid for long periods, secondary contracture may
occur--in the knee with flexion, in the hip with flexion and adduction.

The _diagnosis_ is often a matter of considerable difficulty, and the
condition is liable to be mistaken for such organic lesions as a
tuberculous or pyogenic focus in the bone close to the joint.

The greatest difficulty is met with in the knee and hip, where the
condition may closely simulate tuberculous disease. The use of the
Rntgen rays, or examination of the joint under ansthesia, is helpful.

The _local treatment_ consists chiefly in improving the nutrition of the
affected limb by means of massage, exercises, baths, and electricity.
Splints are to be avoided. In refractory cases, benefit may follow the
application of blisters or of Corrigan's button. The general condition
of the patient must be treated on the same lines as in other neuroses.
The Weir-Mitchell treatment may have to be employed in obstinate cases,
the patient being secluded from her friends and placed in charge of a
nurse. Complete recovery is the rule, but when the muscles are weak and
wasted from prolonged disuse, a considerable time may elapse before the
limb returns to normal.


TUMOURS AND CYSTS

New growths taking origin in the synovial membrane are rare, and are not
usually diagnosed before operation. They are attended with exudation
into the joint, and in the case of _sarcoma_ the fluid is usually
blood-stained. If the tumour projects in a polypoidal manner into the
joint, it may cause symptoms of loose body. One or two cases have been
recorded in which a _cartilaginous tumour_ growing from the synovial
membrane has erupted through the joint capsule and infiltrated the
adjoining muscles. _Multiple cartilaginous tumours_ forming loose bodies
are described on p. 544.

_Cysts of joints_ constitute an ill-defined group which includes ganglia
formed in relation to the capsular ligament. Cystic distension of burs
which communicate with the joint is most often met with in the region of
the knee in cases of long-standing hydrops. It was suggested by Morrant
Baker that cystic swellings may result from the hernial protrusion of
the synovial membrane between the stretched fibres of the capsular
ligament, and the name "Baker's cysts" has been applied to these.

In the majority of cases, cysts in relation to joints give rise to
little inconvenience and may be left alone. If interfered with at all,
they should be excised.


LOOSE BODIES

It is convenient to describe the varieties of loose bodies under two
heads: those composed of fibrin, and those composed of organised
connective tissue.

#Fibrinous Loose Bodies# (Corpora oryzoidea).--These are homogeneous or
concentrically laminated masses of fibrin, sometimes resembling rice
grains, melon seeds, or adhesive wafers, sometimes quite irregular in
shape. Usually they are present in large numbers, but sometimes there is
only one, and it may attain considerable dimensions. They are not
peculiar to joints, for they are met with in tendon sheaths and burs,
and their origin from synovial membrane may be accepted as proved. They
occur in tuberculosis, arthritis deformans, and in Charcot's disease,
and their presence is almost invariably associated with an effusion of
fluid into the joint. While they may result from the coagulation of
fibrin-forming elements in the exudate, their occurrence in tuberculous
hydrops would appear to be the result of coagulation necrosis, or of
fibrinous degeneration of the surface layer of the diseased synovial
membrane. However formed, their shape is the result of mechanical
influences, and especially of the movement of the joint.

_Clinically_, loose bodies composed of fibrin constitute an unimportant
addition to the features of the disease with which they are associated.
They never give rise to the classical symptoms associated with impaction
of a loose body between the articular surfaces. Their presence may be
recognised, especially in the knee, by the crepitating sensation
imparted to the fingers of the hand grasping the joint while it is
flexed and extended by the patient.

The _treatment_ is directed towards the disease underlying the hydrops.
If it is desired to empty the joint, this is best done by open
incision.

[Illustration: FIG. 166.--Radiogram of Multiple Loose Bodies in
Knee-joint and Semi-membranosus Bursa in a man t. 38.

(Mr. J. W. Dowden's case.)]

#Bodies composed of Organised Connective Tissue.#--These are
comparatively common in joints that are already the seat of some chronic
disease, such as arthritis deformans, Charcot's arthropathy, or synovial
tuberculosis. They take origin almost exclusively from an erratic
overgrowth of the fringes of the synovial membrane, and may consist
entirely of fat, the arborescent lipoma (Fig. 159) being the most
pronounced example of this variety. Fibrous tissue or cartilage may
form in one or more of the fatty fringes and give rise to hard nodular
masses, which may attain a considerable size, and in course of time may
undergo ossification.

Like other hypertrophies on a free surface, they tend to become
pedunculated, and so acquire a limited range of movement. The pedicle
may give way and the body become free. In this condition it may wander
about the joint, or lie snugly in one of its recesses until disturbed by
some sudden movement. A loose body free in a joint is capable of growth,
deriving the necessary nutriment from the surrounding fluid. The size
and number of the bodies vary widely. Single specimens have been known
to attain the size of the patella. The smaller varieties may number
considerably over a hundred.

[Illustration: FIG. 167.--Loose Body from Knee-joint of man t. 25.
Natural size.

a = Convex surface.   b = Concave surface.]

In arthritis deformans a rarer type of loose body is met with, a portion
of the lipping of one of the articular margins being detached by injury.
In Charcot's disease, bodies composed of bone are formed in relation to
the capsular and other ligaments, and may be made to grate upon one
another.

The _clinical features_ in this group are mainly those of the disease
which has given rise to the loose bodies, and it is exceptional to meet
with symptoms from impaction of the body between the articular surfaces.
Treatment is to be directed towards the primary disease in the joint, as
well as to the removal of the loose bodies.

[Illustration: FIG. 168.--Multiple partially ossified Chondromas of
Synovial Membrane, from Shoulder-joint, the seat of arthritis deformans,
from a man t. 35.]

_Loose Bodies in Joints which are otherwise healthy._--It is in joints
otherwise healthy that loose bodies causing the classical symptoms and
calling for operative treatment are most frequently met with. They occur
chiefly in the knee and elbow of healthy males under the age of thirty.
The complaint may be of vague pains, of occasional cracking on moving
the joint, or of impairment of function--usually an inability to extend
or flex the joint completely. In many cases a clear account is given of
the symptoms which arise when the body is impacted between the articular
surfaces, namely, sudden onset of intense sickening pain, loss of power
in the limb and locking of the joint, followed by effusion and other
accompaniments of a severe sprain. On some particular movement, the
body is disengaged, the locking disappears, and recovery takes place.
Attacks of this kind may recur at irregular intervals, during a period
of many years. On examining the joint, it is usually found to contain
fluid, and there may be points of special tenderness corresponding to
the ligaments that have been overstretched. In cases in which there has
been recurrent attacks of locking, the ligaments become slack, the joint
is wobbly, and the quadriceps is wasted. The patient himself, or the
surgeon, may discover the loose body and feel it roll beneath his
fingers, especially if it is lodged in the supra-patellar pouch in the
knee, or on one or other side of the olecranon in the elbow. In most
instances the patient has carefully observed his own symptoms, and is
aware not only of the existence of the loose body, but of its erratic
appearance at different parts of the joint. This feature serves to
differentiate the lesions from a torn medial meniscus in which the pain
and tenderness are always in the same spot. As the body usually contains
bone, it is recognisable in a skiagram.

[Illustration: FIG. 169.--Multiple Cartilaginous Loose Bodies from
Knee-joint.]

There are two methods of _removing the body_; the first and simpler
method is applicable when the body can be palpated, usually in the
supra-patellar pouch; it is preferably transfixed by a needle and can
then be removed through a small incision; otherwise, the joint must be
freely opened and explored, firstly to find the body and further to
remove it.

The characters of this type of loose body are remarkably constant. It is
usually solitary, about the size of a bean or almond, concavo-convex in
shape, the convex aspect being smooth like an articular surface, the
concave aspect uneven and nodulated and showing reparative changes,
healing over of the raw surface, and the new formation of fibrous
tissue, hyaline cartilage and bone, the necessary nutriment being
derived from the synovial fluid (Fig. 167). The body is sometimes found
to be lodged in a defect or excavation in one of the articular surfaces,
usually the medial condyle of the femur, from which it is readily
shelled out by means of an elevator. It presents on section a layer of
articular cartilage on the convex aspect and a variable thickness of
spongy bone beneath this.

The origin of these bodies is one of the most debated questions in
surgical pathology; they obviously consist of a portion of the articular
surface of one of the bones, but how this is detached still remains a
mystery; some maintain that it is purely traumatic; Knig regards them
as portions of the articular surface which have been detached by a
morbid process which he calls "osteochondritis dessicans."

_Multiple Chondromas and Osteomas of the Synovial Membrane._--In this
rare type of loose body, the surface of the synovial membrane is studded
with small sessile or pedunculated tumours composed of pure hyaline
cartilage, or of bone, or of transition stages between cartilage and
bone. They are pearly white in colour, pitted and nodular on the
surface, rarely larger than a pea, although when compressed they may
cake into masses of considerable size. With the movements of the joint
many of the tumours become detached and lie in the serous exudate
excited by their presence. They are found also in the diverticula of the
synovial membrane, in the shoulder in the downward prolongation along
the tendon of the biceps, in the hip in the bursal extension beneath the
psoas.

The patient complains of increasing disability of the limb, movements of
the joint becoming more and more restricted and painful. There is
swelling corresponding to the distended capsule of the joint, and on
palpation the bodies moving under the fingers yield a sensation as of
grains of rice shifting in a bag. If the bodies are so numerous as to be
tightly packed together, the impression is that of a plastic mass having
the shape of the synovial sac. The stiffness and the cracking on
movement may suggest arthritis deformans, but the X-ray appearances make
the diagnosis an easy one. We have observed two cases of this affection
in the knee-joint of adult women, one in the shoulder-joint of an adult
male (Fig. 168), and Caird has observed one in the hip. The treatment
consists in opening the joint by free incision and removing the bodies.

_Displacement of the menisci_ of the knee is referred to with injuries
of that joint.

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The Junior Classics

A LIBRARY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

[Illustration: CATHRINE DOUGLAS THRUST HER ARM THROUGH THE EMPTY
STAPLES _From the painting by J P Shelton_]

THE JUNIOR CLASSICS

SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY WILLIAM PATTEN
MANAGING EDITOR OF THE HARVARD CLASSICS

INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL. D.
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

WITH A READING GUIDE BY WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
PRESIDENT SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON, MASS., SINCE 1917[-1939]



VOLUME SEVEN

Stories of Courage and Heroism




CONTENTS



PREFACE

How Phidias Helped the Image-Maker _Beatrice Harraden_

The Fight at the Pass of Thermopyl _Charlotte M. Yonge_

The Bravery of Regulus _Charlotte M. Yonge_

The Rabbi Who Found the Diadem _Dr. A. S. Isaacs_

How Livia Won the Brooch _Beatrice Harraden_

Julius Csar Crossing the Rubicon _Jacob Abbott_

Fearless Saint Genevieve, Patron Saint of Paris _Charlotte M. Yonge_

The Boy Viking--Olaf II of Norway _E. S. Brooks_

The Boy-Heroes of Crecy and Poitiers _Treadwell Walden_

The Noble Burghers of Calais _Charlotte M. Yonge_

The Story of Joan of Arc, the Maid Who Saved France _Anonymous_

How Joan the Maid Took Largess from the English _Anonymous_

Death of Joan the Maid _Anonymous_

How Catherine Douglas Tried to Save King James of Scotland _Charlotte
M. Yonge_

The Brave Queen of Hungary _Charlotte M. Yonge_

The Story of Christopher Columbus for Little Children _Elizabeth
Harrison_

A Sea-Fight in the Time of Queen Bess _Charles Kingsley_

A Brave Scottish Chief _Anonymous_

The Adventure of Grizel Cochrane _Arthur Quiller-Couch_

The Sunken Treasure _Nathaniel Hawthorne_

The Lost Exiles of Texas _Arthur Oilman_

The Boy Conqueror--Charles XII of Sweden _E. S. Brooks_

The True Story of a Kidnapped Boy as Told by Himself _Peter
Williamson_

The Prisoner Who Would Not Stay in Prison _Anonymous_

A White Boy Among the Indians, as Told by Himself _John Tanner_

Evangeline of Acadia _Henry W. Longfellow_

Jabez Rockwell's Powder-Horn _Ralph D. Paine_

A Man Who Coveted Washington's Shoes _Frank R. Stockton._

A Famous Fight Between an English and a French Frigate _Rev. W. H.
Fitchett_

The Trick of an Indian Spy _Arthur Quiller-Couch_

The Man in the "Auger Hole" _Frank R. Stockton._

The Remarkable Voyage of the _Bounty_ _Anonymous_

The Two Boy Hostages at the Siege of Seringapatam _Anonymous_

The Man Who Spoiled Napoleon's "Destiny" _Rev. W. H. Fitchett_

A Fire-Fighter's Rescue from the Flames _Arthur Quiller-Couch_

How Napoleon Rewarded His Men _Baron de Marbot_

A Rescue from Shipwreck _Arthur Quiller-Couch_

Rebecca the Drummer _Charles Barnard_

The Messenger _M. E. M. Davis_

Humphry Davy and the Safety-Lamp _George C. Towle_

Kit Carson's Duel _Emerson Hough_

The Story of Grace Darling _Anonymous_

The Struggles of Charles Goodyear _George C. Towle_

Old Johnny Appleseed _Elizabeth Harrison_

The Little Post-Boy _Bayard Taylor_

How June Found Massa Linkum _Elizabeth S. Phelps_

The Story of a Forest Fire _Raymond S. Spears_




ILLUSTRATIONS



CATHERINE DOUGLAS THRUST HER ARM THROUGH THE EMPTY STAPLES

How Catherine Douglas Tried to Save King James of Scotland

_Frontispiece illustration in color from the painting by J. R.
Skelton_


HE SHOOK HIS CLENCHED FIST AT THE OBSTRUCTED SEA-STRAIT

The Boy Viking--Olaf II of Norway

_From the drawing by Gertrude Demain Hammond_


"FIGHT ON!" CRIED THE MAID; "THE PLACE IS OURS"

The Story of Joan of Arc

_From the painting by William Rainey_


THEN HE OFFERED A FERVENT PRAYER OF THANKS

A Story of Christopher Columbus




PREFACE



The stories in this volume are true stories, and have been arranged
in chronological order, an arrangement that will aid the reader to
remember the times to which the stories relate.

Almost any encyclopedia can be consulted for general details of
the life stories of the interesting people whose names crowd the
volume except perhaps in the cases of Peter Williamson and John
Tanner, "The True Story of a Kidnapped Boy," and "A White Boy Among
the Indians." Peter Williamson was kidnapped in Glasgow, Scotland,
when he was eight years old, was captured by the Cherokee Indians
in 1745, and (though the story does not tell this) he returned to
England and became a prominent citizen. He first made the British
Government pay damages for his kidnapping, gave the first exhibition
in England of Indian war dances, and was the first Englishman to
publish a street directory. He was finally pensioned by the Government
for his services in establishing a penny post.

John Tanner, the son of a clergyman, was stolen by the Indians some
years later. His mother died when he was very young, his father
treated him harshly, and so when the Indians kidnapped him he made
no effort to escape. John remained among them until he was an old
man, and the story of his life, which he was obliged to dictate
to others as he could neither read nor write, was first published
about 1830. The stories of these boys are considered to be two
of the most reliable early accounts we possess of life among the
Indians.

Acknowledgment for permission to include several stories included
in this volume is made in Volume X.

WILLIAM PATTEN.




HOW PHIDIAS HELPED THE IMAGE-MAKER

By Beatrice Harraden



During the time when Pericles was at the head of the state at
Athens he spared no pains and no money to make the city beautiful.
He himself was a lover and patron of the arts, and he was determined
that Athens should become the very centre of art and refinement,
and that she should have splendid public buildings and splendid
sculptures and paintings. So he gathered round him all the great
sculptors and painters, and set them to work to carry out his
ambitious plans; and some of you know that the "Age of Pericles"
is still spoken of as an age in which art advanced towards and
attained to a marvellous perfection.

On the Acropolis, or Citadel of Athens, rose the magnificent
Temple of Athena, called the Parthenon, built under the direction
of Phidias, the most celebrated sculptor of that time, who adorned
it with many of his works, and especially with the huge statue of
Athena in ivory, forty-seven feet in height. The Acropolis was also
enriched with another figure of Athena in bronze--also the work of
Phidias.

The statue was called the "Athena Promachus"; that is "The Defender."
If you turn to your Grecian History you will find a full description
of the Parthenon and the other temples of the gods and heroes and
guardian deities of the city. But I want to tell you something
about Phidias himself, and little Iris, an image-maker's daughter.

It was in the year 450 B.C., in the early summer, and Phidias, who
had been working all the day, strolled quietly along the streets
of Athens.

As he passed by the Agora (or market-place), he chanced to look up,
and he saw a young girl of about thirteen years sitting near him.
Her face was of the purest beauty; her head was gracefully poised
on her shoulders; her expression was sadness itself. She looked
poor and in distress. She came forward and begged for help; and
there was something in her manner, as well as in her face, which
made Phidias pause and listen to her.

"My father lies ill," she said plaintively, "and he cannot do
his work, and so we can get no food: nothing to make him well and
strong again. If I could only do his work for him I should not mind;
and then I should not beg. He does not know I came out to beg--he
would never forgive me; but I could not bear to see him lying there
without food."

"And who is your father?" asked Phidias kindly.

"His name is Aristus," she said, "and he is a maker of images--little
clay figures of gods and goddesses and heroes. Indeed, he is clever;
and I am sure you would praise the 'Hercules' he finished before
he was taken ill."

"Take me to your home," Phidias said to the girl; as they passed
on together he asked her many questions about the image-maker. She
was proud of her father; and Phidias smiled to himself when he heard
her speak of this father as though he were the greatest sculptor
in Athens. He liked to hear her speak so enthusiastically.

"Is it not wonderful," she said, "to take the clay and work in into
forms? Not everyone could do that--could you do it?"

Phidias laughed.

"Perhaps not so well as your father," he answered kindly. "Still,
I can do it."

A sudden thought struck Iris.

"Perhaps you would help father?" she said eagerly. "Ah! but I ought
not to have said that."

"Perhaps I can help him," replied Phidias good-naturedly.  "Anyway,
take me to him."

She led him through some side streets into the poorest parts of the
city, and stopped before a little window, where a few roughly-wrought
images and vases were exposed to view. She beckoned to him to follow
her, and opening the door, crept gently into a room which served
as their workshop and dwelling-place. Phidias saw a man stretched
out on a couch at the farther end of the room, near a bench where
many images and pots of all sorts lay unfinished.

"This is our home," whispered Iris proudly, "and that is my father
yonder."

The image-maker looked up and called for Iris.

"I am so faint, child," he murmured. "If I could only become strong
again I could get back to my work. It is so hard to lie here and
die."

Phidias bent over him.

"You shall not die," he said, "if money can do you any good. I met
your little daughter, and she told me that you were an image-maker;
and that interested me, because I, too, can make images, though
perhaps not as well as you. Still, I thought I should like to come
and see you and help you; and if you will let me, I will try and
make a few images for you, so that your daughter may go out and
sell them, and bring you home money. And meanwhile, she shall fetch
you some food to nourish you."

Then he turned to Iris, and putting some coins into her hands bade
her go out and bring what she thought fit. She did not know how to
thank him, but hurried away on her glad errand, and Phidias talked
kindly to his fellow-worker, and then, throwing aside his cloak,
sat down at the bench and busied himself with modelling the clay.

It was so different from his ordinary work that he could not help
smiling.

"This is rather easier," he thought to himself, "than carving
from the marble a statue of Athena.  What a strange occupation!"
Nevertheless, he was so interested in modelling the quaint little
images that he did not perceive that Iris had returned, until he
looked up, and saw her standing near him, watching him with wonder,
which she could not conceal.

"Oh, how clever!" she cried. "Father, if you could only see what
he is doing!"

"Nay, child," said the sculptor, laughing; "get your father his
food, and leave me to my work. I am going to model a little image
of the goddess Athena, for I think the folk will like to buy
that, since that rogue Phidias has set up his statue of her in the
Parthenon."

"Phidias, the prince of sculptors!" said the image-maker. "May the
gods preserve his life; for he is the greatest glory of all Athens!"

"Ay," said Iris, as she prepared her father's food, "that is what
we all call him--the greatest glory of all Athens."

"We think of him," said Aristus, feebly, "and that helps us in
our work. Yes, it helps even us poor image-makers. When I saw the
beautiful Athena I came home cheered and encouraged. May Phidias
be watched over and blessed all his life!"

The tears came into the eyes of Phidias as he bent over his work;
it was a pleasure to him to think that his fame gained for him a
resting-place of love and gratitude in the hearts of the poorest
citizens of Athens. He valued this tribute of the image-maker far
more than the praises of the rich and great. Before he left, he
saw that both father and daughter were much refreshed by the food
which his bounty had given to them, and he bade Aristus be of good
cheer, because he would surely regain his health and strength.

"And because you love your art," he said, "I shall be a friend
to you and help you. And I shall come again to-morrow and do some
work for you--that is to say, if you approve of what I have already
done, and then Iris will be able to go out and sell the figures."

He hastened away before they were able to thank him, and he left
them wondering who this new friend could be. They talked of him
for a long time, of his kindness and his skill; and Aristus dreamt
that night about the stranger who had come to work for him.

The next day Phidias came again, and took his place at the
image-maker's bench, just as if he were always accustomed to sit
there. Aristus, who was better, watched him curiously, but asked
no questions.

But Iris said to him: "My father and I talk of you, and wonder who
you are."

Phidias laughed.

"Perhaps I shall tell you some day," he answered.  "There, child,
what do you think of that little vase? When it is baked it will be
a pretty thing."

As the days went on, the image-maker recovered his strength; and
meanwhile Phidias had filled the little shop with dainty-wrought
images and graceful vases, such as had never been seen there before.

One evening, when Aristus was leaning against Iris, and admiring
the stranger's work, the door opened and Phidias came in.

"What, friend," he said cheerily, "you are better to-night I see!"

"Last night," said Aristus, "I dreamt that the friend who held out
a brother's hand to me and helped me in my trouble was the great
Phidias himself.  It did not seem wonderful to me, for only the
great do such things as you have done for me.  You must be great."

"I do not know about that," said the sculptor, smiling, "and
after all, I have not done so much for you. I have only helped
a brother-workman: for I am an image-maker too--and my name is
Phidias."

Then Aristus bent down and reverently kissed the great sculptor's
hands.

"I cannot find words with which to thank you," he murmured, "but I
shall pray to the gods night and day that they will for ever bless
Phidias, and keep his fame pure, and his hands strong to fashion
forms of beauty. And this I know well: that he will always have
a resting-place of love and gratitude in the poor image-maker's
heart."

And Phidias went on his way, tenfold richer and happier for the
image-maker's words. For there is something lovelier than fame
and wealth, my children; it is the opportunity of giving the best
of one's self and the best of one's powers to aid those of our
fellow-workers who need our active help.




THE FIGHT AT THE PASS OF THERMOPYL

By Charlotte M. Yonge



There was trembling in Greece. "The Great King," as the Greeks
called Xerxes, the chief ruler of the East, was marshaling his
forces against the little free states that nestled amid the rocks
and gulfs of the Eastern Mediterranean--the whole of which together
would hardly equal one province of the huge Asiatic realm! Moreover,
it was a war not only on the men but on their gods. The Persians
were zealous adorers of the sun and the fire, they abhorred the
idol-worship of the Greeks, and defiled and plundered every temple
that fell in their way. Death and desolation were almost the best
that could be looked for at such hands--slavery and torture from
cruelly barbarous masters would only too surely be the lot of
numbers, should their land fall a prey to the conquerors.

The muster place was at Sardis, and there Greek spies had seen the
multitudes assembling and the state and magnificence of the king's
attendants.  Envoys had come from him to demand earth and water from
each state in Greece, as emblems that land and sea were his, but
each state was resolved to be free, and only Thessaly, that which
lay first in his path, consented to yield the token of subjugation.  A
council was held at the Isthmus of Corinth, and attended by deputies
from all the states of Greece to consider of the best means of
defense.  The ships of the enemy would coast round the shores of
the gean Sea, the land army would cross the Hellespont on a bridge
of boats lashed together, and march southwards into Greece. The
only hope of averting the danger lay in defending such passages
as, from the nature of the ground, were so narrow that only a few
persons could fight hand to hand at once, so that courage would be
of more avail than numbers.

The first of these passes was called Tempe, and a body of troops
was sent to guard it; but they found that this was useless and
impossible, and came back again. The next was at Thermopyl.  Look
in your map of the Archipelago, or gean Sea, as it was then called,
for the great island of Negropont, or by its old name, Euboea. It
looks like a piece broken off from the coast, and to the north is
shaped like the head of a bird, with the beak running into a gulf,
that would fit over it, upon the main land, and between the island
and the coast is an exceedingly narrow strait. The Persian army
would have to march round the edge of the gulf. They could not cut
straight across the country, because the ridge of mountains called
Oeta rose up and barred their way. Indeed, the woods, rocks,
and precipices came down so near the seashore, that in two places
there was only room for one single wheel track between the steeps
and the impassable morass that formed the border of the gulf on
its south side. These two very narrow places were called the gates
of the pass, and were about a mile apart. There was a little more
width left in the intervening space; but in this there were a
number of springs of warm mineral water, salt and sulphurous, which
were used for the sick to bathe in, and thus the place was called
Thermopyl, or the Hot Gates. A wall had once been built across
the westernmost of these narrow places, when the Thessalians and
Phocians, who lived on either side of it, had been at war with one
another; but it had been allowed to go to decay, since the Phocians
had found out that there was a very steep narrow mountain path
along the bed of a torrent, by which it was possible to cross from
one territory to the other without going round this marshy coast
road.

This was, therefore, an excellent place to defend.  The Greek
ships were all drawn up on the further side of Euboea to prevent
the Persian vessels from getting into the strait and landing men
beyond the pass, and a division of the army was sent off to guard
the Hot Gates. The council at the Isthmus did not know of the
mountain pathway, and thought that all would be safe as long as
the Persians were kept out of the coast path.

The troops sent for this purpose were from different cities,
and amounted to about 4,000 who were to keep the pass against two
millions. The leader of them was Leonidas, who had newly become
one of the two kings of Sparta, the city that above all in Greece
trained its sons to be hardy soldiers, dreading death infinitely
less than shame.  Leonidas had already made up his mind that the
expedition would probably be his death, perhaps because a prophecy
had been given at the Temple at Delphi that Sparta should be saved
by the death of one of her kings of the race of Hercules. He was
allowed by law to take with him 300 men, and these he chose most
carefully, not merely for their strength and courage, but selecting
those who had sons, so that no family might be altogether destroyed.
These Spartans, with their helots or slaves, made up his own share
of the numbers, but all the army was under his generalship. It is
even said that the 300 celebrated their own funeral rites before
they set out lest they should be deprived of them by the enemy,
since, as we have already seen, it was the Greek belief that the
spirits of the dead found no rest till their obsequies had been
performed.  Such preparations did not daunt the spirits of Leonidas
and his men, and his wife, Gorgo, not a woman to be faint-hearted
or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a
word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous
message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred
up to be able to say to those she best loved that they must come
home from battle "with the shield or on it"--either carrying it
victoriously or borne upon it as a corpse.

When Leonidas came to Thermopyl, the Phocians told him of the
mountain path through the chestnut woods of Mount ta, and begged
to have the privilege of guarding it on a spot high up on the
mountain side, assuring him that it was very hard to find at the
other end, and that there was every probability that the enemy
would never discover it. He consented, and encamping around the warm
springs, caused the broken wall to be repaired, and made ready to
meet the foe.

The Persian army were seen covering the whole country like locusts,
and the hearts of some of the southern Greeks in the pass began to
sink. Their homes in the Peloponnesus were comparatively secure--had
they not better fall back and reserve themselves to defend the
Isthmus of Corinth? But Leonidas, though Sparta was safe below the
Isthmus, had no intention of abandoning his northern allies, and
kept the other Peloponnesians to their posts, only sending messengers
for further help.

Presently a Persian on horseback rode up to reconnoiter the pass. He
could not see over the wall, but in front of it and on the ramparts,
he saw the Spartans, some of them engaged in active sports, and
others in combing their long hair. He rode back to the king, and
told him what he had seen.  Now Xerxes had in his camp an exiled
Spartan prince, named Demaratus, who had become a traitor to his
country, and was serving as counselor to the enemy. Xerxes sent for
him, and asked whether his countrymen were mad to be thus employed
instead of fleeing away; but Demaratus made answer that a hard fight
was no doubt in preparation, and that it was the custom of the
Spartans to array their hair with especial care when they were about
to enter upon any great peril. Xerxes would, however, not believe
that so petty a force could intend to resist him, and waited four
days, probably expecting his fleet to assist him, but as it did
not appear, the attack was made.

The Greeks, stronger men and more heavily armed, were far better
able to fight to advantage than the Persians with their short spears
and wicker shields, and beat them off with great ease. It is said
that Xerxes three times leapt off his throne in despair at the
sight of his troops being driven backwards; and thus for two days
it seemed as easy to force a way through the Spartans as through
the rocks themselves. Nay, how could slavish troops, dragged from
home to spread the victories of an ambitious king, fight like freemen
who felt that their strokes were to defend their homes and children?

That evening a wretched man, named Ephialtes, crept into the Persian
camp, and offered, for a great sum of money, to show the mountain
path that would enable the enemy to take the brave defenders in the
rear! A Persian general, named Hydarnes, was sent off at nightfall
with a detachment to secure this passage, and was guided through
the thick forests that clothed the hill-side. In the stillness of
the air, at daybreak, the Phocian guards of the path were startled
by the crackling of the chestnut leaves under the tread of many
feet. They started up, but a shower of arrows was discharged on them,
and forgetting all save the present alarm, they fled to a higher
part of the mountain, and the enemy, without waiting to pursue
them, began to descend.

As day dawned, morning light showed the watchers of the Grecian
camp below a glittering and shimmering in the torrent bed where
the shaggy forests opened; but it was not the sparkle of water, but
the shine of gilded helmets and the gleaming of silvered spears.
Moreover, a man crept over to the wall from the Persian camp
with tidings that the path had been betrayed, that the enemy were
climbing it, and would come down beyond the Eastern Gate. Still,
the way was rugged and circuitous, the Persians would hardly descend
before midday, and there was ample time for the Greeks to escape
before they could thus be shut in by the enemy.

There was a short council held over the morning sacrifice. Megistias,
the seer, on inspecting the entrails of the slain victim, declared
that their appearance boded disaster. Leonidas ordered him to
retire, but he refused, though he sent home his only son.

There was no disgrace in leaving a post that could not be held,
and Leonidas recommended all the allied troops under his command
to march away while yet the way was open. As to himself and his
Spartans, they had made up their minds to die at their post, and
there could be no doubt that the example of such a resolution would
do more to save Greece than their best efforts could ever do if
they were careful to reserve themselves for another occasion.

All the allies consented to retreat, except the eighty men who came
from Mycen and the 700 Thespians, who declared that they would
not desert Leonidas. There were also 400 Thebans who remained; and
thus the whole number that stayed with Leonidas to confront two
million of enemies were fourteen hundred warriors, besides the helots
or attendants on the 300 Spartans, whose number is not known, but
there was probably at least one to each.

Leonidas had two kinsmen in the camp, like himself, claiming the
blood of Hercules, and he tried to save them by giving them letters
and messages to Sparta; but one answered that "he had come to fight,
not to carry letters;" and the other, that "his deeds would tell
all that Sparta wished to know." Another Spartan, named Dienices,
when told that the enemy's archers were so numerous that their arrows
darkened the sun, replied, "So much the better, we shall fight in
the shade." Two of the 300 had been sent to a neighboring village,
suffering severely from a complaint in the eyes. One of them
called Eurytus, put on his armor, and commanded his helot to lead
him to his place in the ranks; the other, called Aristodemus, was
so overpowered with illness that he allowed himself to be carried
away with the retreating allies. It was still early in the day
when all were gone, and Leonidas gave the word to his men to take
their last meal. "Tonight," he said, "we shall sup with Pluto."

Hitherto, he had stood on the defensive, and had husbanded the
lives of his men; but he now desired to make as great a slaughter
as possible, so as to inspire the enemy with dread of the Grecian
name.  He therefore marched out beyond the wall, without waiting
to be attacked, and the battle began. The Persian captains went
behind their wretched troops and scourged them on to the fight
with whips! Poor wretches, they were driven on to be slaughtered,
pierced with the Greek spears, hurled into the sea, or trampled
into the mud of the morass; but their inexhaustible numbers told
at length. The spears of the Greeks broke under hard service,
and their swords alone remained; they began to fall, and Leonidas
himself was among the first of the slain.  Hotter than ever was the
fight over his body, and two Persian princes, brothers of Xerxes,
were there killed; but at length word was brought that Hydarnes was
over the pass, and that the few remaining men were thus enclosed
on all sides. The Spartans and Thespians made their way to a little
hillock within the wall, resolved to let this be the place of their
last stand; but the hearts of the Thebans failed them, and they
came towards the Persians holding out their hands in entreaty for
mercy. Quarter was given to them, but they were all branded with
the king's mark as untrustworthy deserters. The helots probably
at this time escaped into the mountains; while the small desperate
band stood side by side on the hill still fighting to the last,
some with swords, others with daggers, others even with their hands
and teeth, till not one living man remained amongst them when the
sun went down. There was only a mound of slain, bristled over with
arrows.

Twenty thousand Persians had died before that handful of men! Xerxes
asked Demaratus if there were many more at Sparta like these, and
was told there were 8,000. The body of the brave king was buried
where he fell, as were those of the other dead. Much envied were
they by the unhappy Aristodemus, who found himself called by no
name but the "Coward," and was shunned by all his fellow-citizens.
No one would give him fire or water, and after a year of misery,
he redeemed his honor by perishing in the forefront of the battle
of Plataea, which was the last blow that drove the Persians
ingloriously from Greece.

The Greeks then united in doing honor to the brave warriors who,
had they been better supported, might have saved the whole country
from invasion.  The poet Simonides wrote the inscriptions that were
engraved upon the pillars that were set up in the pass to commemorate
this great action. One was outside the wall, where most of the
fighting had been. It seems to have been in honor of the whole
number who had for two days resisted--



"Here did four thousand men from Pelops' land
Against three hundred myriads [Footnote: A myriad consisted of ten
thousand.] bravely stand."



In honor of the Spartans was another column--



"Go, traveler, to Sparta tell
That here, obeying her, we fell."



On the little hillock of the last resistance was placed the figure
of a stone lion, in memory of Leonidas, so fitly named the lion-like,
and the names of the 300 were likewise engraven on a pillar at
Sparta.

Lion, pillars, and inscriptions have all long since passed away,
even the very spot itself has changed; new soil has been formed,
and there are miles of solid ground between Mount ta and the gulf,
so that the Hot Gates no longer exist. But more enduring than stone
or brass--nay, than the very battle-field itself--has been the name
of Leonidas.  Two thousand three hundred years have sped since he
braced himself to perish for his country's sake in that narrow,
marshy coast road, under the brow of the wooded crags, with the
sea by his side. Since that time how many hearts have glowed, how
many arms have been nerved at the remembrance of the Pass of Thermopyl,
and the defeat that was worth so much more than a victory!




THE BRAVERY OF REGULUS

By Charlotte M. Yonge



The first wars that the Romans engaged in beyond the bounds of
Italy, were with the Carthaginians.

The first dispute between Rome and Carthage was about their
possession in the island of Sicily; and the war thus begun had
lasted eight years, when it was resolved to send an army to fight
the Carthaginians on their own shores. The army and fleet were
placed under the command of the two consuls, Lucius Manlius and
Marcus Attilius Regulus. On the way, there was a great sea-fight
with the Carthaginian fleet, and this was the first naval battle
that the Romans ever gained. It made the way to Africa free; but
the soldiers, who had never been so far from home before, murmured,
for they expected to meet not only human enemies, but monstrous
serpents, lions, elephants, asses with horns, and dog-headed monsters,
to have a scorching sun overhead, and a noisome marsh under their
feet.  However, Regulus sternly put a stop to all murmurs, by
making it known that disaffection would be punished by death, and
the army safely landed, and set up a fortification at Clypea, and
plundered the whole country round. Orders here came from Rome that
Manlius should return thither, but that Regulus should remain to
carry on the war. This was a great grief to him. He was a very poor
man, with nothing of his own but a little farm of seven acres, and
the person whom he had employed to cultivate it had died in his
absence; a hired laborer had undertaken the care of it, but had
been unfaithful, and had run away with his tools and his cattle, so
that he was afraid that, unless he could return quickly, his wife
and children would starve. However, the Senate engaged to provide
for his family, and he remained, making expeditions into the country
round, in the course of which the Romans really did fall in with
a serpent, as monstrous as their imagination had depicted. It was
said to be 120 feet long, and dwelt upon the banks of the river
Bagrada, where it used to devour the Roman soldiers as they went
to fetch water. It had such tough scales that they were obliged to
attack it with their engines meant for battering city walls; and
only succeeded with much difficulty in destroying it.

The country was most beautiful, covered with fertile corn-fields
and full of rich fruit-trees, and all the rich Carthaginians had
country-houses and gardens, which were made delicious with fountains,
trees, land flowers. The Roman soldiers, plain, hardy, fierce, and
pitiless, did, it must be feared, cruel damage among these peaceful
scenes; they boasted of having sacked 300 villages, and mercy
was not yet known to them. The Carthaginian army, though strong
in horsemen and in elephants, kept upon the hills and did nothing
to save the country, and the wild desert tribes of Numidians came
rushing in to plunder what the Romans had left. The Carthaginians
sent to offer terms of peace; but Regulus, who had become uplifted
by his conquests, made such demands that the messengers remonstrated.
He answered, "Men who are good for anything should either conquer
or submit to their betters;" and he sent them rudely away, like a
stern old Roman as he was.

His merit was that he had no more mercy on himself than on others.

The Carthaginians were driven to extremity, and made horrible
offerings to Moloch, giving the little children of the noblest
families to be dropped into the fire between the brazen hands of
his statue, and grown-up people of the noblest families rushed in
of their own accord, hoping thus to propitiate their gods, and obtain
safety for their country. Their time was not yet fully come, and
a respite was granted to them. They had sent, in their distress,
to hire soldiers in Greece, and among these came a Spartan, named
Xanthippus, who at once took the command, and led the army out to
battle, with a long line of elephants ranged in front of them, and
with clouds of horsemen hovering on the wings, The Romans had not
yet learnt the best mode of fighting with elephants, namely, to
leave lanes in their columns where these huge beasts might advance
harmlessly; instead of which, the ranks were thrust and trampled
down by the creatures' bulk, and they suffered a terrible defeat;
Regulus himself was seized by the horsemen, and dragged into
Carthage, where the victors feasted and rejoiced through half the
night, and testified their thanks to Moloch by offering in his
fires the bravest of their captives.

Regulus himself was not, however, one of these victims. He was
kept a close prisoner for two years, pining and sickening in his
loneliness, while in the meantime the war continued, and at last
a victory so decisive was gained by the Romans, that the people
of Carthage were discouraged, and resolved to ask terms of peace.
They thought that no one would be so readily listened to at Rome
as Regulus, and they therefore sent him there with their envoys,
having first made him swear that he would come back to his prison
if there should neither be peace nor an exchange of prisoners. They
little knew how much more a true-hearted Roman cared for his city
than for himself--for his word than for his life.

Worn and dejected, the captive warrior came to the outside of the
gates of his own city, and there paused, refusing to enter. "I
am no longer a Roman citizen," he said; "I am but the barbarians'
slave, and the Senate may not give audience to strangers within
the walls."

His wife Marcia ran out to greet him, with his two sons, but he
did not look up, and received their caresses as one beneath their
notice, as a mere slave, and he continued, in spite of all entreaty,
to remain outside the city, and would not even go to the little
farm he had loved so well.

The Roman Senate, as he would not come in to them, came out to hold
their meeting in the Campagna.

The ambassadors spoke first, then Regulus, standing up, said,
as one repeating a task, "Conscript fathers, being a slave to the
Carthaginians, I come on the part of my masters to treat with you
concerning peace, and an exchange of prisoners." He then turned to
go away with the ambassadors, as a stranger might not be present
at the deliberations of the Senate. His old friends pressed him to
stay and give his opinion as a senator who had twice been consul;
but he refused to degrade that dignity by claiming it, slave as he
was. But, at the command of his Carthaginian masters, he remained,
though not taking his seat.

Then he spoke. He told the senators to persevere in the war. He
said he had seen the distress of Carthage, and that a peace would
be only to her advantage, not to that of Rome, and therefore he
strongly advised that the war should continue.  Then, as to the
exchange of prisoners, the Carthaginian generals, who were in the
hands of the Romans, were in full health and strength, whilst he
himself was too much broken down to be fit for service again, and
indeed he believed that his enemies had given him a slow poison,
and that he could not live long. Thus he insisted that no exchange
of prisoners should be made.

It was wonderful, even to Romans, to hear a man thus pleading
against himself, and their chief priest came forward, and declared
that, as his oath had been wrested from him by force, he was not
bound by it to return to his captivity. But Regulus was too noble
to listen to this for a moment. "Have you resolved to dishonor me?"
he said. "I am not ignorant that death and the extremest tortures
are preparing for me; but what are these to the shame of an infamous
action, or the wounds of a guilty mind? Slave as I am to Carthage,
I have still the spirit of a Roman. I have sworn to return. It is
my duty to go; let the gods take care of the rest."

The Senate decided to follow the advice of Regulus, though they
bitterly regretted his sacrifice.  His wife wept and entreated in
vain that they would detain him; they could merely repeat their
permission to him to remain; but nothing could prevail with him
to break his word, and he turned back to the chains and death he
expected as calmly as if he had been returning to his home. This
was in the year B.C. 249.

"Let the gods take care of the rest," said the Roman; the gods whom
alone he knew, and through whom he ignorantly worshiped the true
God, whose Light was shining out even in this heathen's truth and
constancy. How his trust was fulfilled is not known. The Senate,
after the next victory, gave two Carthaginian generals to his
wife and sons to hold as pledges for his good treatment; but when
tidings arrived that Regulus was dead, Marcia began to treat them
both with savage cruelty, though one of them assured her that he
had been careful to have her husband well used. Horrible stories
were told that Regulus had been put out in the sun with his eyelids
cut off, rolled down a hill in a barrel with spikes, killed by
being constantly kept awake, or else crucified. Marcia seems to have
heard, and perhaps believed in these horrors, and avenged them on
her unhappy captives till one had died, and the Senate sent for
her sons and severely reprimanded them. They declared it was their
mother's doing, not theirs, and thenceforth were careful of the
comfort of the remaining prisoner.

It may thus be hoped that the frightful tale of Regulus' sufferings
was but formed by report acting on the fancy of a vindictive woman,
and that Regulus was permitted to die in peace of the disease brought
on far more probably by the climate and imprisonment, than by the
poison to which he ascribed it. It is not the tortures he may have
endured that make him one of the noblest characters of history,
but the resolution that would neither let him save himself at the
risk of his country's prosperity, nor forfeit the word that he had
pledged.




THE RABBI WHO FOUND THE DIADEM

Translated from the Talmud by Dr. A. S. Isaacs



Great was the alarm in the palace of Rome, which soon spread throughout
the entire city.  The empress had lost her costly diadem, and it
could not be found. They searched in every direction, but all in
vain. Half distracted, for the mishap boded no good to her or her
house, the empress redoubled her exertions to regain her precious
possession, but without result. As a last resource it was proclaimed
in the public streets: "The empress has lost a precious diadem.
Whoever restores it within thirty days shall receive a princely
reward.  But he who delays, and brings it after thirty days, shall
lose his head."

In those times all nationalities flocked toward Rome; all classes
and creeds could be met in its stately halls and crowded thoroughfares.
Among the rest was a rabbi, a learned sage from the East, who loved
goodness, and lived a righteous life in the stir and turmoil of
the Western world. It chanced one night as he was strolling up and
down, in busy meditation, beneath the clear, moonlit sky, he saw
the diadem sparkling at his feet. He seized it quickly, brought
it to his dwelling, where he guarded it carefully until the thirty
days had expired, when he resolved to return it to the owner.

He proceeded to the palace, and, undismayed at sight of long lines
of soldiery and officials, asked for an audience with the empress.

"What dost thou mean by this?" she inquired, when he told her his
story and gave her the diadem.  "Why didst thou delay until this
hour? Dost thou know the penalty? Thy head must be forfeited."

"I delayed until now," the rabbi answered calmly, "so that thou
mightst know that I return thy diadem, not for the sake of the
reward, still less out of fear of punishment; but solely to comply
with the Divine command not to withhold from another the property
which belongs to him."

"Blessed be thy God!" the empress answered, and dismissed the rabbi
without further reproof; for had he not done right for right's
sake?




HOW LIVIA WON THE BROOCH

By Beatrice Harraden



It was the day before the public games in Rome, in the year 123
B.C., and a tall man of magnificent appearance and strength was
standing outside the Temple of Hercules, talking to a young girl
whose face bore some resemblance to his own. The people passing by
looked at them, and said, half aloud, "There stands the gladiator
Naevus. I wonder how he will bear himself in the Public Games on
the morrow?"

And another man, who was talking eagerly with his companion, stopped
when he caught sight of the gladiator (who was a well-known figure
in Rome), and said, in a loud voice, "That is the man I told you
about, Fabricius. A fine fellow, is he not?  To-morrow he will fight
with the new hero, Lucius And, of course, he will be victorious,
as usual. If he disappoints my hopes, I shall lose a great deal of
money."

"You have plenty to spare!" laughed his friend, as they passed on
together.

The gladiator did not take the slightest notice of any remarks
which were made about him; indeed, it was doubtful whether he heard
them, being engaged in earnest conversation with the young girl,
his daughter.

"Do not be anxious about me, Marcella," he said, seeing that the
tears were falling from her eyes. "I shall be victorious, as I have
always been, and then, child, I shall buy your freedom, together
with my own, and we shall leave Rome, and return to Sicily."

"Nay, father," she answered, between her sobs, "I never doubted
your strength, but my heart is full of fears for you; and yet I
am proud when I hear every one praising you. Last night my master
Claudius gave a great banquet, and when I came to hand round the
ewer of rose-water, I heard the guests say that Naevus was the
strongest and finest gladiator that Rome had ever known. My master
Claudius and two of the guests praised the new man Lucius, but the
others would not hear a word in his favour."

The gladiator smiled.

"You shall be proud of me to-morrow, Marcella," he said, "I have
just been offering up my prayers to the god Hercules; and in the
name of Hercules I promise you, child, that I shall conquer the new
man Lucius, and that to-morrow's combat shall be my last fight. So
you may go home in peace. You look tired, child. Ah! it is a bitter
thing to be a slave! But courage, Marcella; a few days more of
slavery, and then we shall be free.  For this end I have fought in
the arena; and this hope has given me strength and skill."

She took from her neck a piece of fine cord, to which was attached
a tiny stone. She put it in his great hand.

"Father," she said pleadingly, "the Greek physician gave this to
me. He told me it was an Eastern charm to keep the lives of those
who wore it.  Will you wear it on the morrow?"

He laughingly assented, and the two walked together as far as the
Forum, where they parted.

But Marcella was not proud any more; she was sad.

She had had many a dream of freedom, but she would have gladly
given up all chances of realizing that dream, if only to feel that
her father's life was not in danger. She would have gladly been a
slave ten times over rather than that he should risk his life in
those fearful contests.

Marcella, who was a slave in the house of Claudius Flaccus, a great
Roman noble, now hastened home to her duties. Her little mistress
Livia, Claudius' only daughter, wondered to see her looking so pale
and sad.

"Why, you should be glad like I am, Marcella," she cried, as she
showed the slave-maiden the necklace of pearls that she had just
finished stringing.  "See, Marcella! I shall wear these to-morrow
when we go to the Circus Maximus. And what do you think? My father
has promised me a brooch of precious stones if the new gladiator,
Lucius, is successful to-morrow. Oh, how I hope he will be!"

Marcella tried to restrain her tears, but it was of no avail. She
threw herself on the couch, and buried her face in the soft cushions,
and wept as if her heart would break. Her little mistress Livia
bent over her, and tried to comfort her.

"Marcella," she whispered, "it was unkind of me to say that. I
forgot about your father. Please forgive me, Marcella, for I do love
you, although you are only a slave. And I do not want the brooch;
I should not like to wear it now. Please, Marcella, do not cry any
more."

The slave raised her head and smiled through her tears.

"You did not mean to be unkind, dear little mistress," she said, as
she kissed the hand which had been caressing her own golden hair.
"I am sure you did not mean to be unkind; but I am in great trouble,
and I have just said 'Good-bye' to my father, and I can think of
no one else but him.  When those we love are in danger we cannot
help being anxious, can we?"

At that moment the curtains were drawn aside, and Claudius himself
came into the beautiful apartment.  Livia ran to greet him; she
was a child of ten years old, bright and winning in her ways, in
beauty and bearing every inch the child of a patrician. She was
dressed in soft silk of dark purple.

"I do not want the brooch," she said, as she put up her face to be
kissed. "I want Marcella's father to be victorious to-morrow."

Claudius frowned.

"What has Marcella's father got to do with you, little one?" he
asked roughly. "Neither he nor she is anything to you, a patrician's
daughter. Slaves both of them! Let me hear no more of them. And as
for the brooch, it shall be a handsome one."

But when he had gone Livia turned to the slave and said, "I shall
never wear that brooch, Marcella."


So the day wore into the night, and all through the night Marcella
lay awake, wondering what the morrow would bring forth. When at
last she fell asleep she dreamed that she was in the Circus Maximus
watching her father, who was fighting with a new gladiator. She saw
her father fall.  She heard the cries of the populace. She herself,
a girl of fourteen summers, sprang up to help him.  And then she
awoke.

"Ah, it was only a dream!" she cried, with a sigh of relief. "Father
will win the fight to-morrow, and then he will buy his own freedom
and mine, too."

It was a beautiful day for the Public Games.  People had come from
all parts of the country, and the streets of Rome were crowded with
all manner of folk.

The AEdile whose duty it was to arrange the Public Games had
provided a very costly entertainment, and great excitement prevailed
everywhere to know the issue of the contest between the gladiators
Naevus and Lucius. It was a wonderful sight to see the Circus
Maximus crowded with the rich and luxurious patrician nobles and
ladies arid their retinues of slaves, and the poorer classes, all
bent on amusing themselves on this great public festival.

No doubt, amongst all those masses there were many anxious hearts, but
none so anxious as that of the slave-girl Marcella. She sat behind
her little mistress, eagerly expectant. At last a peal of trumpets
and a clash of cymbals, accompanied by some wild kind of music,
announced that the performance was about to begin. The folding-doors
under the archway were flung open, and the gladiators marched in
slowly, two by two. In all the pride of their strength and bearing
they walked once round the arena, and then they stepped aside to
wait until their turn came. The performance began with some fights
between animals; for at the time of which we are speaking the
Romans had learned to love this cruel bloodshed, and had learned
to despise the less exciting, if more manly, trials of strength in
which their ancestors had delighted.  When this part of the cruel
amusement was over the trumpets again sounded, and the gladiators
made ready for their contest. Then it was that Marcella's heart
beat wildly with fear. She saw her father advance together with the
other gladiator; she saw their swords flash; she heard the people
around her call out the name now of Naevus, and now of Lucius; she
heard one near her say:

"He of the red scarf will prove the stronger mark my words."

Marcella's father wore the red scarf,

"Nay, nay," answered the speaker's companion.  "He of the green
scarf will win the day."

It was all that Marcella could do to prevent herself from saying,
"The gladiator with the red scarf will prove the stronger--he must
prove the stronger."

She sat spell-bound, watching for the event of the contest, which
had now begun between the two in real earnest. The people encouraged
now the one and now the other. At this moment it seemed probable
that the new man, Lucius, would be the winner; at that moment the
tide had turned in the favour of Naevus. But suddenly there was a
loud cry, for Lucius had felled Naevus to the ground, and now stood
over him with his sword ready for use, waiting to learn from the
populace whether the favourite gladiator was to be spared or killed.

The slave-girl Marcella had risen from her seat.

"That is my father," she cried; "spare him--spare him!"

But no one heard her or noticed her, and the signal for mercy was
not shown; on the contrary, the thumbs of thousands of hands pointed
upwards; and that meant that the vanquished man, who had been
the hero of so many contests, having now failed of his accustomed
valour, was to die.  So Lucius gave him a thrust with his sword,
and he died while he was being carried away from the arena.

"You have won your brooch, little daughter," laughed Claudius, as
he bent over and fondled Livia's hair. "And it shall be a costly
brooch, worthy of a patrician's daughter."

But Livia's eyes were full of tears,

"I could never wear it," she sobbed; "I should always be thinking
of Marcella's father."

Poor Marcella! and she thought the little charm which he had worn
for her sake would preserve his life. Ah! it was cruel to think
that she would never see him again, and that all their hopes of
freedom and their plans for the future had ended. Well might she
weep.

That was hundreds of years ago, you know, but still the same story
goes on, and all through the centuries sorrow comes to us, just as
we think we are grasping happiness, and we have to be brave and bear
that sorrow. But sometimes we are helped by friends, even as Livia
helped Marcella. For she did help her; she loved her as a sister,
and treated her as such. And as time went on the little patrician
lady claimed a gift from her father Claudius, a gift which was far
more costly than any brooch--it was the freedom of the Sicilian
slave Marcella, the gladiator's daughter.




JULIUS CSAR CROSSING THE RUBICON

By Jacob Abbott



There was a little stream in ancient times, in the north of Italy,
which flowed eastward into the Adriatic Sea, called the Rubicon.
This stream has been immortalized by the transactions which we are
now about to describe.

The Rubicon was a very important boundary, and yet it was in itself
so small and insignificant that it is now impossible to determine
which of two or three little brooks here running into the sea
is entitled to its name and renown. In history the Rubicon is a
grand, permanent, and conspicuous stream, gazed upon with continued
interest by all mankind for nearly twenty centuries; in nature it
is an uncertain rivulet, for a long time doubtful and undetermined,
and finally lost.

The Rubicon originally derived its importance from the fact that
it was the boundary between all that part of the north of Italy
which is formed by the valley of the Po, one of the richest and
most magnificent countries of the world, and the more southern
Roman territories. This country of the Po constituted what was in
those days called the hither Gaul, and was a Roman province. It
belonged now to Csar's jurisdiction, as the commander in Gaul.
All south of the Rubicon was territory reserved for the immediate
jurisdiction of the city. The Romans, in order to protect themselves
from any danger which might threaten their own liberties from the
immense armies which they raised for the conquest of foreign nations,
had imposed on every side very strict limitations and restrictions
in respect to the approach of these armies to the capital. The
Rubicon was the limit on this northern side. Generals commanding
in Gaul were never to pass it. To cross the Rubicon with an army
on the way to Rome was rebellion and treason. Hence the Rubicon
became, as it were, the visible sign and symbol of civil restriction
to military power.

As Csar found the time of his service in Gaul drawing toward
a conclusion, he turned his thoughts more and more toward Rome,
endeavoring to strengthen his interest there by every means in his
power, and to circumvent and thwart the designs of Pompey. He had
agents and partisans in Rome who acted for him and in his name. He
sent immense sums of money to these men, to be employed in such ways
as would most tend to secure the favor of the people. He ordered
the Forum to be rebuilt with great magnificence. He arranged great
celebrations, in which the people were entertained with an endless
succession of games, spectacles, and public feasts. When his
daughter Julia, Pompey's wife, died, he celebrated her funeral with
indescribable splendor. He distributed corn in immense quantities
among the people, and he sent a great many captives home, to be
trained as gladiators to fight in the theatres for their amusement.
In many cases, too, where he found men of talents and influence among
the populace, who had become involved in debt by their dissipations
and extravagance, he paid their debts, and thus secured their
influence on his side.  Men were astounded at the magnitude of
these expenditures, and, while the multitude rejoiced thoughtlessly
in the pleasures thus provided for them, the more reflecting and
considerate trembled at the greatness of the power which was so
rapidly rising to overshadow the land.

It increased their anxiety to observe that Pompey was gaining the
same kind of influence and ascendency, too. He had not the advantage
which Csar enjoyed in the prodigious wealth obtained from the rich
countries over which Csar ruled, but he possessed, instead of it,
the advantage of being all the time at Rome, and of securing, by
his character and action there, a very wide personal popularity
and influence. Pompey was, in fact, the idol of the people. At one
time, when he was absent from Rome, at Naples, he was taken sick.
After being for some days in considerable danger, the crisis passed
favorably, and he recovered.  Some of the people of Naples proposed
a public thanksgiving to the gods, to celebrate his restoration to
health. The plan was adopted by acclamation, and the example thus
set extended from city to city, until it had spread throughout
Italy, and the whole country was filled with processions, games,
shows, and celebrations, which were instituted everywhere in honor
of the event.  And when Pompey returned from Naples to Rome the
towns on the way could not afford room for the crowds that came
forth to meet him. The high roads, the villages, the ports, says
Plutarch, were filled with sacrifices and entertainments.  Many
received him with garlands on their heads and torches in their hands,
and, as they conducted him along, strewed the way with flowers.

In fact, Pompey considered himself as standing far above Csar in
fame and power, and this general burst of enthusiasm and applause
educed by his recovery from sickness confirmed him in this idea.
He felt no solicitude, he said, in respect to Csar. He should take
no special precautions against any hostile designs which he might
entertain on his return from Gaul. It was he himself, he said, that
had raised Csar up to whatever of elevation he had attained, and
he could put him down even more easily than he had exalted him.

In the meantime, the period was drawing near in which Csar's command
in the provinces was to expire; and, anticipating the struggle
with Pompey which was about to ensue, he conducted several of his
legions through the passes of the Alps and advanced gradually,
as he had a right to do, across the country of the Po toward the
Rubicon, revolving in his capacious mind, as he came, the various
plans by which he might hope to gain the ascendency over the power
of his mighty rival and make himself supreme.

He concluded that it would be his wisest policy not to attempt to
intimidate Pompey by great and open preparations for war, which
might tend to arouse him to vigorous measures of resistance, but
rather to cover and conceal his designs, and thus throw his enemy
off his guard. He advanced, therefore, toward the Rubicon with a
small force.  He established his headquarters at Ravenna, a city
not far from the river, and employed himself in objects of local
interest there in order to avert as much as possible the minds
of the people from imagining that he was contemplating any great
design. Pompey sent to him to demand the return of a certain legion
which he had lent him from his own army at a time when they were
friends.  Csar complied with this demand without any hesitation,
and sent the legion home. He sent with this legion, also, some
other troops which were properly his own, thus evincing a degree of
indifference in respect to the amount of the force retained under
his command which seemed wholly inconsistent with the idea that he
contemplated any resistance to the authority of the government at
Rome.

In the meantime, the struggle at Rome between the partisans of
Csar and Pompey grew more and more violent and alarming. Csar,
through his friends in the city, demanded to be elected consul.
The other side insisted that he must first, if that was his wish,
resign the command of his army, come to Rome, and present himself
as a candidate in the character of a private citizen. This the
constitution of the state very properly required.  In answer to
this requisition, Csar rejoined that, if Pompey would lay down
his military commands, he would do so too; if not, it was unjust to
require it of him. The services, he added, which he had performed
for his country demanded some recompense, which, moreover, they
ought to be willing to award even if in order to do it it were
necessary to relax somewhat in his favor the strictness of ordinary
rules. To a large part of the people of the city these demands
of Csar appeared reasonable.  They were clamorous to have them
allowed.  The partisans of Pompey, with the stern and inflexible
Cato at their head, deemed them wholly inadmissible and contended
with the most determined violence against them. The whole city was
filled with the excitement of this struggle, into which all the
active and turbulent spirits of the capital plunged with the most
furious zeal, while the more considerate and thoughtful of the
population, remembering the days of Marius and Sylla, trembled
at the impending danger. Pompey himself had no fear. He urged the
Senate to resist to the utmost all of Csar's claims, saying if Csar
should be so presumptuous as to attempt to march to Rome he could
raise troops enough by stamping with his foot to put him down.

It would require a volume to contain a full account of the disputes
and tumults, the manoeuvres and debates, the votes and decrees,
which marked the successive stages of this quarrel. Pompey himself
was all the time without the city. He was in command of an army
there, and no general, while in command, was allowed to come within
the gates. At last an exciting debate was broken up in the Senate
by one of the consuls rising to depart, saying that he would hear
the subject discussed no longer. The time had arrived for action,
and he should send a commander, with an armed force, to defend the
country from Csar's threatened invasion. Csar's leading friends,
two tribunes of the people, disguised themselves as slaves and
fled to the north to join their master. The country was filled with
commotion and panic.  The Commonwealth had obviously more fear of
Csar than confidence in Pompey. The country was full of rumors in
respect to Csar's power, and the threatening attitude which he was
assuming, while they who had insisted on resistance seemed, after
all, to have provided very inadequate means with which to resist.
A thousand plans were formed, and clamorously insisted upon by
their respective advocates, for averting the danger.  This only
added to the confusion, and the city became at length pervaded with
a universal terror.

While this was the state of things at Rome, Csar was quietly
established at Ravenna, thirty or forty miles from the frontier.
He was erecting a building for a fencing school there, and his mind
seemed to be occupied very busily with the plans and models of the
edifice which the architects had formed. Of course, in his intended
march to Rome, his reliance was not to be so much on the force
which he should take with him, as on the cooperation and support
which he expected to find there. It was his policy, therefore,
to move as quietly and privately as possible, and with as little
display of violence, and to avoid everything which might indicate
his intended march to any spies which might be around him, or to any
other persons who might be disposed to report what they observed,
at Rome. Accordingly, on the very eve of his departure, he busied
himself with his fencing school, and assumed with his officers and
soldiers a careless and unconcerned air, which prevented any one
from suspecting his design.

In the course of the day, he privately sent forward some cohorts
to the southward, with orders for them to encamp on the banks of
the Rubicon.  When night came, he sat down to supper as usual and
conversed with his friends in his ordinary manner, and went with
them afterward to a public entertainment. As soon as it was dark
and the streets were still, he set off secretly from the city,
accompanied by a very few attendants. Instead of making use of
his ordinary equipage, the parading of which would have attracted
attention to his movements, he had some mules taken from a neighboring
bakehouse and harnessed into his chaise. There were torch-bearers
provided to light the way. The cavalcade drove on during the
night, finding, however, the hasty preparations which had been made
inadequate for the occasion.  The torches went out, the guides lost
their way, and the future conqueror of the world wandered about
bewildered and lost, until, just after break of day, the party met
with a peasant who undertook to guide them. Under his direction they
made their way to the main road again, and advanced then without
further difficulty to the banks of the river, where they found
that portion of the army which had been sent forward encamped and
awaiting their arrival.

Csar stood for some time upon the banks of the stream, musing upon
the greatness of the undertaking in which simply passing across it
would involve him. His officers stood by his side.  "We can retreat
_now_" said he, "but once across that river, we must go on."
He paused for some time, conscious of the vast importance of the
decision, though he thought only, doubtless, of its consequences to
himself. Taking the step which was now before him would necessarily
end either in his realizing the loftiest aspirations of his ambition,
or in his utter and irreparable ruin.

There were vast public interests, too, at stake, of which, however,
he probably thought but little.  It proved, in the end, that
the history of the whole Roman world, for several centuries, was
depending upon the manner in which the question now in Csar's mind
should turn.

There was a little bridge across the Rubicon at the point where
Csar was surveying it. While he was standing there, the story
is, a peasant or shepherd came from the neighboring fields with
a shepherd's pipe--a simple musical instrument made of a reed and
used much by the rustic musicians of those days. The soldiers and
some of the officers gathered around him to hear him play.  Among
the rest came some of Csar's trumpeters, with their trumpets in
their hands. The shepherd took one of these martial instruments
from the hands of its possessor, laying aside his own, and began
to sound a charge--which is a signal for a rapid advance--and to
march at the same time over the bridge. "An omen! a prodigy!" said
Csar. "Let us march where we are called by such a divine intimation.
_The die is cast._"

So saying, he pressed forward over the bridge, while the officers,
breaking up the encampment, put the columns in motion to follow
him.

It was shown abundantly, on many occasions in the course of Csar's
life, that he had no faith in omens. There are equally numerous
instances to show that he was always ready to avail himself of the
popular belief in them, to awaken his soldiers' ardor or to allay
their fears. Whether, therefore, in respect to this story of the
shepherd trumpeter it was an incident that really and accidently
occurred, or whether Csar planned and arranged it himself, with
reference to its effect, or whether, which is, perhaps, after all,
the most probable supposition, the tale was only an embellishment
invented out of something or nothing by the story-tellers of those
days to give additional dramatic interest to the narrative of the
crossing of the Rubicon, it must be left for each reader to decide.

As soon as the bridge was crossed, Csar called an assembly of his
troops, and, with signs of great excitement and agitation, made an
address to them on the magnitude of the crisis through which they
were passing. He showed them how entirely he was in their power; he
urged them, by the most eloquent appeals, to stand by him, faithful
and true, promising them the most ample rewards when he should have
attained the object at which he aimed. The soldiers responded to
this appeal with promises of the most unwavering fidelity.

The first town on the Roman side of the Rubicon was Ariminum.
Csar advanced to this town.  The authorities opened its gates to
him--very willing, as it appeared, to receive him as their commander.
Csar's force was yet quite small, as he had been accompanied by
only a single legion in crossing the river. He had, however, sent
orders for the other legions, which had been left in Gaul, to join
him without any delay, though any reinforcement of his troops seemed
hardly necessary, as he found no indications of opposition to his
progress. He gave his soldiers the strictest injunctions to do no
injury to any property, public or private, as they advanced, and
not to assume, in any respect, a hostile attitude toward the people
of the country. The inhabitants, therefore, welcomed him wherever
he came, and all the cities and towns followed the example of
Ariminum, surrendering, in fact, faster than he could take possession
of them.

In the confusion of the debates and votes in the Senate at Rome
before Csar crossed the Rubicon, one decree had been passed deposing
him from his command of the army and appointing a successor.  The
name of the general thus appointed was Domitius. The only real
opposition which Csar encountered in his progress toward Rome
was from him. Domitius had crossed the Apennines at the head of an
army on his way northward to supersede Csar in his command, and
had reached the town of Corfinium, which was perhaps one third of
the way between Rome and the Rubicon.  Csar advanced upon him here
and shut him in.

After a brief siege the city was taken, and Domitius and his army
were made prisoners.  Everybody gave them up for lost, expecting
that Csar would wreak terrible vengeance upon them.  Instead of
this, he received the troops at once into his own service and let
Domitius go free.

In the meantime, the tidings of Csar's having passed the Rubicon,
and of the triumphant success which he was meeting with at the
commencement of his march toward Rome, reached the capital, and
added greatly to the prevailing consternation.  The reports of the
magnitude of his force and of the rapidity of his progress were
greatly exaggerated.  The party of Pompey and the Senate had done
everything to spread among the people the terror of Csar's name
in order to arouse them to efforts for opposing his designs; and
now, when he had broken through the barriers which had been intended
to restrain him and was advancing toward the city in an unchecked
and triumphant career, they were overwhelmed with dismay.  Pompey
began to be terrified at the danger which was impending. The Senate
held meetings without the city--councils of war, as it were, in
which they looked to Pompey in vain for protection from the danger
which he had brought upon them. He had said that he could raise
an army sufficient to cope with Csar at any time by stamping with
his foot. They told him they thought now that it was high time for
him to stamp.

In fact, Pompey found the current setting everywhere strongly against
him. Some recommended that commissioners should be sent to Csar
to make proposals for peace. The leading men, however, knowing that
any peace made with him under such circumstances would be their
own ruin, resisted and defeated the proposal. Cato abruptly left
the city and proceeded to Sicily, which had been assigned him as
his province.  Others fled in other directions. Pompey himself,
uncertain what to do, and not daring to remain, called upon all
his partisans to join him, and set off at night, suddenly, and with
very little preparation and small supplies, to retreat across the
country toward the shores of the Adriatic Sea. His destination was
Brundusium, the usual port of embarkation for Macedon and Greece.

Csar was all this time gradually advancing toward Rome. His soldiers
were full of enthusiasm in his cause. As his connection with the
government at home was sundered the moment he crossed the Rubicon,
all supplies of money and of provisions were cut off in that quarter
until he should arrive at the capital and take possession of it.
The soldiers voted, however, that they would serve him without pay.
The officers, too, assembled together and tendered him the aid of
their contributions. He had always observed a very generous policy
in his dealings with them, and he was now greatly gratified at
receiving their requital of it.

The further he advanced, too, the more he found the people of the
country through which he passed disposed to espouse his cause. They
were struck with his generosity in releasing Domitius.  It is true
that it was a very sagacious policy that prompted him to release
him. But, then, it was generosity too. In fact, there must be
something of a generous spirit in the soul to enable a man even to
see the policy of generous actions.

Among the letters of Csar that remain to the present day, there
is one written about this time to one of his friends, in which he
speaks of this subject. "I am glad," says he, "that you approve of
my conduct at Corfinium. I am satisfied that such a course is the
best one for us to pursue, as by so doing we shall gain the good
will of all parties, and thus secure a permanent victory. Most
conquerors have incurred the hatred of mankind by their cruelties,
and have all, in consequence of the enmity they have thus awakened,
been prevented from long enjoying their power. Sylla was an exception;
but his example of successful cruelty I have no disposition to
imitate. I will conquer after a new fashion, and fortify myself in
the possession of the power I acquire by generosity and mercy."

Domitius had the ingratitude, after this release, to take up arms
again, and wage a new war against Csar. When Csar heard of it he
said it was all right. "I will act out the principles of my nature,"
said he, "and he may act out his."

Another instance of Csar's generosity occurred which is even more
remarkable than this.  It seems that among the officers of his
army there were some whom he had appointed at the recommendation
of Pompey, at the time when he and Pompey were friends. These men
would, of course, feel under obligations of gratitude to Pompey
as they owed their military rank to his friendly interposition in
their behalf. As soon as the war broke out Csar gave them all his
free permission to go over to Pompey's side if they chose to do
so.

Caesar acted thus very liberally in all respects.  He surpassed
Pompey very much in the spirit of generosity and mercy with which
he entered upon the great contest before them. Pompey ordered every
citizen to join his standard, declaring that he should consider
all neutrals as his enemies.  Csar, on the other hand, gave free
permission to every one to decline, if he chose, taking any part
in the contest, saying that he should consider all who did not act
against him as his friends. In the political contests of our day it
is to be observed that the combatants are much more prone to imitate
the bigotry of Pompey than the generosity of Csar, condemning, as
they often do, those who choose to stand aloof from electioneering
struggles, more than they do their most determined opponents and
enemies.

When, at length, Csar arrived at Brundusium, he found that Pompey
had sent a part of his army across the Adriatic into Greece and was
waiting for the transports to return that he might go over himself
with the remainder. In the meantime, he had fortified himself
strongly in the city.  Csar immediately laid siege to the place,
and he commenced some works to block up the mouth of the harbor. He
built piers on each side, extending out as far into the sea as the
depth of the water would allow them to be built. He then constructed
a series of rafts, which he anchored on the deep water, in a line
extending from one pier to the other. He built towers upon these
rafts, and garrisoned them with soldiers, in hopes by this means
to prevent all egress from the fort.  He thought that, when this
work was completed, Pompey would be entirely shut in, beyond all
possibility of escape.

The transports, however, returned before the work was completed.
Its progress was, of course, slow, as the constructions were the
scene of a continued conflict; for Pompey sent out rafts and galleys
against them every day, and the workmen had thus to build in the
midst of continual interruptions, sometimes from showers of darts,
arrows, and javelins, sometimes from the conflagrations of fireships,
and sometimes from the terrible concussions of great vessels of
war, impelled with prodigious force against them. The transports
returned, therefore, before the defences were complete, and contrived
to get into the harbor. Pompey immediately formed his plan for
embarking the remainder of his army.

He filled the streets of the city with barricades and pitfalls
excepting two streets which led to the place of embarkation. The
object of these obstructions was to embarrass Csar's progress
through the city in case he should force an entrance while his
men were getting on board the ships. He then, in order to divert
Csar's attention from his design, doubled the guards stationed upon
the walls on the evening of his intended embarkation, and ordered
them to make vigorous attacks upon all Csar's forces outside. Then,
when the darkness came on, he marched his troops through the two
streets which had been left open to the landing-place, and got them
as fast as possible on board the transports. Some of the people of
the town contrived to make known to Csar's army what was going on,
by means of signals from the walls; the army immediately brought
scaling ladders in great numbers, and, mounting the walls with great
ardor and impetuosity, they drove all before them, and soon broke
open the gates and got possession of the city. But the barricades
and pitfalls, together with the darkness, so embarrassed their
movements that Pompey succeeded in completing his embarkation and
sailing away.

Csar had no ships in which to follow. He returned to Rome. He met,
of course, with no opposition.  He re-established the government
there, organized the Senate anew, and obtained supplies of corn
from the public granaries and of money from the city treasury in
the capital. In going to the Capitoline Hill after this treasure,
he found the officer who had charge of the money stationed there
to defend it. He told Csar that it was contrary to law for him to
enter. Csar said that, for men with swords in their hands, there
was no law.  The officer still refused to admit him. Csar then
told him to open the doors or he would kill him on the spot. "And
you must understand," he added, "that it will be easier for me to
do it than it has been to say it." The officer resisted no longer,
and Csar went in.

After this, Csar spent some time in vigorous campaigns in Italy,
Spain, Sicily, and Gaul, wherever there was manifested any opposition
to his sway. When this work was accomplished, and all these countries
were completely subjected to his dominion, he began to turn his
thoughts to the plan of pursuing Pompey across the Adriatic Sea.




FEARLESS SAINT GENEVIEVE, PATRON SAINT OF PARIS

By Charlotte M. Yonge



Four hundred years of the Roman dominion had entirely tamed the once
wild and independent Gauls. Everywhere, except in the moorlands of
Brittany, they had become as much like Romans themselves as they
could accomplish; they had Latin names, spoke the Latin tongue, all
their personages of higher rank were enrolled as Roman citizens,
their chief cities were colonies where the laws were administered
by magistrates in the Roman fashion, and the houses, dress, and
amusements were the same as those of Italy. The greater part of
the towns had been converted to Christianity, though some paganism
still lurked in the more remote villages and mountainous districts.

It was upon these civilized Gauls that the terrible attacks came
from the wild nations who poured out of the center and east of
Europe. The Franks came over the Rhine and its dependent rivers,
and made furious attacks upon the peaceful plains, where the Gauls
had long lived in security, and reports were everywhere heard
of villages harried by wild horsemen, with short double-headed
battle-axes, and a horrible short pike covered with iron and with
several large hooks, like a gigantic artificial minnow, and like
it fastened to a long rope, so that the prey which it had grappled
might be pulled up to the owner. Walled cities usually stopped them,
but every farm or villa outside was stripped of its valuables, set
on fire, the cattle driven off, and the more healthy inhabitants
seized for slaves.

It was during this state of things that a girl was born to a wealthy
peasant at the village now called Nanterre, about two miles from
Lutetia, which was already a prosperous city, though not as yet so
entirely the capital as it was destined to become under the name of
Paris. She was christened by an old Gallic name, probably Gwenfrewi,
or White Stream, in Latin Genovefa, but she is best known by the late
French form of Genevieve. When she was about seven years old, two
celebrated bishops passed through the village, Germanus, of Auxerre,
and Lupus, of Troyes, who had been invited to Britain to dispute
the false doctrines of Pelagius.  All the inhabitants flocked into
the church to see them, pray with them, and receive their blessing;
and here the sweet childish devotion of Genevive so struck Germanus,
that he called her to him, talked to her, made her sit beside him
at the feast, gave her his special blessing, and presented her
with a copper medal with a cross engraven upon it. From that time
the little maiden always deemed herself especially consecrated to
the service of Heaven, but she still remained at home, daily keeping
her father's sheep, and spinning their wool as she sat under the
trees watching them, but always with her heart full of prayer.

After this St. Germanus proceeded to Britain, and there encouraged
his converts to meet the heathen Picts at Maes Garmon, in Flintshire,
where the exulting shout of the white-robed catechumens turned to
flight the wild superstitious savages of the north,--and the Hallelujah
victory was gained without a drop of bloodshed. He never lost sight
of Genevive, the little maid whom he had so early distinguished
for her piety.

After she lost her parents she went to live with her godmother,
and continued the same simple habits, leading a life of sincere
devotion and strict self-denial, constant prayer and much charity
to her poorer neighbors.

In the year 451 the whole of Gaul was in the most dreadful state
of terror at the advance of Attila, the savage chief of the Huns,
who came from the banks of the Danube with a host of savages
of hideous features, scarred and disfigured to render them more
frightful. The old enemies, the Goths and the Franks, seemed like
friends compared with these formidable beings, whose cruelties
were said to be intolerable, and of whom every exaggerated story
was told that could add to the horrors of the miserable people who
lay in their path. Tidings came that this "Scourge of God," as
Attila called himself, had passed the Rhine, destroyed Tongres and
Metz, and was in full march for Paris. The whole country was in the
utmost terror. Every one seized their most valuable possessions,
and would have fled; but Genevive placed herself on the only bridge
across the Seine, and argued with them, assuring them, in a strain
that was afterwards thought of as prophetic, that, if they would
pray, repent, and defend instead of abandoning their homes, God
would protect them. They were at first almost ready to stone her
for thus withstanding their panic, but just then a priest arrived
from Auxerre, with a present for Genevive from St. Germanus, and
they were thus reminded of the high estimation in which he held
her; they became ashamed of their violence, and she led them back
to pray and to arm themselves.  In a few days they heard that Attila
had paused to besiege Orleans, and that Atius, the Roman general,
hurrying from Italy, had united his troops with those of the Goths and
Franks, and given Attila so terrible a defeat at Chlons that the
Huns were fairly driven out of Gaul. And here it must be mentioned
that when in the next year, 452, Attila with his murderous host,
came down into Italy, and after horrible devastation of all the
northern provinces, came to the gates of Rome, no one dared to meet
him but one venerable bishop, Leo, the Pope, who, when his flock
were in transports of despair, went forth only accompanied by one
magistrate to meet the invader, and endeavored to turn his wrath
aside. The savage Huns were struck with awe by the fearless majesty
of the unarmed old man. They conducted him safely to Attila, who
listened to him with respect, and promised not to lead his people
into Rome, provided a tribute should be paid to him. He then
retreated, and, to the joy of all Europe, died on his way back to
his native dominions.

But with the Huns the danger and suffering of Europe did not end.
The happy state described in the Prophets as "dwelling safely, with
none to make them afraid," was utterly unknown in Europe throughout
the long break-up of the Roman Empire; and in a few more years
the Franks were overrunning the banks of the Seine, and actually
venturing to lay siege to the Roman walls of Paris itself. The
fortifications were strong enough, but hunger began to do the work
of the besiegers, and the garrison, unwarlike and untrained, began
to despair. But Genevive's courage and trust never failed; and
finding no warriors willing to run the risk of going beyond the
walls to obtain food for the women and children who were perishing
around them, this brave shepherdess embarked alone in a little
boat, and guiding it down the stream, landed beyond the Frankish
camp, and repairing to the different Gallic cities, she implored them
to send succor to their famished brethren. She obtained complete
success. Probably the Franks had no means of obstructing the passage
of the river, so that a convoy of boats could easily penetrate
into the town: at any rate they looked upon Genevive as something
sacred and inspired whom they durst not touch; probably as one of
the battle-maids in whom their own myths taught them to believe.
One account indeed says that, instead of going alone to obtain help,
Genevive placed herself at the head of a forage party, and that
the mere sight of her inspired bearing caused them to be allowed
to enter and return in safety; but the boat version seems the more
probable, since a single boat on the broad river would more easily
elude the enemy than a troop of Gauls pass through their army.

But a city where all the valor resided in one woman could not long
hold out, and in another inroad, when Genevieve was absent, Paris
was actually seized by the Franks. Their leader, Hilperik, was
absolutely afraid of what the mysteriously brave maiden might do
to him, and commanded the gates of the city to be carefully guarded
lest she should enter; but Genevive learnt that some of the chief
citizens were imprisoned, and that Hilperik intended their death,
and nothing could withhold her from making an effort in their
behalf.  The Franks had made up their minds to settle and not to
destroy. They were not burning and slaying indiscriminately, but
while despising the Romans, as they called the Gauls, for their
cowardice, they were in awe of their superior civilization and
knowledge of arts. The country people had free access to the city,
and Genevive in her homely gown and veil passed by Hilperik's
guards without being suspected of being more than any ordinary
Gaulish village-maid; and thus she fearlessly made her way, even
to the old Roman halls, where the long-haired Hilperik was holding
his wild carousal. Would that we knew more of that interview--one
of the most striking that ever took place!

We can only picture to ourselves the Roman tesselated pavement
bestrewn with wine, bones, and fragments of the barbarous revelry.
There were, untamed Franks, their sun-burnt hair tied up in a knot
at the top of their heads, and falling down like a horse's tail,
their faces close-shaven, except two huge mustaches, and dressed
in tight leather garments, with swords at their wide belts. Some
slept, some feasted, some greased their long locks, some shouted
out their favorite war-songs around the table, which was covered
with the spoils of churches, and at their head sat the wild,
long-haired chieftain, who was a few years later driven away by
his own followers for his excesses,--the whole scene was all that
was abhorrent to a pure, devout, and faithful nature, most full of
terror to a woman. Yet there, in her strength, stood the peasant
maiden, her heart full of trust and pity, her looks full of the power
that is given by fearlessness of them that can kill the body. What
she said we do not know--we only know that the barbarous Hilperik
was overawed; he trembled before the expostulations of the brave
woman, and granted all she asked--the safety of his prisoners, and
mercy to the terrified inhabitants.  No wonder that the people of
Paris have ever since looked back to Genevieve as their protectress,
and that in after-ages she has grown to be the patron saint of the
city.

She lived to see the son of Hilperik, Chlodwig, or, as he was more
commonly called, Clovis, marry a Christian wife, Clotilda, and after
a time become a Christian. She saw the foundation of the Cathedral
of Notre Dame, and of the two famous churches of St. Denys and of
St. Martin of Tours, and gave her full share to the first efforts
for bringing the rude and bloodthirsty conquerors to some knowledge
of Christian faith, mercy, and purity.  After a life of constant
prayer and charity she died, three months after King Clovis, in
the year 512, the 89th of her age.

[Illustration: HE SHOOK HIS CLENCHED FIST AT THE OBSTRUCTED SEA-STRAIT
_From the drawing by Gertrude Demain Hammond_]




THE BOY VIKING--OLAF II OF NORWAY

By E. S. Brooks



Old Rane, the helmsman, whose fierce mustaches and shaggy shoulder-mantle
made him look like some grim old Northern wolf, held high in air
the great bison-horn filled with foaming mead.

"Skoal to the Viking! Hael was-hael!"[Footnote: "Hail and health
to the Viking!"] rose his exultant shout. From a hundred sturdy
throats the cry re-echoed till the vaulted hall of the Swedemen's
conquered castle rang again.

"Skoal to the Viking! Hael; was-hael!" and in the centre of that
throng of mail-clad men and tossing spears, standing firm and
fearless upon the interlocked and uplifted shields of three stalwart
fighting-men, a stout-limbed lad of scarce thirteen, with flowing
light-brown hair and flushed and eager face, brandished his sword
vigorously in acknowledgment of the jubilant shout that rang once
again through the dark and smoke-stained hall: "Was-hael to the
sea-wolf's son! Skoal to Olaf the King!"

Then above the din and clash of shouting and of steel rose the voice
of Sigvat the saga-man, or song-man of the young viking, singing
loud and sturdily:


  "Olaf the King is on his cruise,
  His blue steel staining,
  Rich booty gaining,
  And all men trembling at the news,
  Up, war-wolf's brood! our young fir's name
  O'ertops the forest trees in fame,
  Our stout young Olaf knows no fear.
    Though fell the fray,
    He's blithe and gay,
  And warriors fall beneath his spear.
  Who can't defend the wealth they have
  Must die or share with the rover brave!"


A fierce and warlike song, boys and girls, to raise in honor of so
young a lad. But those were fierce and warlike days when men were
stirred by the recital of bold and daring deeds--those old, old
days, eight hundred years ago, when Olaf, the boy viking, the pirate
chief of a hundred mail-clad men, stood upon the uplifted shields
of his exultant fighting-men in the grim and smoke-stained hall of
the gray castle of captured Sigtun, oldest of Swedish cities.

Take your atlas and, turning to the map of Sweden, place your
finger on the city of Stockholm. Do you notice that it lies at the
easterly end of a large lake? That is the Maelar, beautiful with
winding channels, pine-covered islands, and rocky shores.  It is
peaceful and quiet now, and palace and villa and quaint Northern
farmhouse stand unmolested on its picturesque borders. But channels,
and islands, and rocky shores have echoed and re-echoed with the
war-shouts of many a fierce sea-rover since those far-off days
when Olaf, the boy viking, and his Norwegian ships of war ploughed
through the narrow sea-strait and ravaged the fair shores of the
Maelar with fire and sword.

Stockholm, the "Venice of the North," as it is called, was not then
in existence; and little now remains of old Sigtun save ruined walls.
But travellers may still see the three tall towers of the ancient
town, and the great stone-heap, alongside which young Olaf drew his
ships of war, and over which his pirate crew swarmed into Sigtun
town, and planted the victorious banner of the golden serpent upon
the conquered walls.

For this fair young Olaf came of hardy Norse stock. His father,
Harald Graenske, or "Gray-mantle," one of the tributary kings of
Norway, had fallen a victim to the tortures of the haughty Swedish
queen; and now his son, a boy of scarce thirteen, but a warrior
already by training and from desire, came to avenge his father's
death. His mother, the Queen Aasta, equipped a large dragon-ship or
war-vessel for her adventurous son, and with the lad, as helmsman
and guardian, was sent old Rane, whom men called "the far-travelled,"
because he had sailed westward as far as England and southward to
Nrvasund (by which name men then knew the Straits of Gibraltar).
Boys toughened quickly in those stirring days, and this lad,
who, because he was commander of a dragon-ship, was called Olaf
the King--though he had no land to rule--was of viking blood, and
quickly learned the trade of war.  Already, among the rocks and
sands of Sodermann, upon the Swedish coast, he had won his first
battle over a superior force of Danish war-vessels.

Other ships of war joined him; the name of Olaf the Brave was
given him by right of daring deeds, and "Skoal to the Viking!" rang
from the sturdy throats of his followers as the little sea-king of
thirteen was lifted in triumph upon the battle-dented shields.

But a swift runner bursts into the gray hall of Sigtun. "To your
ships, O king; to your ships!" he cries. "Olaf, the Swedish king,
men say, is planting a forest of spears along the sea-strait, and,
except ye push out now, ye may not get out at all!"

The nimble young chief sprang from the upraised shields.

"To your ships, vikings, all!" he shouted. "Show your teeth, war-wolves!
Up with the serpent banner, and death to Olaf the Swede!"

Straight across the lake to the sea-strait, near where Stockholm
now stands, the vikings sailed, young Olaf's dragon-ship taking the
lead. But all too late; for, across the narrow strait, the Swedish
king had stretched great chains, and had filled up the channel with
stocks and stones. Olaf and his Norsemen were fairly trapped; the
Swedish spears waved in wild and joyful triumph, and King Olaf,
the Swede, said with grim satisfaction to his lords: "See, jarls
and lendermen, the Fat Boy is caged at last!" For he never spoke
of his stout young Norwegian namesake and rival save as "Olaf
Tjocke"--Olaf the Thick, or Fat.

The boy viking stood by his dragon-headed prow, and shook his
clenched fist at the obstructed sea-strait and the Swedish spears.

"Shall we, then, land, Rane, and fight our way through?" he asked.

"Fight our way through?" said old Rane, who had been in many another
tight place in his years of sea-roving, but none so close as this.
"Why, king, they be a hundred to one!"

"And if they be, what then?" said impetuous Olaf "Better fall as
a viking breaking Swedish spears than die a straw-death [Footnote:
So contemptuously did those fierce old sea-kings regard a peaceful
life that they said of one who died quietly on his bed at home:
"His was but a straw-death."] as Olaf of Sweden's bonder-man. May
we not cut through these chains?"

"As soon think of cutting the solid earth, king," said the helmsman.

"So; and why not, then?" young Olaf exclaimed, struck with
a brilliant idea. "Ho, Sigvat," he said, turning to his saga-man,
"what was that lowland under the cliff where thou didst say the
pagan Upsal king was hanged in his own golden chains by his Finnish
queen?"

"'Tis called the fen of Agnefit, O king," replied the saga-man,
pointing toward where it lay.

"Why, then, my Rane," asked the boy, "may we not cut our way out
through that lowland fen, to the open sea and liberty?"

"'Tis Odin's own device," cried the delighted helmsman, catching at
his young chief's great plan. "Ho, war-wolves all, bite ye your way
through the Swedish fens! Up with the serpent banner, and farewell
to Olaf the Swede!"

It seemed a narrow chance, but it was the only one. Fortune favored
the boy viking. Heavy rains had flooded the lands that slope down
to the Maelar Lake; in the dead of night the Swedish captives and
stout Norse oarsmen were set to work, and before daybreak an open
cut had been made in the lowlands beneath Agnefit, or the "Rock of
King Agne," where, by the town of Sodertelje, the vikings' canal
is still shown to travellers; the waters of the lake came rushing
through the cut, and an open sea-strait awaited young Olaf's fleet.

"Unship the rudder; hoist the sail aloft!" commanded Bane the
helmsman. "Sound war-horns all! Skoal to the Viking; skoal to the
wise young Olaf!"

A strong breeze blew astern; the Norse rowers steered the rudderless
ships with their long oars, and with a mighty rush, through the new
canal and over all the shallows, out into the great Norrstrom, or
North Stream, as the Baltic Sea was called, the fleet passed in
safety while the loud war-horns blew the notes of triumph.

So the boy viking escaped from the trap of his Swedish foes, and,
standing by the "grim, gaping dragon's head" that crested the prow
of his warship, he bade the helmsman steer for Gotland Isle, while
Sigvat, the saga-man, sang with the ring of triumph:


         "Down the fiord sweep wind and rain;
          Our sails and tackle sway and strain;
                    Wet to the skin
                    We're sound within.
          Our sea-steed through the foam goes prancing,
          While shields and spears and helms are glancing.
                    From fiord to sea,
                    Our ships ride free,
          And down the wind with swelling sail
          We scud before the gathering gale."


What a breezy, rollicking old saga it is! Can't you almost catch
the spray and sea-swell in its dashing measures, boys?

Now, turn to your atlases again and look for the large island of
Gotland off the southeastern coast of Sweden, in the midst of the
Baltic Sea. In the time of Olaf it was a thickly peopled and wealthy
district, and the principal town, Wisby, at the northern end, was
one of the busiest places in all Europe. To this attractive island
the boy viking sailed with all his ships, looking for rich booty,
but the Gotlanders met him with fair words and offered him so great
a "scatt," or tribute, that he agreed not to molest them, and rested
at the island, an unwelcome guest, through all the long winter.
Early in the spring he sailed eastward to the Gulf of Riga and spread
fear and terror along the coast of Finland. And the old saga tells
how the Finlanders "conjured up in the night, by their witchcraft,
a dreadful storm and bad weather; but the king ordered all the
anchors to be weighed and sail hoisted, and beat off all night to
the outside of the land. So the king's luck prevailed more than
the Finlander's witchcraft."

Then away "through the wild sea" to Denmark sailed the young pirate
king, and here he met a brother viking, one Thorkell the Tall. The
two chiefs struck up a sort of partnership; and coasting southward
along the western shores of Denmark, they won a sea-fight in the
Ringkiobing Fiord, among the "sand hills of Jutland." And so business
continued brisk with this curiously matched pirate firm--a giant
and a boy--until, under the cliffs of Kinlimma, in Friesland,
hasty word came to the boy viking that the English king, Ethelred
the Unready, was calling for the help of all sturdy fighters to
win back his heritage and crown from young King Cnut, or Canute
the Dane, whose father had seized the throne of England. Quick to
respond to an appeal that promised plenty of hard knocks, and the
possibility of unlimited booty, Olaf, the ever ready, hoisted his
blue and crimson sails and steered his war-ships over the sea to
help King Ethelred, the never ready. Up the Thames and straight
for London town he rowed.

"Hail to the serpent banner! Hail to Olaf the Brave!" said
King Ethelred, as the war-horns sounded a welcome; and on the low
shores of the Isle of Dogs, just below the old city, the keels of
the Norse war-ships grounded swiftly, and the boy viking and his
followers leaped ashore. "Thou dost come in right good time with
thy trusty dragon-ships, young king," said King Ethelred; "for the
Danish robbers are full well entrenched in London town and in my
father Edgar's castle."

And then he told Olaf how, "in the great trading place which
is called Southwark," the Danes had raised "a great work and dug
large ditches, and within had builded a bulwark of stone, timber,
and turf, where they had stationed a large army.

"And we would fain have taken this bulwark," added the king, "and
did in sooth bear down upon it with a great assault; but indeed we
could make naught of it."

"And why so?" asked the young viking.

"Because," said King Ethelred, "upon the bridge betwixt the castle
and Southwark have the ravaging Danes raised towers and parapets,
breast high, and thence they did cast down stones and weapons upon
us so that we could not prevail. And now, sea-king, what dost thou
counsel? How may we avenge ourselves of our enemies and win the
town?"

Impetuous as ever, and impatient of obstacles, the young viking
said: "How? why, pull thou down this bridge, king, and then may ye
have free river-way to thy castle."

"Break down great London Bridge, young hero?" cried the amazed king.
"How may that be? Have we a Duke Samson among us to do so great a
feat?"

"Lay me thy ships alongside mine, king, close to this barricaded
bridge," said the valorous boy, "and I will vow to break it down,
or ye may call me caitiff and coward."

"Be it so," said Ethelred, the English king; and all the war-chiefs
echoed: "Be it so!" So Olaf and his trusty Rane made ready the
war-forces for the destruction of the bridge.

Old London Bridge was not what we should now call an imposing
structure, but our ancestors of nine centuries back esteemed it
quite a bridge. The chronicler says that it was "so broad that two
wagons could pass each other upon it," and "under the bridge were
piles driven into the bottom of the river."

So young Olaf and old Rane put their heads together, and decided
to wreck the bridge by a bold viking stroke. And this is how it is
told in the "Heimskringla," or Saga of King Olaf the Saint:

"King Olaf ordered great platforms of floating wood to be tied
together with hazel bands, and for this he took down old houses;
and with these, as a roof, he covered over his ships so widely that
it reached over the ships' sides. Under this screen he set pillars,
so high and stout that there both was room for swinging their
swords, and the roofs were strong enough to withstand the stones
cast down upon them."

"Now, out oars and pull for the bridge," young Olaf commanded; and
the roofed-over war-ships were rowed close up to London Bridge.

And as they came near the bridge, the chronicle says: "There were
cast upon them, by the Danes upon the bridge, so many stones and
missile weapons, such as arrows and spears, that neither helmet nor
shield could hold out against it; and the ships themselves were so
greatly damaged that many retreated out of it."

But the boy viking and his Norsemen were there for a purpose, and
were not to be driven back by stones or spears or arrows. Straight
ahead they rowed, "quite up under the bridge."

"Out cables, all, and lay them around the piles," the young sea-king
shouted; and the half-naked rowers, unshipping their oars, reached
out under the roofs and passed the stout cables twice around the
wooden supports of the bridge. The loose end was made fast at the
stern of each vessel, and then, turning and heading down stream,
King Olaf's twenty stout war-ships waited his word:

"Out oars!" he cried; "pull, war-birds! Pull all, as if ye were
for Norway!"

Forward and backward swayed the stout Norse rowers; tighter and
tighter pulled the cables; fast down upon the straining war-ships
rained the Danish spears and stones; but the wooden piles under
the great bridge were loosened by the steady tug of the cables,
and soon with a sudden spurt the Norse war-ships darted down the
river, while the slackened cables towed astern the captured piles
of London Bridge. A great shout went up from the besiegers, and
"now," says the chronicle, "as the armed troops stood thick upon
the bridge, and there were likewise many heaps of stones and other
weapons upon it, the bridge gave way; and a great part of the men
upon it fell into the river, and all the others fled--some into
the castle, some into Southwark." And before King Ethelred, "the
Unready, "could pull his ships to the attack, young Olaf's fighting-men
had sprung ashore, and, storming the Southwark earthworks, carried
all before them, and the battle of London Bridge was won.

And the young Olaf's saga-man sang triumphantly:


          "London Bridge is broken down--
           Gold is won and bright renown.
             Shields resounding,
             War-horns sounding,
           Hildar shouting in the din!
             Arrows singing,
             Mail-coats ringing,
           Odin makes our Olaf win!"


And perhaps, who knows, this wrecking of London Bridge so many
hundred years ago by Olaf, the boy viking of fifteen, may have
been the origin of the old song-game dear to so many generations
of children:

    "London Bridge is fallen down, fallen down, fallen down--
     London Bridge is fallen down, my fair lady!"


So King Ethelred won back his kingdom, and the boy viking was honored
above all others. To him was given the chief command in perilous
expeditions against the Danes, and the whole defence of all the
coast of England. North and south along the coast he sailed with
all his warships, and the Danes and Englishmen long remembered the
dashing but dubious ways of this young sea-rover, who swept the
English coast and claimed his dues from friend and foe alike. For
those were days of insecurity for merchant and trader and farmer,
and no man's wealth or life was safe except as he paid ready tribute
to the fierce Norse allies of King Ethelred. But soon after this,
King Ethelred died, and young Olaf, thirsting for new adventures,
sailed away to the south and fought his way all along the French
coast as far as the mouth of the River Garonne. Many castles
he captured; many rival vikings subdued; much spoil he gathered;
until at last his dragon-ships lay moored under the walls of old
Bordeaux, waiting for fair winds to take him around to the Straits
of Gibraltar, and so on "to the land of Jerusalem."

One day, in the booty-filled "fore-hold" of his dragon-ship, the
young sea-king lay asleep; and suddenly, says the old record, "he
dreamed a wondrous dream."

"Olaf, great stem of kings, attend!" he heard a deep voice call;
and, looking up, the dreamer seemed to see before him "a great and
important man, but of a terrible appearance withal."

"If that thou art Olaf the Brave, as men do call thee," said the
vision, "turn thyself to nobler deeds than vikings' ravaging and
this wandering cruise. Turn back, turn back from thy purposeless
journey to the land of Jerusalem, where neither honor nor fame
awaits thee. Son of King Harald, return thee to thy heritage; for
thou shalt be king over all Norway."

Then the vision vanished and the young rover awoke to find himself
alone, save for the sleeping foot-boy across the cabin door-way.
So he quickly summoned old Rane, the helmsman, and told his dream.

"'Twas for thy awakening, king," said his stout old follower. "'Twas
the great Olaf, thine uncle, Olaf Tryggvesson the king, that didst
call thee. Win Norway, king, for the portent is that thou and thine
shall rule thy fatherland."

And the war-ships' prows were all turned northward again, as the
boy viking, following the promise of his dream, steered homeward
for Norway and a throne.

Now in Norway Earl Eric was dead. For thirteen years he had usurped
the throne that should have been filled by one of the great King
Olaf's line; and, at his death, his handsome young son, Earl Hakon
the Fair, ruled in his father's stead. And when young King Olaf
heard this news, he shouted for joy and cried to Rane:

"Now, home in haste, for Norway shall be either Hakon's heritage
or mine!"

"'Tis a fair match of youth 'gainst youth," said the trusty helmsman;
"and if but fair luck go with thee, Norway shall be thine!"

So from "a place called Furovald," somewhere between the mouths of
Humber and of Tees, on the English coast, King Olaf, with but two
stout war-ships and two hundred and twenty "well-armed and chosen
persons," shook out his purple sails to the North Sea blasts, and
steered straight for Norway.

As if in league against this bold young viking the storm winds came
rushing down from the mountains of Norway and the cold belt of the
Arctic Circle and caught the two war-ships tossing in a raging sea.

The storm burst upon them with terrific force, and the danger of
shipwreck was great. "But," says the old record, "as they had a
chosen company and the king's luck with them all went on well."

"Thou able chief!"

sings the faithful saga-man,


                  "With thy fearless crew
           Thou meetest with skill and courage true
               The wild sea's wrath
               On thy ocean path.
           Though waves mast-high were breaking round,
           Thou findest the middle of Norway's ground,
               With helm in hand
               On Saelo's strand."


Now _Sael_ was Norse for "lucky" and Saelo's Island means the lucky
island.

"I'll be a lucky king for landing thus upon the Lucky Isle," said
rash young Olaf, with the only attempt at a joke we find recorded
of him, as, with a mighty leap, he sprang ashore where the sliding
keel of his war-ship ploughed the shore of Saelo's Isle.

"True, 'tis a good omen, king," said old Rane the helmsman, following
close behind.

But the soil of the "Lucky Isle" was largely clay, moist and
slippery, and as the eager young viking climbed the bank his right
foot slipped, and he would have fallen had not he struck his left
foot firmly in the clay and thus saved himself. But to slip at all
was a bad sign in those old, half-pagan, and superstitious times,
and he said, ruefully: "An omen; an omen, Rane! The king falls!"

"Nay,'tis the king's luck," says ready and wise old Rane. "Thou
didst not fall, king. See; thou didst but set fast foot in this
thy native soil of Norway."

"Thou art a rare diviner, Rane," laughed the young king, much
relieved, and then he added solemnly: "It may be so if God doth
will it so."

And now news comes that Earl Hakon, with a single war-ship, is
steering north from Sogne Fiord; and Olaf, pressing on, lays his two
ships on either side of a narrow strait, or channel, in Sandunga
Sound. Here he stripped his ships of all their war-gear, and stretched
a great cable deep in the water, across the narrow strait. Then he
wound the cable-ends around the capstans, ordered all his fighting-men
out of sight, and waited for his rival. Soon Earl Hakon's war-ship,
crowded with rowers and fighting-men, entered the strait. Seeing,
as he supposed, but two harmless merchant-vessels lying on either
side of the channel, the young earl bade his rowers pull between
the two. Suddenly there is a stir on the quiet merchant-vessels.
The capstan bars are manned; the sunken cable is drawn taut. Up
goes the stern of Earl Hakon's entrapped warship; down plunges her
prow into the waves, and the water pours into the doomed boat. A
loud shout is heard; the quiet merchant-vessels swarm with mail-clad
men, and the air is filled with a shower of stones, and spears,
and arrows. The surprise is complete. Tighter draws the cable; over
topples Earl Hakon's vessel, and he and all his men are among the
billows struggling for life. "So," says the record, "King Olaf took
Earl Hakon and all his men whom they could get hold of out of the
water and made them prisoners; but some were killed and some were
drowned."

Into the "fore-hold" of the king's ship the captive earl was led a
prisoner, and there the young rivals for Norway's crown faced each
other. The two lads were of nearly the same age--between sixteen
and seventeen--and young Earl Hakon was considered the handsomest
youth in all Norway. His helmet was gone, his sword was lost, his
ring-steel suit was sadly disarranged, and his long hair, "fine
as silk," was "bound about his head with a gold ornament." Fully
expecting the fate of all captives in those cruel days--instant
death--the young earl nevertheless faced his boy conqueror proudly,
resolved to meet his fate like a man.

"They speak truth who say of the house of Eric that ye be handsome
men," said the king, studying his prisoner's face. "But now, earl,
even though thou be fair to look upon, thy luck hath failed thee
at last."

"Fortune changes," said the young earl. "We both be boys; and thou,
king, art perchance the shrewder youth. Yet, had we looked for such
a trick as thou hast played upon us, we had not thus been tripped
upon thy sunken cables. Better luck next time."

"Next time!" echoed the king; "dost thou not know, earl, that as
thou standest there, a prisoner, there may be no 'next time' for
thee?"

The young captive understood full well the meaning of the words.
"Yes, king," he said; "it must be only as thou mayst determine.
Man can die but once. Speak on; I am ready!" But Olaf said: "What
wilt thou give me, earl, if at this time I do let thee go, whole
and unhurt?"

"'Tis not what I may give, but what thou mayst take, king," the
earl made answer. "I am thy prisoner; what wilt thou take to free
me?"

"Nothing," said the generous young viking, advancing nearer to his
handsome rival. "As thou didst say, we both be boys, and life is
all before us. Earl, I give thee thy life, do thou but take oath
before me to leave this my realm of Norway, to give up thy kingdom,
and never to do battle against me hereafter."

The conquered earl bent his fair young head.

"Thou art a generous chief, King Olaf," he said. "I take my life
as thou dost give it, and all shall be as thou wilt."

So Earl Hakon took the oath, and King Olaf righted his rival's
capsized war-ship, refitted it from his own stores of booty, and
thus the two lads parted; the young earl sailing off to his uncle,
King Canute, in England, and the boy viking hastening eastward to
Vigen, where lived his mother, the Queen Aasta, whom he had not
seen for full five years.

It is harvest-time in the year 1014. Without and within the long,
low house of Sigurd Syr, at Vigen, all is excitement; for word has
come that Olaf the sea-king has returned to his native land, and is
even now on his way to this his mother's house. Gay stuffs decorate
the dull walls of the great-room, clean straw covers the earth
floor, and upon the long, four-cornered tables is spread a mighty
feast of mead and ale and coarse but hearty food, such as the old
Norse heroes drew their strength and muscle from. At the door-way
stands the Queen Aasta with her maidens, while before the entrance,
with thirty "well-clothed men," waits young Olafs stepfather,
wise Sigurd Syr, gorgeous in a jewelled suit, a scarlet cloak, and
a glittering golden helmet. The watchers on the housetops hear a
distant shout, now another and nearer one, and soon, down the highway,
they catch the gleam of steel and the waving of many banners; and
now they can distinguish the stalwart forms of Olaf's chosen hundred
men, their shining coats of ring-mail, their foreign helmets, and
their crossleted shields flashing in the sun. In the very front
rides old Rane, the helmsman, bearing the great white banner blazoned
with the golden serpent, and, behind him, cased in golden armor,
his long brown hair flowing over his sturdy shoulders, rides the
boy viking, Olaf of Norway.

It was a brave home-coming; and as the stout young hero, leaping
from his horse, knelt to receive his mother's welcoming kiss, the
people shouted for joy, the banners waved, the war-horns played their
loudest; and thus, after five years of wandering, the boy comes
back in triumph to the home he left when but a wild and adventurous
little fellow of twelve.

The hero of nine great sea-fights, and of many smaller ones, before
he was seventeen, young Olaf Haraldson was a remarkable boy, even
in the days when all boys aimed to be battle-tried heroes. Toughened
in frame and fibre by his five years of sea-roving, he had become
strong and self-reliant, a man in action though but a boy in years.

"I am come," he said to his mother and his step-father, "to take
the heritage of my forefathers. But not from Danish nor from Swedish
kings will I supplicate that which is mine by right. I intend rather
to seek my patrimony with battle-axe and sword, and I will so lay
hand to the work that one of two things shall happen: Either I
shall bring all this kingdom of Norway under my rule, or I shall
fall here upon my inheritance in the land of my fathers."

These were bold words for a boy of seventeen. But they were not
idle boastings. Before a year had passed, young Olaf's pluck and
courage had won the day, and in harvest-time, in the year 1015,
being then but little more than eighteen years old, he was crowned
King of Norway in the Drontheim, or "Throne-home," of Nidaros, the
royal city, now called on your atlas the city of Drontheim.  For
fifteen years King Olaf the Second ruled his realm of Norway.
The old record says that he was "a good and very gentle man"; but
history shows his goodness and gentleness to have been of a rough
and savage kind. The wild and stern experiences of his viking days
lived again even in his attempts to reform and benefit his land.
When he who had himself been a pirate tried to put down piracy, and
he who had been a wild young robber sought to force all Norway to
become Christian, he did these things in so fierce and cruel a way
that at last his subjects rebelled, and King Canute came over with
a great army to wrest the throne from him. On the bloody field of
Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, the stern king fell, says Sigvat, his
saga-man,



  "beneath the blows
  By his own thoughtless people given."



So King Canute conquered Norway; but after his death, Olaf's son,
Magnus the Good, regained his father's throne. The people, sorrowful
at their rebellion against King Olaf, forgot his stern and cruel
ways, and magnified all his good deeds so mightily that he was at
last declared a saint, and the shrine of Saint Olaf is still one
of the glories of the old cathedral in Drontheim. And, after King
Magnus died, his descendants ruled Norway for nearly four hundred
years; and thus was brought to pass the promise of the dream that,
in the "fore-hold" of the great dragon-ship, under the walls of
old Bordeaux, came so many years before to the daring and sturdy
young Olaf of Norway, the boy viking.




THE BOY-HEROES OF CRECY AND POITIERS

By Treadwell Walden



Almost every one has heard of the famous battles of Crecy and
Poitiers, which were so much alike in all that made them remarkable
that they are generally coupled together,--one always reminding us
of the other. Yet there is one point they had in common which has
not been especially remarked, but which ought to link them memorably
together in the imagination of young people.

These two great battles really took place ten years apart; for one
was fought in 1346 and the other in 1356. The battle-fields also
were wide apart; for Crecy was far in the north of France, near
the coast of the English Channel, and Poitiers away in the south,
deep in the interior, nearly three hundred miles from Crecy. But they
have drawn near to each other in the mind of students of history,
because in both cases the French largely outnumbered the English;
in both cases the English had gone so far into the country that
their retreat seemed to be cut off; in both cases there was a most
surprising and unexpected result, for the French were terribly
defeated; and in both cases this happened because they made the
same mistake: they trusted so much to their overwhelming numbers,
to their courage and their valor, that they forgot to be careful
about anything else, while the English made up for their small
numbers by prudence, discipline, and skill, without which courage
and valor are often of no avail.

It is quite exciting to read the description of these battles, with
their archery fights, the clashing together of furious knights,
the first brave advance and the final running away; but, after a
while, the battles at large seem to fade out in the greater interest
which surrounds the figures of two youngsters,--one hardly more
than fifteen, the other scarcely fourteen,--for one carried off
all the honors of the victory of Crecy, and the other redeemed
from total dishonor the defeat of Poitiers.  Let us now take up
the romantic story of the English lad in the former battle, and of
the French lad in the latter.

When, in 1346, Edward III of England had determined upon an invasion
of France, he brought over his army in a fleet of nearly a thousand
sail.  He had with him not only the larger portion of his great
nobles, but also his eldest son, Edward Plantagenet, the Prince
of Wales. He had good reasons for taking the boy. The prince was
expected to become the next King of England. His father evidently
thought him able to take a very important part in becoming also
the King of France. If all the accounts of him are true, he was a
remarkable youth; wonderfully strong and courageous, and wonderfully
discreet for his years.

There was only one road to success or fame in those days, and that
was the profession of arms.  The ambition of every high-born young
fellow was to become a knight. Knighthood was something that both
king and nobles regarded as higher in some respects than even the
royalty or nobility to which they were born. No one could be admitted
into an order of the great brotherhood of knights, which extended
all over Europe and formed an independent society, unless he had
gone through severe discipline, and had performed some distinguished
deed of valor. Then he could wear the golden spurs; for knighthood
had its earliest origin in the distinction of fighting on horseback,
while ordinary soldiers fought on foot. Although knighthood changed
afterward, the word "chivalry" always expressed it, from _cheval_,
a horse. And in addition to valor, which was the result of physical
strength and courage, the knight was expected to be generous,
courteous, faithful, devout, truthful, high-souled, high-principled.
Hence the epithet, "chivalrous," which, even to-day, is so often
heard applied to men of especially fine spirit. "Honor" was the
great word which included all these qualities then, as it does in
some measure now.

I have only time to give you the standard, and cannot pause to tell
you how well or ill it was lived up to generally. But I would not
have taken this story in hand if chivalry had to be left out of
the account, for it was chivalry that made my two boys the heroes
they were.

As soon as King Edward landed at La Hague, he gave very clear
evidence of the serious work he had cut out for his son, and of
his confidence that the youngster would be equal to it. He publicly
pledged his boy, beforehand, to some great deed, and to a life of
valor and honor. In sight of the whole army, he went through the
form of making him a knight. Young Edward, clad in armor, kneeled
down before him on the wet sand, when the king touched his shoulder
with his sword, saying: "I dub thee knight. Be brave, bold, and
loyal!" You may imagine how proudly then the young fellow seized
lance and sword and shield, and sprang into his saddle at a leap,
and with what high resolve he rode on beside his mailed and gallant
father to deserve the name which that impressive ceremony had given
him.

The army moved rapidly forward and northward toward Calais, conquering
everything on its way, till when in the neighborhood of Crecy, the
intelligence came that the French king, Philip, with an army of
one hundred and twenty thousand men and all the chivalry of France,
had come in between it and the sea. There was no retreat possible.
Edward had but thirty thousand to oppose this great host. They were
four to one. He was in a dangerous spot also; but after a time he
succeeded in getting away to a good position, and there he awaited
the onset. No one will doubt that he was anxious enough, and yet
what did he do? After arranging his troops in battle order, three
battalions deep, he sent young Edward to the very front of the
brilliant group of his finest barons to take the brunt of the terrible
charge that was now to come! It shows of what stern material the
king and the men of that time were made, for all his present love,
all his future hope, lay around that gallant boy. But he knew that
the value of the glory which might be earned was worth all the
risk. Besides, he was as much under chivalrous necessity to send
him, as the lad was under to go. That pledge to knighthood, on the
sea-shore, had not been either lightly taken or lightly given. If
chivalry was not equal to sacrifice, it was equal to nothing. There
was keen wisdom, too, in the act. The king could count all the
more on the enthusiasm, self-devotion and valor of the knights and
men-at-arms, in whose keeping he had placed so precious a charge.
That whole first battalion would be nerved to tenfold effort
because the prince was among them, for every one would be as deeply
concerned as the father in the boy's success.

Edward carried his feeling of devotion to his son's best interests
to such a chivalrous extent that he made it a point of duty to keep
out of the battle altogether.

He was nowhere to be seen. He went into a windmill on a height
nearby, and watched the fight through one of the narrow windows
in its upper story. He would not even put on his helmet.  That was
the way the father stood by his son--by showing absolute confidence
in him, and denying himself all the glory that might come from a
great and important battle. And the young fellow was a thousandfold
nerved and strengthened by knowing that his father fully trusted
in him.

I need not give the details of the battle. It is sufficient to know
that the first line of the French chivalry charged with the utmost
fury. Among these was an ally of note, John, King of Bohemia, who
with his barons and knights was not behindhand in the deadly onset;
and yet this king was old and blind! His was chivalry in another
form! He would have his stroke in the battle, and he plunged into
it with his horse tied by its reins to one of his knights on either
side. A plume of three ostrich feathers waved from his helmet,
and the chroniclers say he laid about him well. After the battle,
he and his two companions were found dead, with their horses tied
together.

But although the French were brave they were not wise. For not only
had they brought on the fight with headlong energy before they were
prepared, but they had allowed Edward to place himself so that the
afternoon sun, then near its setting, blazed full in their eyes
and faces. Edward's army fought in the shadow. The terrible English
bowmen sent their deadly cloth-yard arrows so thick and fast into
the dazzled and crowded ranks of fifteen thousand Genoese archers
and the intermingled men-at-arms, that the missiles filled the air
like snow. The Genoese were thrown into confusion, and this spread
throughout the whole French army.  The French king, with some of
his dukes, flew foaming over the field in the rear, trying in vain
to get up in time to swell the onset upon the English front.

But the onset had proved bad enough as it was.  The knights around
the young prince were frightened for his safety. One of them, Sir
Thomas of Norwich, was sent hack to Edward to ask him to come to
the assistance of the prince.

"Sir Thomas," said the king, "is my son dead or unhorsed, or so
wounded that he cannot help himself?"

"Not so, my lord, thank God; but he is fighting against great odds,
and is like to have need of your help."

"Sir Thomas," replied the king, "return to them who sent you, and
tell them from me not to send for me, whatever chance befall them,
so long as my son is alive, and tell them that I bid them let the
lad win his spurs; for I wish, if God so desire, that the day should
be his, and the honor thereof remain to him and to those to whom
I have given him in charge."

And there he stayed in the windmill till the battle was over. Soon
the cry of victory reached him as the French fled in the darkness,
leaving their dead strewn upon the field. Now the young prince
appeared covered with all the glory that his father had coveted
for him, bearing the ostrich plume which he had taken from the dead
King of Bohemia.  The boy rode up with his visor raised,--his face
was as fair as a girl's, and glowed under a crown of golden hair.
He bore his trophy aloft, and when it was placed as a knightly
decoration above the crest of his helmet, he little thought that
the triple tuft was to wave for more than five hundred years, even
to this day, on England's front, for such it does, and that, next
to the crown, there shall be no badge so proudly known as the
three feathers which nod above the coronet of the Prince of Wales.
Edward Albert, son of King George V, now wears it because Edward,
the Prince of Wales, when still in his teens, won it at Crecy. We
will leave him there, and go on ten years.

Philip, the French king, had passed away about six years before,
and John, a wild character for such a trying time, had ascended
the throne. He was always plunging himself into difficulties, and
was often guilty of cruelty; and yet was of such a free, generous
nature, and had so many of the virtues of chivalry in that day,
that he was known as "John the Good." He was the extreme opposite
to the grave, prudent, sagacious Edward III, who was still alive
and well, and King of England.

Some time after the victory of Crecy, Calais had been taken, and then
both nations were glad to arrange a truce. Nine years of this had
gone by, when Edward thought it necessary to make another attempt
on France. As soon as might be, therefore, young Edward, his son,
now twenty-five, came over alone, landing at Bordeaux. He had,
meantime, gained great fame.  He was now known as "the Black Prince,"
because he had a fancy for having his armor painted as black as
midnight, in order, they say, to give a greater brightness to his
fresh blond complexion and golden hair. Marshaling his little army
of 12,000 men, he set out into the interior of France. When he had
reached the neighborhood of Poitiers, he was astounded by the news
that King John was both after him and behind him, with a force of
60,000 men--five to one! Here was Crecy over again as to numbers,
but there was one thing made it worse; for, as Edward III not long
before had instituted the famous "Order of the Garter" which is
even now one of the foremost orders of knighthood in Europe, so
John, not to be behindhand, and in order to give a new chivalrous
impulse to his nobles, had just instituted the "Order of the Star."
He made five hundred knights of this new order, every one of whom
had vowed that he would never retreat, and would sooner be slain
than yield to an enemy.

The Black Prince thought it almost impossible to fight his way
through such a desperately determined host. So he offered to restore
all he had just conquered and to make another truce, if he might
pass by unmolested. But John would not consent. He must have Calais
back again, and the prince, with one hundred of his best knights,
into the bargain.  "This will never do," thought the prince. "Better
try for another Crecy."

On the morning of September 19,1356, the battle began. John had
with him all four of his sons, Charles, Louis, John and Philip; the
eldest only nineteen, and the youngest fourteen. The three former
were put under good guardianship in different portions of the field;
but why the hair-brained monarch took the youngest boy with him
into the very front and thickest of the fight, it is hard to guess,
unless it was another imitation of Edward, and he had also good
reason to think that the lad was unusually well able to take care
of himself, having been trained at arms and pledged to knighthood.
But young "Sir Philip," as he was called, proved quite equal to
the occasion.

King John himself led the van, moving down through a defile, into
which, after a time, his whole army found themselves crowded.
Meantime, the Prince of Wales had planted his army just where he
would tempt John into that trap and had set his archers in good
position. These men were clad in green, like Robin Hood's men, and
carried bows seven feet long and so thick that few men of modern
days could bend them. A cloth-yard shaft from one of these would fly
with tremendous force. Edward had placed these archers in ambush,
behind green hedges, and crouching in the green of the vineyards.

Just as the French king, with all his new chivalry around him, dashed
down the narrow valley--the white standard of France on one side
of him, his keen-eyed little son on the other--and began to deploy
the whole advance battalion, preliminary to a grand charge--whiz!
whiz! whir! whir! from both sides came the arrows, as thick as hail
and as terrible as javelins, from the hidden archers. The astonished
Frenchmen fell back. That crowded still more those who were yet
wedged in the narrow space behind. Now came the English onset.
Then a panic. Then a rout. Then a general flight.  Dukes, barons,
knights of all sorts fled with the rest; also Charles, Louis, John,
the three elder sons of the king. The king was in great danger of
being slain; but he did not move, and Philip stood fighting by his
side. The standard-bearer fell, and the white ensign lay in the
dust. Many a faithful knight was cut down, or swept away a prisoner.
But Philip flinched not.

The assailants--some of whom knew the king, while others were
wondering who he might be--pressed them fiercely on every side,
striking at them, but more anxious to take them captives than
to kill them, for they were worth a heavy ransom. The Englishmen
shouted all together, "Yield you!  Yield you, else you die!" Little
Sir Philip had no yield in him, as long as his father held out. He
kept close to him, trying to ward off the blows which were aimed
at him, and warning him in time, as his quick eye caught a near
danger on either hand. Every instant he was heard calling out,
"Father, ware right! Father, ware left!" Suddenly a mounted knight
appeared, who hailed the king in French. It was a French knight,
who was fighting on the English side.

"Sir, sir!" he shouted, "I pray you yield!"

"To whom shall I yield me?" said John, "Where is my cousin, the
Prince of Wales?"

"Sir, yield you to me; I will bring you to him."

"Who are you?" said the king.

"Denis de Morbecque, a knight of Artois; I serve the King of England,
not being able to live in France, for I have lost all I possessed
there."

"I yield me to you," said John, handing him his steel glove.

Then the whole crowd began to drag at him, each exclaiming: "I
took him!" Both the king and the prince were sadly hustled, until
two barons broke through the throng by dint of their horses, and
led the two to the tent of the Prince of Wales, "and made him a
present of the King of France!" says an old chronicler. "The prince
also bowed full low before the king, and received him as a king,
properly and discreetly, as he well knew how to do."

In the evening he entertained him and Philip at supper, "and would
not sit at the king's table for all the king's entreaty, but waited
as a serving man, bending the knee before him, and saying: 'Dear
sir, be pleased not to put on so bad a countenance, because it hath
not pleased God to consent this day to your wishes; for, assuredly,
my lord and father will show you all the honor and friendship he
shall be able, and he will come to terms with you so reasonably
that you shall remain good friends forever.'"

Nor did all this end in words, but it went on for years during all
the captivity of King John and Prince Philip,--first at Bordeaux and
afterward at the then new Windsor Castle, in England, where galas,
tournaments, hawking and hunting, and all sorts of entertainments
were devised for them.  When King John was brought from Bordeaux
to England, where King Edward had prepared to meet him in great
state, the French king was mounted on a tall, cream-colored charger,
and young Philip rode by his side in great honor also, while the
Prince of Wales sat on a small black horse, like an humble attendant
on them both. The two royal fathers met midway in that London street,
the houses which lined the way were hung with rich tapestries, the
trades were out in companies of many colors, the people thronged
round the steelclad cavalcades as they came together, and they
filled the air with shouts--but what two figures now most fill
the eye when all that pageant has passed away? Not the father who
stood by his son with such chivalrous faith, nor the father whose
son stood by him with such chivalrous devotion, but the fair youth
who carries that tuft of feathers upon his helmet, with its motto,
"I serve," and the lad whom all have heard of as "Philip the Bold";
the boy-hero of Crecy doing chivalrous honor to the boy-hero of
Poitiers!




THE NOBLE BURGHERS OF CALAIS

By Charlotte M. Yonge



Nowhere does the continent of Europe approach Great Britain so
closely as at the Straits of Dover, and when the English sovereigns
were full of the vain hope of obtaining the crown of France, or
at least of regaining the great possessions that their forefathers
had owned as French nobles, there was no spot so coveted by them
as the fortress of Calais, the possession of which gave an entrance
into France.

Thus it was that when, in 1346, Edward III had beaten Philippe VI
at the battle of Crecy, the first use he made of his victory was to
march upon Calais, and lay siege to it. The walls were exceedingly
strong and solid, mighty defenses of masonry, of huge thickness
and like rocks for solidity, guarded it, and the king knew that it
would be useless to attempt a direct assault. Indeed, during all
the middle ages, the modes of protecting fortifications were far
more efficient than the modes of attacking them. The walls could
be made enormously massive, the towers raised to a great height,
and the defenders so completely sheltered by battlements that they
could not easily be injured, and could take aim from the top of
their turrets, or from their loophole windows. The gates had absolute
little castles of their own, a moat flowed round the walls full of
water, and only capable of being crossed by a drawbridge, behind
which the portcullis, a grating armed beneath with spikes, was
always ready to drop from the archway of the gate and close up the
entrance. The only chance of taking a fortress by direct attack was
to fill up the moat with earth and faggots, and then raise ladders
against the walls; or else to drive engines against the defenses,
battering-rams which struck them with heavy beams, mangonels which
launched stones, sows whose arched wooden backs protected troops
of workmen who tried to undermine the wall, and moving towers
consisting of a succession of stages or shelves, filled with soldiers,
and with a bridge with iron hooks, capable of being launched from
the highest story to the top of the battlements. The besieged could
generally disconcert the battering-ram by hanging beds or mattresses
over the walls to receive the brunt of the blow, the sows could
be crushed with heavy stones, the towers burnt by well directed
flaming missiles, the ladders overthrown, and in general the besiegers
suffered a great deal more damage than they could inflict. Cannon
had indeed just been brought into use at the battle of Crecy, but
they only consisted of iron bars fastened together with hoops,
and were as yet of little use, and thus there seemed to be little
danger to a well guarded city from any enemy outside the walls.

King Edward arrived before the place with all his victorious army
early in August, his good knights and squires arrayed in glittering
steel armor, covered with surcoats richly embroidered with their
heraldic bearings; his stout men-at-arms, each of whom was attended
by three bold followers; and his archers, with their cross-bows to
shoot bolts, and long-bows to shoot arrows of a yard long, so that
it used to be said that each went into battle with three men's lives
under his girdle, namely the three arrows he kept there ready to
his hand. With the king was his son, Edward, Prince of Wales, who
had just won the golden spurs of knighthood so gallantly at Crecy
when only in his seventeenth year, and likewise the famous Hainault
knight, Sir Walter Mauny, and all that was noblest and bravest in
England.

This whole glittering army, at their head the king's great
royal standard bearing the golden lilies of France quartered with
the lions of England, and each troop guided by the square banner,
swallow-tailed pennon or pointed pennoncel of their leader, came
marching to the gates of Calais, above which floated the blue
standard of France with its golden flowers, and with it the banner
of the governor, Sir Jean de Vienne. A herald, in a rich long robe
embroidered with the arms of England, rode up to the gate, a trumpet
sounding before him, and called upon Sir Jean de Vienne to give up
the place to Edward, King of England, and of France, as he claimed
to be. Sir Jean made answer that he held the town for Philippe,
King of France, and that he would defend it to the last; the herald
rode back again and the English began the siege of the city.

At first they only encamped, and the people of Calais must have
seen the whole plain covered with the white canvas tents, marshalled
round the ensigns of the leaders, and here and there a more gorgeous
one displaying the colors of the owner.  Still there was no attack
upon the walls. The warriors were to be seen walking about in the
leathern suits they wore under their armor; or if a party was to
be seen with their coats of mail on, helmet on head, and lance in
hand, it was not against Calais that they came; they rode out into
the country, and by and by might be seen driving-back before them
herds of cattle and flocks of sheep or pigs that they had seized
and taken away from the poor peasants; and at night the sky would
show red lights where farms and homesteads had been set on fire.
After a time, in front of the tents, the English were to be seen
hard at work with beams and boards, setting up huts for themselves,
and thatching them over with straw or broom.

These wooden houses were all ranged in regular streets, and there
was a market-place in the midst, whither every Saturday came farmers
and butchers to sell corn and meat, and hay for the horses; and
the English merchants and Flemish weavers would come by sea and by
land to bring cloth, bread, weapons, and everything that could be
needed to be sold in this warlike market.

The governor, Sir Jean de Vienne, began to perceive that the king
did not mean to waste his men by making vain attacks on the strong
walls of Calais, but to shut up the entrance by land, and watch
the coast by sea so as to prevent any provisions from being taken
in, and so to starve him into surrendering. Sir Jean de Vienne,
however, hoped that before he should be entirely reduced by famine,
the King of France would be able to get together another army and
come to his relief, and at any rate he was determined to do his
duty, and hold out for his master to the last. But as food was
already beginning to grow scarce, he was obliged to turn out such
persons as could not fight and had no stores of their own, and so
one Wednesday morning he caused all the poor to be brought together,
men, women, and children, and sent them all out of the town, to
the number of 1,700. It was probably the truest mercy, for he had
no food to give them, and they could only have starved miserably
within the town, or have hindered him from saving it for his
sovereign; but to them it was dreadful to be driven out of house
and home, straight down upon the enemy, and they went along weeping
and wailing, till the English soldiers met them and asked why they
had come out. They answered that they had been put out because they
had nothing to eat, and their sorrowful famished looks gained pity
for them. King Edward sent orders that not only should they go
safely through his camp, but that they should all rest, and have
the first hearty dinner that they had eaten for many a day, and he
sent every one a small sum of money before they left the camp, so
that many of them went on their way praying aloud for the enemy
who had been so kind to them.

A great deal happened whilst King Edward kept watch in his wooden
town and the citizens of Calais guarded their walls. England was
invaded by King David II of Scotland, with a great army, arid the
good Queen Philippa, who was left to govern at home in the name of
her little son Lionel, assembled all the forces that were left at
home, and sent them to meet him. And one autumn day, a ship crossed
the Straits of Dover, and a messenger brought King Edward letters
from his queen to say that the Scots army had been entirely defeated
at Nevil's Cross, near Durham, and that their king was a prisoner,
but that he had been taken by a squire named John Copeland, who
would not give him up to her.

King Edward Sent letters to John Copeland to come to him at Calais,
and when the squire had made his journey, the king took him by the
hand saying, "Ha! welcome, my squire, who by his valor has captured
our adversary the King of Scotland."

Copeland, falling on one knee, replied, "If God, out of His great
kindness, has given me the King of Scotland, no one ought to be
jealous of it, for God can, when He pleases, send His grace to a
poor squire as well as to a great lord. Sir, do not take it amiss
if I did not surrender him to the orders of my lady queen, for I
hold my lands of you, and my oath is to you, not to her."

The king was not displeased with his squire's sturdiness, but made
him a knight, gave him a pension of 500_l._. a year, and desired him
to surrender his prisoner to the queen, as his own representative.
This was accordingly done, and King David was lodged in the Tower
of London.  Soon after, three days before All Saints' Day, there
was a large and gay fleet to be seen crossing from the white cliffs
of Dover, and the king, his son, and his knights rode down to the
landing-place to welcome plump, fair-haired Queen Philippa, and all
her train of ladies, who had come in great numbers to visit their
husbands, fathers, or brothers in the wooden town. Then there was
a great court, and numerous feasts and dances, and the knights and
squires were constantly striving who could do the bravest deed of
prowess to please the ladies. The King of France had placed numerous
knights and men-at-arms in the neighboring towns and castles, and
there were constant fights whenever the English went out foraging,
and many bold deeds that were much admired were done. The great
point was to keep provisions out of the town, and there was much
fighting between the French who tried to bring in supplies, and the
English who intercepted them. Very little was brought in by land,
and Sir Jean de Vienne and his garrison would have been quite starved
but for two sailors of Abbeville, named Marant and Mestriel, who
knew the coast thoroughly, and often, in the dark autumn evenings,
would guide in a whole fleet of little boats, loaded with bread and
meat for the starving men within the city.  They were often chased
by King Edward's vessels, and were sometimes very nearly taken,
but they always managed to escape, and thus they still enabled the
garrison to hold out.

So all the winter passed, Christmas was kept with brilliant feasting
and high merriment by the king and his queen in their wooden palace
outside, and with lean cheeks and scanty fare by the besieged
within. Lent was strictly observed perforce by the besieged, and
Easter brought a betrothal in the English camp; a very unwilling
one on the part of the bridegroom, the young Count of Flanders, who
loved the French much better than the English, and had only been
tormented into giving his consent by his unruly vassals because
they depended on the wool of English sheep for their cloth works.
So, though King Edward's daughter Isabel was a beautiful fair-haired
girl of fifteen, the young count would scarcely look at her; and
in the last week before the marriage-day, while her robes and her
jewels were being prepared, and her father and mother were arranging
the presents they should make to all their court on the wedding-day,
the bridegroom, when out hawking, gave his attendants the slip,
and galloped off to Paris, where he was welcomed by King Philippe.

This made Edward very wrathful, and more than ever determined to
take Calais. About Whitsuntide he completed a great wooden castle
upon the seashore, and placed in it numerous warlike engines, with
forty men-at-arms and 200 archers, who kept such a watch upon the
harbor that not even the two Abbeville sailors could enter it,
without having their boats crushed and sunk by the great stones
that the mangonels launched upon them. The townspeople began to feel
what hunger really was, but their spirits were kept up by the hope
that their king was at last collecting an army for their rescue.

And Philippe did collect all his forces, a great and noble army,
and came one night to the hill of Sangate, just behind the English
army, the knights' armor glancing and their pennons flying in the
moonlight, so as to be a beautiful sight to the hungry garrison who
could see the white tents pitched upon the hillside. Still there
were but two roads by which the French could reach their friends
in the town--one along the seacoast, the other by a marshy road
higher up the country, and there was but one bridge by which the
river could be crossed. The English king's fleet could prevent any
troops from passing along the coast road, the Earl of Derby guarded
the bridge, and there was a great tower, strongly fortified, close
upon Calais. There were a few skirmishes, but the French king,
finding it difficult to force his way to relieve the town, sent
a party of knights with a challenge to King Edward to come out of
his camp and do battle upon a fair field.

To this Edward made answer, that he had been nearly a year before
Calais, and had spent large sums of money on the siege, and that he
had nearly become master of the place, so that he had no intention
of coming out only to gratify his adversary, who must try some
other road if he could not make his way in by that before him.

Three days were spent in parleys, and then, without the slightest
effort to rescue the brave, patient men within the town, away went
King Philippe of France, with all his men, and the garrison saw the
host that had crowded the hill of Sangate melt away like a summer
cloud.

August had come again, and they had suffered privation for a whole
year for the sake of the king who deserted them at their utmost
need.  They were in so grievous a state of hunger and distress that
the hardiest could endure no more, for ever since Whitsuntide no
fresh provisions had reached them. The governor, therefore, went
to the battlements and made signs that he wished to hold a parley,
and the king appointed Lord Basset and Sir Walter Mauny to meet
him, and appoint the terms of surrender.

The governor owned that the garrison was reduced to the greatest
extremity of distress, and requested that the king would be contented
with obtaining the city and fortress, leaving the soldiers and
inhabitants to depart in peace.

But Sir Walter Mauny was forced to make answer that the king, his
lord, was so much enraged at the delay and expense that Calais
had cost him, that he would only consent to receive the whole on
unconditional terms, leaving him free to slay, or to ransom, or
make prisoners whomsoever he pleased, and he was known to consider
that there was a heavy reckoning to pay, both for the trouble the
siege had cost him and the damage the Calesians had previously done
to his ships.

The brave answer was: "These conditions are too hard for us. We are
but a small number of knights and squires, who have loyally served
our lord and master as you would have done, and have suffered much
ill and disquiet, but we will endure far more than any man has
done in such a post, before we consent that the smallest boy in the
town shall fare worse than ourselves. I therefore entreat you, for
pity's sake, to return to the king and beg him to have compassion,
for I have such an opinion of his gallantry that I think he will
alter his mind."

The king's mind seemed, however, sternly made up; and all that Sir
Walter Mauny and the barons of the council could obtain from him
was that he would pardon the garrison and townsmen on condition
that six of the chief citizens should present themselves to him,
coming forth with bare feet and heads, with halters round their
necks, carrying the keys of the town, and becoming absolutely his
own to punish for their obstinacy as he should think fit.

On hearing this reply, Sir Jean de Vienne begged Sir Walter Mauny
to wait till he could consult the citizens, and, repairing to the
market-place, he caused a great bell to be rung, at sound of which
all the inhabitants came together in the town-hall.  When he told
them of these hard terms he could not refrain from weeping bitterly,
and wailing and lamentation arose all round him. Should all starve
together, or sacrifice their best and most honored after all
suffering in common so long?

Then a voice was heard; it was that of the richest burgher in the
town, Eustache de St. Pierre.  "Messieurs, high and low," he said,
"it would be a sad pity to suffer so many people to die through hunger,
if it could be prevented; and to hinder it would be meritorious in
the eyes of our Saviour.  I have such faith and trust in finding
grace before God, if I die to save my townsmen, that I name myself
as first of the six."

As the burgher ceased, his fellow-townsmen wept aloud, and many,
amid tears and groans, threw themselves at his feet in a transport
of grief and gratitude. Another citizen, very rich and respected,
rose up and said, "I will be second to my comrade, Eustache."
His name was Jean Daire. After him, Jacques Wissant, another very
rich man, offered himself as companion to these, who were both his
cousins; and his brother Pierre would not be left behind: and two
more, unnamed, made up this gallant band of men willing to offer
their lives for the rescue of their fellow-townsmen.

Sir Jean de Vienne mounted a little horse--for he had been wounded,
and was still lame--and came to the gate with them, followed by
all the people of the town, weeping and wailing, yet, for their own
sakes and their children's, not daring to prevent the sacrifice.
The gates were opened, the governor and the six passed out, and
the gates were again shut behind them. Sir Jean then rode up to
Sir Walter Mauny, and told him how these burghers had voluntarily
offered themselves, begging him to do all in his power to save
them; and Sir Walter promised with his whole heart to plead their
cause. De Vienne then went back into the town, full of heaviness
and anxiety; and the six citizens were led by Sir Walter to
the presence of the king, in his full court. They all knelt down,
and the foremost said: "Most gallant king, you see before you six
burghers of Calais, who have all been capital merchants, and who
bring you the keys of the castle and town. We yield ourselves to
your absolute will and pleasure, in order to save the remainder
of the inhabitants of Calais, who have suffered much distress and
misery. Condescend, therefore, out of your nobleness of mind, to
have pity on us."

Strong emotion was excited among all the barons and knights who
stood round, as they saw the resigned countenances, pale and thin
with patiently-endured hunger, of these venerable men, offering
themselves in the cause of their fellow-townsmen.  Many tears of
pity were shed; but the king still showed himself implacable, and
commanded that they should he led away, and their heads stricken
off. Sir Walter Mauny interceded for them with all his might, even
telling the king that such an execution would tarnish his honor,
and that reprisals would be made on his own garrisons; and all
the nobles joined in entreating pardon for the citizens, but still
without effect; and the headsman had been actually sent for, when
Queen Philippa, her eyes streaming with tears, threw herself on
her knees amongst the captives, and said, "Ah, gentle sir, since
I have crossed the sea with much danger to see you, I have never
asked you one favor; now I beg as a boon to myself, for the sake
of the Son of the Blessed Mary, and for your love to me, that you
will be merciful to these men!"

For some time the king looked at her in silence; then he exclaimed:
"Dame, dame, would that you had been anywhere than here! You have
entreated in such a manner that I cannot refuse you; I therefore
give these men to you, to do as you please with."

Joyfully did Queen Philippa conduct the six citizens to her own
apartments, where she made them welcome, sent them new garments,
entertained them with a plentiful dinner, and dismissed them each
with a gift of six nobles. After this, Sir Walter Mauny entered the
city, and took possession of it; retaining Sir Jean de Vienne and
the other knights and squires till they should ransom themselves, and
sending out the old French inhabitants; for the king was resolved
to people the city entirely with English, in order to gain a
thoroughly strong hold of this first step in France.

The king and queen took up their abode in the city; and the houses
of Jean Daire were, it appears, granted to the queen--perhaps,
because she considered the man himself as her charge, and wished to
secure them for him--and her little daughter Margaret was, shortly
after, born in one of his houses. Eustache de St. Pierre was taken
into high favor, and was placed in charge of the new citizens whom
the king placed in the city.

Indeed, as this story is told by no chronicler but Froissart, some
have doubted of it, and thought the violent resentment thus imputed
to Edward III inconsistent with his general character; but it is
evident that the men of Calais had given him strong provocation by
attacks on his shipping--piracies which are not easily forgiven--and
that he considered that he had a right to make an example of them.
It is not unlikely that he might, after all, have intended to forgive
them, and have given the queen the grace of obtaining their pardon,
so as to excuse himself from the fulfillment of some over-hasty
threat. But, however this may have been, nothing can lessen the
glory of the six grave and patient men who went forth, by their own
free will to meet what might be a cruel and disgraceful death, in
order to obtain the safety of their fellow-townsmen.




THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC, THE MAID WHO SAVED FRANCE

Anonymous



Over five hundred years ago, the children of Domremy, a little
village on the border of France, used to dance and sing beneath a
beautiful beech tree. They called it "The Fairy Tree." Among these
children was one named Jeanne, the daughter of an honest farmer,
Jacques d'Arc.  Jeanne sang more than she danced, and though she
carried garlands like the other boys and girls, and hung them on the
boughs of the Fairies' Tree, she liked better to take the flowers
into the parish church and lay them on the altars of St. Margaret
and St. Catherine.

She was brought up by her parents (as she told the judges at her
trial) to be industrious, to sew and spin. She did not fear to
match herself at spinning and sewing, she said, against any woman
in Rouen. When very young, she sometimes went to the fields to watch
the cattle. As she grew older, she worked in the house; she did not
any longer watch sheep and cattle. But the times were dangerous, and
when there was an alarm of soldiers or robbers in the neighborhood,
she sometimes helped to drive the flock into a fortified island or
peninsula, for which her father was responsible, in the river near
her home. She learned her creed, she said, from her mother. Twenty
years after her death, her neighbors, who remembered her, described
her as she was when a child. Jean Morin said that she was a good
industrious girl, but that she would often be praying in church
when her father and mother did not know it. Jean Waterin, when he
was a boy, had seen Joan in the fields, "and when they were all
playing together, she would go apart and pray to God, as he thought,
and he and the others used to laugh at her. When she heard the
church bell ring, she would kneel down in the fields." All those
who had seen Joan told the same tale: she was always kind, simple,
industrious, pious and yet merry and fond of playing with the
others.

In Joan's childhood France was under a mad king, Charles VI, and
was torn to pieces by two factions, the party of Burgundy and the
party of Armagnac. The English took advantage of these disputes,
and overran the land. The two parties of Burgundy and Armagnac
divided town from town and village from village. It was as in the
days of the Douglas Wars in Scotland, when the very children took
sides for Queen Mary and King James, and fought each other in the
streets. Domremy was for the Armagnacs--that is, against the English
and for the Dauphin, the son of the mad Charles VI. But at Maxey,
a village near Domremy, the people were all for Burgundy and the
English. The boys of Domremy would go out and fight the Maxey boys
with fists and sticks and stones. Joan did not remember having
taken part in those battles, but she had often seen her brothers
and the Domremy boys come home all bruised and bleeding.

When Joan was between twelve and thirteen (1424), so she swore,
_a Voice came to her from God for her guidance_, but when first it
came, she was in great fear. And it came, that Voice, about noonday,
in the summer season, she being in her father's garden. Joan had
not fasted the day before that, but was fasting when the Voice
came.  The Voices at first only told her to be a good girl, and go
to church. The Voice later told her of the great sorrow there was
in France, and that one day she must go into France and help the
country.  She had visions with the Voices; visions first of St.
Michael, and then of St. Catherine and St. Margaret.  "I saw them
with my bodily eyes, as I see you," she said to her judges," and
when they departed from me I wept, and well I wished that they had
taken me with them."

What are we to think about these visions and these Voices which
were with Joan to her death?

In 1428 only a very few small towns in the east still held out for
the Dauphin, and these were surrounded on every side by enemies.
Meanwhile the Voices came more frequently, urging Joan to go into
France and help her country. She asked how she, a girl, who could
not ride or use sword and lance, could be of any help? At the same
time she was encouraged by one of the vague old prophecies which
were common in France. A legend ran that France was to be saved
by a Maiden from the Oak Wood, and there was an Oak Wood (_le bois
chenu_) near Domremy. Some such prophecy had an influence on Joan,
and probably helped people to believe in her. The Voices often
commanded her to go to Vaucouleurs, a neighboring town which was
loyal, and there meet Robert de Baudricourt, who was captain of the
French garrison. Now, Robert de Baudricourt was a gallant soldier,
but a plain practical man, very careful of his own interest, and
cunning enough to hold his own among his many enemies, English,
Burgundian, and Lorrainers.

Joan had a cousin who was married to one Durand Lassois, at Burey
en Vaux, a village near Vaucouleurs. This cousin invited Joan
to visit her for a week. At the end of that time she spoke to her
cousin's husband. There was an old saying, as we saw, that France
would be rescued by a Maid, and she, as she told Lassois, was that
Maid. Lassois listened, and, whatever he may have thought of her
chances, he led her to Robert de Baudricourt.

Joan came, in her simple red dress, and walked straight up to the
captain. She told him that the Dauphin must keep quiet, and risk
no battle, for, before the middle of Lent next year (1423), God
would send him help. She added that the kingdom belonged, not to
the Dauphin, but to her Master, who willed that the Dauphin should
be crowned, and she herself would lead him to Reims, to be anointed
with the holy oil.

"And who is your Master?" said Robert.

"The King of Heaven!"

Robert, very naturally, thought that Joan was crazed, and shrugged
his shoulders. He bluntly told Lassois to box her ears and take her
back to her father. So she had to go home; but here new troubles
awaited her. The enemy came down on Domremy and burned it; Joan and
her family fled to Neufchateau, where they stayed for a few days.
When Joan looked from her father's garden to the church, she saw
nothing but a heap of smoking ruins. These things only made her
feel more deeply the sorrows of her country. The time was drawing
near when she had prophesied that the Dauphin was to receive help
from heaven--namely, in the Lent of 1429. On that year the season
was held more than commonly sacred, for Good Friday and the
Annunciation fell on the same day. So, early in January, 1429, Joan
turned her back on Domremy, which she was never to see again. Her
cousin Lassois came and asked leave for Joan to visit him again;
so she said good-by to her father and mother, and to her friends.
She went to her cousin's house at Burey, and there she stayed for
six weeks, hearing bad news of the siege of Orleans by the English.
A squire named Jean de Nouillompont met Joan one day.

"Well, my lass," said he, "is our king to be driven from France,
and are we all to become English?"

"I have come here," said Joan, "to bid Robert de Baudricourt lead
me to the king, but he will not listen to me. And yet to the king
I must go, even if I walk my legs down to the knees; for none in all
the world--king, nor duke, nor the King of Scotland's daughter--can
save France, but myself only. Certainly, I would rather stay and
spin with my poor mother, for to fight is not my calling; but I
must go and I must fight, for so my Lord will have it."

"And who is your Lord?" said Jean de Nouillompont.

"He is God," said the Maiden.

On February 12, the story goes, she went to Robert de Baudricourt.
"You delay too long," she said. "On this very day, at Orleans, the
gentle Dauphin has lost a battle."

Now the people of Vaucouleurs brought clothes for Joan to wear on
her journey to the Dauphin.  They were such clothes as men wear--doublet,
hose, surcoat, boots, and spurs--and Robert de Baudricourt gave
Joan a sword. Her reason was that she would have to be living alone
among men-at-arms for a ten days' journey and she thought it was
more modest to wear armor like the rest. Also, her favorite saint,
St. Margaret, had done this once when in danger. Besides, in all
the romances of chivalry, we find fair maidens fighting in arms
like men, or travelling dressed as pages.

On February 23, 1429, the gate of the little castle of Vaucouleurs,
"the Gate of France," which is still standing, was thrown open. Seven
travellers rode out, among them two squires, Jean de Nouillompont
and Bertrand de Poulengy, with their attendants, and Joan the Maid.
"Go, and let what will come of it come!" said Robert de Baudricourt.
He did not expect much to come of it.  It was a long journey--they
were eleven days on the road--and a dangerous. But Joan laughed
at danger. "God will clear my path to the king, for to this end I
was born." Often they rode by night, stopping at monasteries when
they could, Sometimes they slept out under the sky. Though she was
young and beautiful, these two gentlemen never dreamed of paying
their court to her and making love, as they do in romances, for
they regarded her "as if she had been an angel." They were in awe
of her, they said long afterward, and all the knights who had seen
her said the same.

From Fierbois, Joan made some clerk write to the king that she was
coming to help him, and that she would know him among all his men.
Probably it was here that she wrote to beg her parents pardon, and
they forgave her, she says. Meanwhile, news reached the people then
besieged in Orleans that a marvellous Maiden was riding to their
rescue. On March 6, Joan arrived in Chinon where for two or three
days the king's advisers would not let him see her. At last they
yielded, and she went straight up to him, and when he denied that
he was the king, she told him that she knew well who he was.

"There is the king," said Charles, pointing to a richly dressed
noble.

"No, fair sire. You are he!"

Still, it was not easy to believe. Joan stayed at Chinon in the
house of a noble lady. The young Duc d'Alenon was on her side from
the first.

Great people came to see her and question her, but when she was
alone, she wept and prayed.

Joan was weary of being asked questions.  One day she went to Charles
and said, "Gentle Dauphin, why do you delay to believe me? I tell
you that God has taken pity on you and your people, at the prayer
of St. Louis and St. Charlemagne.  And I will tell you by your
leave, something which will show you that you should believe me."
Then she told him secretly something which, as he said, none could
know but God and himself.

But the king to whom Joan brought this wonderful message, the
king whom she loved so loyally, and for whom she died, spoiled all
her plans.  He, with his political advisers, prevented her from
driving the English quite out of France. These favorites were lazy,
comfortable, cowardly, disbelieving; in their hearts they hated the
Maid, who put them to so much trouble. Charles, to tell the truth,
never really believed in her; he never quite trusted her; he never
led a charge by her side; and in the end, he shamefully deserted
her, and left the Maid to her doom.

Weeks had passed, and Joan had never yet seen a blow struck in war.
She used to exercise herself in horsemanship, and knightly sports
of tilting, and it is wonderful that a peasant-girl became, at once,
one of the best riders among the chivalry of France. The young Duc
d'Alenon and his wife were her friends from the first, when the
politicians and advisers were against her. It was now determined
that Joan should be taken to Poitiers, and examined before all the
learned men, bishops, doctors, and higher clergy who still were on
the side of France. There was good reason for this delay. It was
plain to all, friends and foes, that the wonderful Maid was not like
other men and women, with her Voices, her visions, her prophecies,
and her powers. All agreed that she had some strange help given
to her; but who gave it?  This aid must come, people thought then,
either from heaven or hell--either from God and his saints, or
from the devil and his angels. Now, if any doubt could be thrown
on the source whence Joan's aid came, the English might argue (as
of course they did) that she was a witch and a heretic.  If she was
a heretic and a witch, then her king was involved in her wickedness,
and so he might be legally shut out from his kingdom. It was
necessary, therefore, that Joan should be examined by learned men.
They must find out whether she had always been good, and a true
believer, and whether her Voices always agreed in everything with
the teachings of the Church. Otherwise her angels must be devils
in disguise. During three long weeks the learned men asked her
questions. They said it was wonderful how wisely this girl, who
"did not know A from B," replied to their puzzling inquiries. She
told the story of her visions, of the command laid upon her to
rescue Orleans.

At last, after examining witnesses from Domremy, and the Queen of
Sicily and other great ladies to whom Joan was intrusted, the clergy
found nothing in her but "goodness, humility, frank maidenhood,
piety, honesty and simplicity." As for her wearing a man's dress,
the Archbishop of Embrim said to the king, "It is more becoming
to do these things in man's clothes, since they have to be done
amongst men."

The king therefore made up his mind at last.  Jean and Pierre,
Joan's brothers, were to ride with her to Orleans; her old friends,
her first friends, Jean de Nouillompont and Bertrand de Poulengy,
had never left her. She was given a squire, a page, and a chaplain.
The king gave Joan armor and horses, and offered her a sword. But
her Voices told her that, behind the altar of St.  Catherine de
Fierbois, where she heard mass on her way to Chinori, there was
an old sword, with five crosses on the blade, buried in the earth.
That sword she was to wear. A man whom Joan did not know, and had
never seen, was sent from Tours, and found the sword in the place
which she described. The sword was cleaned of rust, and the king
gave her two sheaths, one of velvet, one of cloth of gold, but
Joan had a leather sheath made for use in war. She also commanded
a banner to be made, with the Lilies of France on a white field.

When once it was settled that she was to lead an army to relieve
Orleans, she showed her faith by writing a letter addressed to the
King of England, Bedford, the Regent, and the English generals at
Orleans. If they did not yield to the Maid and the king, she will
come on them to their sorrow.  "Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays
and entreats you not to work your own destruction!"

We may imagine how the English laughed and swore when they received
this letter. They threw the heralds of the Maid into prison,
and threatened to burn them as heretics. From the very first, the
English promised to burn Joan as a witch and a heretic.

At last the men-at-arms who were to accompany Joan were ready.
She was armed in white armor, but unhelmeted, a little axe in her
hand, riding a great black charger. She turned to the church, and
said, in her girlish voice, "You priests and churchmen, make prayers
and processions to God." Then she cried, "Forward, Forward!" and
on she rode at their head, a page carrying her banner. And so Joan
went to war.

She led, she says, ten or twelve thousand soldiers.  This army
was to defend a great convoy of provisions of which the people of
Orleans stood in sore need. The people were not starving, but food
came in slowly, and in small quantities. The French general-in-chief
was the famous Dunois.  On the English side was the brave Talbot,
who fought under arms for sixty years, and died fighting when he
was over eighty.

Looking _down_ the river Loire, Orleans lies on your right hand. It
had strong walls, towers on the wall, and a bridge of many arches
crossing to the left side of the river. At the further end of this
bridge were a fort and rampart called Les Tourelles, and this fort
had already been taken by the English, so that no French army could
cross the bridge to help Orleans. The rampart and the fort of Les
Tourelles were guarded by another strong work called Les Augustins.
All round the outside of the town, on the right bank, the English
had built strong redoubts, which they called _bastilles_, but on
the east, above the town, and on the Orleans bank of the Loire,
the English had only one bastille, St. Loup. Now, as Joan's army
mustered at Blois, south of Orleans, further down the river, she
might march on the _left_ side of the river, cross it by boats
above Orleans, and enter the town where the English were weakest
and had only one fort, St. Loup.  Or she might march up the _right_
bank, and attack the English where they were strongest and had
many bastilles. The Voices bade the Maid act on the boldest plan,
and enter Orleans, where the English were strongest, on the right
bank of the river. The English would not move, said the Voices.
She was certain that they would not even sally out against her.
But Dunois in Orleans, and the generals with the Maid, thought this
plan very perilous.  They, therefore, deceived her, caused her to
think that Orleans was on the _left_ bank of the Loire, and led
her thither. When she arrived, she saw that they had not played
her fair, that the river lay between her and the town, and the
strongest force of the enemy.

This girl of seventeen saw that, if a large convoy of provisions
was to be thrown into a besieged town, the worst way was to try
to ferry the supplies across a river under the enemy's fire. But
Dunois and the other generals had brought her to this pass, and
the Maid was sore ill-pleased. The wind was blowing in her teeth;
boats could not cross with the troops and provisions. There she sat
her horse and chafed till Dunois came out and crossed the Loire to
meet her. This is what he says about Joan and her conduct:

"I did not think, and the other generals did not think, that the
men-at-arms with the Maid were a strong enough force to bring the
provisions into the town. Above all, it was difficult to get boats
and ferry over the supplies, for both wind and stream were dead
against us. Then Joan spoke to me thus:

"'Are you the general?'

"'That am I, and glad of your coming.'

"'Is it you who gave counsel that I should come hither by that bank
of the stream, and not go straight where Talbot and the English
are?'

"'I myself, and others wiser than I, gave that advice, and we think
it the better way and the surer.'

"'In God's name, the counsel of our God is wiser and surer than
yours. You thought to deceive me, and you have deceived yourselves,
for I bring you a better rescue than ever shall come to soldier or
city--that is, the help of the King of Heaven, * * *'

"Then instantly, and as it were in one moment, the wind changed that
had been dead against us, and had hindered the boats from carrying
the provisions into Orleans, and the sails filled."

Dunois now wished Joan to cross by boat and enter the town, but
her army could not cross, so the army returned to Blois, to cross
by the bridge there, and come upon the Orleans bank, as Joan had
intended from the first. Then Joan crossed in the boat, holding in
her hand the lily standard. She and La Hire and Dunois rode into
Orleans, where the people crowded round her, blessing her, and
trying to kiss her hand. So they led her with great joy to the
Regnart Gate, and the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the
Duke of Orleans, and there was she gladly received.

Next day, without leave from Joan, La Hire led a sally against the
English, fought bravely, but failed, and Joan wished once more to
bid the English go in peace. The English, of course, did not obey
her summons, and it is said that they answered with wicked words
which made her weep.  For she wept readily, and blushed when she was
moved. In her anger she went to a rampart, and, crying aloud, bade
the English begone; but they repeated their insults, and threatened
yet again to burn her. Next day, Dunois went off to bring the
troops from Blois, and Joan rode round and inspected the English
position. They made no attempt to take her. On May 4 the army
returned from Blois. Joan rode out to meet them, priests marched
in procession, singing hymns, but the English never stirred. They
were expecting fresh troops under Fastolf. For some reason, probably
because they did not wish her to run risk, they did not tell Joan
when the next fight began. She had just lain down to sleep when
she leaped up with the noise, wakening her squire. "My Voices tell
me," she said, "that I must go against the English, but whether to
their forts or against Fastolf I know not."

In a moment she was in the street, the page handed to her the lily
flag from the upper window.  Followed by her squire, D'Aulon, she
galloped to the Burgundy Gate. They met wounded men.  "Never do I
see French blood but my hair stands up on my head," said Joan. She
rode out of the gate to the English fort of St. Loup, which the
Orleans men were attacking. Joan leaped into the fosse, under fire,
holding her banner, and cheering on her men. St. Loup was taken by
the French, in spite of a gallant defence.

The French generals now conceived a plan to make a feint, or
a sham attack, on the English forts where they were strongest, on
the Orleans side of the river. The English on the left side would
cross to help their countrymen, and then the French would take the
forts beyond the bridge. Thus they would have a free path across
the river, and would easily get supplies, and tire out the English.
They only told Joan of the first part of their plan, but she saw
that they were deceiving her. When the plan was explained, she
agreed to it; her one wish was to strike swiftly and strongly.

The French attacked the English fort of Les Augustins, beyond the
river, but suddenly they fled to their bridge of boats, while the
English sallied out, yelling their insults at Joan. She turned,
gathered a few men, and charged. The English ran before her like
sheep; she planted her banner again in the ditch. The French hurried
back to her; a great Englishman, who guarded the breach, was shot;
two French knights leaped in, the others followed, and the English
took refuge in the redoubt of Les Tourelles, their strong fort at
the bridge-head.

The Maid returned to Orleans, and, though it was a Friday, and
she always fasted on Fridays, she was so weary that she ate some
supper. A bit of bread, her page reports, was all that she usually
ate. Now the generals sent to Joan and said that enough had been
done. They had food, and could wait for another army from the king.
"You have been with your council," she said, "I have been with mine.
The wisdom of God is greater than yours.  Rise early to-morrow, do
better than your best, keep close by me; for to-morrow have I much
to do, and more than ever yet I did, and to-morrow shall my blood
flow from a wound above my breast." Joan had already said at Chinon
that she would be wounded at Orleans.

The generals did not wish to attack the bridge-tower, but Joan paid
them no attention. They were glad enough to follow, lest she took
the fort without them. About half-past six in the morning the
fight began. The French and Scottish leaped into the fosse, they
set ladders against the walls, they reached the battlements, and
were struck down by English swords and axes. Cannon-balls and great
stones and arrows rained on them. "Fight on!" cried the Maid; "the
place is ours." At one o'clock she set a ladder against the wall
with her own hands, but was deeply wounded by an arrow, which
pierced clean through between neck and shoulder. Joan wept, but
seizing the arrow with her own hands she dragged it out. "Yet,"
says Dunois, "she did not withdraw from the battle, nor took any
medicine for the wound; and the onslaught lasted from morning till
eight at night, so that there was no hope of victory. I desired that
the army should go back to the town, but the Maid came to me and
bade me wait a little longer. Next she mounted her horse and rode
into a vineyard, and there prayed for the space of seven minutes
or eight.  Then she returned, took her banner, and stood on the
brink of the fosse. The English trembled when they saw her, but our
men returned to the charge and met with no resistance. The English
fled or were slain, and we returned gladly into Orleans." The people
of Orleans had a great share in this victory. Seeing the English
hard pressed, they laid long beams across the broken arches of the
bridge, and charged by this perilous way. The triumph was even more
that of the citizens than of the army.

Next day the English drew up their men in line of battle. The French
went out to meet them, and would have begun the attack. Joan said
that God would not have them fight.

"If the English attack, we shall defeat them; we are to let them
go in peace if they will."

Mass was then said before the French army.

When the rite was done, Joan asked: "Do they face us, or have they
turned their backs?"

It was the English backs that the French saw, that day: Talbot's
men were in full retreat on Meun.

From that hour, May 8 is kept a holiday at Orleans in honor of Joan
the Maiden. Never was there such a deliverance. In a week the Maid
had driven a strong army, full of courage and well led, out of
forts like Les Tourelles. The Due d'Alencon visited it, and said
that with a few men-at-arms he would have felt certain of holding
it for a week against any strength, however great. But Joan not only
gave the French her spirit: her extraordinary courage in leading
a new charge after so terrible a wound, "six inches deep," says
D'Alencon, made the English think that they were fighting a force
not of this world.




HOW JOAN THE MAID TOOK LARGESS FROM THE ENGLISH

Anonymous



The Maid had shown her sign, as she promised; she had rescued
Orleans. Her next desire was to lead Charles to Reims, through
a country occupied by the English, and to have him anointed there
with the holy oil. Till this was done she could only regard him as
Dauphin--king, indeed, by blood, but not by consecration.

[Illustration: FIGHT ON CRIED THE MAID THE PLACE IS OURS _From the
painting by William Rainey_]

After all that Joan had accomplished, the king and his advisers
might have believed in her. She went to the castle of Loches, where
Charles was; he received her kindly, but still he did not seem eager
to go to Reims. It was a dangerous adventure, for which he and his
favorites had no taste. It seems that more learned men were asked
to give their opinion. Was it safe and wise to obey the Maid?
Councils were now held at Tours, and time was wasted as usual. As
usual, Joan was impatient.  With Dunois, she went to see Charles at
the castle of Loches. Some nobles and clergy were with him; Joan
entered, knelt, and embraced his knees.  "Noble Dauphin," she said,
"do not hold so many councils, and such weary ones, but come to
Reims and receive the crown."

Harcourt asked her if her Voices, or "counsel" (as she called it),
gave this advice. She blushed and said: "I know what you mean, and
will tell you gladly." The king asked her if she wished to speak
before so many people. Yes, she would speak. When they doubted her,
she prayed, "and then she heard a Voice saying to her:

"'_Fille de Dieu, va, va, je serai a ton aide, val!_'" [Footnote:
"Daughter of God, go on, go on, I will help thee; go!]

"And when she heard this Voice she was glad indeed, and wished
that she could always be as she was then; and as she spoke," says
Dunois, "she rejoiced strangely, lifting her eyes to heaven." And
she repeated: "I will last for only one year, or little more; use
me while you may."

Joan stirred the favorites and courtiers at last.  They would go
to Reims, but could they leave behind them English garrisons in
Jargeau, where Suffolk commanded; in Meun, where Talbot was, and in
other strong places? Already, without Joan, the French had attacked
Jargeau, after the rescue of Orleans, and had failed. Joan agreed
to assail Jargeau. Her army was led by the "fair duke," D'Alenon.

Let us tell what followed in the words of the Duc d'Alenon:

"We were about six hundred lances, who wished to go against the
town of Jargeau, then held by the English. That night we slept in
a wood, and next day came Dunois and some other captains. When we
were all met we were about twelve hundred lances; and now arose
a dispute among the captains, some thinking that we should attack
the city, others not so, for they said that the English were very
strong, and had many men. Seeing this difference, Jeanne bade us
have no fear of any numbers, nor doubt about attacking the English,
because God was guiding us. She herself would rather be herding
sheep than fighting, if she were not certain that God was with us.
Thereon we rode to Jargeau, meaning to occupy the outlying houses,
and there pass the night; but the English knew of our approach,
and drove in our skirmishers. Seeing this, Jeanne took her banner
and went to the front, bidding our men be of good heart. And they
did so much that they held the suburbs of Jargeau that night.
* * * Next morning we got ready our artillery, and brought guns up
against the town.  After some days a council was held, and I, with
others, was ill content with La Hire, who was said to have parleyed
with Lord Suffolk. La Hire was sent for, and came. Then it was
decided to storm the town, and the heralds cried, 'To the attack!'
and Jeanne said to me, 'Forward, gentle duke.' I thought it was
too early, but she said, 'Doubt not; the hour is come when God
pleases.' As the onslaught was given, Jeanne bade me leave the
place where I stood, 'or yonder gun' pointing to one on the walls,
'will slay you.' Then I withdrew, and a little later De Lude was
slain in that very place.  And I feared greatly, considering the
prophecy of the Maid. Then we both went together to the onslaught;
and Suffolk cried for a parley, but no man marked him, and we
pressed on. Jeanne was climbing a ladder, banner in hand, when her
flag was struck by a stone, and she also was struck on her head, but
her light helmet saved her. She leaped up again, crying, 'Friends,
friends; on, on! Our Lord has condemned the English. They are
ours; be of good heart.' In that moment Jargeau was taken, and the
English fled to the bridges, we following, and more than eleven
hundred of them were slain."

Once Joan saw a man-at-arms strike down a prisoner. She leaped from
her horse, and laid the wounded Englishman's head on her breast,
consoling him, and bade a priest come and hear his confession. From
Jargeau the Maid rode back to Orleans, where the people could not
look on her enough, and made great festival.

The garrison of the English in Beaugency did not know whether to
hold out or to yield. Fastolf said that the English had lost heart,
and that Beaugency should be left to its fate, while the rest held
out in strong places and waited for re-enforcements, but Talbot
was for fighting. The English then rode to Meun, and cannonaded
the bridge-fort, which was held by the French. They hoped to take
the bridge, cross it, march to Beaugency, and relieve the besieged
there. But that very night Beaugency surrendered to the Maid! She
then bade her army march on the English, who were retreating to
Paris. But how was the Maid to find the English? "Ride forward,"
she cried, "and you shall have a sure guide." They had a guide,
and a strange one.

The English were marching toward Paris, near Pathay, when their
skirmishers came in with the news that the French were following.
Talbot lined the hedges with five hundred archers of his best, and
sent a galloper to bring thither the rest of his army. On came the
French, not seeing the English in ambush. In a few minutes they
would have been shot down and choked the pass with dying men and
horses. But now was the moment for the strange guide.

A stag was driven from cover by the French, and ran blindly among
the ambushed English bowmen.  Not knowing that the French were
so near, and being archers from Robin Hood's country, who loved a
deer, they raised a shout, and probably many an arrow flew at the
stag. The French scouts heard the cry, saw the English and hurried
back with the news. "Forward!" cried the Maid; "if they were hung
to the clouds, we have them. Today the gentle king will gain such
a victory as never yet did he win."

The French dashed into the pass before Talbot had secured it.
Fastolf galloped up, but the English thought that he was in flight;
the captain of the advanced guard turned his horse about and made
off. Talbot was taken, Fastolf fled, "making more sorrow than ever
yet did man." The French won a great victory. They needed their
spurs, as the Maid had told them that they would, to follow their
flying foes. The English lost some 3,000 men. In the evening,
Talbot, as a prisoner, was presented to the Duc d'Alenon.

At last, with difficulty, Charles was brought to visit Reims and
consent to be crowned like his ancestors.

Seeing that he was never likely to move, Joan left the town where
he was and went off into the country. This retreat brought Charles
to his senses. The towns which he passed by yielded to him; Joan
went and summoned each. "Now she was with the king in the centre,
now with the rear guard, now with the van." The town of Troyes,
where there was an English garrison, did not wish to yield. There
was a council in the king's army; they said they could not take
the place.

"In two days it shall be yours, by force or by good-will," said
the Maid. "Six days will do," said the chancellor, "if you are sure
you speak truth."

Joan made ready for an attack. She was calling "Forward!" when the
town surrendered. Reims, after some doubts, yielded also, on July
16, and all the people welcomed the king. On July 17 the king was
crowned and anointed with the holy oil by that very Archbishop
of Reims who always opposed Joan. The Twelve Peers of France were
not all present--some were on the English side--but Joan stood by
Charles, her banner in her hand.

When the ceremony was ended, and the Dauphin Charles was a crowned
and anointed king, the Maid knelt weeping at his feet. "Gentle
king," she said, "now is accomplished the will of God, who desired
that you should come to Reims to be consecrated, and to prove
that you are the true king and the kingdom is yours." Then all the
knights wept for joy.

The king bade Joan choose her reward. Already horses, rich armor,
jewelled daggers, had been given to her. These, adding to the beauty
and glory of her aspect, had made men follow her more gladly, and
for that she valued them. She made gifts to noble ladies, and gave
much to the poor.  She only wanted money to wage the war with, not
for herself. Her family was made noble; on their shield, between
two lilies, a sword upholds the crown. Her father was at Reims, and
saw her in her glory. What reward, then, was Joan to choose?  She
chose nothing for herself, but that her native village of Domremy
should be free from taxes.  This news her father carried home from
the splendid scene at Reims.

As they went from Reims after the coronation, Dunois and the archbishop
were riding by her rein.  The people cheered and shouted with joy.

"They are a good people," said Joan. "Never saw I any more joyous
at the coming of their king.  Ah, would that I might be so happy
when I end my days as to be buried here!" Said the archbishop:
"Jeanne, in what place do you hope to die?" Then she said: "Where
it pleases God; for I know not that hour, nor that place, more
than ye do. But would to God, my Maker, that now I might depart,
and lay down my arms, and help my father and mother, and keep
their sheep with my brothers and my sisters, who would rejoice to
see me!"

What was to be done after the crowning of the king? Bedford,
the regent for the child Henry VI, expected to see Joan under the
walls of Paris.  He was waiting for the troops which the Cardinal
of Winchester had collected in England. Bedford induced Winchester
to bring his men to France, but they had not arrived. The Duke of
Burgundy, the head of the great French party which opposed Charles,
had been invited by the Maid to Reims.  Again she wrote to him:
"Make a firm, good peace with the King of France," she said; "forgive
each other with kind hearts"; "I pray and implore you, with joined
hands, fight not against France."

The Duke of Burgundy, far from listening to Joan's prayer, left
Paris and went to raise men for the English. Meanwhile, Charles
was going from town to town, and all received him gladly. But Joan
soon began to see that instead of marching west from Reims to Paris,
the army was being led southwest toward the Loire. There the king
would be safe among his dear castles, where he could live indoors,
and take his ease. Thus Bedford was able to throw 5,000 men of
Winchester's into Paris, and even dared to come out and hunt for
the French king. The French should have struck at Paris at once, as
Joan desired. The delays were excused because the Duke of Burgundy
had promised to surrender Paris in a fortnight. But this he did
merely to gain time. Joan knew this, and said there would be no
peace but at the lance-point.

The French and English armies kept watching each other, and there
were skirmishes near Senlis.  On August 15, the Maid and d'Alenon
hoped for a battle. But the English had fortified their position
in the night. Come out they would not, so Joan rode up to their
fortification, standard in hand, struck the palisade and challenged
them to sally forth. She even offered to let them march out and
draw themselves up in line of battle. The Maid stayed on the field
all night and next day made a retreat, hoping to draw the English
out of their fort. But they were too wary and went back to Paris.

Now the fortnight was over, after which the Duke of Burgundy was
to surrender Paris, but he did nothing of the kind. The Maid was
weary of words. She called the Duc d'Alenon and said: "My fair
duke, array your men, for, by my staff, I would fain see Paris
more closely than I have seen it yet." On August 23, the Maid and
d'Alenon left the king at Compigne and rode to St.  Denis, where
were the tombs of the kings of France.  "And when the king heard
that they were at St.  Denis, he came, very sore against his will,
as far as Senlis, and it seems that his advisers were contrary to
the will of the Maid, of the Duc d'Alencon, and of their company."
The king was afraid to go near Paris, but Bedford was afraid to
stay in the town. He went to Rouen, the strongest English hold in
Normandy, leaving the Burgundian army and 2,000 English in Paris.

Every day, the Maid and d'Alenon rode from St. Denis to the gates
of Paris, to observe the best places for an attack. And still
Charles dallied and delayed, still the main army did not come up.
Thus the delay of the king gave the English time to make Paris
almost impregnable and to frighten the people who, had Charles
marched straight from Reims, would have yielded as Reims did.
D'Alenon kept going to Senlis urging Charles to come up with the
main army. He went on September 1--the king promised to start next
day. D'Alenon returned to the Maid, the king still loitered. At
last d'Alenon brought him to St. Denis on September 7, and there
was a skirmish that day.

In the book of Perceval de Cagny, who was with his lord, the Duc
d'Alenon, he says: "The assault was long and fierce, and it was
marvel to hear the noise of the cannons and culverins from the
walls, and to see the clouds of arrows. Few of those in the fosse
with the Maid were struck, though many others on horse and foot
were wounded with arrows and stone cannon-balls, but by God's grace
and the Maid's good fortune, there was none of them but could return
to camp unhelped. The assault lasted from noon till dusk--say eight
in the evening. After sunset, the Maid was struck by a crossbow
bolt in the thigh; and, after she was hurt, she cried but the louder
that all should attack, and that the place was taken. But as night
had now fallen and she was wounded, and the men-at-arms were weary
with the long attack, De Gaucourt and others came and found her,
and, against her will, brought her forth from the fosse. And so
ended that onslaught.  But right sad she was to leave and said,
'By my bton, the place would have been taken.' They put her on
horseback, and led her to her quarters, and all the rest of the
king's company who that day had come from St. Denis."

"Next day," says Cagny, "in spite of her wound, she was first in
the field. She went to d'Alenon and bade him sound the trumpet
for the charge.  D'Alenon and the other captains were of the same
mind as the Maid, and Montmorency with sixty gentlemen and many
lances came in, though he had been on the English side before. So
they began to march on Paris, but the king sent messengers, and
compelled the Maid and the captains to return to St. Denis. Right
sorry were they, yet they must obey the king. When she saw that
they would go, she dedicated her armor, and hung it up before the
statue of Our Lady at St. Denis, and so right sadly went away in
company with the king. And thus were broken the will of the Maid
and the army of the king."

The courtiers had triumphed. They had thwarted the Maid, they had
made her promise to take Paris of no avail. They had destroyed the
confidence of men in the banner that had never gone back.

The king now went from one pleasant tower on the Loire to another,
taking the Maid with him.  Meanwhile, the English took and plundered
some of the cities which had yielded to Charles, and they carried
off the Maid's armor from the chapel in St. Denis. Her Voices had
bidden her stay at St. Denis, but this she was not permitted to
do, and now she must hear daily how the loyal towns that she had
won were plundered by the English, and all her work seemed wasted.
The Duc d'Alenon offered to lead an army against the English in
Normandy, if the Maid might march with him, for the people had not
wholly lost faith, but the courtiers and the Archbishop of Reims,
who managed the king and the war, would not consent, nor would they
allow the Maid and the duke to even see each other.

Joan wanted to return to Paris, but the council sent her to take
La Charit and Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier from the English. This town
she attacked first. Her squire, a gentleman named d'Aulon, was with
her, and described what he saw. "When they had besieged the place
for some time, an assault was commanded, but for the great strength
of the forts and the numbers of the enemy the French were forced
to give way. At that hour I who speak was wounded by an arrow in
the heel, and could not stand or walk without crutches. But I saw
the Maid holding her ground with a handful of men, and, fearing ill
might come of it, I mounted a horse and rode to her, asking what
she was doing there alone, and why she did not retreat like the
others.  She took the _salade_ from her head, and answered that
she was not alone, but had in her company fifty thousand of her
people; and that go she would not till she had taken that town,

"But, whatever she said, I saw that she had with her but four men
or five, as others also saw, wherefore I bade her retreat. Then she
commanded me to have fagots brought, and planks to bridge fosses.
And as she spoke to me, she cried in a loud voice, 'All of you, bring
fagots to fill the fosse.' And this was done, whereat I greatly
marvelled, and instantly that town was taken by assault with no
great resistance. And all that the Maid did seemed to me rather
deeds divine than natural, and it was impossible that so young
a maid should do such deeds without the will and guidance of Our
Lord."




DEATH OF JOAN THE MAID

Anonymous



From there the Maid rode to attack La Charit.  But, though the
towns helped her as well as they might with money and food, her
force was too small and was too ill provided with everything, for
the king did not send supplies. She abandoned the siege and departed
in great displeasure.  The court now moved from place to place,
with Joan following in its train; for three weeks she stayed with
a lady who describes her as very devout and constantly in church.
Thinking her already a saint, people brought her things to touch.

"Touch them yourselves," she said; "your touch is as good as mine."

Winter was over and spring came on, but still the king did nothing.
The Maid could be idle no longer. Without a word to the king,
she rode to Lagny, "for there they had fought bravely against the
English." These men were Scots, under Sir Hugh Kennedy. In mid-April
she was at Melun.  There "she heard her Voices almost every day,
and many a time they told her that she would presently be taken
prisoner." Her year was over. She prayed that she might die as soon
as she was taken, without the long sorrow of imprisonment. Then her
Voices told her to bear graciously whatever befell her, for so it
must be. But they told her not the hour of her captivity. "If she
had known the hour she would not then have gone to war. And often
she prayed them to tell her of that hour, but they did not answer."
These words are Joan's.  She spoke them to her judges at Rouen.

The name of Joan was now such a terror to the English that men
deserted rather than face her in arms. At this time the truce with
Burgundy ended, and the duke openly set out to besiege the strong
town of Compigne, held by De Flavy for France.  Burgundy had
invested Compigne, when Joan, with four hundred men, rode into
the town secretly at dawn. That day Joan led a sally against the
Burgundians. Her Voices told her nothing, good or bad, she says.
The Burgundians were encamped at Margny and at Clairoix, the English
at Venette, villages on a plain near the walls. Joan crossed the
bridge on a gray charger, in a surcoat of crimson silk, rode through
the redoubt beyond the bridge, and attacked the Burgundians. De
Flavy in the town was to prevent the English from attacking her in
the rear. He had boats on the river to secure Joan's retreat, if
necessary.

Joan swept through Margny driving the Burgundians before her; the
garrison of Clairoix came to their help; the battle was doubtful.
Meanwhile the English came up; they could not have reached
the Burgundians, to aid them, but some of the Maid's men, seeing
the English standards, fled.  The English followed them under the
walls of Compigne; the gate of the redoubt was closed to prevent
the English from entering with the runaways.  Like Hector under
Troy, the Maid was shut out from the town which she came to save.

Joan was with her own foremost line when the rear fled. They told
her of her danger; she heeded not. Her men seized her bridle and
turned her horse's head about. The English held the entrance from
the causeway; Joan and a few men were driven into a corner of the
outer wall. A rush was made at Joan. "Yield! yield to me!" each
man cried.

"I have given my faith to Another," she said, "and I will keep my
oath."

Her enemies confess that on this day Joan did great feats of arms,
covering the rear of her force when they had to fly. Some French
historians hold that the gates were closed, by treason, that the
Maid might be taken.

The Maid, as a prisoner, was led to Margny, where the Burgundian
and English captains rejoiced over her. They had her at last, the
girl who had driven them from fort and field. Not a French lance
was raised to rescue her; not a sou did the king send to ransom
her.

Within two days of her capture, the Vicar-General of the Inquisition
in France claimed her as a heretic and a witch. The English knights
let the doctors of the University of Paris judge and burn the girl
whom they seldom dared to face in war.  She was the enemy of the
English, and the English believed in witchcraft. Joan was now kept
in a high tower and was allowed to walk on the leads.  She knew
she was sold to England, she had heard that the people of Compigne
were to be massacred.  She would rather die than fall into English
hands, but she hoped to escape and relieve Compigne.  She therefore
prayed for counsel to her Saints; might she leap from the top of
the tower? Would they not bear her up in their hands? St. Catherine
bade her not to leap; God would help her and the people of Compigne.

Then, for the first time, as far as we know, the Maid wilfully
disobeyed her Voices. She leaped from the tower. They found her,
not wounded, not a limb broken, but stunned. She knew not what
had happened; they told her she had leaped down For three days she
could not eat, "yet was she comforted by St. Catherine, who bade
her confess and seek pardon of God, and told her that, without
fail, they of Compigne should be relieved before Martinmas." This
prophecy was fulfilled. Joan was more troubled about Compigne than
about her own coming doom.

She was now locked up in an iron cage at Rouen.  The person who
conducted the trial was her deadly enemy, the Bishop of Beauvais,
Cauchon, whom she and her men had turned out of his bishopric.
Next, Joan was kept in strong irons day and night, always guarded
by five English soldiers. Weakened by long captivity and ill usage,
she, an untaught girl, was questioned repeatedly for three months
by the most cunning and learned doctors of law of the Paris
University. Often many spoke at once, to perplex her mind. But
Joan always showed a wisdom which confounded them, and which is at
least as extraordinary as her skill in war. She would never swear
an oath to answer _all_ their questions. About herself, and all
matters bearing on her own conduct, she would answer.  About the
king, and the secrets of the king, she would not answer. If they
forced her to reply about these things, she frankly said, she would
not tell them the truth. The whole object of the trial was to prove
that she dealt with powers of evil, and that her king had been
crowned and aided by the devil. Her examiners, therefore, attacked
her day by day, in public and in her dungeon, with questions about
these visions which she held sacred and could only speak of with
a blush among her friends.  She maintained that she certainly did
see and hear her Saints, and that they came to her by the will of
God. This was called blasphemy and witchcraft.

Most was made of her refusal to wear woman's dress. For this she
seems to have had two reasons: first, that to give up her old dress
would have been to acknowledge that her mission was ended; next,
for reasons of modesty, she being alone in prison among ruffianly
men. She would wear woman's dress if they would let her take the
Holy Communion, but this they refused. To these points she was
constant: she would not deny her visions; she would not say one word
against her king, "the noblest Christian in the world" she called
him, who had deserted her. She would not wear woman's dress in
prison. They took her to the torture-chamber, and threatened her
with torture. Finally, they put her up in public, opposite a pile
of wood ready for burning, where she was solemnly preached to for
the last time. All through her trial, her Voices bade her answer
boldly, in three months she would give her last answer, in three
months "she would be free with great victory, and come into the
Kingdom of Paradise."

At last, in fear of the fire and the stake before her, and on promise
of being taken to a kindlier prison among women, and released from
chains, she promised to renounce her visions, and submit to Cauchon
and her other enemies. Some little note on paper she now signed
with a cross, and repeated a short form of words. By some trick
this signature was changed for a long document, in which she was
made to confess all her visions false.

Cauchon had triumphed. The blame of heresy and witchcraft was cast
on Joan, and on her king as an accomplice. But the English were
not satisfied; they made an uproar, they threatened Cauchon, for
Joan's life was to be spared. She was to be in prison all her days,
on bread and water, but while she lived they dared scarcely stir
against the French. They were soon satisfied.

Joan's prison was not changed. There soon came news that she had
put on man's dress again. The judges went to her. She told them
(they say) that she put on this dress of her own free will. In
confession, later, she told her priest that she had been refused
any other dress, and had been brutally treated both by the soldiers
and by an English lord.

In any case, the promises made to her had been broken. The judge
asked her if her Voices had been with her again.

"Yes."

"What did they say?"

"God told me by the Voices of the great sorrow of my treason, when
I abjured to save my life."

"Do you believe the Voices came from St. Margaret and St. Catherine?"

"Yes, and that they are from God."

She added that she had never meant to deny this, had not understood
that she had denied it.

All was over now; she was a "relapsed heretic."

Enough. They burned Joan the Maid. She did not suffer long. Her
eyes were fixed on a cross which a priest, Martin l'Advenu, held
up before her. She maintained, he says, to her dying moment, the
truth of her Voices. With a great cry of JESUS! she gave up her
life. Even the English wept, even a secretary of the English king
said that they had burned a Saint.

Twenty years after her death Charles VII, in his own interest,
induced the Pope to try the case of Joan over again. They collected
the evidence of most of the living people who had known her, the
Domremy peasants, from Dunois, d'Alenon, d'Aulon, from Isambart
and l'Advenu, they learned how nobly she died, and how she never
made one complaint, but forgave all her enemies freely. All these
old Latin documents were collected, edited, and printed, in 1849,
by Monsieur Jules Quicherat, a long and noble labor.




HOW CATHERINE DOUGLAS TRIED TO SAVE KING JAMES OF SCOTLAND

By Charlotte M. Yonge



It was bedtime, and the old vaulted chambers of the Dominican monastery
at Perth echoed with sounds that would seem incongruous in such a
home of austerity, but that the disturbed state of Scotland rendered
it the habit of her kings to attach their palaces to convents, that
they themselves might benefit by the "peace of the Church," which
was in general accorded to all sacred spots.

Thus it was that Christmas and Carnival time of 1435-6 had been
spent by the court in the cloisters of Perth, and the dance, the
song, and the tourney had strangely contrasted with the grave and
self-denying habits to which the Dominicans were devoted in their
neighboring cells. The festive season was nearly at an end, for
it was the 20th of February, but the evening had been more than
usually gay, and had been spent in games at chess, tables, or
backgammon, reading romances of chivalry, harping and singing. King
James himself, brave and handsome, and in the prime of life, was
the blithest of the whole joyous party. He was the most accomplished
man in his dominions; for though he had been basely kept a prisoner
at Windsor throughout his boyhood by Henry IV of England, an
education had been bestowed on him far above what he would have
otherwise obtained; and he was naturally a man of great ability,
refinement, and strength of character. Not only was he a perfect
knight on horseback, but in wrestling and running, throwing
the hammer, and "putting the stane," he had scarcely a rival, and
he was skilled in all the learned lore of the time, wrote poetry,
composed music both sacred and profane, and was a complete minstrel,
able to sing beautifully and to play on the harp and organ. His queen,
the beautiful Joan Beaufort, had been the lady of his minstrelsy
in the days of his captivity, ever since he had watched her walking
on the slopes of Windsor Park, and wooed her in verses that are
still preserved.  They had now been eleven years married, and their
court was one bright spot of civilization, refinement, and grace,
amid the savagery of Scotland.  And now, after the pleasant social
evening, the queen, with her long fair hair unbound, was sitting
under the hands of her tirewomen, who were preparing her for the
night's rest; and the king, in his furred nightgown, was standing
before the bright fire on the hearth of the wide chimney, laughing
and talking with the attendant ladies.

Yet dark hints had already been whispered, which might have cast
a shadow over that careless mirth.  Always fierce and vindictive,
the Scots had been growing more and more lawless and savage ever
since the disputed succession of Bruce and Balliol had unsettled all
royal authority, and led to one perpetual war with the English. The
twenty years of James's captivity had been the worst of all--almost
every noble was a robber chief, Scottish borderer preyed upon
English borderer, Highlander upon Lowlander, knight upon traveler,
every one who had armor upon him who had not; each clan was at deadly
feud with its neighbor; blood was shed like water from end to end
of the miserable land, and the higher the birth of the offender
the greater the impunity he claimed.

Indeed, James himself had been brought next to the throne by one of
the most savage and horrible murders ever perpetrated--that of his
elder brother, David, by his own uncle; and he himself had probably
been only saved from sharing the like fate by being sent out of the
kingdom. His earnest words on his return to take the rule of this
unhappy realm were these: "Let God but grant me life, and there
shall not be a spot in my realm where the key shall not keep the
castle, and the bracken bush the cow, though I should lead the life
of a dog to accomplish it."

This great purpose had been before James through the eleven years
of his reign, and he had worked it out resolutely. The lawless
nobles would not brook his ruling hand, and strong and bitter was
the hatred that had arisen against him. In many of his transactions
he was far from blameless: he was sometimes tempted to craft,
sometimes to tyranny; but his object was always a high and kingly
one, though he was led by the horrible wickedness of the men he
had to deal with more than once to forget that evil is not to be
overcome with evil, but with good. In the main, it was his high
and uncompromising resolution to enforce the laws upon high and low
alike that led to the nobles' conspiracies against him; though, if
he had always been true to his purpose of swerving neither to the
right nor to the left, he might have avoided the last fatal offense
that armed the murderer against his life.

The chief misdoers in the long period of anarchy had been his uncles
and cousins; nor was it till after his eldest uncle's death that
his return home had been possible. With a strong hand had he avenged
upon the princes and their followers the many miseries they had
inflicted upon his people; and in carrying out these measures he
had seized upon the great earldom of Strathern, which had descended
to one of their party in right of his wife, declaring that it could
not be inherited by a female. In this he appears to have acted
unjustly, from the strong desire to avail himself by any pretext
of an opportunity of breaking the overweening power of the great
turbulent nobles; and, to make up for the loss, he created the new
earldom of Menteith, for the young Malise Graham, the son of the
dispossessed earl. But the proud and vindictive Grahams were not
thus to be pacified. Sir Robert Graham, the uncle of the young
earl, drew off into the Highlands, and there formed a conspiracy
among other discontented men who hated the resolute government that
repressed their violence. Men of princely blood joined in the plot,
and 300 Highland catherans were ready to accompany the expedition
that promised the delights of war and plunder.

Even when the hard-worked king was setting forth to enjoy his holiday
at Perth, the traitors had fixed upon that spot as the place of
his doom; but the scheme was known to so many, that it could not
be kept entirely secret, and warnings began to gather round the
king. When, on his way to Perth, he was about to cross the Firth of
Forth, the wild figure of a Highland woman appeared at his bridle
rein, and solemnly warned him "that, if he crossed that water, he
would never return alive." He was struck by the apparition, and
bade one of his knights to inquire of her what she meant; but the
knight must have been a dullard or a traitor, for he told the king
that the woman was either mad or drunk, and no notice was taken of
her warning.

There was likewise a saying abroad in Scotland, that the new year,
1436, should see the death of a king; and this same carnival night,
James, while playing at chess with a young friend, whom he was wont
to call the king of love, laughingly observed that "it must be you
or I, since there are but two kings in Scotland--therefore, look
well to yourself."

Little did the blithe monarch guess that at that moment one of the
conspirators, touched by a moment's misgiving, was hovering round,
seeking in vain for an opportunity of giving him warning; that even
then his chamberlain and kinsman, Sir Robert Stewart, was enabling
the traitors to place boards across the moat for their passage,
and to remove the bolts and bars of all the doors in their way.
And the Highland woman was at the door, earnestly entreating to
see the king if but for one moment! The message was even brought
to him, but alas! he bade her wait till the morrow, and she turned
away, declaring that she should never more see his face!

And now, as before said, the feast was over, and the king stood,
gayly chatting with his wife and her ladies, when the clang of arms
was heard, and the glare of torches in the court below flashed on
the windows. The ladies flew to secure the doors.  Alas! the bolts
and bars were gone! Too late the warnings returned upon the king's
mind, and he knew it was he alone who was sought. He tried to
escape by the windows, but here the bars were but too firm. Then
he seized the tongs, and tore up a board in the floor, by which he
let himself down into the vault below, just as the murderers came
rushing along the passage, slaying on their way a page named Walter
Straiton.

There was no bar to the door. Yes, there was.  Catherine Douglas,
worthy of her name, worthy of the cognizance of the bleeding heart,
thrust her arm through the empty staples to gain for her sovereign
a few moments more for escape and safety! But though true as steel,
the brave arm was not as strong. It was quickly broken.  She was
thrust fainting aside, and the ruffians rushed in. Queen Joan stood
in the midst of the room, with her hair streaming round her, and
her mantle thrown hastily on. Some of the wretches even struck and
wounded her, but Graham called them off, and bade them search for
the king. They sought him in vain in every corner of the women's
apartments, and dispersed through the other rooms in search of
their prey. The ladies began to hope that the citizens and nobles
in the town were coming to their help, and that the king might
have escaped through an opening that led from the vault into the
tennis-court. Presently, however, the king called to them to draw
him up again, for he had not been able to get out of the vault,
having a few days before caused the hole to be bricked up, because
his tennis-balls used to fly into it and be lost.  In trying to
draw him up by the sheets, Elizabeth Douglas, another of the ladies,
was actually pulled down into the vault; the noise was heard by
the assassins, who were still watching outside, and they returned.

There is no need to tell of the foul and cruel slaughter that
ensued, nor of the barbarous vengeance that visited it. Our tale
is of golden, not of brazen deeds; and if we have turned our eyes
for a moment to the Bloody Carnival of Perth, it is for the sake of
the king, who was too upright for his bloodthirsty subjects, and,
above all, for that of the noble-hearted lady whose frail arm was
the guardian of her sovereign's life in the extremity of peril.




THE BRAVE QUEEN OF HUNGARY

By Charlotte M. Yonge



Of all the possessions of the old kingdom of Hungary, none was more
valued than what was called the Crown of St. Stephen, so called from
one which had, in the year 1000, been presented by Pope Sylvester
II to Stephen, the second Christian Duke, and first King of Hungary.
A crown and a cross were given to him for his coronation, which
took place in the Church of the Holy Virgin, at Alba Regale, also
called in German Weissenburg, where thenceforth the kings of Hungary
were anointed to begin their troubled reigns, and at the close of
them were laid to rest beneath the pavement, where most of them
might have used the same epitaph as the old Italian leader: "He rests
here, who never rested before." For it was a wild realm, bordered
on all sides by foes, with Poland, Bohemia, and Austria, ever
casting greedy eyes upon it, and afterwards with the Turk upon the
southern border, while the Magyars, or Hungarian nobles, themselves
were a fierce and untamable race, bold and generous, but brooking
little control, claiming a voice in choosing their own sovereign,
and to resist him, even by force of arms, if he broke the laws. No
prince had a right to their allegiance unless he had been crowned
with St. Stephen's crown; but if he had once worn that sacred
circle, he thenceforth was held as the only lawful monarch, unless
he should flagrantly violate the Constitution.  In 1076, another
crown had been given by the Greek emperor to Geysa, King of Hungary,
and the sacred crown combined the two. It had the two arches of
the Roman crown, and the gold circlet of the Constantinopolitan;
and the difference of workmanship was evident.

In the year 1439 died King Albert, who had been appointed King of
Hungary in right of his wife, Queen Elizabeth. He left a little
daughter only four years old, and as the Magyars had never been
governed by a female hand, they proposed to send and offer their
crown, and the hand of their young widowed queen, to Wladislas, the
King of Poland.  But Elizabeth had hopes of another child, and in
case it should be a son, she had no mind to give away its rights
to its father's throne. How, then, was she to help herself among
the proud and determined nobles of her court? One thing was certain,
that if once the Polish King were crowned with St.  Stephen's crown,
it would be his own fault if he were not King of Hungary as long
as he lived; but if the crown were not to be found, of course he
could not receive it, and the fealty of the nobles would not be
pledged to him.

The most trustworthy person she had about her was Helen Kottenner,
the lady who had the charge of her little daughter, Princess
Elizabeth, and to her she confided her desire that the crown might
be secured, so as to prevent the Polish party from getting access
to it. Helen herself has written down the history of these strange
events, and of her own struggles of mind at the risk she ran, and
the doubt whether good would come of the intrigue; and there can
be no doubt that, whether the queen's conduct were praiseworthy or
not, Helen dared a great peril for the sake purely of loyalty and
fidelity.  "The queen's commands," she says, "sorely troubled me;
for it was a dangerous venture for me and my little children, and
I turned it over in my mind what I should do, for I had no one to
take counsel of but God alone; and I thought if I did it not, and
evil arose therefrom, I should be guilty before God and the world.
So I consented to risk my life on this difficult undertaking; but
desired to have some one to help me." This was permitted; but the
first person to whom the Lady of Kottenner confided her intention,
a Croat, lost his color from alarm, looked like one half dead, and
went at once in search of his horse. The next thing that was heard
of him was that he had had a bad fall from his horse, and had been
obliged to return to Croatia, and the queen remained much alarmed
at her plans being known to one so faint-hearted. However, a more
courageous confidant was afterwards found in a Hungarian gentleman,
whose name has become illegible in Helen's old manuscript.

The crown was in the vaults of the strong castle of Plintenburg,
also called Vissegrad, which stands upon a bend of the Danube,
about twelve miles from the twin cities of Buda and Pesth. It was
in a case, within a chest, sealed with many seals, and since the
king's death, it had been brought up by the nobles, who closely
guarded both it and the queen, into her apartments, and there
examined and replaced it in the chest. The next night, one of the
queen's ladies upset a wax taper, without being aware of it, and
before the fire was discovered, and put out, the corner of the
chest was singed, and a hole burnt in the blue velvet cushion that
lay on the top. Upon this, the lords had caused the chest to be
taken down again into the vault, and had fastened the doors with
many locks and with seals. The castle had further been put into
the charge of Ladislas von Gara, the queen's cousin, and Ban, or
hereditary commander, of the border troops, and he had given it
over to a Burggraf, or seneschal, who had placed his bed in the
chamber where was the door leading to the vaults.

The queen removed to Komorn, a castle higher up the Danube, in
charge of her faithful cousin, Count Ulric of Eily, taking with
her her little daughter Elizabeth, Helen Kottenner, and two other
ladies. This was the first stage on the journey to Presburg, where
the nobles had wished to lodge the queen, and from thence she sent
back Helen to bring the rest of the maids of honor and her goods
to join her at Komorn. It was early spring, and snow was still on
the ground, and the Lady of Kottenner and her faithful nameless
assistant travelled in a sledge; but two Hungarian noblemen went
with them, and they had to be most careful in concealing their
arrangements. Helen had with her the queen's signet, and keys; and
her friend had a file in each shoe, and keys under his black velvet
dress.

On arriving in the evening, they found that the Burggraf had fallen
ill, and could not sleep in the chamber leading to the vault, because
it belonged to the ladies' chambers, and that he had therefore
put a cloth over the padlock of the door and sealed it. There was
a stove in the room, and the maidens began to pack up their clothes
there, an operation that lasted till eight o'clock; while Helen's
friend stood there, talking and jesting with them, trying all the
while to hide the files, and contriving to say to Helen: "Take care
that we have a light." So she begged the old housekeeper to give
her plenty of wax tapers, as she had many prayers to say. At last
every one was gone to bed, and there only remained in the room
with Helen, an old woman, whom she had brought with her, who knew
no German, and was fast asleep. Then the accomplice came back through
the chapel, which opened into this same hall. He had on his black
velvet gown and felt shoes, and was followed by a servant, who,
Helen says, was bound to him by oath, and had the same Christian
name as himself, this being evidently an additional bond of fidelity.
Helen, who had received from the queen all the keys of this outer
room, let them in, and, after the Burggraf's cloth and seal had been
removed, they unlocked the padlock and the other two locks of the
outer door of the vault, and the two men descended into it.  There
were several other doors, whose chains required to be filed through,
and their seals and locks broken, and to the ears of the waiting
Helen the noise appeared fatally loud. She says: "I devoutly prayed
to God and the Holy Virgin, that they would support and help me;
yet I was in greater anxiety for my soul than for my life, and I
prayed to God that He would be merciful to my soul, and rather let
me die at once there, than that anything should happen against His
will, or that should bring misfortune on my country and people."

She fancied she heard a noise of armed men at the chapel door, but
finding nothing there, believed that it was a spirit, and returning
to her prayers, vowed, poor lady, to make a pilgrimage to St.  Maria
Zell, in Styria, if the Holy Virgin's intercessions obtained their
success, and till the pilgrimage could be made, "to forego every
Saturday night my feather bed!" After another false alarm at a
supposed noise at the maidens' door, she ventured into the vault
to see how her companions were getting on, when she found they
had filed away all the locks, except that of the case containing
the crown, and this they were obliged to burn, in spite of their
apprehension that the smell and smoke might be observed. They then
shut up the chest, replaced the padlocks and chains with those
they had brought for the purpose, and renewed the seals with the
queen's signet, which, bearing the royal arms, would baffle detection
that the seals had been tampered with. They then took the crown
into the chapel, where they found a red velvet cushion, so large
that by taking out some of the stuffing a hiding-place was made in
which the crown was deposited, and the cushion sewn up over it.

By this time day was dawning, the maidens were dressing, and it was
the hour for setting off for Komorn. The old woman who had waited
on them came to the Lady of Kottenner to have her wages paid, and
be dismissed to Buda. While she was waiting, she began to remark
on a strange thing lying by the stove, which, to the Lady Helen's
great dismay, she perceived to be a bit of the case in which the
crown was kept. She tried to prevent the old woman from noticing
it, pushed it into the hottest part of the stove, and, by way of
further precaution, took the old woman away with her, on the plea
of asking the queen to make her a bedeswoman at Vienna, and this
was granted to her.

When all was ready, the gentleman desired his servant to take the
cushion and put it into the sledge designed for himself and the
Lady of Kottenner.  The man took it on his shoulders, hiding it
under an old ox-hide, with the tail hanging down, to the laughter
of all beholders. Helen further records the trying to get some
breakfast in the market-place and finding nothing but herrings,
also the going to mass, and the care she took not to sit upon the
holy crown, though she had to sit on its cushion in the sledge.
They dined at an inn, but took care to keep the cushion in sight,
and then in the dusk crossed the Danube on the ice, which was
becoming very thin, and half-way across it broke under the maidens'
carriage, so that Helen expected to be lost in the Danube, crown
and all.  However, though many packages were lost under the ice,
her sledge got safe over, as well as all the ladies, some of whom
she took into her conveyance, and all safely arrived at the castle
of Komorn late in the evening.

The very hour of their arrival a babe was born to the queen and
to her exceeding joy it was a son.  Count von Eily, hearing "that
a king and friend was born to him," had bonfires lighted, and
a torchlight procession on the ice that same night, and early in
the morning came the Archbishop of Gran to christen the child. The
queen wished her faithful Helen to be godmother, but Helen refused
in favor of some lady whose family it was probably needful to
propitiate. She took off the little princess Elizabeth's mourning
for her father and dressed her in red and gold, all the maidens
appeared in gay apparel, and there was great rejoicing and
thanksgiving when the babe was christened Ladislas, after a sainted
king of Hungary.

[Illustration: THEN HE OFFERED A FERVENT PRAYER OF THANKS]

The peril was, however, far from ended; for many of the Magyars
had no notion of accepting an infant for their king, and by Easter,
the King of Poland was advancing upon Buda to claim the realm to
which he had been invited. No one had discovered the abstraction
of the crown, and Elizabeth's object was to take her child to
Weissenburg, and there have him crowned, so as to disconcert the
Polish party. She had sent to Buda for cloth of gold to make him a
coronation dress, but it did not come in time, and Helen therefore
shut herself into the chapel at Komorn, and, with doors fast
bolted, cut up a rich and beautiful vestment of his grandfather's,
the Emperor Sigismund, of red and gold, with silver spots, and
made it into a tiny coronation robe, with surplice and humeral (or
shoulder-piece), the stole and banner, the gloves and shoes. The
queen was much alarmed by a report that the Polish party meant to
stop her on her way to Weissenburg; and if the baggage should be
seized and searched, the discovery of the crown might have fatal
consequences. Helen, on this, observed that the king was more
important than the crown, and that the best way would be to keep
them together; so she wrapped up the crown in a cloth, and hid it
under the mattress of his cradle, with a long spoon for mixing his
pap upon the top, so, said the queen, he might take care of his
crown himself.

On Tuesday before Whitsunday the party set out, escorted by Count
Ulric, and several other knights and nobles. After crossing the
Danube in a large boat, the queen and her little girl were placed
in a carriage, or more probably a litter, the other ladies rode,
and the cradle and its precious contents were carried by four men;
but this the poor little Lassla, as Helen shortens his lengthy
name, resented so much, that he began to scream so loud that she
was forced to dismount and carry him in her arms, along a road
rendered swampy by much rain.

They found all the villages deserted by the peasants, who had fled
into the woods, and as most of their lords were of the other party,
they expected an attack, so the little king was put into the carriage
with his mother and sister, and the ladies formed a circle round it
"that if any one shot at the carriage we might receive the stroke."
When the danger was over the child was taken out again, for he
would be content nowhere but in the arms of either his nurse or
of faithful Helen, who took turns to carry him on foot nearly all
the way, sometimes in a high wind which covered them with dust,
sometimes in great heat, sometimes in rain so heavy that Helen's
fur pelisse, with which she covered his cradle, had to be wrung
out several times. They slept at an inn, round which the gentlemen
lighted a circle of fires, and kept watch all night.

Weissenburg was loyal, five hundred armed gentlemen came out to
meet them, and on Whitsun Eve they entered the city, Helen carrying
her little king in her arms in the midst of a circle of these five
hundred holding their naked swords aloft. On Whitsunday, Helen rose
early, bathed the little fellow, who was twelve weeks old that day,
and dressed him. He was then carried in her arms to the church,
beside his mother. According to the old Hungarian customs the choir
door was closed,--the burghers were within, and would not open
till the new monarch should have taken the great coronation oath
to respect the Hungarian liberties and laws.

This oath was taken by the queen in the name of her son, the doors
were opened, and all the train entered, the little princess being
lifted up to stand by the organ, lest she should be hurt in the
throng.  First Helen held her charge up to be confirmed, and then
she had to hold him while he was knighted, with a richly adorned
sword bearing the motto "Indestructible," and by a stout Hungarian
knight called Mikosch Weida, who struck with such a good will that
Helen felt the blow on her arm, and the queen cried out to him not
to hurt the child.

The Archbishop of Gran anointed the little creature, dressed him
in the red and gold robe, and put on his head the holy crown, and
the people admired to see how straight he held up his neck under
it; indeed, they admired the loudness and strength of his cries,
when, as the good lady records, "the noble king had little pleasure
in his coronation, for he wept aloud." She had to hold him up for
the rest of the service, while Count Ulric of Eily held the crown
over his head, and afterwards to seat him in a chair in St. Peter's
Church, and then he was carried home in his cradle, with the count
holding the crown over his head, and the other regalia borne before
him.

And thus Ladislas became King of Hungary at twelve weeks old, and
was then carried off by his mother into Austria for safety. Whether
this secret robbery of the crown, and coronation by stealth,
was wise or just on the mother's part is a question not easy of
answer--though of course she deemed it her duty to do her utmost
for her child's rights.  Of Helen Kottenner's deep fidelity and
conscientious feeling there can be no doubt, and her having acted
with her eyes fully open to the risk she ran, her trust in Heaven
overcoming her fears and terrors, rendered her truly a heroine.

The crown has had many other adventures, and afterwards was kept in
an apartment of its own in the castle of Ofen, with an antechamber
guarded by two grenadiers. The door was of iron, with three locks,
and the crown itself was contained in an iron chest with five
seals. All this, however, did not prevent it from being taken away
and lost in the Revolution of 1849.




A STORY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS FOR LITTLE CHILDREN

By Elizabeth Harrison



Once upon a time, far across the great ocean there lived a little
boy named Christopher.  The city in which he lived was called Genoa.
It was on the coast of the great sea, and from the time that little
Christopher could first remember he had seen boats come and go
across the water.  I doubt not that he had little boats of his own
which he tried to sail, or paddle about on the small pools near
his home.

Soon after he was old enough to read books, which in those days
were very scarce and very much valued, he got hold of an account
of the wonderful travels of a man named Marco Polo. Over and over
again little Christopher read the marvelous stories told by this
old traveler, of the strange cities which he had seen and of the
dark-colored people whom he had met; of the queer houses; of the
wild and beautiful animals he had encountered; of the jewels and
perfumes and flowers which he had come across.

All day long the thoughts of little Christopher were busy with this
strange far-away land which Marco Polo described. All night long
he dreamed of the marvelous sights to be seen on those distant
shores. Many a time he went down to the water's edge to watch the
queer ships as they slowly disappeared in the dim distance, where
the sea and sky seemed to meet. He listened eagerly to everything
about the sea and the voyages of adventure, or of trade which were
told by the sailors near.

When he was fourteen years old he went to sea with an uncle, who
was commander of one of the vessels that came and went from the
port of Genoa.  For a number of years he thus lived on a vessel,
learning everything that he could about the sea.  At one time the
ship on which he was sailing had a desperate fight with another
ship; both took fire and were burned to the water's edge. Christopher
Columbus, for that was his full name, only escaped, as did the
other sailors, by jumping into the sea and swimming to the shore.
Still this did not cure him of his love for the ocean life.

We find after a time that he left Italy, his native country, and
went to live in Portugal, a land near the great sea, whose people
were far more venturesome than had been those of Genoa. Here he
married a beautiful maiden, whose father had collected a rich store
of maps and charts, which showed what was then supposed to be the
shape of the earth and told of strange and wonderful voyages which
brave sailors had from time to time dared to make out into the
then unknown sea. Most people in those days thought it was certain
death to any one who ventured very far out on the ocean.

There were all sorts of queer and absurd ideas afloat as to the
shape of the earth. Some people thought it was round like a pancake
and that the waters which surrounded the land gradually changed
into mist and vapor and that he who ventured out into these vapors
fell through the mist and clouds down into--they knew not where.
Others believed that there were huge monsters living in the distant
waters ready to swallow any sailor who was foolish enough to venture
near them.

But Christopher Columbus had grown to be a very wise and thoughtful
man, and from all he could learn from the maps of his father-in-law
and the books which he read, and from the long talks which he had
with some other learned men, he grew more and more certain that the
world was round like an orange, and that by sailing westward from
the coast of Portugal one could gradually go round the world and
find at last the wonderful land of _Cathay_, the strange country
which lay far beyond the sea, the accounts of which had so thrilled
him as a boy.

We, of course, know that he was right in his belief concerning the
shape of the earth, but people in those days laughed him to scorn
when he spoke of making a voyage out on the vast and fearful ocean.
In vain he talked and reasoned and argued, and drew maps to explain
matters. The more he proved to his own satisfaction that this must
be the shape of the world, the more other people shook their heads
and called him crazy.

He remembered in his readings of the book of Marco Polo's travels
that the people whom Polo had met were heathen who knew little about
the God who had made the world, and nothing at all about His Son,
Christ Jesus, and as Christopher Columbus loved very dearly the
Christian religion, his mind became filled with a longing to carry
it across the great seas to this far-away country. The more he
thought about it the more he wanted to go, until his whole life
was filled with the one thought of how to get hold of some ships
to prove that the earth was round, and that these far-away heathens
could be reached.

Through some influential friends he obtained admission to the court
of the King of Portugal.  Eagerly he told the rich monarch of the
great enterprise which filled his heart. It was of little or no
use, the king was busy with other affairs, and only listened to
the words of Columbus as one might listen to the wind. Year after
year passed by, Columbus' wife had died, and their one little son,
Diego, had grown to be quite a boy. Finally Columbus decided he
would leave Portugal and would go over to Spain, a rich country
near by, and see if the Spanish monarchs would not give him boats
in which to make his longed-for voyage.

The Spanish king was named Ferdinand, and the Spanish queen was a
beautiful woman named Isabella. When Columbus told them of his belief
that the world was round, and of his desire to help the heathen who
lived in this far-off country, they listened attentively to him,
for both King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were very earnest people
and very desirous that all the world should become Christians;
but their ministers and officers of state persuaded them that the
whole thing was a foolish dream of an enthusiastic, visionary man;
and again Columbus was disappointed in his hope of getting help.

Still he did not give up in despair. _The thought was too great for
that_. He sent his brother over to England to see if the English
king would not listen to him and give the necessary help, but again
he was doomed to disappointment. Only here and there could he find
any one who believed that it was possible for him to sail round
the earth and reach the land on the other side. Long years passed
by. Columbus grew pale and thin with waiting and hoping, with
planning arid longing.

Sometimes as he walked along the streets of the Spanish capital
people would point their fingers at him and say: "There goes
the crazy old man who thinks the world is round." Again and again
Columbus tried to persuade the Spanish king and queen that if they
would aid him, his discoveries would bring great honor and riches
to their kingdom, and that they would also become the benefactors
of the world by helping to spread the knowledge of Christ and His
religion. Nobody believed in his theory. Nobody was interested in
his plan.  He grew poorer and poorer.

At last he turned his back on the great Spanish court, and in silent
despair he took his little son by the hand and walked a long way to
a small seaport called Palos, where there was a queer old convent
in which strangers were often entertained by the kind monks who
lived in it.  Weary and footsore he reached the gate of the convent.
Knocking upon it he asked the porter, who answered the summons,
if he would give little Diego a bit of bread and a drink of water.
While the two tired travelers were resting, as the little boy ate
his dry crust of bread, the prior of the convent, a man of thought
and learning, whose name was Juan Perez, came by and at once saw that
these two were no common beggars. He invited them in and questioned
Columbus closely about his past life. He listened quietly and
thoughtfully to Columbus and his plan of crossing the ocean and
converting the heathen to Christianity.

Juan Perez had at one time been a very intimate friend of Queen
Isabella; in fact, the priest to whom she told all her sorrows and
troubles. He was a quiet man and talked but little. After a long
conference with Columbus, in which he was convinced that Columbus
was right, he borrowed a mule and getting on his back rode for many
miles across the open country to the palace in which the queen was
then staying. I do not know how he convinced her of the truth of
Columbus' plan, when all the ministers and courtiers and statesmen
about her considered it the absurdly foolish and silly dream of an
old man; but, somehow, he did it.

He then returned on his mule to the old convent at Palos, and
told Columbus to go back once more to the court of Spain and again
petition the queen to give him money with which to make his voyage
of discovery. The state treasurer said the queen had no money to
spare, but this noble-hearted woman, who now, for the first time,
realized that it was a grand and glorious thing Columbus wished to
do, said she would give her crown jewels for money with which to
start Columbus on his dangerous journey across the great ocean.

This meant much in those days, as queens were scarcely considered
dignified or respectable if they did not wear crowns of gold inlaid
with bright jewels on all public occasions, but Queen Isabella
cared far more to send the gospel of Christ over to the heathen
than how she might look, or what other people might say about her.
The jewels were pawned and the money was given to Columbus.  With
a glad heart he hastened back to the little town of Palos where he
had left his young son with the kind priest Juan Perez.

But now a new difficulty arose. Enough sailors could not be found
who would venture their lives by going out on this unknown voyage
with a crazy old man such as Columbus was thought to be. At last
the convicts from the prisons were given liberty by the queen on
condition that they would go with the sailors and Columbus. So, you
see, it was not altogether a very nice crew, still it was the best
he could get, and Columbus' heart was so filled with the great work
that he was willing to undertake the voyage no matter how great
or how, many the difficulties might be. The ships were filled with
food and other provisions for a long, long voyage.

Nobody knew how long it would be before the land on the other side
could be reached, and many people thought there was no possible
hope of its ever being found.

Early one summer morning, even before the sun had risen, Columbus
bade farewell to the few friends who had gathered at the little
seaport of Palos to say good-bye to him. The ships spread their
sails and started on the great untried voyage.  There were three
boats, none of which we would think, nowadays, was large enough
or strong enough to dare venture out of sight and help of land and
run the risk of encountering the storms of mid-ocean.

The names of the boats were the _Santa Maria_, which was the one
that Columbus himself commanded, and two smaller boats, one named
the _Pinta_ and the other the _Nina_.

Strange, indeed, must the sailors have felt, as hour after hour
they drifted out into the great unknown waters, which no man ever
ventured into before.  Soon all land faded from their sight, and
on, and on, and on they went, not knowing where or how the voyage
would end. Columbus alone was filled with hope, feeling quite sure
that in time he would reach the never before visited shores of a
New World, and would thus be the means of bringing the Christian
religion to these poor, ignorant people.  On and on they sailed,
day after day--far beyond the utmost point which sailors had ever
before reached.

Many of the men were filled with a strange dread and begged and
pleaded to return home. Still on and on they went, each day taking
them further and further from all they had ever known or loved
before. Day after day passed, and week after week until two months
had elapsed.

The provisions which they had brought with them were getting scarce,
and the men now dreaded starvation. They grew angry with Columbus,
and threatened to take his life if he did not command the ships
to be turned back toward Spain, but his patience did not give out,
nor was his faith one whit the less. He cheered the hearts of the
men as best he could, often telling them droll, funny stories to
distract their thoughts from the terrible dread which now filled
all minds.

He promised a rich reward to the first man who should discover
land ahead. This somewhat renewed their courage, and day and night
watches were set and the western horizon before them was scanned
at all hours. Time and again they thought they saw land ahead,
only to find they had mistaken a cloud upon the horizon for the
longed-for shore. Flocks of birds flying westward began to be seen.
This gave some ground for hope. For surely the birds must be flying
toward some land where they could find food, and trees in which to
build their nests. Still fear was great in the hearts of all, and
Columbus knew that he could not keep the men much longer in suspense,
and that if land did not appear soon they would compel him to turn
around and retrace his steps whether he wished to or not.

Then he thought of all the benighted heathen who had never heard of
God's message of love to man through Christ, and he prayed almost
incessantly that courage might be given him to go on.  Hour after
hour he looked across the blue water, day and night, longing for
the sight of land. In fact, he watched so incessantly that his
eyesight became injured and he could scarcely see at all.

At last one night as he sat upon the deck of the ship he was quite
sure that a faint light glimmered for a few moments in the distant
darkness ahead.  Where there is a light there must be land, he
thought. Still he was not sure, as his eyesight had become so dim.
So he called one of the more faithful sailors to him and asked him
what he saw. The sailor exclaimed:

"A light, a light!"

Another sailor was called, but by this time the light had disappeared
and the sailor saw nothing, and Columbus' hopes again sank. Still
he felt they must be nearing land. About two o'clock that night
the commander of one of the other boats started the cry:

"Land! land ahead!"

You can well imagine how the shout was taken up, and how the sailors,
one and all, rushed to the edge of their ships, leaning far over,
no doubt, and straining their eyes for the almost unhoped-for sight.

Early the next morning some one of the sailors picked up a branch
of a strange tree, lodged in the midst of which was a tiny bird's
nest. This was sure evidence that they were indeed near land; for
branches of trees do not grow in water,

Little by little the land came in sight. First it looked like a dim
ghost of a shore, but gradually it grew distinct and clear. About
noon the next day the keel of Columbus' boat grounded upon the sand
of the newly discovered country. No white man had ever before set
eyes upon it. No ship had ever before touched this coast.

At last after a long life of working and studying, of hoping
and planning, of trying and failing, and trying yet again, he had
realized his dream.

The great mystery of the ocean was revealed, and Columbus had
achieved a glory which would last as long as the world lasted. _He
had given a new world to mankind!_ He had reached the far distant
country across the ocean, which scarcely any of his countrymen had
even believed to have any existence. He now _knew_ that the whole
round world could in time have the Christian religion.

He sprang upon the shore, and dropping on his knees he first stooped
and kissed the ground, and then he offered a fervent prayer of
thanks to God.

A learned attorney who had come with him across the water next
planted the flag of Spain upon the unknown land, and claimed the
newly discovered country in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella of Spain.

Wonderful, wonderful indeed were the things which Columbus and the
sailors now saw! Strange naked men and women of a copper, or bronze
color, strange new birds with gorgeous tails that glittered like
gems such as they had never seen before; beautiful and unknown
fruits and flowers met their gaze on every side.

The savages were kind and gentle and brought them food and water.
They had little else to offer as they had no houses, nor streets,
nor carriages, nor cars, nor conveniences of any kind. Do you know,
my dear children, that this strange, wild savage country which
Columbus had traveled so far and so long to discover was _our
country, America?_

But it was not long after Columbus had gone back to Europe and told
the people there of the wonderful things which he had seen in this
far, far away land that ship-loads of white people, who were educated
and who had been taught to love God and to keep His commandments,
came over and settled in this wild, new country. They plowed the
land and planted seed; they built houses for themselves, their
wives, and little ones, and in time they made school-houses for
the children, and churches in which to worship God. Long and hard
was the struggle which these first white men had to make in this
strange, new country.

Year after year more and more white men came.  These new settlers
prospered, and new towns were built, and roads were made from one
town to another, and stores and manufactories began to be seen.

At last the little handful of people had grown so strong that they
established a government of their own, which welcomed all newcomers,
providing they were law-abiding citizens. The poor and oppressed,
the persecuted and discouraged in other lands came to this new shore,
where they found wealth if they were willing to work for it.

Here they need no longer fear the persecutions from which they had
suffered. Here they gained new hope and became honored and respected
citizens.

Little by little the small country grew into a great nation, the
greatest on earth, because it is the freest, and each citizen in
it has his rights respected.  But for the courage and determination
and self-sacrifice of Columbus this great new world might have
remained for hundreds of years unknown to men.

Four hundred years afterwards the children of the children's children
of these early settlers, had a grand celebration in honor of the
brave old man, Christopher Columbus, whom the people of his day
called crazy, and all the nations of the earth were invited to
bring their most beautiful, their richest and rarest products to
this celebration, in order that not we of America alone, but _the
whole world might celebrate the wisdom and the courage of the great
Columbus, "the finder of America."_

In the rejoicing and in the celebration the nations did not forget the
good Queen Isabella, who was willing to give up her most precious
jewels in order that she might help Columbus in his voyage of
discovery.




A SEA-FIGHT IN THE TIME OF QUEEN BESS

By Charles Kingsley



When the sun leaped up the next morning, and the tropic night
flashed suddenly into the tropic day, Amyas was pacing the deck,
with dishevelled hair and torn clothes, his eyes red with rage
and weeping, his heart full--how can I describe it? Picture it
to yourselves, picture it to yourselves, you who have ever lost a
brother; and you who have not, thank God that you know nothing of
his agony. Full of impossible projects, he strode and staggered
up and down, as the ship thrashed close-hauled through the rolling
seas. He would go back and burn the villa. He would take Guayra,
and have the life of every man in it in return for his brother's.
"We can do it, lads!" he shouted. "If Drake took Nombre de Dios,
we can take La Guayra." And every voice shouted, "Yes."

"We will have it, Amyas, and have Frank too, yet," cried Cary; but
Amyas shook his head. He knew, and knew not why he knew, that all
the ports in New Spain would never restore to him that one beloved
face.

"Yes, he shall be well avenged. And look there!  There is the first
crop of our vengeance." And he pointed toward the shore, where
between them and the now distant peaks of the Silla three sails
appeared, not five miles to windward.

"There are the Spanish bloodhounds on our heels, the same ships
which we saw yesterday off Guayra.  Back, lads, and welcome them,
if they were a dozen."

There was a murmur of applause from all around; and if any young
heart sank for a moment at the prospect of fighting three ships
at once, it was awed into silence by the cheer which rose from all
the older men, and by Salvation Yeo's stentorian voice:

"If there were a dozen, the Lord is with us, who has said, 'One of
you shall chase a thousand.' Clear away, lads, and see the glory
of the Lord this day."

"Amen!" cried Gary; and the ship was kept still closer to the wind.

Amyas had revived at the sight of battle. He no longer felt his
wounds, or his great sorrow; even Frank's last angel's look grew
dimmer every moment as he bustled about the deck; and ere a quarter
of an hour had passed, his voice cried firmly and cheerfully as of
old:

"Now, my masters, let us serve God, and then to breakfast, and
after that clear for action."

Jack Brimblecombe read the daily prayers, and the prayers before a
fight at sea, and his honest voice trembled as, in the Prayer for
all Conditions of Men (in spite of Amyas' despair), he added, "and
especially for our dear brother Mr. Francis Leigh, perhaps captive
among the idolaters;" and so they rose.

"Now, then," said Amyas, "to breakfast. A Frenchman fights best
fasting, a Dutchman drunk, an Englishman full, and a Spaniard when
the devil is in him, and that's always."

"And good beef and the good cause are a match for the devil," said
Cary. "Come down, captain; you must eat too."

Amyas shook his head, took the tiller from the steersman, and bade
him go below and fill himself.  Will Cary went down, and returned
in five minutes, with a plate of bread and beef, and a great jack
of ale, coaxed them down Amyas' throat, as a nurse does with a
child, and then scuttled below again with tears hopping down his
face.

Amyas stood still steering. His face was grown seven years older
in the last night. A terrible set calm was on him. Woe to the man
who came across him that day!

"There are three of them, you see, my masters," said he, as the crew
came on deck again. "A big ship forward, and two galleys astern of
her. The big ship may keep; she is a race ship, and if we can but
recover the wind of her, we will see whether our height is not
a match for her length. We must give her the slip, and take the
galleys first."

"I thank the Lord," said Yeo, "who has given so wise a heart to
so young a general; a very David and Daniel, saving his presence,
lads; and if any dare not follow him, let him be as the men of
Meroz and Succoth. Amen! Silas Stavely, smite me that boy over the
head, the young monkey; why is he not down at the powder-room door?"

And Yeo went about his gunnery, as one who knew how to do it, and
had the most terrible mind to do it thoroughly, and the most terrible
faith that it was God's work.

So all fell to; and though there was comparatively little to
be done, the ship having been kept as far as could be in fighting
order all night, yet there was "clearing the decks, lacing the
nettings, making of bulwarks, fitting of waist-cloths, arming of
tops, tallowing of pikes, slinging of yards, doubling of sheets
and tacks," enough to satisfy even the pedantical soul of Richard
Hawkins himself.

Amyas took charge of the poop, Gary of the forecastle, and Yeo, as
gunner, of the main deck, while Drew, as master, settled himself
in the waist; and all was ready, and more than ready, before the
great ship was within two miles of them.

And now, while the mastiffs of England and the bloodhounds of Spain
are nearing and nearing over the rolling surges, thirsting for each
other's blood, let us spend a few minutes at least in looking at
them both, and considering the causes which in those days enabled
the English to face and conquer armaments immensely superior in
size and number of ships, and to boast that in the whole Spanish
war but one queen's ship, the _Revenge_, and (if I recollect right)
but one private man-of-war, Sir Richard Hawkins' _Dainty_, had ever
struck their colors to the enemy.

What was it which enabled Sir Richard Grenvil's _Revenge_, in his
last fearful fight off the Azores, to endure, for twelve hours
before she struck, the attack of eight Spanish armadas, of which
two (three times her own burden) sank at her side; and after all
her masts were gone, and she had been boarded three times without
success, to defy to the last the whole fleet of fifty-four sail,
which lay around, her, waiting for her to sink, "like dogs around
the dying forest king?"

What was it that enabled young Richard Hawkins' _Dainty_, though
half her guns were useless through the carelessness or treachery
of the gunner, to maintain for three days a running fight with two
Spaniards of equal size with her, double weight of metal, and ten
times the number of men?

What enabled Sir George Gary's illustrious ship, the _Content_,
to fight single-handed, from seven in the morning till eleven at
night, with four great armadas and two galleys, though her heaviest
gun was but one nine-pounder, and for many hours she had but thirteen
men fit for service?

What enabled, in the very year of which I write, those two valiant
Turkey merchantmen of London, the _Merchant Royal_ and the _Tobie_,
with their three small consorts, to cripple, off Pantellaria in the
Mediterranean, the whole fleet of Spanish galleys sent to intercept
them, and return triumphant through the Straits of Gibraltar?

And lastly, what in the fight of 1588, whereof more hereafter,
enabled the English fleet to capture, destroy, and scatter that
Great Armada, with the loss (but not the capture) of one pinnace,
and one gentleman of note?

There were more causes than one: the first seems to have lain in
the build of the English ships; the second in their superior gunnery
and weight of metal; the third (without which the first would have
been useless) in the hearts of the English men.

The English ship was much shorter than the Spanish; and this (with
the rig of those days) gave them an ease in manoeuvring, which
utterly confounded their Spanish foes. "The English ships in the
fight of 1588," says Camden, "charged the enemy with marvellous
agility, and having discharged their broadsides, flew forth presently
into the deep, and levelled their shot directly, without missing,
at those great ships of the Spaniards, which were altogether heavy
and unwieldy." Moreover, the Spanish fashion, in the West Indies
at least, though not in the ships of the Great Armada, was, for
the sake of carrying merchandise, to build their men-of-war flush
decked, or as it was called "race" (razs), which left those on
deck exposed and open; while the English fashion was to heighten
the ship as much as possible at stem and stern, both by the sweep
of her lines, and also by stockades ("close fights and cage-works")
on the poop and forecastle, thus giving to the men a shelter, which
was further increased by strong bulkheads ("co-bridgeheads") across
the main-deck below, dividing the ship thus into a number of separate
forts, fitted with swivels ("bases, fowlers and murderers") and
loopholed for musketry and arrows.

But the great source of superiority was, after all, in the men
themselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibious
and all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything,
from needlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows;
and he was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was
not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice
from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider
sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel
of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest
nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest
also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and
self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work,
was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best he could. In
one word, he was a free man.

The English officers, too, as now, lived on terms of sympathy with
their men unknown to the Spaniards, who raised between the commander
and the commanded absurd barriers of rank and blood, which forbade
to his pride any labor but that of fighting. The English officers,
on the other hand, brought up to the same athletic sports, the
same martial exercise, as their men, were not ashamed to care for
them, to win their friendship, even on emergency to consult their
judgment; and used their rank, not to differ from their men,
but to outvie them; not merely to command and be obeyed, but like
Homer's heroes, or the old Norse vikings, to lead and be followed.
Drake touched the true mainspring of English success when he once
(in his voyage round the world) indignantly rebuked some coxcomb
gentleman-adventurers with, "I should like to see the gentleman that
will refuse to set his hand to a rope. I must have the gentlemen
to hale and draw with the mariners." But those were days in which
her Majesty's service was as little overridden by absurd rules of
seniority as by that etiquette which is at once the counterfeit and
the ruin of true discipline. Under Elizabeth and her ministers, a
brave and a shrewd man was certain of promotion, let his rank or
his age be what they might; the true honor of knighthood covered
once and for all any lowliness of birth; and the merchant service
(in which all the best sea-captains, even those of noble blood,
were more or less engaged) was then a nursery, not only for seamen,
but for warriors, in days when Spanish and Portuguese traders
(whenever they had a chance) got rid of English competition by
salvoes of cannon-shot.

Hence, as I have said, that strong fellow-feeling between officers
and men; and hence mutinies (as Sir Richard Hawkins tells us) were
all but unknown in the English ships, while in the Spanish they broke
out on every slight occasion. For the Spaniards, by some suicidal
pedantry, had allowed their navy to be crippled by the same
despotism, etiquette, and official routine by which the whole nation
was gradually frozen to death in the course of the next century
or two; forgetting that, fifty years before, Cortez, Pizarro, and
the early conquistadores of America had achieved their miraculous
triumphs on the exactly opposite methods; by that very fellow-feeling
between commander and commanded by which the English were now
conquering them in their turn.

Their navy was organized on a plan complete enough; but on one
which was, as the event proved, utterly fatal to their prowess
and unanimity, and which made even their courage and honor useless
against the assaults of free men. "They do, in their armadas at sea,
divide themselves into three bodies; to wit, soldiers, mariners, and
gunners. The soldiers and officers watch and ward as if on shore;
and this is the only duty they undergo, except cleaning their
arms, wherein they are not over curious. The gunners are exempted
from all labor and care, except about the artillery; and these are
either Almaines, Flemings, or strangers; for the Spaniards are but
indifferently practiced in this art. The mariners are but as slaves
to the rest, to moil and to toil day and night; and those but few
and bad, and not suffered to sleep or harbor under the decks. For
in fair or foul weather, in storms, sun, or rain, they must pass
void of covert or succor."

This is the account of one who was long prisoner on board their
ships; let it explain itself, while I return to my tale. For the
great ship is now within two musket-shots of the _Rose_, with the
golden flag of Spain floating at her poop; and her trumpets are
shouting defiance up the breeze, from a dozen brazen throats, which
two or three answer lustily from the _Rose_, from whose poop flies
the flag of England, and from her fore the arms of Leigh and Cary
side by side, and over them the ship and bridge of the good town
of Bideford. And then Amyas calls:

"Now, silence trumpets, waits, play up! 'Fortune my foe!' and God
and the Queen be with us!"

Whereon (laugh not, reader, for it was a fashion of those musical
as well as valiant days) up rose that noble old favorite of good
Queen Bess, from cornet and sackbut, fife and drum; while Parson
Jack, who had taken his stand with the musicians on the poop, worked
away lustily at his violin.

"Well played, Jack; thy elbow flies like a lamb's tail," said Amyas,
forcing a jest.

"It shall fly to a better fiddle-bow presently, sir, if I have the
luck--"

"Steady, helm!" said Amyas. "What is he after now?"

The Spaniard, who had been coming upon them right down the wind
under a press of sail, took in his light canvas.

"He don't know what to make of our waiting for him so bold," said
the helmsman.

"He does, though, and means to fight us," cried another. "See, he
is hauling up the foot of his mainsail; but he wants to keep the
wind of us."

"Let him try, then," quoth Amyas. "Keep her closer still. Let no
one fire till we are about. Man the starboard guns; to starboard,
and wait, all small-arm men. Pass the order down to the gunner,
and bid all fire high, and take the rigging."

Bang went one of the Spaniard's bow guns, and the shot went wide.
Then another and another, while the men fidgeted about, looking at
the priming of their muskets, and loosened arrows in the sheaf.

"Lie down, men, and sing a psalm. When I want you, I'll call you.
Closer still, if you can, helmsman, and we will try a short ship
against a long one. We can sail two points nearer the wind than
he."

As Amyas had calculated, the Spaniard would gladly enough have stood
across the _Rose's_ bows, but knowing the English readiness, dare
not for fear of being raked; so her only plan, if she did not
intend to shoot past her foe down to leeward, was to put her head
close to the wind, and wait for her on the same tack.

Amyas laughed to himself. "Hold on yet awhile.  More ways of killing
a cat than choking her with cream. Drew, there, are your men ready?"

"Ay, ay, sir!" and on they went, closing fast with the Spaniard,
till within a pistol-shot.

"Ready about!" and about she went like an eel, and ran upon
the opposite tack right under the Spaniard's stern. The Spaniard,
astounded at the quickness of the manoeuvre, hesitated a moment,
and then tried to get about also, as his only chance; but it was
too late, and while his lumbering length was still hanging in the
wind's eye, Amyas' bowsprit had all but scraped his quarter, and
the _Rose_ passed slowly across his stern at ten yards' distance.

"Now, then!" roared Amyas. "Fire, and with a will! Have at
her--archers, have at her, muskets all!" and in an instant a storm
of bar and chainshot, round and canister, swept the proud Don
from stem to stern, while through the white cloud of smoke the
musket-balls, and the still deadlier clothyard arrows, whistled
and rushed upon their venomous errand. Down went the steersman,
and every soul who manned the poop. Down went the mizzen topmast,
in went the stern windows and quarter galleries; and as the smoke
cleared away, the gorgeous painting of the Madre Dolorosa, with
her heart full of seven swords, which, in a gilded frame, bedizened
the Spanish stern, was shivered in splinters; while, most glorious
of all, the golden flag of Spain, which the last moment flaunted
above their heads, hung trailing in the water. The ship, her tiller
shot away, and her helmsman killed, staggered helplessly a moment,
and then fell up into the wind.

"Well done, men of Devon!" shouted Amyas, as cheers rent the welkin.

"She has struck!" cried some, as the deafening hurrahs died away.

"Not a bit," said Amyas. "Hold on, helmsman, and leave her to patch
her tackle while we settle the galleys."

On they shot merrily, and long ere the armada could get herself
to rights again, were two good miles to windward, with the galleys
sweeping down fast upon them.

And two venomous-looking craft they were, as they shot through the
short chopping sea upon some forty oars apiece, stretching their
long sword-fish snouts over the water, as if snuffing for their prey.
Behind this long snout, a strong square forecastle was crammed with
soldiers, and the muzzles of cannon grinned out through port-holes,
not only in the sides of the forecastle, but forward in the line
of the galley's course, thus enabling her to keep up a continual
fire on a ship right ahead.

The long low waist was packed full of the slaves, some five or
six to each oar, and down the centre, between the two banks, the
English could see the slave-drivers walking up and down a long
gangway, whip in hand. A raised quarter-deck at the stern held
more soldiers, the sunlight flashing merrily upon their armor and
their gun-barrels; as they neared, the English could hear plainly
the cracks of the whips, and the yells as of wild beasts which
answered them; the roll and rattle of oars, and the loud "Ha!" of
the slaves which accompanied every stroke, and the oaths and curses
of the drivers; while a sickening musky smell, as of a pack of
kennelled hounds, came down the wind from off those dens of misery.
No wonder if many a young heart shuddered as it faced, for the first
time, the horrible reality of those floating hells, the cruelties
whereof had rung so often in the English ears, from the stories
of their own countrymen, who had passed them, fought them, and now
and then passed years of misery on board of them.  Who knew but what
there might be English among those sun-browned, half-naked masses
of panting wretches?

"Must we fire upon the slaves?" asked more than one, as the thought
crossed him.

Amyas sighed.

"Spare them all you can, in God's name; but if they try to run us
down, rake them we must, and God forgive us."

The two galleys came on abreast of each other, some forty yards
apart. To out-manoeuvre their oars as he had done the ship's sails,
Amyas knew was impossible. To run from them, was to be caught
between them and the ship.

He made up his mind, as usual, to the desperate game.

"Lay her head upon the wind, helmsman, and we will wait for them."

They were now within musket-shot, and opened fire from their
bow-guns; but, owing to the chopping sea, their aim was wild. Amyas,
as usual, withheld his fire.

The men stood at quarters with compressed lips, not knowing what
was to come next. Amyas, towering motionless on the quarter-deck,
gave orders calmly and decisively. The men saw that he trusted
himself, and trusted him accordingly.

The Spaniards, seeing him wait for them, gave a shout of joy--was
the Englishman mad? And the two galleys converged rapidly, intending
to strike him full, one on each bow.

They were within forty yards--another minute, and the shock would
come.

The Englishman's helm went up, his yards creaked round, and gathering
way he plunged upon the larboard galley.

"A dozen gold nobles to him who brings down the steersman!" shouted
Carey, who had his cue.

And a flight of arrows from the forecastle rattled upon the galley's
quarter-deck.

Hit or not hit, the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the
coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid
all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then
loud crack on crack, as the _Rose_ sawed slowly through the bank
of oars from stem to stern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps
upon each other; and ere her mate on the other side could swing
round, to strike him in his new position, Amyas' whole broadside,
great and small, had been poured into her at pistol-shot, answered
by a yell which rent their ears and hearts.

"Spare the slaves! Fire at the soldiers!" cried Amyas; but the
work was too hot for much discrimination, for the larboard galley,
crippled but not undaunted, swung round across his stern, and hooked
herself venomously on to him.

It was a move more brave than wise; for it prevented the other
galley from returning to the attack without exposing herself a
second time to the English broadside; and a desperate attempt of
the Spaniards to board at once through the stern ports, and up the
quarter, was met with such a demurrer of shot and steel that they
found themselves in three minutes again upon the galley's poop,
accompanied, to their intense disgust, by Amyas Leigh and twenty
English swords.

Five minutes' hard cutting, hand to hand, and the poop was clear.
The soldiers in the forecastle had been able to give them no assistance,
open as they lay to the arrows and musketry from the _Rose's_ lofty
stern. Amyas rushed along the central gangway, shouting in Spanish,
"Freedom to the slaves! death to the masters!" clambered into the
forecastle, followed close by his swarm of wasps, and set them so
good an example how to use their stings, that in three minutes more
there was not a Spaniard on board who was not dead or dying.

"Let the slaves free!" shouted he. "Throw us a hammer down, men.
Hark! there's an English voice!" There is indeed. From amid the
wreck of broken oars and writhing limbs, a voice is shrieking in
broadest Devon to the master, who is looking over the side:

"Oh, Robert Drew! Robert Drew! Come down and take me out of hell!"

"Who be you, in the name of the Lord?"

"Don't you mind William Prust, that Captain Hawkins left behind in
the Honduras, years and years agone? There's nine of us aboard, if
your shot hasn't put 'em out of their misery. Come down--if you've
a Christian heart, come down!"

Utterly forgetful of all discipline, Drew leaps down, hammer in
hand, and the two old comrades rush into each other's arms.

Why make a long story of what took but five minutes to do? The nine
men (luckily none of them wounded) are freed, and helped on board,
to be hugged and kissed by all comrades and young kinsmen; while
the remaining slaves, furnished with a couple of hammers, are told
to free themselves and help the English. The wretches answered by
a shout; and Amyas, once more safe on board again, dashes after
the other galley, which has been hovering out of reach of his guns;
but there is no need to trouble himself about her; sickened with
what she has got, she is struggling right up wind, leaning over to
one side, and seemingly ready to sink.

"Are there any English on board of her?" asked Amyas, loth to lose
the chance of freeing a countryman.

"Never a one, sir, thank God."

So they set to work to repair damages; while the liberated slaves,
having shifted some of the galley's oars, pull away after their
comrade; and that with such a will, that in ten minutes they have
caught her up, and careless of the Spaniard's fire, boarded her en
masse, with yells as of a thousand wolves.  There will be fearful
vengeance taken on those tyrants, unless they play the man this
day.

And in the meanwhile half the crew are clothing, feeding, questioning,
caressing those nine poor fellows thus snatched from living death;
and Yeo, hearing the news, has rushed up on deck to welcome his
old comrades, and:

"Is Michael Heard, my cousin, here among you?"

Yes, Michael Heard is there, white-headed rather from misery than
age; and the embracings and questionings begin afresh.

"Where is my wife, Salvation Yeo?"

"With the Lord."

"Amen!" says the old man, with a short shudder.

"I thought so much; and my two boys?"

"With the Lord."

The old man catches Yeo by the arm.

"How, then?" It is Yeo's turn to shudder now.

"Killed in Panama, fighting the Spaniards; sailing with Mr. Oxenham;
and 'twas I led 'em into it.  May God and you forgive me!"

"They couldn't die better, Cousin Yeo. Where's my girl Grace?"

"Dead."

The old man covers his face with his hands for a while. "Well, I've
been alone with the Lord these fifteen years, so I must not whine
at being alone a while longer--it won't be long."

"Put this coat on your back, uncle," says some one.

"No; no coats for me. You'd better go to your work, lads, or the
big one will have the wind of you yet."

"So she will," said Amyas, who has overheard; but so great is the
curiosity on all hands, that he has some trouble in getting the
men to quarters again; indeed, they only go on condition of parting
among themselves the new-comers, each to tell his sad and strange
story. How after Captain Hawkins, constrained by famine, had put
them ashore, they wandered in misery till the Spaniards took them;
how, instead of hanging them (as they at first intended), the Dons
fed and clothed them, and allotted them as servants to various
gentlemen about Mexico, where they throve, turned their hands
(like true sailors) to all manner of trades, and made much money,
and some of them were married, even to women of wealth; so that
all went well, until the fatal year 1574, when, "much against the
minds of many of the Spaniards themselves, that cruel and bloody
Inquisition was established for the first time in the Indies"; and
how, from that moment, their lives were one long tragedy.

The history even of their party was not likely to improve the good
feeling of the crew toward the Spanish ship which was two miles
to leeward of them, and which must be fought with, or fled from,
before a quarter of an hour was past. So, kneeling down upon the
deck, as many a brave crew in those days did in like case, they
"gave God thanks devoutly for the favor they had found"; and then
with one accord, at Jack's leading, sang one and all the ninety-fourth
Psalm:



  "O, Lord, Thou dost revenge all wrong,
  Vengeance belongs to Thee," etc.



And then again to quarters; for half the day's work, or more than
half, still remained to be done; and hardly were the decks cleared
afresh, and the damage repaired as best it could be, when she came
ranging up to leeward, as closehauled as she could.  She was, as
I said, a long flush-decked ship of full five hundred tons, more
than double the size, in fact, of the _Rose_, though not so lofty
in proportion; and many a bold heart beat loud, and no, shame to
them, as she began firing away merrily,, determined, as all well
knew, to wipe out in English blood the disgrace of her late foil.

"Never mind, my merry masters," said Amyas, "she has quantity and
we quality."

"That's true," said one, "for one honest man is worth two rogues."

"And one of our guns, three of theirs," said another.  "So when
you will, captain, and have at her."

"Let her come abreast of us, and don't burn powder.  We have the
wind, and can do what we like with her. Serve the men out a horn
of ale all round, steward, and all take your time."

So they waited for five minutes more, and then set to work quietly,
after the fashion of English mastiffs, though they waxed right mad
before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters began to
crackle and fly.

Amyas, having, as he had said, the wind, and being able to go nearer
it than the Spaniard, kept his place at easy point-blank range for
his two eighteen-pounder guns, which Yeo and his mate worked with
terrible effect.

"We are lacking her through and through every shot," said he.
"Leave the small ordnance alone yet awhile, and we shall sink her
without them."

"Whing, whing," went the Spaniard's shot like so many humming-tops,
through the rigging far above their heads; for the ill-constructed
ports of those days prevented the guns from hulling an enemy who
was to windward, unless close alongside.


"Blow, jolly breeze," cried one, "and lay the Don over all thou
canst. What's the matter aloft there?"

Alas! a crack, a flap, a rattle; and blank dismay!  An unlucky shot
had cut the foremast in two, and all forward was a mass of dangling
wreck.

"Forward, and cut away the wreck!" said Amyas, unmoved. "Small-arm
men, be ready. He will be aboard of us in five minutes!"

It was too true. The _Rose_, unmanageable from the loss of her
head-sail, lay at the mercy of the Spaniard; and the archers and
musketeers had hardly time to range themselves to leeward, when
the _Madre Dolorosa's_ chains were grinding against the _Rose's_,
and grapples tossed on board from stem to stern.

"Don't cut them loose!" roared Amyas. "Let them stay and see the
fun! Now, dogs of Devon, show your teeth, and hurrah for God and
the Queen!"

And then began a fight most fierce and fell; the Spaniards,
according to their fashion, attempted to board, the English, amid
fierce shouts of "God and the Queen!" "God and St. George for
England!" sweeping them back by showers of arrows and musket balls,
thrusting them down with pikes, hurling grenades from the tops;
while the swivels on both sides poured their grape, and bar, and
chain, and the great main-deck guns, thundering muzzle to muzzle,
made both ships quiver and recoil, as they smashed the round shot
through and through each other.

So they roared and flashed, fast clenched to each other under a
cloud of smoke beneath the cloudless tropic sky; while all around,
the dolphins gamboled, and the flying-fish shot on from swell to
swell, and the rainbow-hued jellies opened and shut their cups of
living crystal to the sun, as merrily as if nothing had happened.

So it raged for an hour or more, till all arms were weary, and
all tongues clove to the mouth.  Sick men scrambled up on deck and
fought with the strength of madness; and tiny powder-boys, handing
up cartridges from the hold, laughed and cheered as the shots ran
past their ears; and old Salvation Yeo, a text upon his lips, and
a fury in his heart as of Joshua or Elijah in old time, worked on,
calm and grim, but with the energy of a boy at play. And now and
then an opening in the smoke showed the Spanish captain, in his
suit of black steel armor, standing cool and proud, guiding and
pointing, careless of the iron hail, but too lofty a gentleman to
soil his glove with aught but a knightly sword-hilt; while Amyas
and Will, after the fashion of the English gentlemen, had stripped
themselves nearly as bare as their own sailors, and were cheering,
thrusting, hewing, and hauling, here, there, and everywhere, like
any common mariner, and filling them with a spirit of self-respect,
fellow-feeling, and personal daring, which the discipline of the
Spaniards, more perfect mechanically, but cold and tyrannous, and
crushing spiritually, never could bestow. The black-plumed senor
was obeyed; but the golden locked Amyas was followed; and would
have been followed to the end of the world.

The Spaniards, ere five minutes had passed, poured into the _Rose's_
waist, but only to their destruction. Between the poop and forecastle
(as was then in fashion) the upper deck beams were left open and
unplanked, with the exception of a narrow gangway on either side;
and off that fatal ledge the boarders, thrust on by those behind,
fell headlong between the beams to the maindeck below to be slaughtered
helpless in that pit of destruction, by the double fire from the
bulkheads fore and aft; while the few who kept their footing on
the gangway, after vain attempts to force the stockades on poop
and forecastle, leaped overboard again amid a shower of shot and
arrows. The fire of the English was as steady as it was quick; and
though three-fourths of the crew had never smelled powder before,
they proved well the truth of the old chronicler's saying (since
proved again more gloriously than ever at Alma, Balaklava, and
Inkermann), that "the English never fight better than in their
first battle."

Thrice the Spaniards clambered on board; and thrice surged back
before that deadly hail. The deck on both sides were very shambles;
and Jack Brimblecombe, who had fought as long as his conscience
would allow him, found enough to do in carrying poor wretches to
the surgeon. At last there was a lull in that wild storm. No shot
was heard from the Spaniard's upper-deck.

Amyas leaped into the mizzen rigging, and looked through the
smoke. Dead men he could descry through the blinding veil, rolled
in heaps, laid flat; dead men and dying; but no man upon his feet.
The last volley had swept the deck clear; one by one had dropped
below to escape that fiery shower: and alone at the helm, grinding
his teeth with rage, his mustachios curling up to his very eyes,
stood the Spanish captain.

Now was the moment for a counter-stroke.  Amyas shouted for the
boarders, and in two minutes more he was over the side, and clutching
at the Spaniard's mizzen rigging.

What was this? The distance between him and the enemy's side was
widening. Was she sheering off? Yes--and rising too, growing bodily
higher every moment, as if by magic. Amyas looked up in astonishment
and saw what it was. The Spaniard was keeling fast over to leeward
away from him. Her masts were all sloping forward, swifter and
swifter--the end was come then!

"Back! in God's name back, men! She is sinking by the head!"

And with much ado some were dragged back, some leaped back--all
but old Michael Heard.

With hair and beard floating in the wind, the bronzed naked figure,
like some weird old Indian fakir, still climbed on steadfastly up
the mizzen-chains of the Spaniard, hatchet in hand.

"Come back, Michael! Leap while you may!" shouted a dozen voices.
Michael turned:

"And what should I come back for, then, to go home where no one
knoweth me? I'll die like an Englishman this day, or I'll know the
reason why!" and turning, he sprang in over the bulwarks, as the
huge ship rolled up more and more, like a dying whale, exposing
all her long black bulk almost down to the keel, and one of her
lower-deck guns, as if in defiance, exploded upright into the air,
hurling the ball to the very heavens.

In an instant it was answered from the _Rose_ by a column of
smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of
the defenceless Spaniard.

"Who fired? Shame to fire on a sinking ship!"

"Gunner Yeo, sir," shouted a voice up from the maindeck. "He's like
a madman down here."

"Tell him if he fires again, I'll put him in irons, if he were my
own brother. Cut away the grapples aloft, men. Don't you see how
she drags us over? Cut away, or we shall sink with her."

They cut away, and the _Rose_, released from the strain, shook her
feathers on the wave-crest like a freed sea-gull, while all men
held their breath.

Suddenly the glorious creature righted herself, and rose again, as
if in noble shame, for one last struggle with her doom. Her bows
were deep in the water, but her afterdeck still dry. Righted: but
only for a moment, long enough to let her crew come pouring wildly
up on deck, with cries and prayers, and rush aft to the poop, where,
under the flag of Spain, stood the tall captain, his left hand on
the standard-staff, his sword pointed in his right.

"Back, men!" they heard him cry, "and die like valiant mariners."

Some of them ran to the bulwarks, and shouted "Mercy! We surrender!"
and the English broke into a cheer and called to them to run her
alongside.

"Silence!" shouted Amyas. "I take no surrender from mutineers.
Seor," cried he to the captain, springing into the rigging and
taking off his hat, "for the love of God and these men, strike!
and surrender _ buena querra_."

The Spaniard lifted his hat and bowed courteously, and answered,
"Impossible, seor. No _querra_ is good which stains my honor."

"God have mercy on you, then!"

"Amen!" said the Spaniard, crossing himself.

She gave one awful lunge forward, and dived under the coming swell,
hurling her crew into the eddies. Nothing but the point of her poop
remained, and there stood the stern and steadfast Don, cap--pie
in his glistening black armor, immovable as a man of iron, while
over him the flag, which claimed the empire of both worlds, flaunted
its gold aloft and upward in the glare of the tropic noon.

"He shall not carry that flag with him! I will have it yet, if I die
for it!" said Will Gary, and rushed to the side to leap overboard,
but Amyas stopped him.

"Let him die as he has lived, with honor." A wild figure sprang out
of the mass of sailors who struggled and shrieked amid the foam,
and rushed upward at the Spaniard. It was Michael Heard. The Don,
who stood above him, plunged his sword into the old man's body:
but the hatchet gleamed, nevertheless: down went the blade through
headpiece and through head; and as Heard sprang onward, bleeding,
but alive, the steel-clad corpse rattled down the deck into the
surge. Two more strokes, struck with the fury of a dying man, and
the standard-staff was hewn through. Old Michael collected all
his strength, hurled the flag far from the sinking ship, and then
stood erect one moment and shouted, "God save Queen Bess!" and the
English answered with a "Hurrah!" which rent the welkin.

Another moment and the gulf had swallowed his victim, and the
poop, and him; and nothing remained of the _Madre Dolorosa_ but a
few floating spars and struggling wretches, while a great awe fell
upon all men, and a solemn silence, broken only by the cry


"Of some strong swimmer in his agony."


And then, suddenly collecting themselves, as men awakened from a
dream, half-a-dozen desperate gallants, reckless of sharks and eddies,
leaped overboard, swam toward the flag, and towed it alongside in
triumph.




A BRAVE SCOTTISH CHIEF

Anonymous



This is the story of the life of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun,
in the province of Galloway, Scotland. Earlstoun is a bonny place,
sitting above the waterside of the river Ken. The gray tower stands
ruinous and empty to-day, but once it was a pleasant dwelling, and
dear to the hearts of those who had dwelt in it, when they were
in foreign lands or hiding out on the wild wide moors. It was the
time when Charles II wished to compel the most part of the people
of Scotland to change their religion and worship as he bade them.
Some obeyed the king; but most hated the new order of things, and
cleaved in their hearts to their old ways and to their old ministers,
who had been put out of their churches and homes at the coming
of the king. Many even set themselves to resist the king in open
battle rather than obey him in the matter of their consciences. It
was only in this that they were rebellious, for many of them had
been active in bringing him again to the throne.

Among those who thus went out to fight were William Gordon and his
son Alexander. William Gordon was a grave, courteous, and venerable
man, and his estate was one of the best in all Galloway.  Like
nearly all the lairds in the south and west, he was strongly of the
Presbyterian party, and resolved to give up life and lands rather
than his principles. Now, the king was doubtless ill-advised, and
his councillors did not take the kindly or the wise way with the
people at this time; for a host of wild Highlanders had been turned
into the land, who plundered in cotter's and laird's hall without
much distinction between those that stood for the Covenants and
those that held for the king.  So in the year 1679 Galloway was
very hot and angry, and many were ready to fight the king's forces
wherever they could be met with.

So, hearing news of a revolt in the west, William Gordon rode away,
with many good riders at his back, to take his place in the ranks
of the rebels.  His son Alexander, whose story we are to tell, was
there before him. The Covenanting army had gained one success in
Drumclog, which gave them some hope, but at Bothwell Bridge their
forces were utterly broken, largely through their own quarrels, by
the Duke of Monmouth and the disciplined troops of the government.

Alexander Gordon had to flee from the field of Bothwell. He came
home to Earlstoun alone, for his father had been met about six miles
from the battle-field by a troop of horse, and as he refused to
surrender, he was slain there and buried in the parish of Glassford.

Immediately after Bothwell, Alexander Gordon was compelled to go into
hiding with a price upon his head. Unlike his father, he was very
ready-witted, free with his tongue, even boisterous upon occasion,
and of very great bodily strength. These qualities stood him in
good stead during the long period of his wandering and when lying
in concealment among the hills.

The day after Bothwell, he was passing through the town of Hamilton,
when he was recognized by an old retainer of the family.

"Save us, Maister Alexander," said the man, who rememhered the
ancient kindnesses of his family, "do you not know that it is death
for you to be found here?"

So saying he made his young master dismount, and carried away
all his horseman's gear and his arms, which he hid in a heap of
field-manure behind the house. Then he took Earlstoun to his own
house, and put upon him a long dress of his wife's.  Hardly had
he been clean-shaven and arrayed in a clean white cap, when the
troopers came clattering into the town. They had heard that he and
some others of the prominent rebels had passed that way; and they
went from door to door, knocking and asking, "Saw ye anything of
Sandy Gordon of Earlstoun?"

So going from house to house they came to the door of the ancient
Gordon retainer, and Earlstoun had hardly time to run to the corner
and begin to rock the cradle with his foot before the soldiers
came to ask the same question there. But they passed on without
suspicion, only saying one to the other as they went out, "My
certes, Billy, but yon was a sturdy hizzie!"

After that there was nothing but the heather and the mountain cave
for Alexander Gordon for many a day. He had wealth of adventures,
travelling by night, hiding and sleeping by day. Sometimes he would
venture to the house of one who sympathized with the Covenanters,
only to find that the troopers were already in possession.  Sometimes,
in utter weariness, he slept so long that when he awoke he would
find a party searching for him quite close at hand; then there was
nothing for it but to lie close like a hare in a covert till the
danger passed by.

Once when he came to his own house of Earlstoun he was only an
hour or two there before the soldiers arrived to search for him.
His wife had hardly time to stow him in a secret recess behind the
ceiling of a room over the kitchen, in which place he abode several
days, having his meals passed to him from above, and breathing
through a crevice in the wall.

After this misadventure he was sometimes in Galloway and sometimes
in Holland for three or four years. He might even have remained in
the Low Countries, but his services were so necessary to his party
in Scotland that he was repeatedly summoned to come over into
Galloway and the west to take up the work of organizing resistance
to the government.

During most of the time the tower of Earlstoun was a barracks
of the soldiers, and it was only by watching his opportunity that
Alexander Gordon could come home to see his wife, and put his hand
upon his bairns' heads as they lay a-row in their cots. Yet come
he sometimes did, especially when the soldiers of the garrison
were away on duty in the more distant parts of Galloway.  Then the
wanderer would steal indoors in the gloaming, soft-footed, like
a thief, into his own house, and sit talking with his wife and an
old retainer or two who were fit to be trusted with the secret. Yet
while he sat there, one was ever on the watch, and at the slightest
signs of king's men in the neighborhood Alexander Gordon rushed
out and ran to the great oak tree, which you may see to this day
standing in sadly diminished glory in front of the great house of
Earlstoun.

Now it stands alone, all the trees of the forest having been cut
away from around it during the subsequent poverty which fell upon
the family.  A rope ladder lay snugly concealed among the ivy that
clad the trunk of the tree. Up this Alexander Gordon climbed. When
he arrived at the top he pulled the ladder after him, and found
himself upon an ingeniously constructed platform built with a
shelter over it from the rain, high among the branchy tops of the
great oak. His faithful wife, Jean Hamilton, could make signals to
him out of one of the top windows of Earlstoun whether it was safe
for him to approach the house, or whether he had better remain hidden
among the leaves. If you go now to look for the tree, it is indeed
plain and easy to be seen. But though now so shorn and lonely, there
is no doubt that two hundred years ago it stood undistinguished
among a thousand others that thronged the woodland about the tower
of Earlstoun.

Often, in order to give Alexander Gordon a false sense of security,
the garrison would be withdrawn for a week or two, and then in the
middle of some mirky night or early in the morning twilight the
house would be surrounded and the whole place ransacked in search
of its absent master.

On one occasion, the man who came running along the narrow river
path from Dalry had hardly time to arouse Gordon before the dragoons
were heard clattering down through the wood from the high-road.
There was no time to gain the great oak in safety, where he had so
often hid in time of need. All Alexander Gordon could do was to put
on the rough jerkin of a laboring man, and set to cleaving firewood
in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant.
When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house,
they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout
for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his
back" if he did not work to a better tune.

The commander ordered him to drop his axe, and to point out the
different rooms and hiding-places about the castle. Alexander Gordon
did so with an air of indifference, as if hunting Whigs were much
the same to him as cleaving firewood.  He did his duty with a stupid
unconcern which successfully imposed on the soldiers; and as soon
as they allowed him to go, he fell to his wood-chopping with the
same stolidity and rustic boorishness that had marked his conduct.

Some of the officers came up to him and questioned him as to his
master's hiding-place in the woods. But as to this he gave them no
satisfaction.

"My master," he said, "has no hiding-place that I know of. I always
find him here when I have occasion to seek for him, and that is
all I care about. But I am sure that if he thought you were seeking
him he would immediately show you, for that is ever his custom."

This was one of the answers with a double meaning that were so much
in the fashion of the time and so characteristic of the people.

On leaving, the commander of the troop said, "Ye are a stupid kindly
nowt, man. See that ye get no harm in such a rebel service."

Sometimes, however, searching waxed so hot and close that Gordon
had to withdraw himself altogether out of Galloway and seek quieter
parts of the country. On one occasion he was speeding up the Water
of  when he found himself so weary that he was compelled to lie
down under a bush of heather and rest before proceeding on his
journey.  It so chanced that a noted king's man, Dalyell of Glen,
was riding homeward over the moor. His horse started back in
astonishment, having nearly stumbled over the body of a sleeping
man. It was Alexander Gordon. Hearing the horse's feet, he leaped
up, and Dalyell called upon him to surrender.  But that was no word
to say to a Gordon of Earlstoun. Gordon instantly drew his sword,
and, though unmounted, his lightness of foot on the heather and
moss more than counterbalanced the advantages of the horseman, and
the king's man found himself matched at all points; for the Laird
of Earlstoun was in his day a famous swordsman.

Soon the Covenanter's sword seemed to wrap itself about Dalyell's
blade and sent it twirling high in the air. In a little while he
found himself lying on the heather at the mercy of the man whom he
had attacked. He asked for his life, and Alexander Gordon granted
it to him, making him promise by his honor as a gentleman that
whenever he had the fortune to approach a conventicle (church meeting)
he would retire, if he saw a white flag elevated in a particular
manner upon a flagstaff.  This seemed but a little condition to
weigh against a man's life, and Dalyell agreed.

Now, the cavalier was an exceedingly honorable man and valued his
spoken word. So on the occasion of a great conventicle at Mitchelslacks,
in the parish of Closeburn, he permitted a great field meeting to
disperse, drawing off his party in another direction, because the
signal streaming from a staff told him the man who had spared his
life was among the company of worshippers.

After this, the white signal was frequently used in the neighborhood
over which Dalyell's jurisdiction extended, and to the great credit
of the cavalier it is recorded that on no single occasion did
he violate his plighted word, though he is said to have remarked
bitterly that the Whig with whom he fought must have been the
devil, "forever going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and
down in it."

But Alexander Gordon was too great a man in the affairs of the
Praying Societies to escape altogether.  He continually went and
came from Holland, and some of the letters that he wrote from that
country are still in existence. At last, in 1683, having received
many letters and valuable papers for delivery to people in refuge
in Holland, he went secretly to Newcastle, and agreed with the
master of a ship for his voyage to the Low Countries.  But just
as the vessel was setting out from the mouth of the Tyne, it was
accidentally stopped.  Some watchers for fugitives came on board,
and Earlstoun and his companion were challenged.  Earlstoun,
fearing the taking of his papers, threw the box that contained them
overboard; but it floated, and was taken along with himself.

Then began a long series of misfortunes for Alexander Gordon. He was
five times tried, twice threatened with torture--which he escaped,
in the judgment hall itself, by such an exhibition of his great
strength as terrified his judges. He simulated madness, foamed
at the mouth, and finally tore up the benches in order to attack
the judges with the fragments. He was sent first to the castle of
Edinburgh and afterward to the Bass (an island), "for a change of
air," as the record quaintly says. Finally, he was despatched to
Blackness Castle, where he remained close in hold till the revolution.

Not till June 5, 1689, were his prison doors thrown open, but even
then Alexander Gordon would not go till he had obtained signed
documents from the governor and officials of his prison to the
effect that he had never altered any of his opinions in order to
gain privilege or release.

Alexander Gordon returned to Earlstoun, and lived there quietly
far into the next century, taking his share in local and county
business with Grierson of Lag and others who had hunted him
for years-which is a strange thing to think on, but one also very
characteristic of those times.

On account of his great strength and the power of his voice, he
was called "the Bull of Earlstoun," and it is said that when he
was rebuking his servants the bellowing of the Bull could plainly
be heard in Dalry, which is two miles away across hill and stream.




THE ADVENTURE OF GRIZEL COCHRANE

By Arthur Quiller-Couch



At Edinburgh, almost under the shadow of the spire of St. Giles's,
in the pavement between that old cathedral church and the County
Hall, the passer-by will mark the figure of a heart let into the
causeway, and know that he is standing on the "Heart of Midlothian,"
[Footnote: The title of one of Sir Walter Scott's romances.] the
site of the old Tolbooth. That gloomy pile vanished in the autumn
of 1817; as Mr. Stevenson says, "the walls are now down in the
dust; there is no more _squalor carceris_ for merry debtors, no
more cage for the old acknowledged prison-breaker; but the sun and
the wind play freely over the foundations of the gaol;" this place,
"old in story and name-father to a noble book." The author of that
same "noble book" possessed himself of some memorials of the keep
he had rendered so famous, securing the stones of the gateway, and
the door with its ponderous fastenings to decorate the entrance of
his kitchen-court at Abbotsford. And this is all that is left.

But in the summer and autumn of 1685 the Tolbooth held prisoners
enough, notwithstanding the many gloomy processions that were from
time to time walking to the axe and halter in the Grassmarket; and
in a narrow cell, late one August evening, two persons were sitting
of whom this story shall treat. These two were Sir John Cochrane,
of Ochiltree, and his daughter Grizel--here on the saddest of
errands, to visit her father in prison and help in his preparations
for death.

For Sir John, a stout Whig, had been one of the leaders of Argyle's
insurrection; had been beaten with his troops by Lord Ross at
Muirdykes; had disbanded his handful of men, and fled for hiding to
the house of his uncle, Mr. Gavin Cochrane, of Craigmuir; had been
informed against by his uncle's wife, seized, taken to Edinburgh;
had been paraded, bound and bareheaded, through the streets by
the common executioner; and then on the 3d of July flung into the
Tolbooth to await his trial for high treason. And now the trial,
too, was over, and Sir John was condemned to die.

As he now sat, with bowed head, on the bench of his cell, it was not
the stroke of death that terrified him--for Sir John was a brave
man--but the parting with his children, who would through his
rashness be left both orphaned and penniless (for the crown would
seize his goods), and chiefly the parting with his daughter, who
had been his one comfort in the dark days of waiting for the king's
warrant of execution to arrive.

Between his apprehension and his trial no friend or kinsman had been
allowed to visit him; but now that his death was assured, greater
license had been granted. But, anxious to deprive his enemies of a
chance to accuse his sons, he had sent them his earnest entreaties
and commands that they should abstain from using this permission
until the night before his execution. They had obeyed; but obedience
of this sort did not satisfy the conscience of his daughter Grizel.
On the very night of his condemnation he heard the key turn in his
door; thinking it could only be the gaoler, he scarcely lifted his
eyes. But the next moment a pair of soft arms were flung round his
neck, and his daughter was weeping on his breast. From that day she
had continued to visit him; and now as she sat beside him, staring
at the light already fading in the narrow pane, both father and
daughter knew that it was almost the last time.

Presently she spoke--

"And this message--tell me truly, have you any hope from it?"

It was an appeal made by Sir John's father, the Earl of Dundonald,
to Father Peters, the king's confessor, who often dictated to him,
as was well known, on matters of state. But in the short time left,
would there be time to press this appeal, and exert that influence
in London which alone could stay the death-warrant?

"There is no hope in that quarter," said Sir John.

Grizel knew that he spoke only what was her own conviction, and
her despair.

"Argyle is dead these three days," pursued her father, "and with
him men of less consequence than I. Are they likely to spare me--a
head of the rising?  Would they spare any man now, in the heat of
their revenge?"

"Father," said Grizel suddenly, "could you spare me from your side
for a few days?"

Sir John looked up. He knew by her manner that she had formed some
plan in her mind; he knew, too, from her heart, that nothing but
chance of winning his safety could take her from him now, of all
times.

"My child," he said, "you are going to attempt something."

She nodded, with a brighter face than she had worn for many days.

"And what you would attempt," he went on, "is an impossibility."

"Nothing is impossible to a true heart," she said.

"And who will help you?"

"No one." She was standing before him now, and in the twilight he
could see her eyes lit up with hope, her figure upright, and as if
full of a man's strength.

"My girl, you will run into danger--into blame.  They will not
spare you, and--do you know the characters of those men whom you
would have to sue?"

She bent and kissed him.

"I am a Cochrane, my father."

Early next morning, before the world was up, Grizel Cochrane was
mounted on horseback and riding towards the border. She had dressed
herself--this girl of eighteen--as a young serving-woman, and when
she drew rein at a wayside cottage for food and drink, professed
herself journeying on a borrowed horse to visit her mother's house
across the Tweed.

By noon Edinburgh was some leagues behind, but she pressed on
through that day and most of the following night.

On the second day after leaving Edinburgh she crossed the Tweed,
and came in safety to the home of an old nurse, on the English
side, four miles beyond the town of Berwick.

"Gude sakes!" cried the old woman, who was standing at her cottage
door and was rather astonished to find the horsewoman draw rein,
leap to the ground, and plant a kiss on either cheek--"Gude sakes!
if it isna Miss Grizel!"

"Quickly, into the house!" commanded her young mistress; "I have
somewhat to tell that will not wait an hour."

She knew the old nurse was to be trusted, and therefore told her
story and her secret. "Even now," she said at the end of her story,
"the postman is riding from London with the warrant in his bag. I
must stop him and make him give it up to me, or my father's head
is the penalty.

"But what use to talk o' this, when the postman is a stout rider,
and armed to boot? How is a mere girl, saving your presence, to do
this at all?"

"Look here."

Grizel unrolled a bundle which she had brought on her saddle-crutch
from Edinburgh; it held a horseman's cloak and a brace of pistols.

"Now," said she, "where are the clothes of Donald, my foster-brother?
He was a slight lad in times syne, and little doubt they'll fit
me."

For this was indeed the brave girl's plan:--In those times
the mail from London took eight days on its journey to Edinburgh;
by possessing herself of the warrant for her father's death and
detaining it, she could count on the delay of sixteen or seventeen
days at least before application could be made for a second, and
that signed and sent to the Scotch capital. By this delay, time
enough would be won for her friends in London to use all their
influence to quash the sentence.

It was a mad scheme; but, as she had said, nothing is impossible
to a true heart. She had possessed herself, too, of the minutest
information with regard to the places where the postmen rested on
their journey. One of these places, she knew, was a small inn kept
by a widow on the outskirts of the little town of Belford. There
the man who received the bag at Durham was accustomed to arrive at
about six in the morning, and take a few hours' sleep before going
on with his journey. And at Belford, Grizel Cochrane had determined
to meet him.

Taking leave of her faithful nurse, she rode southwards again, and,
timing her pace, drew up before the inn at Belford just an hour
after the postman had come in from the south and disposed himself
to sleep.

The mistress of the inn had no ostler, so Grizel stabled her horse
with her own hands, and striding into the inn-parlor, demanded food
and drink.

"Sit ye down, then," answered the old woman, "at the end of yon table,
for the best I have to give you is there already. And be pleased,
my bonny man, to make as little noise as may be; for there's one
asleep in that bed that I like ill to disturb."

She pointed to the victuals on the board, which were indeed the
remains of the sleeping man's meal.  Grizel sat down before them,
considered to herself while she played with a mouthful or two, and
then asked--

"Can I have a drink of water?"

"'Deed," answered the hostess, "and are ye a water-drinker? 'Tis
but an ill-custom for a change-house."

"Why, that I know; and so, when I put up at an inn, 'tis my custom
always to pay for it the price of stronger drink, which I cannot
take."

"Indeed--well, that's fairly spoken; and, come to think of it,
'tis but just." The landlady brought a jug of water and set it on
the board.

"Is the well where you got this water near at hand?" said Grizel,
pouring out a glass and sipping at it; "for if 'tis no trouble to
fetch some fresh for me, I will tell you this is rather over-warm
and flat. Your trouble shall be considered in the dawing," added
she.

"'Tis a good step off," answered the dame; "but I cannot refuse to
fetch for so civil, discreet a lad--and a well-favored one, besides.
So bide ye here, and I'll be as quick as I maun. But for any sake
take care and don't meddle with the man's pistols there, for they
are loaded, the both; and every time I set eyes on them they scare
me out of my senses, almost."

She took up a pitcher and went out to draw the water. No sooner
was Grizel left alone than, starting up, she waited for a moment,
listening to the footsteps as they died away in the distance, and
then crept swiftly across the floor to the place where the postman
lay asleep. He lay in one of those close wooden bedsteads, like
cupboards, which were then common in the houses of the poor, and
to this day may be seen in many a house in Brittany. The door of it
was left half-open to give the sleeper air, and from this aperture
the noise of his snoring issued in a way that shook the house.

Nevertheless, it seemed to the girl that he must be awakened by
the creaking of the floor under her light footfall. With heart in
mouth she stole up to the bedstead, and gently pulling the door
still wider ajar, peeped in, in the hope of seeing the mail-bag
and being able to pounce upon it.

She saw it, indeed; but to her dismay, it lay beneath the shaggy
head of its guardian--a giant in size. The postman used his charge
as a pillow, and had flung himself so heavily across it as to
give not the faintest hope that any one could pull it away without
disturbing its keeper from his nap.  Nothing could be done now. In
those few bitter moments, during which she stood helplessly looking
from the bag which contained the fatal warrant to the unconscious
face of the man before her, Grizel made up her mind to another
plan.

She turned to the table, caught up the postman's holsters, and
pulled out the pistols of which the old woman had professed herself
in such terror.  Quickly drawing and secreting the charges, she
returned them to their cases, with many an anxious look over her
shoulder towards the bedstead, and took her seat again at the foot
of the table.

Hardly had she done so when she heard the old woman returning
with the pitcher. Grizel took a draught, for her throat felt like
a lime-kiln, and having settled her bill, much to the landlady's
satisfaction, by paying for the water the price of a pot of beer,
prepared to set off. She carelessly asked and ascertained how much
longer the other guest was likely to sleep.

"By the noise he makes he intends sleeping till Doomsday," she
said, laughing.

"Ay, poor man! his is a hard life," said the hostess; "and little
more than half an hour more before he must be on the highway again."

Grizel laughed once more, and, mounting her horse, set off at a
trot along the road southward, as if continuing her journey in that
direction.

Hardly had she got beyond the town, however, when turning the
horse's head she galloped back, making a circuit around Belford and
striking into the high road again between that place and Berwick.
Having gained it, she walked the horse gently on, awaiting the
coming up of the postman.

Though all her mind was now set on the enterprise before her, she
could not help a shiver of terror as she thought on the chance of
her tampering with the pistols being discovered, and their loading
replaced. But she had chosen her course, and now she must go through
with it. She was a woman, after all; and it cannot be wondered
that her heart began to beat quickly as her ear caught the sound
of hoofs on the road behind her, and, turning, she saw the man on
whose face she had been gazing not an hour before, trotting briskly
towards her--the mail-bags (there were two--one containing the
letters direct from London, the other those taken up at the different
post-offices on the road) strapped one on each side of his saddle
in front, close to the holsters.

At the last moment her nerve came back, and as he drew near she
saluted him civilly and with perfect calmness, put her horse into
the same pace with his, and rode on for some way in his company.

The postman was a burly, thick-set man, with a good-humored face.
You may be sure that Miss Cochrane inspected it anxiously enough,
and was relieved to find that it did not contain any vast amount
of hardy courage.

The man was well enough inclined for conversation, too, and as
they rode had a heap of chat, which it seemed a pity to interrupt.
At length, however, when they were about half-way between Belford
and Berwick, Grizel judged now or never was the time. Pulling her
horse's rein gently so as to bring her close to her company, she
said in a low but perfectly determined voice--

"Friend, I have taken a fancy for those mail-bags of yours, and I
must have them: therefore take my advice, and deliver them up quietly,
for I am provided for all hazards. I am mounted, as you see, on
a fleet horse; I carry fire-arms; and, moreover, I am allied with
those who are stronger, though not bolder, than I. You see that
wood, yonder?" she continued, pointing to one about a mile off,
with an accent and air meant to corroborate her bold words. "Then
take my advice: give me up your bags, and speed back the road you
came for the present, nor dare to approach that wood for at least
two or three hours to come."

The postman, whose eyes had been growing rounder and rounder during
this speech from the stripling beside him, pulled up and looked at
her in dumb amazement for some moments.

"If," said he, as soon as he found his tongue, "you mean, young
master, to make yourself merry at my expense, you are heartily
welcome. I can see a joke, I trust, as well as another man; so
have your laugh out, and don't think I'm one to take offence at
the words of a foolish boy. But if," and here he whipped a pistol
from his holster and turned the muzzle on her face--"if y'are mad
enough to think seriously of such a business, then I am ready for
you."

They had come to a stand now, in the middle of the road; and Grizel
felt an ugly sinking at the heart as she looked at the mouth of the
pistol, now not a yard from her cheek. Nevertheless she answered,
very quietly and cooly--

"If you have a doubt, dismiss it; I am quite in earnest."

The postman, with his hand on the trigger, hesitated.

"Methinks my lad, you seem of an age when robbing a garden or an
old woman's fruit-stall would befit you better, if so be you must
turn thief, than taking his Majesty's mails upon his highway from
a stout and grown man. So be thankful, then, you have met with one
who will not shed blood if he can help it, and go your way before
I am provoked to fire."

"Sir," said Grizel, "you are a worthy man; nor am I fonder of
bloodshed than you; but if you will not be persuaded, what shall
I do? For I have said--and it is truth--that mail I must and will
have. Choose, then;" and with this she pulled out a pistol from
under her cloak, and, cocking it, presented it in his face.

"Nay, then, your blood be on your own head," cried the postman,
and raising his pistol again he pulled the trigger; it flashed in
the pan. Dashing the weapon to the ground, he pulled out the other
in a moment, and aiming it in Grizel's face, fired--with the same
result. In a furious passion he flung down this pistol, too, sprang
from his horse, and dashed forward to seize her. She dug her spurs
into her horse's flank and just eluded his grasp.  Meanwhile the
postman's horse, frightened at the noise and the struggle, had moved
forward a pace or two. The girl saw her opportunity, and seized it
in the same instant. Another dig with the spurs, and her own horse
was level with the other; leaning forward she caught at the bridle,
and calling to the pair, in an instant was galloping off along the
highway, leaving the postman helplessly staring.

She had gone about a hundred yards with her prize, when she pulled
up to look back. Her discomfited antagonist was still standing
in the middle of the road, apparently stupefied with amazement at
the unlooked-for turn which affairs had taken.  Shouting to him
to remember her advice about the wood, she put both the horses to
their speed, and on looking back once more was gratified to find
that the postman, impressed with the truth of her mysterious threat,
had turned and was making the best of his way back to Belford.

On gaining the wood to which she had pointed, Grizel tied the
postman's horse to a tree, at a safe distance from the road, and
set about unfastening the straps of the mail-bags. With a sharp
penknife she ripped them open, and searched for the government
despatches among their contents. To find these was not difficult, owing
to their address to the council in Edinburgh, and of the imposing
weight of their seals. Here she discovered, not only the warrant
for her father's death, but also many other sentences inflicting
punishment in varying degrees on the unhappy men who had been
taken in the late rising. Time was pressing; she could not stop to
examine the warrants, but, quickly tearing them in small pieces,
placed them carefully in her bosom.

This done, and having arranged all the private papers as far
as possible as she had found them, Grizel mounted her horse again
and rode off. The postman's horse and the mail-bags, she imagined,
would soon be found, from the hints which she had given to the man
about the wood--and this afterwards proved to be the case. She now
set her horse at a gallop again, and did not spare whip or spur
until she reached the cottage of her nurse, where her first care
was to burn, not only the warrant for her father's death, but the
remainder of the sentences on his fellow-prisoners. Having satisfied
herself that all trace of the obnoxious papers was now consumed,
she put on again her female garments, and was once more the gentle
and unassuming Miss Grizel Cochrane.

It was high time, however, to be making her way northwards again;
accordingly she left her pistols and cloak to be concealed by
the nurse, and again set forward on her journey. By avoiding the
highroad, resting only at the most sequestered cottages--and then
but for an hour or so--and riding all the while as hard as she
might, she reached Edinburgh in safety early next morning.

It remains only to say that the time thus won by this devoted girl
was enough to gain the end for which she strove; and Father Peters
plied the ear of King James so importunately that at length the
order was signed for Sir John Cochrane's pardon.

The state of public affairs rendered it prudent for many years that
this action of Grizel Cochrane's should be kept secret; but after
the Revolution, when men could speak more freely, her heroism was
known and applauded. She lived to marry Mr.  Ker, of Morriston, in
Berwickshire, and doubtless was as good a wife as she had proved
herself a daughter.




THE SUNKEN TREASURE

By Nathaniel Hawthorne



Picture to yourselves a handsome, old-fashioned room, with a large,
open cupboard at one end, in which is displayed a magnificent gold
cup, with some other splendid articles of gold and silver plate. In
another part of the room, opposite to a tall looking-glass, stands
our beloved chair, newly polished, and adorned with a gorgeous
cushion of crimson velvet, tufted with gold.

In the chair sits a man of strong and sturdy frame, whose face has
been roughened by northern tempests and blackened by the burning
sun of the West Indies. He wears an immense periwig, flowing down
over his shoulders. His coat has a wide embroidery of golden foliage;
and his waistcoat, likewise, is all flowered over and bedizened
with gold. His red, rough hands, which have done many a good day's
work with the hammer and adze, are half covered by the delicate lace
ruffles at his wrists.  On a table lies his silver-hilted sword;
and in the corner of the room stands his gold-headed cane, made of
a beautifully polished West India wood Somewhat such an aspect as
this did Phips present when he sat in Grandfather's chair after
the king had appointed him Governor of Massachusetts.

But Sir William Phips had not always worn a gold-embroidered coat,
nor always sat so much at his ease as he did in Grandfather's chair.
He was a poor man's son, and was born in the province of Maine,
where in his boyhood he used to tend sheep upon the hills. Until he
had grown to be a man, he did not even know how to read and write.
Tired of tending sheep, he apprenticed himself to a ship-carpenter,
and spent about four years in hewing the crooked limbs of oak trees
into knees for vessels.

In 1673, when he was twenty-two years old, he came to Boston, and
soon afterwards was married to a widow lady, who had property enough
to set him up in business. It was not long before he lost all the
money that he had acquired by his marriage, and became a poor man
again. Still, he was not discouraged. He often told his wife that
he should be very rich, and would build a "fair brick house" in
the Green Lane of Boston.

Several years passed away; and Phips had not yet gained the riches
which he promised to himself.  During this time he had begun to
follow the sea for a living. In the year 1684 he happened to hear
of a Spanish ship which had been cast away near Porto de la Plata.
She had now lain for fifty years beneath the waves. This old ship
had been laden with immense wealth; and nobody had thought of the
possibility of recovering any part of it from the deep sea which
was rolling and tossing it about.  But though it was now an old
story, Phips resolved that the sunken treasure should again be
brought to light.

He went to London and obtained admittance to King James. He told
the king of the vast wealth that was lying at the bottom of the
sea. King James listened with attention, and thought this a fine
opportunity to fill his treasury with Spanish gold. He appointed
William Phips to be captain of a vessel, called the _Rose Algier_,
carrying eighteen guns and ninety-five men. So now he was Captain
Phips of the English navy.

The captain sailed from England and cruised for two years in the
West Indies, trying to find the wrecked Spanish ship. But the sea
is so wide and deep that it is no easy matter to discover the exact
spot where a sunken vessel lies. The prospect of success seemed very
small, and most people thought that Phips was as far from having
money enough to build a "fair brick house" as he was while he tended
sheep.

The seamen became discouraged, and gave up all hope of making their
fortunes by discovering the Spanish wreck. They wanted Phips to
turn pirate.  There was a much better prospect of growing rich by
plundering vessels which still sailed in the sea than by seeking
for a ship that had lain beneath the waves full half a century.
They broke out in open mutiny, but were finally mastered by Phips,
and compelled to obey his orders. It would have been dangerous to
continue much longer at sea with such a crew of mutinous sailors;
and the ship was unseaworthy. So Phips judged it best to return to
England.

Before leaving the West Indies, he met with an old Spaniard who
remembered the wreck of the Spanish ship, and gave him directions
how to find the very spot. It was on a reef of rocks, a few leagues
from Porto de la Plata.

On his arrival in England Phips solicited the king to let him have
another vessel and send him back again to the West Indies. But King
James refused to have anything more to do with the affair.  Phips
might never have been able to renew the search if the Duke of
Albemarle and some other noblemen had not lent their assistance.

They fitted out a ship, and he sailed from England, and arrived
safely at La Plata, where he took an adze and assisted his men to
build a large boat.

The boat was intended for going closer to the rocks than a large
vessel could safely venture.  When it was finished, the captain
sent several men in it to examine the spot where the Spanish ship
was said to have been wrecked. They were accompanied by some Indians,
who were skilful divers, and could go down a great way into the
depths of the sea.

The boat's crew proceeded to the reef of rocks, and gazed down into
the transparent water. Nothing could they see more valuable than a
curious sea shrub growing beneath the water, in a crevice of the.
reef of rocks. It flaunted to and fro with the swell and reflux
of the waves, and looked as bright and beautiful as if its leaves
were gold.

"We won't go back empty-handed," cried an English sailor; and then
he spoke to one of the, Indian divers. "Dive down and bring me that
pretty sea shrub there. That's the only treasure we shall find!"

Down plunged the diver, and soon rose dripping from the water,
holding the sea shrub in his hand.  But he had learned some news
at the bottom of the sea. "There are some ship's guns," said he,
the moment he had drawn breath, "some great cannon, among the rocks,
near where the shrub was growing."

No sooner had he spoken than the English sailors knew that they
had found the spot where the Spanish galleon had been wrecked, so
many years before. The other Indian divers plunged over the boat's
side and swam headlong down, groping among the rocks and sunken
cannon. In a few moments one of them rose above the water with a
heavy lump of silver in his arms. That single lump was worth more
than a thousand dollars. The sailors took it into the boat, and
then rowed back is speedily as they could, being in haste to inform
Captain Phips of their good luck.

But, confidently as the captain had hoped to find the Spanish wreck,
yet, now that it was really found, the news seemed too good to be
true. He could not believe it till the sailors showed him the lump
of silver. "Thanks be to God!" then cries Phips. "We shall every
man of us make our fortunes!"

Hereupon the captain and all the crew set to work, with iron rakes
and great hooks and lines, fishing for gold and silver at the bottom
of the sea.  Up came the treasures in abundance. Now they beheld a
table of solid silver, once the property of an old Spanish grandee.
Now they found an altar vessel, which had been destined as a gift
to some Catholic church. Now they drew up a golden cup, fit for
the King of Spain to drink his wine out of.  Now their rakes were
loaded with masses of silver bullion. There were also precious
stones among the treasure, glittering and sparkling, so that it is
a wonder how their radiance could have been concealed.

After a day or two they discovered another part of the wreck where
they found a great many bags of silver dollars. But nobody could
have guessed that these were money-bags. By remaining so long in
the salt-water they had become covered over with a crust which had
the appearance of stone, so that it was necessary to break them
in pieces with hammers and axes. When this was done, a stream of
silver dollars gushed out upon the deck of the vessel.

The whole value of the recovered treasure, plate, bullion, precious
stones, and all, was estimated at more than two millions of dollars.
It was dangerous even to look at such a vast amount of wealth.  A
captain, who had assisted Phips in the enterprise, lost his reason
at the sight of it. He died two years afterward, still raving about
the treasures that lie at the bottom of the sea.

Phips and his men continued to fish up plate, bullion, and dollars,
as plentifully as ever, till their provisions grew short. Then,
as they could not feed upon gold and silver any more than old King
Midas could, they found it necessary to go in search of food. Phips
returned to England, arriving there in 1687, and was received with
great joy by the Albemarles and other English lords who had fitted
out the vessel. Well they might rejoice; for they took the greater
part of the treasures to themselves.

The captain's share, however, was enough to make him comfortable
for the rest of his days. It also enabled him to fulfil his promise
to his wife, by building a "fair brick house" in the Green Lane of
Boston. The Duke of Albemarle sent Mrs.  Phips a magnificent gold
cup, worth at least five thousand dollars. Before Captain Phips
left London, King James made him a knight; so that, instead of
the obscure ship-carpenter who had formerly dwelt among them, the
inhabitants of Boston welcomed him on his return as the rich and
famous Sir William Phips.




THE LOST EXILES OF TEXAS

By Arthur Gilman



If we could have stood upon the shores of Matagorda Bay with the
Indians on a certain day over two hundred years ago we might have
been witness to a strange sight. Before us would have been spread
out the waters of a broad and sheltered harbor opening towards the
sea through a narrow passage which was obstructed by sandbars and
an island. One's eyes could not reach to the end of the bay, which
is fifty miles long; nor could they see land beyond the sea-passage,
for that opens into the broad Gulf of Mexico. Let us take our stand
on the shore and see what we can see.

There appear to us, as if by magic, the forms of two French gentlemen
accompanied by a small party of soldiers, who come from the mouth
of the bay, and carefully thread their way along the shore.  It is
a strange company of men. The leader is a native of Rouen, and he
says that few of his companions are fit for anything but eating.
He thought that his band comprised creatures of all sorts, like
Noah's ark, but unlike the collection of the great patriarch, they
seemed to be few of them worth saving.

As we look, the men begin to gather together the pieces of
drift-wood that the peaceful waves throw up on to the shore. They
are evidently planning to make a raft; but as one of them casts his
lazy eyes in the direction in which ours were at first thrown, he
exclaims with evident joy, in his native French _"Voila les vaisseaux!"_
or words to that effect, for he has descried two ships entering
the bay from the Gulf. The ships slowly keep their way towards
the inland coast, and from one of them there lands a man evidently
higher in authority than any we have seen. His air is calm,
dignified, forceful, persistent. He announces to those about him
that they are at one of the mouths of the great Mississippi, or,
as he well calls it _"La rivire fu-neste,"_ the fatal river. "Here
shall we land all our men," he adds, "and here shall our vessels
be placed in safe harbor."

In vain does the commander of one of the little ships protest that
the water of the bay is too shallow and that the currents are too
powerful; the strong man has given his order, and it must be obeyed.
The channel was duly marked out, and on the twentieth of February,
one of the ships, the _Aimable,_ weighed anchor and began to enter
the bay. The commander was on the shore, anxiously watching to see
the result, when, suddenly, some of his men who had been cutting
down a tree to make a canoe, rushed up and exclaimed, with terror
in their faces, "The Indians have attacked us and one of our number
is even now a captive in their hands." There was nothing to be done
but go in pursuit of the savages.

It did not take long to arm a few men, and off they started with
their leader in the direction that the Indians had taken. The
savages were overtaken and a parley ensued. The leader's thoughts
were now in two places at once, and he was not far enough from the
shore not to be able to cast a glance towards the _Aimable_, and
to say to his lieutenants, as he saw the vessel drifting near shoal
water, "If she keeps on in that course, she will soon be aground."
Still, no time was to be lost. The parley with the Indians did
not hinder them long, and soon they were on the way towards the
village whither the captive had been taken. Just as they entered
its precincts and looked upon its inhabitants, clustered in groups
among the dome-shaped huts, the loud boom of a cannon burst upon
their ears. The savages were smitten with terror, and the commander
felt his heart beat quickly as he looked again towards the water
and saw the _Aimable_ furling its sails, a sure token to him that
she had indeed struck the rock and would be lost, with all the
stores intended for use when her passengers should be landed.

Undaunted by the prospect, or even by the dark picture that his
imagination conjured up, he pressed onward among the miserable
savages, until his man had been recovered. Then he returned, and
found his vessel on her side, a forlorn spectacle.  Now the wind
rose, and the sea beat upon the helpless hulk. It rocked backwards
and forwards on its uneasy bed; its treasures of boxes and bales
and casks were strewn over the waters; the greedy Indians made haste
to seize what they could; and as night approached the hurriedly
organized patrol of soldiers had all that they could do to face
the deepening storm and protect their goods from the treacherous
natives, as the less treacherous waves cast them upon the sands of
the shore.

Who were these men, thus unceremoniously thrust upon the shores of
the New World? How did it happen that they were found at a point
that no European had before seen? Perhaps it is not necessary to
ask how they happened to mistake the entrance to Matagorda Bay for
one of the broad mouths of the Mississippi. They were Frenchmen.
So much their speech has told us. The leader was Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de La Salle, a man whom the historian Bancroft says that he
had no superior among his countrymen for force of will and vast
conceptions; for various knowledge, and quick adaptation of his
genius to untried circumstances; for sublime magnanimity that resigned
itself to the will of Heaven and yet triumphed over affliction by
energy of purpose and unfaltering hope.

In early life he had renounced his inheritance and devoted himself
to the service of the Church, but he soon left the order of Jesuits
which he had entered, because, as Mr. Parkman surmises, he did not
relish being all his life the moved and not the mover; because he
could not give up his individuality and remain one of the great
body, all of whom were compelled to march in a track pointed out to
them by a superior. It is pleasant to know that he left the order
with good feelings on both sides.

In 1667, we find the young man already entered upon the career of
adventure in which the rest of his life was to be spent. He had
sailed to Canada, the place of attraction for ambitious French
youth, and there he remained several years, making the familiar
acquaintance of the Indians and learning their language, while he
was dreaming, like many others, of the passage to China through
the rivers that came down from the westward. He had looked, too,
in his vivid imagination over the vast plains of the great West,
and had become filled with brilliant visions of an empire that he
hoped some day to see established there for France. We have already
learned how France took possession of the region, at this very
period.

In such state of mind, La Salle sailed back to France in the
autumn of 1674. He was well received and the next year returned,
ennobled, and more than ever determined to push his grand scheme
for the acquisition of the great West. His was no plan to indulge
in theatrical spectacles, but to take actual possession. Year
after year we see him steadily pursuing his single plan. He thinks
nothing of crossing the Atlantic, of pushing his course through
the trackless woods, or of paddling his frail canoe over the wild
waters of the broad lakes. Indians did not daunt him by their
cruelty, nor wild beasts affright him by their numbers and ferocity.
Onward, ever onward, He pressed.

In the year 1680, we find him taking possession by actual occupation,
of the region now comprising the State of Illinois. It was the
first time that civilization had asserted itself there. La Salle
built a fort, and, in memory of the trials of the way, called it
_Crevecoeur_, which signified Broken-heart; but it did not testify
to any broken courage on his part;--rather it was a monument to
the obstacles that his persistence had surmounted.

Two years later, we find his canoe, which seems to our eyes now the
emblem of an aggressive civilization, flitting along the Illinois
River, entering the muddy Mississippi, and floating down its thousand
miles to the Gulf. This is not the whole picture, however. We see
the party start from the Chicago River, in the cold weather of
December.  The rivers are frozen. Canoes must be dragged over their
snowy and icy surfaces, and baggage can be transported in no way
but upon rough sledges.  Can you not see the slow procession of
fifty persons dragging themselves along day after day through the
region inhabited but by savages and wild beasts, suffering from cold
and hunger, and all held to their duty by the persevering leader
who had brought them there?

There are twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen Indian braves, belonging
to those terrible Abenakis and Mohegans whose "midnight yells had,"
as Mr. Parkman says, "startled the border hamlets of New England;
who had danced around Puritan scalps, and whom Puritan imaginations
painted as incarnate fiends." There were besides, ten squaws
and three children. A motley collection and one not calculated to
inspire confidence nor hope for the success of any undertaking. It
was not until they had passed the point where the river broadens
into Lake Peoria that they found water in which they could float
their canoes. Then they continued on, until early in February they
found themselves on the banks of the Mississippi. It was filled
with ice, and no canoe could navigate it.

After a delay of a few days, they found the river free, and again
took up their course southwards.  A day more brought them to the
confluence of the muddy Missouri, which some of my readers have
probably seen, where a mighty stream coming down from distant
mountains, enters another not so mighty as itself, and plowing
its way across its current, burrows under the soil on the opposite
shore.  This did not detain the voyagers, though they encamped there
over night, and then pursued their course towards the unknown. A
few days showed them the mouth of the Ohio, but still they pressed
onward. It was near the end of February, the temperature was growing
perceptibly warmer as they approached the South.

At a certain point they encamped and sent out their hunters for
game. One did not return at night, and a horror seized the others,
as they thought that he had been overtaken and killed by hostile
Indians. Day after day the woods were scoured in the hope of finding
the missing companion, but it seemed vain. A fort was erected for
the protection of the party on a high bluff, and named for the
lost hunter, Prudhomme. At last they met some Chickasaw Indians,
and messages of amity were exchanged through them with the people
of their village, not far distant. Soon afterwards Prudhomme was
discovered, half-dead from exposure, for he had lost his way while
hunting.

Thus the expedition progressed for many days, until at last the little
canoes found themselves thrust out through the turbid channels of
the delta, into the clear salt waters of the Gulf of Mexico. They
had stopped on the way after leaving Fort Prudhomme, at several
Indian towns, had been well treated by the natives, and they had
seen the mouths of the Arkansas and the Red rivers.

The whole valley of the Fatal River had been laid bare to them, and
now La Salle thought the time had come to take formal possession
for his sovereign.

Near the mouth of the river, the party came together on the ninth
of April, 1682, and a ceremony took place that was very similar to
the one at the Sault Ste. Marie, a few days less than eleven years
before, by which France had taken possession of the Northwest. It
did not rival that in the magnificence with which it was conducted,
though the ceremonial was, perhaps, a little more elaborated, but
it seemed to have a better basis of fact, for La Salle had actually
passed through the heart of the region which he now claimed. A
column was erected, of course, and a tablet of lead was buried near
it, such as those that had been placed in the ground at various
other places by Frenchmen, bearing testimony to the fact that Louis
the Great claimed to rule the land.

It was nearly the end of November of the following year, when La
Salle reached Quebec, after having retraced his route by long and
tedious stages up the rivers that he had followed down to the Gulf.
Then he returned to France to tell the story of his travels, and
began to use his influence to induce the government to send out
an expedition to take controlling possession of the Mississippi
region.  He argued with all his powers, saying that by fortifying
the river, the French might control the continent.  It was really
a grand and brilliant proposition, and the king and his minister
gave more than was demanded. Four vessels were prepared, instead
of the two that La Salle asked for. The expedition comprised a
hundred soldiers, thirty volunteers, many mechanics and laborers,
several families and a few girls, who looked forward to certain
marriage in the new land.

On the twenty-fourth of July, La Salle set sail from Roehelle,
with four hundred men in his four vessels, leaving an affectionate
and comforting letter as his last farewell to his mother at Rouen.
We have already seen how he was thrown upon the shores of the
New World. There, on the sands of Matagorda Bay, with nothing to
eat but oysters and a sort of porridge made of the flour that had
been saved, the homesick party of downcast men and sorrowing women
encamped until their leader could tell them what to do. They did
not even know where they were. They were intending to conquer the
Spaniards, but they knew nothing of their whereabouts. They were
attacked by Indians, and finally, some three weeks after the wreck,
the commander of the ships sailed away for France leaving La Salle
and his forlorn company behind!

A site was soon chosen on the river now called Lavaca (a corruption
of _La Vache_, the cow, a name given it because buffaloes had been
seen there), and a fort was built called St. Louis. La Salle had
scarcely finished this establishment, when he determined to search
for the Mississippi River, for he had by that time concluded from
explorations that he had not found it. On the last day of October,
he started, and towards the end of March, the party returned, tattered
and worn, almost ready to die; but though the strong body of the
leader had given away, his stronger spirit was still unbroken, and
he soon determined to set out to find the Illinois region where
he left a colony formerly, and where he felt sure he could obtain
relief. There was no chance for them to return directly to France
since their vessels were all gone, and this seemed their only hope.

A party of twenty was formed to undertake the perilous enterprise,
and on the twenty-second of April, 1686, they took their way from
the fort, bearing on their persons the contributions that their
fellows who were to remain had been able to bring together for
their comfort.

The party experienced a variety of hardships, quarrelled among
themselves, and finally, on the morning of the eighteenth of March,
1687, one of them shot and killed the brave leader. The remainder
kept on, finally reached Canada and were taken to their native
land. To the colonists at Fort St. Louis, no ground of hope ever
appeared, though they felt that the people of France must have an
interest in them, and so they kept a look-out over the water for a
ship coming to their relief. It never came, alas, and no one knows
to this day what became of the Lost Exiles of Texas!




THE BOY CONQUEROR--CHARLES XII OF SWEDEN

By E. S. Brooks



In an old, old palace on the rocky height of the _Slottsbacke_,
or Palace Hill, in the northern quarter of the beautiful city of
Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, there lived, just two hundred
years ago, a bright young prince. His father was a stern and daring
warrior-king--a man who had been a fighter from his earliest boyhood;
who at fourteen had been present in four pitched battles with the
Danes, and who, while yet scarce twelve years old, had charged
the Danish line at the head of his guards and shot down the stout
Danish colonel, who could not resist the spry young warrior.  His
mother was a sweet-faced Danish princess, a loving and gentle lady,
who scarce ever heard a kind word from her stern-faced husband,
and whose whole life was bound up in her precious little prince.

And this little Carolus, Karl, or Charles, dearly loved his tender
mother. From her he learned lessons of truth and nobleness that
even through all his stormy and wandering life never forsook him.
Often while he had swung gently to and fro in his quaint, carved,
and uncomfortable-looking cradle, had she crooned above him the
old saga-songs that told of valor and dauntless courage and all the
stern virtues that made up the heroes of those same old saga-songs.
Many a time she had trotted the little fellow on her knee to the
music of the ancient nursery rhyme that has a place in all lands
and languages, from the steppes of Siberia to the homes of New York
and San Francisco:


"Ride along, ride a cock-horse,
His mane is dapple-gray;
Ride along, ride a cock-horse,
Little boy, ride away.
Where shall the little boy ride to?
To the king's court to woo"--


and so forth, and so forth, and so forth--in different phrases but
with the same idea, as many and many a girl and boy can remember.
And she had told him over and over again the saga-stories and fairy
tales that every Scandinavian boy and girl, from prince to peasant,
knows so well--of Frithiof and Ingeborg, and the good King Rene;
and about the Stone Giant and his wife Guru; and about the dwarfs,
and trolls, and nixies, and beautiful mermaids and stromkarls. And
she told him also many a story of brave and daring deeds, of noble
and knightly lives, and how his ancestors, from the great Gustavus,
and, before, from the still greater Gustavus Vasa, had been kings
of Sweden, and had made the name of that Northern land a power in
all the courts of Europe.

Little Prince Charles was as brave as he was gentle and jolly, and
as hardy as he was brave.  At five years old he killed his first
fox; at seven he could manage his horse like a young centaur; and
at twelve he had his first successful bear hunt.  He was as obstinate
as he was hardy; he steadily refused to learn Latin or French--the
languages of the court--until he heard that the kings of Denmark
and Poland understood them, and then he speedily mastered them.

His lady-mother's death, when he was scarce twelve years old, was
a great sadness, and nearly caused his own death, but, recovering
his health, he accompanied his father on hunting parties and military
expeditions, and daily grew stronger and hardier than ever.

In April, 1697, when the prince was not yet fifteen, King Charles
XI, his stern-faced father, suddenly died, and the boy king succeeded
to the throne as absolute lord of "Sweden and Finland, of Livonia,
Carelia, Ingria, Wismar, Wibourg, the islands of Rugen and Oesel,
of Pomerania, and the duchies of Bremen and Verdun"--one of the finest
possessions to which a young king ever succeeded, and representing
what is now Sweden, Western Russia, and a large part of Northern
Germany.

A certain amount of restraint is best for us all.  As the just
restraints of the law are best for men and women, so the proper
restraints of home are best for boys and girls. A lad from whom
all restraining influences are suddenly withdrawn--who can have
his own way unmolested--stands in the greatest danger of wrecking
his life. The temptations of power have been the cause of very
much of the world's sadness and misery. And this temptation came
to this boy King of Sweden called in his fifteenth year to supreme
sway over a large realm of loyal subjects. Freed from the severity
of his stern father's discipline, he found himself responsible to
no one--absolutely his own master.  And he did what too many of
us, I fear, would have done in his position--he determined to have
a jolly good time, come what might; and he had it--in his way.

He and his brother-in-law, the wild young Duke of Holstein, turned
the town upside down. They snapped cherry-pits at the king's
gray-bearded councillors, and smashed in the windows of the staid
and scandalized burghers of Stockholm. They played ball with the
table dishes, and broke all the benches in the palace chapel. They
coursed hares through the council-chambers of the Parliament House,
and ran furious races until they had ruined several fine horses.
They beheaded sheep in the palace till the floors ran with blood,
and then pelted the passers-by with sheep's heads. They spent the
money in the royal treasury like water, and played so many heedless
and ruthless boy-tricks that the period of these months of folly was
known, long after, as the "Gottorp Fury," because the harum-scarum
young brother-in-law, who was the ringleader in all these scrapes,
was Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.

But at last, even the people--serfs of this boy autocrat though they
were--began to murmur, and when one Sunday morning three clergymen
preached from the text "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is
a child," the young sovereign remembered the counsels of his good
mother and recalled the glories of his ancestors, saw how foolish
and dangerous was all this reckless sport, turned over a new leaf,
became thoughtful and care-taking, and began his career of conquest
with the best victory of all--the conquest of himself!

But though he curbed his tendency to profitless and hurtful
"skylarking," he had far too much of the Berserker blood of his
ancestors--those rough old vikings who "despised mail and helmet
and went into battle unharnessed"--to become altogether gentle in
manners or occupation. He hated his fair skin, and sought in every
way to tan and roughen it, and to harden himself by exposure and
neglect of personal comfort. Many a night was passed by the boy on
the bare floor, and for three nights in the cold Swedish December
he slept in the hay-loft of the palace stables, without undressing
and with but scanty covering.

So he grew to be a lad of seventeen, sturdy, strong, and hardy, and
at the date of our story, in the year of 1699, the greater part of
his time was given up to military exercises and field sports, with
but little attention to debates in council or to the cares of state.

Among his chief enjoyments were the sham fights on land and water.
Many a hard-fought battle was waged between the boys and young men
who made up his guards and crews, and who would be divided into
two or more opposing parties, as the plan of battle required. This
was rough and dangerous sport, and was attended often with really
serious results. But the participants were stout and sturdy Northern
lads, used to hardships and trained to physical endurance. They
thought no more of these encounters than do the boys of to-day of
the crush of football and the hard hitting of the baseball field,
and blows were given and taken with equal good nature and unconcern.

One raw day in the early fall of 1699, sturdy young Arvid Horn,
a stout, blue-eyed Stockholm boy, stripped to the waist, and with
a gleam of fun in his eyes, stood upright in his little boat as
it bobbed on the crest of the choppy Maelar waves.  He hailed the
king's yacht.

"Holo; in the boat there! Stand for your lives!" he shouted, and
levelled his long squirt-gun full at the helmsman.

Swish! came the well-directed stream of water plump against the
helmsman's face. Again and again it flew, until dripping and sore
he dropped the tiller and dashed down the companion-way calling
loudly for help.

Help came speedily, and as the crew of the king's yacht manned the
rail and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which
were the principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe"
naval engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so
sure an aim or so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering
stream as young Arvid Horn. One by one he drove them back while
as his boat drifted still nearer the yacht he made ready to spring
to the force-chains and board his prize. But even before he could
steady himself for the jump, another tall and fair-haired Stockholm
lad, darting out from the high cabin, rallied the defeated crew
and bade them man the pumps at once.

A clumsy-looking fire-engine stood amidship, and the crew leaped
to its pumps as directed, while the newcomer, catching up a line
of hose, sprang to the rail and sent a powerful stream of water
straight against the solitary rover.

"Repel boarders!" he cried, laughingly, and the sudden stream from
the fire-engine's nozzle sent young Arvid Horn staggering back into
his boat.

But he rallied quickly, and with well-charged squirt-gun attacked
the new defender of the yacht.  The big nozzle, however, was more
than a match for the lesser squirt-gun, and the small boat speedily
began to fill under the constant deluge of water from the engine.

"Yield thee, yield thee, Arvid Horn; yield thee to our unconquerable
nozzle," came the summons from the yacht; "yield thee, or I will
drown you out like a rat in a cheese-press!"

"Arvid Horn yields to no one," the plucky boy in the boat made answer,
and with a parting shot and a laughing "_Farvl!_" he leaped from
the sinking boat into the dancing Maelar water. Striking boldly out,
he swam twice round the boat in sheer bravado, defying the enemy;
now ducking to escape the pursuing stream, or now, while floating
on his back, sending a return shot with telling force against the
men at the pump--for he still clung to his trusty squirt-gun.

The fair-faced lad in the yacht looked at the swimmer in evident
admiration,

"Is it, then, hard to swim, Arvid Horn?" he inquired.

"Not if one is fearless," called back the floating boy.

"How; fearless?" exclaimed the lad on the yacht, hastily. "Do you
perhaps think that I am afraid?"

"I said not so," replied young Arvid, coolly sending a full charge
from his squirt-gun straight up in the air.

"No; but you mean it--good faith, you mean it, then," said the lad,
and flinging off wig, cocked hat, and long coat only, without an
instant's hesitation he, too, leaped into the Maelar Lake.

There is nothing so cooling to courage or reckless enthusiasm as
cold water-if one cannot swim.  The boy plunged and floundered,
and weighty with his boots and his clothing, soon sank from sight.
As he came spluttering to the surface again, "Help, help, Arvid,"
he called despairingly; "I am drowning!"

Arvid, who had swum away from his friend, thinking that he would
follow after, heard the cry and caught a still louder one from the
yacht: "The king, the king is sinking!"

A few strokes brought him near to the over-confident diver, and
clutching him by his shirt-collar, he kept the lad's head above
water until, after a long and laborious swim, he brought his kingly
burden safe to land--for the fair-haired and reckless young knight
of the nozzle was none other than his gracious majesty, Charles
the Twelfth of Sweden.

"Truly it is one thing to be brave and another to be skilful,"
said the king, as he stood soaked and dripping on the shore. "But
for you, friend Arvid, I had almost gone."

"You are very wet, sire, and may take cold," said Arvid; "let us
hasten at once to yonder house for warmth and dry clothes."

"Not so, Arvid; I do not fear the water--on land," said the king.
"I am no such milksop as to need to dry off before a kitchen fire.
See, this is the better way"; and catching up a stout hazel-stick,
he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loath, Arvid Horn accepted
the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he
rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys went at each
other "hammer and tongs" in a lively bout at "single-stick."

They were soon thoroughly warmed up by this vigorous exercise,
and forgot their recent bath and the king's danger. It was a drawn
battle, however, and, as they paused for breath, King Charles said:
"Trust that to drive away cold and ague, Arvid. Faith,'tis a rare
good sport."

"Could it be done on horseback, think you?" queried Arvid, always
on the lookout for sensation.

"And why not? 'Tis well thought," said the king. "Let us straight
to the palace yard and try it for ourselves."

But ere they reached the palace the idea had developed into still
greater proportions.

The king's guards were summoned, and divided into two parties.
Their horses were unsaddled, and, riding "bareback" and armed with
nothing but hazel-sticks, the two forces were pitted against each
other in a great cavalry duel of "single-stick."

King Charles commanded one side, and young Arvid Horn the other. At
it they went, now one side and now the other having the advantage,
the two leaders fighting with especial vigor.

Arvid pressed the king closely, and both lads were full of the
excitement of the fray when Charles, careless of his aim and with
his customary recklessness, brought his hazel-stick with a terrible
thwack upon poor Arvid's face. Now Arvid Horn had a boil on his
cheek, and if any of my boy readers know what a tender piece of
property a boil is, they will know that King Charles's hazel-stick
was not a welcome poultice.

With a cry of pain Arvid fell fainting from his horse, and the
cavalry battle at "single-stick" came to a sudden stop. But the
heat and the pain brought on so fierce a fever that the lad was
soon as near to death's door as his friend King Charles had been
in the sea fight of the squirt-guns.

The king was deeply concerned during young Arvid's illness, and
when the lad at last recovered he made him a present of two thousand
thalers, laughingly promising to repeat the prescription whenever
Arvid was again wounded at "single-stick." He was greatly pleased
to have his friend with him once more, and, when Arvid was strong
enough to join in his vigorous sports again, one of the first
things he proposed was a great bear-hunt up among the snow-filled
forests that skirted the Maelar Lake.

A day's ride from Stockholm, the hunting-lodge of the kings of
Sweden lay upon the heavily drifted hill-slopes just beyond the
lake shore, and through the forests and marshes two hundred years
ago the big brown bear of Northern Europe, the noble elk, the now
almost extinct auroch, or bison, and the great gray wolf roamed in
fierce and savage strength, affording exciting and dangerous sport
for daring hunters.

And among these hunters none excelled young Charles of Sweden.
Reckless in the face of danger, and brave as he was reckless, he
was ever on the alert for any novelty in the manner of hunting that
should make the sport even more dangerous and exciting. So young
Arvid Horn was not surprised when the king said to him:

"I have a new way for hunting the bear, Arvid, and a rarely good
one, too."

"Of that I'll be bound, sire," young Arvid responded; "but-how may
it be?"

"You shall know anon," King Charles replied; "but this much will I
say: I do hold it but a coward's part to fight the poor brute with
firearms.  Give the fellow a chance for his life, say I, and a fair
fight in open field--and then let the best man win."

Here was a new idea. Not hunt the bear with musket, carbine, or
wheel-lock? What then--did King Charles reckon to have a wrestling
bout or a turn at "single-stick" with the _Jarl_ Bruin?  So wondered
Arvid Horn, but he said nothing, waiting the king's own pleasure,
as became a shrewd young courtier.

And soon enough he learned the boy-hunter's new manner of bear-hunting,
when, on the very day of their arrival at the Maelar lodge, they
tracked a big brown bear beneath the great pines and spruces of the
almost boundless forest, armed only with strong wooden pitchforks.
Arvid was not at all anxious for this fighting at close quarters,
but when he saw King Charles boldly advance upon the growling bear,
when he saw the great brute rise on his hind legs and threaten to
hug Sweden's monarch to death, he would have sprung forward to aid
his king. But a huntsman near at hand held him back.

"Wait," said the man; "let the 'little father' play his part."

And even as he spoke Arvid saw the king walk deliberately up to the
towering bear, and, with a quick thrust of his long-handled fork,
catch the brute's neck between the pointed wooden prongs, and with
a mighty shove force the bear backward in the snow.

Then, answering his cry of "Holo, all!" the huntsmen sprang to
his side, flung a stout net over the struggling bear, and held it
thus, a floundering prisoner, while the intrepid king coolly cut
its throat with his sharp hunting-knife.

Arvid learned to do this, too, in time, but it required some extra
courage even for his steady young head and hand.

One day, when each of the lads had thus transfixed and killed his
bear, and as, in high spirits, they were returning to the hunting-lodge,
a courserman dashed hurriedly across their path, recognized the
king, and reining in his horse, dismounted hastily, saluted, and
handed the king a packet.

"From the council, sire," he said.

Up to this day the young king had taken but little interest in the
affairs of state, save as he directed the review or drill, leaving
the matters of treaty and of state policy to his trusted councillors.
He received the courserman's despatch with evident unconcern, and
read it carelessly.  But his face changed as he read it a second
time; first clouding darkly, and then lighting up with the gleam
of a new determination and purpose.

"What says Count Piper?" he exclaimed half aloud; "Holstein laid
waste by Denmark, Gottorp Castle taken, and the duke a fugitive?
And my council dares to temper and negotiate? _Ack; so!_ Arvid
Horn, we must be in Stockholm ere night-fall."

"But, sire, how can you?" exclaimed Arvid.  "The roads are heavy
with snow, and no horse could stand the strain or hope to make the
city ere morning."

"No horse!" cried King Charles; "then three shall do it. Hasten; bid
Hord the equerry harness the triple team to the strongest sledge,
and be you ready to ride with me in a half hour's time.  For we
shall be in Stockholm by nightfall."

And ere the half hour was up they were off.  Careless of roadway,
straight for Stockholm they headed, the triple team of plunging
Ukraine horses, driven abreast by the old equerry Hord, dashing down
the slopes and across the Maelar ice, narrowly escaping collision,
overturn, and death.  With many a plunge and many a ducking, straight
on they rode, and ere the Stockholm clocks had struck the hour of
six the city gates were passed, and the spent and foaming steeds
dashed panting into the great yard of the Parliament House.

The council was still in session, and the grave old councillors
started to their feet in amazement at this sudden apparition of
the boy king, soiled and bespattered from head to foot, standing
there in their midst.

"Gentlemen," he said, with earnestness and determination in his
voice, "your despatch tells me of unfriendly acts on the part of the
King of Denmark against our brother and ally of Holstein-Gottorp.
I am resolved never to begin an unjust war, but never to finish an
unjust one save with the destruction of mine enemies. My resolution
is fixed. I will march and attack the first one who shall declare
war; and when I shall have conquered him, I hope to strike terror
into the rest."

These were ringing and, seemingly, reckless words for a boy of
seventeen, and we do not wonder that, as the record states, "the
old councillors, astonished at this declaration, looked at one
another without daring to answer." The speech seemed all the more
reckless when they considered, as we may here, the coalition against
which the boy king spoke so confidently.

At that time--in the year 1699--the three neighbors of this young
Swedish monarch were three kings of powerful northern nations--Frederick
the Fourth, King of Denmark; Augustus, called the Strong, King of
Poland and Elector of Saxony, and Peter, afterward known as the
Great, Czar of Russia. Tempted by the large possessions of young
King Charles, and thinking to take advantage of his youth, his
inexperience, and his presumed indifference, these three monarchs
concocted a fine scheme by which Sweden was to be overrun, conquered,
and divided among the three members of this new copartnership
of kings--from each of whom, or from their predecessors, this boy
king's ancestors had wrested many a fair domain and wealthy city.

But these three kings--as has many and many another plotter in
history before and since--reckoned without their host. They did not
know the mettle that was in this grandnephew of the great Gustavus.

Once aroused to action, he was ready to move before even his would-be
conquerors, in those slow-going days, imagined he had thought of
resistance.  Money and men were raised, the alliance of England and
Holland was secretly obtained, a council of defence was appointed
to govern Sweden during the absence of the king, and on April 23,
1700, two months before his eighteenth birthday, King Charles bade
his grandmother and his sisters good-by and left Stockholm forever.

Even as he left, the news came that another member in this firm of
hostile kings, Augustus of Saxony and Poland, had invaded Sweden's
tributary province of Livonia on the Gulf of Finland.  Not to be
drawn aside from his first object--the punishment of Denmark--Charles
simply said, "We will make King Augustus go back the way he came,"
and hurried on to join his army in southern Sweden.

By August 3, 1700, King Charles had grown tired of waiting for his
reserves and new recruits, and so, with scarce six thousand men,
he sailed away from Malmo--clear down at the most southerly point
of Sweden--across the Sound, and steered for the Danish coast not
twenty-five miles away.

Young Arvid Horn, still the king's fast friend, and now one of
his aids, following his leader, leaped into the first of the small
barges or row-boats that were to take the troops from the frigates
to the Danish shore. His young general and king, impatient at the
slowness of the clumsy barges, while yet three hundred yards from
shore, stood upright in the stern, drew his sword, and exclaimed:
"I am wearied with this pace. All you who are for Denmark follow
me!" And then, sword in hand, he sprang over into the sea.

Arvid Horn quickly followed his royal friend.  The next moment
generals and ministers, ambassadors and belaced officials, with
the troops that filled the boats, were wading waist-deep through
the shallow water of the Sound, struggling toward the Danish shore,
and fully as enthusiastic as their hasty young leader and king.

The Danish musket-balls fell thick around them as the Danish troops
sought from their trenches to repel the invaders.

"What strange whizzing noise is this in the air?" asked the young
king, now for the first time in action.

"'Tis the noise of the musket-balls they fire upon you," was the
reply.

"_Ack_, say you so," said Charles: "good, good; from this time
forward that shall he my music."

In the face of this "music" the shore was gained, the trenches were
carried by fierce assault and King Charles's first battle was won.
Two days later, Copenhagen submitted to its young conqueror, and
King Frederick of Denmark hastened to the defence of his capital,
only to find it in the possession of the enemy, and to sign a
humiliating treaty of peace.

The boy conqueror's first campaign was over, and, as his biographer
says, he had "at the age of eighteen begun and finished a war
in less than six weeks." Accepting nothing for himself from this
conquest, he spared the land from which his dearly remembered mother
had come from the horrors of war and pillage which in those days
were not only allowable but expected.

King Augustus of Poland, seeing the short work made of his ally
the King of Denmark, by this boy king, whom they had all regarded
with so much contempt, deemed discretion to be the better part of
valor and, as the lad had prophesied, withdrew from Livonia, "going
back by the way he came." Then the young conqueror, flushed with his
successes, turned his army against his third and greatest enemy,
Czar Peter, of Russia, who, with over eighty thousand men, was
besieging the Swedish town of Narva.

A quaint old German-looking town, situated a few miles from the
shores of the Gulf of Finland, in what is now the Baltic provinces
of Russia, and near to the site of the czar's later capital of St.
Petersburg, the stout-walled town of Narva was the chief defence of
Sweden on its eastern borders, and a stronghold which the Russian
monarch especially coveted for his own. Young Arvid Horn's uncle,
the Count Horn, was in command of the Swedish forces in the town,
which, with a thousand men, he held for the young king, his master,
against all the host of the Czar Peter.

The boy who had conquered Denmark in less than six weeks, and forced
a humiliating peace from Poland, was not the lad to consider for
a moment the question of risk or of outnumbering forces. In the
middle of November, when all that cold Northern land is locked in
ice and snow, he flung out the eagle-flag of Sweden to the Baltic
blasts, and crossed to the instant relief of Narva, with an army of
barely twenty thousand men.  Landing at Pernau with but a portion
of his troops, he pushed straight on, and with scarce eight thousand
men hurried forward to meet the enemy.  With a courage as daring
as his valor was headlong, he surprised and routed first one and
then another advance detachment of the Russian force, and soon
twenty-five thousand demoralized and defeated men were retreating
before him into the Russian camp. In less than two days all the
Russian outposts were carried, and on the noon of the thirtieth of
November, 1700, the boy from Sweden appeared with his eight thousand
victory-flushed though wearied troops before the fortified camp
of his enemy, and, without a moment's hesitation, ordered instant
battle.

"Sire," said one of his chief officers, the General Stenbock, "do
you comprehend the greatness of our danger? The Muscovites outnumber
us ten to one."

"What, then!" said the intrepid young king, "do you imagine that
with my eight thousand brave Swedes I shall not be able to march
over the bodies of eighty thousand Muscovites?" And then at the
signal of two fusees and the watchword, "With the help of God," he
ordered his cannon to open on the Russian trenches, and through a
furious snow-storm charged straight upon the enemy.

Again valor and enthusiasm triumphed. The Russian line broke before
the impetuosity of the Swedes, and, as one chronicler says, "ran
about like a herd of cattle"; the bridge across the river broke under
the weight of fugitives, panic followed, and when night fell, the
great Russian army of eighty thousand men surrendered as prisoners
of war to a boy of eighteen with but eight thousand tired soldiers
at his back.

So the boy conqueror entered upon his career of victory. Space does
not permit to detail his battles and his conquests. How he placed
a new king on the throne of Poland, kept Denmark in submission,
held the hosts of Russia at bay, humbled Austria, and made his
name, ere yet he was twenty, at once a wonder and a terror in all
the courts of Europe. How, at last, his ambition getting the better
of his discretion, he thought to be a modern Alexander, to make
Europe Protestant, subdue Rome, and carry his conquering eagles into
Egypt and Turkey and Persia. How, by unwise measures and foolhardy
endeavors, he lost all the fruits of his hundred victories and
his nine years of conquest in the terrible defeat by the Russians
at Pultowa, which sent him an exile into Turkey, kept him there a
prisoner of state for over five years; and how, finally, when once
again at the head of Swedish troops, instead of defending his own
home-land of Sweden, he invaded Norway in the depth of winter, and
was killed, when but thirty-six, by a cannon-shot from the enemy's
batteries at Frederickshall on December 11, 1718.

Charles the Twelfth of Sweden was one of the most remarkable of the
world's historic boys.  Elevated to a throne founded on despotic
power and victorious memories, at an age when most lads regard
themselves as the especial salt of the earth, he found himself launched
at once into a war with three powerful nations, only to become in
turn the conqueror of each. A singularly good boy, so far as the
customary temptations of power and high station are concerned--temperate,
simple, and virtuous in tastes, dress, and habits--he was, as one
of his biographers has remarked, "the only one among kings who had
lived without a single frailty."

But this valorous boy, who had first bridled his own spirit, and
then conquered the Northern world, "reared," as has been said,
"under a father cold and stern, defectively educated, taught from
childhood to value nothing but military glory," could not withstand
the temptation of success.  An ambition to be somebody and to do
something is always a laudable one in boy or girl, until it supplants
and overgrows the sweet, true, and manly boy and girl nature, and
makes us regardless of the comfort or the welfare of others. A
desire to excel the great conquerors of old, joined to an obstinacy
as strong as his courage, caused young Charles of Sweden to miss
the golden opportunity, and instead of seeking to rule his own
country wisely, sent him abroad a homeless wanderer on a career of
conquest, as romantic as it was, first, glorious, and at the last
disastrous.

In the northern quarter of the beautiful city of Stockholm, surrounded
by palaces and gardens, theatres, statues, and fountains, stands
Molin's striking statue of the boy conqueror, Charles the Twelfth
of Sweden. Guarded at the base by captured mortars, the outstretched
hand and unsheathed sword seem to tell of conquests to be won and
victories to be achieved. But to the boy and girl of this age of
peace and good-fellowship, when wars are averted rather than sought,
and wise statesmanship looks rather to the healing than to the
opening of the world's wounds, one cannot but feel how much grander,
nobler, and more helpful would have been the life of this young
"Lion of the North," as his Turkish captors called him, had it been
devoted to deeds of gentleness and charity rather than of blood
and sorrow, and how much more enduring might have been his fame and
his memory if he had been the lover and helper of his uncultivated
and civilization-needing people, rather than the valorous, ambitious,
headstrong, and obstinate boy conqueror of two centuries ago.




THE TRUE STORY OF A KIDNAPPED BOY AS TOLD BY HIMSELF

By Peter Williamson



I was born in Hirulay, in the county of Aberdeen, Scotland.
My parents, though not rich, were respectable, and so long as I
was under their care all went well with me. Unhappily, I was sent
to stay with an aunt at Aberdeen, where, at eight years old, when
playing on the quay, I was noticed as a strong, active little fellow
by two men belonging to a vessel in the harbor. Now, this vessel
was in the employ of certain merchants of Aberdeen, who used her
for the villanous purpose of kidnapping--that is, stealing young
children from their parents and selling them as slaves in the
plantations abroad.

These impious monsters, marking me out for their prey, tempted me
on board the ship, which I had no sooner entered than they led me
between the decks to some other boys whom they had kidnapped in
like manner. Not understanding what a fate was in store for me, I
passed the time in childish amusement with the other lads in the
steerage, for we were never allowed to go on deck while the vessel
stayed in the harbor, which it did till they had imprisoned as many
luckless boys as they needed.

Then the ship set sail for America. I cannot remember much of the
voyage, being a mere child at the time, but I shall never forget
what happened when it was nearly ended. We had reached the American
coast, when a hard gale of wind sprang up from the southeast, and
about midnight the ship struck on a sandbank off Cape May, near
Delaware.  To the terror of all on board, it was soon almost full
of water. The boat was then hoisted out, and the captain and his
fellow-villains, the crew, got into it, leaving me and my deluded
companions, as they supposed, to perish. The cries, shrieks, and
tears of a throng of children had no effect on these merciless
wretches.

But happily for us the wind abated, and the ship being on a sandbank,
which did not give way to let her deeper, we lay here till morning,
when the captain, unwilling to lose all his cargo, sent some of
the crew in a boat to the ship's side to bring us ashore. A sort
of camp was made, and here we stayed till we were taken in by a
vessel bound to Philadelphia.

At Philadelphia, people soon came to buy us.  We were sold for 16
apiece. I never knew what became of my unhappy companions, but I
was sold for seven years to one of my countrymen, Hugh Wilson, who
in his youth had suffered the same fate as myself in being kidnapped
from his home.

Happy was my lot in falling into his power, for he was a humane,
worthy man. Having no children of his own, and pitying my sad
condition, he took great care of me till I was fit for business,
and at twelve years old set me about little things till I could
manage harder work. Meanwhile, seeing my fellow-servants often
reading and writing, I felt a strong desire to learn, and told my
master that I should be glad to serve a year longer than the bond
obliged me if he would let me go to school. To this he readily
agreed, and I went every winter for five years, also learning as
much as I could from my fellow-servants.

With this good master I stayed till I was seventeen years old, when
he died, leaving me a sum of money, about 120 sterling, his best
horse, and all his wearing apparel.

I now maintained myself by working about the country, for any one
who would employ me, for nearly seven years, when I determined to
settle down. I applied to the daughter of a prosperous planter,
and found my suit was acceptable both to her and her father, so
we married. My father-in-law, wishing to establish us comfortably,
gave me a tract of land which lay, unhappily for me, as it has since
proved, on the frontiers of Pennsylvania.  It contained about two
hundred acres, with a good house and barn.

I was now happy in my home, with a good wife; but my peace did not
last long, for about 1754 the Indians in the French interest, who
had formerly been very troublesome in our province, began to renew
their old practices. Even many of the Indians whom we supposed to
be in the English interest joined the plundering bands; it was no
wonder, for the French did their utmost to win them over, promising
to pay 15 for every scalp of an Englishman!

Hardly a day passed but some unhappy family fell a victim to French
bribery and savage cruelty.  As for me, though now in comfortable
circumstances, with an affectionate and amiable wife, it was not
long before I suddenly became the most pitiable of mankind. I can
never bear to think of the last time I saw my dear wife, on the
fatal 2d of October, 1754. That day she had left home to visit
some of her relations, and, no one being in the house but myself,
I stayed up later than usual, expecting her return. How great was
my terror when, at eleven o'clock at night, I heard the dismal
warwhoop of the savages, and, flying to the window, saw a band of
them outside, about twelve in number.

They made several attempts to get in, and I asked them what they
wanted. They paid no attention, but went on beating at the door,
trying to get it open. Then, having my gun loaded in my hand, I
threatened them with death if they would not go away. But one of
them, who could speak a little English, called out in return that
if I did not come out they would burn me alive in the house.  They
told me further--what I had already found out--that they were no
friends to the English, but that if I would surrender myself prisoner
they would not kill me.

My horror was beyond all words. I could not depend on the promises of
such creatures, but I must either accept their offer or be burned
alive.  Accordingly, I went out of my house with my gun in my hand,
not knowing what I did or that I still held it. Immediately, like
so many tigers, they rushed on me and disarmed me. Having me now
completely in their power, the merciless villains bound me to a
tree near the door, and then went into the house and plundered what
they could.  Numbers of things which they were unable to carry away
were set fire to with the house and consumed before my eyes. Then
they set fire to my barn, stable, and outhouses, where I had about
two hundred bushels of wheat, and cows, sheep, and horses.  My
agony as I watched all this havoc it is impossible to describe.

When the terrible business was over, one of the monsters came to
me, a tomahawk in his hand, threatening me with a cruel death if I
would not consent to go with them. I was forced to agree, promising
to do all that was in my power for them, and trusting to Providence
to deliver me out of their hands. On this they untied me, and gave
me a great load to carry on my back, under which I travelled all
that night with them, full of the most terrible fear lest my unhappy
wife should likewise have fallen into their clutches. At daybreak
my master ordered me to lay down my load, tying my hands round a
tree with a small cord. They then kindled a fire near the tree to
which I was bound, which redoubled my agony, for I thought they
were going to sacrifice me there.

When the fire was made, they danced round me after their manner, with
all kinds of antics, whooping and crying out in the most horrible
fashion.  Then they took the burning coals and sticks, flaming
with fire at the ends, and held them near my face, head, hands and
feet, with fiendish delight, at the same time threatening to burn
me entirely if I called out or made the least noise. So, tortured
as I was, I could make no sign of distress but shedding silent
tears, which, when they saw, they took fresh coals, and held them
near my eyes, telling me my face was wet, and they would dry it
for me. I have often wondered how I endured these tortures; but at
last they were satisfied, and sat down round the fire and roasted
the meat which they had brought from my dwelling!

When they had prepared it, they offered some to me, and though
it may be imagined that I had not much heart to eat, I was forced
to seem pleased, lest if I refused it they should again begin to
torture me.  What I could not eat I contrived to get between the bark
and the tree--my foes having unbound my hands till they supposed I
had eaten all they gave me. But then they bound me as before, and
so I continued all day.

When the sun was set they put out the fire, and covered the ashes
with leaves, as is their custom, that the white people may find no
signs of their having been there.

Travelling thence, by the river, for about six miles, I being loaded
heavily, we reached a spot near the Blue Hills, where the savages
hid their plunder under logs of wood. Thence, shocking to relate,
they went to a neighboring house, that of Jacob Snider, his wife,
five children, and a young man, a servant. They soon forced their
way into the unhappy man's dwelling, slew the whole family, and
set fire to the house.

The servant's life was spared for a time, since they thought he
might be of use to them, and forthwith loaded him with plunder. But
he could not bear the cruel treatment that we suffered; and though
I tried to console him with a hope of deliverance, he continued to
sob and moan. One of the savages, seeing this, instantly came up,
struck him to the ground, and slew him.

The family of John Adams next suffered. All were here put to death
except Adams himself, a good old man, whom they loaded with plunder,
and day after day continued to treat with the most shocking cruelty,
painting him all over with various colors, plucking the white hairs
from his beard, and telling him he was a fool for living so long,
and many other tortures which he bore with wonderful composure,
praying to God.

One night after he had been tortured, when he and I were sitting
together, pitying each other's misfortunes, another party of Indians
arrived, bringing twenty scalps and three prisoners, who gave us
terrible accounts of what tragedies had passed in their parts, on
which I cannot bear to dwell.

These three prisoners contrived to escape, but unhappily, not
knowing the country, they were recaptured and brought back. They
were then all put to death, with terrible tortures.

A great snow now falling, the savages began to be afraid that the
white people would follow their tracks upon it and find out their
skulking retreats, and this caused them to make their way to their
winter quarters, about two hundred miles further from any plantations
or English inhabitants.  There, after a long and tedious journey,
in which I was almost starved, I arrived with this villainous
crew. The place where we had to stay, in their tongue, was called
Alamingo, and there I found a number of wigwams full of Indian women
and children. Dancing, singing, and shooting were their general
amusements, and they told what successes they had had in their
expeditions, in which I found myself part of their theme. The
severity of the cold increasing, they stripped me of my own clothes
and gave me what they usually wear themselves--a blanket, a piece
of coarse cloth, and a pair of shoes made of deerskin.

The better sort of Indians have shirts of the finest linen they can
get, and with these some wear ruffles, but they never put them on
till they have painted them different colors, and do not take them
off to wash, but wear them till they fall into pieces.  They are
very proud, and delight in trinkets, such as silver plates round
their wrists and necks, with several strings of _wampum_, which is
made of cotton, interwoven with pebbles, cockle-shells, etc.  From
their ears and noses they have rings and beads, which hang dangling
an inch or two.

The hair of their heads is managed in different ways: some pluck
out and destroy all except a lock hanging from the crown of the
head, which they interweave with wampum and feathers. But the women
wear it very long, twisted down their backs, with beads, feathers,
and wampum, and on their heads they carry little coronets of brass
or copper.

No people have a greater love of liberty or affection for their
relations, yet they are the most revengeful race on earth, and
inhumanly cruel. They generally avoid open fighting in war, yet
they are brave when taken, enduring death or torture with wonderful
courage. Nor would they at any time commit such outrages as they
do if they were not tempted by drink and money by those who call
themselves civilized.

At Alamingo I was kept nearly two months, till the snow was off
the ground--a long time to be among such creatures! I was too far
from any plantations or white people to try to escape; besides,
the bitter cold made my limbs quite benumbed.  But I contrived to
defend myself more or less against the weather by building a little
wigwam with the bark of the trees, covering it with earth, which
made it resemble a cave, and keeping a good fire always near the
door.

Seeing me outwardly submissive, the savages sometimes gave me a
little meat, but my chief food was Indian corn.

Having liberty to go about was, indeed, more than I expected; but
they knew well it was impossible for me to escape.

At length they prepared for another expedition against the planters
and white people, but before they set out they were joined by many
other Indians from Fort Duquesne, well stored with powder and ball
that they had received from the French.

As soon as the snow was quite gone, so that no trace of their
footsteps could be found, they set out on their journey toward
Pennsylvania, to the number of nearly a hundred and fifty. Their
wives and children were left behind in the wigwams.  My duty was
to carry whatever they intrusted to me; but they never gave me a
gun. For several days we were almost famished for want of proper
provisions: I had nothing but a few stalks of Indian corn, which I
was glad to eat dry, and the Indians themselves did not fare much
better.

When we again reached the Blue Hills, a council of war was held,
and we agreed to divide into companies of about twenty men each,
after which every captain marched with his party where he thought
proper. I still belonged to my old masters, but was left behind on
the mountains with ten Indians, to stay till the rest returned, as
they did not think it safe to carry me nearer to the plantations.

Here being left, I began to meditate on my escape, for I knew the
country round very well, having often hunted there. The third day
after the great body of the Indians quitted us, my keepers visited
the mountains in search of game, leaving me bound in such a way
that I could not get free.

When they returned at night they unbound me, and we all sat down
to supper together, feasting on two polecats which they had killed.
Then, being greatly tired with their day's excursion, they lay down
to rest as usual.

Seeing them apparently fast asleep, I tried different ways of
finding out whether it was a pretence to see what I should do. But
after making a noise and walking about, sometimes touching them
with my feet, I found that they really slept.  My heart exulted at
the hope of freedom, but it sank again when I thought how easily I
might be recaptured. I resolved, if possible, to get one of their
guns, and if discovered to die in self-defence rather than be
taken; and I tried several times to take one from under their heads,
where they always secure them. But in vain; I could not have done
so without rousing them.

So, trusting myself to the Divine protection, I set out defenceless.
Such was my terror, however, that at first I halted every four or
five yards, looking fearfully toward the spot where I had left the
Indians, lest they should wake and miss me. But when I was about
two hundred yards off I mended my pace and made all the haste I
could to the foot of the mountains.

Suddenly I was struck with the greatest terror and dismay, hearing
behind me the fearful cries and bowlings of the savages, far worse
than the roaring of lions or the shrieking of hyenas; and I knew
that they had missed me. The more my dread increased, the faster I
hurried, scarce knowing where I trod, sometimes falling and bruising
myself, cutting my feet against the stones, yet, faint and maimed
as I was, rushing on through the woods. I fled till daybreak, then
crept into a hollow tree, where I lay concealed, thanking God for
so far having favored my escape. I had nothing to eat but a little
corn.

But my repose did not last long, for in a few hours I heard the
voices of the savages near the tree in which I was hid threatening
me with what they would do if they caught me, which I already guessed
too well. However, at last they left the spot where I heard them,
and I stayed in my shelter the rest of that day without any fresh
alarms.

At night I ventured out again, trembling at every bush I passed, and
thinking each twig that touched me a savage. The next day I concealed
myself in the same manner, and at night travelled forward, keeping
off the main road, used by the Indians, as much as possible, which
made my journey far longer, and more painful than I can express.

But how shall I describe my terror when, on the fourth night,
a party of Indians lying round a small fire which I had not seen,
hearing the rustling I made among the leaves, started from the
ground, seizing their arms, and ran out into the wood? I did not
know, in my agony of fear, whether to stand still or rush on. I
expected nothing but a terrible death; but at that very moment a
troop of swine made toward the place where the savages were. They,
seeing the hogs, guessed that their alarm had been caused by them,
and returned merrily to their fire and lay down to sleep again.
As soon as this happened, I pursued my way more cautiously and
silently, but in a cold perspiration of terror at the peril I had
just escaped. Bruised, cut, and shaken, I still held on my path
till break of day, when I lay down under a huge log, and slept
undisturbed till noon. Then, getting up, I climbed a great hill,
and, scanning the country round, I saw, to my unspeakable joy, some
habitations of white people, about ten miles distant.

My pleasure was somewhat damped by not being able to get among
them that night. But they were too far off; therefore, when evening
fell, I again commended myself to Heaven, and lay down, utterly
exhausted. In the morning, as soon as I woke, I made toward the
nearest of the cleared lands which I had seen the day before; and
that afternoon I reached the house of John Bull, an old acquaintance.

I knocked at the door, and his wife, who opened it, seeing me in
such a frightful condition, flew from me like lightning, screaming,
into the house.

This alarmed the whole family, who immediately seized their arms,
and I was soon greeted by the master with his gun in his hand. But
when I made myself known--for at first he took me for an Indian--he
and all his family welcomed me with great joy at finding me alive;
since they had been told I was murdered by the savages some months
ago.

No longer able to bear up, I fainted and fell to the ground. When
they had recovered me, seeing my weak and famished state, they gave
me some food, but let me at first partake of it very sparingly.
Then for two days and nights they made me welcome, and did their
utmost to bring back my strength, with the kindest hospitality.
Finding myself once more able to ride, I borrowed a horse and some
clothes of these good people, and set out for my father-in-law's
house in Chester County, about a hundred and forty miles away. I
reached it on January 4,1755; but none of the family could believe
their eyes when they saw me, having lost all hope on hearing that
I had fallen a prey to the Indians.

They received me with great joy; but when I asked for my dear wife,
I found she had been dead two months, and this fatal news greatly
lessened the delight I felt at my deliverance.




THE PRISONER WHO WOULD NOT STAY IN PRISON

ANONYMOUS



Few people out of his own country would have heard of Baron Trenck
had it not been for the wonderful skill and cunning with which he
managed to cut through the stone walls and iron bars of all his many
cages. He was born at Knigsberg in Prussia in 1726, and entered
the body-guard of Frederic II in 1742, when he was about sixteen.
Trenck was a young man of good family, rich, well educated,
and, according to his own account, fond of amusement. He confesses
to having shirked his duties more than once for the sake of
some pleasure, even after the War of the Austrian Succession had
broken out (September, 1744), and Frederic, strict though he was,
had forgiven him. It is plain from this that the king must have
considered that Trenck had been guilty of some deadly treachery
toward him when in after years he declined to pardon him for crimes
which after all the young man had never committed.

Trenck's first confinement was in 1746, when he was thrown into
the Castle of Glatz, on a charge of corresponding with his cousin
and namesake, who was in the service of the Empress Maria Theresa,
and of being an Austrian spy. At first he was kindly treated
and allowed to walk freely about the fortifications, and he took
advantage of the liberty given him to arrange a plan of escape
with one of his fellow-prisoners. The plot was, however, betrayed
by the other man, and a heavy punishment fell on Trenck. By the
king's orders, he was promptly deprived of all his privileges and
placed in a cell in one of the towers, which overlooked the ramparts
lying ninety feet below, on the side nearest the town. This added
a fresh difficulty to his chances of escape, as, in passing from
the castle to the town, he was certain to be seen by many people.
But no obstacles mattered to Trenck. He had money, and money could
do a great deal. So he began by bribing one of the officials about
the prison, and the official in his turn bribed a soapboiler, who
lived not far from the castle gates, and promised to conceal Trenck
somewhere in his house. Still, liberty must have seemed a long way
off, for Trenck had only one little knife with which to cut through
anything. By dint of incessant and hard work, he managed to saw
through three thick steel bars, but even so, there were eight others
left to do. His friend the official then procured him a file, but
he was obliged to use it with great care, lest the scraping sound
should be heard by his guards. Perhaps they wilfully closed their
ears, for many of them were sorry for Trenck; but, at all events,
the eleven bars were at last sawn through, and all that remained
was to make a rope ladder. This he did by tearing his leather
portmanteau into strips and plaiting them into a rope, and as this
was not long enough, he added his sheets. The night was dark and
rainy, which favored him, and he reached the bottom of the rampart
in safety. Unluckily, he met here with an obstacle on which he had
never counted. There was a large drain, opening into one of the
trenches, which Trenck had neither seen nor heard of, and into
this he fell. In spite of his struggles, he was held fast, and
his strength being at last exhausted, he was forced to call the
sentinel, and at midday, having been left in the drain for hours
to make sport for the town, he was carried back to his cell.

Henceforth he was still more strictly watched than before, though,
curiously enough, his money never seems to have been taken from
him, and at this time he had about eighty louis left, which he
always kept hidden. Eight days after his last attempt, Fouquet,
the commandant of Glatz, who hated Trenck and all his family, sent
a deputation consisting of the adjutant, an officer, and a certain
Major Doo to speak to the unfortunate man and exhort him to patience
and submission. Trenck entered into conversation with them for the
purpose of throwing them off their guard, when suddenly he snatched
away Doo's sword, rushed from his cell, knocked down the sentinel
and lieutenant who were standing outside, and striking right and
left at the soldiers who came flying to bar his progress, he dashed
down the stairs and leaped from the ramparts. Though the height
was great he fell into the fosse without injury, still grasping
his sword. He scrambled quickly to his feet and jumped easily over
the second rampart, which was much lower than the first, and then
began to breathe freely, as he thought he was safe from being
overtaken by the soldiers, who would have to come a long way round.
At this moment, however, he saw a sentinel making for him, a short
distance off, and he rushed for the palisades which divided the
fortifications from the open country, from which the mountains and
Bohemia were easily reached.  In the act of scaling them, his foot
was caught tight between the bars, and he was trapped till the
sentinel came up, and after a sharp fight got him back to prison.

For some time poor Trenck was in a sad condition.  In his struggle
with the sentinel he had been wounded, while his right foot had
got crushed in the palisades. Besides this, he was watched far more
strictly than before, for an officer and two men remained always
in his cell, and two sentinels were stationed outside. The reason
of these precautions, of course, was to prevent his gaining over
his guards singly, either by pity or bribery. His courage sank to
its lowest ebb, as he was told on all sides that his imprisonment
was for life, whereas long after he discovered the real truth, that
the king's intention had been to keep him under arrest for a year
only, and if he had had a little more patience, three weeks would
have found him free.  His repeated attempts to escape naturally
angered Frederic, while on the other hand the king knew nothing
of the fact which excused Trenck's impatience--namely, the belief
carefully instilled in him by all around him that he was doomed to
perpetual confinement.

It is impossible to describe in detail all the plans made by Trenck
to regain his freedom; first because they were endless, and secondly
because several were nipped in the bud. Still, the unfortunate man
felt that as long as his money was not taken from him his case was
not hopeless, for the officers in command were generally poor and
in debt, and were always sent to garrison work as a punishment.  After
one wild effort to liberate _all_ the prisoners in the fortress,
which was naturally discovered and frustrated, Trenck made friends
with an officer named Schell, lately arrived at Glatz, who promised not
only his aid but his company in the new enterprise.  As more money
would be needed than Trenck had in his possession, he contrived
to apply to his rich relations outside the prison, and by some
means--what we are not told--they managed to convey a large sum to
him. Suspicion, however, got about that Trenck was on too familiar
a footing with the officers, and orders were given that his door
should always be kept locked. This occasioned further delay, as
false keys had secretly to be made before anything else could be
done.

Their flight was unexpectedly hastened by Schell accidentally learning
that he was in danger of arrest. One night they crept unobserved
through the arsenal and over the inner palisade, but on reaching
the rampart they came face to face with two of the officers, and
again a leap into the fosse was the only way of escape. Luckily, the
wall at this point was not high, and Trenck arrived at the bottom
without injury; but Schell was not so happy, and hurt his foot so
badly that he called on his friend to kill him, and to make the
best of his way alone. Trenck, however, declined to abandon him,
and having dragged him over the outer palisade, took him on his
back, and made for the frontier. Before they had gone five hundred
yards, they heard the boom of the alarm guns from the fortress,
while clearer still were the sounds of pursuit.  As they knew that
they would naturally be sought on the side toward Bohemia, they
changed their course and pushed on to the river Neiss, at this
season partly covered with ice. Trenck swam over slowly with his
friend on his back, and found a boat on the other side. By means
of this boat they evaded their enemies, and reached the mountains
after some hours, very hungry, and almost frozen to death.

Here a new terror awaited them. Some peasants with whom they took
refuge recognized Schell, and for a moment the fugitives gave
themselves up for lost. But the peasants took pity on the two
wretched objects, fed them and gave them shelter, till they could
make up their minds what was best to be done. To their unspeakable
dismay, they found that they were, after all, only seven miles from
Glatz, and that in the neighboring town of Wunschelburg a hundred
soldiers were quartered, with orders to capture all deserters from
the fortress. This time, however, fortune favored the luckless
Trenck, and though he and Schell were both in uniform, they rode
unobserved through the village while the rest of the people were at
church, and, skirting Wunschelburg, crossed the Bohemian frontier
in the course of the day.

Then follows a period of comparative calm in Trenck's history. He
travelled freely about Poland, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Denmark
and Holland, and even ventured occasionally across the border into
Prussia. Twelve years seem to have passed by in this manner, till,
in 1758, his mother died, and Trenck asked leave of the council
of war to go up to Dantzic to see his family and to arrange his
affairs. Curiously enough, it appears never to have occurred to
him that he was a deserter, and as such liable to be arrested at
any moment. And this was what actually happened. By order of the
king, Trenck was taken first to Berlin, where he was deprived of
his money and some valuable rings, and then removed to Magdeburg,
of which place Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick was the governor.

Here his quarters were worse than he had ever known them. His
cell was only six feet by ten, and the window was high, with bars
without as well as within. The wall was seven feet thick, and beyond
it was a palisade, which rendered it impossible for the sentinels
to approach the window. On the other side the prisoner was shut
in by three doors, and his food (which was not only bad, but very
scanty) was passed to him through an opening.

One thing only was in his favor. His cell was only entered once
a week, so he could pursue any work to further his escape without
much danger of being discovered. Notwithstanding the high window,
the thick wall, and the palisade--notwithstanding, too, his want
of money--he soon managed to open negotiations with the sentinels,
and found, to his great joy, that the next cell was empty. If he
could only contrive to burrow his way into that, he would be able
to watch his opportunity to steal through the open door; once
free, he could either swim the Elbe and cross into Saxony, which
lay about six miles distant, or else float down the river in a boat
till he was out of danger.

Small as the cell was, it contained a sort of cupboard, fixed
into the floor by irons, and on these Trenck began to work. After
frightful labor, he at last extracted the heavy nails which fastened
the staples to the floor, and breaking off the heads (which he put
back to avoid detection), he kept the rest to fashion for his own
purposes. By this means he made instruments to raise the bricks.

On this side also the wall was seven feet thick, and formed of bricks
and stones. Trenck numbered them as he went on with the greatest
care, so that the cell might present its usual appearance before
the Wednesday visit of his guards. To hide the joins, he scraped
off some of the mortar, which he smeared over the place.

As may be supposed, all this took a very long time. He had nothing
to work with but the tools he himself had made, which, of course,
were very rough. But one day a friendly sentinel gave him a little
iron rod and a small knife with a wooden handle. These were treasures
indeed! And with their help he worked away for six months at his
hole, as in some places the mortar had become so hard that it had
to be pounded like a stone.

During this time he enlisted the compassion of some of the other
sentinels, who not only described to him the lay of the country
which he would have to traverse if he ever succeeded in getting
out of prison, but interested in his behalf a Jewess named Esther
Heymann, whose own father had been for two years a prisoner in
Magdeburg. In this manner Trenck became the possessor of a file,
a knife, and some writing paper, as the friendly Jewess had agreed
to convey letters to some influential people, both at Vienna and
Berlin, and also to his sister.  But this step led to the ruin,
not only of Trenck, but of several persons concerned, for they were
betrayed by an imperial secretary of embassy called Weingarten, who
was tempted by a bill for 20,000 florins. Many of those guilty of
abetting Trenck in this fresh effort to escape were put to death,
while his sister was ordered to build a new prison for him in the
Fort de l'Etoile, and he himself was destined to pass nine more
years in chains.

In spite of his fetters, Trenck was able in some miraculous way
to get on with his hole, but his long labor was rendered useless
by the circumstance that his new prison was finished sooner than
he expected, and he was removed into it hastily, being only able
to conceal his knife. He was now chained even more heavily than
before, his two feet being attached to a heavy ring fixed in the
wall, another ring being fastened round his body. From this ring
was suspended a chain with a thick iron bar, two feet long at the
bottom, and to this his hands were fastened. An iron collar was
afterward added to his instruments of torture.

Besides torments of body, nothing was wanting which could work on
his mind. His prison was built between the trenches of the principal
rampart, and was of course very dark. It was likewise very damp,
and, to crown all, the name of "Trenck" had been printed in red
bricks on the wall, above a tomb whose place was indicated by a
death's-head.

Here again, he tells us, he excited the pity of his guards, who
gave him a bed and coverlet, and as much bread as he chose to eat;
and, wonderful as it may seem, his health did not suffer from all
these horrors. As soon as he got a little accustomed to his cramped
position, he began to use the knife he had left, and to cut through
his chains. He next burst the iron band, and after a long time
severed his leg fetters, but in such a way that he could put them
on again and no one be any the wiser. Nothing is more common in
the history of prisoners than this exploit, and nothing is more
astonishing, yet we meet with the fact again and again in their memoirs
and biographies. Trenck at any rate appears to have accomplished
the feat without much difficulty, though he found it very hard,
to get his hand back into his handcuffs. After he had disposed of
his bonds, he began to saw at the doors leading to the gallery.
These were four in number, and all of wood, but when he arrived at
the fourth, his knife broke in two, and the courage that had upheld
him for so many years gave away. He opened his veins and lay down
to die, when in his despair he heard the voice of Gefhardt, the
friendly sentinel from the other prison. Hearing of Trenck's sad
plight, he scaled the palisade, and, we are told expressly, bound
up his wounds, though we are _not_ told how he managed to enter
the cell.  Be that as it may, the next day, when the guards came
to open the door, they found Trenck ready to meet them, armed with
a brick in one hand, and a knife, doubtless obtained from Gefhardt,
in the other. The first man that approached him, he stretched
wounded at his feet, and thinking it dangerous to irritate further
a desperate man, they made a compromise with him. The governor took
off his chains for a time, and gave him strong soup and fresh linen.
Then, after a while, new doors were put to his cell, the inner door
being lined with plates of iron, and he himself was fastened with
stronger chains than those he had burst through.

For all this the watch must have been very lax, as Gefhardt soon
contrived to open communication with him again, and letters were
passed through the window (to which the prisoner had made a false
and movable frame) and forwarded to Trenck's rich friends. His
appeal was always answered promptly and amply. More valuable than
money were two files, also procured from Gefhardt, and by their
means the new chains were speedily cut through, though, as before,
without any apparent break. Having freed his limbs, he began to
saw through the floor of his cell, which was of wood.  Underneath,
instead of hard rock, there was sand, which Trenck scooped out with
his hands. This earth was passed through the window to Gefhardt,
who removed it when he was on guard, and gave his friend pistols,
a bayonet, and knives to assist him when he had finally made his
escape.

All seemed going smoothly. The foundations of the prison were only
four feet deep, and Trenck's tunnel had reached a considerable
distance when everything was again spoiled. A letter written by
Trenck to Vienna fell into the hands of the governor, owing to some
stupidity on the part of Gefhardt's wife, who had been intrusted
to deliver it.  The letter does not seem to have contained any
special disclosure of his plan of escape, as the governor, who
was still Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, could find nothing wrong in
Trenck's cell except the false window-frame. The cut chains, though
examined, somehow escaped detection, from which we gather either
that the officials were very careless, or the carpenter very stupid.
Perhaps both may have been the case, for as the Seven Years' War
(against Austria) was at this time raging, sentinels and officers
were frequently changed, and prison discipline insensibly relaxed.
Had this not been so, Trenck could never have been able to labor
unseen, but as it was, he was merely deprived of his bed, as a
punishment for tampering with the window.

As soon as he had recovered from his fright and an illness which
followed, he returned to his digging.


It was necessary for him to bore under the subterranean gallery of
the principal rampart, which was a distance of thirty-seven feet,
and to get outside the foundation of the rampart. Beyond that was
a door leading to the second rampart.  Trenck was forced to work
almost naked, for fear of raising the suspicions of the officials
by his dirty clothes, but in spite of all his precautions and the
wilful blindness of his guards, who as usual were on his side, all
was at length discovered. His hole was filled up, and a year's work
lost.

The next torture invented for him was worse than any that had gone
before. He was visited and awakened every quarter of an hour, in
order that he might not set to work in the night. This lasted for
four years, during part of which time Trenck employed himself in
writing verses and making drawings on his tin cups, after the manner
of all prisoners, and in writing books with his blood, as ink was
forbidden. We are again left in ignorance as to how he got paper.
He also began to scoop out another hole, but was discovered afresh,
though nothing particular seems to have been done to him, partly
owing to the kindness of the new governor, who soon afterward died.

It had been arranged by his friends that for the space of one year
horses should be ready for him at a certain place on the first and
fifteenth of every month. Inspired by this thought, he turned to
his burrowing with renewed vigor, and worked away at every moment
when he thought he could do so unseen.  One day, however, when he
had reached some distance, he dislodged a large stone which blocked
up the opening toward his cell. His terror was frightful. Not only
was the air suffocating, and the darkness dreadful, but he knew
that if any of the guards were unexpectedly to come into his cell,
the opening must be discovered, and all his toil again lost. For
eight hours he stayed in the tunnel paralyzed by fear. Then he
roused himself, and by dint of superhuman struggles managed to open
a passage on one side of the stone, and to reach his cell, which
for once appeared to him as a haven of rest.

Soon after this the war ended with the Peace of Paris (1763), and
Trenck's hopes of release seemed likely to be realized. He procured
money from his friends, and bribed the Austrian ambassador in Berlin
to open negotiations on his behalf, and while these were impending
he rested from his labors for three whole months. Suddenly he was
possessed by an idea which was little less than madness. He bribed
a major to ask for a visit from Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, again
Governor of Magdeburg, offering to disclose his passage, and to
reveal all his plans of escape, on condition that the duke would
promise to plead for him with the king. This message never reached
the duke himself, but some officers arrived ostensibly sent by him,
but in reality tools of the major's. They listened to all he had
to say, and saw all he had to show, then broke their word, filled
up the passage, and redoubled the chains and the watch.

Notwithstanding this terrible blow, Trenck's trials were drawing
to an end. Whether Frederic's heart was softened by his brilliant
victories, or whether Trenck's influential friends succeeded in
making themselves heard, we do not know, but six months later he
was set free, on condition that he never tried to revenge himself
on any one, and that he never again should cross the frontiers of
Saxony or Prussia.




A WHITE BOY AMONG THE INDIANS, AS TOLD BY HIMSELF

By John Tanner



The earliest event of my life which I distinctly remember (says
John Tanner) is the death of my mother. This happened when I was
two years old, and many of the attending circumstances made so deep
an impression that they are still fresh in my memory. I cannot
recollect the name of the settlement at which we lived, but I
have since learned it was on the Kentucky River, at a considerable
distance from the Ohio.

My father, whose name was John Tanner, was an emigrant from Virginia,
and had been a clergyman.

When about to start one morning to a village at some distance, he
gave, as it appeared, a strict charge to my sisters, Agatha and
Lucy, to send me to school; but this they neglected to do until
afternoon, and then, as the weather was rainy and unpleasant, I
insisted on remaining at home. When my father returned at night,
and found that I had been at home all day, he sent me for a parcel
of small canes, and flogged me much more severely than I could
suppose the offence merited. I was displeased with my sisters for
attributing all the blame to me, when they had neglected even to
tell me to go to school in the forenoon. From that time, my father's
house was less like home to me, and I often thought and said, "I
wish I could go and live among the Indians."

One day we went from Cincinnati to the mouth of the Big Miami,
opposite which we were to settle.  Here was some cleared land, and
one or two log cabins, but they had been deserted on account of
the Indians. My father rebuilt the cabins, and inclosed them with
a strong picket. It was early in the spring when we arrived at
the mouth of the Big Miami, and we were soon engaged in preparing
a field to plant corn. I think it was not more than ten days after
our arrival, when my father told us in the morning, that, from
the actions of the horses, he perceived there were Indians lurking
about in the woods, and he said to me, "John, you must not go out
of the house to-day." After giving strict charge to my stepmother
to let none of the little children go out, he went to the field,
with the negroes, and my elder brother, to sow corn.

Three little children, besides myself, were left in the house
with my stepmother. To prevent me from going out, my stepmother
required me to take care of the little child, then not more than
a few months old; but as I soon became impatient of confinement
I began to pinch my little brother, to make him cry.  My mother,
perceiving his uneasiness, told me to take him in my arms and walk
about the house; I did so, but continued to pinch him. My mother
at length took him from me to nurse him. I patched my opportunity
and escaped into the yard; thence through a small door in the large
gate of the wall into the open field. There was a walnut-tree at
some distance from the house, and near the side of the field where
I had been in the habit of finding some of last year's nuts. To gain
this tree without being seen by my father and those in the field,
I had to use some precaution. I remember perfectly well having seen
my father as I skulked toward the tree; he stood in the middle of
the field, with his gun in his hand, to watch for Indians, while
the others were sowing corn. As I came near the tree, I thought
to myself, "I wish I could see these Indians. "I had partly filled
with nuts a straw hat which I wore, when I heard a crackling noise
behind me; I looked round, and saw the Indians; almost at the same
instant, I was seized by both hands, and dragged off between two.
One of them took my straw hat, emptied the nuts on the ground,
and put it on my head. The Indians who seized me were an old and a
young one; these, as I learned subsequently, were Manito-o-geezhik,
and his son Kish-kau-ko.

After I saw myself firmly seized by both wrists by the two Indians,
I was not conscious of anything that passed for a considerable
time. I must have fainted, as I did not cry out, and I can remember
nothing that happened to me until they threw me over a large log,
which must have been at a considerable distance from the house. The
old man I did not now see; I was, dragged along between Kish-kau-ko
and a very short thick man. I had probably made some resistance,
or done something to irritate this latter, for he took me a little
to one side, and drawing his tomahawk, motioned to me to look up.
This I plainly understood, from the expression of his face, and
his manner, to be a direction for me to look up for the last time,
as he was about to kill me. I did as he directed, but Kish-kau-ko
caught his hand as the tomahawk was descending, and prevented him
from burying it in my brains. Loud talking ensued between the two.
Kish-kau-ko presently raised a yell: the old man and four others
answered it by a similar yell, and came running up. I have since
understood that Kish-kau-ko complained to his father that the short
man had made an attempt to kill his little brother, as he called
me. The old chief, after reproving the short man, took me by one
hand, and Kish-kau-ko took me by the other and thus they dragged
me between them, the man who threatened to kill me, and who was
now an object of terror to me, being kept at some distance. I could
perceive, as I retarded them somewhat in their retreat, that they
were apprehensive of being overtaken; some of them were always at
some distance from us.

It was about one mile from my father's house to the place where
they threw me into a hickory-bark canoe, which was concealed under
the bushes, on the bank of the river. Into this they all seven jumped,
and immediately crossed the Ohio, landing at the mouth of the Big
Miami, and on the south side of that river. Here they abandoned
their canoe, and stuck their paddles in the ground, so that they
could be seen from the river. At a little distance in the woods
they had some blankets and provisions concealed; they offered me
some dry venison and bear's grease, but I could not eat. My father's
house was plainly to be seen from the place where we stood; they
pointed at it, looked at me, and laughed, but I have never known
what they said.

After they had eaten a little, they began to ascend the Miami,
dragging me along as before.

It must have been early in the spring when we arrived at Sau-ge-nong,
for I can remember that at this time the leaves were small, and
the Indians were about planting their corn. They managed to make
me assist at their labors, partly by signs, and partly by the few
words of English old Manito-o-geezhik could speak. After planting,
they all left the village, and went out to hunt and dry meat.  When
they came to their hunting-grounds, they chose a place where many
deer resorted, and here they began to build a long screen like a
fence; this they made of green boughs and small trees. When they
had built a part of it, they showed me how to remove the leaves and
dry brush from that side of it to which the Indians were to come
to shoot the deer. In this labor I was sometimes assisted by the
squaws and children, but at other times I was left alone. It now
began to be warm weather, and it happened one day that, having been
left alone, as I was tired and thirsty, I fell asleep. I cannot
tell how long I slept, but when I began to awake, I thought I heard
someone crying a great way off. Then I tried to raise up my head,
but could not. Being now more awake, I saw my Indian mother and
sister standing by me, and perceived that my face and head were
wet. The old woman and her daughter were crying bitterly, but it
was some time before I perceived that my head was badly cut and
bruised. It appears that, after I had fallen asleep, Manito-o-geezhik,
passing that way, had perceived me, had tomahawked me, and thrown
me in the bushes; and that when he came to his camp he had said to
his wife, "Old woman, the boy I brought you is good for nothing; I
have killed him; you will find him in such a place." The old woman
and her daughter having found me, discovered still some signs of
life, and had stood over me a long time, crying, and pouring cold
water on my head, when I waked. In a few days I recovered in some
measure from this hurt, and was again set to work at the screen,
but I was more careful not to fall asleep; I endeavored to assist
them at their labors, and to comply in all instances with their
directions, but I was notwithstanding treated with great harshness,
particularly by the old man and his two sons She-mung and Kwo-tash-e.
While we remained at the hunting camp, one of them put a bridle in
my hand, and pointing in a certain direction motioned me to go. I
went accordingly, supposing he wished me to bring a horse: I went
and caught the first I could find, and in this way I learned to
discharge such services as they required of me.

I had been about two years at Sau-ge-nong, when a great council was
called by the British agents at Mackinac. This council was attended
by the Sioux, the Winnebagoes, the Menomonees, and many remote
tribes, as well as by the Ojibbeways, Ottawwaws, etc. When old
Manito-o-geezhik returned from this council, I soon learned that
he had met there his kinswoman, Net-no-kwa, who, notwithstanding
her sex, was then regarded as principal chief of the Ottawwaws.
This woman had lost her son, of about my age, by death; and, having
heard of me, she wished to purchase me to supply his place. My old
Indian mother, the Otter woman, when she heard of this, protested
vehemently against it. I heard her say, "My son has been dead once,
and has been restored to me; I cannot lose him again." But these
remonstrances had little influence when Net-no-kwa arrived with
plenty of presents. She brought to the lodge first blankets, tobacco,
and other articles of great value. She was perfectly acquainted
with the dispositions of those with whom she had to negotiate.
Objections were made to the exchange until a few more presents
completed the bargain, and I was transferred to Net-no-kwa. This
woman, who was then advanced in years, was of a more pleasing
aspect than my former mother. She took me by the hand, after she
had completed the negotiation with my former possessors, and led
me to her own lodge, which stood near. Here I soon found I was to
be treated more indulgently than I had been. She gave me plenty
of food, put good clothes upon me, and told me to go and play with
her own sons. We remained but a short time at Sau-ge-nong. She
would not stop with me at Mackinac, which we passed in the night,
but ran along to Point St. Ignace, where she hired some Indians
to take care of me, while she returned to Mackinac by herself, or
with one or two of her young men. After finishing her business at
Mackinac, she returned, and, continuing on our journey, we arrived
in a few days at Shab-a-wy-wy-a-gun.

The husband of Net-no-kwa was an Ojibbeway of Red River, called
Taw-ga-we-ninne, the hunter.  He was always indulgent and kind to
me, treating me like an equal, rather than as a dependent. When
speaking to me, he always called me his son. Indeed, he himself was
but of secondary importance in the family, as everything belonged
to Net-no-kwa.  and she had the direction in all affairs of any
moment.  She imposed on me, for the first year, some tasks. She
made me cut wood, bring home game, bring water, and perform other
services not commonly required of boys of my age; but she treated
me invariably with so much kindness that I was far more happy and
content than I had been in the family of Manito-o-geezhik. She
sometimes whipped me, as she did her own children: but I was not
so severely and frequently beaten as I had been before.

Early in the spring, Net-no-kwa and her husband, with their family,
started to go to Mackinac.  They left me, as they had done before,
at Point St.  Ignace, as they would not run the risk of losing me
by suffering me to be seen at Mackinac. On our return, after we had
gone twenty-five or thirty miles from Point St. Ignace, we were
detained by contrary winds at a place called Me-nau-ko-king, a
point running out into the lake. Here we encamped with some other
Indians, and a party of traders. Pigeons were very numerous in the
woods, and the boys of my age, and the traders, were busy shooting
them. I had never killed any game, and, indeed, had never in my
life discharged a gun. My mother had purchased at Mackinac a keg
of powder, which, as they thought it a little damp, was here spread
out to dry. Taw-ga-we-ninne had a large horseman's pistol; and,
finding myself somewhat emboldened by his indulgent manner toward
me, I requested permission to go and try to kill some pigeons with
the pistol. My request was seconded by Net-no-kwa, who said, "It
is time for our son to begin to learn to be a hunter." Accordingly,
my father, as I called Taw-ga-we-ninne, loaded the pistol and gave
it to me, saying, "Go, my son, and if you kill anything with this,
you shall immediately have a gun and learn to hunt." Since I have
been a man, I have been placed in difficult stations; but my anxiety
for success was never greater than in this, my first essay as a
hunter. I had not gone far from the camp before I met with pigeons,
and some of them alighted in the bushes very near me. I cocked my
pistol, and raised it to my face, bringing the breech almost in
contact with my nose. Having brought the sight to bear upon the
pigeon, I pulled trigger, and was in the next instant sensible of a
humming noise, like that of a stone sent swiftly through the air.
I found the pistol at the distance of some paces behind me, and
the pigeon under the tree on which he had been sitting. My face
was much bruised, and covered with blood. I ran home, carrying
my pigeon in triumph. My face was speedily bound up; my pistol
exchanged for a fowling-piece; I was accoutred with a powder-horn,
and furnished with shot, and allowed to go out after birds. One of
the young Indians went with me, to observe my manner of shooting.
I killed three more pigeons in the course of the afternoon, and did
not discharge my gun once without killing.  Henceforth I began to
be treated with more consideration, and was allowed to hunt often,
that I might become expert.

Game began to be scarce, and we all suffered from hunger. The
chief man of our band was called As-sin-ne-boi-nainse (the Little
Assinneboin), and he now proposed to us all to move, as the country
where we were was exhausted. The day on which we were to commence
our removal was fixed upon, but before it arrived our necessities
became extreme. The evening before the day on which we intended to
move my mother talked much of all our misfortunes and losses, as
well as of the urgent distress under which we were then laboring.
At the usual hour I went to sleep, as did all the younger part of
the family; but I was wakened again by the loud praying and singing
of the old woman, who continued her devotions through a great part
of the night. Very early on the following morning she called us all
to get up, and put on our moccasins, and be ready to move. She then
called Wa-me-gon-a-biew to her, and said to him in rather a low
voice: "My son, last night I sung and prayed to the Great Spirit,
and when I slept there come to me one like a man, and said to me,
'Net-no-kwa, to-morrow you shall eat a bear. There is, at a distance
from the path you are to travel to-morrow, and in such a direction'
(which she described to him), 'a small round meadow, with something
like a path leading from it; in that path there is a bear.' Now,
my son, I wish you to go to that place, without mentioning to any
one what I have said, and you will certainly find the bear, as I
have described to you." But the young man, who was not particularly
dutiful, or apt to regard what his mother said, going out of the
lodge, spoke sneeringly to the other Indians of the dream. "The
old woman," said he, "tells me we are to eat a bear to-day; but I
do not know who is to kill it." The old woman, hearing him, called
him in, and reproved him; but she could not prevail upon him to go
to hunt.

I had my gun with me, and I continued to think of the conversation
I had heard between my mother and Wa-me-gon-a-biew respecting her
dream. At length I resolved to go in search of the place she had
spoken of, and without mentioning to any one my design, I loaded
my gun as for a bear, and set off on our back track. I soon met
a woman belonging to one of the brothers of Taw-ga-we-ninne, and
of course my aunt. This woman had shown little friendship for us,
considering us as a burden upon her husband, who sometimes gave
something for our support; she had also often ridiculed me.  She
asked me immediately what I was doing on the path, and whether
I expected to kill Indians, that I came there with my gun. I made
her no answer; and thinking I must be not far from the place where
my mother had told Wa-me-gon-a-biew to leave the path, I turned off,
continuing carefully to regard all the directions she had given.
At length I found what appeared at some former time to have been
a pond. It was a small, round, open place in the woods, now grown
up with grass and small bushes. This I thought must be the meadow
my mother had spoken of; and examining around it, I came to an open
space in the bushes, where, it is probable, a small brook ran from
the meadow; but the snow was now so deep that I could see nothing
of it. My mother had mentioned that, when she saw the bear in her
dream, she had, at the same time, seen a smoke rising from the
ground. I was confident this was the place she had indicated, and
I watched long, expecting to see the smoke; but, wearied at length
with waiting, I walked a few paces into the open place, resembling
a path, when I unexpectedly fell up to my middle in the snow, I
extricated myself without difficulty, and walked on; but, remembering
that I had heard the Indians speak of killing bears in their holes,
it occurred to me that it might be a bear's hole into which I had
fallen and, looking down into it, I saw the head of a bear lying
close to the bottom of the hole. I placed the muzzle of my gun
nearly between his eyes and discharged it. As soon as the smoke
cleared away, I took a piece of stick and thrust it into the eyes
and into the wound in the head of the bear, and, being satisfied
that he was dead, I endeavored to lift him out of the hole; but
being unable to do this, I returned home, following the track I
had made in coming out. As I came near the camp, where the squaws
had by this time set up the lodges, I met the same woman I had
seen in going out, and she immediately began again to ridicule me.
"Have you killed a bear, that you come back so soon, and walk so
fast?" I thought to myself, "How does she know that I have killed
a bear?" But I passed by her without saying anything, and went into
my mother's lodge. After a few minutes, the old woman said, "My
son, look in that kettle, and you will find a mouthful of beaver
meat, which a man gave me since you left us in the morning. You
must leave half of it for Wa-me-gon-a-biew, who has not yet returned
from hunting, and has eaten nothing to-day. "I accordingly ate the
beaver meat, and when I had finished it, observing an opportunity
when she stood by herself, I stepped up to her, and whispered in her
ear, "My mother, I have killed a bear." "What do you say, my son?"
said she. "I have killed a bear." "Are you sure you have killed
him?" "Yes." "Is he quite dead?" "Yes." She watched my face for
a moment, and then caught me in her arms, hugging and kissing me
with great earnestness, and for a long time. I then told her what
my aunt had said to me, both going and returning, and this being
told to her husband when he returned, he not only reproved her for
it, but gave her a severe flogging.  The bear was sent for, and,
as being the first I had killed, was cooked all together, and the
hunters of the whole band invited to feast with us, according to
the custom of the Indians. The same day one of the Crees killed a
bear and a moose, and gave a large share of the meat to my mother.

One winter I hunted for a trader called by the Indians Aneeb, which
means an elm tree. As the winter advanced, and the weather became
more and more cold, I found it difficult to procure as much game
as I had been in the habit of supplying, and as was wanted by the
trader. Early one morning, about mid-winter, I started an elk.
I pursued until night, and had almost overtaken him; but hope and
strength failed me at the same time. What clothing I had on me,
notwithstanding the extreme coldness of the weather, was drenched
with sweat.  It was not long after I turned toward home that I
felt it stiffening about me. My leggings were of cloth, and were
torn in pieces in running through the bush. I was conscious I was
somewhat frozen before I arrived at the place where I had left our
lodge standing in the morning, and it was now midnight.  I knew it
had been the old woman's intention to move, and I knew where she
would go; but I had not been informed she would go on that day.  As
I followed on their path, I soon ceased to suffer from cold, and
felt that sleepy sensation which I knew preceded the last stage of
weakness in such as die of cold. I redoubled my efforts, but with
an entire consciousness of the danger of my situation; it was with
no small difficulty that I could prevent myself from lying down.
At length I lost all consciousness for some time, how long I cannot
tell, and, awaking as from a dream, I found I had been walking round
and round in a small circle not more than twenty or twenty-five
yards over. After the return of my senses, I looked about to try
to discover my path, as I had missed it; but, while I was looking,
I discovered a light at a distance, by which I directed my course.
Once more, before I reached the lodge, I lost my senses; but I did
not fall down; if I had, I should never have gotten up again; but
I ran round and round in a circle as before. When I at last came
into the lodge, I immediately fell down, but I did not lose myself
as before. I can remember seeing the thick and sparkling coat of
frost on the inside of the pukkwi lodge, and hearing my mother say
that she had kept a large fire in expectation of my arrival; and
that she had not thought I should have been so long gone in the
morning, but that I should have known long before night of her
having moved. It was a month before I was able to go out again, my
face, hands, and legs having been much frozen.

After many dangerous and disagreeable experiences, John Tanner,
when almost an old man, came back to the whites to tell his history,
which, as he could not write, was taken down at his dictation.




EVANGELINE OF ACADIA

By Henry W. Longfellow



More than two hundred years ago there lived in Acadia, as Nova
Scotia was then called, a beautiful maiden named Evangeline. Benedict
Bellefontaine, Evangeline's father, was the wealthiest farmer in
the neighborhood. His goodly acres were somewhat apart from the
little village of Grand-Pr, but near enough for Evangeline not to
feel lonely.

The people of Grand-Pr were simple and kindly, and dwelt together
in the love of God and man. They had neither locks to their doors
nor bars to their windows; visitors were always welcome, and all
gave of their best to whoever might come.

The house of Benedict Bellefontaine, firmly builded with rafters
of oak, was on a hill commanding the sea. The barns stood toward
the north, shielding the house from storms. They were bursting with
hay and corn, and were so numerous as to form almost a village by
themselves. The horses, the cattle, the sheep and the poultry were
all well-fed and well cared for. At Benedict Bellefontaine's there
was comfort and plenty. The men and the maids never grumbled. All
men were equal, all were brothers and sisters. In Acadia the richest
man was poor, but the poorest lived in abundance.

Evangeline was her father's housekeeper; her mother was dead. Benedict
was seventy years old, but he was hale and hearty and managed his
prosperous farm himself. His hair was as white as snow and his face
was as brown as oak leaves.  Evangeline's hair was dark brown and
her eyes were black. She was the loveliest girl in Grand-Pr and
many a lad was in love with her.

Among all Evangeline's suitors only one was welcome, and he was Gabriel
Lajeunesse, son of Basil the blacksmith. Gabriel and Evangeline had
grown up together like brother and sister. The priest had taught
them their letters out of the selfsame book, and together they
had learned their hymns and their verses. Together they had watched
Basil at his forge and with wondering eyes had seen him handle
the hoof of a horse as easily as a plaything, taking it into his
lap and nailing on the shoe. Together they had ridden on sledges
in winter and hunted birds' nests in summer, seeking eagerly that
marvellous stone which the swallow is said to bring from the shore
of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings. Lucky is he who
finds that stone!

And now they were man and woman. Benedict and Basil were old friends
and they desired the marriage of the children. They were ready to
marry. The young men of the village had built them a house and a
barn. The barn was filled with hay and the house was stored with
food enough to last a year.

One beautiful evening in Indian summer Evangeline and Gabriel were
betrothed.

Benedict was sitting in-doors by the wide-mouthed fireplace singing
fragments of songs such as his fathers before him had sung in their
orchards in sunny France, and Evangeline was close beside him at
her wheel industriously spinning flax for her loom. Up-stairs there
was a chest filled with strong white linen which Evangeline would
take to her new home. Every thread of it had been spun and woven
by the maiden.

As they sat by the fireside, footsteps were heard, and the wooden
latch was suddenly lifted. Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes
that it was Basil the blacksmith, and Evangeline knew by her beating
heart that Gabriel was with him.

"Welcome," said Benedict the farmer, "welcome, Basil, my friend.
Come and take thy place on the settle close by the chimney-side.
Take thy pipe and the box of tobacco from the shelf overhead. Never
art thou so much thyself as when through the curling smoke of the
pipe or the forge thy friendly and jovial face gleams as round and
red as the harvest moon through the mist of the marshes."

"Benedict Bellefontaine, thou art always joking.  Thou art cheerful
even when others are grave and anxious," answered Basil.

He paused to take the pipe which Evangeline was handing him, and
lighted it with a coal from the embers.

"For four days the English ships have ridden at their anchors in
the Gaspereau's mouth, and their cannon are pointed against us.
What they are here for we do not know, but we are all commanded to
meet in church to-morrow to hear his Majesty's will proclaimed as
law in the land. Alas! in the meantime the hearts of the people
are full of fears of evil," continued the blacksmith.

"Perhaps some friendly purpose brings these ships to our shores,"
replied the farmer. "Perhaps the harvests in England have been
blighted and they have come to buy our grain and hay."

"The people in the village do not think so," said Basil, gravely
shaking his head. "They remember that the English are our enemies.
Some have fled already to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts
waiting anxiously to hear to-morrow's news. If the news is not to
be bad why have our weapons been taken from us? Only the blacksmith's
sledge and the scythes of the mowers have been left."

"We are safer unarmed," answered the cheerful farmer, who as usual
made the best of everything.  "What can harm us here in the midst
of our flocks and our corn-fields? Fear no evil, my friend, and,
above all, may no shadow fall on this house and hearth to-night. It
is the night of the contract. Ren Leblanc will be here presently
with his papers and inkhorn. Shall we not be glad and rejoice in
the happiness of our children?"

Evangeline and her lover were standing by the window. They heard
the words of the farmer and the maiden blushed. Hardly had he spoken
when the worthy notary entered the room.

Ren Leblanc was bent with age. His hair was yellow, his forehead
was high, and he looked very wise, with his great spectacles sitting
astride on his nose. He was the father of twenty children, and more
than a hundred grandchildren rode on his knee. All children loved
him for he could tell them wonderful fairy tales and strange stories
of the forest. He told them of the goblins that came at night to
water the horses, of how the oxen talked in their stalls on Christmas
Eve, of how a spider shut up in a nutshell could cure the fever, and
of the marvellous powers possessed by horse shoes and four-leaved
clover. He knew more strange things than twenty other men.

As soon as Basil saw the notary he asked him about the English
ships.

"Father Leblanc, thou hast heard the talk of the village. Perhaps,
thou canst tell us something about the ships and their errand."

"I have heard enough talk," answered the notary, "but I am none
the wiser. Yet I am not one of those who think that the ships are
here to do us evil. We are at peace and, why then, should they harm
us?"

"Must we in all things look for the how and the why and wherefore?"
shouted the hasty and somewhat excitable blacksmith. "Injustice is
often done and might is the right of the strongest."

"Man is unjust," replied the notary, "but God is just, and finally
justice triumphs. I remember a story that has often consoled me
when things have seemed to be going wrong.

"Once in an ancient city, whose name I have forgotten, there stood
high on a marble column, in the public square, a brazen statue
of Justice holding her scales in her left hand and a sword in her
right.  This meant that justice reigned over the land and in the
hearts and the homes of the people. Yet in the course of time the
laws of the land were corrupted and might took the place of right,
the weak were oppressed, and the mighty ruled with a rod of iron.
By and by, birds built their nests in the scales of Justice; they
were not afraid of the sword that flashed in the sunshine above
them.

"It happened that in the palace of a wealthy nobleman a necklace
of pearls disappeared. Suspicion fell on a poor orphan girl, who
was arrested and sentenced to be hanged right at the foot of the
statue of Justice.

"The girl was put to death, but as her innocent spirit ascended to
heaven a great storm arose and lightning struck the statue, angrily
hurling the scales from the left hand of the figure of Justice.
They fell to the pavement with a clatter and in one of the shattered
nests was found the pearl necklace.  It had been stolen by a magpie
who had cunningly woven the string of pearls into the clay wall of
her babies' cradle. So the poor girl was proven innocent and the
people of that city were taught to be more careful of justice."

This story silenced the blacksmith but did not drive away his
forebodings of evil. Evangeline lighted the brazen lamp on the
table and filled the great pewter tankard with home-brewed nut brown
ale. The notary drew from his pocket his papers and his inkhorn
and began to write the contract of marriage. In spite of his age
his hand was steady, He set down the names and the ages of the
parties and the amount of Evangeline's dowry in flocks of sheep and
in cattle. All was done in accordance with the law and the paper
was signed and sealed.  Benedict took from his leathern pouch three
times the notary's fee in solid pieces of silver. The old man arose
and blessed the bride and the bridegroom, and then lifted aloft
the tankard of ale and drank to their health. Then wiping the foam
from his lip, he bowed solemnly and went away.

The others sat quietly by the fireside until Evangeline brought
the draught-board to her father and Basil and arranged the pieces
for them. They were soon deep in the game, while Evangeline and her
lover sat apart in the embrasure of a window and whispered together
as they watched the moon rise over the sea. Their hearts were full
of happiness as they looked into the future, believing that they
would be together.

At nine o'clock the guests rose to depart, but Gabriel lingered on
the doorstep with many farewell words and sweet good-nights. When
he was gone Evangeline carefully covered the fire and noiselessly
followed her father up-stairs. Out in the orchard Gabriel waited
and watched for the gleam of her lamp and her shadow as she moved
about behind her snowy curtains. She did not know that he was so
near, yet her thoughts were of him.

The next day the betrothal feast was held in Benedict's house and
the orchard. There were good Benedict and sturdy Basil the blacksmith
and there were the priest and the notary. Beautiful Evangeline
welcomed the guests with a smiling face and words of gladness.
Then Michael the fiddler took a seat under the trees and he sang
and played for the company to dance, sometimes beating time to the
music with his wooden shoes.

Merrily, merrily whirled the dancers, old and young together, and
the children among them.  Fairest of all the maidens was Evangeline,
and Gabriel was the noblest of all the youths.

So the morning passed away. A loud summons sounded from the church
tower and from the drums of the soldiers. The men thronged to the
church leaving the women outside in the church yard.

The church doors were closed, and the crowd silently awaited the
will of the soldiers. Then the commander arose and spoke from the
steps of the altar.

How dreadful were the words spoken from that holy place! The lands
and dwellings and the cattle of all kinds, of the people were to
be given up to the King of England whom they had to obey for he
had conquered the French. They were to be driven from their homes
and Englishmen were to be allowed to take possession of Acadia.

The commander declared the men prisoners, but overcome with sorrow
and anger, they rushed to the door-way. Basil, the hot-headed
blacksmith, cried out, "Down with the tyrants of England!" but a
soldier struck him on the mouth and dragged him down to the pavement.

Then Father Felician, the priest, spoke to his people, and tried
to quiet them. His words were few, but they sank deep in the hearts
of his flock.

"O Father, forgive them," they cried, as the crucified Christ had
cried centuries before them.

The evening service followed and the people fell on their knees
and were comforted.

Evangeline waited for her father at his door.  She had set the
table and his supper was ready for him. On the white cloth were the
wheaten bread, the fragrant honey, the tankard of ale, and fresh
cheese, just brought from the dairy, but Benedict did not come. At
last the girl went back to the church and called aloud the names
of her father and Gabriel. There was no answer. Back to the empty
house she went, feeling desolate. It began to rain; then the lightning
flashed and it thundered, but Evangeline was not frightened, for
she remembered that God was in Heaven and that He governs the world
that He created. She thought of the story that she had heard the
night before of the justice of Heaven and, trusting in God, she
went to bed and slept peacefully until morning.

The men were kept prisoners in the church for four days and nights.
On the fifth day the women and the children were bidden to take
their household goods to the seashore and there they were joined
by the long-imprisoned but patient Acadian farmers.

When Evangeline saw Gabriel she ran to him and whispered, "Gabriel,
be of good cheer, for if we love each other nothing can harm us,
whatever mischances may happen."

Then she saw her father. He was sadly changed: the fire was gone
from his eyes and his footstep was heavy and slow. With a full
heart she embraced him, feeling that words of comfort would do no
good.

The Acadians were hurried on board the ships and in the confusion
families were separated.  Mothers were torn from their children and
wives from their husbands. Basil was put on one ship and Gabriel
on another, while Evangeline stood on the shore with her father.
When night came not half the work of embarking was done. The people
on shore camped on the beach in the midst of their household goods
and their wagons.

None could escape, for the soldiers were watching them.

The priest moved about in the moonlight trying to comfort the people.
He laid his hand on Evangeline's head and blessed her. Suddenly
columns of shining smoke arose and flashes of flame were seen in
the direction of Grand-Pr. The village was on fire. The people
felt that they could never return to their homes and their hearts
were swelled with anguish. Evangeline and the priest turned to
Benedict. He was motionless, his soul had gone to Heaven.

There on the beach, with the light of the burning village for a
torch, they buried the farmer of Grand-Pr, and the priest repeated
the burial service to the accompaniment of the roaring sea.

In the morning the work of embarking was finished and toward night
the ships sailed out of the harbor leaving the dead on the shore
and the village in ruins.

The Acadians were scattered all over the land from north to south
and from the bleak shores of the ocean even to the banks of the
Mississippi River.  Evangeline wandered from place to place looking
for Gabriel Lajeunesse, and Gabriel sought Evangeline as earnestly.
Sometimes they heard of one another but through long years they
never met.

Evangeline was growing old and her hair showed faint streaks of
gray when at last she made her home in Philadelphia. She became a
Sister of Mercy and by day and by night ministered to the sick and
the dying.

A pestilence fell on the city, carrying away rich and poor alike.

Evangeline lovingly tended the very poorest, and each day she went
to the almshouse on her errand of mercy.

One morning she came to a pallet on which lay an old man, thin and
gray. As she looked at him his face seemed to assume the form of
earlier manhood.  With a cry she fell on her knees.

"Gabriel, my beloved!"

The old man heard the voice and it carried him back to the home
of his childhood, to happiness and Evangeline. He opened his eyes.
Evangeline was kneeling beside him. At last they were together.




JABEZ ROCKWELL'S POWDER-HORN

By Ralph D. Paine



"Pooh, you are not tall enough to carry a musket!  Go with the
drums, and tootle on that fife you blew at the Battle of Saratoga.
Away with you, little Jabez, crying for a powder-horn, when grown
men like me have not a pouch amongst them for a single charge of
powder!"

A tall, gaunt Vermonter, whose uniform was a woolen bedcover draped
to his knees, laughed loudly from the doorway of his log hut as he
flung these taunts at the stripling soldier.

A little way down the snowy street of these rude cabins a group
of ragged comrades was crowding at the heels of a man who hugged
a leather apron to his chest with both arms. Jabez Rockwell was in
hot haste to join the chase; nevertheless he halted to cry back at
his critic:

"It's a lie! I put my fife in my pocket at Saratoga, and I fought
with a musket as long and ugly as yourself. And a redcoat shot me
through the arm. If the camp butcher has powder-horns to give away,
I deserve one more than those raw militia recruits, so wait until
you are a veteran of the Connecticut line before you laugh at us
old soldiers."

The youngster stooped to tighten the clumsy wrappings of rags which
served him for shoes, and hurried on after the little, shouting
mob which had followed the butcher down to the steep hillside of
Valley Forge, where he stood at bay with his back to the cliff.

"There are thirty of you desperate villains," puffed the fat
fugitive, "and I have only ten horns, which have been saved from
the choicest of all the cattle I've killed these two months gone.
I would I had my maul and skinning-knife here to defend myself.
Take me to headquarters, if there is no other way to end this riot.
I want no pay for the horns. They are my gift to the troops, but,
Heaven help me! who is to decide how to divide them amongst so
many?"

"Stand him on his bald head, and loose the horns from the apron. As
they fall, he who finds keeps!" roared one of the boisterous party.

"Toss them all in the air and let us fight for them," was another
suggestion.

The hapless butcher glared round him with growing dismay.

At this rate half the American army would soon be clamoring round
him, drawn by the chance to add to their poor equipment.

By this time Jabez Rockwell had wriggled under the arms of the
shouting soldiers, twisting like an uncommonly active eel, until
he was close to the red-faced butcher. With ready wit the youngster
piped up a plan for breaking the deadlock:

"There are thirty of us, you say, that put you to rout, Master
Ritter. Let us divide the ten horns by lot. Then you can return to
your cow-pens with a whole skin and a clean conscience."

"There is more sense in that little carcass of yours than in all
those big, hulking troopers, that could spit you on a bayonet like
a sparrow!" rumbled Master Ritter. "How shall the lots be drawn?"

"Away with your lottery!" cried a burly rifleman, whose long
hunting-shirt whipped in the bitter wind. "The road up the valley
is well beaten down.  The old forge is half a mile away. Do you
mark a line, old beef-killing Jack, and we will run for our lives.
The first ten to touch the stone wall of the smithy will take the
ten prizes."

Some yelled approval, others fiercely opposed, and the wrangling
was louder than before. Master Ritter, who had plucked up heart,
began to steal warily from the hillside, hoping to escape in the
confusion.

A dozen hands clutched his collar and leather apron, and jerked
him headlong back into the argument.

Young Jabez scrambled to the top of the nearest boulder, and ruffled
with importance like a turkey-cock as he waved his arms to command
attention.

"The guard will be turned out and we shall end this fray by cooling
our heels in the prison huts on the hill," he declaimed. "If we
run a foot-race, who is to say which of us first reaches the forge?
Again,--and I say I never served with such thick-witted troops
when I fought under General Arnold at Saratoga,--those with shoes
to their feet have the advantage over those that are bound up in
bits of cloth and clumsy patches of hide. Draw lots, I say, before
the picket is down upon us!"

The good-natured crowd cheered the boy orator, and hauled him from
his perch with such hearty thumps that he feared they would break
him in two.

Suddenly the noise was hushed as if the wranglers had been stricken
dumb. Fur-capped heads turned to face down the winding valley,
and without need of an order, the company spread itself along the
roadside in a rude, uneven line. Every man stood at attention, his
head up, his shoulders thrown back, hands at his sides. Thus they
stood while they watched a little group of horsemen trot toward
them.

In front rode a commanding figure in buff and blue. The tall, lithe
frame sat the saddle with the graceful ease of the hard-riding
Virginia fox-hunter.  The stern, smooth-shaven face, reddened and
roughened by exposure to all weathers, lighted with an amiable
curiosity at sight of this motley and expectant party, the central
figure of which was the butcher, Master Ritter, who had dropped to
his knees, as if praying for his life.

General Washington turned to a sprightly-looking, red-haired youth
who rode at his side, as if calling his attention to this singular
tableau. The Marquis de Lafayette shrugged his shoulders after the
French manner, and said, laughingly:

"It ees vat you t'ink? Vill they make ready to kill 'im? Vat they
do?"

Just behind them pounded General Muhlenberg, the clergyman who had
doffed his gown for the uniform of a brigadier, stalwart, swarthy,
laughter in his piercing eyes as he commented:

"To the rescue. The victim is a worthy member of my old Pennsylvania
flock. This doth savor of a soldier's court martial for honest
Jacob Ritter."

The cavalcade halted, and the soldiers saluted, tongue-tied
and embarrassed, scuffling, and prodding one another's ribs in an
attempt to urge a spokesman forward, while General Washington gazed
down at them as if demanding an explanation.

The butcher was about to make a stammering attempt when the string
of his apron parted, and the ten cow-horns were scattered in the
snow. He dived in pursuit of them, and his speech was never made.

Because Jabez Rockwell was too light and slender to make much
resistance, he was first to be pushed into the foreground, and
found himself nearest the commander-in-chief. He made the best of
a bad matter, and his frank young face flushed hotly as he doffed
his battered cap and bowed low.

"May it please the general, we were in a good-natured dispute
touching the matter of those ten cow-horns which the butcher brought
amongst us to his peril. There are more muskets than pouches in our
street, and we are debating a fair way to divide them. It is--it
is exceeding bold, sir, but dare we ask you to suggest a way out
of the trouble which preys sorely on the butcher's mind and body?"

A fleeting frown troubled the noble face of the chief, and his mouth
twitched, not with anger but in pain, for the incident brought home
to him anew that his soldiers, these brave, cheerful, half-clothed,
freezing followers were without even the simplest tools of warfare.

The cloud cleared and he smiled, such a proud, affectionate smile
as a father shows to sons of his who have deemed no sacrifice too
great for duty's sake. His eyes softened as he looked down at the
straight stripling at his bridle-rein, and replied:

"You have asked my advice as a third party, and it is meet that I
share in the distribution. Follow me to the nearest hut."

His officers wheeled and rode after him, while the bewildered
soldiers trailed behind, two and two, down the narrow road, greatly
wondering whether reward or punishment was to be their lot.

As for Jabez Rockwell, he strode proudly in the van as guide to the
log cabin, and felt his heart flutter as he jumped to the head of
the charger, while the general dismounted with the agility of a
boy.

Turning to the soldiers, who hung abashed in the road, Washington
called:

"Come in, as many of you as can find room!"

The company filled the hut, and made room for those behind by
climbing into the tiers of bunks filled with boughs to soften the
rough-hewn planks.

In one corner a wood-fire smoldered in a rough stone fireplace,
whose smoke made even the general cough and sneeze. He stood behind
a bench of barked logs, and took from his pocket a folded document.
Then he picked up from the hearth a bit of charcoal, and announced:

"I will write down a number between fifteen hundred and two thousand,
and the ten that guess nearest this number shall be declared the
winners of the ten horns."

He carefully tore the document into strips, and then into small
squares, which were passed along the delighted audience. There
was a busy whispering and scratching of heads. Over in one corner,
jammed against the wall until he gasped for breath, Jabez Rockwell
said to himself:

"I must guess shrewdly. Methinks he will choose a number half-way
between fifteen hundred and two thousand. I will write down seventeen
hundred and fifty. But, stay! Seventeen seventy-six may come first
into his mind, the glorious year when the independence of the
colonies was declared.  But he will surely take it that we, too,
are thinking of that number, wherefore I will pass it by."

As if reading his thoughts, a comrade curled up in a bunk at Rockwell's
elbow muttered, "Seventeen seventy-six, I haven't a doubt of it!"

Alas for the cunning surmise of Jabez, the chief did write down
the Independence year, "1776," and when this verdict was read aloud
the boy felt deep disappointment. This was turned to joy, however,
when his guess of "1750" was found to be among the ten nearest the
fateful choice, and one of the powder-horns fell to him.

The soldiers pressed back to make way for General Washington as he
went out of the hut, stooping low that his head might escape the
roof-beams.  Before the party mounted, the boyish Lafayette swung
his hat round his head and shouted:

"A huzza for ze wise general!"

The soldiers cheered lustily, and General Mhlenberg followed with:

"Now a cheer for the Declaration of Independence and for the soldier
who wrote down 'Seventeen seventy-six.'"

General Washington bowed in his saddle, and the shouting followed
his clattering train up the valley on his daily tour of inspection.
He left behind him a new-fledged hero in the person of Jabez
Rockwell, whose bold tactics had won him a powder-horn and given
his comrades the rarest hour of the dreary winter at Valley Forge.

In his leisure time he scraped and polished the horn, fitted it
with a wooden stopper and cord, and with greatest care and labor
scratched upon its gleaming surface these words:



  Jabez Rockwell, Ridgeway, Conn--His Horn
  Made in Camp at Valley Forge



Thin and pale, but with unbroken spirit, this sixteen-year-old
veteran drilled and marched and braved picket duty in zero weather,
often without a scrap of meat to brace his ration for a week on
end; but he survived with no worse damage than sundry frost-bites.
In early spring he was assigned to duty as a sentinel of the company
which guarded the path that led up the hill to the headquarters of
the commander-in-chief. Here he learned much to make the condition
of his comrades seem more hopeless and forlorn than ever.

Hard-riding scouting parties came into camp with reports of forays
as far as the suburbs of Philadelphia, twenty miles away. Spies,
disguised as farmers, returned with stories of visits into the heart
of the capital city held by the enemy. This gossip and information,
Which the young sentinel picked up bit by bit, he pieced together
to make a picture of an invincible, veteran British army, waiting
to fall upon the huddled mob of "rebels" at Valley Forge, and
sweep them away like chaff.  He heard it over and over again, that
the Hessians, with their tall and gleaming brass hats and fierce
mustaches, "were dreadful to look upon," that the British Grenadiers,
who tramped the Philadelphia streets in legions, "were like moving
ranks of stone wall."

Then Jabez would look out across the valley, and perhaps see an
American regiment at drill, without uniforms, ranks half-filled,
looking like an array of scarecrows. His heart would sink, dfespite
his memories of Saratoga; and in such dark hours he could not
believe it possible even for General Washington to win a battle in
the coming summer campaign.

It was on a bright day of June that Capt. Allan McLane, the leader
of scouts, galloped past the huts of the sentinels, and shouted as
he rode:

"The British have marched out of Philadelphia!  I have just cut my
way through their skirmishers over in New Jersey!"

A little later orderlies were buzzing out of the old stone house
at headquarters like bees from a hive, with orders for the troops
to be ready to march. As Jabez Rockwell hurried to rejoin his
regiment, men were shouting the glad news along the green valley,
with songs and cheers and laughter.  They fell in as a fighting
army, and left behind them the tragic story of their winter at
Valley Forge, as the trailing columns swept beyond the Schuylkill
into the wide and smiling farm lands of Pennsylvania.

Summer heat now blistered the dusty faces that had been for so long
blue and pinched with hunger and cold. A week of glad marching and
full rations carried Washington's awakened army into New Jersey,
by which time the troops knew their chief was leading them to block
the British retreat from Philadelphia.

Jabez Rockwell, marching with the Connecticut Brigade, had forgotten
his fears of the brass-capped Hessians and the stone-wall Grenadiers.
One night they camped near Monmouth village, and scouts brought in
the tidings that the British were within sight. In the long summer
twilight Jabez climbed a little knoll hard by, and caught a glimpse
of the white tents of the Queen's Hangers, hardly beyond musket-shot.
Before daybreak a rattle of firing woke him, and he scrambled out
to find that the pickets were already exchanging shots.

He picked up his old musket, and chewing a hunk of dry bread for
breakfast, joined his company drawn up in a pasture. Knapsacks were
piled near Freehold meeting-house, and the troops marched ahead,
not knowing where they were sent.

Across the wooded fields Jabez saw the lines of red splotches which
gleamed in the early sunlight, and he knew these were British troops.
The rattling musket-fire became a grinding roar, and the deeper
note of artillery boomed into the tumult. A battle had begun, yet
the Connecticut Brigade was stewing in the heat hour after hour,
impatient, troubled, wondering why they had no part to play.  As
the forenoon dragged along the men became sullen and weary.

When at last an order came it was not to advance, but to retreat.
Falling back, they found themselves near their camping-place.
Valley Forge had not quenched the faith of Jabez Rockwell in General
Washington's power to conquer any odds, but now he felt such dismay
as brought hot tears to his eyes. On both sides of his regiment
American troops were streaming to the rear, their columns broken
and straggling. It seemed as if the whole army was fleeing from
the veterans of Clinton and Cornwallis.

Jabez flung himself into a cornfield, and hid his face in his arms.
Round him his comrades were muttering their anger and despair. He
fumbled for his canteen, and his fingers closed round his powder-horn.
"General Washington did not give you to me to run away with," he
whispered; and then his parched lips moved in a little prayer:

"Dear Lord, help us to beat the British this day, and give me a
chance to empty my powder-horn before night. Thou hast been with
General Washington and me ever since last year. Please don't desert
us now."

Nor was he surprised when, as if in direct answer to his petition,
he rose to see the chief riding through the troop lines, but such
a chief as he had never known before. The kindly face was aflame
with anger, and streaked with dust and sweat. The powerful horse
he rode was lathered, and its heaving flanks were scarred from
hard-driven spurs.

As the commander passed the regiment, his staff in a whirlwind at
his heels, Jabez heard him shout in a great voice vibrant with rage
and grief:

"I cannot believe the army is retreating. I ordered a general
advance. Who dared to give such an order? Advance those lines--"

"It was General Lee's order to retreat," Jabez heard an officer
stammer in reply.

Washington vanished in a moment, with a storm of cheers in his wake.
Jabez was content to wait for orders now. He believed the Battle
of Monmouth as good as won.

His recollection of the next few hours was jumbled and hazy. He
knew that the regiment went forward, and then the white smoke of
musket-fire closed down before him. Now and then the summer breeze
made rifts in this stifling cloud, and he saw it streaked with
spouting fire. He aimed his old musket at that other foggy line
beyond the rail fence, whose top was lined with men in coats of
red and green and black.

Suddenly his officers began running to and fro, and a shout ran
down the thin line:

"Stand steady, Connecticut! Save your fire!  Aim low! Here comes
a charge!"

A tidal wave of red and brass broke through the gaps in the rail
fence, and the sunlight rippled along a wavering line of British
bayonets. They crept nearer, nearer, until Jabez could see the grim
ferocity, the bared teeth, the staring eyes of the dreaded Grenadiers.

At the command to fire he pulled trigger, and the kick of his musket
made him grunt with pain.  Pulling the stopper from his powder-horn
with his teeth, Jabez poured in a charge, and was ramming the
bullet home when he felt his right leg double under him and burn
as if red-hot iron had seared it.

Then the charging tide of Grenadiers swept over him. He felt their
hobnailed heels bite into his back; then his head felt queer, and
he closed his eyes. When he found himself trying to rise, he saw,
as through a mist, his regiment falling back, driven from their
ground by the first shock of the charge. He groaned in agony of
spirit. What would General Washington say?

Jabez was now behind the headlong British column, which heeded him
not. He was in a little part of the field cleared of fighting for
the moment, except for the wounded who dotted the trampled grass.
The smoke had drifted away, for the swaying lines in front of him
were locked in the frightful embrace of cold steel.

The boy staggered to his feet, with his musket as a crutch, and
his wound was forgotten. He was given strength to his need by the
spirit of a great purpose.

Alone he stood and reeled, while he beckoned, passionately,
imploringly, his arm outstretched toward his broken regiment. The
lull in the firing made a moment of strange quiet, broken only by
groans and the hard, gasping curses of men locked in the death-grip.
Therefore the shrill young voice carried far, as he shouted:

"Come back, Connecticut! I'm waiting for you!"

His captain heard the boy, and waved his sword with hoarse cries
to his men. They caught sight of the lonely little figure in the
background, and his cry went to their hearts, and a great wave of
rage and shame swept the line like a prairie fire. Like a landslide
the men of Connecticut swept forward to recapture the ground they
had yielded. Back fell the British before a countercharge they could
not withstand, back beyond the rail fence. Nor was there refuge
even there, for, shattered and spent, they were smashed to fragments
in a flank attack driven home in the nick of time by the American
reserves.

From a low hill to the right of this action General Washington had
paused to view the charge just when his line gave way. He sent an
officer in hot haste for reserves, and waited for them where he
was.

Thus it happened that his eye swept the littered field from which
Jabez Rockwell rose, as one from the dead, to rally his comrades,
alone, undaunted, pathetic beyond words. A little later two privates
were carrying to the rear the wounded lad, who had been picked up
alive and conscious. They halted to salute their Commander-in-chief,
and laid their burden down as the general drew rein and said:

"Take this man to my quarters, and see to it that he has every
possible attention. I saw him save a regiment and retake a position."

The limp figure on the litter of boughs raised itself on an elbow,
and said very feebly:

"I didn't want to see that powder-horn disgraced, sir."

With a smile of recognition General Washington responded:

"The powder-horn? I remember. _You_ are the lad who led the
powder-horn rebellion at Valley Forge. And I wrote down 'Seventeen
seventy-six.' You have used it well, my boy. I will not forget."

When Jabez Rockwell was able to rejoin his company he scratched
upon the powder-horn this addition to the legend he had carved at
Valley Forge:



  First Used at Monmouth
  June 28, 1778.



A hundred years later the grandson of Jabez Rockwell hung the
powder-horn in the old stone house at Valley Forge which had been
General Washington's headquarters. And if you should chance to see
it there you will find that the young soldier added one more line
to the rough inscription:



  Last Used at Yorktown, 1781.





A MAN WHO COVETED WASHINGTON'S SHOES

By Frank E. Stockton



The person whose story we are now about to tell was not a Jerseyman;
but, as most of the incidents which make him interesting to us
occurred in this State, we will give him the benefit of a few years'
residence here.

This was General Charles Lee, who might well have been called a
soldier of fortune. He was born in England, but the British Isles
were entirely too small to satisfy his wild ambitions and his roving
disposition. There are few heroes of romance who have had such a
wide and varied experience, and who have engaged in so many strange
enterprises. He was a brave man and very able, but he had a fault
which prevented him from being a high-class soldier; and that fault
was, that he could not bear restraint, and was always restive under
command of another, and, while always ready to tell other people
what they ought to do, was never willing to be told what he ought
to do.

He joined the British army when he was a young man; and he first
came to this country in 1757, when General Abercrombie brought over
an army to fight the French. For three years, Lee was engaged in
the wilds and forests, doing battle with the Indians and French,
and no doubt he had all the adventures an ordinary person would
desire, But this experience was far from satisfactory.

When he left America, he went to Portugal with another British
army, and there he fought the Spanish with as much impetuosity as
he had fought the French and Indians. Life was absolutely tasteless
to Lee without a very strong sprinkle of variety. Consequently
he now tried fighting in an entirely different field, and went
into politics. He became a Liberal, and with his voice fought the
government for whom he had been previously fighting with his sword.

But a few years of this satisfied him; and then he went to Poland,
where he became a member of the king's staff, and as a Polish
officer disported himself for two years.

It is very likely that in Turkey a high-spirited man would find
more opportunities for lively adventure than even in Poland. At any
rate, Charles Lee thought so; and to Turkey he went, and entered
into the service of the sultan. Here he distinguished himself
in a company of Turks who were guarding a great treasure in its
transportation from Moldavia to Constantinople. No doubt he wore
a turban and baggy trousers, and carried a great scimiter, for a
man of that sort is not likely to do things by halves when he does
them at all.

Having had such peculiar experiences in various armies and various
parts of the world, Lee thought himself qualified to occupy a
position of rank in the British army, and, coming back to England,
he endeavored to obtain military promotion. But the government there
did not seem to think he had learned enough in Poland and Turkey
to enable him to take precedence of English officers accustomed
to command English troops, and it declined to put him above such
officers, and to give him the place he desired. Lee was not a man
of mild temper.  He became very angry at the treatment he received,
and, abandoning his native country again, he went to Russia, where
the czar gave him command of a company of wild Cossacks. But he
did not remain long with the Cossacks. Perhaps they were not wild
and daring enough to suit his fancy, although there are very few
fancies which would not be satisfied with the reckless and furious
demeanor generally attributed to these savage horsemen.

He threw up his command and went to Hungary, and there he did some
fighting in an entirely different fashion. Not having any opportunity
to distinguish himself upon a battlefield, he engaged in a duel;
and of course, as he was acting the part of a hero of romance, he
killed his man.

Hungary was not a suitable residence for him after the duel, and
he went back to England, and there he found the country in a state
of excitement in regard to the American Colonies. Now, if there
was anything that Lee liked, it was a state of excitement, and in
the midst of this political hubbub he felt as much at home as if
he had been charging the ranks of an enemy. Of course, he took part
against the government, for, as far as we know, he had always been
against it, and he became a violent supporter of the rights of the
colonists.

He was so much in earnest in this matter, that in 1773 he came
to America to see for himself how matters stood. When he got over
here, he became more strongly in favor of the colonists than he
had been at home, and everywhere proclaimed that the Americans were
right in resisting the unjust taxation claims of Great Britain.
As he had always been ready to lay aside his British birthright
and become some sort of a foreigner, he now determined to become
an American; and to show that he was in earnest, he went down to
Virginia and bought a farm there.

Lee soon became acquainted with people in high places in American
politics; and when the first Congress assembled, he was ready to
talk with its members, urging them to stand up for their rights, and
draw their swords and load their guns in defense of independence.
It was quite natural, that, when the Revolution really began, a man
who was so strongly in favor of the patriots, and had had so much
military experience in so many different lands, should be allowed
to take part in the war, and Charles Lee was appointed major general.

This was a high military position,--much higher, in fact, than
he could ever have obtained in his own country,--but it did not
satisfy him. The position he wanted was that of commander in chief
of the American army; and he was surprised and angry that it was
not offered to him, and that a man of his ability should be passed
over, and that high place given to a person like George Washington,
who knew but little of war, and had no idea whatever how the thing
was done in Portugal, Poland, Russia and Turkey, and who was, in
fact, no more than a country gentleman.

All this showed that these Americans were fools, who did not understand
their best interests. But as there was a good chance for a fight,
and, in fact, a good many fights, and as a major generalship was
not to be sneered at, he accepted it, and resigned the commission
which he held in the English army.

He was doubtless in earnest in his desire to assist the Americans
to obtain their independence, for he was always in earnest when
he was doing anything that he was inclined to do. But he did not
propose to sacrifice his own interests to the cause he had undertaken;
and as, by entering the American army, he risked the loss of his
estate in England, he arranged with Congress for compensation for
such loss.

But, although General Lee was now a very ardent American soldier,
he could not forgive Mr.  Washington for taking command above him.
If that Virginia gentleman had had the courtesy and good sense
which were generally attributed to him, he would have resigned the
supreme command, and, modestly stepping aside, would have asked
General Lee to accept it.

At least, that was the opinion of General Charles Lee.

As this high and mighty soldier was so unwilling to submit to the
orders of incompetent people, he never liked to be under the direct
command of Washington, and, if it were possible to do so, he managed
to be concerned in operations not under the immediate eye of the
commander in chief. In fact, he was very jealous indeed of Washington,
and did not hesitate to express his opinion about him whenever he
had a chance.

The American army was not very successful in Long Island, and there
was a time when it fared very badly in New Jersey; and Lee was not
slow to declare that these misfortunes were owing entirely to the
ignorance of the man who was in command.  Moreover, if there was
any one who wanted to know if there was another man in the Colonies
who could command the army better, and lead it more certainly and
speedily to victory, General Lee was always ready to mention an
experienced soldier who would be able to perform that duty most
admirably.

If it had not been for this unfortunate and jealous disposition,
Charles Lee--a very different man from "Light Horse Harry" Lee--would
have been one of the most useful officers in the American army.
But he had such a jealousy of Washington, and hoped so continually
that something would happen which would give him the place then
occupied by the Virginia country gentleman, that, although he was
at heart an honest patriot, he allowed himself to do things which
were not at all patriotic. He wanted to see the Americans successful
in the country, but he did not want to see all that happen under
the leadership of Washington; and if he could put an obstacle in
the way of that incompetent person, he would do it, and be glad to
see him stumble over it.

In the winter of 1776, when the American army was taking its
way across New Jersey towards the Delaware River with Cornwallis
in pursuit, Washington was anxiously looking for the troops under
the command of General Lee, who had been ordered to come to his
assistance; and if ever assistance was needed, it was needed then.
But Lee liked to do his own ordering, and, instead of hurrying to
help Washington, he thought it would be a great deal better to do
something on his own account; and so he endeavored to get into the
rear of Cornwallis's army, thinking that, if he should attack the
enemy in that way, he might possibly win a startling victory which
would cover him with glory, and show how much better a soldier he
was than that poor Washington who was retreating across the country,
instead of boldly turning and showing fight.

If Lee had been a true soldier, and had conscientiously obeyed the
commands of his superior, he would have joined Washington and his
army without delay and a short time afterward would have had an
opportunity of taking part in the battle of Trenton, in which the
Virginia country gentleman defeated the British, and gained one of
the most important victories of the war.

Lee pressed slowly onward--ready to strike a great blow for himself,
and unwilling to help anybody else strike a blow--until he came to
Morristown; and, after staying there one night, he proceeded in
the direction of Basking Ridge, a pretty village not far away. Lee
left his army at Bernardsville, which was then known as Vealtown,
and rode on to Basking Ridge, accompanied only by a small guard.
There he took lodgings at an inn, and made himself comfortable.
The next morning he did not go and put himself at the head of his
army and move on, because there were various affairs which occupied
his attention.

Several of his guard wished to speak to him, some of them being men
from Connecticut, who appeared before him in full-bottomed wigs,
showing plainly that they considered themselves people who were
important enough to have their complaints attended to. One of them
wanted his horse shod, another asked for some money on account
of his pay, and a third had something to say about rations. But
General Lee cut them all off very shortly with, "You want a great
deal, but you have not mentioned what you want most. You want to
go home, and I should be glad to let you go, for you are no good
here." Then his adjutant general asked to see him; and he had a
visit from a Major Wilkinson, who arrived that morning with a letter
from General Gates.

All these things occupied him very much, and he did not sit down
to breakfast till ten o'clock.  Shortly after they had finished
their meal, and Lee was writing a letter to General Gates, in which
he expressed a very contemptible opinion of General Washington,
Major Wilkinson saw, at the end of the lane which led from the
house down to the main road, a party of British cavalry who dashed
round the corner toward the house. The major immediately called
out to General Lee that the redcoats were coming; but Lee, who was
a man not to be frightened by sudden reports, finished signing the
letter, and then jumped up to see what was the matter.

By this time the dragoons had surrounded the house; and when he
perceived this, General Lee naturally wanted to know where the guards
were, and why they did not fire on these fellows. But there was
no firing, and apparently there were no guards, and when Wilkinson
went to look for them, he found their arms in the room which had
been their quarters, but the men were gone.  These private soldiers
had evidently been quite as free and easy, and as bent upon making
themselves comfortable, as had been the general, and they had had
no thought that such a thing as a British soldier was anywhere in
the neighborhood. When Wilkinson looked out of the door, he saw
the guards running in every direction, with dragoons chasing them.

What all this meant, nobody knew at first; and Wilkinson supposed
that it was merely a band of marauders of the British army, who
were making a raid into the country to get what they could in the
way of plunder. It was not long before this was found to be a great
mistake; for the officer in command of the dragoons called from the
outside, and demanded that General Lee should surrender himself,
and that, if he did not do so in five minutes, the house would be
set on fire.

Now, it was plain to everybody that the British had heard of the
leisurely advance of this American general, and that he had left
his command and come to Basking Ridge to take his ease at an inn,
and so they had sent a detachment to capture him.  Soon the women
of the house came to General Lee, and urged him to hide himself
under a feather bed.  They declared that they would cover him up so
that nohody would suspect that he was in the bed; then they would
tell the soldiers that he was not there, and that they might come
and search the house if they chose.

But although Lee was a jealous man and a hasty man, he had a soul
above such behavior as this, and would not hide himself in a feather
bed; but, as there was no honorable way of escape, he boldly came
forward and surrendered himself.

The British gave him no time to make any preparations for departure.
They did not know but that his army might be on the way to Basking
Ridge; and the sooner they were off, the better.  So they made him
jump on Major Wilkinson's horse, which was tied by the door; and
in his slippers and dressing gown, and without a hat, this bold
soldier of wide experience, who thought he should be commander in
chief of the American army, was hurried away at full gallop. He was
taken to New York, where he was put into prison.  It is said that
Lee plotted against America during his imprisonment; but General
Washington did not know that, and used every exertion to have him
exchanged, so that his aspiring rival soon again joined the American
army.

But his misfortune had no effect upon General Charles Lee, who
came back to his command with as high an opinion of himself, and
as low an opinion of certain other people, as he had had when he
involuntarily left it. It was some time after this, at the battle
of Monmouth Court House, that Charles Lee showed what sort of a
man he really was. He had now become so jealous that he positively
determined that he would not obey orders, and would act as he thought
best. He had command of a body of troops numbering five thousand,
a good-sized army for those days, and he was ordered to advance
to Monmouth Court House and attack the enemy who were there, while
Washington, with another force, would hasten to his assistance as
rapidly as possible.

Washington carried out his part of the plan; but when he had
nearly reached Monmouth, he found, to his amazement, that Lee had
gone there, but had done no fighting at all, and was now actually
retreating, and coming in his direction. As it would be demoralizing
in the highest degree to his own command, if Lee's armed forces in
full retreat should come upon them, Washington hurried forward to
prevent anything of the sort, and soon met Lee. When the latter
was asked what was the meaning of this strange proceeding, he could
give no good reason, except that he thought it better not to risk
an engagement at that time.

Then the Virginia country gentleman blazed out at the soldier of
fortune, and it is said that no one ever heard George Washington
speak to any other man as he spoke to General Lee on that day. He
was told to go back to his command and to obey orders, and together the
American forces moved on. In the battle which followed, the enemy
was repulsed; but the victory was not so complete as it should have
been, for the British departed in the night and went where they
intended to go, without being cut off by the American army, as
would have been the case if Lee had obeyed the orders which were
given him.

General Lee was very angry at the charges which Washington had made
against him, and demanded that he should be tried by court-martial.
His wish was granted. He was tried, and found guilty of every charge
made against him, and in consequence was suspended from the army
for one year.

But Charles Lee never went back into the American army. Perhaps
he had enough of it.  In any event, it had had enough of him; and
seven years afterwards, when he died of a fever, his ambition to
stand in Washington's shoes died with him. While he lived on his
Virginia farm, he was as impetuous and eccentric as when he had been
in the army, and he must have been a very unpleasant neighbor. In
fact, the people there thought he was crazy. This opinion was not
changed when his will was read, for in that document he said,--

"I desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church
or churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist
meeting house; for since I have resided in this country I have kept
so much bad company when living, that I do not choose to continue
it when dead."




A FAMOUS FIGHT BETWEEN AN ENGLISH AND A FRENCH FRIGATE

By Rev. W. H. Fitchett, LL. D.



One of the most famous frigate fights in British history is that
between the _Arethusa_ and _La Belle Poule_, fought off Brest
on June 17, 1778.  Who is not familiar with the name and fame of
"the saucy _Arethusa_"? Yet there is a curious absence of detail
as to the fight. The combat, indeed, owes its enduring fame to two
somewhat irrelevant circumstances--first, that it was fought when
France and England were not actually at war, but were trembling on
the verge of it. The sound of the _Arethusa's_ guns, indeed, was
the signal of war between the two nations. The other fact is that
an ingenious rhymester--scarcely a poet--crystallised the fight into
a set of verses in which there is something of the true smack of the
sea, and an echo, if not of the cannon's roar, yet of the rough-voiced
mirth of the forecastle; and the sea-fight lies embalmed, so
to speak, and made immortal in the sea-song. The _Arethusa_ was a
stumpy little frigate, scanty in crew, light in guns, attached to
the fleet of Admiral Keppel, then cruising off Brest. Keppel had as
perplexed and delicate a charge as was ever entrusted to a British
admiral. Great Britain was at war with her American colonies, and
there was every sign that France intended to add herself to the
fight. No fewer than thirty-two sail of the line and twelve frigates
were gathered in Brest roads, and another fleet of almost equal
strength in Toulon. Spain, too, was slowly collecting a mighty
armament. What would happen to England if the Toulon and Brest
fleets united, were joined by a third fleet from Spain, and the
mighty array of ships thus collected swept up the British Channel?
On June 13, 1778, Keppel, with twenty-one ships of the line and
three frigates, was despatched to keep watch over the Brest fleet,
War had not been proclaimed, but Keppel was to prevent a junction
of the Brest and Toulon fleets, by persuasion if he could, but by
gunpowder in the last resort.

Keppel's force was much inferior to that of the Brest fleet, and
as soon as the topsails of the British ships were visible from
the French coast, two French frigates, the _Licorne_ and _La Belle
Poule_, with two lighter craft, bore down upon them to reconnoitre.
But Keppel could not afford to let the French admiral know his
exact force, and signalled to his own outlying ships to bring the
French frigates under his lee.

At nine o'clock at night the _Licorne_ was overtaken by the _Milford_,
and with some rough sailorly persuasion, and a hint of broadsides,
her head was turned towards the British fleet. The next morning,
in the grey dawn, the Frenchman, having meditated on affairs during
the night, made a wild dash for freedom. The _America_, an English
64--double, that is, the _Licorne's_ size--overtook her, and fired
a shot across her bow to bring her to, Longford, the captain of
the _America_, stood on the gunwale of his own ship politely urging
the captain of the _Licorne_ to return with him. With a burst of
Celtic passion the French captain fired his whole broadside into
the big Englishman, and then instantly hauled down his flag so as
to escape any answering broadside!

Meanwhile the _Arethusa_ was in eager pursuit of the _Belle Poule_;
a fox-terrier chasing a mastiff!  The _Belle Poule_ was a splendid
ship, with heavy metal, and a crew more than twice as numerous
as that of the tiny _Arethusa_. But Marshall, its captain, was a
singularly gallant sailor, and not the man to count odds. The song
tells the story of the fight in an amusing fashion:--



  "Come all ye jolly sailors
  Whose hearts are cast in honour's mould,
  While England's glory I unfold.
    Huzza to the _Arethusa_!
  She is a frigate tight and brave
  As ever stemmed the dashing wave;
    Her men are staunch
    To their fav'rite launch,
  And when the foe shall meet our fire,
  Sooner than strike we'll all expire
    On board the _Arethusa_.

  "On deck five hundred men did dance,
  The stoutest they could find in France;
  We, with two hundred, did advance
    On board the _Arethusa_.
  Our captain hailed the Frenchman, 'Ho!'
  The Frenchman then cried out, 'Hallo!'
    'Bear down, d'ye see,
    To our Admiral's lee.'
  'No, no,' says the Frenchman, 'that can't be.'
  'Then I must lug you along with me,'
    Says the saucy _Arethusa_!"



As a matter of fact Marshall hung doggedly on the Frenchman's quarter
for two long hours, fighting a ship twice as big as his own. The
_Belle Poule_ was eager to escape; Marshall was resolute that it
should not escape, and, try as he might, the Frenchman, during that
fierce two hours' wrestle, failed to shake off his tiny but dogged
antagonist. The _Arethusa's_ masts were shot away, its jib-boom
hung a tangled wreck over its bows, its bulwarks were shattered,
half its guns were dismounted, and nearly every third man in its
crew struck down.  But still it hung, with quenchless and obstinate
courage, on the _Belle Poule's_ quarter, and by its perfect seamanship
and the quickness and the deadly precision with which its lighter
guns worked, reduced its towering foe to a condition of wreck almost
as complete as its own. The terrier, in fact, was proving too much
for the mastiff.

Suddenly the wind fell. With topmasts hanging over the side, and
canvas torn to ribbons, the _Arethusa_ lay shattered and moveless
on the sea.  The shot-torn but loftier sails of the _Belle Poule_,
however, yet held wind enough to drift her out of the reach of the
_Arethusa's_ fire. Both ships were close under the French cliffs;
but the _Belle Poule_, like a broken-winged bird, struggled into
a tiny cove in the rocks, and nothing remained for the _Arethusa_
but to cut away her wreckage, hoist what sail she could, and drag
herself sullenly back under jury-masts to the British fleet. But
the story of that two hours' heroic fight maintained against such
odds sent a thrill of grim exultation through Great Britain. Menaced
by the combination of so many mighty states, while her sea-dogs were
of this fighting temper, what had Great Britain to fear? In the
streets of many a British seaport, and in many a British forecastle,
the story of how the _Arethusa_ fought was sung in deep-throated
chorus:



  "The fight was off the Frenchman's land;
  We forced them back upon their strand;
  For we fought till not a stick would stand
  Of the gallant _Arethuml!_"





THE TRICK OF AN INDIAN SPY

By Arthur Quiller-Couch



It was in 1779, when America was struggling with England for her
independence, and a division of the English redcoats were encamped
on the banks of the Potomac. So admirably fortified was their
position by river and steep woods, that no ordinary text-book of
warfare would admit the possibility of surprising it. But Washington
and his men did not conduct their campaigns by the book. "If you
fight with art," said that general once to his soldiery, "you are
sure to be defeated.  Acquire discipline enough for retreat and
the uniformity of combined attack, and your country will prove the
best of engineers."

In fact, it was with a guerilla warfare, and little else, that the
British had to contend. The Americans had enrolled whole tribes
of Indians in their ranks and made full use of the Indian habits
of warfare. The braves would steal like snakes about the pathless
forests, and dashing unexpectedly on the outposted redcoats, kill
a handful in one fierce charge, and then retreat pell-mell back into
their shelter, whither to follow them was to court certain death.
The injuries thus inflicted were not overwhelming, but they
were teasing for all that. Day by day the waste went on--loss of
sentinels, of stragglers, sometimes of whole detachments, and all
this was more galling from the impossibility of revenge. In order
to limit the depredations it was the custom of the British commanders
to throw forward their outposts to a great distance from the main
body, to station sentinels far into the woods, and cover the main
body with a constant guard.

One regiment was suffering from little less than a panic. Perpetually
and day after day sentinels had been missing. Worse than this,
they had been surprised, apparently, and carried off without giving
any alarm or having time to utter a sound.  It would happen that
a sentinel went forward to his post with finger upon his trigger,
while his comrades searched the woods around and found them empty.
When the relief came, the man would just be missing. That was all.
There was never a trace left to show the manner in which he had been
conveyed away: only, now and then, a few drops of blood splashed
on the leaves where he had been standing.

The men grew more and more uneasy. Most suspected treachery. It was
unreasonable, they argued, to believe that man after man could be
surprised without having time even to fire his musket. Others talked
of magic, and grew gloomy with strange suspicions of the Indian
medicinemen.  At any rate, here was a mystery. Time would clear it
up, no doubt; but meanwhile the sentry despatched to his post felt
like a man marked out for death. It was worse. Many men who would
have marched with firm step to death in any familiar shape, would
go with pale cheeks and bowed knees to this fate of which nothing
was known except that nothing was left of the victim.

Matters at length grew intolerable. One morning, the sentinels
having been set as usual overnight, the guard went as soon as dawn
began to break to relieve a post that extended far into the woods.
The sentinel was gone! They searched about, found his footprints
here and there on the trodden leaves, but no blood--no trace of
struggle, no marks of surrounding enemies. It was the old story,
however, and they had almost given up the problem by this time.
They left another man at the post, and went their way back, wishing
him better luck.

"No need to be afraid," he called after them, "I will not desert."

They looked back. He was standing with his musket ready to fly up
to his shoulder at the slightest sound, his eyes searching the glades
before him.  There was nothing faint about Tom, they determined,
and returned to the guard-house.

The sentinels were replaced every four hours, and at the regular
time the guard again marched to relieve the post. The man was gone!

They rubbed their eyes, and searched again. But this one had disappeared
as mysteriously as his fellows.  Again there was no single trace.
But it was all the more necessary that the post should not remain
unguarded. They were forced to leave a third man and return, promising
him that the colonel should be told of his danger as soon as they
got back.

It was panic indeed that filled the regiment when they returned
to the guard-house and told the news.  The colonel was informed
at once. He promised to go in person to the spot when the man was
relieved, and search the woods round about. This gave them some
confidence, but they went nevertheless with the gloomiest forebodings
as to their comrade's fate. As they drew near the spot they advanced
at a run. Their fears were justified.  The post was vacant--the
man gone without a sound.

In the blank astonishment that followed, the colonel hesitated.
Should he station a whole company at the post? This would doubtless
prevent further loss; but then it was little likely to explain the
mystery; for the hands that had carried off three sentinels, would,
it was reasonable to believe, make no attempt to spirit away a
whole company of men.  And for future action as well as to put an
end to the superstitious terror of the soldiery, the vital necessity
was to clear up the mystery. He had no belief in the theory that these
men deserted. He knew them too well. He prided himself mat he was
thoroughly acquainted with his own regiment, and had well-grounded
reasons for pride in his men. For this reason he was the more chary
of exposing a fourth brave man where three had already been lost.
However, it had to be done. The poor fellow whose turn it was to take
the post, though a soldier of proved courage and even recklessness
in action, positively shook from head to foot.

"I must do my duty," he said to the colonel. "I know that well
enough; but for all that I should like to lose my life with a bit
of credit."

There was no higher bravery than facing an indefinite terror such
as this, as the colonel was at pains to point out, but he added--

"I will leave no man here against his will."

Immediately a soldier stepped out of the ranks.

"Give me the post," he said quietly.

The colonel looked at the volunteer admiringly, and spoke some
words in praise of his courage.

"No," said the man; "I have an idea, that is all.  What I promise
you is that I will not be taken alive. I shall give you a deal of
trouble; because you will hear of me on the least alarm. If I am
given this post, I propose to fire my piece if I hear the slightest
noise. If a bird chatters or a leaf falls, my musket shall go off.
Of course you may be alarmed when nothing is the matter; but that's
my condition, and you must take the chance."

"Take the chance!" said the colonel. "It's the very wisest thing
you can do, You're a fellow of courage, and what's more, you're a
fellow with a head."

He shook hands with him, as did the rest of the soldiers, with
faces full of foreboding. "Come," said the man, "don't look so
glum; cheer up, and I shall have a story to tell you when we meet
again."

They left him and went back to the guard-room again. An hour passed
away in suspense. It seemed as though every ear in the regiment
were on the rack for the discharge of that musket.  Hardly a man
spoke, but as the minutes dragged along the conviction gained ground
that already the brave man had followed the fate of the other three.
The colonel paced up and down in the guard-room, as anxious as any
of the men. He looked at his watch for the twentieth time. An hour
and twenty minutes had gone.

Suddenly, down in the woods, the report of a musket rang out.

Colonel, officers, and men poured out of the guard-room, almost
without a word, and advanced at a double through the woods. The
mystery was going to be solved at last. Until quite close to the
spot, they were forced, by the thickness of the forest, to remain
in ignorance of what had happened, and whether their comrade was
dead or alive. But they shouted, and an answering "Halloa!" at
last came back. As they turned into the glade where the sentinel
had been posted, they beheld him advancing towards them and dragging
another man along the ground by the hair of the head.

He flung the body down. It was an Indian, stone-dead, with a
musket-wound in his side.

"How did it happen?" panted the colonel, beside himself with joy.

"Well," said the soldier, saluting, "I gave your honor notice that
I should fire if I heard the least noise. That's what I did, and
it saved my life; and it just happened in this way.

"I hadn't been long standing here, peering round till my eyes ached,
when I heard a rustling about fifty yards away. I looked and saw an
American hog, of the sort that are common enough in these parts,
coming down the glade opposite, crawling along the ground and
sniffing to right and left--just as if he'd no business in life
but to sniff about for nuts under the fallen leaves and all about
the roots of the trees. Boars are common enough, so I gave him a
glance and didn't take much notice for some minutes.

"But after a while, thinks I to myself--'No doubt the others
kept their eyes about them sharp enough, and was only took in by
neglecting something that seemed of no account;' so being on the
alarm and having no idea what was to be feared and what was not,
I woke up after some minutes and determined to keep my eyes on it
and watch how it passed in and out among the trees. For I thought,
if it comes on an Indian skulking about yonder, I may be able to
learn something from its movements. Indians are thick enough here
and to spare: but they're not so thick as nuts, for all that.

"So I kept glancing at the hog, and then looking round and glancing
again. Not another creature was in sight; not a leaf rustling. And
then, all of a sudden--I can't tell why--it struck me as queer that
the animal was snuffling around among the trees and making off to
the right, seemingly for the thick coppice just behind my post. I
didn't want anything behind me, you may be sure, not even a hog,
and as it was now only a few yards from my coppice I kept my eye
more constantly on it, and cast up in my mind whether I should fire
or not.

"It seemed foolish enough to rouse you all up by shooting a pig!
I fingered my trigger, and couldn't for the life of me make up my
mind what to do.  I looked and looked, and the more I looked the
bigger fool I thought myself for being alarmed at it. It would be
a rare jest against me that I mistook a pig for an Indian; and this
was a hog sure enough. You've all seen scores of them, and know
how they move. Well, this one was for all the world like any other,
and I was almost saying to myself that'twas more like the average
hog than any hog I'd ever seen, when just as it got close to the
thicket I fancied it gave an unusual spring.

"At any rate, fancy or no, I didn't hesitate. I took cool aim, and
directly I did so, felt sure I was right. The beast stopped in a
hesitating sort of way, and by that I knew it saw what I was about,
though up to the moment it had never seemed to be noticing me. 'An
Indian's trick, for a sovereign,' thought I, and pulled the trigger.

"It dropped over like a stone; and then, as I stood there, still
doubting if it were a trap that I should fall into by running to
look, I heard a groan--and the groan of a man, too. I loaded my
musket and ran up to it. I had shot an Indian, sure enough, and
that groan was his last.

"He had wrapped himself in the hog's skin so completely, and his
hands and feet were so neatly hid, and he imitated the animal's walk
and noise so cleverly, that I swear, if you saw the trick played
again, here before you, your honor would doubt your honor's eyes.
And seeing him at a distance, in the shadow of the trees, no man
who had not lost three comrades before him, as I had, would ever
have guessed. Here's the knife and tomahawk the villain had about
him. You see, once in the coppice he had only to watch his moment
for throwing off the skin and jumping on me from behind; a dig
in the back before a man had time to fire his piece was easy work
enough. After that it's easier still to drag the body off and hide
it under a heap of leaves. The rebels pay these devils by the scalp,
and no doubt if your honor looks about, you'll find the collection
our friend here has already made to-day."




THE MAN IN THE "AUGER HOLE."

By Frank R. Stockton



When we consider the American Revolution, we are apt to think of
it as a great war which all the inhabitants of the Colonies rose
up against Great Britain, determined, no matter what might be the
hardships and privations, no matter what the cost in blood and money,
to achieve their independence and the right to govern themselves.
But this was not the case. A great majority of the people of the
Colonies were ardently in favor of independence; but there were
also a great many people, and we have no right to say that some
of them were not very good people, who were as well satisfied that
their country should be a colony of Great Britain as the Canadians
are now satisfied with that state of things, and who were earnestly
and honestly opposed to any separation from the mother country.

This difference of opinion was the cause of great trouble and
bloodshed among the colonists themselves, and the contests between
the Tories and the Whigs were nowhere more bitter than in New
Jersey. In some parts of the Colony, families were divided against
themselves; and not only did this result in quarrels and separations,
but fathers and sons, and brothers and brothers, fought against
each other. At one time the Tories, or, as they came to be called,
"refugees," were in such numbers that they took possession of the
town of Freehold, and held it for more than a week; and when at
last the town was retaken by the patriotic forces, most of them
being neighbors and friends of the refugees, several prominent
Tories were hanged, and many others sent to prison.

The feeling between the Americans of the two different parties was
more violent than that between the patriots and the British troops,
and before long it became entirely unsafe for any Tory to remain
in his own home in New Jersey. Many of them went to New York, where
the patriotic feeling was not so strong at that time, and there
they formed themselves into a regular military company called the
"Associated Loyalists"; and this company was commanded by William
Temple Franklin, son of the great Benjamin Franklin, who had been
appointed Governor of New Jersey by the British Crown. He was now
regarded with great hatred by the patriots of New Jersey, because
he was a strong Tory. This difference of opinion between William
Franklin and his father was the most noted instance of this state
of feeling which occurred in those days.

It will be interesting to look upon this great contest from a
different point of view than that from which we are accustomed to
regard it; and some extracts from the journal of a New Jersey lady
who was a decided Tory, will give us an idea of the feeling and
condition of the people who were opposed to the Revolution.

This lady was Mrs. Margaret Hill Morris, who lived in Burlington.
She was a Quaker lady, and must have been a person of considerable
wealth; for she had purchased the house on Green Bank, one of the
prettiest parts of Burlington, overlooking the river, in which
Governor Franklin had formerly resided. This was a fine house and
contained the room which afterwards became celebrated under the
name of the "Auger Hole." This had been built, for what reason is
not known, as a place of concealment. It was a small room, entirely
dark, but said to be otherwise quite comfortable, which could be
approached only through a linen closet.  In order to get at it,
the linen had to be taken from the shelves, the shelves drawn out,
and a small door opened at the back of the closet, quite low down,
so that the dark room could only be entered by stooping.

In this "Auger Hole," Mrs. Morris, who was a strong Tory, but a
very good woman, had concealed a refugee who at the time was sought
for by the adherents of the patriotic side, and who probably would
have had a hard time of it if he had been caught, for he was a
person of considerable importance.

The name of the refugee was Jonathan Odell, and he was rector of
St. Mary's Church in Burlington.  He was a learned man, being a
doctor as well as a clergyman, and a very strong Tory. He had been
of much service to the people of Burlington; for when the Hessians
had attacked the town, he had come forward and interceded with
their commander, and had done his work so well that the soldiers
were forbidden to pillage the town. But when the Hessians left,
the American authorities began a vigorous search for Tories; and
Parson Odell was obliged to conceal himself in good Mrs.  Morris's
"Auger Hole."

Mrs. Morris was apparently a widow who lived alone with her two
boys, and, having this refugee in her house, she was naturally very
nervous about the movements of the American troops and the actions
of her neighbors of the opposite party.

She kept a journal of the things that happened^ about her in those
eventful days, and from this we will give some extracts. It must
be understood that in writing her journal, the people designated as
the "enemy" were the soldiers under Washington, and that "gondolas"
were American gunboats.

"From the 13th to the 16th we had various reports of the advancing
and retiring of the enemy; parties of armed men rudely entered the
town and diligent search was made for tories. Some of the gondola
gentry broke into and pillaged Red Smith's house on the bank. About
noon this day (16th) a very terrible account of thousands coming
into the town, and now actually to be seen on Gallows Hill: my
incautious son caught up the spyglass, and was running towards the
hill to look at them. I told him it would be liable to misconstruction."

The journal states that the boy went out with the spyglass, but
could get no good place from which he could see Gallows Hill, or
any troops upon it, and so went down to the river, and thought he
would take a view of the boats in which were the American troops.
He rested his spyglass on the low limb of a tree, and with a boyish
curiosity inspected the various boats of the little fleet, not
suspecting that any one would object to such a harmless proceeding.

But the people on the boats saw him, and did object very much; and
the consequence was, that, not long after he reached his mother's
house, a small boat from one of the vessels came to shore.  A party
of men went to the front door of the house in which they had seen
the boy enter, and began loudly to knock upon it. Poor Mrs. Morris
was half frightened to death, and she made as much delay as possible
in order to compose her features and act as if she had never heard
of a refugee who wished to hide himself from his pursuers. In the
mild manner in which Quaker women are always supposed to speak,
she asked them what they wanted. They quickly told her that they
had heard that there was a refugee, to whom they applied some very
strong language, who was hiding somewhere about here, and that
they had seen him spying at them with a glass from behind a tree,
and afterwards watched him as he entered this house.

Mrs. Morris declared that they were entirely mistaken; that the
person they had seen was no one but her son, who had gone out to
look at them as any boy might do, and who was perfectly innocent
of any designs against them. The men may have been satisfied with
this explanation with regard to her son; but they asserted that
they knew that there was a refugee concealed somewhere in that
neighborhood, and they believed that he was in an empty house near
by, of which they were told she had the key. Mrs. Morris, who had
given a signal, previously agreed upon, to the man in the "Auger
Hole," to keep very quiet, wished to gain as much time as possible,
and exclaimed:

"Bless me! I hope you are not Hessians."

"Do we look like Hessians?" asked one of them rudely.

"Indeed, I don't know."

"Did you ever see a Hessian?"

"No, never in my life; but they are men, and you are men, and
may be Hessians, for anything I know. But I will go with you into
Colonel Cox's house, though indeed it was my son at the mill; he
is but a boy, and meant no harm; he wanted to see the troops."

So she took the key of the empty house referred to, and went in
ahead of the men, who searched the place thoroughly, and, after
finding no place where anybody could be, they searched one or two
of the houses adjoining; but for some reason they did not think it
worth while to go through Mrs.  Morris's own house. Had they done
so, it, is not probable that the good lady could have retained her
composure, especially if they had entered the room in which was
the linen closet; for, even had they been completely deceived by
the piles of sheets and pillowcases, there is no knowing but that
the unfortunate man in the "Auger Hole" might have been inclined
to sneeze.

But although she was a brave woman and very humanely inclined, Mrs.
Morris felt she could not any longer take the risk of a refugee
in her house.  And so that night, after dark, she went up to the
parson in the "Auger Hole," and made him come out; and she took him
into the town, where he was concealed by some of the Tory citizens,
who were better adapted to take care of the refugee than this lone
Quaker woman with her two inquisitive boys. It is believed that
soon after this he took refuge in New York, which was then in the
hands of the British.

Further on in the journal Mrs. Morris indulges in some moral reflections
in regard to the war in which her countrymen were engaged, and no
one of right feeling will object to her sentiments.

"Jan. 14. I hear Gen. Howe sent a request to Washington desiring
three days' cessation of arms to take care of the wounded and bury
the dead, which was refused; what a woeful tendency war has to
harden the human heart against the tender feelings of humanity. Well
may it be called a horrid art thus to change the nature of man. I
thought that even barbarous nations had a sort of religious regard
for their dead."

After this the journal contains many references to warlike scenes
on the river and warlike sounds from the country around. Numbers
of gondolas filled with soldiers went up and down the river, at
times cannon from distant points firing alarums.  At other times
the roaring of great guns from a distance, showing that a battle was
going on, kept the people of Burlington in a continual excitement;
and Mrs. Morris, who was entirely cut off from her relatives and
friends, several of whom were living in Philadelphia, was naturally
very anxious and disturbed in regard to events, of which she heard
but little, and perhaps understood less.

One day she saw a number of gunboats, with flags flying and drums
beating, that were going, she was told, to attend a court-martial
at which a number of refugees, men of her party, were to be tried
by General Putnam; and it was believed that if they were found
guilty they would be executed.

After a time, Mrs. Morris found an opportunity of showing, that,
although in principle she might be a Tory, she was at heart a good,
kind Quaker lady ready to give help to suffering people, no matter
whether they belonged to the side she favored or to that which she
opposed.

Some of the people who came up the river in the gunboats--and in
many cases the soldiers brought their wives with them, probably
as cooks--were taken sick during that summer; and some of these
invalids stopped at Burlington, being unable to proceed farther.

Here, to their surprise, they found no doctors; for all the patriots
of that profession had gone to the army, and the Tory physician had
departed to the British lines. But, as is well known, the women in
the early days of New Jersey were often obliged to be physicians;
and among the good housewives of Burlington, who knew all about
herb teas, homemade plasters, and potions, Mrs. Morris held a high
position. The sick Continentals were told that she was just as good
as a doctor, and, besides, was a very kind woman, always ready to
help the sick and suffering.

So some of the sick soldiers came to her; and from what Mrs.
Morris wrote, one or two of them must have been the same men who
had previously come to her house and threatened the life of her
boy, who had been looking at them with a spyglass. But now they very
meekly and humbly asked her to come and attend their poor comrades
who were unable to move. At first Mrs. Morris thought this was
some sort of a trick, and that they wanted to get her on board of
one of the gunboats, and carry her away. But when she found that
the sick people were in a house in the town, she consented to go
and do what she could. So she took her bottles with her, and her
boxes and her herbs, and visited the sick people, several of whom
she found were women.

They were all afflicted with some sort of a fever, probably of
a malarial kind, contracted from living day and night on board of
boats without proper protection; and, knowing just what to do with
such cases, she, to use her own expression, "treated them according
to art," and it was not long before they all recovered.

What happened in consequence of this hospital work for those whom
she considered her enemies, is thus related by Mrs. Morris:

"I thought I had received all my pay when they thankfully acknowledged
all my kindness, but lo! in a short time afterwards, a very rough,
ill-looking man came to the door and asked for me. When I went
to him, he drew me aside and asked me if I had any friends in
Philadelphia. The question alarmed me, supposing that there was
some mischief meditated against that poor city; however, I calmly
said, 'I have an ancient father-in-law, some sisters, and other
near friends there.' 'Well,' said the man, 'do you wish to hear
from them, or send anything by way of refreshment to them? If you
do, I will take charge of it and bring you back anything you may
send for.' I was very much surprised, to be sure, and thought he
only wanted to get provisions to take to the gondolas, when he told
me his wife was one I had given medicine to, and this was the only
thing he could do to pay me for my kindness.  My heart leaped for
joy, and I set about preparing something for my dear absent friends.
A quarter of beef, some veal, fowls, and flour, were soon put up,
and about midnight the man came and took them away in his boat."

Mrs. Morris was not mistaken in trusting to the good intentions
of this grateful Continental soldier, for, as she says, two nights
later there came a loud knocking at the door:

"Opening the chamber window, we heard a man's voice saying, 'Come
down softly and open the door, but bring no light.' There was
something mysterious in such a call, and we concluded to go down
and set the candle in the kitchen. When we got to the front door
we asked, 'Who are you?' The man replied, 'A friend; open quickly':
so the door was opened, and who should it be but our honest gondola
man with a letter, a bushel of salt, a jug of molasses, a bag of
rice, some tea, coffee, and sugar, and some cloth for a coat for
my poor boys--all sent by my kind sisters. How did our hearts and
eyes overflow with love to them and thanks to our Heavenly Father
for such seasonable supplies. May we never forget it. Being now
so rich, we thought it our duty to hand out a little to the poor
around us, who were mourning for want of salt, so we divided the
bushel and gave a pint to every poor person who came for it, and
had a great plenty for our own use."

As the war drew to its close and it became plain to every one that
the cause of the patriots must triumph, the feeling between the two
parties of Americans became less bitter; and the Tories, in many
cases, saw that it would be wise for them to accept the situation,
and become loyal citizens of the United States of America, as before
they had been loyal subjects of Great Britain.

When peace was at last proclaimed, those Tories who were prisoners
were released, and almost all of them who had owned farms or estates
had them returned to them, and Mrs. Morris could visit her "ancient
father-in-law" and her sisters in Philadelphia, or they could come
up the river and visit her in her house on the beautiful Green Bank
at Burlington, without fear or thought of those fellow-countrymen
who had been their bitter enemies.




THE REMARKABLE VOYAGE OF THE BOUNTY

Anonymous



This is a story of a man who, when in command of his ships and
when everything went prosperously with him, was so overbearing and
cruel that some of his men, in desperation at the treatment they
received, mutinied against him.  But the story shows another side
of his character in adversity, which it is impossible not to admire.

In 1787, Captain Bligh was sent from England to Otaheite in charge
of the _Bounty_, a ship which had been especially fitted out to
carry young plants of the breadfruit tree for transplantation in
the West Indies.

"The breadfruit grows on a spreading tree about the size of a
large apple tree; the fruit is round, and has a thick, tough rind.
It is gathered when it is full-grown, and while it is still green
and hard; it is then baked in an oven until the rind is black and
scorched. This is scraped off, and the inside is soft and white,
like the crumb of a penny loaf."

The Otaheitans use no other bread but the fruit kind. It is, therefore,
little wonder that the West Indian planters were anxious to grow
this valuable fruit in their own islands, as, if it flourished there,
food would be provided with little trouble for their servants and
slaves.

In the passage to Otaheite, Captain Bligh had several disturbances
with his men. He had an extremely irritable temper, and would often
fly into a passion and make most terrible accusations, and use most
terrible language to his officers and sailors.

On one occasion he ordered the crew to eat some decayed pumpkins,
instead of their allowance of cheese, which he said they had stolen
from the ship's stores.

The pumpkin was to be given to the men at the rate of one pound of
pumpkin to two pounds of biscuits.

The men did not like accepting the substitute on these terms. When
the captain heard this, he was infuriated, and ordered the first
man of each mess to be called by name, at the same time saying
to them, "I'll see who will dare refuse the pumpkin or anything
else I may order to be served out." Then, after swearing at them
in a shocking way, he ended by saying, "I'll make you eat grass,
or anything else you can catch, before I have done with you," and
threatened to flog the first man who dared to complain again.

While they were at Otaheite, several of the sailors were flogged
for small offences, or without reason, and on the other hand, during
the seven months they stayed at the island, both officers and men
were allowed to spend a great deal of time on shore, and were given
the greatest possible liberty.

Therefore, when the breadfruit plants were collected, and they
weighed anchor on April 4, in 1787, it is not unlikely they were
loath to return to the strict discipline of the ship, and to leave
an island so lovely, and where it was possible to live in the
greatest luxury without any kind of labor.

From the time they sailed until April 27, Christian, the third
officer, had been in constant hot water with Captain Bligh. On the
afternoon of that day, when the captain came on deck, he missed
some cocoanuts that had been heaped up between the guns. He said at
once that they had been stolen, and that it could not have happened
without the officers knowing of it. When they told him they had
not seen any of the crew touch them, he cried, "Then you must have
taken them yourselves!" After this he questioned them separately;
when he came to Christian, the latter answered, "I do not know, sir,
but I hope you do not think me so mean as to be guilty of stealing
yours."

The captain swore terribly, and said, "You must have stolen them
from me, or you would be able to give a better account of them!" He
turned to the others with much more abuse, saying, "You scoundrels,
you are all thieves alike, and combine with the men to rob me!
I suppose you'll steal my yams next, but I'll sweat you for it,
you rascals!  I'll make half of you jump overboard before you get
through Endeavor Straits!"

Then he turned to the clerk, giving the order to "give them but
half a pound of yams to-morrow: if they steal _them_, I'll reduce
them to a quarter."

That night, Christian, who was hardly less passionate and resentful
than the captain, told two of the midshipmen, Stewart and Hayward,
that he intended to leave the ship on a raft, as he could no longer
endure the captain's suspicion and insults.  He was very angry
and excited, and made some preparations for carrying out his plan,
though these had to be done with the greatest secrecy and care.

It was his duty to take the morning watch, which is from four to
eight o'clock, and this time he thought would be a good opportunity
to make his escape. He had only just fallen into a restless slumber
when he was called to take his turn.

He got up with his brain still alert with the sense of injury and
wrong, and most curiously alive to seize any opportunity which
might lead to an escape from so galling a service.

On reaching the deck, he found the mate of the watch had fallen
asleep, and that the other midshipman was not to be seen.

Then he made a sudden determination to seize the ship, and rushing
down the gangway ladder, whispered his intention to Matthew Quintal
and Isaac Martin, seamen, both of whom had been flogged. They readily
agreed to join him, and several others of the watch were found to
be quite as willing.

Some one went to the armorer for the keys of the arm chest, telling
him they wanted to fire at a shark alongside.

Christian then armed those men whom he thought he could trust, and
putting a guard at the officers' cabins, went himself with three
other men to the captain's cabin.

It was just before sunrise when they dragged him from his bed, and
tying his hands behind his back, threatened him with instant death
if he should call for help or offer any kind of resistance. He
was taken up to the quarter-deck in his nightclothes, and made to
stand against the mizzen-mast with four men to guard him.

Christian then gave orders to lower the boat in which he intended
to cast them adrift, and one by one the men were allowed to come
up the hatchways, and made to go over the side of the ship into it.
Meanwhile, no heed was given to the remonstrances, reasoning, and
prayers of the captain, saving threats of death unless he was quiet.

Some twine, canvas, sails, a small cask of water, and a quadrant
and compass were put into the boat, also some bread and a small
quantity of rum and wines. When this was done the officers were
brought up one by one and forced over the side.  There was a great
deal of rough joking at the captain's expense, who was still made
to stand by the mizzen-mast, and much bad language was used by
everybody.

When all the officers were out of the ship, Christian said, "Come,
Captain Bligh, your officers and men are now in the boat, and you
must go with them; if you make the least resistance you will be
instantly put to death."

He was lowered over the side with his hands still fastened behind
his back, and directly after the boat was veered astern with a
rope.

Some one with a little pity for them threw in some pieces of pork
and some clothes, as well as two or three cutlasses; these were
the only arms given.

There were altogether nineteen men in this pitiful strait. Although
much of the conduct of the mutineers is easily understood with regard
to the captain, the wholesale crime of thrusting so many innocent
persons out to the mercy of the winds and waves, or to the death
from hunger and thirst which they must have believed would inevitably
overtake them, is incomprehensible.

As the _Bounty_ sailed away, leaving them to their fate, those in
the boat cast anxious looks to the captain, wondering what should
be done. At a time when his mind must have been full of the injury
he had received, and the loss of his ship at a moment when his
plans were so flourishing and he had every reason to congratulate
himself as to the ultimate success of the undertaking, it is much
in his favor that he seems to have realized their unfortunate
position and to have been determined to make the best of it.

His first care was to see how much food they had.  On examining
it, they found there was a hundred and fifty pounds of bread,
thirty-two pounds of pork, six quarts of rum, six bottles of wine,
and twenty-eight gallons of water.

As they were so near Tofoa they determined to put in there for a
supply of breadfruit and water, so that they might keep their other
provisions. But after rowing along the coast for some time, they
only discovered some cocoanut trees on the top of a stony cliff,
against which the sea beat furiously.  After several attempts they
succeeded in getting about twenty nuts. The second day they failed
to get anything at all.

However, some natives came down to the boat and made inquiries
about the ship; but the captain unfortunately told the men to say
she had been lost, and that only they were saved.

This proved most disastrous; for the treacherous natives, finding
they were defenceless, at first brought them presents of breadfruit,
plantains and cocoanuts, rendering them all more hopeful and cheerful
by their kindness. But toward night their numbers increased in a
most alarming manner, and soon the whole beach was lined with them.

Presently they began knocking stones together, by which the men knew
they intended to make an attack upon them. They made haste to get
all the things into the boat, and all but one, named John Norton,
succeeded in reaching it. The natives rushed upon this poor man
and stoned him to death.

Those in the boat put to sea with all haste, but were again terribly
alarmed to find themselves followed by natives in canoes from which
they renewed the attack.

Many of the sailors were a good deal hurt by stones, and they had
no means at all with which to protect themselves. At last they
threw some clothes overboard; these tempted the enemy to stop to
pick them up, and as soon as night came on they gave up the chase
and returned to the shore.

All the men now begged Captain Bligh to take them toward England;
but he told them there could be no hope of relief until they reached
Timor, a distance of full twelve hundred leagues; and that, if they
wished to reach it, they would have to content themselves with one
ounce of bread and a quarter of a pint of water a day. They all
readily agreed to this allowance of food, and made a most solemn
oath not to depart from their promise to be satisfied with the
small quantity. This was about May 2.

After the compact was made, the boat was put in order, the men
divided into watches, and they bore away under a reefed lug-foresail.

A fiery sun rose on the 3d, which is commonly a sign of rough
weather, and filled the almost hopeless derelicts with a new terror.

In an hour or two it blew very hard, and the sea ran so high that
their sail was becalmed between the waves; they did not dare to
set it when on the top of the sea, for the water rushed in over
the stern of the boat, and they were obliged to bale with all their
might.

The bread was in bags, and in the greatest danger of being spoiled
by the wet. They were obliged to throw some rope and the spare
sails overboard, as well as all the clothes but what they wore, to
lighten the boat; then the carpenter's tool-chest was cleared and
the bread put into it.

They were all very wet and cold, and a teaspoonful of rum was served
to each man, with a quarter of a breadfruit which was so bad that
it could hardly be eaten; but the captain was determined at all
risks to keep to the compact they had entered into, and to make
their provisions last eight weeks.

In the afternoon the sea ran even higher, and at night it became
very cold; but still they did not dare to leave off baling for an
instant, though their legs and arms were numb with fatigue and wet.

In the morning a teaspoonful of rum was served to all, and five
small cocoanuts divided for their dinner, and every one was satisfied.

When the gale had subsided they examined the bread, and found a
great deal of it had become mouldy and rotten; but even this was
carefully kept and used. The boat was now near some islands, but
they were afraid to go on shore, as the natives might attack them;
while being in sight of land, where they might replenish their poor
stock of provisions and rest themselves, added to their misery.
One morning they hooked a fish, and were overjoyed at their good
fortune; but in trying to get it into the boat it was lost, and
again they had to content themselves with the damaged bread and
small allowance of water for their supper.

They were dreadfully cramped for room, and were obliged to manage
so that half their number should lie down in the bottom of the
boat or upon a chest, while the others sat up and kept watch; their
limbs became so stiff from being constantly wet, and from want of
space to stretch them in, that after a few hours' sleep they were
hardly able to move.

About May 7, they passed what the captain supposed must be the Fiji
Islands, and two large canoes put off and followed them for some
time, but in the afternoon they gave up the chase. It rained heavily
that day, and every one in the boat did his best to catch some
water, and they succeeded in increasing their stock to thirty-four
gallons, besides having had enough to drink for the first time
since they had been cast adrift; but the rain made them very cold
and miserable, as they had no dry clothes.

The next morning they had an ounce and a half of pork, a teaspoonful
of rum, half a pint of cocoanut milk and an ounce of bread for
breakfast, which was quite a large meal for them.

Through fifteen weary days and nights of ceaseless rain they
toiled, sometimes through fierce storms of thunder and lightning,
and before terrific seas lashed into foam and fury by swift and
sudden squalls, with only their miserable pittance of bread and
water to keep body and soul together.

In this rain and storm the little sleep they got only added to their
discomfort, save for the brief forgetfulness it brought; for they
had to lie down in water in the bottom of the boat, and with no
covering but the streaming clouds above them.

The captain then advised them to wring their clothes through
sea-water, which they found made them feel much warmer for a time.

On May 17 every one was ill and complaining of great pain, and
begging for more food; but the captain refused to increase their
allowance, though he gave them all a small quantity of rum.

Until the 24th they flew before the wild seas that swept over stem
and stern of their boat and kept them constantly baling.

Some of them now looked more than half dead from starvation, but
no one suffered from thirst, as they had absorbed so much water
through the skin.

A fine morning dawned on the 25th, when they saw the sun for the
first time for fifteen days, and were able to eat their scanty
allowance in more comfort and warmth. In the afternoon there were
numbers of birds called boobies and noddies near, which are never
seen far from land.

The captain took this opportunity to look at the state of their
bread, and found if they did not exceed their allowance there was
enough to last for twenty-nine days, when they hoped to reach Timor.

That afternoon some noddies came so near the boat that one was
caught. These birds are about the size of a small pigeon; it was
divided into eighteen parts and given by lot. The men were much
amused when they saw the beak and claws fall to the lot of the
captain. The bird was eaten, bones and all, with bread and water,
for dinner.

Now they were in calmer seas, they were overtaken by a new trouble.
The heat of the sun became so great that many of them were overcome
by faintness, and lay in the bottom of the boat in an apathetic
state all day, only rousing themselves toward evening, when the
catching of birds was attempted.

On the morning of the 28th the sound of breakers could be heard
plainly; they had reached the Great Barrier Reef, which runs up
much of the east coast of Australia.

After some little time a passage nearly a quartar of a mile in
width was discovered through the reef, and they were carried by a
strong current into the peaceful waters which lie within the Barrier.

For a little time they were so overjoyed that their past troubles
were forgotten. The dull blue-gray lines of the mainland, with its
white patches of glaring sandhills, could be seen in the distance,
and that afternoon they landed on an island.

They found the rocks around it were covered with oysters and huge
clams, which could easily be got at low tide. Some of their party
sent out to reconnoitre returned greatly pleased at having found
plenty of fresh water.

A fire was made by help of a small magnifying-glass.  Among the
things thrown into the boat from the ship was a small copper pot;
and thus with a mixture of oysters, bread, and pork a stew was
made, and every one had plenty to eat.

The day after they landed was the 29th of May, the anniversary
of the restoration of King Charles II, and as the captain thought
it applied to their own renewed health and strength, he named it
Restoration Island.

After a few days' rest, which did much to revive the men, and when
they had filled all their vessels with water and had gathered a
large supply of oysters, they were ready to go on again.

As they were about to start, everybody was ordered to attend prayers,
and as they were embarking about twenty naked savages came running
and shouting toward them, each carrying a long barbed spear, but
the English made all haste to put to sea.

For several days they sailed over the lakelike stillness of the
Barrier reef-bound waters, and past the bold desolations of the
Queensland coast, every headland and bay there bearing the names
Cook gave them only a few years before, and which still tell us by
that nomenclature each its own story of disappointment and hope.

Still making way to the north, they passed many more islands and
keys, the onward passage growing hot and hotter, until on June 3,
when they doubled Cape York, the peninsula which is all but unique
in its northward bend, they were again in the open sea.

By this time many of them were ill with malaria; then for the first
time some of the wine which they had with them was used.

But the little boat still bravely made its way with its crew, whose
faces were so hollow and ghastly that they looked like a crew of
spectres, sailing beneath the scorching sun that beat down from
the pale blue of the cloudless sky upon a sea hardly less blue in
its greater depths. Only the hope that they would soon reach Timor
seemed to rouse them from a state of babbling delirium or fitful
slumber.

On the 11th the captain told them they had passed the meridian of
the east of Timor; and at three o'clock on the next morning they
sighted the land.

It was on Sunday, June 14, when they arrived at Company Bay, and
were received with every kindness by the people.

Thus ended one of the most remarkable voyages that have ever been
made. They had been sent out with provisions only sufficient for
their number for _five_ days, and Captain Bligh had, by his careful
calculation and determination to give each man only that equal
portion they had agreed to accept, made it last for _fifty_ days,
during which time they had come three thousand six hundred and
eighteen nautical miles.

There had been days when the men were so hunger-driven that they
had besought him with pitiful prayers for more to eat, and when it
was his painful duty to refuse it; and times, as they passed those
islands where plentiful food could be got, when he had to turn a
deaf ear to their longings to land. He had to endure the need of
food, the cramped position, the uneasy slumber, as did his men;
as well as the more perfect knowledge of their dangers. There had
been days and nights while he worked out their bearings when he
had to be propped up as he took the stars or sun.

It was, therefore, Captain Bligh's good seamanship, his strict
discipline and fairness in the method of giving food and wine to
those who were sick, that enabled them to land at Timor with the
whole of their number alive, with the exception of the one man who
was stoned to death by the savages at Tofoa.




THE TWO BOY HOSTAGES AT THE SIEGE OF SERINGAPATAM

Anonymous



In the year 1791, Lord Cornwallis, then Governor-General of India,
made preparations for a final and decisive campaign against Tippoo.
He had not proved himself a successful commander in America, where
he was compelled to surrender himself and army to Washington; but
this time fortune was to follow his arms. His great object was to
capture the principal stronghold of the tyrant, Seringapatam; with
this in view he proceeded to reduce all the intermediate fortresses,
and in February, 1792, appeared in sight of the famous city, in
the dungeons of which many a British soldier had suffered both a
weary imprisonment and a cruel death.

The army gazed with admiration and wonder on this magnificent
Oriental city, its vast extent of embattled walls bristling with
cannon, on the domes of its mosques which rose above them, on the
cupolas of its splendid palaces and the lofty facades of the great
square pagodas. It was garrisoned by no less than 45,000 men,
while beneath its walls were encamped the troops of the sultan. To
attempt the capture of so strong a place seemed an impossibility.

Great indeed would be the issue of the contest between the two hostile
armies. Should the British and their allies be defeated there was
nothing before them but a disastrous retreat over hundreds of miles
of country already laid waste by sword and fire; while if Tippoo
suffered a reverse nothing remained for him but a humiliating
surrender. The ardour of Cornwallis's troops had been kindled by
the stories of the frightful tortures which the despot had practiced
upon his helpless prisoners, and they were passionately desirous
of avenging them.

Although his forces were far inferior in number, Lord Cornwallis
decided upon an immediate attack on the enemy's camp in three
divisions. The evening was calm and beautiful, the moon just rising
to shed her silvery light over the scene, as the troops moved on
in silence, but with hearts beating high with courage and hopes of
success.

Lord Cornwallis himself led the centre division, sword in hand, and
headed several bayonet charges, during which he received a wound
in the hand. The attack took Tippoo by complete surprise. On the
first alarm he rushed from his gorgeous tent and sprang on to his
horse, and as he did so a mass of fugitives thronged past him,
conveying the intelligence that his centre had been penetrated, and
a column was marching to cut off his retreat from the great ford
leading across the river Cauvery to Seringapatam. He had only just
time to make good his escape.

All night the fighting raged, and by morning Tippoo reckoned he
had lost, in killed, wounded, and missing, no less than 23,000 men.
Being unable to recapture his largest--the sultan's--redoubt, he
abandoned all the others, and, in a fit of despair, withdrew his
forces to the island and fortress of Seringapatam, there to make
a last stand.

The besiegers pressed forward with vigour, and on its two
principal sides the city was completely invested. The pioneers and
working-parties were actively at work, and soon turned Tippoo's
wonderful garden into a scene of desolation. The sultan saw that his
situation was becoming desperate, and made an attempt to negotiate,
but at the same time thought to paralyse the efforts of the English
and end the war, by procuring the assassination of their chief. A
number of horsemen, drugged and maddened by _bhang_, vowed to bring
to the sultan the head of his foe, and lay it at his feet as an
offering.  They made a dash into the British camp, but before they
could secure their trophy were routed, and most of them slain.

It is impossible to enumerate all the deeds of heroism performed
during the battle and the progress of the siege--the bravery of
Captain Hugh Sibbald, who, with a hundred Highlanders, captured
and defended the sultan's redoubt against innumerable odds; of
the courage of Major Dalrymple, with his Highlanders and Bengal
infantry, who, to draw attention from the working-parties, crossed
the Cauvery, and fell furiously upon Tippoo's cavalry camp. Every
British soldier seemed animated with a dauntless courage. Meantime
a trench had been opened within 800 yards of the walls, and the
advances carried on with spirit and energy. The anger of the Oriental
despot manifested itself by a continual discharge of cannon.

Eighteen days after the battle everything was ready for a grand
attack upon the citadel of Seringapatam.  The British soldiers,
flushed with success, and burning to avenge the cruel sufferings and
murders of their countrymen, were eager to commence the assault.
The besieged, crushed, despairing, expected every minute to hear the
roar of the breaching batteries, and to see their stately mosques
in flames. At this moment, so full of anticipation, orders were
issued to cease all acts of hostility.  Tippoo had sued for peace;
but at the very instant the order for cessation of firing was
issued, every gun that could be brought to bear upon the trenches,
and the musketry from all available points, were ordered by the
sultan to be fired.

In the treaty which was now drawn up Tippoo not only agreed to
release all his prisoners, but to pay the equivalent of $16,500,000,
yield up half his possessions, and to place in the hands of the
British his two eldest sons, to be retained as hostages till the
due performance of his pledges.

Never before had Indian history presented so touching a spectacle
as that seen on the day when the young princes were delivered into
the hands of their father's conquerors. On the morning of the 26th
of February, twenty days only after the appearance of the British
before the walls, the two youthful hostages, each mounted on a
richly-caparisoned elephant, left the fort. Soldiers and citizens,
stirred by deep sympathy, thronged the ramparts to take one last
look at the two boys. Even the stern and cruel Tippoo himself was
moved, and found it difficult to repress his emotion as, standing
on the bastion above the great entrance, he watched the procession.

When the youthful hostages issued from the fortress the guns of
Seringapatam thundered forth a salute; and as they approached the
British lines they were received with similar honors. Accompanied
by the English negotiator of the terms of peace and a guard of
honour, they were met at the outposts and conveyed to the camp.
"Each was seated in a howdah of chased silver. They were arrayed
in robes of white, with red turbans in which a spray of pearls was
fastened, while jewels and diamonds of great value were around and
suspended from their necks. _Harcarrahs_, or Brahmin messengers
of trust, headed the procession, and seven standard-bearers, each
carrying a small green banner displayed on a rocket-pole. After
these marched 100 pikemen, whose weapons were inlaid with silver.
Their escort was a squadron of cavalry, with 200 sepoy soldiers.
They were received by the troops in line, with presented arms,
drums beating, and officers in front saluting."

Being conducted to the tent of Lord Cornwallis, who stood at the
entrance surrounded by his staff and the various colonels of the
regiments, they descended from their howdahs and approached him.
Embracing them both, he took them by the hand and led them inside.
Although of the respective ages of ten and twelve years, the children
appeared to possess all the politeness and reserve of manhood. The
principal officer of Tippoo, after having formally surrendered them
to the general, said--

"These children were this morning the sons of my master, the sultan.
Their situation is now changed; they must look up to your lordship
as their father."

Early in the year 1794, Tippoo having fulfilled all the terms of
the treaty, the two youthful hostages were restored to their father.
They were conducted by an officer to Deonhully, on a plain near
which the sultan had pitched his tent. The two boys knelt to their
father, placing their heads at his feet. He received them apparently
unmoved, touched their necks, and when they arose pointed to their
seats; and this was all the welcome they publicly received.




THE MAN WHO SPOILED NAPOLEON'S "DESTINY"

By Rev. W. H. Fitchett, LL.D.



From March 18 to May 20, 1799--for more than sixty days and nights,
that is--a little, half-forgotten, and more than half-ruined Syrian
town was the scene of one of the fiercest and most dramatic sieges
recorded in military history. And rarely has there been a struggle
so apparently one-sided.

A handful of British sailors and Turkish irregulars were holding
Acre, a town without regular defences, against Napoleon, the most
brilliant military genius of his generation, with an army of 10,000
war-hardened veterans, the "Army of Italy"--soldiers who had dared
the snows of the Alps and conquered Italy, and to whom victory was
a familiar experience. In their ranks military daring had reached,
perhaps, its very highest point.  And yet the sailors inside that
ring of crumbling wall won! At Acre Napoleon experienced his first
defeat; and, years after, at St. Helena, he said of Sir Sidney
Smith, the gallant sailor who baffled him, "That man made me miss
my destiny." It is a curious fact that one Englishman thwarted
Napoleon's career in the East, and another ended his career in
the West, and it may be doubted which of the two Napoleon hated
most--Wellington, who finally overthrew him at Waterloo, or Sidney
Smith, who, to use Napoleon's own words, made him "miss his destiny,"
and exchange the empire of the East for a lonely pinnacle of rock
in the Atlantic.

Sidney Smith was a sailor of the school of Nelson and of Dundonald--a
man, that is, with a spark of that warlike genius which begins where
mechanical rules end. He was a man of singular physical beauty,
with a certain magnetism and fire about him which made men willing
to die for him.  He became a middy at the tender age of eleven
years; went through fierce sea-fights, and was actually mate of the
watch when fourteen years old.  He was a fellow-middy with William
IV in the fight off Cape St. Vincent, became commander when he was
eighteen years of age, and captain before he was quite nineteen.
But the British marine, even in those tumultuous days, scarcely
yielded enough of the rapture of fighting to this post-captain in his
teens. He took service under the Swedish flag, saw hard fighting
against the Russians, became the close personal friend of the
king, and was knighted by him. One of the feats at this period of
his life with which tradition, with more or less of plausibility,
credits Sidney Smith, is that of swimming by night through the
Russian fleet, a distance of two miles, carrying a letter enclosed
in a bladder to the Swedish admiral.

Sidney Smith afterwards entered the Turkish service. When war broke
out betwixt France and England in 1790, he purchased a tiny craft
at Smyrna, picked up in that port a mixed crew, and hurried to join
Lord Hood, who was then holding Toulon. When the British abandoned
the port--and it is curious to recollect that the duel between
Sidney Smith and Napoleon, which reached its climax at Acre, began
here--Sidney Smith volunteered to burn the French fleet, a task
which he performed with an audacity and skill worthy of Nelson,
and for which the French never forgave him.

Sidney Smith was given the command of an English frigate, and fought
a dozen brilliant fights in the Channel. He carried with his boats
a famous French privateer off Havre de Grace; but during the fight
on the deck of the captured ship it drifted into the mouth of the
Seine above the forts.  The wind dropped, the tide was too strong
to be stemmed, and Sidney Smith himself was captured.  He had so
harried the French coast that the French refused to treat him as
an ordinary prisoner of war, and threw him Into that forbidding
prison, the Temple, from whose iron-barred windows the unfortunate
sailor watched for two years the horrors of the Reign of Terror
in its last stages, the tossing crowds, the tumbrils rolling past,
crowded with victims for the guillotine. Sidney Smith escaped at
last by a singularly audacious trick. Two confederates, dressed
in dashing uniform, one wearing the dress of an adjutant, and the
other that of an officer of still higher rank, presented themselves
at the Temple with forged orders for the transfer of Sidney Smith.

The governor surrendered his prisoner, but insisted on sending a
guard of six men with him. The sham adjutant cheerfully acquiesced,
but, after a moment's pause, turned to Sidney Smith and said, if he
would give his parole as an officer not to attempt to escape, they
would dispense with the escort.  Sidney Smith, with due gravity,
replied to his confederate. "Sir, I swear on the faith of an officer
to accompany you wherever you choose to conduct me." The governor
was satisfied, and the two sham officers proceeded to "conduct"
their friend with the utmost possible despatch to the French coast.
Another English officer who had escaped--Captain Wright--joined
Sidney Smith outside Rouen, and the problem was how to get through
the barriers without a passport. Smith sent Wright on first, and
he was duly challenged for his passport by the sentinel; whereupon
Sidney Smith, with a majestic air of official authority, marched up
and said in faultless Parisian French, "I answer for this citizen,
I know him"; whereupon the deluded sentinel saluted and allowed
them both to pass!

Sidney Smith's escape from the Temple made him a popular hero
in England. He was known to have great influence with the Turkish
authorities, and he was sent to the East in the double office of
envoy-extraordinary to the Porte, and commander of the squadron at
Alexandria. By one of the curious coincidences which marked Sidney
Smith's career, he became acquainted while in the Temple with a
French Royalist officer named Philippeaux, an engineer of signal
ability, and who had been a schoolfellow and a close chum of Napoleon
himself at Brienne. Smith took his French friend with him to the
East, and he played a great part in the defence of Acre. Napoleon
had swept north through the desert to Syria, had captured Gaza and
Jaffa, and was about to attack Acre, which lay between him and his
ultimate goal, Constantinople.  Here Sidney Smith resolved to bar
his way, and in his flagship the _Tigre_, with the _Theseus_, under
Captain Miller, and two gunboats, he sailed to Acre to assist in
its defence. Philippeaux took charge of the fortifications, and
thus, in the breaches of a remote Syrian town, the former prisoner
of the Temple and the ancient school friend of Napoleon joined hands
to wreck that dream of a great Eastern empire which lurked in the
cells of Napoleon's masterful intellect.

Acre looks like a blunted arrow-head jutting out from a point in the
Syrian coast. Napoleon could only attack, so to speak, the _neck_
of the arrow, which was protected by a ditch and a weak wall, and
flanked by towers; but Sidney Smith, having command of the sea,
could sweep the four faces of the town with the fire of his guns,
as well as command all the sea-roads in its vicinity. He guessed,
from the delay of the French in opening fire, that they were waiting
for their siege-train to arrive by sea. He kept vigilant watch,
pounced on the French flotilla as it rounded the promontory of Mount
Carmel, captured nine of the vessels, carried them with their guns
and warlike material to Acre, and mounted his thirty-four captured
pieces on the batteries of the town. Thus the disgusted French saw
the very guns which were intended to batter down the defences of
Acre--and which were glorious with the memories of a dozen victories
in Italy--frowning at them, loaded with English powder and shot,
and manned by English sailors.

It is needless to say that a siege directed by Napoleon--the siege
of what he looked upon as a contemptible and almost defenceless
town, the single barrier betwixt his ambition and its goal--was
urged with amazing fire and vehemence. The wall was battered day
and night, a breach fifty feet wide made, and more than twelve
assaults delivered, with all the fire and daring of which French
soldiers, gallantly led, are capable. So sustained was the fighting,
that on one occasion the combat raged in the ditch and on the breach
for _twenty-five_ successive hours. So close and fierce was it that
one half-ruined tower was held by _both_ besiegers and besieged
for twelve hours in succession, and neither would yield. At the
breach, again, the two lines of desperately fighting men on repeated
occasions clashed bayonets together, and wrestled and stabbed and
died, till the survivors were parted by the barrier of the dead
which grew beneath their feet.

Sidney Smith, however, fought like a sailor, and with all the cool
ingenuity and resourcefulness of a sailor. His ships, drawn up on
two faces of the town, smote the French stormers on either flank
till they learned to build up a dreadful screen, made up partly of
stones plucked from the breach, and partly of the dead bodies of
their comrades. Smith, too, perched guns in all sorts of unexpected
positions--a 24-pounder in the lighthouse, under the command of
an exultant middy; two 68-pounders under the charge of "old Bray,"
the carpenter of the _Tigre_, and, as Sidney Smith himself reports,
"one of the bravest and most intelligent men I ever served with";
and yet a third gun, a French brass l8-pounder, in one of the
ravelins, under a master's mate. Bray dropped his shells with the
nicest accuracy in the centre of the French columns as they swept
up the breach, and the middy perched aloft, and the master's mate
from the ravelin, smote them on either flank with case-shot, while
the _Theseus_ and the _Tigre_ added to the tumult the thunder of
their broadsides, and the captured French gunboats contributed the
yelp of their lighter pieces.

The great feature of the siege, however, was the fierceness and
the number of the sorties. Sidney Smith's sorties actually exceeded
in number and vehemence Napoleon's assaults. He broke the strength
of Napoleon's attacks, that is, by anticipating them. A crowd of
Turkish irregulars, with a few naval officers leading them, and a
solid mass of Jack-tars in the centre, would break from a sally-port,
or rush vehemently down through the gap in the wall, and scour the
French trenches, overturn the gabions, spike the guns, and slay the
guards. The French reserves hurried fiercely up, always scourged,
however, by the flank fire of the ships, and drove back the
sortie. But the process was renewed the same night or the next day
with unlessened fire and daring. The French engineers, despairing
of success on the surface, betook themselves to mining; whereupon
the besieged made a desperate sortie and reached the mouth of the
mine.  Lieutenant Wright, who led them, and who had already received
two shots in his sword-arm, leaped down the mine followed by his
sailors, slew the miners, destroyed their work, and safely regained
the town.

The British sustained one startling disaster.  Captain Miller of
the _Theseus_, whose ammunition ran short, carefully collected such
French shells as fell into the town without exploding, and duly
returned them, alight, and supplied with better fuses, to their
original senders. He had collected some seventy shells on the
_Theseus_, and was preparing them for use against the French. The
carpenter of the ship was endeavouring to get the fuses out of the
loaded shells with an auger, and a middy undertook to assist him,
in characteristic middy fashion, with a mallet and a spike-nail. A
huge shell under his treatment suddenly exploded on the quarter-deck
of the _Theseus_, and the other sixty-nine shells followed suit.
The too ingenious middy disappeared into space; forty seamen, with
Captain Miller himself, were killed; and forty-seven, including the
two lieutenants of the ship, the chaplain, and the surgeon, were
seriously wounded. The whole of the poop was blown to pieces, and
the ship was left a wreck with fire breaking out at half-a-dozen
points. The fire was subdued, and the _Theseus_ survived in a
half-gutted condition, but the disaster was a severe blow to Sir
Sidney's resources.

As evening fell on May 7, the white sails of a fleet became visible,
and all firing ceased while besiegers and besieged watched the
approaching ships.  Was it a French fleet or a Turkish? Did it
bring succour to the besieged or a triumph to the besiegers?  The
approaching ships flew the crescent.  It was the Turkish fleet
from Rhodes bringing reinforcements. But the wind was sinking, and
Napoleon, who had watched the approach of the hostile ships with
feelings which may be guessed, calculated that there remained six
hours before they could cast anchor in the bay. Eleven assaults
had been already made, in which eight French generals and the best
officers in every branch of the service had perished. There remained
time for a twelfth assault. He might yet pluck victory from the
very edge of defeat. At ten o'clock that night the French artillery
was brought up close to the counterscarp to batter down the curtain,
and a new breach was made.  Lannes led his division against the
shot-wrecked tower, and General Rimbaud took his grenadiers with a
resistless rush through the new breach. All night the combat raged,
the men fighting desperately hand to hand. When the rays of the
level morning sun broke through the pall of smoke which hung sullenly
over the combatants, the tricolour flew on the outer angle of the
tower, and still the ships bringing reinforcements had not reached
the harbour! Sidney Smith, at this crisis, landed every man from
the English ships, and led them, pike in hand, to the breach, and
the shouting and madness of the conflict awoke once more. To use
Sidney Smith's own words, "the muzzles of the muskets touched each
other--the spear-heads were locked together." But Sidney Smith's
sailors, with the brave Turks who rallied to their help, were not
to be denied.

Lannes's grenadiers were tumbled headlong from the tower, Lannes
himself being wounded, while Rimbaud's brave men, who were actually
past the breach, were swept into ruin, their general killed, and
the French soldiers within the breach all captured or slain.

One of the dramatic incidents of the siege was the assault made
by Kleber's troops. They had not taken part in the siege hitherto,
but had won a brilliant victory over the Arabs at Mount Tabor.  On
reaching the camp, flushed with their triumph, and seeing how slight
were the apparent defences of the town, they demanded clamorously
to be led to the assault. Napoleon consented. Kleber, who was of
gigantic stature, with a head of hair worthy of a German music-master
or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach
and stood there, while with gesture and voice--a voice audible
even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry--he
urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest French
battery, watched the sight with eager eyes--the French grenadiers
running furiously up the breach, the grim line of levelled muskets
that barred it, the sudden roar of the English guns as from every
side they smote the staggering French column. Vainly single officers
struggled out of the torn mass, ran gesticulating up the breach,
and died at the muzzles of the British muskets. The men could not
follow, or only died as they leaped forward. The French grenadiers,
still fighting, swearing, and screaming, were swept back past the
point where Kleber stood, hoarse with shouting, black with gunpowder,
furious with rage. The last assault on Acre had failed.  The French
sick, field artillery, and baggage silently defiled that night to
the rear. The heavy guns were buried in the sand, and after sixty
days of open trenches Napoleon, for the first time in his life,
though not for the last, ordered a retreat.

Napoleon buried in the breaches of Acre not merely 3,000 of his
bravest troops, but the golden dream of his life. "In that miserable
fort," as he said, "lay the fate of the East." Napoleon expected
to find in it the pasha's treasures, and arms for 300,000 men.
"When I have captured it," he said to Bourrienne, "I shall march
upon Damascus and Aleppo. I shall arm the tribes; I shall reach
Constantinople; I shall overturn the Turkish Empire; I shall found
in the East a new and grand empire. Perhaps I shall return to Paris
by Adrianople and Vienna!" Napoleon was cheerfully willing to pay
the price of what religion he had to accomplish this dream. He was
willing, that is, to turn Turk. "Had I but captured Acre," Napoleon
added, "I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies; I would
have changed the face of the world. But that man made me miss my
destiny."




A FIRE-FIGHTER'S RESCUE FROM THE FLAMES

By Arthur Quiller-Couch



About a hundred years ago, long before James Braidwood had arisen
to organise the fire-brigades of Edinburgh and London and set the
example which has since been followed by every town in the civilised
world, late on a dark afternoon a young stableman, John Elliot by
name, was sauntering carelessly homewards down Piccadilly, London,
when a glare in the sky, the confused murmurs of a large crowd,
and the hurrying footsteps of pedestrians who passed him, told of
a not distant fire.

Following the footsteps of the passers-by, he found himself in one
of the side streets leading off Piccadilly, and there at the end
of the street, a large house was blazing furiously. He worked his
way vigorously through the spectators, now so densely gathered as
to form a living wedge in the narrow street and block it against all
traffic, and at length found himself in a position to see clearly
the ruin that had already been wrought on the burning pile.

As a matter of fact, all was pretty well over with the house. How
far the upper storeys were intact he had little means of judging;
but he saw that the ceilings of the first and second floors had
given way, and also that the fire was running along the rafters of
the floor above. Flames were pouring from half a dozen windows. He
turned to a man who stood next him in the concourse.

"The house is nearly done for," he remarked.

"Quite," replied the man. "You see it is burned through, and it
is only a question of minutes before the roof must tumble in. The
firemen do not dare to make any further attempt. It is a dreadful
business."

"What?"

"Why, don't you know? This is Lady Dover's house--poor old soul!
and she is still there, in the top room. No one can save her now,
but it is a hideous death all the same."

Elliot looked about him and now understood the pallor on the upturned
faces of the crowd. He looked at the house again. The whole street
was wrapped in a crimson mist; the falling streams of water which
the firemen still continued to direct on the blaze were hissing
impotently, and seemed only to feed the fire. In the crowd that
watched there was hardly a sound; one could almost hear men's hearts
beating as they waited for the conclusion of the tragedy which
they knew to be inevitable. But further down the street, where it
was not understood that human life was at stake in the midst of
this spectacle, rose the sounds of girls laughing, men quarrelling
and fighting, whistling, oaths, and merriment. Caps were flying
about, and the mass was jostling and swaying to and fro, as before
Newgate on a Monday morning.

"Do you mean to say," asked Elliot, after a moment, "that the poor
old lady is up there and nobody is going to save her?"

"What's the use?" answered the man. "If you think it possible,
better try for yourself." But this reply was not heard, for the
young stableman had already begun to push his way forward to the
group of firemen that stood watching the conflagration in despair.

He was a man of extraordinary strength, and now with a set purpose
to inspire him still further, he scattered the crowd to right and
left, elbowing, pushing, and thrusting, until he stood before the
firemen and repeated his question.

He met with the same answer. "It was impossible," they said.
Everything had been done that could be, and now there was nothing
but to wait for the end.

"But it is a question of human life," he objected.

In reply they merely pointed to the flame-points now running along
every yard of woodwork still left in the building.

Elliot caught a ladder from their hands and, running forward with
it, planted it firmly against the house. He had to choose his place
carefully, as almost every one of the windows above was belching
out an angry blaze.

"Which is the window where they were last seen?" he asked.

The firemen pointed. The crowd at length finding that a brave man
was going to risk his life, raised a cheer as they caught sight of
him, and standing on tiptoe, peered over each other's shoulders to
get a better view of the work that was forward.

"Now then," said Elliot, "don't try to stop the flames, for that
is useless, but keep the water playing on the ladder all the time."

He slipped off his shoes, and amid another cheer from the crowd,
dashed up it as quick as thought.  The window to which the fireman
had pointed was clear of flames. On gaining it, Elliot sprang on
to the sill and jumped down into the room.

It was lighted brilliantly enough by the glow from the street, and
through the dense smoke that was already beginning to fill it he
saw two figures.

Both were women, and for a moment the gallant man doubted that he
had come in time; for so still and motionless were they that it
seemed as if the smoke must have already stifled them, and left them
in these startling attitudes. One--a very old lady--was kneeling
by the bedside, her head bent forward in despair, her hands flung
out over the counterpane.  The other--a tall, heavy-looking woman--was
standing bolt upright by the window.  Neither spoke nor stirred,
and the kneeling woman did not even raise her head at the noise
of his entrance; the other, with eyes utterly expressionless and
awful, supported herself with one hand against the wall, and gazed
at him speechlessly. Awestruck by this sight, Elliot had to pause
a moment before he found his speech.

"Which is Lady Dover?" he cried at last.

The kneeling woman lifted her head, saw him, and with a cry, or
rather a smothered exclamation of hope, got upon her feet and ran
forward to him.  He hurried her to the window. She obeyed him in
silence, for it was clear that terror had robbed her tongue of all
articulate speech. He clambered out, turned on the topmost rung,
and flinging an arm round her waist, was lifting her out, when the
other figure stepped forward and set a hand on his shoulder. The
look on this woman's face was now terrible. Something seemed working
in her throat and the muscles of her face: it was her despair
struggling with her paralysed senses for speech.

"Me too," she at length managed to mutter hoarsely; but the sound
when it came was, as Elliot afterwards declared, like nothing in
heaven or earth.

"If life is left in me, I will come back for you," he cried.

But his heart failed him when he saw the distance he should have
to go, and still more when he noted her size. For the ladder was
slippery from the water which the firemen kept throwing upon it, and
which alone saved it from catching on fire.  Moreover, the clouds
of smoke in the room had thickened considerably since his entrance,
and it could not be many minutes now before the floor gave way, or
the roof crashed in, or both. He had felt his feet scorched through
his stockings, when he set foot on the boards.

Down in the street the crowd had increased enormously; gentlemen from
the clubs, waiters and loungers from a distance had all gathered
to look.  As Elliot descended the ladder with his burden a frantic
storm of cheering broke forth--for every soul present understood
the splendid action that had just been performed; and the crush
around the foot of the ladder of those who pressed forward to
express their admiration was terrific.

But they knew, of course, nothing of the stout lady still left in
the bedroom; and when Elliot, heedless of the cheers and hand-shakes that
met him, flung Lady Dover into the arms of the nearest bystander,
and turned again towards the ladder, they were utterly at a loss
to understand what he could be about.

But he kept his word, A dead hush fell again upon the spectators,
as once more the brave man dashed up the ladder, upon which the
firemen had ceased now to play. Half-way up he turned.

"Keep on at the pumps!" he called; and then again was up to
the window and looked in. The lady had still preserved her former
attitude, though leaning now further back against the wall and
panting for breath in the stifling smoke. He put his hand out to
her.

"Catch hold of my neck and hold tightly round it," he said.

But again she was speechless and helpless. Her eyes lit up as she
saw him, but beyond this she hardly seemed to understand his words.
Elliot groaned, and finding, after another trial, that she did not
comprehend, boldly reached in and grasped her round the waist.

She was heavier even than he had imagined, and for one fearful
moment, as he stood poised on the topmost rung, he thought that
all was over. It seemed impossible that they should ever reach the
ground except by tumbling off the ladder. By a superhuman effort,
however, he managed to drag her out, and then clasping her waist
with one arm, whilst with the other he held on like grim death, he
hung breathless for a moment, and then began slowly to descend.

Up to this point there had been no sound in the street below. But
now, as the watchers saw his feet moving down the ladder, their
enthusiasm broke out in one deep sigh, followed by yells and shouts
of admiration. As the young stableman slowly descended, and finally,
by God's mercy, reached the ground with his burden, these feelings
broke all bounds. Men rushed round him; guineas were poured by the
handful into his pockets; and when these and his hands were full,
the gold was even stuffed into his mouth.

But, in the midst of this excitement, a sudden crash caused the
spectators to look upwards again.  It was the roof of the house
that had fallen in, only a minute after Elliot had set his foot
upon the ground.

The lady whom he had saved by this second brave ascent was a relative
of Lady Dover, by name Mile, von Hompesch. It is pleasant to hear
that her preserver was rewarded by the family of Lady Dover, who
bestowed a pension upon him.  At a later period he was in the service
of the first Lord Braybrooke, and this narrative was preserved by
a member of the family who had often heard Elliot relate it. Like
all brave men, he never spoke vaingloriously of his exploit; but
always professed great gratitude for his reward, which seemed to
him considerably higher than his deserts.




HOW NAPOLEON REWARDED HIS MEN

By Lieutenant-General Baron de Marbot



After crossing the Traun, burning the bridge at Mauthhausen, and
passing the Enns, Napoleon's army advanced to Mlk, without knowing
what had become of General Hiller.  Some spies assured us that the
archduke had crossed the Danube and joined him, and that we should
on the morrow meet the whole Austrian army, strongly posted in
front of Saint-Plten. In that case, we must make ready to fight
a great battle; but if it were otherwise, we had to march quickly
on Vienna in order to get there before the enemy could reach it by
the other bank. For want of positive information the emperor was
very undecided.  The question to be solved was, Had General Hiller
crossed the Danube, or was he still in front of us, masked by a
swarm of light cavalry, which, always flying, never let us get near
enough to take a prisoner from whom one might get some enlightenment?

Still knowing nothing for certain, we reached, on May 7, the pretty
little town of Mlk, standing on the bank of the Danube, and overhung
by an immense rock, on the summit of which rises a Benedictine
convent, said to be the finest and richest in Christendom. From the
rooms of the monastery a wide view is obtained over both banks of
the Danube.  There the emperor and many marshals, including Lannes,
took up their quarters, while our staff lodged with the parish
priest. Much rain had fallen during the week, and it had not ceased
for twenty-four hours and still was falling, so that the Danube and
its tributaries were over their banks.  That night, as my comrades
and I, delighted at being sheltered from the bad weather, were
having a merry supper with the parson, a jolly fellow, who gave us
an excellent meal, the aide-de-camp on duty with the marshal came
to tell me that I was wanted, and must go up to the convent that
moment. I was so comfortable where I was that I found it annoying
to have to leave a good supper and good quarters to go and get wet
again, but I had to obey.

All the passages and lower rooms of the monastery were full of
soldiers. On reaching the dwelling-rooms, I saw that I had been
sent for about some serious matter, for generals, chamberlains,
orderly officers, said to me repeatedly, "The emperor has sent for
you." Some added, "It is probably to give you your commission as
major." This I did not believe, for I did not think I was yet of
sufficient importance to the sovereign for him to send for me at
such an hour to give me my commission with his own hands. I was shown
into a vast and handsome gallery, with a balcony looking over the
Danube; there I found the emperor at dinner with several marshals
and the abbot of the convent, who has the title of bishop. On
seeing me, the emperor left the table, and went toward the balcony,
followed by Lannes. I heard him say in a low tone, "The execution
of this plan is almost impossible; it would be sending a brave
officer for no purpose to almost certain death." "He will go, sir,"
replied the marshal; "I am certain he will go: at any rate we can
but propose it to him."

Then, taking me by the hand, the marshal opened the window of the
balcony over the Danube. The river at this moment, trebled in volume
by the strong flood, was nearly a league wide; it was lashed by a
fierce wind, and we could hear the waves roaring. It was pitch-dark,
and the rain fell in torrents, but we could see on the other side
a long line of bivouac fires. Napoleon, Marshal Lannes, and I being
alone on the balcony, the marshal said, "On the other side of the
river you see an Austrian camp. Now, the emperor is keenly desirous
to know whether General Hiller's corps is there, or still on this
bank. In order to make sure he wants a stout-hearted man, bold enough
to cross the Danube, and bring away some soldier of the enemy's,
and I have assured him that you will go." Then Napoleon said to me,
"Take notice that I am not giving you an order; I am only expressing
a wish. I am aware that the enterprise is as dangerous as it can
be, and you can decline it without any fear of displeasing me. Go,
and think it over for a few moments in the next room; come back
and tell us frankly your decision."

I admit that when I heard Marshal Lannes's proposal I had broken
out all over in a cold sweat; but at the same moment, a feeling
which I cannot define, but in which a love of glory and of my
country was mingled, perhaps, with a noble pride, raised my ardor
to the highest point, and I said to myself, "The emperor has here
an army of 150,000 devoted warriors, besides 25,000 men of his guard,
all selected from the bravest. He is surrounded with aides-de-camp
and orderly officers, and yet when an expedition is on foot, requiring
intelligence no less than boldness, it is I whom the emperor and
Marshal Lannes choose." "I will go, sir," I cried, without hesitation.
"I will go; and if I perish, I leave my mother to your Majesty's
care." The emperor pulled my ear to mark his satisfaction; the
marshal shook my hand--"I was quite right to tell your Majesty that
he would go. There's what you may call a brave soldier."

My expedition being thus decided on, I had to think about the
means of executing it. The emperor called General Bertrand, his
aide-de-camp, General Dorsenne, of the guard, and the commandant of
the imperial headquarters, and ordered them to put at my disposal
whatever I might require. At my request an infantry picket went
into the town to find the burgomaster, the leader of the boatmen,
and five of his best hands. A corporal and five grenadiers of the
old guard who could all speak German, and had still to earn their
decoration, were also summoned, and voluntarily agreed to go with
me. The emperor had them brought in first, and promised that on
their return they should receive the Cross at once. The brave men
replied by a "Vive l'Empereur!" and went to get ready. As for the
five boatmen, on its being explained to them through the interpreter
that they had to take a boat across the Danube, they fell on their
knees and began to weep. The leader declared that they might just
as well be shot at once as sent to certain death.  The expedition was
absolutely impossible, not only from the strength of the current,
but because the tributaries had brought into the Danube a great
quantity of fir trees recently cut down in the mountains, which
could not be avoided in the dark, and would certainly come against
the boat and sink it.  Besides, how could one land on the opposite
bank among willows which would scuttle the boat, and with a flood
of unknown extent? The leader concluded, then, that the operation
was physically impossible.  In vain did the emperor tempt them
with an offer of 6,000 francs per man; even this could not persuade
them, though, as they said, they were poor boatmen with families,
and this sum would be a fortune to them. But, as I have already
said, some lives must be sacrificed to save those of the greater
number, and the knowledge of this makes commanders sometimes
pitiless. The emperor was inflexible, and the grenadiers received
orders to take the poor men, whether they would or not, and we went
down to the town.

The corporal who had been assigned to me was an intelligent man.
Taking him for my interpreter, I charged him as we went along to
tell the leader of the boatmen that as he had to come along with
us, he had better in his own interest show us his best boat, and
point out everything that we should require for her fitting. The
poor man obeyed; so we got an excellent vessel, and we took all
that we wanted from the others. We had two anchors, but as I did
not think we should be able to make use of them, I had sewn to the
end of each cable a piece of canvas with a large stone wrapped in
it. I had seen in the south of France the fishermen use an apparatus of
this kind to hold their boats by throwing the cord over the willows
at the water's edge. I put on a cap, the grenadiers took their forage
caps, we had provisions, ropes, axes, saws, a ladder--everything,
in short, which I could think of to take.

Our preparations ended, I was going to give the signal to start,
when the five boatmen implored me with tears to let the soldiers
escort them to their houses, to take perhaps the last farewell of
their wives and children; but, fearing that a tender scene of this
kind would further reduce their small stock of courage, I refused.
Then the leader said, "Well, as we have only a short time to live,
allow us five minutes to commend our souls to God, and do you do
the same, for you also are going to your death." They all fell on
their knees, the grenadiers and I following their example, which
seemed to please the worthy people much. When their prayer was
over, I gave each man a glass of wine, and we pushed out into the
stream.

I had bidden the grenadiers follow in silence all the orders of
the syndic, or leader, who was steering; the current was too strong
for us to cross over straight from Mlk: we went up, therefore,
along the bank under sail for more than a league, and although the
wind and the waves made the boat jump, this part was accomplished
without accident.  But when the time came to take to our oars and
row out from the land, the mast, on being lowered, fell over to
one side, and the sail, dragging in the water, offered a strong
resistance to the current and nearly capsized us. The master ordered
the ropes to be cut and the masts to be sent overboard: but the
boatmen, losing their heads, began to pray without stirring. Then
the corporal, drawing his sword, said, "You can pray and work too;
obey at once, or I will kill you." Compelled to choose between
possible and certain death, the poor fellows took up their hatchets,
and with the help of the grenadiers, the mast was promptly cut away
and sent floating. It was high time, for hardly were we free from
this dangerous burden when we felt a fearful shock. A pine-stem
borne down by the stream had struck the boat. We all shuddered, but
luckily the planks were not driven in this time.  Would the boat,
however, resist more shocks of this kind? We could not see the
stems, and only knew that they were near by the heavier tumble of
the waves. Several touched us, but no serious accident resulted.
Meantime the current bore us along, and as our oars could make very
little way against it to give us the necessary slant, I feared for
a moment that it would sweep us below the enemy's camp, and that
my expedition would fail. By dint of hard rowing, however, we had
got three-quarters of the way over, when I saw an immense black
mass looming over the water. Then a sharp scratching was heard,
branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions
the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows
and had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much
less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached
the left bank in front of the Austrian camp. This shore was bordered
with very thick trees, which, overhanging the bank like a dome, made
the approach difficult, no doubt, but at the same time concealed our
boat from the camp. The whole shore was lighted up by the bivouac
fires, while we remained in the shadow thrown by the branches of
the willows. I let the boat float downward, looking for a suitable
landing-place.  Presently I perceived that a sloping path had been
made down the bank by the enemy to allow the men and horses to get
to the water.  The corporal adroitly threw into the willows one of
the stones that I had made ready, the cord caught in a tree, and
the boat brought up against the land a foot or two from the slope.
It must have been just about midnight. The Austrians, having the
swollen Danube between them and the French, felt themselves so
secure that, except the sentry, the whole camp was asleep.

It is usual in war for the guns and the sentinels always to face
toward the enemy, however far off he may be. A battery placed
in advance of the camp was therefore turned toward the river, and
sentries were walking on the top of the bank. The trees prevented
them from seeing the extreme edge, while from the boat I could see
through the branches a great part of the bivouac. So far my mission
had been more successful than I had ventured to hope, but in order
to make the success complete I had to bring away a prisoner, and
to execute such an operation fifty paces away from several thousand
enemies, whom a single cry would rouse, seemed very difficult.
Still, I had to do something. I made the five sailors lie down
at the bottom of the boat under guard of two grenadiers, another
grenadier I posted at the bow of the boat, which was close to the
bank, and myself disembarked, sword in hand, followed by the corporal
and two grenadiers. The boat was a few feet from dry land; we had
to walk in the water, but at last we were on the slope. We went up,
and I was making ready to rush on the nearest sentry, disarm him,
gag him, and drag him off to the boat, when the ring of metal and
the sound of singing in a low voice fell on my ears. A man, carrying
a great tin pail, was coming to draw water, humming a song as he
went; we quickly went down again to the river to hide under the
branches, and as the Austrian stooped to fill his pail, my grenadiers
seized him by the throat, put a handkerchief full of wet sand
over his mouth, and placing their sword-points against his body,
threatened him with death if he resisted or uttered a sound.
Utterly bewildered, the man obeyed, and let us take him to the boat;
we hoisted him into the hands of the grenadiers posted there, who
made him lie down beside the sailors. While this Austrian was lying
captured, I saw by his clothes that he was not, strictly speaking,
a soldier, but an officer's servant.  I should have preferred to
catch a combatant who could have given me more precise information;
but I was going to content myself with this capture for want of a
better, when I saw, at the top of the slope, two soldiers carrying a
caldron between them on a pole. They were only a few paces off. It
was impossible for us to re-embark without being seen.  I therefore
signed to my grenadiers to hide themselves again, and as soon as
the two Austrians stooped to fill their vessel, powerful arms seized
them from behind and plunged their heads under water. We had to
stupefy them a little, since they had their swords, and I feared
that they might resist.  Then they were picked up in turn, their
mouths covered with a handkerchief full of sand, and sword-points
against their breasts constrained them to follow us. They were shipped
as the servant had been, and my men and I got on board again.

So far, all had gone well. I made the sailors get up and take their
oars, and ordered the corporal to cast loose the rope which held
us to the bank. It was, however, so wet, and the knot had been
drawn so tight by the force of the stream, that it was impossible
to unfasten. We had to saw the rope, which took us some minutes.
Meanwhile, the rope, shaking with our efforts, imparted its movement
to the branches of the willow round which it was wrapped, and the
rustling became loud enough to attract the notice of the sentry. He
drew near, unable to see the boat, but perceiving that the agitation
of the branches increased, he called out, "Who goes there?" No
answer. Further challenge from the sentry. We held our tongues and
worked away. I was in deadly fear; after facing so many dangers,
it would have been too cruel if we were wrecked in sight of port.
At last the rope was cut, and the boat pushed off. But hardly was
it clear of the overhanging willows than the light of the bivouac
fires made it visible to the sentry, who, shouting "To arms!" fired
at us. No one was hit; but at the sound the whole camp was astir
in a moment, and the gunners, whose pieces were ready loaded and
trained on the river, honored my boat with some cannon-shots. At
the report my heart leaped for joy, for I knew that the emperor and
marshal would hear it. I turned my eyes toward the convent, with
its lighted windows, of which I had, in spite of the distance,
never lost sight. Probably all were open at this moment, but in
one only could I perceive any increase of brilliancy; it was the
great balcony window, which was as large as the doorway of a church,
and sent from afar a flood of light over the stream. Evidently, it
had just been opened at the thunder of the cannon, and I said to
myself, "The emperor and the marshals are doubtless on the balcony;
they know that I have reached the enemy's camp, and are making vows
for my safe return." This thought raised my courage, and I heeded
the cannon-balls not a bit. Indeed, they were not very dangerous,
for the stream swept us along at such a pace that the gunners could
not aim with any accuracy, and we must have been very unlucky to
get hit. One shot would have done for us, but all fell harmless into
the Danube.  Soon I was out of range, and could reckon a successful
issue to my enterprise. Still, all danger was not yet at an end.
We had still to cross among the floating pine-stems, and more
than once we struck on submerged islands, and were delayed by the
branches of the poplars. At last we reached the right bank, more than
two leagues below Mlk, and a new terror assailed me. I could see
bivouac fires, and had no means of learning whether they belonged
to a French regiment. The enemy had troops on both banks, and I
knew that on the right bank Marshal Lannes's outposts were not far
from Mlk, facing an Austrian corps, posted at Saint-Plten.

Our army would doubtless go forward at daybreak, but was it already
occupying this place? And were the fires that I saw those of friends
or enemies?  I was afraid that the current had taken me too far
down, but the problem was solved by French cavalry trumpets sounding
the reveill. Our uncertainty being at an end, we rowed with all
our strength to the shore, where in the dawning light we could
see a village. As we drew near, the report of a carbine was heard,
and a bullet whistled by our ears. It was evident that the French
sentries took us for a hostile crew. I had not foreseen this
possibility, and hardly knew how we were to succeed in getting
recognized, till the happy thought struck me of making my six
grenadiers shout "Vive l'Empereur Napolon!" This was, of course,
no certain evidence that we were French, but it would attract the
attention of the officers, who would have no fear of our small
numbers, and would no doubt prevent the men from firing on us before
they knew whether we were French or Austrians. A few moments later
I came ashore, and I was received by Colonel Gautrin and the 9th
Hussars, forming part of Lannes's division. If we had landed half
a league lower down we should have tumbled into the enemy's pickets.
The colonel lent me a horse, and gave me several wagons, in which
I placed the grenadiers, the boatmen, and the prisoners, and the
little cavalcade went off toward Molk. As we went along, the corporal,
at my orders, questioned the three Austrians, and I learned with
satisfaction that the camp whence I had brought them away belonged
to the very division, General Hiller's, the position of which the
emperor was so anxious to learn. There was, therefore, no further
doubt that that general had joined the archduke on the other side
of the Danube. There was no longer any question of a battle on the
road which we held, and Napoleon, having only the enemy's cavalry
in front of him, could in perfect safety push his troops forward
toward Vienna, from which we were but three easy marches distant.
With this information I galloped, forward, in order to bring it to
the emperor with the least possible delay.

When I reached the gate of the monastery, it was broad day. I found
the approach blocked by the whole population of the little town of
Molk, and heard among the crowd the cries of the wives, children,
and friends of the sailors whom I had carried off. In a moment I was
surrounded by them, and was able to calm their anxiety by saying,
in very bad German, "Your friends are alive, and you will see
them in a few moments." A great cry of joy went up from the crowd,
bringing out the officer in command of the guard at the gate. On
seeing me he ran off in pursuance of orders to warn the aides-de-camp
to let the emperor know of my return. In an instant the whole palace
was up. The good Marshal Lannes came to me, embraced me cordially,
and carried me straight off to the emperor, crying out, "Here he
is, sir; I knew he would come back. He has brought three prisoners
from General Hiller's division." Napoleon received me warmly, and
though I was wet and muddy all over, he laid his hand on my shoulder,
and did not forget to give his greatest sign of satisfaction by
pinching my ear. I leave you to imagine how I was questioned!  The
emperor wanted to know every incident of the adventure in detail,
and when I had finished my story said, "I am very well pleased with
you, 'Major' Marbot." These words were equivalent to a commission,
and my joy was full. At that moment, a chamberlain announced that
breakfast was served, and as I was calculating on having to wait
in the gallery until the emperor had finished, he pointed with his
finger toward the dining-room, and said, "You will breakfast with
me." As this honor had never been paid to any officer of my rank,
I was the more flattered. During breakfast I learned that the emperor
and the marshal had not been to bed all night, and that when they
heard the cannon on the opposite bank they had all rushed onto
the balcony. The emperor made me tell again the way in which I had
surprised the three prisoners, and laughed much at the fright and
surprise which they must have felt.

At last, the arrival of the wagons was announced, but they had much
difficulty in making their way through the crowd, so eager were the
people to see the boatmen. Napoleon, thinking this very natural,
gave orders to open the gates, and let everybody come into the
court. Soon after, the grenadiers, the boatmen, and the prisoners
were led into the gallery. The emperor, through his interpreter,
first questioned the three Austrian soldiers, and learning with
satisfaction that not only General Hiller's corps, but the whole
of the archduke's army, were on the other bank, he told Berthier
to give the order for the troops to march at once on Saint-Polten.
Then, calling up the corporal and the five soldiers, he fastened
the Cross on their breast, appointed them knights of the empire,
and gave them an annuity of 1,200 francs apiece. All the veterans
wept for joy. Next came the boatmen's turn. The emperor told them
that, as the danger they had run was a good deal more than he had
expected, it was only fair that he should increase their reward;
so instead of the 6,000 francs promised, 12,000 in gold were given
to them on the spot. Nothing could express their delight; they
kissed the hands of the emperor and all present, crying, "Now we
are rich!" Napoleon laughingly asked the leader if he would go the
same journey for the same price the next night. But the man answered
that, having escaped by miracle what seemed certain death, he would
not undertake such a journey again even if his lordship, the abbot
of Molk, would give him the monastery and all its possessions. The
boatmen withdrew, blessing the generosity of the French emperor,
and the grenadiers, eager to show off their decoration before their
comrades, were about to go off with their three prisoners, when
Napoleon perceived that the Austrian servant was weeping bitterly.
He reassured him as to his safety, but the poor lad replied, sobbing,
that he knew the French treated their prisoners well, but that, as
he had on him a belt containing nearly all his captain's money, he
was afraid that the officer would accuse him of deserting in order
to rob him, and he was heart-broken at the thought. Touched by the
worthy fellow's distress, the emperor told him that he was free,
and as soon as we were before Vienna he would be passed through
the outposts, and be able to return to his master. Then, taking a
rouleau of 1,000 francs, he put it in the man's hand, saying, "One
must honor goodness wherever it is shown." Lastly, the emperor
gave some pieces of gold to each of the other two prisoners, and
ordered that they too should be sent back to the Austrian outposts,
so that they might forget the fright which we had caused them.




A RESCUE FROM SHIPWRECK

By Arthur Quiller-Couch



On the 13th of October, 1811, we were cruising in the _Endymion_,
off the north of Ireland, in a fine clear day succeeding one in
which it had almost blown a hurricane. The master had just taken
his meridian observation, the officer of the watch had reported
the latitude, the captain had ordered it to be made twelve o'clock,
and the boatswain, catching a word from the lieutenant, was in the
full swing of his "Pipe to dinner!" when the captain called out--

"Stop! stop! I meant to go about first."

"Pipe belay! Mr. King," smartly ejaculated the officer of the watch,
addressing the boatswain; which words, being heard over the decks,
caused a sudden cessation of the sounds peculiar to that hungry
season. The cook stood with a huge six-pound piece of pork uplifted
on his tormentors, his mate ceased to bale out the pea-soup, and
the whole ship seemed paralysed. The boatswain, having checked
himself in the middle of his long-winded dinner-tune, drew a fresh
inspiration, and dashed off into the opposite sharp, abrupt, cutting
sound of the "Pipe belay!" the essence of which peculiar note is
that its sounds should be understood and acted on with the utmost
degree of promptitude.

There was now a dead pause of perfect silence all over the ship,
in expectation of what was to come next. All eyes were turned to
the chief.

"No; never mind; we'll wait," cried the good-natured captain,
unwilling to interfere with the comforts of the men; "let them go
to dinner; we shall tack at one o'clock, it will do just as well."

The boatswain, at a nod from the lieutenant of the watch, at once
recommenced his merry "Pipe to dinner" notes; upon which a loud,
joyous laugh rang from one end of the ship to the other. This
hearty burst was not in the slightest degree disrespectful; on
the contrary, it sounded like a grateful expression of glee at the
prospect of the approaching good things which, by this time, were
finding their speedy course down the hatchways.

Nothing was now heard but the cheerful chuckle of a well-fed company,
the clatter of plates and knives, and the chit-chat of light hearts
under the influence of temperate excitement.

When one o'clock came, the hands were called "About ship!" But as
the helm was in the very act of going down, the look-out-man at
the fore-topmast head called out--

"I see something a little on the lee-bow, sir!"

"Something! What do you mean by 'something'?" cried the first
lieutenant, making a motion to the quarter-master at the con to
right the helm again.

"I don't know what it is, sir," cried the man; "it is black,
however."

"Black! Is it like a whale?" asked the officer, playing a little
with his duty.

"Yes, sir," cried the look-out-man, unconscious that Shakespeare
had been before him, "very like a whale!"

The captain and the officer exchanged glances at the poor fellow
aloft having fallen into the trap laid for him, and the temptation
must have been great to have inquired whether it were not "like a
weasel"; but this might have been stretching the jest too far; so
the lieutenant merely called to the signal midshipman, and desired
him to skull up to the mast-head with his glass, to see what he
made of the look-out-man's whale.

"It looks like a small rock," cried young "Skylark" as soon as
he reached the top-gallant-yard and had taken the glass from his
shoulders, across which he had slung it with a three-yarn fox.

"Stuff and nonsense!" replied the officers, "there are no rocks
hereabouts; we can but just see the top of Muckish, behind Tory
Island. Take another spy at your object, youngster; the mast-head-man
and you will make it out to be something by-and-by, between you,
I dare say."

"It's a boat, sir!" roared out the boy. "It's a boat adrift, two
or three points on the lee-bow."

"Oh-ho!" said the officer, "that may be, sir," turning with
an interrogative air to the captain, who gave orders to keep the
frigate away a little that this strange-looking affair might be
investigated.  Meanwhile, as the ship was not to be tacked, the watch
was called, and one half only of the people remained on deck. The
rest strolled, sleepy, below; or disposed themselves in the sun on
the lee gangway, mending their clothes, or telling long yarns.

A couple of fathoms of the fore and main sheets, and a slight touch
of the weather topsail and top-gallant braces, with a check on the
bow-lines, made the swift-footed _Endymion_ spring forward, like a
greyhound slipped from the leash. In a short time we made out that
the object we were in chase of was, in fact, a boat. On approaching
a little nearer, some heads of people became visible, and then several
figures stood up, waving their hats to us. We brought to, just to
windward of them, and sent a boat to see what was the matter.

It turned out as we supposed; they had belonged to a ship which
had foundered in the recent gale.  Although their vessel had become
water-logged, they had contrived to hoist their long-boat out, and
to stow in her twenty-one persons, some of them seamen and some
passengers; of these, two were women, and three children. Their
vessel, it appeared, had sprung a leak in middle of the gale, and,
in spite of all their pumping, the water gained so fast upon them
that they took to baling as a more effectual method. After a time,
when this resource failed, the men, totally worn out and quite
dispirited, gave it up as a bad job, abandoned their pumps, and
actually lay down to sleep. In the morning the gale broke; but
the ship had filled in the meantime, and was falling fast over her
broadside.  With some difficulty they disentangled the long-boat
from the wreck, and thought themselves fortunate in being able to
catch hold of a couple of small oars, with a studding-sail-boom
for a mast, on which they hoisted a fragment of their main-hatchway
tarpaulin for a sail. One ham and three gallons of water were all
the provisions they were able to secure; and in this fashion they
were set adrift on the wide sea. The master of the ship, with two
gentlemen who were passengers, preferred to stick by the vessel
while there was any part of her above water.

This, at least, was the story told us by the people we picked up.

The wind had been fair for the shore when the long-boat left the
wreck, and though their ragged sail scarcely drove them along,
their oars were only just sufficient to keep the boat's head the
right way.  Of course they made but slow progress; so that when they
rose on the top of a swell, which was still very long and high in
consequence of the gale, they could only just discover the distant
land, Muckish, a remarkable flat-topped mountain on the northwest
coast of Ireland, not very far from the promontory called the Bloody
Foreland.

There appeared to have been little discipline among this forlorn
crew, even when the breeze was in their favour; but when the wind
chopped round, and blew off shore, they gave themselves up to
despair, laid in their oars, let the sail flap to pieces, gobbled
up all their provisions, and drank out their whole stock of water.
Meanwhile the boat, which had been partially stove, in the confusion
of clearing the ship, began to fill with water; and, as they all
admitted afterwards, if it had not been for the courage and patience
of the women under this sharp trial, they must have gone to the
bottom.

As it was both cold and rainy, the poor children, who were too young
to understand the nature of their situation, or the inutility of
complaining, incessantly cried out for water, and begged that more
clothes might be wrapped round them. Even after they came to us the
little things were still crying, "Oh! do give us some water"--words
which long sounded in our ears. None of these women were by any means
strong--on the contrary, one of them seemed to be very delicate;
yet they managed to rouse the men to a sense of their duty by
a mixture of reproaches and entreaties, combined with the example
of that singular fortitude which often gives more than masculine
vigour to female minds in seasons of danger. How long this might
have lasted I cannot say; but probably the strength of the men,
however stimulated, must have given way before night, especially
as the wind freshened, and the boat was driving further to sea. Had
it not been for the accident of the officer of the forenoon watch
on board the _Endymion_ being unaware of the captain's intention
to tack before dinner, these poor people, most probably, would all
have perished.

The women, dripping wet, and scarcely capable of moving hand or
foot, were lifted up the side, in a state almost of stupor; for
they were confused by the hurry of the scene, and their fortitude
had given way the moment all high motive to exertion was over. One
of them, on reaching the quarterdeck, slipped through our hands,
and falling on her knees, wept violently as she returned thanks
for such a wonderful deliverance; but her thoughts were bewildered,
and, fancying that her child was lost, she struck her hands
together, and leaping again on her feet, screamed out, "Oh! where's
my bairn--my wee bairn?"

At this instant a huge quarter-master, whose real name or nickname
(I forget which) was Billy Magnus, appeared over the gangway
hammocks, holding the missing urchin in his immense paw, where it
squealed and twisted itself about, like Gulliver between the finger
and thumb of the Brobdingnag farmer. The mother had just strength
enough left to snatch her offspring from Billy, when she sank down
flat on the deck, completely exhausted.

By means of a fine blazing fire, and plenty of hot tea, toast,
and eggs, it was easy to remedy one class of these poor people's
wants; but how to rig them out in dry clothes was a puzzle, till
the captain bethought him of a resource which answered very well.
He sent to several of the officers for their dressing-gowns; and
these, together with supplies from his own wardrobe, made capital
gowns and petticoats--at least, till the more fitting drapery of
the ladies was dried. The children were tumbled into bed in the
same compartment, close to the fire; and it would have done any
one's heart good to have witnessed the style in which the provisions
vanished from the board, while the women wept, prayed, and laughed,
by turns.

The rugged seamen, when taken out of the boat, showed none of these
symptoms of emotion, but running instinctively to the scuttle-butt,
asked eagerly for a drop of water. As the most expeditious method
of feeding and dressing them, they were distributed among the
different messes, one to each, as far as they went. Thus they were
all soon provided with dry clothing, and with as much to eat as
they could stow away; for the doctor, when consulted, said they
had not fasted so long as to make it dangerous to give them as much
food as they were disposed to swallow. With the exception of the
ham devoured in the boat, and which, after all, was but a mouthful
apiece, they had tasted nothing for more than thirty hours; so
that, I suppose, better justice was never done to his Majesty's
beef, pork, bread, and other good things, with which our fellows
insisted on stuffing the newcomers, till they fairly cried out for
mercy and begged to be allowed a little sleep.

Possibly some of us were more disposed to sympathise with the
distress of these people when adrift in their open boat on the wide
sea, from having ourselves, about a month before, been pretty much
in the same predicament. It always adds, as any one knows, greatly
to our consideration for the difficulties and dangers of others,
to have recently felt some touch of similar distress in our own
persons.  This maxim, though it is familiar enough, makes so little
impression on our ordinary thoughts, that when circumstances occur
to fix our attention closely upon it we are apt to arrive as suddenly
at the perception of its truth as if it were a new discovery.




REBECCA THE DRUMMER

By Charles Barnard



It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the ship first appeared.
At once there was the greatest excitement in the village. It was
a British warship. What would she do? Would she tack about in the
bay to pick up stray coasters as prizes, or would she land soldiers
to burn the town? In either case there would be trouble enough.

Those were sad days, those old war-times in 1812.  The sight of a
British warship in Boston Bay was not pleasant. We were poor then,
and had no monitors to go out and sink the enemy or drive him off.
Our navy was small, and, though we afterwards had the victory and
sent the troublesome ships away, never to return, at that time they
often came near enough, and the good people in the little village
of Scituate Harbor were in great distress over the strange ship
that had appeared at the mouth of the harbor.

It was a fishing-place in those days, and the harbor was full
of smacks and boats of all kinds. The soldiers could easily enter
the harbor and burn up, everything, and no one could prevent them.
There were men enough to make a good fight, but they were poorly
armed, and had nothing but fowling-pieces and shotguns, while the
soldiers had muskets and cannon.

The tide was down during the morning, so that there was no danger
for a few hours; and all the people went out on the cliffs and
beaches to watch the ship and to see what would happen next.

On the end of the low, sandy spit that makes one side of the harbor,
stood the little white tower known as Scituate Light. In the house
behind the light lived the keeper's family, consisting of himself,
wife, and several boys and girls. At the time the ship appeared,
the keeper was away, and there was no one at home save Mrs. Bates,
the eldest daughter, Rebecca, about fourteen years old, two of the
little boys, and a young girl named Sarah Winsor, who was visiting
Rebecca.

Rebecca had been the first to discover the ship, while she was
up in the light-house tower polishing the reflector. She at once
descended the steep stairs and sent off the boys to the village to
give the alarm.

For an hour or two, the ship tacked and stood off to sea, then
tacked again, and made for the shore.  Men, women and children
watched her with anxious interest. Then the tide turned and began
to flow into the harbor. The boats aground on the flats floated,
and those in deep water swung round at their moorings. Now the
soldiers would probably land. If the people meant to save anything
it was time to be stirring. Boats were hastily put out from the
wharf, and such clothing, nets and other valuables as could be
handled were brought ashore, loaded into hay carts, and carried
away.

It was of no use to resist. The soldiers, of course, were well
armed, and if the people made a stand among the houses, that would
not prevent the enemy from destroying the shipping.

As the tide spread out over the sandy flats it filled the harbor
so that, instead of a small channel, it became a wide and beautiful
bay. The day was fine, and there was a gentle breeze rippling the
water and making it sparkle in the sun. What a splendid day for
fishing or sailing! Not much use to think of either while that
warship crossed and recrossed before the harbor mouth.

About two o'clock the tide reached high water mark, and, to the
dismay of the people, the ship let go her anchor, swung her yards
round, and lay quiet about half-a-mile from the first cliff. They
were going to land to burn the town. With their spy-glass the people
could see the boats lowered to take the soldiers ashore.

Ah! then there was confusion and uproar. Every horse in the village
was put into some kind of team, and the women and children were
hurried off to the woods behind the town. The men would stay and
offer as brave a resistance as possible. Their guns were light and
poor, but they could use the old fish-houses as a fort, and perhaps
make a brave fight of it.

If worse came to worse, they could at least retreat and take to
the shelter of the woods.

It was a splendid sight. Five large boats, manned by sailors, and
filled with soldiers in gay red coats. How their guns glittered
in the sun!  The oars all moved together in regular order, and the
officers in their fine uniforms stood up to direct the expedition.
It was a courageous company come with a warship and cannon to fight
helpless fishermen.

So Rebecca Bates and Sarah Winsor thought, as they sat up in the
light-house tower looking down on the procession of boats as it
went past the point and entered the harbor.

"Oh! If I only were a man!" cried Rebecca.

"What could you do? See what a lot of them; and look at their guns!"

"I don't care. I'd fight. I'd use father's old shotgun--anything.
Think of uncle's new boat and the sloop!"

"Yes; and all the boats."

"It's too bad; isn't it?"

"Yes; and to think we must sit here and see it all and not lift a
finger to help."

"Do you think there will be a fight?"

"I don't know. Uncle and father are in the village, and they will
do all they can."

"See how still it is in town. There's not a man to be seen."

"Oh, they are hiding till the soldiers get nearer.  Then we'll hear
the shots and the drum."

"The drum! How can they? It's here. Father brought it home to mend
it last night."

"Did he? Oh! then let's--"

"See, the first boat has reached the sloop. Oh!  oh! They are going
to burn her."

"Isn't it mean?"

"It's too bad!--too--"

"Where is that drum?"

"It's in the kitchen."

"I've got a great mind to go down and beat it."

"What good would that do?"

"Scare 'em."

"They'd see it was only two girls, and they would laugh and go on
burning just the same."

"No. We could hide behind the sand hills and the bushes. Come,
let's--"

"Oh, look! look! The sloop's afire!"

"Come, I can't stay and see it any more. The cowardly Britishers to
burn the boats! Why don't they go up to the town and fight like--"

"Come, let's get the drum. It'll do no harm; and perhaps--"

"Well, let's. There's the fife, too; we might take that with us."

"Yes; and we'll--"

No time for further talk. Down the steep stairs of the tower rushed
these two young patriots, bent on doing what they could for their
country. They burst into the kitchen like a whirlwind, with rosy
cheeks and flying hair. Mrs. Bates sat sorrowfully gazing out of
the window at the scene of destruction going on in the harbor, and
praying for her country and that the dreadful war might soon he
over. She could not help. Son and husband were shouldering their
poor old guns in the town, and there was nothing to do but to watch
and wait and pray.

Not so the two girls. They meant to do something, and, in a fever
of excitement, they got the drum and took the cracked fife from
the bureau drawer. Mrs. Bates, intent on the scene outside, did
not heed them, and they slipped out by the back door, unnoticed.

They must be careful, or the soldiers would see them. They went
round back of the house to the north and towards the outside beach,
and then turned and plowed through the deep sand just above high
water mark. They must keep out of sight of the boats, and of the
ship, also. Luckily, she was anchored to the south of the light; and
as the beach curved to the west, they soon left her out of sight.
Then they took to the water side, and, with the drum between them,
ran as fast as they could towards the mainland. Presently they
reached the low heaps of sand that showed where the spit joined
the fields and woods.

Panting and excited, they tightened up the drum and tried the fife
softly.

"You take the fife, Sarah, and I'll drum."

"All right; but we mustn't stand still. We must march along the
shore towards the light."

"Won't they see us?"

"No; we'll walk next the water on the outside beach."

"Oh, yes; and they'll think it's soldiers going down to the Point
to head 'em off."

"Just so. Come, begin! One, two,--one, two!"

Drum! drum!! drum!!!

Squeak! squeak!! squeak!!!

"For'ard--march!"

"Ha! ha!"

The fife stopped.

"Don't laugh. You'll spoil everything, and I can't pucker my lips."

Drum! drum!! drum!!!

Squeak! squeak!! squeak!!!

The men in the town heard it and were amazed beyond measure. Had
the soldiers arrived from Boston? What did it mean? Who were coming?

Louder and louder on the breeze came the roll of a sturdy drum
and the sound of a brave fife. The soldiers in the boats heard the
noise and paused in their work of destruction. The officers ordered
everybody into the boats in the greatest haste. The people were
rising! They were coming down the Point with cannons, to head them
off! They would all be captured, and perhaps hung by the dreadful
Americans!

How the drum rolled! The fife changed its tune. It played "Yankee
Doodle,"--that horrid tune! Hark! The men were cheering in the
town!  there were thousands of them in the woods along the shore!

In grim silence marched the two girls,--plodding over the sharp
stones, splashing through the puddles,--Rebecca beating the old drum
with might and main; Sarah blowing the fife with shrill determination.

How the Britishers scrambled into their boats!  One of the brave
officers was nearly left behind on the burning sloop. Another fell
overboard and wet his good clothes, in his haste to escape from
the American army marching down the beach--a thousand strong! How
the sailors pulled! No fancy rowing now, but desperate haste to
get out of the place and escape to the ship.

How the people yelled and cheered on the shore!  Fifty men or more
jumped into the boats to prepare for the chase. Ringing shots began
to crack over the water.

Louder and louder rolled the terrible drum.  Sharp and clear rang
out the cruel fife.

Nearly exhausted, half dead with fatigue, the girls toiled
on,--tearful, laughing, ready to drop on the wet sand, and still
beating and blowing with fiery courage.

The boats swept swiftly out of the harbor on the outgoing tide.
The fishermen came up with the burning boats. Part stopped to put
out the fires, and the rest pursued the flying enemy with such
shots as they could get at them. In the midst of it all, the sun
went down.

The red-coats did not return a shot. They expected every minute
to see a thousand men open on them at short range from the beach,
and they reserved their powder.

Out of the harbor they went in confusion and dismay. The ship
weighed anchor and ran out her big guns, but did not fire a shot.
Darkness fell down on the scene as the boats reached the ship.  Then
she sent a round shot towards the light. It fell short and threw
a great fountain of white water into the air.

The girls saw it, and dropping their drum and fife, sat down on
the beach and laughed till they cried.

That night the ship sailed away. The great American army of two
had arrived, and she thought it wise to retreat in time!

Rebecca lived until old and feeble in body, but ever brave in
spirit and strong in patriotism, she told this story herself to
the writer, and it is true.




THE MESSENGER

By M. E. M. Davis



"Those reptiles of Americans, I say to you, Marcel,--mark my
words!--that they have it in their heads to betray Louisiana to
the Spaniard. They are tr-r-raitors!" Old Galmiche rolled the word
viciously on his French tongue.

"Yes," assented his young companion, absently.  He quite agreed with
Galmiche--the Americans were traitors, oh, of the blackest black!
But the sky overhead was so blue, the wind blowing in from the Gulf
and lifting the dark curls on his bared forehead was so moist and
sweet, the scene under his eyes, although familiar, was so enchanting!
He rose, the better to see it all once again.

Grand Terre, the low-lying strip of an island upon which he stood,
was at that time--September, 1814--the stronghold of Jean Lafitte,
the famous freebooter, or, as he chose rather to call himself,
privateer, and his band of smugglers and buccaneers.

The island, which lies across the mouth of Barataria Bay, with a
narrow pass at each end opening, into the Gulf of Mexico, had been
well fortified.  Lafitte's own bungalow-like house was protected
on the Gulf side by an enclosing wall surmounted by small cannon.
The rich furniture within the house--the pictures, books, Oriental
draperies, silver and gold plate and rare crystal--attested
equally--so declared his enemies--to the fastidious taste of the
Lord of Barataria and to his lawlessness.

The landlocked bay holds in its arms many small islands.

These served Lafitte as places of deposit for smuggled or pirated
goods. Water-craft of every description--more than one sloop or
lugger decorated with gay lengths of silk or woolen cloth--rode at
ease in the secure harbor. In a curve of the mainland a camp had
been established for the negroes imported in defiance of United
States law, from Africa, to be sold in Louisiana and elsewhere.
The buccaneers themselves were quartered on the main island.

Marcel Lefort, the slender, dark-eyed Creole _voyageur_, drew a deep
sigh of delight as he resumed his seat on the grassy sward beside
Galmiche. But he sprang again to his feet, for the tranquil morning
air was suddenly disturbed by the reverberating boom of a cannon!

Island, bay and mainland were instantly in commotion.  Lafitte himself
appeared on the east end, of his veranda, spy-glass in hand.

The noted outlaw was a tall, sinewy, graceful man, then a little
past thirty, singularly handsome, with clear-cut features, dark
hair and fierce gray eyes which could, upon occasion, soften to
tenderness.  The hands which lifted the spy-glass were white and
delicate.

He lowered the glass.

"A British sloop of war in the offing," he remarked to his
lieutenant, Dominique You, standing beside him. "She has sent off
a pinnace with a flag of truce. I go to meet it. Order an answering
salute."

A moment later he had stepped into his four-oared barge and was
skimming lightly down the Great Pass toward the Gulf.

When he returned, two officers in the British uniform were seated
in the barge with him. The freebooters, a formidable array of
French, Italians, Portuguese and West Indians, with here and there
a sunburned American, stared with bold and threatening eyes at
the intruders as they passed through the whispering _chnai_ (oak
grove) to the house, to unfold their mission to the "Great Chief,"
and to share his princely hospitality.

Shortly after nightfall of the same day, on one of the little inner
islands, Marcel Lefort stood leaning upon his long boat paddle,
awaiting orders; his pirogue was drawn up among the reeds hard by.
He lifted his head, but hardly had his keen eye caught the shadowy
outlines of a boat on the bay before its occupants had landed.

"The lad is too young," objected Dominique You, as the two men drew
near.

"His father was a gunner in Kelerec's army at sixteen," returned
Lafitte. "You are sure of the route, Marcel?" he continued, touching
the _voyageur_ on the shoulder.

"Yes, my captain. As the bird is of his flight through the air.
This is not the first time," he added proudly, "that I have brought
secret despatches from New Orleans to Barataria."

"True. Now listen. You will set out at once with this." He handed
the lad a small packet wrapped in oil silk, which Marcel thrust
into his bosom. "You will make all speed to the city," he continued.
"There you will find Monsieur Pierre Lafitte, my brother--whether
he be in prison, at the smithy, or at the Cafe Turpin--"

"Yes, my captain."

"And give the packet into his own hand--"

"Yes, my captain."

"None but his, you understand. In case the packet should be lost or
stolen by the way, you will all the same seek monsieur, my brother,
and say to him that the British have this day offered to me, Jean
Lafitte, Lord of Barataria, the sum of thirty thousand dollars,
the rank of captain in the British navy, and a free pardon for my
men, if I will assist them in their invasion of Louisiana. I am
sure that monsieur, my brother, will not need to be told that Jean
Lafitte spurns this insulting proposition.  But you will say to
him that the governor must be warned at once. The British officers
will be--detained--here until you are well on your way."

"Yes, my captain."

"You quite understand, Marcel? And you quite understand also that
if you risk your life, it is for Louisiana?"

"For Louisiana!" echoed Marcel, solemnly. He touched his cap in the
darkness, stepped warily into the pirogue, pushed off, and dropped
his paddle into the water.

The needle-like boat threaded its way in and out among the islands,
and leaped into the mouth of a sluggish gulfward-stealing bayou.
Here a few strokes of the paddle swept pirogue and paddler into
a strange and lonely world. The tall cypress-trees on each bank,
draped with funeral moss, cast impenetrable shadows on the water;
the deathlike silence was broken only by the occasional ominous
hoot of an owl or the wheezy snort of an alligator; the clammy air
breathed poison. But the stars overhead were bright, and Marcel's
heart throbbed exultant.

"For Louisiana!" he murmured. "He might have chosen Galmiche,
or Jose, or Nez Coupe; but it is I, Marcel Lefort, whom the Great
Chief has sent with the warning. For Louisiana! For Louisiana!" His
muscular arms thrilled to the finger-tips with the rhythmic sweep
of his paddle to the words.

Turn after turn of the sinuous, ever-narrowing bayou slipped behind
him as the night advanced.  He kept a wary eye upon the black
masses of foliage to right and left, knowing that a runaway negro,
a mutineer from Barataria, or a murderous Choctaw might lurk there
in wait for the passing boatman; or an American spy,--he quickened
his strokes at the thought!--to wrest from him the precious despatch.

"Those vipers of Americans!" he breathed. "The Governor Claiborne,
since the Great Chief trusts him, must have become a Creole at
his heart. But the rest have the heart of a cockatrice. And these
British, as Galmiche says, are surely Americans in disguise."

The young Creole's ideas were not strange, his upbringing considered.
He had stood in 1803, a boy of eight, beside his father on the Place
d'Armes of New Orleans and watched the French flag descend slowly
from the tall staff, and the Stars and Stripes ascend proudly in
its place. He had seen the impotent tears and heard the impotent
groans of the French Creoles when the new American governor,
standing on the balcony of the _cabildo_, took possession, in the
name of the United States, of the French province of Louisiana.

Daily since then, almost hourly, he had heard his father and his
father's friends denounce the Americans as double-dyed traitors,
who had bought Louisiana from France that they might hand it over
to the still more detested Spaniards.

"Vipers of Americans!" he repeated, humming under his breath a
refrain much in vogue:



  "Americam coquin,
  'Bille en nanquin,
  Voleur du pain."


("American rogue, dressed in nankeen, bread-stealer.")

"It will soon be morning." He glanced up at the open sky, for
he was breasting the surface of a small lake. "Good!" The pirogue
slipped into another bayou at the upper end of the lagoon. The
shadows here seemed thicker than ever after the starlit lake.

"Ugh!" ejaculated Marcel. An unseen log had lurched against the
pirogue, upsetting it and throwing its occupant into the water. He
sank, but rose in a flash and reached out, swimming, after pirogue
and paddle.

But the log lurched forward again, snapping viciously, and before
he could draw back, a huge alligator had seized his left forearm
between his great jaws. The conical teeth sank deep in the flesh.

Marcel tugged under water at the knife in his belt. It seemed
an eternity before he could draw it. A swift vision of the Great
Chief's brooding eyes darted through his brain.

"For Louisiana!" The words burst involuntarily from his lips as
the keen blade buried itself under the knotty scales deep in the
monster's throat.  The mighty jaws relaxed and dropped the limp
and bloody arm.

Half an hour later the messenger stepped again into his recovered
boat. A groan forced its way between his clenched teeth as he set
his paddle to the dark waters of the bayou, but its rhythmic sweep
did not slacken.

In the gray dawnlight of the second morning Lafitte's messenger came
up from the Mississippi River at New Orleans, and walked swiftly
across the Place d'Armes into Conde Street.

The nineteen-year-old lad looked twice his age; his lips were
parched, his eyes were bloodshot, a red spot glowed in each livid
cheek. One arm, wrapped in a bloody sleeve of his hunting-shirt,
hung limply at his side. He paid no heed to the wondering questions
of the few people he met, but sped like one in a dream to his goal.

In the great smithy of the Lafitte brothers, which served as a blind
for their smuggling operations, the forges were already aglow, the
army of black slaves at work, and Pierre Lafitte, who, although
outlawed like his brother, knew himself secure in this citadel, was
giving orders. At sight of Marcel he leaped forward. "Why, Marcel!"
he cried.  "Why, my poor lad, what--"

But Marcel had thrust the packet into his hand, and dropped as one
dead at his feet.


"Those Americans, they are traitors, oh, of the blackest black!"
The familiar phrase in his father's well-known voice fell upon
Marcel's returning consciousness.  He listened with closed eyes.
"And that General An-drrew Jack-_son_, look you, Coulon, he has
the liver of a Spaniard. He will betray Louisiana. That sees itself!"

"That sees itself," echoed old Coulon.

Marcel opened his eyes. "Who is General Andrew Jackson?" he
demanded, surprised at the stiffness of his own tongue. And those
hands, pale and inert, lying on the coverlet before him, could
they be his own? And why should he, Marcel, be in his bed in broad
daylight? Suddenly he remembered that yesterday he had fetched a
despatch to Monsieur Pierre from the Great Chief--

"Did M'sieu' Pierre--" he began, eagerly, trying to rise on his
elbow.

"Thank God!" ejaculated old Lefort, commonly called "Piff-Paff,"
springing to the bedside. "The boy is himself once more. But not
so fast, my little Marcel, not so fast!"

Many weeks, it appeared, had passed since Marcel had been borne
in the strong arms of Pierre Lafitte to Lefort's cottage near the
smithy. Fever and delirium had set in before the worn figure was
laid on the couch.

"But now," tears were streaming down the weather-beaten face of
the old gunner, "now, by God's help, we shall get on our feet!"

"But _who_ is General Andrew Jackson?" persisted Marcel, querulously.

"General An-drrew Jack-_son_," replied Coulon, seeing that the
father's throat was choked with sobs, "General An-drrew Jack-_son_
is an American.  He arrives from day to day at New Orleans. He
is in league with those British who are Americans in disguise. He
comes to betray Louisiana to the Spaniard."

"The monster!" said Marcel, drowsily.

His recovery thenceforth was rapid. Old Lefort's private forge was
in his own court-yard.  Here, among the rustling bananas and the
flowering pomegranates, where he had played, a motherless infant,
the slim, emaciated lad sat or walked about in the November sunshine.
And while Marcel hung about, the smith, hammering out the delicate
Lefort wrought-iron work so prized in New Orleans to-day, anathematized
indiscriminately General Jackson, the Spaniards, the British and
the Americans.

Meanwhile strange sounds filtered into the courtyard from without--the
beat of drums, the shrill concord of fifes, the measured tread of
marching feet.

Marcel heard and wondered. He was not permitted to walk abroad,
but what he saw from his window under the roof quickened his blood.

"Is it that Governor Claiborne has heeded the Great Chief's warning?"
he asked of his father.

"The governor is an American," said Piff-Paff.  "All Americans
are perfidious. But the traitor of traitors is General An-drrew
Jack-_son_. Be quiet, my son. Do you wish to die of fever?"

"When I do get out," Marcel was saying to himself one sunny day
early in December, "I will slay the traitor with my own hand."

A steady tread came echoing down the corridor, and the Great Chief
stepped into the court-yard.

"M'sieu' Jean!" cried Piff-Paff, running to meet him.

Lafitte pressed the old man's hands in his, and turned to Marcel.

"Aha, my little game-cock, there you are!" he said, catching the
boy in his arms. "My faith, but you paddled well for Louisiana that
time we know of! And the arm? Is it all there?" A winning tenderness
softened the fierce eyes. "But I am pressed for time, my friends,"
he continued, stepping back.

As he spoke he unbuckled his belt, to which hung a short sword with
jeweled cross-hilt. "Keep this lad, in memory of Lafitte--and the
alligator," he laughed, handing sword and belt to Marcel, who stood
open-mouthed, unable for sheer ecstasy to utter a word.

"And look you, Marcel," his tones became grave, "I charge you
henceforth to forget the road to Barataria. It leads to riches,
yes, but it is a crooked and dishonest road. I would I had never
myself set foot in such ways!" He paused a moment, his eyes bent
on the ground." Learn your father's honest trade. Live by it, an
honest man and a good citizen."

"Yes, my captain," stammered Marcel.

"Swear!" said Lafitte, imperiously.

"I swear!" breathed Marcel, his hand on the cross-hilt of the sword.
"By God's help!"

"Amen!" said Lafitte, reverently. He turned away.

"But where are you going, M'sieu' Jean?" cried Piff-Paff. "Do you
not know that a reward of five hundred dollars is offered for your
arrest?"

"I know." Lafitte shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.  "I go to
offer my services to General Jackson."

_"Gen-e-ral Jackson!_" echoed Piff-Paff. His jaws dropped. He stood
like one suddenly turned to stone while the chief's retreating
footsteps rang down the alleyway. "General Jack-_son!_" he repeated,
mechanically. "But he shall not!"

With a roar of rage he leaped for the saber--his old saber which
hung by the forge. "Myself, I will slay the traitor Jack-_son_
before M'sieu' Jean dishonors himself! I, Blaise Lefort, will save
him."

He dashed out. Marcel followed, buckling on his cross-hilted sword
as he ran.

"Nevertheless it is I who will destroy the traitor!" he muttered.
"I have already said it."

The narrow streets of the old town presented a unique spectacle.
The tall dormer-window houses with their latticed balconies looked
down upon hurrying crowds almost as motley as those of the carnival.
But the faces of these men and women were earnest, grimly determined.

And soldiers, soldiers everywhere! United States soldiers in trim
uniforms; Coffee's Tennesseeans in brown shirts and slouched hats;
Planche's gaily clad Creole infantry; D'Aquin's freemen of color;
Indians in blankets and leggings--all carrying guns, all stepping
briskly to drumbeat and fife-call.

Pennons, guidons and banners tossed about in the orderly confusion;
American and French flags waved together from balconies and windows.

"But, look!" exclaimed Marcel in pained astonishment, "our Creoles
are drilling with the Americans!"

"They are mad!" growled Piff-Paff. "This General Jack-_son_ has
poisoned their hearts."

In truth, the threatened attack on New Orleans by the British
had united Creoles and Americans.  A few only of the former held
aloof--like old Lefort himself; these, honest in their convictions,
were uncompromising.

Marcel set his teeth, gripping his sword. At the entrance to General
Jackson's headquarters in Royal Street they were questioned by a
sentry, who looked from the swarthy old man to the pale lad, and
let them pass.

They hurried down the long, dim corridor, which opened upon a sunny
courtyard hung with blossoming rose vines. Huge water-jars were
ranged against the wall. A fountain played in the center, and
round the pool beneath, some soldiers in uniform were lounging and
gossiping. Marcel glanced curiously at these as he followed his
father up the winding stair. The arched hall above, with its Spanish
windows, opened into an anteroom.

Father and son paused instinctively here among the shadows. The
large room beyond the folding doors, which were thrown open, was
filled with the afternoon sunshine; a table strewn with maps and
papers was placed near one of the long windows.  Beyond it, in
an armchair, was seated a man in an attitude of rigid attention.
Several staff-officers were gathered about him.

The Great Chief stood directly in front of the seated figure. He
had doubtless been speaking for some minutes. Now, holding out his
sword, he concluded:

"And I offer my services and those of my Baratarians in this hour
of my country's peril to General Jackson."

He spoke in English. Marcel, who was acquainted with the forbidden
tongue, glanced sidewise at his father. He saw that the old man
had also understood. Both father arid son, as if moved by the same
spring, made a step forward.

But both paused. General Jackson had risen from his seat. The
light fell full upon his face as he reached out without a word and
grasped Lafitte's hand.

At sight of the tall, martial figure, erect and commanding in the
simple uniform of the United States army, the compelling face,
with its crown of bristling silvered hair, the eyes that shone with
a curious, soft fire, the firm mouth and masterful chin, Marcel
Lefort's soul seemed drawn from his bosom as by an invisible hand.
A mist gathered before his eyes, his throat clicked, a mysterious
longing suddenly swept over him from head to foot.

Before he knew what he was about he had traversed the antechamber
and entered the larger room, his footfalls on the bare polished
floor disturbing the dramatic silence.

"My captain!" he cried, stopping short and lifting his eager, boyish
face to the Great Chief. "My general!" He turned with outstretched
sword to the greater chief beyond. He wished to say more, but the
throbbing of his heart was too loud in his ears.

Suddenly Marcel heard a footstep sound behind him. His father! He
had quite forgotten his father.

"He will slay me where I stand!" he groaned inwardly.

A hand whose touch thrilled him was slipped under his arm. He felt
himself drawn to his father's side.

"General An-drrew Jack-_son_,"--the old gunner jpoke with great
dignity and feeling although his English was queer,--"we haf come,
my son an' me, to hoffer ou' swo'de to dose United State'. Yes, my
general. If dose United State' will make us the honah to haccep'."

"By the Eternal," cried General Jackson, surprised into his favorite
oath, "with such a spirit in the air, I would storm all the powers
of the world!"

In less than a month the memorable Battle of New Orleans was
fought--January 8, 1815. The Baratarians, under command of Jean
Lafitte, rendered distinguished service in the short but bloody
and decisive engagement. The two batteries directed by Beluche and
Dominique You were especially commended in the general's official
reports.  Piff-Paff and his son served side by side in Dominique
You's battery.

When the battle was over, Marcel stood with his fellow gunners
on the parapet of Rodriguez Canal and looked out across the
field--smoke-hung under the cloudless morning sky. The British
dead, in their scarlet uniforms, were lying row on row, one behind
the other, like grain cut down by the mower's scythe. The boy's
heart sickened. But a prolonged cheer came ringing along the parapet.

General Jackson was walking slowly down the line, stopping in front
of each command to salute the men and to praise their coolness and
courage.  As he came up, the Baratarians broke into wild shouts.
The great commander shook hands with Lafitte and his brother, who
stood a little apart.

"Well done, Baratarians!" he said, stepping into the midst of the
powder-grimed crew. His swift glance fell upon a lad whose luminous
eyes were fixed upon him.

"Well done, my little creole!" he added, a rare smile flashing
across his worn face.

"My general," said Marcel, saluting proudly, "me, I am an American!"




HUMPHRY DAVY AND THE SAFETY-LAMP

By George C. Towle



Few boys have ever led a happier, busier, or more varied existence
than did Humphry Davy. He was the son of a poor wood-carver, who
lived in the pretty seaside town of Penzance, in England, where
Humphry was born in 1778.  Lowly, however, as was his birth, in
his earliest years Humphry gave many proofs that nature had endowed
him with rare talents.

Some of the stories told of his childish brightness are hard to
believe. They relate, for instance, that before he was two years
old he could talk almost as plainly and clearly as a grown person;
that he could repeat many passages of "Pilgrim's Progress," from
having heard them, before he could read; and that at five years
old he could read very rapidly, and remembered almost everything
he read.

His father, the wood-carver, had died while Humphry was still very
young, and had left his family poor. But by good-fortune a kind
neighbor and friend, a Mr. Tonkine, took care of the widow and her
children, and obtained a place for Humphry as an apprentice with an
apothecary of the town. Humphry proved, indeed, a rather troublesome
inmate of the apothecary's house. He set up a chemical laboratory
in his little room upstairs, and there devoted himself to all sorts
of experiments.  Every now and then an explosion would be heard,
which made the members of the apothecary's household quake with
terror.

Humphry began to dream ambitious dreams.  Not for him, he thought,
was the drudgery of an apothecary store. He felt that he had in
himself the making of a famous man, and he resolved that he would
leave no science unexplored. He set to work with a will. His quick
mind soon grasped the sciences not only of mathematics and chemistry,
but of botany, anatomy, geology, and metaphysics.  His means for
the experiments he desired to make were very limited, but he did
not allow any obstacle to prevent him from pursuing them.

He was especially fond of wandering along the seashore, and observing
and examining the many curious and mysterious objects which he found
on the crags and in the sand. One day his eye was struck with the
bladders of seaweed, which he found full of air. The question was,
how did the air get into them? This puzzled him, and he could find
no answer to it, because he had no instruments to experiment with.

But on another day, soon after, as he strolled on the beach, what
was his surprise and delight to find a case of surgical instruments,
which had been flung up from some wreck on the coast! Armed with this,
he hastened home, and managed to turn each one of the instruments
to some useful account.  He constructed an air-pump out of a
surgeon's syringe, and made a great many experiments with it.

Fortunately for Humphry, he formed a friendship with a youth who
could not only sympathize with him, but was of a great deal of use
to him.  This was Gregory Watt, a son of the great James Watt, the
inventor of the steam-engine. Gregory Watt had gone to Penzance
for his health, and had there fallen in with the ambitious son of
the wood-carver.  This new friend was able to give Humphry many new
and valuable hints and encouraged him with hopeful words to go on
with his studies and experiments.

Already Humphry was getting to be known as a scientific genius
beyond the quiet neighborhood of Penzance. He had proposed a theory
on heat and light which had attracted the attention of learned
men; and at twenty-one he had discovered the peculiar properties
of nitrous oxide--what we now call "laughing-gas"--though he nearly
killed himself by inhaling too much of it. He had also made many
experiments in galvanism, and had found silicious earth in the skin
of reeds and grass.

So famous indeed had he already become, that at the age of
twenty-two--when most young men are only just leaving college--he
was chosen lecturer on science at the great Royal Institution in
London. There he amazed men by the eloquence and clearness with
which he revealed the mysteries of science. He was so bright and
attractive a young man, moreover, that the best London society
gladly welcomed him to its drawing-rooms, and praises of him were
in every mouth. His lecture-room was crowded whenever he spoke.

But he was not a bit spoiled by all this flattery and homage. He
worked all the harder; resolved to achieve yet greater triumphs
in science than he had yet done. An opportunity soon arose to turn
his knowledge and inventive powers to account in a very important
way. For a long time the English public had every now and then been
horrified by the terrible explosions which took place in the coal
mines. These explosions resulted often in an appalling loss of
human life. Their cause was the filling of the mine by a deadly
gas, called "fire-damp," which, when ignited by a lighted candle
or lamp, exploded with fearful violence. One day an explosion
of fire-damp occurred which killed over one hundred miners on the
spot.

This event called universal attention to the subject, and Humphry
Davy was besought to try and find some means of preventing, or
at least lessening, similar calamities. He promptly undertook the
task, and set about it with all his wonted energy.  The problem
before him was how to provide light in the mines in such a way that
the miners might see to work by it, and at the same time be safe
from the danger of fire-damp explosion. Many attempts had been made
to achieve this, but they had all failed,

Davy began his experiments. He soon made several valuable discoveries.
One was that explosions of inflammable gases could not pass through
long narrow metallic tubes. Another was that when he held a piece
of wire gauze over a lighted candle, the flame would not pass through
it. As a result of his long and patient toil Davy was able at last
to construct his now famous _Safety-Lamp_, which has undoubtedly
saved the lives of thousands during the period which has elapsed
since it was invented.  He presented a model of his new lamp to the
Royal Society, in whose rooms in London it is to be seen to this
day.

It is a simple affair, being merely a lamp screwed on to a wire
gauze cylinder, and fitted to it by a tight ring. His idea was to
admit the fire-damp into the lamp gradually by narrow tubes, so
that it would be consumed by combustion. The Safety-Lamp was in
truth the greatest triumph of Humphry Davy's useful life.

"I value it," he said, "more than anything I ever did."

Honors of all kinds were showered upon him.  Many medals were awarded
to him, and the grateful miners subscribed from their scant wages
enough to present him with a magnificent service of silver worth
$12,000. His discovery was hailed from every part of Europe. The
Czar Alexander of Russia sent him a beautiful vase, and he was
chosen a member of the historic Institute of France; while his own
government conferred upon him the coveted title of baronet.

Sir Humphry Davy, as he was now called, died in the prime of life
and in the fulness of honor and fame. Fond of travel, and continuing
to the last his scientific studies, he went to the continent, and
took up his abode at Geneva, on the borders of one of the loveliest
of Swiss lakes. There he had a laboratory, where he could work at
will, and could also indulge his passion for fishing and hunting.

But he was worn out before his time. He was attacked by palsy, and
passed away at Geneva in 1829, in the fifty-first year of his age.
There he was buried. A simple monument reveals where he lies in
the foreign churchyard; while a tablet in Westminster Abbey keeps
alive his memory in the hearts of his countrymen.




KIT CARSON'S DUEL

By Emerson Hough



"How much farther, Franois?" asked the leader of a little mountain
cavalcade which wound its way down a broad river valley in the heart
of the Rocky Mountains. "See, it is now noon, and the encampment
is not yet in sight.  Shall we not stop and rest?"

The speaker was a tall, thin man, whose face, browned by the sun
of the plains and mountains, none the less bore a refinement almost
approaching austerity. The man accosted was leaner and browner than
himself, and wore the full costume of the Western _engage_ of the
fur trade.

"M'sieu' Parker," he replied, "halways you hask how far to ze
hencampment. I do not know. In the mountain we do no hask how far.
We push on ze horse. Thass all."

"But the rendezvous--are you sure it is in this valley of the
Green?"

"It is establish for ze month of August in ze valley of ze Green.
Those man of the mountain, he do not disappoint. This rendezvous
of ze year 1835, it may be ze last one for ze trappaire. But me,
Franois Verrier, say to you that you shall see ze rendezvous,
also ze trappaire, and ze trader, and ze Injin--hundreds of heem.
My faith! Zay shall see for ze first time ze missionaire to ze
Injin!  M'sieu' Parker, you are not ze good father? _Eh bien_, you
shall make some little _priere_ for those _sauvages_."

The thin face of Samuel Parker brightened.  This land before his
view, majestic, beautiful, was as fabled and unknown as the continent
of lost Atlantis.  It was a wild world, a new one. He, first to
answer that strange appeal from the wild Northwest,--that appeal
carried by the four Nez Perces Indians, who travelled in ignorance
and hope across half a continent to ask that the Book might be sent
out to them by the white man,--felt now exaltation swell within
his soul.

What a meeting must be this, which he had pushed forward so eagerly
to discover! It was a gathering, as he had been well advised, not
in the name of religion or of politics, of art or science--hardly
even in the cause of commerce, although here the wild trappers and
hunters, absent from one year's end to the other in the mountains,
annually met, at some appointed spot in the Rockies, those bold
merchants who brought out to them stores of goods to trade for
furs. The trappers' rendezvous! He had heard of it a thousand tales
distorted and unreal. Truly there was work ahead.  He caught up
the reins upon his horse's neck, forgot his weariness, and resumed
his way.

His followers, a score or more of horsemen and pack-train drivers,
among whom rode a short sturdy young man, the future martyr-missionary,
Marcus Whitman, moved on, browned, gaunt, dust-begrimed, yet
cheerful.

They had travelled for perhaps a mile or so down the valley when
the guide, riding abreast of his employer, suddenly pulled up his
horse and signed for his companion to pause.

"M'sieu'," said he, "you think I know little of zis land. Behol'!
We are harrive' zis hour."

He pointed. There, against the sky-line, on a projecting range of
the mountainside which sloped down to the edge of the valley, was
the figure of a mountain man, motionless, and evidently on guard.

"_En avant!_" cried Franois, setting heels to his horse. "_V'la!_
It is ze guard of ze encampment.  Ride quick, _mes camarades!_"

The train, packhorses and all, pushed forward at a gallop, which
soon broke into a wild run--the proper gait in trapper custom for
all who arrived at the mountain rendezvous.

As they rounded the spur of rocks which had made the watch-tower
of the sentinel, the full scene burst upon their eyes. There was
a wide, sweet space in the valley, made as if for the very purpose
of the great rendezvous. A flat of green cottonwoods adjoined the
river-bank. "Benches," or natural terraces, of sweet grass rose
along the hillside a half-mile away. Hundreds of horses, picketed
or hobbled, grazed here and there. Others, favorite steeds of their
masters, stood tied at the doors of lodges, in front of which rose
long, tufted spears, in the heraldry of that land insignia of their
owner's rank. Teepees, a hundred and twoscore, skin tents of the
savage tribes and homes also of the whites, were grouped irregularly
over a space of more than half a mile. At the doors of many of
these, silent Indians sat and smoked. In the wide interspaces of
the village were many men, some of them dressed in brown buckskins,
others clad more gaudily. These passed to and fro, some on foot,
others riding furiously. Animation was in all the air.

Shouts, cries, a tumult formed of many factors filled the air.
Babel of speech rose from Frenchmen, Spaniards, Canadians, English,
Scotch, Irish, and American backwoodsmen, and Indians of half a
dozen tribes. Horses, dogs, black-haired and blanketed women, and
children of divers colors moved about continually. The gathering
was heterogeneous, conglomerate, picturesque, savage.

Samuel Parker, missionary to the Oregon tribes, and now come hither
to the mountain market of 1835 as knight-errant of the Gospel,
pulled up his horse at the edge of the encampment and gazed in
sheer amazement. His party--except Whitman, who reined in his horse
at his friend's side--passed on and joined the shouting throng.
Apparently they conveyed certain news as they rode; for now out of
the circling ranks of wild horsemen there swept toward the strangers
a group of yelling riders.

Long ribbons and waving eagle feathers streamed from the manes and
tails of their ponies.  Some riders, even of the white men, wore
the great war-bonnets of the northern tribes, the long crests of
feathers sweeping back upon the croups of the rough-coated steeds
they rode. Weapons were in the hands of all. Loud speech and many
oaths were on their lips. They might well have disturbed bolder
hearts than that of a peaceful missionary.

The leader of the approaching band was a man of gigantic stature,
more than six inches above the six-feet mark. He was dark of hair
and eye; a wide mustache swept back across his face, and his heavy,
untrimmed beard, matted and sunburned at the edges, gave him an
expression savage and forbidding.

Clad in the buckskin of a mountain trapper, none the less this
personage affected a certain finery.  A brilliant sash encircled
his waist, his hat bore a wide plume. At his belt hung pistols,
and in his hand was a long rifle. He pulled up his horse squatting,
its nose high in air.

"How, friend!" he cried. "Or _be_ you friend, who come thus without
word to Bill Shunan's camp?"

"Sir," replied the missionary, "my name is Parker--Samuel Parker.
I am from far New England, and am bound upon my way to Oregon.
I have come aside from the Sublette Cutoff trail to be present at
this rendezvous. Yourself I do not know."

"What! Not know Bill Shunan, the bully of the Rockies, and the
owner of this camp? Hark ye, stranger, ye're treading on dangerous
ground.  I've whipped half a dozen men to-day, and driven every
fighter of the rendezvous back into his lodge.  _They_ know Bill
Shunan, and they show him respect, as you shall yourself."

Samuel Parker made no reply, and found no way to move forward,
even had he been sure that friends awaited him in the village. The
giant went on:

"Now, what's your business, man? Ye look like no trapper nor good
mountain man. As for more Yankee traders, we've enough of them now,
and more than enough. Look ye at their packs, laid out there, half
of them not opened! The traders are robbing us mountain men at
this market. Two skins they ask for a pint of sugar, if one would
please his squaw. As much goes for a knife; and three skins for
coffee as much as you could put in a pint cup. Powder they hold as
high as gold-dust, and a blanket is worth a pair of horses. It's
robbery, and I'll have no more of it. If Jim Bridger and Bill
Williams, and their half-black Beckwourth, and Gervais, and Fraeb,
and their other offscourings of old Ashley, will not rebel against
such doings, then, for one, Bill Shunan is not afraid. My people
were French back in old Canada.  It is the French who found the
Rockies, and who ought to own them! These Americans--I whip them
with switches! And so I'll whip you if ye come here as a trader
and give us no better measure than these others! Now, I say, who
are ye?"

The dark eye of the missionary lighted again with its hidden fire.

"I am a missionary," said he, "a man of the church, a minister
of the Gospel, as I would have said to you. I have come to this
encampment to hold divine services among you. Red men or white, we
are brethren, and we are sinners in common." The close-shut mouth,
the dull flush visible beneath the tan, the flash of the eye, all
bespoke him a man not devoid of courage. Yet his speech brought
only rage to the other.

"Minister!" he cried. "By all the saints, no unfrocked priest
shall speak words in this camp of mine! Not even a good father of
the French has been present at a rendezvous of the bully boys of
the mountains; and who are you, to come intruding at the frolic
of the trappers? I'll have no sniveling Protestant here. So get ye
gone at once!"

"Sir," said the minister, "I have ridden far, and I am not of a
mind to go back." He crowded his horse forward, the more so as he
saw approaching another band of men from the encampment. He could
only hope that they might be of a class not quite the same as this
desperado. A moment later these riders joined the group of parleyers.

"How now, what is this?" cried out the tall man who led these
newcomers. "Who's the stranger?  Does he carry news from the States?"

"Back with ye, Bill Williams!" cried Shunan.  "'Tis but a sniveling
preacher from the East, and I have told him he shall bring no psalms
here."

The freshly arrived horsemen made small reply to Shunan's speech,
but bent a curious gaze upon the stranger. The latter saw at a
glance that these were no allies of the bully. Therefore he glanced
toward them as if in appeal.

Without a word a half-score of them urged their horses round him,
and separated him from Shunan's party.

"What!" cried Shunan. "You dispute me? I tell ye he will never
see the sun again if he pushes himself into this camp. What do ye
mean, you puny Yankees? Do ye want me to put ye on your death-beds,
as I have a couple of ye before to-day? Back with ye! For I say
this man shall not come into camp!"

"Shunan," broke in a quiet voice, "who gives you right to issue
orders here?"

The speaker was a young man, still in his twenties; and so far from
equaling in stature the giant whom he addressed, he was slight and
small, not over five feet six inches in height, although of good
shoulders and great depth of chest.

He sat a dark-brown horse, fully caparisoned in the Spanish fashion.
His garb was of buckskin, but plain and devoid of ornamentation.
A wide hat swept over his well-tanned face, and from beneath its
brim there shone the steely glance of gray-blue eyes.

Shunan, dumfounded, whirled his horse toward the speaker.

"Shunan," repeated this man, in turn urging his own horse forward,
"you've made trouble enough in the encampment. You shall no longer
act the bully here. The stranger comes in peace, and he shall be
heard here if he likes. What!" and the blue eyes flashed. "Would
you issue orders at a meeting of the free men of the mountains--the
very place in all the world where every man who comes in friendship
is made welcome? This is our country.  This is our encampment. The
law of what is right shall govern here; and I take it upon myself
to say this to you!"

Silence fell upon all who heard these words.  The last speaker
raised his hand as Parker would have spoken. The friends of the
young man now pressed closer about him. He did not give back, but
urged his mount still forward, until it breasted the cream-colored
horse which Shunan rode. The bully, half-sobered from his potations
by this stern situation, did not himself give back.

"Who are you?" he cried. "By what right do ye question Bill Shunan?
Would ye be the next to be whipped with switches? There is but one
end to this, boy! Are ye ready for it?"

"Have I ever been found unready?" asked the young man, quietly.
"I say again, this land is free. The stranger shall have meat and
robes at my lodge, and if he will speak, he shall have his say."

In a rage Shunan spurred forward, his hand uplifted; yet the brown
horse and its rider receded not an inch. The issue was joined.
There must now be combat!

"Not here!" cried old Bill Williams, suddenly. "Wait! Back to the
camp with ye all, and there let it be decided proper!"

This speech met with sudden approval upon both sides. An instant
later the missionary's horse was swept forward in a rush which
carried both parties, intermingled, deep into the center of the
tented village.

Well toward the middle of the encampment there was a large and
irregular space left unoccupied, a sort of plaza, devoted to common
use, and employed as meeting-ground in the trading operations of
the market, or the jollifications, which occupied far more of the
time. As the riders came into this open space Shunan and his party
drew off to the right. His antagonist sought out his lodge upon
the opposite side. He was followed here by several of his warmer
friends, Williams, Bridger, Fraeb, other men of the mountains at
one time known throughout the length and breadth of the West.

"Sir," said the young man, turning toward Samuel Parker, "get you
down, and come within my house. Perhaps by this time you are used
to such. We bid you welcome. I shall return to you soon, after I
have settled this matter which has come up between me and yonder
ruffian."

"I beseech you!" cried the missionary, reaching out an imploring
hand. "What is it you would do? Surely you do not mean--you would
not engage in combat with this man--you do not mean bloodshed?
This--on my account--no, no! Let me go."

The quiet man whom he thus accosted made no answer at first, but
pushed back the hat from his brow and gazed upon the newcomer with
a kindly eye.

"There is but one way," said he. "Bill, see to it that our friend
has good treatment here." The man addressed took Parker by the arm
and thrust him gently within the lodge.

The young man now summoned another friend.  "Gervais," he said, "go
to yonder bully, and say to him that unless his threats and boasts
cease, I shall be forced to kill him. Our bullets should be for
our enemies, but Shunan has made trouble enough; and he must go to
his lodge or meet me, man to man."

"Are ye ready for him, boy?" asked Gervais.  "How is the shoulder
where you caught the Blackfoot bullet last fall? Can you handle
the rifle?"

"I'll not trust the shoulder," was the reply, "and will not risk
the rifle." He drew a pistol from his belt and looked at the priming
of the pan. "One shot," said he; "and it must do."

"But he'll use his rifle."

"Very well. Go to him and say that I shall come mounted, like
himself, and he may be armed as he likes. No man is my superior
on horse or with any weapon. Moreover, you shall see that I do not
seek so much to kill him as to end his boasting, and to restore
the law in this camp."

Gervais sprang upon his horse and was off, calling out to others,
who drew near, the instructions which he had received. He approached
Shunan, who was now urging his horse round and round the open space
of the village, shouting defiance and uttering foul reproaches for
his antagonist, whom he announced himself eager to meet. Gervais
delivered his message.

The bully continued to crowd his horse back and forth, pulling it
up so sharply that it was thrown upon its haunches now and again
in mid-career. He waved his long rifle over his head, and issued
a general challenge to all within reach of his voice.

At this moment there rode out from the farther side of the circle
the champion of law and order. The horse which he bestrode came on
strongly and lightly, its head up. The rider had stripped off all
his accouterments, and rode a buckskin pad-saddle, Indian fashion.
About his waist was a belt, which bore no weapons. His long rifle,
at which weapon he had no master, did not rest upon the saddle
front. His hat was gone, and a handkerchief bound back his long
light hair. He rode forward lightly, easily, in confidence.

Shunan, yelling, wildly, charged at once upon him.

The young man sat erect; but when Shunan was still a score of yards
away, the brown horse leaped aside, its rider lying along its neck
as an Indian might have done, and swept round and to the rear of
Shunan.

The bully, fumbling with his piece, endeavored to follow. Then he
saw the pistol barrel pointing under the neck of the brown horse,
and cold terror smote his soul.

The two swept past again at full gallop, Shunan still not quite master
of his horse and weapon at the same time, for the long-barreled,
muzzle-loading rifle was difficult to manage from the back of a
plunging horse. They wheeled and passed yet again; but this time,
as they turned, they headed directly toward each other at a steady
pace.

The spectators knew that in an instant the issue would be decided.

Shunan jerked up his horse and threw his rifle sharply to his
face. His antagonist made no attempt to swerve, but instead spurred
forward sharply. The brown horse sprang breast to breast with the
cream-colored mustang. The two men were within arm's length. At
this minute there rang out two reports, almost at the same instant.
The horses sprang apart.

The slighter man was still sitting erect. He swept his hand hastily
across his temple, where he felt a stinging burn. Shunan, dazed,
sat his horse for an instant, but his rifle dropped to the ground;
and as his horse sprang forward, he himself fell, and so lay, one
arm hanging limp and the other raised in the sign of surrender.

The duel was over. The late friends of Shunan joined the riders
who now crowded into the open space from the opposite sides of the
arena.

"Did he touch ye, boy?" cried old Bill Williams.

"No, though he meant it well enough. See, there's a twist of hair
gone from the side of my head."

"He got your bullet through the hand and wrist," said Williams, as
they turned away. "His right arm's done for, for a while. You were
a bit the first with your fire, my son,"

"I know it, and I knew I had need to be. I fired at his hand, and
knew I must be a shade the first.  I knew if I held true, his aim
would be thrown out."

As he spoke, he dismounted at the door of his own lodge. There
Samuel Parker met him, and cried, "Is it over? Is any one hurt?
Has there been murder done?"

"There, there, friend," said old Bill Williams, gently, "you bring
here still your Yankee way of speech. Besides, 'tis no murder unless
some one is killed, and yonder bully Shunan will only have a sore
hand for a month or so. 'Twas a lesson that was well needed for
him. See now, the camp is quiet already. Men and women may venture
out-of-doors in peace and comfort. 'Tis but the law of the mountains
you have seen, man."

"And as for the law of the Gospel," interrupted Gervais, "they
shall have that this night round the fire, if you wish to speak."

The minister gazed from one to the other with emotions new to him.

"And you, sir," he said, extending his hand to the young man who
had thus stoutly championed him, "who are you? Whom shall I thank
for this strange act--for this strange justice of the mountains,
as you call it?"

The bronzed men who stood or sat their horses near at hand gazed
from one to another, smiling, At last old Bill Williams broke out
into a laugh.

"Man," cried he, "'tis easily seen you're fresh from the States!
What, not know the best man in all the Rockies? There is but one
could have done this deed so well. We have few courts here, but
whenever we've needed a sheriff of our own we've had one, and here
he is. So you did not know Kit Carson!"




THE STORY OF GRACE DARLING

Anonymous



On the evening of Wednesday, September 5, the steamship Forfarshire
left Hull for Dundee, carrying a cargo of iron, and having some
forty passengers on board. The ship was only eight years old;
the master, John Humble, was an experienced seaman; and the crew,
including firemen and engineers, was complete. But even before the
vessel left the dock one passenger at least had felt uneasily that
something was wrong--that there was an unusual commotion among
officials and sailors. Still, no alarm was given, and at dusk the
vessel steamed prosperously down the Humber River.

The next day (Thursday, the 6th) the weather changed, the wind
blowing N.N.W., and increasing toward midnight to a perfect gale.
On the morning of Friday, the 7th, a sloop from Montrose, making
for South Shields, saw a small boat labouring hard in the trough
of the sea. The Montrose vessel bore down on it, and in spite of
the state of the weather managed to get the boat's crew on board.

They were nine men in all, the sole survivors, as they believed
themselves to be, of the crew and passengers of the _Forfarshire,_
which was then lying a total wreck on Longstone, one of the outermost
of the Farne Islands.

It was a wretched story they had to tell of lives thrown away
through carelessness and negligence, unredeemed, as far as their
story went, by any heroism or unselfish courage.

While still in the Humber, and not twenty miles from Hull, it was
found that one of the boilers leaked, but the captain refused to
put about. The pumps were set to work to fill the boiler, and the
vessel kept on her way, though slowly, not passing between the
Farne Islands and the mainland till Thursday evening. It was eight
o'clock when they entered Berwick Bay; the wind freshened and was
soon blowing hard from N.N.W. The motion of the vessel increased
the leakage, and it was now found that there were holes in all the
three boilers. Two men were set to work the pumps, one or two of
the passengers also assisting, but as fast as the water was pumped
into the boilers it poured out again. The bilge was so full of
steam and boiling water that the firemen could not get to the fires.
Still the steamer struggled on, laboring heavily, for the sea was
running very high. At midnight they were off St. Abbs Head, when
the engineers reported that the case was hopeless; the engines had
entirely ceased to work. The ship rolled helplessly in the waves,
and the rocky coast was at no great distance. They ran up the sails
fore and aft to try and keep her off the rocks, and put her round
so that she might run before the wind, and as the tide was setting
southward she drifted fast with wind and tide. Torrents of rain
were falling, and in spite of the wind there was a thick fog. Some
of the passengers were below, others were on deck with crew and
captain, knowing well their danger.

About three the noise of breakers was distinctly heard a little
way ahead, and at the same time a light was seen away to the left,
glimmering faintly through the darkness. It came home to the anxious
crew with sickening certainty that they were being driven on the
Farne Islands. These islands form a group of desolate rocks lying
off the Northumbrian coast. They are twenty in number, some only
uncovered at low tide, and all offering a rugged iron wall to any
ill-fated boat that may be driven upon them.

Even in calm weather and by daylight seamen are glad to give them
a wide berth.

The master of the _Forfarshire_ in this desperate strait attempted
to make for the channel which runs between the Islands and the
mainland. It was at best a forlorn chance; it was hopeless here;
the vessel refused to answer her helm! On she drove in the darkness,
nearer and nearer came the sound of the breakers; the passengers and
crew on board the boat became frantic. Women wailed and shrieked;
the captain's wife clung to him, weeping; the crew lost all instinct
of discipline, and thought of nothing but saving their skins.

Between three and four the shock came--a hideous grinding noise,
a strain and shiver of the whole ship, and she struck violently
against a great rock.  In the awful moment which followed, five of
the crew succeeded in lowering the larboard quarter-boat and pushed
off in her. The mate swung himself over the side, and also reached
her; and a passenger rushing at this moment up from the cabin and
seeing the boat already three yards from the ship, cleared the
space with a bound and landed safely in her, though nearly upsetting
her by his weight. She righted, and the crew pulled off with the
desperate energy of men rowing for their lives.  The sight of agonized
faces, the shrieks of the drowning, were lost in the darkness and
in the howling winds, and the boat with the seven men on board was
swept along by the rapidly-flowing tide.

Such was the story the exhausted boat's crew told next morning to
their rescuers on board the Montrose sloop. And the rest of the
ship's company--what of them? Had they all gone down by the island
crag with never a hand stretched out to help them?

Hardly had the boat escaped from the stranded vessel when a great
wave struck her on the quarter, lifted her up bodily, and dashed
her back on the rock. She struck midships on the sharp edge and
broke at once into two pieces. The after part was washed clean
away with about twenty passengers clinging to it, the captain and
his wife being among them. A group of people, about nine in number,
were huddled together near the bow; they, with the whole forepart
of the ship, were lifted right on to the rock. In the fore cabin
was a poor woman, Mrs. Dawson, with a child on each arm. When the
vessel was stranded on the rock the waves rushed into the exposed
cabin, but she managed to keep her position, cowering in a corner.
First one and then the other child died from cold and exhaustion,
and falling from the fainting mother were swept from her sight by
the waves, but the poor soul herself survived all the horrors of
the night.

It was now four o'clock; the storm was raging with unabated violence,
and it was still two hours to daybreak. About a mile from Longstone,
the island on which the vessel struck, lies Brownsman, the outermost
of the Farne Islands, on which stands the lighthouse. At this
time the keeper of the lighthouse was a man of the name of William
Darling.  He was an elderly, almost an old man, and the only other
inmates of the lighthouse were his wife and daughter Grace, a girl
of twenty-two.  On this Friday night she was awake, and through the
raging of the storm heard shrieks more persistent and despairing
than those of the wildest sea-birds.  In great trouble she rose
and awakened her father. The cries continued, but in the darkness
they could do nothing. Even after day broke it was difficult to
make out distant objects, for a mist was still hanging over the sea.
At length, with a glass they could discern the wreck on Longstone,
and figures moving about on it. Between the two islands lay a mile
of yeasty sea, and the tide was running hard between them. The
only boat on the lighthouse was a clumsily built jolly-boat, heavy
enough to tax the strength of two strong men in ordinary weather,
and here there was but an old man and a young girl to face a
raging sea and a tide running dead against them. Darling hesitated
to undertake anything so dangerous, but his daughter would hear
of no delay. On the other side of that rough mile of sea men were
perishing, and she could not stay where she was and see them die.

So off they set in the heavy coble, the old man with one oar,
the girl with the other, rowing with straining breath and beating
hearts. Any moment they might be whelmed in the sea or dashed against
the rocks. Even if they got the crew off, it would be doubtful if
they could row them to the lighthouse; the tide was about to turn,
and would be against them on their homeward journey; death seemed
to face them on every side.

When close to the rock there was imminent danger of their being
dashed to pieces against it.  Steadying the boat an instant,
Darling managed to jump on to the rock, while Grace rapidly rowed
out a little and kept the boat from going on the rocks by rowing
continually. It is difficult to imagine how the nine shipwrecked
people, exhausted and wearied as they were, were got into the boat
in such a sea, especially as the poor woman, Mrs. Dawson, was in
an almost fainting condition; but finally they were all gotten on
board. Fortunately, one or two of the rescued crew were able to
assist in the heavy task of rowing the boat back to Brownsman.

The storm continued to rage for several days after, and the whole
party had to remain in the lighthouse. Moreover, a boatload which
had come to their rescue from North Shields was also storm-stayed.

It is told of this admirable girl that she was the tenderest and
gentlest of nurses and hostesses, as she was certainly one of the
most singularly courageous of women.

She could never be brought to look upon her exploit as in any way
remarkable, and when by-and-by honors and distinctions were showered
upon her, and people came from long distances to see her, she kept
through it all the dignity of perfect simplicity and modesty.

Close to Bamborough, on a windy hill, lie a little gray church and
a quiet churchyard. At all seasons high winds from the North Sea
blow over the graves and fret and eat away the soft gray sandstone
of which the plain headstones are made. So great is the wear and
tear of these winds that comparatively recent monuments look like
those which have stood for centuries. On one of these stones lies
a recumbent figure, with what looks not unlike a lance clasped in
the hand and laid across the breast. Involuntarily one thinks of the
stone crusaders, who lie in their armor, clasping their half-drawn
swords, awaiting the Resurrection morning. It is the monument of
Grace Darling, who here lies at rest with her oar still clasped in
her strong right hand.




THE STRUGGLES OF CHARLES GOODYEAR

By George C. Towle



Never did any man work harder, suffer more keenly, or remain more
steadfast to one great purpose of life, than did Charles Goodyear.
The story of his life--for the most part mournful--teems with
touching interest. No inventor ever struggled against greater or
more often returning obstacles, or against repeated failures more
overwhelming.  Goodyear is often compared, as a martyr and hero of
invention, to Bernard Palissy the potter. He is sometimes called
"the Palissy of the nineteenth century." But his sufferings were
more various, more bitter, and more long enduring than ever were
even those of Palissy; while the result of his long, unceasing
labors was infinitely more precious to the world. For if Palissy
restored the art of enamelling so as to produce beautiful works of
art, Goodyear perfected a substance which gives comfort and secures
health to millions of human beings.

Charles Goodyear was born at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1801. He
was the eldest of the six children of a leading hardware merchant
of that place, a man both of piety and of inventive talent. When
Charles was a boy, his father began the manufacture of hardware
articles, and at the same time carried on a farm. He often required
his son's assistance, so that Charles's schooling was limited. He
was very fond of books, however, from an early age, and instead of
playing with his mates, devoted most of his leisure time to reading.

It was even while he was a schoolboy that his attention was first
turned to the material, the improvement of which for common uses
became afterwards his life-work. "He happened to take up a thin
scale of India-rubber," says his biographer, "peeled from a bottle,
and it was suggested to his mind that it would be a very useful
fabric if it could be made uniformly so thin, and could be so prepared
as to prevent its melting and sticking together in a solid mass."
Often afterward he had a vivid presentiment that he was destined
by Providence to achieve these results.

The years of his youth and early manhood were spent in the hardware
trade in Philadelphia and then in Connecticut; and at twenty-four
he was married to a heroic young wife, who shared his trials, and
was ever to him a comforting and encouraging spirit. From boyhood
he was always devout and pure in habits. On one occasion, soon after
his marriage, he wrote to his wife while absent from her: "I have
quit smoking, chewing, and drinking all in one day. You cannot form
an idea of the extent of this last evil in this city [New York]
among the young men."

Charles Goodyear's misfortunes began early in his career. He failed
in business, his health broke down, and through life thereafter
he suffered from almost continual attacks of dyspepsia. He was,
moreover, a small, frail man, with a weak constitution.  He was
imprisoned for debt after his failure; nor was this the only time
that he found himself within the walls of a jail. That was almost
a frequent experience with him in after life.

It was under discouragements like these that Goodyear began his
long series of experiments in India-rubber. Already this peculiar
substance--a gum that exudes from a certain kind of very tall tree,
which is chiefly found in South America--had been manufactured into
various articles, but it had not been made enduring, and the uses
to which it could be put were very limited.

There is no space here to follow Goodyear's experiments in detail.
He entered upon them with the ardor of a fanatic and the faith of
a devotee. But he very soon found that the difficulties in his way
were great and many. He was bankrupt, in bad health, with a growing
family dependent on him, and no means of support. Yet he persevered,
through years of wretchedness, to the very end. It is a striking
fact that his very first experiment was made in a prison cell.

During the long period occupied by his repeated trials of invention he
passed through almost every calamity to which human flesh is heir.
Again and again he was thrown into prison. Repeatedly he saw
starvation staring him and his gentle wife and his poor little
children in the face. He was reduced many times to the very last
extreme of penury. His friends sneered at him, deserted him, called
him mad. He was forced many times to beg the loan of a few dollars,
with no prospect of repayment. One of his children died in the
dead of winter, when there was no fuel in the cheerless house. A
gentleman was once asked what sort of a looking man Goodyear was.
"If you meet a man," was the reply, "who wears an India-rubber
coat, cap, stock, vest, and shoes, with an India-rubber money purse
without a cent in it, that is Charles Goodyear."

Once, while in the extremity of want, when he was living at Greenwich,
near New York, he met his brother-in-law, and said, "Give me ten
dollars, brother; I have pawned my last silver spoon to pay my fare
to the city."

"You must not go on so; you cannot live in this way," said the
other.

"I am going to do better," replied Goodyear cheerily.

It was by accident at last that he hit upon the secret of how to make
India-rubber durable. He was talking one day to several visitors,
and in his ardor making rapid gestures, when a piece of rubber which
he was holding in his hand accidentally hit against a hot stove.
To his amazement, instead of melting, the gum remained stiff
and charred, like leather. He again applied great heat to a piece
of rubber, and then nailed it outside the door, where it was very
cold. The next morning he found that it was perfectly flexible;
and this was the discovery which led to that successful invention
which he had struggled through so many years to perfect. The
main value of the discovery lay in this, that while the gum would
dissolve in a moderate heat, it both remained hard and continued
to be flexible when submitted to an extreme heat.  This came to be
known as the "vulcanization" of India-rubber.

Two years were still to elapse, however, before Goodyear could
make practical use of his great discovery. He had tired everybody
out by his previous frequent assertions that his invention had been
perfected, when it had until now always proved a failure. Many a
time he had gone to his friends, declaring that he had succeeded,
so that when he really had made the discovery nobody believed in
it.

He was still desperately poor and in wretched health. Yet he moved
to Woburn, in Massachusetts, resolutely continuing his experiments
there.  He had no money, and so baked his India-rubber in his wife's
oven and saucepans, or hung it before the nose of her tea-kettle.
Sometimes he begged the use of the factory ovens in the neighborhood
after the day's work was over, and sold his children's very
school-books in order to supply himself with the necessary gum. At
this time he lived almost exclusively on money gifts from pitying
friends, who shook their heads in their doubts of his sanity. Often
his house had neither food nor fuel in it; his family were forced
to go out into the woods to get wood to burn. "They dug their potatoes
before they were half-grown, for the sake of having something to
eat."

Goodyear was terribly afraid that he should die before he could make
the world perceive the great uses to which his discovery might be
applied. What he was toiling for was neither fame nor fortune, but
only to confer a vast benefit on his fellow-men.

At last, after infinite struggles, the absorbing purpose of his
life was attained. India-rubber was introduced under his patents,
and soon proved to have all the value he had, in his wildest moments,
claimed for it. Success thus crowned his noble efforts, which had
continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation.
India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least
five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher
than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But,
as too often happens, his great discovery enriched neither Goodyear
nor his family. It soon gave employment to sixty thousand artisans,
and annually produced articles in this country alone worth eight
millions of dollars.

Happily the later years of the noble, self-denying inventor were
spent at least free from the grinding penury and privations of his
years of uncertainty and toil. He died in his sixtieth year (1860),
happy in the thought of the magnificent boon he had given to mankind.




OLD JOHNNY APPLESEED

By Elizabeth Harrison



Many years ago on the sparsely settled prairies of America
there lived an old man who was known by the queer name of "Johnny
Appleseed" His wife had died long ago and his children had grown
up and scattered to the corners of the earth. He had not even a
home that he could call his own, but wandered about from place to
place, with only a few friends and little or no money. His face was
wrinkled, his hair was thin and grey, and his shoulders stooped.
His clothes were old and ragged and his hat was old and shabby.
Yet inside of him was a heart that was brave and true, and he felt
that even he, old and poor as he was, could be of use in the world,
because he loved his fellow-men, and love always finds something
to do.

As he trudged along the lonely road from town to town, or made for
himself a path through the unbroken forest, he often thought of
the good God, and of how all men were children of the One Father.
Sometimes he would burst out singing the words of a song which he
had learned when he was a young man.


"Millions loving, I embrace you,
All the world this kiss I send!
Brothers, o'er yon starry tent
Dwells a God whose love is true!"


These words, by the way, are a part of a great poem you may some
day read. And they once so stirred the heart of a great musician
that he set them to the finest music the world has ever heard.
And now the great thought of a loving God and the great music of
a loving man comforted the lonely traveller.

The old man wandered about from village to village, which in those
days were scattered far apart, with miles and miles of prairie land
stretching between them, and sometimes woodland and rivers, too,
separated one village from the next.  At night he usually earned his
crust of bread and lodgings by mending the teakettle or wash-boiler
of some farmer's wife, or by soldering on the handle of her tin
cup or the knob to her tea-pot, as he always carried in one of his
coat pockets a small charcoal stove and a bit of solder. He always
carried under his arm or over his shoulder a green baize bag, and
when the mending was done he would oftentimes draw out of this
green bag an old violin and begin to play, and the farmer, as well
as his wife and the children, would gather around him and listen
to his strange music.

Sometimes it was gay and sometimes it was sad, but always sweet.
Sometimes he sang words that he himself had written, and sometimes
the songs which had been written by the great masters. But mending
broken tinware and playing an old violin were not the only things
he did to help the world along. As he wandered from place to place
he often noticed how rich the soil was, and he would say to himself,
"Some day this will be a great country with thousands of people
living on this land, and though I shall never see them, they may
never read my verses or hear my name, still I can help them, and
add some things to their lives."

So whenever a farmer's wife gave him an apple to eat he carefully
saved every seed that lay hidden in the heart of the apple, and
next day as he trudged along he would stoop down every now and then
and plant a few of the seeds and then carefully cover them with the
rich black soil of the prairie.  Then he would look up reverently
to the sky and say, "I can but plant the seed, dear Lord, and Thy
clouds may water them, but Thou alone can give the increase. Thou
only can cause this tiny seed to grow into a tree whose fruit
shall feed my fellow-men." Then the God-like love that would fill
his heart at such a thought would cause his face to look young
again, and his eyes to shine as an angel's eyes must shine, and
oftentimes he would sing in clear rich tones--



  "Millions loving, I embrace you,
  All the world this kiss I send!
  Brothers, o'er yon starry tent
  Dwells a God whose love is true!"



And he knew that God dwelt in his heart as well as in the blue sky
above.

When the cold winters came and the ground was frozen too hard for
him to plant his apple seeds, he still saved them, and would often
have a small bag full of them by the time that spring returned
again.  And this is how he came to be called "Old Johnny Appleseed."

Though nobody took very much notice of what he was doing, he still
continued each day to plant apple seeds and each evening to play
on his violin.

By-and-by his step grew slower and his shoulders drooped lower
until at last his soul, which had always been strong and beautiful,
passed out of his worn old body into the life beyond, and the
cast-off body was buried by some villagers who felt kindly towards
the old man, but who never dreamed that he had ever done any real
service for them or their children. And soon his very name was
forgotten.  But the tiny apple seeds took root and began to grow,
and each summer the young saplings grew taller and each winter they
grew stronger, until at last they were young trees, and then they
were old enough to bear apples. As people moved from the east out
to the wild western prairies they naturally enough selected sites
for building their homes near the fruitful apple trees, and in
the springtime the young men gathered the blossoms for the young
maidens to wear in their hair, and in the autumn the fathers gathered
the ripe red and yellow apples to store away in their cellars for
winter use, and the mothers made apple sauce and apple pies and
apple dumplings of them, and all the year round the little children
played under the shade of the apple trees, but none of them ever
once thought of the old man who had planted for people he did not
know, and who could never even thank him for his loving services.

Each apple that ripened bore in its heart a number of new seeds,
some of which were planted and grew into fine orchards from which
were gathered many barrels of apples. These were shipped farther
west, until the Rocky Mountains were reached. In the centre of each
apple shipped were more seeds, from which grew more apple trees,
which bore the same kind of apples that the wrinkled old man in
the shabby old clothes had planted long years before. So that many
thousands of people have already been benefited by what the poor
old man in the shabby old coat did, and thousands yet to come will
enjoy the fruits of his labor.

It is true he never wore the armour of a great knight and never held
the title of a great general.  He never discovered a new world,
nor helped his favorite to sit on the throne of a king. But perhaps
after all, though ragged and poor, he was a hero, because in his
heart he really and truly sang, as well as with his lips:



  "Millions loving, I embrace you,
   All the world this kiss I send!
   Brothers, o'er yon starry tent
   Dwells a God whose love is true!"



For the greatest of all victories is to learn to love others even
when they do not know it. This is to be God-like, and to be God-like
is to be the greatest of heroes.




THE LITTLE POST-BOY

By Bayard Taylor



Very few foreigners travel in Sweden in the winter, on account of
the intense cold. As you go northward from Stockholm, the capital,
the country becomes ruder and wilder, and the climate more severe.
In the sheltered valleys along the Gulf of Bothnia and the rivers
which empty into it, there are farms and villages for a distance
of seven or eight hundred miles, after which fruit-trees disappear,
and nothing will grow in the short, cold summers except potatoes
and a little barley.  Farther inland, there are great forests
and lakes, and ranges of mountains where bears, wolves, and herds
of wild reindeer make their home. No people could live in such a
country unless they were very industrious and thrifty.

I made my journey in the winter, because I was on my way to Lapland,
where it is easier to travel when the swamps and rivers are frozen,
and the reindeer-sleds can fly along over the smooth snow.  It wras
very cold indeed, the greater part of the time; the days were short
and dark, and if I had not found the people so kind, so cheerful,
and so honest, I should have felt inclined to turn back, more than
once. But I do not think there are better people in the world than
those who live in Norrland, which is a Swedish province, commencing
about two hundred miles north of Stockholm.

They are a hale, strong race, with yellow hair and bright blue
eyes, and the handsomest teeth I ever saw. They live plainly, but
very comfortably, in snug wooden houses, with double windows and
doors to keep out the cold; and since they cannot do much out-door
work, they spin and weave and mend their farming implements in
the large family room, thus enjoying the winter in spite of its
severity. They are very happy and contented, and few of them would
be willing to leave that cold country and make their homes in a
warmer climate.

Here there are neither railroads nor stages, but the government has
established post-stations at distances varying from ten to twenty
miles. At each station a number of horses, and sometimes vehicles,
are kept, but generally the traveler has his own sled, and simply
hires the horses from one station to another. These horses are either
furnished by the keeper of the station or some of the neighboring
farmers, and when they are wanted a man or boy goes along with the
traveler to bring them back.  It would be quite an independent and
convenient way of traveling, if the horses were always ready; but
sometimes you must wait an hour or more before they can be furnished.

I had my own little sled, filled with hay and covered with
reindeer-skins to keep me warm. So long as the weather was not too
cold, it was very pleasant to speed along through the dark forests,
over the frozen rivers, or past farm after farm in the sheltered
valleys up hill and down, until long after the stars came out, and
then to get a warm supper in some dark-red post cottage, while the
cheerful people sang or told stories around the fire.  The cold
increased a little every day, to be sure, but I became gradually
accustomed to it, and soon began to fancy that the Arctic climate
was not so difficult to endure as I had supposed. At first the
thermometer fell to zero; then it went down ten degrees below; then
twenty, and finally thirty.  Being dressed in thick furs from head
to foot, I did not suffer greatly; but I was very glad when the
people assured me that such extreme cold never lasted more than two
or three days. Boys of twelve or fourteen very often went with me
to bring back their father's horses, and so long as those lively,
red-cheeked fellows could face the weather, it would not do for me
to be afraid.

One night there was a wonderful aurora in the sky. The streamers
of red and blue light darted hither and thither, chasing each other
up the zenith and down again to the northern horizon with a rapidity
and a brilliance which I had never seen before. "There will be
a storm, soon," said my post-boy; "one always comes, after these
lights."

Next morning the sky was overcast, and the short day was as dark as
our twilight. But it was not quite so cold, and I travelled onward
as fast as possible. There was a long tract of wild and thinly-settled
country before me, and I wished to get through it before stopping
for the night. Unfortunately it happened that two lumber-merchants
were travelling the same way, and had taken the horses; so I was
obliged to wait at the stations until other horses were brought
from the neighbouring farms. This delayed me so much that at seven
o'clock in the evening I had still one more station of three Swedish
miles before reaching the village where I intended to spend the
night. Now a Swedish mile is nearly equal to seven English, so that
the station was at least twenty miles long.

I decided to take supper while the horse was eating his feed. They
had not expected any more travellers at the station, and were not
prepared.  The keeper had gone on with the two lumber-merchants; but
his wife--a friendly, rosy-faced woman-prepared me some excellent
coffee, potatoes, and stewed reindeer-meat, upon which I made
an excellent meal. The house was on the border of a large, dark
forest, and the roar of the icy northern wind in the trees seemed
to increase while I waited in the warm room. I did not feel inclined
to go forth into the wintry storm, but, having set my mind on
reaching the village that night, I was loath to turn back.

"It is a bad night," said the woman, "and my husband will certainly
stay at Umea until morning. His name is Neils Petersen, and I think
you will find him at the post-office when you get there. Lars will
take you, and they can come back together."

"Who is Lars?" I asked.

"My son," said she. "He is getting the horse ready. There is nobody
else about the house to-night."

Just then the door opened, and in came Lars. He was about twelve
years old; but his face was so rosy, his eyes so clear and round
and blue, and his golden hair was blown back from his face in such
silky curls, that he appeared to be even younger. I was surprised
that his mother should be willing to send him twenty miles through
the dark woods on such a night.

"Come here, Lars," I said. Then I took him by the hand, and asked,
"Are you not afraid to go so far to-night?"

He looked at me with wondering eyes, and smiled; and his mother
made haste to say: "You need have no fear, sir. Lars is young; but
he'll take you safe enough. If the storm don't get worse, you'll
be at Umea by eleven o'clock."

I was again on the point of remaining; but while I was deliberating
with myself, the boy had put on his overcoat of sheep-skin, tied
the lappets of his fur cap under his chin, and a thick woolen scarf
around his nose and mouth, so that only the round blue eyes were
visible; and then his mother took down the mittens of hare's fur
from the stove, where they had been hung to dry. He put them on,
took a short leather whip, and was ready.

I wrapped myself in my furs, and we went out together. The driving
snow cut me in the face like needles, but Lars did not mind it in
the least.  He jumped into the sled, which he had filled with fresh,
soft hay, tucked in the reindeer-skins at the sides, and we cuddled
together on the narrow seat, making everything close and warm before
we set out. I could not see at all, when the door of the house was
shut, and the horse started on the journey.  The night was dark,
the snow blew incessantly, and the dark fir-trees roared all around
us.  Lars, however, knew the way, and somehow or other we kept the
beaten track. He talked to the horse so constantly and so cheerfully,
that after a while my own spirits began to rise, and the way seemed
neither so long nor so disagreeable.

"Ho there, Axel!" he would say. "Keep to the road,--not too far to
the left. Well done. Here's a level; now trot a bit."

So we went on--sometimes up hill, sometimes down hill--for a long
time, as it seemed. I began to grow chilly, and even Lars handed
me the reins, while he swung and beat his arms to keep the blood
in circulation. He no longer sang little songs and fragments of
hymns, as when we first set out; but he was not in the least alarmed,
or even impatient.  Whenever I asked (as I did about every five
minutes), "Are we nearly there?" he always answered, "A little
farther."

Suddenly the wind seemed to increase.

"Ah," said he, "now I know where we are; it's one mile more." But
one mile, you must remember, meant seven.

Lars checked the horse, and peered anxiously from side to side in
the darkness. I looked also, but could see nothing.

"What is the matter?" I finally asked.

"We have got past the hills, on the left," he said.  "The country
is open to the wind, and here the snow drifts worse than anywhere
else on the road.  If there have been no ploughs out to-night we'll
have trouble."

You must know that the farmers along the road are obliged to turn
out with their horses and oxen, and plough down the drifts, whenever
the road is blocked up by a storm.

In less than a quarter of an hour we could see that the horse was
sinking in the deep snow. He plunged bravely forward, but made
scarcely any headway, and presently became so exhausted that he
stood quite still. Lars and I arose from the seat and looked around.
For my part, I saw nothing except some very indistinct shapes
of trees; there was no sign of an opening through them. In a few
minutes the horse started again, and with great labour carried us
a few yards farther.

"Shall we get out and try to find the road?" said I.

"It's no use," Lars answered. "In these drifts we would sink to
the waist. Wait a little, and we shall get through this one."

It was as he said. Another pull brought us through the deep part of
the drift, and we reached a place where the snow was quite shallow.
But it was not the hard, smooth surface of the road: we could feel
that the ground was uneven, and covered with roots and bushes.
Bidding Axel stand still, Lars jumped out of the sled, and began
wading around among the trees. Then I got out on the other side,
but had not proceeded ten steps before I began to sink so deeply
into the loose snow that I was glad to extricate myself and return.
It was a desperate situation, and I wondered how we should ever
get out of it.

I shouted to Lars, in order to guide him, and it was not long
before he also came back to the sled.  "If I knew where the road
is," said he, "I could get into it again. But I don't know; and I
think we must stay here all night."

"We shall freeze to death in an hour!" I cried.  I was already
chilled to the bone. The wind had made me very drowsy, and I knew
that if I slept I should soon be frozen.

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Lars cheerfully. "I am a Norrlander, and
Norrlanders never freeze. I went with the men to the bear-hunt
last winter, up on the mountains, and we were several nights in
the snow. Besides, I know what my father did with a gentleman from
Stockholm on this very road, and we'll do it to-night."

"What was it?"

"Let me take care of Axel first," said Lars. "We can spare him some
hay and one reindeer-skin."

It was a slow and difficult task to unharness the horse, but
we accomplished it at last. Lars then led him under the drooping
branches of a fir-tree, tied him to one of them, gave him an armful
of hay, and fastened the reindeer-skin upon his back.  Axel began
to eat, as if perfectly satisfied with the arrangement. The Norrland
horses are so accustomed to cold that they seem comfortable in a
temperature where one of ours would freeze.

When this was done, Lars spread the remaining hay evenly over the
bottom of the sled and covered it with the skins, which he tucked
in very firmly on the side toward the wind. Then, lifting them up
on the other side, he said: "Now take off your fur coat, quick,
lay it over the hay, and then creep under it."

I obeyed as rapidly as possible. For an instant I shuddered in the
icy air; but the next moment I lay stretched in the bottom of the
sled, sheltered from the storm. I held up the ends of the reindeer-skins
while Lars took off his coat and crept in beside me. Then he drew
the skins down and pressed the hay against them. When the wind seemed
to be entirely excluded Lars said we must pull off our boots, untie
our scarfs, and so loosen our clothes that they would not feel
tight upon any part of the body. When this was done, and we lay
close together, warming each other, I found that the chill gradually
passed out of my blood. My hands and feet were no longer numb; a
delightful feeling of comfort crept over me; and I lay as snugly
as in the best bed. I was surprised to find that, although my head
was covered, I did not feel stifled. Enough air came in under the
skins to prevent us from feeling oppressed.  There was barely room
for the two of us to lie, with no chance of turning over or rolling
about.  In five minutes, I think, we were asleep, and I dreamed
of gathering peaches on a warm August day, at home. In fact, I did
not wake up thoroughly during the night; neither did Lars, though
it seemed to me that we both talked in our sleep. But as I must have
talked English and he Swedish, there could have been no connection
between our remarks. I remember that his warm, soft hair pressed
against my chin, and that his feet reached no farther than my
knees. Just as I was beginning to feel a little cramped and stiff
from lying so still I was suddenly aroused by the cold wind on
my face. Lars had risen up on his elbow, and was peeping out from
under the skins.

"I think it must be near six o'clock," he said.  "The sky is clear,
and I can see the big star. We can start in another hour."

I felt so much refreshed that I was for setting out immediately;
but Lars remarked very sensibly that is was not yet possible to
find the road. While we were talking, Axel neighed.

"There they are!" cried Lars, and immediately began to put on his
boots, his scarf, and heavy coat.  I did the same, and by the time
we were ready we heard shouts and the crack of whips. We harnessed
Axel to the sled, and proceeded slowly in the direction of the
sound, which came, as we presently saw, from a company of farmers,
out thus early to plough the road. They had six pairs of horses
geared to a wooden frame, something like the bow of a ship, pointed
in front and spreading out to a breadth of ten or twelve feet.
This machine not only cut through the drifts but packed the snow,
leaving a good, solid road behind it. After it had passed, we sped
along merrily in the cold morning twilight, and in a little more
than an hour reached the post-house at Ume, where we found Lars'
father prepared to return home. He waited, nevertheless, until Lars
had eaten a good warm breakfast, when I said good-bye to both, and
went on towards Lapland.

Some weeks afterwards, on my return to Stockholm, I stopped at the
same little station. This time the weather was mild and bright,
and the father would have gone with me to the next post-house; but
I preferred to take my little bed-fellow and sled-fellow. He was
so quiet and cheerful and fearless, that although I had been nearly
all over the world, and he had never been away from home,--although
I was a man and he a young boy,--I felt that I had learned a lesson
from him, and might probably learn many more if I should know him
better. We had a merry trip of two or three hours, and then I took
leave of Lars forever.




HOW JUNE FOUND MASSA LINKUM

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps



June laid down her knives upon the scrubbing-board, and stole softly
out into the yard. Madame Joilet was taking a nap upstairs, and,
for a few minutes at least, the coast seemed to be quite clear.

Who was June? and who was Madame Joilet?

June was a little girl who had lived in Richmond ever since she could
remember, who had never been outside of the city's boundaries, and
who had a vague idea that the North lay just above the Chick-ahominy
River and the Gulf of Mexico about a mile below the James. She could
not tell A from Z, nor the figure 1 from 40; and whenever Madame
Joilet made those funny little curves and dots and blots with pen
and ink, in drawing up her bills to send to the lodgers upstairs,
June considered that she was moved thereto by witches. Her authority
for this theory lay in a charmig old woman across the way, who
had one tooth, and wore a yellow cap, and used to tell her ghost
stories sometimes in the evening.

Somebody asked June once how old she was.

"'Spect I's a hundred,--dunno," she said gravely.  Exactly how old
she was nobody knew. She was not tall enough to be more than seven,
but her face was like the face of a little old woman. It was a queer
little face, with thick lips and low forehead, and great mournful
eyes. There was something strange about those eyes. Whenever they
looked at one, they seemed to cry right out, as if they had a
voice. But no one in Richmond cared about that. Nobody cared about
June at all. When she was unhappy, no one asked what was the matter;
when she was hungry, or cold, or frightened, Madame Joilet laughed
at her, and when she was sick she beat her. If she broke a teacup
or spilled a mug of coffee, she had her ears boxed, or was shut up
in a terrible dark cellar, where the rats were as large as kittens.
If she tried to sing a little, in her sorrowful, smothered way,
over her work, Madame Joilet shook her for making so much noise.
When she stopped, she scolded her for being sulky.  Nothing that
she could do ever happened to be right; everything was sure to be
wrong. She had not half enough to eat, nor half enough to wear.
What was worse than that, she had nobody to kiss, and nobody to
kiss her; nobody to love her and pet her; nobody in all the wide
world to care whether she lived or died, except a half-starved kitten
that lived in the wood-shed. For June was black, and a slave; and
this Frenchwoman, Madame Joilet, was her mistress.

Exactly what was the use of living under such circumstances June
never could clearly see. She cherished a secret notion that, if she
could find a little grave all dug out somewhere in a clover-field,
she would creep in and hide there. Madame Joilet could not find her
then. People who lived in graves were not supposed to be hungry;
and, if it were ever so cold, they never shivered. That they could
not be beaten was a natural consequence, because there was so much
earth between, that you wouldn't feel the stick. The only objection
would be leaving Hungry. Hungry was the kitten. June had named it
so because it was black. She had an idea that everything black was
hungry.

That there had been a war, June gathered from old Creline, who told
her the ghost stories. What it was all about, she did not know.
Madame Joilet said some terrible giants, called Yankees, were coming
down to eat up all the little black girls in Richmond. Creline said
that the Yankees were the Messiah's people, and were coming to set
the negroes free. Who the Messiah was, June did not know; but she
had heard vague stories from Creline, of old-time African princes,
who lived in great free forests, and sailed on sparkling rivers in
boats of painted bark, and she thought that he must be one of them.

Now, this morning, Creline had whispered mysteriously to June, as
she went up the street to sell some eggs for Madame Joilet, that
Massa Linkum was coming that very day. June knew nothing about
Massa Linkum, and nothing about those grand, immortal words of his
which had made every slave in Richmond free; it had never entered
Madame Joilet's plan that she should know. No one can tell, reasoned
Madame, what notions the little nigger will get if she finds it out.
She might even ask for wages, or take a notion to learn to read,
or run away, or something. June saw no one; she kept her prudently
in the house. Tell her? _No, no, impossible_!

But June had heard the beautiful news this morning, like all the
rest; and June was glad, though she had not the slightest idea why.
So, while her mistress was safely asleep upstairs, she had stolen
out to watch for the wonderful sight,--the mysterious sight that
every one was waiting to see. She was standing there on tiptoe on
the fence, in her little ragged dress, with the black kitten in
her arms, when a great crowd turned a corner, and tossed up a cloud
of dust, and swept up the street.  There were armed soldiers with
glittering uniforms, and there were flags flying, and merry voices
shouting, and huzzas and blessings distinct upon the air.  There
were long lines of dusky faces upturned, and wet with happy tears.
There were angry faces, too, scowling from windows, and lurking in
dark corners.

It swept on, and it swept up, and June stood still, and held her
breath to look, and saw, in the midst of it all, a tall man dressed
in black. He had a thin, white face, sad-eyed and kindly and quiet,
and he was bowing and smiling to the people on either side.

"God bress yer, Massa Linkum, God bress yer!" shouted the happy
voices; and then there was a chorus of wild hurrahs, and June laughed
outright for glee, and lifted up her little thin voice and cried,
"Bress yer, Massa Linkum!" with the rest, and knew no more than
the kitty what she did it for.

The great man turned, and saw June standing alone in the sunlight,
the fresh wind blowing her ragged dress, her little black shoulders
just reaching to the top of the fence, her wide-open, mournful
eyes, and the kitten squeezed in her arms. And he looked right at
her, oh, so kindly! and gave her a smile all to herself--one of
his rare smiles, with a bit of a quiver in it,--and bowed, and was
gone.

"Take me 'long wid yer, Massa Linkum, Massa Linkum!" called poor
June faintly. But no one heard her; and the crowd swept on, and
June's voice broke into a cry, and the hot tears came, and she laid
her face down on Hungry to hide them.  You see, in all her life,
no one had ever looked so at June before.

"June, June, come here!" called a sharp voice from the house. But
June was sobbing so hard she did not hear.

"Venez ici,--vite, vite! June! Voila! The little nigger will be
the death of me. She tears my heart.  June, vite, I say!"

June started, and jumped down from the fence, and ran into the
house with great frightened eyes.

"I just didn't mean to, noways, missus. I want to see Massa Linkum,
an' he look at me, an' I done forget eberyting. O missus, don't
beat me dis yere time, an' I'll neber--"

But Madame Joilet interrupted her with a box on the ear, and
dragged her upstairs. There was a terrible look on Madame's face.
Just what happened upstairs, I have not the heart to tell you.

That night, June was crouched, sobbing and bruised, behind the
kitchen stove, when Creline came in on an errand for her mistress.
Madame Joilet was obliged to leave the room for a few minutes,
and the two were alone together. June crawled out from behind the
stove. "I see him,--I see Massa Linkum, Creline."

"De Lord bress him foreber'n eber. Amen!" exclaimed Creline fervently,
throwing up her old thin hands.

June crept a little nearer, and looked all around the room to see
if the doors were shut.

"Creline, what's he done gone come down here fur? Am he de Messiah?"

"Bress yer soul, chile! don' ye know better'n dat ar?"

"Don' know nuffin," said June sullenly. "Neber knows nuffin; 'spects
I neber's gwine to. Can' go out in de road to fine out,--she beat
me. Can' ask nuffin,--she jest gib me a push down cellar. O Creline,
der's sech rats down dar now,--dar is!"

"Yer poor critter!" said Creline, with great contempt for her
ignorance. "Why, Massa Linkum, eberybody knows 'bout he. He's done
gone made we free,--whole heap on we."

"Free!" echoed June, with puzzled eyes.

"Laws, yes, chile; 'pears like yer's drefful stupid.  Yer don'
b'long--" Creline lowered her voice to a mysterious whisper, and
looked carefully at the closed door,--"yer don' b'long to Missus
Jolly no more dan she b'long to you, an' dat's de trufe now, 'case
Massa Linkum say so,--God bress him!"

Just then Madame Joilet came back.

"What's that you're talking about?" she said sharply.

"June was jes' sayin' what a heap she tink ob you, missus," said
Creline with a grave face.

June lay awake a long time that night, thinking about Massa Linkum,
and the wonderful news Creline had brought, and wondering when
Madame Joilet would tell her that she was free.

But many days passed, and Madame said nothing about it. Creline's
son had left his master and gone North. Creline herself had asked
and obtained scanty wages for her work. A little black boy across
the street had been sentenced to receive twenty-five lashes for
some trifling fault, and they had just begun to whip him in the
yard, when a Union officer stepped up and stopped them. A little
girl, not a quarter of a mile away, whose name June had often
heard, had just found her father, who had been sold away from her
years ago, and had come into Richmond with the Yankee soldiers.
But nothing had happened to June. Everything went on as in the old
days before Master Linkum came. She washed dishes, and scrubbed
knives, and carried baskets of wood, so heavy that she tottered
under their weight, and was scolded if she dropped so much as a
shaving on the floor. She swept the rooms with a broom three times
as tall as she was, and had her ears boxed because she sould not
get the dust up with such tiny hands.  She worked and scrubbed and
ran on errands from morning to night, till her feet ached so she
cried out with the pain. She was whipped and scolded and threatened
and frightened and shaken, just as she had been ever since she could
remember. She was kept shut up like a prisoner in the house, with
Madame Joilet's cold gray eyes forever on her, and her sharp voice
forever in her ear. And still not a word was said about Massa Linkum
and the beautiful freedom he had given to all such as little June,
and not a word did June dare to say.

But June _thought_. Madame Joilet could not help that. If Madame
had known just what June was thinking, she would have tried hard
to help it.

Well, so the days passed, and the weeks, and still Madame said
not a word; and still she whipped and scolded and shook, and June
worked and cried, and nothing happened. But June had not done all
her thinking for nothing.

One night Creline was going by the house, when June called to her
softly through the fence.

"Creline!"

"What's de matter?" said Creline, who was in a great hurry. "I's
gwine to fine Massa Linkum,--don' yer tell nobody. Law's a massy,
what a young un dat ar chile is!" said Creline, thinking that June
had just waked up from a dream, and forthwith forgetting all about
her.

Madame Joilet always locked June in her room, which was nothing
but a closet with a window in it, and a heap of rags for a bed. On
this particular night she turned the key as usual, and then went
to her own room at the other end of the house, where she was soon
soundly asleep.

About eleven o'clock, when all the house was still, the window
of June's closet softly opened.  There was a roofed door-way just
underneath it, with an old grapevine trellis running up one side of
it. A little dark figure stepped out timidly on the narrow, steep
roof, clinging with its hands to keep its balance, and then down
upon the trellis, which it began to crawl slowly down. The old wood
creaked and groaned and trembled, and the little figure trembled
and stood still. If it should give way, and fall crashing to the
ground!

She stood a minute looking down; then she took a slow, careful
step; then another and another, hand under hand upon the bars. The
trellis creaked and shook and cracked, but it held on, and June
held on, and dropped softly down, gasping and terrified at what
she had done, all in a little heap on the grass below.

She lay there a moment perfectly still. She could not catch her
breath at first, and she trembled so that she could not move.

Then she crept along on tiptoe to the wood-shed.  She ran a great
risk in opening the wood-shed door, for the hinges were rusty,
and it creaked with a terrible noise. But Hungry was in there. She
could not go without Hungry. She went in, and called in a faint
whisper. The kitten knew her, dark as it was, and ran out from the
wood-pile with a joyful mew, to rub itself against her dress.

"We's gwine to fine Massa Linkum, you an' me, bof two togeder,"
said June.

"Pur! pur-r-r!" said Hungry, as if she were quite content; and June
took her up in her arms, and laughed softly. How happy they would
be, she and Hungry! and how Massa Linkum would smile and wonder
when he saw them coming in! and how Madame Joilet would hunt and
scold!

She went out of the wood-shed and out of the yard, hushing the soft
laugh on her lips, and holding her breath as she passed under her
mistress's window. She had heard Creline say that Massa Linkum had
gone back to the North; so she walked up the street a little way,
and then she turned aside into the vacant squares and unpaved roads,
and so out into the fields where no one could see her.

It was very still and very dark. The great trees stood up like
giants against the sky, and the wind howled hoarsely through them.
It made June think of the bloodhounds that she had seen rushing
with horrible yells to the swamps, where hunted slaves were hiding.

"I reckon 'tain't on'y little ways, Hungry," she said with a shiver;
"we'll git dar 'fore long. Don' be 'fraid."

"Pur! pur-r-r!" said Hungry, nestling her head in warmly under
June's arm.

"'Spect you lub me, Hungry,--'spect you does!"

And then June laughed softly once more. What would Massa Linkum
say to the kitty? Had he ever seen such a kitty in all his life?

So she folded her arms tightly over Hungry's soft fur, and trudged
away into the woods. She began to sing a little as she walked, in
that sorrowful, smothered way, that made Madame Joilet angry. Ah,
that was all over now! There would be no more scolding and beating,
no more tired days, no more terrible nights spent in the dark and
lonely cellar, no more going to bed without her supper, and crying
herself to sleep. Massa Linkum would never treat her so. She never
once doubted, in that foolish little trusting heart of hers, that
he would be glad to see her, and Hungry too.  Why should she? Was
there anyone in all the world who had looked so at poor June?

So on and away, deep into the woods and swamps, she trudged cheerily;
and she sang low to Hungry, and Hungry purred to her. The night
passed on and the stars grew pale, the woods deepened and thickened,
the swamps were cold and wet, the brambles scratched her hands and
feet.

"It's jes' ober here little ways, Hungry," trying to laugh. "We'll
fine him purty soon. I's terrible tired an'--sleepy, Hungry."

She sat down there on a heap of leaves to rest, and laid her head
down upon her arm, and Hungry mewed a little, and curled up in
her neck. The next she knew, the sun was shining. She jumped up
frightened and puzzled, and then she remembered where she was, and
began to think of breakfast.  But there were no berries but the
poisonous dog-wood, and nothing else to be seen but leaves and
grass and bushes. Hungry snapped up a few grasshoppers, and looked
longingly at an unattainable squirrel, who was flying from tree-top
to tree-top; then they went slowly on.

About noon they came to a bit of a brook. June scooped up the water
in her hands, and Hungry lapped it with her pink tongue. But there
was no dinner to be found, and no sign of Massa Linkum; the sun was
like a great ball of fire above the tree-tops, and the child grew
faint and weak.

"I didn't'spect it was so fur," groaned poor June. "But don't yer
be 'feard now, Hungry.  'Pears like we'll fine him berry soon."

The sun went down, and the twilight came. No supper, and no sign
of Massa Linkum yet. Nothing but the great forest and the swamps
and the darkening shadows and the long, hungry night.  June lay
down once more on the damp ground where the poisonous snakes hid
in the bushes, and hugged Hungry with her weak little arms, and
tried to speak out bravely: "We'll fine him, Hungry, sure, to-morrer.
He'll jes' open de door an' let us right in, he will; an' he'll
hab breakfas' all ready an' waitin'; 'pears like he'll hab a dish
ob milk up in de corner for you now,--tink o' dat ar, Hungry!" and
then the poor little voice that tried to be so brave broke down
into a great sob. "Ef I on'y jes' had one little mouthful now,
Hungry!--on'y one!"

So another night passed, and another morning came. A faint noise
woke June from her uneasy sleep, when the sun was hardly up.
It was Hungry, purring loudly at her ear. A plump young robin lay
quivering between her paws. She was tossing it to and fro with
curves and springs of delight.  She laid the poor creature down
by June's face, looking proudly from June to it, saying as plainly
as words could say, "Here's a fine breakfast.  I got it on purpose
for you. Why don't you eat, for pity's sake? There are plenty more
where this came from!"

But June turned away her eyes and moaned; and Hungry, in great
perplexity, made away with the robin herself.

Presently June crawled feebly to her feet, and pushed on through
the brambles. The kitten, purring in her arms, looked so happy and
contented with her breakfast that the child cried out at the sight
of it in sudden pain.

"O, I tought we'd git dar 'fore now, an' I tought he'd jes' be
so glad to see us!"--and then presently, "He jes' look so kinder
smilin' right out ob his eyes, Hungry!"

A bitter wind blew from the east that day, and before noon the rain
was falling, dreary and chilly and sharp. It soaked June's feet and
ragged dress, and pelted in her face. The wind blew against her,
and whirled about her, and tossed her to and fro,--she was such a
little thing, and so weak now and faint.

Just as the early twilight fell from the leaden sky, and the shadows
began to skulk behind the bushes, and the birds gathered to their
nests with sleepy twitter, she tripped over a little stone, fell
weakly to the ground, and lay still. She had not the strength to
get to her feet again.

But somehow June felt neither troubled nor afraid. She lay there
with her face upturned to the pelting rain, watching it patter from
leaf to leaf, listening to the chirp of the birds in the nests,
listening to the crying of the wind. She liked the sound. She had
a dim notion that it was like an old camp-meeting hymn that she
had heard Creline sing sometimes. She never understood the words,
but the music came back like a dream. She wondered if Massa Linkum
ever heard it. She thought he _looked like it_. She should like to
lie there all night and listen to it; and then in the morning they
would go on and find him,--in the morning; it would come very soon.

The twilight deepened, and the night came on.  The rain fell faster,
and the sharp wind cried aloud.

"It's bery cold," said June sleepily, and turned her face over to
hide it on the kitten's warm, soft fur. "Goo' night, Hungry. We'll
git dar to-mor-rer.  We's mos' dar, Hungry."

Hungry curled up close to her cold, wet cheek--Hungry did not care
how black it was--with a happy answering mew; but June said nothing
more.

The rain fell faster, and the sharp wind cried aloud. The kitten
woke from a nap, and purred for her to stir and speak; but June
said nothing more.

Still the rain fell, and the wind cried; and the long night and
the storm and the darkness passed, and the morning came.

Hungry stirred under June's arm, and licked her face, and mewed
piteously at her ear. But June's arm lay still, and June said no
word.

Somewhere, in a land where there was never slave and never mistress,
where there were no more hungry days and frightened nights, little
June was laughing softly, and had found some one to love her
at last. And so she did not find Massa Linkum after all? Ah!--who
would have guessed it? To that place where June had gone, where
there are no masters and no slaves, he had gone before her.

And don't I suppose his was the first face she saw, as she passed
through the storm and the night to that waiting, beautiful place?
And don't I suppose he smiled as he had smiled before, and led
her gently to that other Face, of which poor little June had known
nothing in all her life? Of course I do.




THE STORY OF A FOREST FIRE

By Raymond S. Spears



For more than six weeks no rain had fallen along the southwest side
of the Adirondacks.  The ground was parched. In every direction
from Seabury Settlement fires had been burning through the forest,
but as yet the valley of the West Canada had escaped.

But one night a careless man threw a burning match into a
brush-heap. When morning came the west wind, blowing up the valley,
was ash-laden and warm with the fire that was coming eastward toward
the settlement in a line a mile wide.

Soon after daybreak Lem Lawson met the fire on his way to
Noblesborough, and warned the settlement of its danger. One man
hastened to Noblesborough for the fire-warden, two went up the
West Canada to the lumber-camps. The rest of the male population,
including boys, hastened down the main road to an old log trail.

It was hoped the fire might be stopped at the open the road afforded.

With hoes and shovels the men dug a trench through the loam to the
sand, scattering the dirt over the leaves toward the fire. When
the first flames came along, they redoubled their efforts amid the
flying sparks and suffocating smoke, but without avail. The sparks
and great pieces of flaming birch curls carried the flames over the
road into the woods beyond the men, fairly surrounding them with
fire.

The men could only go before it, pausing now and then to throw dirt
on a spark. Those who lived in the settlement glanced from side to
side, wondering if the fire would cross the brook, where they now
determined to make another and the last possible stand.

The settlement was built along the brink of a steep side-hill. The
bed of the stream was only a few feet wide,--chiefly sand-bar and
dry boulders at this time,--and beyond it, toward the fire, was a
flat, or bottom, sixty rods wide, averaging not two feet above the
bed of the brook.

Should the fire cross the brook, it would climb the hill and burn
the buildings. Then it would sweep across the narrow fields of
grass, or go round the ends of the settlement clearing, into the
"big woods."

One of the fire-fighters was Will Borson, son of the man who had
thrown the match, and as he fought with his hoe along the road he
heard the men on each side of him cursing his father by name for
his carelessness. More than once these men turned on Will, and told
him he ought to put that fire out, since his father was to blame
for it.

Will did his best. Sparks burned holes in his shirt; a flare of
sheet fire from a brush-heap singed his eyelashes and the hair over
his forehead. When old Ike Frazier cried out, "It's no use here
any more, boys!" Will was the last one to duck his head and run
for the road up the creek to the settlement.

Half a dozen men were detailed to go to the houses and help the
women carry the furniture and other household goods out in the
fields to the watering-troughs; the rest hastened to the brook
and scattered along it, and threw water on the brush at the edge,
hoping the flames would be deadened when they came.

Among them worked Will Borson, thinking with all his might and
looking up and down the creek as if the dry gray boulders, with the
scant thread of water oozing down among them, would give him some
inspiration. The width of the stream was only a few feet on an
average, and twenty feet at the widest pools, over which the flame
and sparks would quickly jump.

The fire reached the flat at the foot of the ridge and came toward
the brook in jumps. The men worked faster than ever with their
ten-quart pails.  Old Ike Frazier glanced up the stream, and saw
Will leaning on his hoe-handle, doing nothing.

"Hi there!" yelled the man. "Get to work!"

"You tell the men they want to be looking out!" Will called back.
"Something'll happen pretty quick!" With that he dropped his hoe
and went climbing up the side-hill toward his home at the top.
Mrs. Borson was just piling the last of her bedding on the wagon
when she saw Will coming toward her. He unhitched the horse from
the wagon, and had the harness scattered on the ground before his
mother could control herself enough to cry:

"Those things'll be burned here! What are you taking the horse
for--we--we--"

Then she sank to the ground and cried, while Will's younger brothers
and sisters joined in.

Will did not stop to say anything, but leaped to the back of the
horse, and away he went up the road, to the amazement of those who
were taking their goods from the houses. But he was soon in the
woods above the settlement and out of sight of every one.

He was headed for the dam. He had thought to open the little sluice
at the bottom of it, which would add to the volume of the water in
the stream--raise it a foot, perhaps.

He reached the dam, and prying at the gate, opened the way. A stream
of water two feet square shot from the bottom of the dam and went
sloshing down among the rocks.

"That water'll help a lot," he thought. Then he heard the roar of
the fire down the brook, and saw a huge dull, brick-colored flash
as a big hemlock went up in flame. The amount of water gushing from
the gate of the dam seemed suddenly small and useless. It would not
fill the brook-bed.  In a little shanty a hundred yards away were
the quarrying tools used in getting out the stone for the Cardin
house. To this Will ran with all his speed.

With an old ax that was behind the shanty he broke down the door.
Inside he picked up a full twelve-pound box of dynamite, and bored
a hole the size of his finger into one side. Then with a fuse and
cap in one hand and the box under his arm, he hurried back to the
dam.

He climbed down the ladder to the bottom of the dam, and fixing
the fuse to the cap, ran it into the hole he had bored till it was
well among the sawdust and sticks of dynamite. He cut the fuse to
two minutes' length, and carried the box back among the big key
logs that held the dam. He was soon ready. He jammed the box under
water among beams where it would stick. A match started the fuse
going, and then Will climbed the ladder and ran for safety.

In a few moments the explosion came. Will heard the beams in the
gorge tumbling as the dam gave way, and the water behind was freed.
Away it went, washing and pounding down the narrow ravine, toward
the low bottom.

The fire-fighters heard the explosion and paused, wondering, to
listen. The next instant the roar of the water came to their ears,
and the tremble caused by logs and boulders rolling with the flood
was felt. Then every man understood what was done, for they had
been log-drivers all their lives, and knew the signs of a loosed
sluicegate or of a broken jam.

They climbed the steep bank toward the buildings, to be above the
flood-line, yelling warnings that were half-cheers.

In a few moments the water was below the mouth of the gorge, and
then it rushed over the low west bank of the brook and spread out
on the wide flat where the fire was raging. For a minute clouds of
steam and loud hissing marked the progress of the wave, and then
the brush-heaps from edge to edge of the valley bottom were covered
and the fire was drowned.

The fires left in the trees above the high-water mark and the
flames back on the ridge still thrust and flared, but were unable
to cross the wide, wet flood-belt. The settlement and the "big
woods" beyond were saved.

Sol Cardin reached the settlement on the following day, and heard
the story of the fire. In response to an offer from Will, he replied:

"No, my boy, you needn't pay for the dam by working or anything
else. I'm in debt to you for saving my timber above the settlement,
instead." Then he added, in a quiet way characteristic of him,
"It seems a pity if wit like yours doesn't get its full growth."


The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

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Title: Pride and Prejudice

Author: Jane Austen

Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1342]
Release Date: June, 1998
[Last updated: August 11, 2011]

Language: English


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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

By Jane Austen



Chapter 1


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his
first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds
of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property
of some one or other of their daughters.

"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that
Netherfield Park is let at last?"

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she
told me all about it."

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.

"_You_ want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."

This was invitation enough.

"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken
by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came
down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much
delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he
is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to
be in the house by the end of next week."

"What is his name?"

"Bingley."

"Is he married or single?"

"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or
five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"

"How so? How can it affect them?"

"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You
must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."

"Is that his design in settling here?"

"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he
_may_ fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as
soon as he comes."

"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send
them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are
as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the
party."

"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly _have_ had my share of beauty, but
I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five
grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty."

"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of."

"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into
the neighbourhood."

"It is more than I engage for, I assure you."

"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would
be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to
go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no
newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for _us_ to
visit him if you do not."

"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very
glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my
hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though
I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."

"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the
others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so
good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving _her_ the preference."

"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he; "they are
all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of
quickness than her sisters."

"Mr. Bennet, how _can_ you abuse your own children in such a way? You
take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves."

"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They
are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration
these last twenty years at least."

"Ah, you do not know what I suffer."

"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four
thousand a year come into the neighbourhood."

"It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not
visit them."

"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them
all."

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour,
reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had
been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. _Her_ mind
was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding,
little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented,
she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her
daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.



Chapter 2


Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He
had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring
his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was
paid she had no knowledge of it. It was then disclosed in the following
manner. Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he
suddenly addressed her with:

"I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy."

"We are not in a way to know _what_ Mr. Bingley likes," said her mother
resentfully, "since we are not to visit."

"But you forget, mamma," said Elizabeth, "that we shall meet him at the
assemblies, and that Mrs. Long promised to introduce him."

"I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces
of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion
of her."

"No more have I," said Mr. Bennet; "and I am glad to find that you do
not depend on her serving you."

Mrs. Bennet deigned not to make any reply, but, unable to contain
herself, began scolding one of her daughters.

"Don't keep coughing so, Kitty, for Heaven's sake! Have a little
compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces."

"Kitty has no discretion in her coughs," said her father; "she times
them ill."

"I do not cough for my own amusement," replied Kitty fretfully. "When is
your next ball to be, Lizzy?"

"To-morrow fortnight."

"Aye, so it is," cried her mother, "and Mrs. Long does not come back
till the day before; so it will be impossible for her to introduce him,
for she will not know him herself."

"Then, my dear, you may have the advantage of your friend, and introduce
Mr. Bingley to _her_."

"Impossible, Mr. Bennet, impossible, when I am not acquainted with him
myself; how can you be so teasing?"

"I honour your circumspection. A fortnight's acquaintance is certainly
very little. One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a
fortnight. But if _we_ do not venture somebody else will; and after all,
Mrs. Long and her daughters must stand their chance; and, therefore, as
she will think it an act of kindness, if you decline the office, I will
take it on myself."

The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Bennet said only, "Nonsense,
nonsense!"

"What can be the meaning of that emphatic exclamation?" cried he. "Do
you consider the forms of introduction, and the stress that is laid on
them, as nonsense? I cannot quite agree with you _there_. What say you,
Mary? For you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and read
great books and make extracts."

Mary wished to say something sensible, but knew not how.

"While Mary is adjusting her ideas," he continued, "let us return to Mr.
Bingley."

"I am sick of Mr. Bingley," cried his wife.

"I am sorry to hear _that_; but why did not you tell me that before? If
I had known as much this morning I certainly would not have called
on him. It is very unlucky; but as I have actually paid the visit, we
cannot escape the acquaintance now."

The astonishment of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs.
Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest; though, when the first tumult of joy
was over, she began to declare that it was what she had expected all the
while.

"How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Bennet! But I knew I should
persuade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well to
neglect such an acquaintance. Well, how pleased I am! and it is such a
good joke, too, that you should have gone this morning and never said a
word about it till now."

"Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you choose," said Mr. Bennet; and,
as he spoke, he left the room, fatigued with the raptures of his wife.

"What an excellent father you have, girls!" said she, when the door was
shut. "I do not know how you will ever make him amends for his kindness;
or me, either, for that matter. At our time of life it is not so
pleasant, I can tell you, to be making new acquaintances every day; but
for your sakes, we would do anything. Lydia, my love, though you _are_
the youngest, I dare say Mr. Bingley will dance with you at the next
ball."

"Oh!" said Lydia stoutly, "I am not afraid; for though I _am_ the
youngest, I'm the tallest."

The rest of the evening was spent in conjecturing how soon he would
return Mr. Bennet's visit, and determining when they should ask him to
dinner.



Chapter 3


Not all that Mrs. Bennet, however, with the assistance of her five
daughters, could ask on the subject, was sufficient to draw from her
husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley. They attacked him
in various ways--with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and
distant surmises; but he eluded the skill of them all, and they were at
last obliged to accept the second-hand intelligence of their neighbour,
Lady Lucas. Her report was highly favourable. Sir William had been
delighted with him. He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely
agreeable, and, to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next assembly
with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful! To be fond of
dancing was a certain step towards falling in love; and very lively
hopes of Mr. Bingley's heart were entertained.

"If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield,"
said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, "and all the others equally well
married, I shall have nothing to wish for."

In a few days Mr. Bingley returned Mr. Bennet's visit, and sat about
ten minutes with him in his library. He had entertained hopes of being
admitted to a sight of the young ladies, of whose beauty he had
heard much; but he saw only the father. The ladies were somewhat more
fortunate, for they had the advantage of ascertaining from an upper
window that he wore a blue coat, and rode a black horse.

An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched; and already
had Mrs. Bennet planned the courses that were to do credit to her
housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred it all. Mr. Bingley
was obliged to be in town the following day, and, consequently, unable
to accept the honour of their invitation, etc. Mrs. Bennet was quite
disconcerted. She could not imagine what business he could have in town
so soon after his arrival in Hertfordshire; and she began to fear that
he might be always flying about from one place to another, and never
settled at Netherfield as he ought to be. Lady Lucas quieted her fears
a little by starting the idea of his being gone to London only to get
a large party for the ball; and a report soon followed that Mr. Bingley
was to bring twelve ladies and seven gentlemen with him to the assembly.
The girls grieved over such a number of ladies, but were comforted the
day before the ball by hearing, that instead of twelve he brought only
six with him from London--his five sisters and a cousin. And when
the party entered the assembly room it consisted of only five
altogether--Mr. Bingley, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and
another young man.

Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant
countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women,
with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely
looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention
of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and
the report which was in general circulation within five minutes
after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen
pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he
was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great
admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust
which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be
proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all
his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most
forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared
with his friend.

Mr. Bingley had soon made himself acquainted with all the principal
people in the room; he was lively and unreserved, danced every dance,
was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giving
one himself at Netherfield. Such amiable qualities must speak for
themselves. What a contrast between him and his friend! Mr. Darcy danced
only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, declined being
introduced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in
walking about the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party.
His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man
in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there again.
Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs. Bennet, whose dislike of
his general behaviour was sharpened into particular resentment by his
having slighted one of her daughters.

Elizabeth Bennet had been obliged, by the scarcity of gentlemen, to sit
down for two dances; and during part of that time, Mr. Darcy had been
standing near enough for her to hear a conversation between him and Mr.
Bingley, who came from the dance for a few minutes, to press his friend
to join it.

"Come, Darcy," said he, "I must have you dance. I hate to see you
standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better
dance."

"I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am
particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this
it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not
another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to
stand up with."

"I would not be so fastidious as you are," cried Mr. Bingley, "for a
kingdom! Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in
my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see
uncommonly pretty."

"_You_ are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room," said Mr.
Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.

"Oh! She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one
of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I
dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you."

"Which do you mean?" and turning round he looked for a moment at
Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said:
"She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt _me_; I am in no
humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted
by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her
smiles, for you are wasting your time with me."

Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and Elizabeth
remained with no very cordial feelings toward him. She told the story,
however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively,
playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous.

The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole family. Mrs.
Bennet had seen her eldest daughter much admired by the Netherfield
party. Mr. Bingley had danced with her twice, and she had been
distinguished by his sisters. Jane was as much gratified by this as
her mother could be, though in a quieter way. Elizabeth felt Jane's
pleasure. Mary had heard herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most
accomplished girl in the neighbourhood; and Catherine and Lydia had been
fortunate enough never to be without partners, which was all that they
had yet learnt to care for at a ball. They returned, therefore, in good
spirits to Longbourn, the village where they lived, and of which they
were the principal inhabitants. They found Mr. Bennet still up. With
a book he was regardless of time; and on the present occasion he had a
good deal of curiosity as to the event of an evening which had raised
such splendid expectations. He had rather hoped that his wife's views on
the stranger would be disappointed; but he soon found out that he had a
different story to hear.

"Oh! my dear Mr. Bennet," as she entered the room, "we have had a most
delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you had been there.
Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it. Everybody said how well
she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful, and danced with
her twice! Only think of _that_, my dear; he actually danced with her
twice! and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second
time. First of all, he asked Miss Lucas. I was so vexed to see him stand
up with her! But, however, he did not admire her at all; indeed, nobody
can, you know; and he seemed quite struck with Jane as she was going
down the dance. So he inquired who she was, and got introduced, and
asked her for the two next. Then the two third he danced with Miss King,
and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifth with Jane again,
and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the _Boulanger_--"

"If he had had any compassion for _me_," cried her husband impatiently,
"he would not have danced half so much! For God's sake, say no more of
his partners. Oh that he had sprained his ankle in the first dance!"

"Oh! my dear, I am quite delighted with him. He is so excessively
handsome! And his sisters are charming women. I never in my life saw
anything more elegant than their dresses. I dare say the lace upon Mrs.
Hurst's gown--"

Here she was interrupted again. Mr. Bennet protested against any
description of finery. She was therefore obliged to seek another branch
of the subject, and related, with much bitterness of spirit and some
exaggeration, the shocking rudeness of Mr. Darcy.

"But I can assure you," she added, "that Lizzy does not lose much by not
suiting _his_ fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at
all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring
him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very
great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my
dear, to have given him one of your set-downs. I quite detest the man."



Chapter 4


When Jane and Elizabeth were alone, the former, who had been cautious in
her praise of Mr. Bingley before, expressed to her sister just how very
much she admired him.

"He is just what a young man ought to be," said she, "sensible,
good-humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners!--so much
ease, with such perfect good breeding!"

"He is also handsome," replied Elizabeth, "which a young man ought
likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete."

"I was very much flattered by his asking me to dance a second time. I
did not expect such a compliment."

"Did not you? I did for you. But that is one great difference between
us. Compliments always take _you_ by surprise, and _me_ never. What
could be more natural than his asking you again? He could not help
seeing that you were about five times as pretty as every other woman
in the room. No thanks to his gallantry for that. Well, he certainly is
very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a
stupider person."

"Dear Lizzy!"

"Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general.
You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are good and agreeable
in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in your
life."

"I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone; but I always speak
what I think."

"I know you do; and it is _that_ which makes the wonder. With _your_
good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of
others! Affectation of candour is common enough--one meets with it
everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design--to take the
good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing
of the bad--belongs to you alone. And so you like this man's sisters,
too, do you? Their manners are not equal to his."

"Certainly not--at first. But they are very pleasing women when you
converse with them. Miss Bingley is to live with her brother, and keep
his house; and I am much mistaken if we shall not find a very charming
neighbour in her."

Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced; their behaviour at
the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more
quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister,
and with a judgement too unassailed by any attention to herself, she
was very little disposed to approve them. They were in fact very fine
ladies; not deficient in good humour when they were pleased, nor in the
power of making themselves agreeable when they chose it, but proud and
conceited. They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the
first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand
pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of
associating with people of rank, and were therefore in every respect
entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others. They were of
a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply
impressed on their memories than that their brother's fortune and their
own had been acquired by trade.

Mr. Bingley inherited property to the amount of nearly a hundred
thousand pounds from his father, who had intended to purchase an
estate, but did not live to do it. Mr. Bingley intended it likewise, and
sometimes made choice of his county; but as he was now provided with a
good house and the liberty of a manor, it was doubtful to many of those
who best knew the easiness of his temper, whether he might not spend the
remainder of his days at Netherfield, and leave the next generation to
purchase.

His sisters were anxious for his having an estate of his own; but,
though he was now only established as a tenant, Miss Bingley was by no
means unwilling to preside at his table--nor was Mrs. Hurst, who had
married a man of more fashion than fortune, less disposed to consider
his house as her home when it suited her. Mr. Bingley had not been of
age two years, when he was tempted by an accidental recommendation
to look at Netherfield House. He did look at it, and into it for
half-an-hour--was pleased with the situation and the principal
rooms, satisfied with what the owner said in its praise, and took it
immediately.

Between him and Darcy there was a very steady friendship, in spite of
great opposition of character. Bingley was endeared to Darcy by the
easiness, openness, and ductility of his temper, though no disposition
could offer a greater contrast to his own, and though with his own he
never appeared dissatisfied. On the strength of Darcy's regard, Bingley
had the firmest reliance, and of his judgement the highest opinion.
In understanding, Darcy was the superior. Bingley was by no means
deficient, but Darcy was clever. He was at the same time haughty,
reserved, and fastidious, and his manners, though well-bred, were not
inviting. In that respect his friend had greatly the advantage. Bingley
was sure of being liked wherever he appeared, Darcy was continually
giving offense.

The manner in which they spoke of the Meryton assembly was sufficiently
characteristic. Bingley had never met with more pleasant people or
prettier girls in his life; everybody had been most kind and attentive
to him; there had been no formality, no stiffness; he had soon felt
acquainted with all the room; and, as to Miss Bennet, he could not
conceive an angel more beautiful. Darcy, on the contrary, had seen a
collection of people in whom there was little beauty and no fashion, for
none of whom he had felt the smallest interest, and from none received
either attention or pleasure. Miss Bennet he acknowledged to be pretty,
but she smiled too much.

Mrs. Hurst and her sister allowed it to be so--but still they admired
her and liked her, and pronounced her to be a sweet girl, and one
whom they would not object to know more of. Miss Bennet was therefore
established as a sweet girl, and their brother felt authorized by such
commendation to think of her as he chose.



Chapter 5


Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom the Bennets
were particularly intimate. Sir William Lucas had been formerly in trade
in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable fortune, and risen to the
honour of knighthood by an address to the king during his mayoralty.
The distinction had perhaps been felt too strongly. It had given him a
disgust to his business, and to his residence in a small market town;
and, in quitting them both, he had removed with his family to a house
about a mile from Meryton, denominated from that period Lucas Lodge,
where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and,
unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all
the world. For, though elated by his rank, it did not render him
supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to everybody. By
nature inoffensive, friendly, and obliging, his presentation at St.
James's had made him courteous.

Lady Lucas was a very good kind of woman, not too clever to be a
valuable neighbour to Mrs. Bennet. They had several children. The eldest
of them, a sensible, intelligent young woman, about twenty-seven, was
Elizabeth's intimate friend.

That the Miss Lucases and the Miss Bennets should meet to talk over
a ball was absolutely necessary; and the morning after the assembly
brought the former to Longbourn to hear and to communicate.

"_You_ began the evening well, Charlotte," said Mrs. Bennet with civil
self-command to Miss Lucas. "_You_ were Mr. Bingley's first choice."

"Yes; but he seemed to like his second better."

"Oh! you mean Jane, I suppose, because he danced with her twice. To be
sure that _did_ seem as if he admired her--indeed I rather believe he
_did_--I heard something about it--but I hardly know what--something
about Mr. Robinson."

"Perhaps you mean what I overheard between him and Mr. Robinson; did not
I mention it to you? Mr. Robinson's asking him how he liked our Meryton
assemblies, and whether he did not think there were a great many
pretty women in the room, and _which_ he thought the prettiest? and his
answering immediately to the last question: 'Oh! the eldest Miss Bennet,
beyond a doubt; there cannot be two opinions on that point.'"

"Upon my word! Well, that is very decided indeed--that does seem as
if--but, however, it may all come to nothing, you know."

"_My_ overhearings were more to the purpose than _yours_, Eliza," said
Charlotte. "Mr. Darcy is not so well worth listening to as his friend,
is he?--poor Eliza!--to be only just _tolerable_."

"I beg you would not put it into Lizzy's head to be vexed by his
ill-treatment, for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would be quite
a misfortune to be liked by him. Mrs. Long told me last night that he
sat close to her for half-an-hour without once opening his lips."

"Are you quite sure, ma'am?--is not there a little mistake?" said Jane.
"I certainly saw Mr. Darcy speaking to her."

"Aye--because she asked him at last how he liked Netherfield, and he
could not help answering her; but she said he seemed quite angry at
being spoke to."

"Miss Bingley told me," said Jane, "that he never speaks much,
unless among his intimate acquaintances. With _them_ he is remarkably
agreeable."

"I do not believe a word of it, my dear. If he had been so very
agreeable, he would have talked to Mrs. Long. But I can guess how it
was; everybody says that he is eat up with pride, and I dare say he had
heard somehow that Mrs. Long does not keep a carriage, and had come to
the ball in a hack chaise."

"I do not mind his not talking to Mrs. Long," said Miss Lucas, "but I
wish he had danced with Eliza."

"Another time, Lizzy," said her mother, "I would not dance with _him_,
if I were you."

"I believe, ma'am, I may safely promise you _never_ to dance with him."

"His pride," said Miss Lucas, "does not offend _me_ so much as pride
often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so
very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour,
should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a _right_
to be proud."

"That is very true," replied Elizabeth, "and I could easily forgive
_his_ pride, if he had not mortified _mine_."

"Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her
reflections, "is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have
ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human
nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us
who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some
quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different
things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may
be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of
ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

"If I were as rich as Mr. Darcy," cried a young Lucas, who came with
his sisters, "I should not care how proud I was. I would keep a pack of
foxhounds, and drink a bottle of wine a day."

"Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought," said Mrs.
Bennet; "and if I were to see you at it, I should take away your bottle
directly."

The boy protested that she should not; she continued to declare that she
would, and the argument ended only with the visit.



Chapter 6


The ladies of Longbourn soon waited on those of Netherfield. The visit
was soon returned in due form. Miss Bennet's pleasing manners grew on
the goodwill of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and though the mother was
found to be intolerable, and the younger sisters not worth speaking to,
a wish of being better acquainted with _them_ was expressed towards
the two eldest. By Jane, this attention was received with the greatest
pleasure, but Elizabeth still saw superciliousness in their treatment
of everybody, hardly excepting even her sister, and could not like them;
though their kindness to Jane, such as it was, had a value as arising in
all probability from the influence of their brother's admiration. It
was generally evident whenever they met, that he _did_ admire her and
to _her_ it was equally evident that Jane was yielding to the preference
which she had begun to entertain for him from the first, and was in a
way to be very much in love; but she considered with pleasure that it
was not likely to be discovered by the world in general, since Jane
united, with great strength of feeling, a composure of temper and a
uniform cheerfulness of manner which would guard her from the suspicions
of the impertinent. She mentioned this to her friend Miss Lucas.

"It may perhaps be pleasant," replied Charlotte, "to be able to impose
on the public in such a case; but it is sometimes a disadvantage to be
so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill
from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and
it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in
the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every
attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all
_begin_ freely--a slight preference is natural enough; but there are
very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without
encouragement. In nine cases out of ten a women had better show _more_
affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he
may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on."

"But she does help him on, as much as her nature will allow. If I can
perceive her regard for him, he must be a simpleton, indeed, not to
discover it too."

"Remember, Eliza, that he does not know Jane's disposition as you do."

"But if a woman is partial to a man, and does not endeavour to conceal
it, he must find it out."

"Perhaps he must, if he sees enough of her. But, though Bingley and Jane
meet tolerably often, it is never for many hours together; and, as they
always see each other in large mixed parties, it is impossible that
every moment should be employed in conversing together. Jane should
therefore make the most of every half-hour in which she can command his
attention. When she is secure of him, there will be more leisure for
falling in love as much as she chooses."

"Your plan is a good one," replied Elizabeth, "where nothing is in
question but the desire of being well married, and if I were determined
to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I should adopt it. But
these are not Jane's feelings; she is not acting by design. As yet,
she cannot even be certain of the degree of her own regard nor of its
reasonableness. She has known him only a fortnight. She danced four
dances with him at Meryton; she saw him one morning at his own house,
and has since dined with him in company four times. This is not quite
enough to make her understand his character."

"Not as you represent it. Had she merely _dined_ with him, she might
only have discovered whether he had a good appetite; but you must
remember that four evenings have also been spent together--and four
evenings may do a great deal."

"Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that they
both like Vingt-un better than Commerce; but with respect to any other
leading characteristic, I do not imagine that much has been unfolded."

"Well," said Charlotte, "I wish Jane success with all my heart; and
if she were married to him to-morrow, I should think she had as good a
chance of happiness as if she were to be studying his character for a
twelvemonth. Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If
the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or
ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the
least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to
have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as
possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your
life."

"You make me laugh, Charlotte; but it is not sound. You know it is not
sound, and that you would never act in this way yourself."

Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, Elizabeth
was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some
interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely
allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the
ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no
sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she hardly
had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered
uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To
this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had
detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry
in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and
pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those
of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of
this she was perfectly unaware; to her he was only the man who made
himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough
to dance with.

He began to wish to know more of her, and as a step towards conversing
with her himself, attended to her conversation with others. His doing so
drew her notice. It was at Sir William Lucas's, where a large party were
assembled.

"What does Mr. Darcy mean," said she to Charlotte, "by listening to my
conversation with Colonel Forster?"

"That is a question which Mr. Darcy only can answer."

"But if he does it any more I shall certainly let him know that I see
what he is about. He has a very satirical eye, and if I do not begin by
being impertinent myself, I shall soon grow afraid of him."

On his approaching them soon afterwards, though without seeming to have
any intention of speaking, Miss Lucas defied her friend to mention such
a subject to him; which immediately provoking Elizabeth to do it, she
turned to him and said:

"Did you not think, Mr. Darcy, that I expressed myself uncommonly
well just now, when I was teasing Colonel Forster to give us a ball at
Meryton?"

"With great energy; but it is always a subject which makes a lady
energetic."

"You are severe on us."

"It will be _her_ turn soon to be teased," said Miss Lucas. "I am going
to open the instrument, Eliza, and you know what follows."

"You are a very strange creature by way of a friend!--always wanting me
to play and sing before anybody and everybody! If my vanity had taken
a musical turn, you would have been invaluable; but as it is, I would
really rather not sit down before those who must be in the habit of
hearing the very best performers." On Miss Lucas's persevering, however,
she added, "Very well, if it must be so, it must." And gravely glancing
at Mr. Darcy, "There is a fine old saying, which everybody here is of
course familiar with: 'Keep your breath to cool your porridge'; and I
shall keep mine to swell my song."

Her performance was pleasing, though by no means capital. After a song
or two, and before she could reply to the entreaties of several that
she would sing again, she was eagerly succeeded at the instrument by her
sister Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in
the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always
impatient for display.

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her
application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited
manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she
had reached. Elizabeth, easy and unaffected, had been listened to with
much more pleasure, though not playing half so well; and Mary, at the
end of a long concerto, was glad to purchase praise and gratitude by
Scotch and Irish airs, at the request of her younger sisters, who,
with some of the Lucases, and two or three officers, joined eagerly in
dancing at one end of the room.

Mr. Darcy stood near them in silent indignation at such a mode of
passing the evening, to the exclusion of all conversation, and was too
much engrossed by his thoughts to perceive that Sir William Lucas was
his neighbour, till Sir William thus began:

"What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy! There
is nothing like dancing after all. I consider it as one of the first
refinements of polished society."

"Certainly, sir; and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst
the less polished societies of the world. Every savage can dance."

Sir William only smiled. "Your friend performs delightfully," he
continued after a pause, on seeing Bingley join the group; "and I doubt
not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr. Darcy."

"You saw me dance at Meryton, I believe, sir."

"Yes, indeed, and received no inconsiderable pleasure from the sight. Do
you often dance at St. James's?"

"Never, sir."

"Do you not think it would be a proper compliment to the place?"

"It is a compliment which I never pay to any place if I can avoid it."

"You have a house in town, I conclude?"

Mr. Darcy bowed.

"I had once had some thought of fixing in town myself--for I am fond
of superior society; but I did not feel quite certain that the air of
London would agree with Lady Lucas."

He paused in hopes of an answer; but his companion was not disposed
to make any; and Elizabeth at that instant moving towards them, he was
struck with the action of doing a very gallant thing, and called out to
her:

"My dear Miss Eliza, why are you not dancing? Mr. Darcy, you must allow
me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner. You
cannot refuse to dance, I am sure when so much beauty is before you."
And, taking her hand, he would have given it to Mr. Darcy who, though
extremely surprised, was not unwilling to receive it, when she instantly
drew back, and said with some discomposure to Sir William:

"Indeed, sir, I have not the least intention of dancing. I entreat you
not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner."

Mr. Darcy, with grave propriety, requested to be allowed the honour of
her hand, but in vain. Elizabeth was determined; nor did Sir William at
all shake her purpose by his attempt at persuasion.

"You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza, that it is cruel to deny
me the happiness of seeing you; and though this gentleman dislikes the
amusement in general, he can have no objection, I am sure, to oblige us
for one half-hour."

"Mr. Darcy is all politeness," said Elizabeth, smiling.

"He is, indeed; but, considering the inducement, my dear Miss Eliza,
we cannot wonder at his complaisance--for who would object to such a
partner?"

Elizabeth looked archly, and turned away. Her resistance had not
injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with some
complacency, when thus accosted by Miss Bingley:

"I can guess the subject of your reverie."

"I should imagine not."

"You are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many evenings
in this manner--in such society; and indeed I am quite of your opinion.
I was never more annoyed! The insipidity, and yet the noise--the
nothingness, and yet the self-importance of all those people! What would
I give to hear your strictures on them!"

"Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more
agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure
which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow."

Miss Bingley immediately fixed her eyes on his face, and desired he
would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such reflections.
Mr. Darcy replied with great intrepidity:

"Miss Elizabeth Bennet."

"Miss Elizabeth Bennet!" repeated Miss Bingley. "I am all astonishment.
How long has she been such a favourite?--and pray, when am I to wish you
joy?"

"That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A lady's
imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love
to matrimony, in a moment. I knew you would be wishing me joy."

"Nay, if you are serious about it, I shall consider the matter is
absolutely settled. You will be having a charming mother-in-law, indeed;
and, of course, she will always be at Pemberley with you."

He listened to her with perfect indifference while she chose to
entertain herself in this manner; and as his composure convinced her
that all was safe, her wit flowed long.



Chapter 7


Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two
thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed,
in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and their mother's
fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply
the deficiency of his. Her father had been an attorney in Meryton, and
had left her four thousand pounds.

She had a sister married to a Mr. Phillips, who had been a clerk to
their father and succeeded him in the business, and a brother settled in
London in a respectable line of trade.

The village of Longbourn was only one mile from Meryton; a most
convenient distance for the young ladies, who were usually tempted
thither three or four times a week, to pay their duty to their aunt and
to a milliner's shop just over the way. The two youngest of the family,
Catherine and Lydia, were particularly frequent in these attentions;
their minds were more vacant than their sisters', and when nothing
better offered, a walk to Meryton was necessary to amuse their morning
hours and furnish conversation for the evening; and however bare of news
the country in general might be, they always contrived to learn some
from their aunt. At present, indeed, they were well supplied both with
news and happiness by the recent arrival of a militia regiment in the
neighbourhood; it was to remain the whole winter, and Meryton was the
headquarters.

Their visits to Mrs. Phillips were now productive of the most
interesting intelligence. Every day added something to their knowledge
of the officers' names and connections. Their lodgings were not long a
secret, and at length they began to know the officers themselves. Mr.
Phillips visited them all, and this opened to his nieces a store of
felicity unknown before. They could talk of nothing but officers; and
Mr. Bingley's large fortune, the mention of which gave animation
to their mother, was worthless in their eyes when opposed to the
regimentals of an ensign.

After listening one morning to their effusions on this subject, Mr.
Bennet coolly observed:

"From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two
of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but
I am now convinced."

Catherine was disconcerted, and made no answer; but Lydia, with perfect
indifference, continued to express her admiration of Captain Carter,
and her hope of seeing him in the course of the day, as he was going the
next morning to London.

"I am astonished, my dear," said Mrs. Bennet, "that you should be so
ready to think your own children silly. If I wished to think slightingly
of anybody's children, it should not be of my own, however."

"If my children are silly, I must hope to be always sensible of it."

"Yes--but as it happens, they are all of them very clever."

"This is the only point, I flatter myself, on which we do not agree. I
had hoped that our sentiments coincided in every particular, but I must
so far differ from you as to think our two youngest daughters uncommonly
foolish."

"My dear Mr. Bennet, you must not expect such girls to have the sense of
their father and mother. When they get to our age, I dare say they will
not think about officers any more than we do. I remember the time when
I liked a red coat myself very well--and, indeed, so I do still at my
heart; and if a smart young colonel, with five or six thousand a year,
should want one of my girls I shall not say nay to him; and I thought
Colonel Forster looked very becoming the other night at Sir William's in
his regimentals."

"Mamma," cried Lydia, "my aunt says that Colonel Forster and Captain
Carter do not go so often to Miss Watson's as they did when they first
came; she sees them now very often standing in Clarke's library."

Mrs. Bennet was prevented replying by the entrance of the footman with
a note for Miss Bennet; it came from Netherfield, and the servant waited
for an answer. Mrs. Bennet's eyes sparkled with pleasure, and she was
eagerly calling out, while her daughter read,

"Well, Jane, who is it from? What is it about? What does he say? Well,
Jane, make haste and tell us; make haste, my love."

"It is from Miss Bingley," said Jane, and then read it aloud.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,--

"If you are not so compassionate as to dine to-day with Louisa and me,
we shall be in danger of hating each other for the rest of our lives,
for a whole day's tete-a-tete between two women can never end without a
quarrel. Come as soon as you can on receipt of this. My brother and the
gentlemen are to dine with the officers.--Yours ever,

"CAROLINE BINGLEY"

"With the officers!" cried Lydia. "I wonder my aunt did not tell us of
_that_."

"Dining out," said Mrs. Bennet, "that is very unlucky."

"Can I have the carriage?" said Jane.

"No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems likely to
rain; and then you must stay all night."

"That would be a good scheme," said Elizabeth, "if you were sure that
they would not offer to send her home."

"Oh! but the gentlemen will have Mr. Bingley's chaise to go to Meryton,
and the Hursts have no horses to theirs."

"I had much rather go in the coach."

"But, my dear, your father cannot spare the horses, I am sure. They are
wanted in the farm, Mr. Bennet, are they not?"

"They are wanted in the farm much oftener than I can get them."

"But if you have got them to-day," said Elizabeth, "my mother's purpose
will be answered."

She did at last extort from her father an acknowledgment that the horses
were engaged. Jane was therefore obliged to go on horseback, and her
mother attended her to the door with many cheerful prognostics of a
bad day. Her hopes were answered; Jane had not been gone long before
it rained hard. Her sisters were uneasy for her, but her mother was
delighted. The rain continued the whole evening without intermission;
Jane certainly could not come back.

"This was a lucky idea of mine, indeed!" said Mrs. Bennet more than
once, as if the credit of making it rain were all her own. Till the
next morning, however, she was not aware of all the felicity of her
contrivance. Breakfast was scarcely over when a servant from Netherfield
brought the following note for Elizabeth:

"MY DEAREST LIZZY,--

"I find myself very unwell this morning, which, I suppose, is to be
imputed to my getting wet through yesterday. My kind friends will not
hear of my returning till I am better. They insist also on my seeing Mr.
Jones--therefore do not be alarmed if you should hear of his having been
to me--and, excepting a sore throat and headache, there is not much the
matter with me.--Yours, etc."

"Well, my dear," said Mr. Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the note
aloud, "if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness--if she
should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of
Mr. Bingley, and under your orders."

"Oh! I am not afraid of her dying. People do not die of little trifling
colds. She will be taken good care of. As long as she stays there, it is
all very well. I would go and see her if I could have the carriage."

Elizabeth, feeling really anxious, was determined to go to her, though
the carriage was not to be had; and as she was no horsewoman, walking
was her only alternative. She declared her resolution.

"How can you be so silly," cried her mother, "as to think of such a
thing, in all this dirt! You will not be fit to be seen when you get
there."

"I shall be very fit to see Jane--which is all I want."

"Is this a hint to me, Lizzy," said her father, "to send for the
horses?"

"No, indeed, I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing
when one has a motive; only three miles. I shall be back by dinner."

"I admire the activity of your benevolence," observed Mary, "but every
impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion,
exertion should always be in proportion to what is required."

"We will go as far as Meryton with you," said Catherine and Lydia.
Elizabeth accepted their company, and the three young ladies set off
together.

"If we make haste," said Lydia, as they walked along, "perhaps we may
see something of Captain Carter before he goes."

In Meryton they parted; the two youngest repaired to the lodgings of one
of the officers' wives, and Elizabeth continued her walk alone, crossing
field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing
over puddles with impatient activity, and finding herself at last
within view of the house, with weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face
glowing with the warmth of exercise.

She was shown into the breakfast-parlour, where all but Jane were
assembled, and where her appearance created a great deal of surprise.
That she should have walked three miles so early in the day, in such
dirty weather, and by herself, was almost incredible to Mrs. Hurst and
Miss Bingley; and Elizabeth was convinced that they held her in contempt
for it. She was received, however, very politely by them; and in their
brother's manners there was something better than politeness; there
was good humour and kindness. Mr. Darcy said very little, and Mr.
Hurst nothing at all. The former was divided between admiration of the
brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion, and doubt as
to the occasion's justifying her coming so far alone. The latter was
thinking only of his breakfast.

Her inquiries after her sister were not very favourably answered. Miss
Bennet had slept ill, and though up, was very feverish, and not
well enough to leave her room. Elizabeth was glad to be taken to her
immediately; and Jane, who had only been withheld by the fear of giving
alarm or inconvenience from expressing in her note how much she longed
for such a visit, was delighted at her entrance. She was not equal,
however, to much conversation, and when Miss Bingley left them
together, could attempt little besides expressions of gratitude for the
extraordinary kindness she was treated with. Elizabeth silently attended
her.

When breakfast was over they were joined by the sisters; and Elizabeth
began to like them herself, when she saw how much affection and
solicitude they showed for Jane. The apothecary came, and having
examined his patient, said, as might be supposed, that she had caught
a violent cold, and that they must endeavour to get the better of it;
advised her to return to bed, and promised her some draughts. The advice
was followed readily, for the feverish symptoms increased, and her head
ached acutely. Elizabeth did not quit her room for a moment; nor were
the other ladies often absent; the gentlemen being out, they had, in
fact, nothing to do elsewhere.

When the clock struck three, Elizabeth felt that she must go, and very
unwillingly said so. Miss Bingley offered her the carriage, and she only
wanted a little pressing to accept it, when Jane testified such concern
in parting with her, that Miss Bingley was obliged to convert the offer
of the chaise to an invitation to remain at Netherfield for the present.
Elizabeth most thankfully consented, and a servant was dispatched to
Longbourn to acquaint the family with her stay and bring back a supply
of clothes.



Chapter 8


At five o'clock the two ladies retired to dress, and at half-past six
Elizabeth was summoned to dinner. To the civil inquiries which then
poured in, and amongst which she had the pleasure of distinguishing the
much superior solicitude of Mr. Bingley's, she could not make a very
favourable answer. Jane was by no means better. The sisters, on hearing
this, repeated three or four times how much they were grieved, how
shocking it was to have a bad cold, and how excessively they disliked
being ill themselves; and then thought no more of the matter: and their
indifference towards Jane when not immediately before them restored
Elizabeth to the enjoyment of all her former dislike.

Their brother, indeed, was the only one of the party whom she could
regard with any complacency. His anxiety for Jane was evident, and his
attentions to herself most pleasing, and they prevented her feeling
herself so much an intruder as she believed she was considered by the
others. She had very little notice from any but him. Miss Bingley was
engrossed by Mr. Darcy, her sister scarcely less so; and as for Mr.
Hurst, by whom Elizabeth sat, he was an indolent man, who lived only to
eat, drink, and play at cards; who, when he found her to prefer a plain
dish to a ragout, had nothing to say to her.

When dinner was over, she returned directly to Jane, and Miss Bingley
began abusing her as soon as she was out of the room. Her manners were
pronounced to be very bad indeed, a mixture of pride and impertinence;
she had no conversation, no style, no beauty. Mrs. Hurst thought the
same, and added:

"She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent
walker. I shall never forget her appearance this morning. She really
looked almost wild."

"She did, indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance. Very
nonsensical to come at all! Why must _she_ be scampering about the
country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair, so untidy, so blowsy!"

"Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches deep
in mud, I am absolutely certain; and the gown which had been let down to
hide it not doing its office."

"Your picture may be very exact, Louisa," said Bingley; "but this was
all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked remarkably
well when she came into the room this morning. Her dirty petticoat quite
escaped my notice."

"_You_ observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure," said Miss Bingley; "and I am
inclined to think that you would not wish to see _your_ sister make such
an exhibition."

"Certainly not."

"To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is,
above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by
it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence,
a most country-town indifference to decorum."

"It shows an affection for her sister that is very pleasing," said
Bingley.

"I am afraid, Mr. Darcy," observed Miss Bingley in a half whisper, "that
this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes."

"Not at all," he replied; "they were brightened by the exercise." A
short pause followed this speech, and Mrs. Hurst began again:

"I have an excessive regard for Miss Jane Bennet, she is really a very
sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with
such a father and mother, and such low connections, I am afraid there is
no chance of it."

"I think I have heard you say that their uncle is an attorney in
Meryton."

"Yes; and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside."

"That is capital," added her sister, and they both laughed heartily.

"If they had uncles enough to fill _all_ Cheapside," cried Bingley, "it
would not make them one jot less agreeable."

"But it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any
consideration in the world," replied Darcy.

To this speech Bingley made no answer; but his sisters gave it their
hearty assent, and indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of
their dear friend's vulgar relations.

With a renewal of tenderness, however, they returned to her room on
leaving the dining-parlour, and sat with her till summoned to coffee.
She was still very poorly, and Elizabeth would not quit her at all, till
late in the evening, when she had the comfort of seeing her sleep, and
when it seemed to her rather right than pleasant that she should go
downstairs herself. On entering the drawing-room she found the whole
party at loo, and was immediately invited to join them; but suspecting
them to be playing high she declined it, and making her sister the
excuse, said she would amuse herself for the short time she could stay
below, with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with astonishment.

"Do you prefer reading to cards?" said he; "that is rather singular."

"Miss Eliza Bennet," said Miss Bingley, "despises cards. She is a great
reader, and has no pleasure in anything else."

"I deserve neither such praise nor such censure," cried Elizabeth; "I am
_not_ a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things."

"In nursing your sister I am sure you have pleasure," said Bingley; "and
I hope it will be soon increased by seeing her quite well."

Elizabeth thanked him from her heart, and then walked towards the
table where a few books were lying. He immediately offered to fetch her
others--all that his library afforded.

"And I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my own
credit; but I am an idle fellow, and though I have not many, I have more
than I ever looked into."

Elizabeth assured him that she could suit herself perfectly with those
in the room.

"I am astonished," said Miss Bingley, "that my father should have left
so small a collection of books. What a delightful library you have at
Pemberley, Mr. Darcy!"

"It ought to be good," he replied, "it has been the work of many
generations."

"And then you have added so much to it yourself, you are always buying
books."

"I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as
these."

"Neglect! I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the beauties of
that noble place. Charles, when you build _your_ house, I wish it may be
half as delightful as Pemberley."

"I wish it may."

"But I would really advise you to make your purchase in that
neighbourhood, and take Pemberley for a kind of model. There is not a
finer county in England than Derbyshire."

"With all my heart; I will buy Pemberley itself if Darcy will sell it."

"I am talking of possibilities, Charles."

"Upon my word, Caroline, I should think it more possible to get
Pemberley by purchase than by imitation."

Elizabeth was so much caught with what passed, as to leave her very
little attention for her book; and soon laying it wholly aside, she drew
near the card-table, and stationed herself between Mr. Bingley and his
eldest sister, to observe the game.

"Is Miss Darcy much grown since the spring?" said Miss Bingley; "will
she be as tall as I am?"

"I think she will. She is now about Miss Elizabeth Bennet's height, or
rather taller."

"How I long to see her again! I never met with anybody who delighted me
so much. Such a countenance, such manners! And so extremely accomplished
for her age! Her performance on the pianoforte is exquisite."

"It is amazing to me," said Bingley, "how young ladies can have patience
to be so very accomplished as they all are."

"All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?"

"Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, and
net purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do all this, and I am sure
I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being
informed that she was very accomplished."

"Your list of the common extent of accomplishments," said Darcy, "has
too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no
otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen. But I am very
far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I
cannot boast of knowing more than half-a-dozen, in the whole range of my
acquaintance, that are really accomplished."

"Nor I, I am sure," said Miss Bingley.

"Then," observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal in your
idea of an accomplished woman."

"Yes, I do comprehend a great deal in it."

"Oh! certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can be really
esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met
with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing,
dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides
all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of
walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word
will be but half-deserved."

"All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must
yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by
extensive reading."

"I am no longer surprised at your knowing _only_ six accomplished women.
I rather wonder now at your knowing _any_."

"Are you so severe upon your own sex as to doubt the possibility of all
this?"

"I never saw such a woman. I never saw such capacity, and taste, and
application, and elegance, as you describe united."

Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley both cried out against the injustice of her
implied doubt, and were both protesting that they knew many women who
answered this description, when Mr. Hurst called them to order, with
bitter complaints of their inattention to what was going forward. As all
conversation was thereby at an end, Elizabeth soon afterwards left the
room.

"Elizabeth Bennet," said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed on her,
"is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the
other sex by undervaluing their own; and with many men, I dare say, it
succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art."

"Undoubtedly," replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly addressed,
"there is a meanness in _all_ the arts which ladies sometimes condescend
to employ for captivation. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is
despicable."

Miss Bingley was not so entirely satisfied with this reply as to
continue the subject.

Elizabeth joined them again only to say that her sister was worse, and
that she could not leave her. Bingley urged Mr. Jones being sent for
immediately; while his sisters, convinced that no country advice could
be of any service, recommended an express to town for one of the most
eminent physicians. This she would not hear of; but she was not so
unwilling to comply with their brother's proposal; and it was settled
that Mr. Jones should be sent for early in the morning, if Miss Bennet
were not decidedly better. Bingley was quite uncomfortable; his sisters
declared that they were miserable. They solaced their wretchedness,
however, by duets after supper, while he could find no better relief
to his feelings than by giving his housekeeper directions that every
attention might be paid to the sick lady and her sister.



Chapter 9


Elizabeth passed the chief of the night in her sister's room, and in the
morning had the pleasure of being able to send a tolerable answer to the
inquiries which she very early received from Mr. Bingley by a housemaid,
and some time afterwards from the two elegant ladies who waited on his
sisters. In spite of this amendment, however, she requested to have a
note sent to Longbourn, desiring her mother to visit Jane, and form her
own judgement of her situation. The note was immediately dispatched, and
its contents as quickly complied with. Mrs. Bennet, accompanied by her
two youngest girls, reached Netherfield soon after the family breakfast.

Had she found Jane in any apparent danger, Mrs. Bennet would have been
very miserable; but being satisfied on seeing her that her illness was
not alarming, she had no wish of her recovering immediately, as her
restoration to health would probably remove her from Netherfield. She
would not listen, therefore, to her daughter's proposal of being carried
home; neither did the apothecary, who arrived about the same time, think
it at all advisable. After sitting a little while with Jane, on Miss
Bingley's appearance and invitation, the mother and three daughters all
attended her into the breakfast parlour. Bingley met them with hopes
that Mrs. Bennet had not found Miss Bennet worse than she expected.

"Indeed I have, sir," was her answer. "She is a great deal too ill to be
moved. Mr. Jones says we must not think of moving her. We must trespass
a little longer on your kindness."

"Removed!" cried Bingley. "It must not be thought of. My sister, I am
sure, will not hear of her removal."

"You may depend upon it, Madam," said Miss Bingley, with cold civility,
"that Miss Bennet will receive every possible attention while she
remains with us."

Mrs. Bennet was profuse in her acknowledgments.

"I am sure," she added, "if it was not for such good friends I do not
know what would become of her, for she is very ill indeed, and suffers
a vast deal, though with the greatest patience in the world, which is
always the way with her, for she has, without exception, the sweetest
temper I have ever met with. I often tell my other girls they are
nothing to _her_. You have a sweet room here, Mr. Bingley, and a
charming prospect over the gravel walk. I do not know a place in the
country that is equal to Netherfield. You will not think of quitting it
in a hurry, I hope, though you have but a short lease."

"Whatever I do is done in a hurry," replied he; "and therefore if I
should resolve to quit Netherfield, I should probably be off in five
minutes. At present, however, I consider myself as quite fixed here."

"That is exactly what I should have supposed of you," said Elizabeth.

"You begin to comprehend me, do you?" cried he, turning towards her.

"Oh! yes--I understand you perfectly."

"I wish I might take this for a compliment; but to be so easily seen
through I am afraid is pitiful."

"That is as it happens. It does not follow that a deep, intricate
character is more or less estimable than such a one as yours."

"Lizzy," cried her mother, "remember where you are, and do not run on in
the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home."

"I did not know before," continued Bingley immediately, "that you were a
studier of character. It must be an amusing study."

"Yes, but intricate characters are the _most_ amusing. They have at
least that advantage."

"The country," said Darcy, "can in general supply but a few subjects for
such a study. In a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined and
unvarying society."

"But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be
observed in them for ever."

"Yes, indeed," cried Mrs. Bennet, offended by his manner of mentioning
a country neighbourhood. "I assure you there is quite as much of _that_
going on in the country as in town."

Everybody was surprised, and Darcy, after looking at her for a moment,
turned silently away. Mrs. Bennet, who fancied she had gained a complete
victory over him, continued her triumph.

"I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the country, for
my part, except the shops and public places. The country is a vast deal
pleasanter, is it not, Mr. Bingley?"

"When I am in the country," he replied, "I never wish to leave it;
and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their
advantages, and I can be equally happy in either."

"Aye--that is because you have the right disposition. But that
gentleman," looking at Darcy, "seemed to think the country was nothing
at all."

"Indeed, Mamma, you are mistaken," said Elizabeth, blushing for her
mother. "You quite mistook Mr. Darcy. He only meant that there was not
such a variety of people to be met with in the country as in the town,
which you must acknowledge to be true."

"Certainly, my dear, nobody said there were; but as to not meeting
with many people in this neighbourhood, I believe there are few
neighbourhoods larger. I know we dine with four-and-twenty families."

Nothing but concern for Elizabeth could enable Bingley to keep his
countenance. His sister was less delicate, and directed her eyes towards
Mr. Darcy with a very expressive smile. Elizabeth, for the sake of
saying something that might turn her mother's thoughts, now asked her if
Charlotte Lucas had been at Longbourn since _her_ coming away.

"Yes, she called yesterday with her father. What an agreeable man Sir
William is, Mr. Bingley, is not he? So much the man of fashion! So
genteel and easy! He has always something to say to everybody. _That_
is my idea of good breeding; and those persons who fancy themselves very
important, and never open their mouths, quite mistake the matter."

"Did Charlotte dine with you?"

"No, she would go home. I fancy she was wanted about the mince-pies. For
my part, Mr. Bingley, I always keep servants that can do their own work;
_my_ daughters are brought up very differently. But everybody is to
judge for themselves, and the Lucases are a very good sort of girls,
I assure you. It is a pity they are not handsome! Not that I think
Charlotte so _very_ plain--but then she is our particular friend."

"She seems a very pleasant young woman."

"Oh! dear, yes; but you must own she is very plain. Lady Lucas herself
has often said so, and envied me Jane's beauty. I do not like to boast
of my own child, but to be sure, Jane--one does not often see anybody
better looking. It is what everybody says. I do not trust my own
partiality. When she was only fifteen, there was a man at my brother
Gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister-in-law was
sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But, however, he
did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses
on her, and very pretty they were."

"And so ended his affection," said Elizabeth impatiently. "There has
been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first
discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!"

"I have been used to consider poetry as the _food_ of love," said Darcy.

"Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is
strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I
am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

Darcy only smiled; and the general pause which ensued made Elizabeth
tremble lest her mother should be exposing herself again. She longed to
speak, but could think of nothing to say; and after a short silence Mrs.
Bennet began repeating her thanks to Mr. Bingley for his kindness to
Jane, with an apology for troubling him also with Lizzy. Mr. Bingley was
unaffectedly civil in his answer, and forced his younger sister to be
civil also, and say what the occasion required. She performed her part
indeed without much graciousness, but Mrs. Bennet was satisfied, and
soon afterwards ordered her carriage. Upon this signal, the youngest of
her daughters put herself forward. The two girls had been whispering to
each other during the whole visit, and the result of it was, that the
youngest should tax Mr. Bingley with having promised on his first coming
into the country to give a ball at Netherfield.

Lydia was a stout, well-grown girl of fifteen, with a fine complexion
and good-humoured countenance; a favourite with her mother, whose
affection had brought her into public at an early age. She had high
animal spirits, and a sort of natural self-consequence, which the
attention of the officers, to whom her uncle's good dinners, and her own
easy manners recommended her, had increased into assurance. She was very
equal, therefore, to address Mr. Bingley on the subject of the ball, and
abruptly reminded him of his promise; adding, that it would be the most
shameful thing in the world if he did not keep it. His answer to this
sudden attack was delightful to their mother's ear:

"I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement; and when
your sister is recovered, you shall, if you please, name the very day of
the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing when she is ill."

Lydia declared herself satisfied. "Oh! yes--it would be much better to
wait till Jane was well, and by that time most likely Captain Carter
would be at Meryton again. And when you have given _your_ ball," she
added, "I shall insist on their giving one also. I shall tell Colonel
Forster it will be quite a shame if he does not."

Mrs. Bennet and her daughters then departed, and Elizabeth returned
instantly to Jane, leaving her own and her relations' behaviour to the
remarks of the two ladies and Mr. Darcy; the latter of whom, however,
could not be prevailed on to join in their censure of _her_, in spite of
all Miss Bingley's witticisms on _fine eyes_.



Chapter 10


The day passed much as the day before had done. Mrs. Hurst and Miss
Bingley had spent some hours of the morning with the invalid, who
continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the evening Elizabeth joined
their party in the drawing-room. The loo-table, however, did not appear.
Mr. Darcy was writing, and Miss Bingley, seated near him, was watching
the progress of his letter and repeatedly calling off his attention by
messages to his sister. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bingley were at piquet, and
Mrs. Hurst was observing their game.

Elizabeth took up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in
attending to what passed between Darcy and his companion. The perpetual
commendations of the lady, either on his handwriting, or on the evenness
of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern
with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was
exactly in union with her opinion of each.

"How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!"

He made no answer.

"You write uncommonly fast."

"You are mistaken. I write rather slowly."

"How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a
year! Letters of business, too! How odious I should think them!"

"It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of yours."

"Pray tell your sister that I long to see her."

"I have already told her so once, by your desire."

"I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend
pens remarkably well."

"Thank you--but I always mend my own."

"How can you contrive to write so even?"

He was silent.

"Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp;
and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful
little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss
Grantley's."

"Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? At
present I have not room to do them justice."

"Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you
always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?"

"They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not for me
to determine."

"It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with
ease, cannot write ill."

"That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline," cried her
brother, "because he does _not_ write with ease. He studies too much for
words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?"

"My style of writing is very different from yours."

"Oh!" cried Miss Bingley, "Charles writes in the most careless way
imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest."

"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them--by which
means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents."

"Your humility, Mr. Bingley," said Elizabeth, "must disarm reproof."

"Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of
humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an
indirect boast."

"And which of the two do you call _my_ little recent piece of modesty?"

"The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in
writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of
thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you
think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with
quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any
attention to the imperfection of the performance. When you told Mrs.
Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved upon quitting Netherfield
you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of
panegyric, of compliment to yourself--and yet what is there so very
laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business
undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else?"

"Nay," cried Bingley, "this is too much, to remember at night all the
foolish things that were said in the morning. And yet, upon my honour,
I believe what I said of myself to be true, and I believe it at this
moment. At least, therefore, I did not assume the character of needless
precipitance merely to show off before the ladies."

"I dare say you believed it; but I am by no means convinced that
you would be gone with such celerity. Your conduct would be quite as
dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were
mounting your horse, a friend were to say, 'Bingley, you had better
stay till next week,' you would probably do it, you would probably not
go--and at another word, might stay a month."

"You have only proved by this," cried Elizabeth, "that Mr. Bingley did
not do justice to his own disposition. You have shown him off now much
more than he did himself."

"I am exceedingly gratified," said Bingley, "by your converting what my
friend says into a compliment on the sweetness of my temper. But I am
afraid you are giving it a turn which that gentleman did by no means
intend; for he would certainly think better of me, if under such a
circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as fast as I
could."

"Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original intentions
as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?"

"Upon my word, I cannot exactly explain the matter; Darcy must speak for
himself."

"You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine,
but which I have never acknowledged. Allowing the case, however, to
stand according to your representation, you must remember, Miss Bennet,
that the friend who is supposed to desire his return to the house, and
the delay of his plan, has merely desired it, asked it without offering
one argument in favour of its propriety."

"To yield readily--easily--to the _persuasion_ of a friend is no merit
with you."

"To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of
either."

"You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of
friendship and affection. A regard for the requester would often make
one readily yield to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason
one into it. I am not particularly speaking of such a case as you have
supposed about Mr. Bingley. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the
circumstance occurs before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour
thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and friend,
where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no
very great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying
with the desire, without waiting to be argued into it?"

"Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to
arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance which is to
appertain to this request, as well as the degree of intimacy subsisting
between the parties?"

"By all means," cried Bingley; "let us hear all the particulars, not
forgetting their comparative height and size; for that will have more
weight in the argument, Miss Bennet, than you may be aware of. I assure
you, that if Darcy were not such a great tall fellow, in comparison with
myself, I should not pay him half so much deference. I declare I do not
know a more awful object than Darcy, on particular occasions, and in
particular places; at his own house especially, and of a Sunday evening,
when he has nothing to do."

Mr. Darcy smiled; but Elizabeth thought she could perceive that he was
rather offended, and therefore checked her laugh. Miss Bingley warmly
resented the indignity he had received, in an expostulation with her
brother for talking such nonsense.

"I see your design, Bingley," said his friend. "You dislike an argument,
and want to silence this."

"Perhaps I do. Arguments are too much like disputes. If you and Miss
Bennet will defer yours till I am out of the room, I shall be very
thankful; and then you may say whatever you like of me."

"What you ask," said Elizabeth, "is no sacrifice on my side; and Mr.
Darcy had much better finish his letter."

Mr. Darcy took her advice, and did finish his letter.

When that business was over, he applied to Miss Bingley and Elizabeth
for an indulgence of some music. Miss Bingley moved with some alacrity
to the pianoforte; and, after a polite request that Elizabeth would lead
the way which the other as politely and more earnestly negatived, she
seated herself.

Mrs. Hurst sang with her sister, and while they were thus employed,
Elizabeth could not help observing, as she turned over some music-books
that lay on the instrument, how frequently Mr. Darcy's eyes were fixed
on her. She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of
admiration to so great a man; and yet that he should look at her
because he disliked her, was still more strange. She could only imagine,
however, at last that she drew his notice because there was something
more wrong and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in
any other person present. The supposition did not pain her. She liked
him too little to care for his approbation.

After playing some Italian songs, Miss Bingley varied the charm by
a lively Scotch air; and soon afterwards Mr. Darcy, drawing near
Elizabeth, said to her:

"Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an
opportunity of dancing a reel?"

She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, with some
surprise at her silence.

"Oh!" said she, "I heard you before, but I could not immediately
determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes,'
that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always
delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of
their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore, made up my mind to tell
you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all--and now despise me if
you dare."

"Indeed I do not dare."

Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his
gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her
manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy
had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her. He really
believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he
should be in some danger.

Miss Bingley saw, or suspected enough to be jealous; and her great
anxiety for the recovery of her dear friend Jane received some
assistance from her desire of getting rid of Elizabeth.

She often tried to provoke Darcy into disliking her guest, by talking of
their supposed marriage, and planning his happiness in such an alliance.

"I hope," said she, as they were walking together in the shrubbery
the next day, "you will give your mother-in-law a few hints, when this
desirable event takes place, as to the advantage of holding her tongue;
and if you can compass it, do cure the younger girls of running after
officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to
check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence,
which your lady possesses."

"Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?"

"Oh! yes. Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Phillips be placed
in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your great-uncle the
judge. They are in the same profession, you know, only in different
lines. As for your Elizabeth's picture, you must not have it taken, for
what painter could do justice to those beautiful eyes?"

"It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but their
colour and shape, and the eyelashes, so remarkably fine, might be
copied."

At that moment they were met from another walk by Mrs. Hurst and
Elizabeth herself.

"I did not know that you intended to walk," said Miss Bingley, in some
confusion, lest they had been overheard.

"You used us abominably ill," answered Mrs. Hurst, "running away without
telling us that you were coming out."

Then taking the disengaged arm of Mr. Darcy, she left Elizabeth to walk
by herself. The path just admitted three. Mr. Darcy felt their rudeness,
and immediately said:

"This walk is not wide enough for our party. We had better go into the
avenue."

But Elizabeth, who had not the least inclination to remain with them,
laughingly answered:

"No, no; stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and appear
to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a
fourth. Good-bye."

She then ran gaily off, rejoicing as she rambled about, in the hope of
being at home again in a day or two. Jane was already so much recovered
as to intend leaving her room for a couple of hours that evening.



Chapter 11


When the ladies removed after dinner, Elizabeth ran up to her
sister, and seeing her well guarded from cold, attended her into the
drawing-room, where she was welcomed by her two friends with many
professions of pleasure; and Elizabeth had never seen them so agreeable
as they were during the hour which passed before the gentlemen appeared.
Their powers of conversation were considerable. They could describe an
entertainment with accuracy, relate an anecdote with humour, and laugh
at their acquaintance with spirit.

But when the gentlemen entered, Jane was no longer the first object;
Miss Bingley's eyes were instantly turned toward Darcy, and she had
something to say to him before he had advanced many steps. He addressed
himself to Miss Bennet, with a polite congratulation; Mr. Hurst also
made her a slight bow, and said he was "very glad;" but diffuseness
and warmth remained for Bingley's salutation. He was full of joy and
attention. The first half-hour was spent in piling up the fire, lest she
should suffer from the change of room; and she removed at his desire
to the other side of the fireplace, that she might be further from
the door. He then sat down by her, and talked scarcely to anyone
else. Elizabeth, at work in the opposite corner, saw it all with great
delight.

When tea was over, Mr. Hurst reminded his sister-in-law of the
card-table--but in vain. She had obtained private intelligence that Mr.
Darcy did not wish for cards; and Mr. Hurst soon found even his open
petition rejected. She assured him that no one intended to play, and
the silence of the whole party on the subject seemed to justify her. Mr.
Hurst had therefore nothing to do, but to stretch himself on one of the
sofas and go to sleep. Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same;
and Mrs. Hurst, principally occupied in playing with her bracelets
and rings, joined now and then in her brother's conversation with Miss
Bennet.

Miss Bingley's attention was quite as much engaged in watching Mr.
Darcy's progress through _his_ book, as in reading her own; and she
was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page. She
could not win him, however, to any conversation; he merely answered her
question, and read on. At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be
amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the
second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, "How pleasant
it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no
enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a
book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not
an excellent library."

No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and
cast her eyes round the room in quest for some amusement; when hearing
her brother mentioning a ball to Miss Bennet, she turned suddenly
towards him and said:

"By the bye, Charles, are you really serious in meditating a dance at
Netherfield? I would advise you, before you determine on it, to consult
the wishes of the present party; I am much mistaken if there are
not some among us to whom a ball would be rather a punishment than a
pleasure."

"If you mean Darcy," cried her brother, "he may go to bed, if he
chooses, before it begins--but as for the ball, it is quite a settled
thing; and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough, I shall send
round my cards."

"I should like balls infinitely better," she replied, "if they were
carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably
tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much
more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of
the day."

"Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be
near so much like a ball."

Miss Bingley made no answer, and soon afterwards she got up and walked
about the room. Her figure was elegant, and she walked well; but
Darcy, at whom it was all aimed, was still inflexibly studious. In
the desperation of her feelings, she resolved on one effort more, and,
turning to Elizabeth, said:

"Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a
turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so
long in one attitude."

Elizabeth was surprised, but agreed to it immediately. Miss Bingley
succeeded no less in the real object of her civility; Mr. Darcy looked
up. He was as much awake to the novelty of attention in that quarter as
Elizabeth herself could be, and unconsciously closed his book. He was
directly invited to join their party, but he declined it, observing that
he could imagine but two motives for their choosing to walk up and down
the room together, with either of which motives his joining them would
interfere. "What could he mean? She was dying to know what could be his
meaning?"--and asked Elizabeth whether she could at all understand him?

"Not at all," was her answer; "but depend upon it, he means to be severe
on us, and our surest way of disappointing him will be to ask nothing
about it."

Miss Bingley, however, was incapable of disappointing Mr. Darcy in
anything, and persevered therefore in requiring an explanation of his
two motives.

"I have not the smallest objection to explaining them," said he, as soon
as she allowed him to speak. "You either choose this method of passing
the evening because you are in each other's confidence, and have secret
affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures
appear to the greatest advantage in walking; if the first, I would be
completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better
as I sit by the fire."

"Oh! shocking!" cried Miss Bingley. "I never heard anything so
abominable. How shall we punish him for such a speech?"

"Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination," said Elizabeth. "We
can all plague and punish one another. Tease him--laugh at him. Intimate
as you are, you must know how it is to be done."

"But upon my honour, I do _not_. I do assure you that my intimacy has
not yet taught me _that_. Tease calmness of manner and presence of
mind! No, no; I feel he may defy us there. And as to laughter, we will
not expose ourselves, if you please, by attempting to laugh without a
subject. Mr. Darcy may hug himself."

"Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at!" cried Elizabeth. "That is an
uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it would
be a great loss to _me_ to have many such acquaintances. I dearly love a
laugh."

"Miss Bingley," said he, "has given me more credit than can be.
The wisest and the best of men--nay, the wisest and best of their
actions--may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in
life is a joke."

"Certainly," replied Elizabeth--"there are such people, but I hope I
am not one of _them_. I hope I never ridicule what is wise and good.
Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, _do_ divert me, I own,
and I laugh at them whenever I can. But these, I suppose, are precisely
what you are without."

"Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has been the study
of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a strong
understanding to ridicule."

"Such as vanity and pride."

"Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride--where there is a real
superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation."

Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile.

"Your examination of Mr. Darcy is over, I presume," said Miss Bingley;
"and pray what is the result?"

"I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it
himself without disguise."

"No," said Darcy, "I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough,
but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch
for. It is, I believe, too little yielding--certainly too little for the
convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others
so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings
are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper
would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost
forever."

"_That_ is a failing indeed!" cried Elizabeth. "Implacable resentment
_is_ a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I
really cannot _laugh_ at it. You are safe from me."

"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular
evil--a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."

"And _your_ defect is to hate everybody."

"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand
them."

"Do let us have a little music," cried Miss Bingley, tired of a
conversation in which she had no share. "Louisa, you will not mind my
waking Mr. Hurst?"

Her sister had not the smallest objection, and the pianoforte was
opened; and Darcy, after a few moments' recollection, was not sorry for
it. He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.



Chapter 12


In consequence of an agreement between the sisters, Elizabeth wrote the
next morning to their mother, to beg that the carriage might be sent for
them in the course of the day. But Mrs. Bennet, who had calculated on
her daughters remaining at Netherfield till the following Tuesday, which
would exactly finish Jane's week, could not bring herself to receive
them with pleasure before. Her answer, therefore, was not propitious, at
least not to Elizabeth's wishes, for she was impatient to get home. Mrs.
Bennet sent them word that they could not possibly have the carriage
before Tuesday; and in her postscript it was added, that if Mr. Bingley
and his sister pressed them to stay longer, she could spare them
very well. Against staying longer, however, Elizabeth was positively
resolved--nor did she much expect it would be asked; and fearful, on the
contrary, as being considered as intruding themselves needlessly long,
she urged Jane to borrow Mr. Bingley's carriage immediately, and at
length it was settled that their original design of leaving Netherfield
that morning should be mentioned, and the request made.

The communication excited many professions of concern; and enough was
said of wishing them to stay at least till the following day to work
on Jane; and till the morrow their going was deferred. Miss Bingley was
then sorry that she had proposed the delay, for her jealousy and dislike
of one sister much exceeded her affection for the other.

The master of the house heard with real sorrow that they were to go so
soon, and repeatedly tried to persuade Miss Bennet that it would not be
safe for her--that she was not enough recovered; but Jane was firm where
she felt herself to be right.

To Mr. Darcy it was welcome intelligence--Elizabeth had been at
Netherfield long enough. She attracted him more than he liked--and Miss
Bingley was uncivil to _her_, and more teasing than usual to himself.
He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration
should _now_ escape him, nothing that could elevate her with the hope
of influencing his felicity; sensible that if such an idea had been
suggested, his behaviour during the last day must have material weight
in confirming or crushing it. Steady to his purpose, he scarcely spoke
ten words to her through the whole of Saturday, and though they were
at one time left by themselves for half-an-hour, he adhered most
conscientiously to his book, and would not even look at her.

On Sunday, after morning service, the separation, so agreeable to almost
all, took place. Miss Bingley's civility to Elizabeth increased at last
very rapidly, as well as her affection for Jane; and when they parted,
after assuring the latter of the pleasure it would always give her
to see her either at Longbourn or Netherfield, and embracing her most
tenderly, she even shook hands with the former. Elizabeth took leave of
the whole party in the liveliest of spirits.

They were not welcomed home very cordially by their mother. Mrs. Bennet
wondered at their coming, and thought them very wrong to give so much
trouble, and was sure Jane would have caught cold again. But their
father, though very laconic in his expressions of pleasure, was really
glad to see them; he had felt their importance in the family circle. The
evening conversation, when they were all assembled, had lost much of
its animation, and almost all its sense by the absence of Jane and
Elizabeth.

They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough-bass and human
nature; and had some extracts to admire, and some new observations of
threadbare morality to listen to. Catherine and Lydia had information
for them of a different sort. Much had been done and much had been said
in the regiment since the preceding Wednesday; several of the officers
had dined lately with their uncle, a private had been flogged, and it
had actually been hinted that Colonel Forster was going to be married.



Chapter 13


"I hope, my dear," said Mr. Bennet to his wife, as they were at
breakfast the next morning, "that you have ordered a good dinner to-day,
because I have reason to expect an addition to our family party."

"Who do you mean, my dear? I know of nobody that is coming, I am sure,
unless Charlotte Lucas should happen to call in--and I hope _my_ dinners
are good enough for her. I do not believe she often sees such at home."

"The person of whom I speak is a gentleman, and a stranger."

Mrs. Bennet's eyes sparkled. "A gentleman and a stranger! It is Mr.
Bingley, I am sure! Well, I am sure I shall be extremely glad to see Mr.
Bingley. But--good Lord! how unlucky! There is not a bit of fish to be
got to-day. Lydia, my love, ring the bell--I must speak to Hill this
moment."

"It is _not_ Mr. Bingley," said her husband; "it is a person whom I
never saw in the whole course of my life."

This roused a general astonishment; and he had the pleasure of being
eagerly questioned by his wife and his five daughters at once.

After amusing himself some time with their curiosity, he thus explained:

"About a month ago I received this letter; and about a fortnight ago
I answered it, for I thought it a case of some delicacy, and requiring
early attention. It is from my cousin, Mr. Collins, who, when I am dead,
may turn you all out of this house as soon as he pleases."

"Oh! my dear," cried his wife, "I cannot bear to hear that mentioned.
Pray do not talk of that odious man. I do think it is the hardest thing
in the world, that your estate should be entailed away from your own
children; and I am sure, if I had been you, I should have tried long ago
to do something or other about it."

Jane and Elizabeth tried to explain to her the nature of an entail. They
had often attempted to do it before, but it was a subject on which
Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason, and she continued to rail
bitterly against the cruelty of settling an estate away from a family of
five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.

"It certainly is a most iniquitous affair," said Mr. Bennet, "and
nothing can clear Mr. Collins from the guilt of inheriting Longbourn.
But if you will listen to his letter, you may perhaps be a little
softened by his manner of expressing himself."

"No, that I am sure I shall not; and I think it is very impertinent of
him to write to you at all, and very hypocritical. I hate such false
friends. Why could he not keep on quarreling with you, as his father did
before him?"

"Why, indeed; he does seem to have had some filial scruples on that
head, as you will hear."

"Hunsford, near Westerham, Kent, 15th October.

"Dear Sir,--

"The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late honoured
father always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have had the
misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal the breach; but
for some time I was kept back by my own doubts, fearing lest it might
seem disrespectful to his memory for me to be on good terms with anyone
with whom it had always pleased him to be at variance.--'There, Mrs.
Bennet.'--My mind, however, is now made up on the subject, for having
received ordination at Easter, I have been so fortunate as to be
distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de
Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has
preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be
my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her
ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which
are instituted by the Church of England. As a clergyman, moreover, I
feel it my duty to promote and establish the blessing of peace in
all families within the reach of my influence; and on these grounds I
flatter myself that my present overtures are highly commendable, and
that the circumstance of my being next in the entail of Longbourn estate
will be kindly overlooked on your side, and not lead you to reject the
offered olive-branch. I cannot be otherwise than concerned at being the
means of injuring your amiable daughters, and beg leave to apologise for
it, as well as to assure you of my readiness to make them every possible
amends--but of this hereafter. If you should have no objection to
receive me into your house, I propose myself the satisfaction of waiting
on you and your family, Monday, November 18th, by four o'clock, and
shall probably trespass on your hospitality till the Saturday se'ennight
following, which I can do without any inconvenience, as Lady Catherine
is far from objecting to my occasional absence on a Sunday, provided
that some other clergyman is engaged to do the duty of the day.--I
remain, dear sir, with respectful compliments to your lady and
daughters, your well-wisher and friend,

"WILLIAM COLLINS"

"At four o'clock, therefore, we may expect this peace-making gentleman,"
said Mr. Bennet, as he folded up the letter. "He seems to be a most
conscientious and polite young man, upon my word, and I doubt not will
prove a valuable acquaintance, especially if Lady Catherine should be so
indulgent as to let him come to us again."

"There is some sense in what he says about the girls, however, and if
he is disposed to make them any amends, I shall not be the person to
discourage him."

"Though it is difficult," said Jane, "to guess in what way he can mean
to make us the atonement he thinks our due, the wish is certainly to his
credit."

Elizabeth was chiefly struck by his extraordinary deference for Lady
Catherine, and his kind intention of christening, marrying, and burying
his parishioners whenever it were required.

"He must be an oddity, I think," said she. "I cannot make him
out.--There is something very pompous in his style.--And what can he
mean by apologising for being next in the entail?--We cannot suppose he
would help it if he could.--Could he be a sensible man, sir?"

"No, my dear, I think not. I have great hopes of finding him quite the
reverse. There is a mixture of servility and self-importance in his
letter, which promises well. I am impatient to see him."

"In point of composition," said Mary, "the letter does not seem
defective. The idea of the olive-branch perhaps is not wholly new, yet I
think it is well expressed."

To Catherine and Lydia, neither the letter nor its writer were in any
degree interesting. It was next to impossible that their cousin should
come in a scarlet coat, and it was now some weeks since they had
received pleasure from the society of a man in any other colour. As for
their mother, Mr. Collins's letter had done away much of her ill-will,
and she was preparing to see him with a degree of composure which
astonished her husband and daughters.

Mr. Collins was punctual to his time, and was received with great
politeness by the whole family. Mr. Bennet indeed said little; but the
ladies were ready enough to talk, and Mr. Collins seemed neither in
need of encouragement, nor inclined to be silent himself. He was a
tall, heavy-looking young man of five-and-twenty. His air was grave and
stately, and his manners were very formal. He had not been long seated
before he complimented Mrs. Bennet on having so fine a family of
daughters; said he had heard much of their beauty, but that in this
instance fame had fallen short of the truth; and added, that he did
not doubt her seeing them all in due time disposed of in marriage. This
gallantry was not much to the taste of some of his hearers; but Mrs.
Bennet, who quarreled with no compliments, answered most readily.

"You are very kind, I am sure; and I wish with all my heart it may
prove so, for else they will be destitute enough. Things are settled so
oddly."

"You allude, perhaps, to the entail of this estate."

"Ah! sir, I do indeed. It is a grievous affair to my poor girls, you
must confess. Not that I mean to find fault with _you_, for such things
I know are all chance in this world. There is no knowing how estates
will go when once they come to be entailed."

"I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins, and
could say much on the subject, but that I am cautious of appearing
forward and precipitate. But I can assure the young ladies that I come
prepared to admire them. At present I will not say more; but, perhaps,
when we are better acquainted--"

He was interrupted by a summons to dinner; and the girls smiled on each
other. They were not the only objects of Mr. Collins's admiration. The
hall, the dining-room, and all its furniture, were examined and praised;
and his commendation of everything would have touched Mrs. Bennet's
heart, but for the mortifying supposition of his viewing it all as his
own future property. The dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and
he begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its
cooking was owing. But he was set right there by Mrs. Bennet, who
assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a
good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen. He
begged pardon for having displeased her. In a softened tone she declared
herself not at all offended; but he continued to apologise for about a
quarter of an hour.



Chapter 14


During dinner, Mr. Bennet scarcely spoke at all; but when the servants
were withdrawn, he thought it time to have some conversation with his
guest, and therefore started a subject in which he expected him to
shine, by observing that he seemed very fortunate in his patroness. Lady
Catherine de Bourgh's attention to his wishes, and consideration for
his comfort, appeared very remarkable. Mr. Bennet could not have chosen
better. Mr. Collins was eloquent in her praise. The subject elevated him
to more than usual solemnity of manner, and with a most important aspect
he protested that "he had never in his life witnessed such behaviour in
a person of rank--such affability and condescension, as he had himself
experienced from Lady Catherine. She had been graciously pleased to
approve of both of the discourses which he had already had the honour of
preaching before her. She had also asked him twice to dine at Rosings,
and had sent for him only the Saturday before, to make up her pool of
quadrille in the evening. Lady Catherine was reckoned proud by many
people he knew, but _he_ had never seen anything but affability in her.
She had always spoken to him as she would to any other gentleman; she
made not the smallest objection to his joining in the society of the
neighbourhood nor to his leaving the parish occasionally for a week or
two, to visit his relations. She had even condescended to advise him to
marry as soon as he could, provided he chose with discretion; and had
once paid him a visit in his humble parsonage, where she had perfectly
approved all the alterations he had been making, and had even vouchsafed
to suggest some herself--some shelves in the closet up stairs."

"That is all very proper and civil, I am sure," said Mrs. Bennet, "and
I dare say she is a very agreeable woman. It is a pity that great ladies
in general are not more like her. Does she live near you, sir?"

"The garden in which stands my humble abode is separated only by a lane
from Rosings Park, her ladyship's residence."

"I think you said she was a widow, sir? Has she any family?"

"She has only one daughter, the heiress of Rosings, and of very
extensive property."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Bennet, shaking her head, "then she is better off than
many girls. And what sort of young lady is she? Is she handsome?"

"She is a most charming young lady indeed. Lady Catherine herself says
that, in point of true beauty, Miss de Bourgh is far superior to the
handsomest of her sex, because there is that in her features which marks
the young lady of distinguished birth. She is unfortunately of a sickly
constitution, which has prevented her from making that progress in many
accomplishments which she could not have otherwise failed of, as I am
informed by the lady who superintended her education, and who still
resides with them. But she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends
to drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies."

"Has she been presented? I do not remember her name among the ladies at
court."

"Her indifferent state of health unhappily prevents her being in town;
and by that means, as I told Lady Catherine one day, has deprived the
British court of its brightest ornament. Her ladyship seemed pleased
with the idea; and you may imagine that I am happy on every occasion to
offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable
to ladies. I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine, that
her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most
elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by
her. These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and
it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to
pay."

"You judge very properly," said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you
that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask
whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the
moment, or are the result of previous study?"

"They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I
sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant
compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to
give them as unstudied an air as possible."

Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd
as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment,
maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance,
and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner
in his pleasure.

By tea-time, however, the dose had been enough, and Mr. Bennet was glad
to take his guest into the drawing-room again, and, when tea was over,
glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Collins readily
assented, and a book was produced; but, on beholding it (for everything
announced it to be from a circulating library), he started back, and
begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at
him, and Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some
deliberation he chose Fordyce's Sermons. Lydia gaped as he opened the
volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three
pages, she interrupted him with:

"Do you know, mamma, that my uncle Phillips talks of turning away
Richard; and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My aunt told me
so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton to-morrow to hear more
about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny comes back from town."

Lydia was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue; but Mr.
Collins, much offended, laid aside his book, and said:

"I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books
of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes
me, I confess; for, certainly, there can be nothing so advantageous to
them as instruction. But I will no longer importune my young cousin."

Then turning to Mr. Bennet, he offered himself as his antagonist at
backgammon. Mr. Bennet accepted the challenge, observing that he acted
very wisely in leaving the girls to their own trifling amusements.
Mrs. Bennet and her daughters apologised most civilly for Lydia's
interruption, and promised that it should not occur again, if he would
resume his book; but Mr. Collins, after assuring them that he bore his
young cousin no ill-will, and should never resent her behaviour as any
affront, seated himself at another table with Mr. Bennet, and prepared
for backgammon.



Chapter 15


Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had
been but little assisted by education or society; the greatest part
of his life having been spent under the guidance of an illiterate and
miserly father; and though he belonged to one of the universities, he
had merely kept the necessary terms, without forming at it any useful
acquaintance. The subjection in which his father had brought him up had
given him originally great humility of manner; but it was now a
good deal counteracted by the self-conceit of a weak head, living in
retirement, and the consequential feelings of early and unexpected
prosperity. A fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de
Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which
he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness,
mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a
clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of
pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.

Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, he intended to
marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had
a wife in view, as he meant to choose one of the daughters, if he found
them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report.
This was his plan of amends--of atonement--for inheriting their father's
estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and
suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own
part.

His plan did not vary on seeing them. Miss Bennet's lovely face
confirmed his views, and established all his strictest notions of what
was due to seniority; and for the first evening _she_ was his settled
choice. The next morning, however, made an alteration; for in a
quarter of an hour's tete-a-tete with Mrs. Bennet before breakfast, a
conversation beginning with his parsonage-house, and leading naturally
to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress might be found for it at
Longbourn, produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general
encouragement, a caution against the very Jane he had fixed on. "As to
her _younger_ daughters, she could not take upon her to say--she could
not positively answer--but she did not _know_ of any prepossession; her
_eldest_ daughter, she must just mention--she felt it incumbent on her
to hint, was likely to be very soon engaged."

Mr. Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth--and it was soon
done--done while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire. Elizabeth, equally
next to Jane in birth and beauty, succeeded her of course.

Mrs. Bennet treasured up the hint, and trusted that she might soon have
two daughters married; and the man whom she could not bear to speak of
the day before was now high in her good graces.

Lydia's intention of walking to Meryton was not forgotten; every sister
except Mary agreed to go with her; and Mr. Collins was to attend them,
at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most anxious to get rid of him,
and have his library to himself; for thither Mr. Collins had followed
him after breakfast; and there he would continue, nominally engaged with
one of the largest folios in the collection, but really talking to Mr.
Bennet, with little cessation, of his house and garden at Hunsford. Such
doings discomposed Mr. Bennet exceedingly. In his library he had been
always sure of leisure and tranquillity; and though prepared, as he told
Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room of the
house, he was used to be free from them there; his civility, therefore,
was most prompt in inviting Mr. Collins to join his daughters in their
walk; and Mr. Collins, being in fact much better fitted for a walker
than a reader, was extremely pleased to close his large book, and go.

In pompous nothings on his side, and civil assents on that of his
cousins, their time passed till they entered Meryton. The attention of
the younger ones was then no longer to be gained by him. Their eyes were
immediately wandering up in the street in quest of the officers, and
nothing less than a very smart bonnet indeed, or a really new muslin in
a shop window, could recall them.

But the attention of every lady was soon caught by a young man, whom
they had never seen before, of most gentlemanlike appearance, walking
with another officer on the other side of the way. The officer was
the very Mr. Denny concerning whose return from London Lydia came
to inquire, and he bowed as they passed. All were struck with the
stranger's air, all wondered who he could be; and Kitty and Lydia,
determined if possible to find out, led the way across the street, under
pretense of wanting something in an opposite shop, and fortunately
had just gained the pavement when the two gentlemen, turning back, had
reached the same spot. Mr. Denny addressed them directly, and entreated
permission to introduce his friend, Mr. Wickham, who had returned with
him the day before from town, and he was happy to say had accepted a
commission in their corps. This was exactly as it should be; for the
young man wanted only regimentals to make him completely charming.
His appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best part of
beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address.
The introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness
of conversation--a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and
unassuming; and the whole party were still standing and talking together
very agreeably, when the sound of horses drew their notice, and Darcy
and Bingley were seen riding down the street. On distinguishing the
ladies of the group, the two gentlemen came directly towards them, and
began the usual civilities. Bingley was the principal spokesman, and
Miss Bennet the principal object. He was then, he said, on his way to
Longbourn on purpose to inquire after her. Mr. Darcy corroborated
it with a bow, and was beginning to determine not to fix his eyes
on Elizabeth, when they were suddenly arrested by the sight of the
stranger, and Elizabeth happening to see the countenance of both as they
looked at each other, was all astonishment at the effect of the meeting.
Both changed colour, one looked white, the other red. Mr. Wickham,
after a few moments, touched his hat--a salutation which Mr. Darcy just
deigned to return. What could be the meaning of it? It was impossible to
imagine; it was impossible not to long to know.

In another minute, Mr. Bingley, but without seeming to have noticed what
passed, took leave and rode on with his friend.

Mr. Denny and Mr. Wickham walked with the young ladies to the door of
Mr. Phillip's house, and then made their bows, in spite of Miss Lydia's
pressing entreaties that they should come in, and even in spite of
Mrs. Phillips's throwing up the parlour window and loudly seconding the
invitation.

Mrs. Phillips was always glad to see her nieces; and the two eldest,
from their recent absence, were particularly welcome, and she was
eagerly expressing her surprise at their sudden return home, which, as
their own carriage had not fetched them, she should have known nothing
about, if she had not happened to see Mr. Jones's shop-boy in the
street, who had told her that they were not to send any more draughts to
Netherfield because the Miss Bennets were come away, when her civility
was claimed towards Mr. Collins by Jane's introduction of him. She
received him with her very best politeness, which he returned with
as much more, apologising for his intrusion, without any previous
acquaintance with her, which he could not help flattering himself,
however, might be justified by his relationship to the young ladies who
introduced him to her notice. Mrs. Phillips was quite awed by such an
excess of good breeding; but her contemplation of one stranger was soon
put to an end by exclamations and inquiries about the other; of whom,
however, she could only tell her nieces what they already knew, that
Mr. Denny had brought him from London, and that he was to have a
lieutenant's commission in the ----shire. She had been watching him the
last hour, she said, as he walked up and down the street, and had Mr.
Wickham appeared, Kitty and Lydia would certainly have continued the
occupation, but unluckily no one passed windows now except a few of the
officers, who, in comparison with the stranger, were become "stupid,
disagreeable fellows." Some of them were to dine with the Phillipses
the next day, and their aunt promised to make her husband call on Mr.
Wickham, and give him an invitation also, if the family from Longbourn
would come in the evening. This was agreed to, and Mrs. Phillips
protested that they would have a nice comfortable noisy game of lottery
tickets, and a little bit of hot supper afterwards. The prospect of such
delights was very cheering, and they parted in mutual good spirits. Mr.
Collins repeated his apologies in quitting the room, and was assured
with unwearying civility that they were perfectly needless.

As they walked home, Elizabeth related to Jane what she had seen pass
between the two gentlemen; but though Jane would have defended either
or both, had they appeared to be in the wrong, she could no more explain
such behaviour than her sister.

Mr. Collins on his return highly gratified Mrs. Bennet by admiring
Mrs. Phillips's manners and politeness. He protested that, except Lady
Catherine and her daughter, he had never seen a more elegant woman;
for she had not only received him with the utmost civility, but even
pointedly included him in her invitation for the next evening, although
utterly unknown to her before. Something, he supposed, might be
attributed to his connection with them, but yet he had never met with so
much attention in the whole course of his life.



Chapter 16


As no objection was made to the young people's engagement with their
aunt, and all Mr. Collins's scruples of leaving Mr. and Mrs. Bennet for
a single evening during his visit were most steadily resisted, the coach
conveyed him and his five cousins at a suitable hour to Meryton; and
the girls had the pleasure of hearing, as they entered the drawing-room,
that Mr. Wickham had accepted their uncle's invitation, and was then in
the house.

When this information was given, and they had all taken their seats, Mr.
Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire, and he was so much
struck with the size and furniture of the apartment, that he declared he
might almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast
parlour at Rosings; a comparison that did not at first convey much
gratification; but when Mrs. Phillips understood from him what
Rosings was, and who was its proprietor--when she had listened to the
description of only one of Lady Catherine's drawing-rooms, and found
that the chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt all
the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented a comparison
with the housekeeper's room.

In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her mansion,
with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble abode, and
the improvements it was receiving, he was happily employed until the
gentlemen joined them; and he found in Mrs. Phillips a very attentive
listener, whose opinion of his consequence increased with what she
heard, and who was resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as
soon as she could. To the girls, who could not listen to their cousin,
and who had nothing to do but to wish for an instrument, and examine
their own indifferent imitations of china on the mantelpiece, the
interval of waiting appeared very long. It was over at last, however.
The gentlemen did approach, and when Mr. Wickham walked into the room,
Elizabeth felt that she had neither been seeing him before, nor thinking
of him since, with the smallest degree of unreasonable admiration.
The officers of the ----shire were in general a very creditable,
gentlemanlike set, and the best of them were of the present party; but
Mr. Wickham was as far beyond them all in person, countenance, air, and
walk, as _they_ were superior to the broad-faced, stuffy uncle Phillips,
breathing port wine, who followed them into the room.

Mr. Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every female eye was
turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by whom he finally seated
himself; and the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into
conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night, made her feel
that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered
interesting by the skill of the speaker.

With such rivals for the notice of the fair as Mr. Wickham and the
officers, Mr. Collins seemed to sink into insignificance; to the young
ladies he certainly was nothing; but he had still at intervals a kind
listener in Mrs. Phillips, and was by her watchfulness, most abundantly
supplied with coffee and muffin. When the card-tables were placed, he
had the opportunity of obliging her in turn, by sitting down to whist.

"I know little of the game at present," said he, "but I shall be glad
to improve myself, for in my situation in life--" Mrs. Phillips was very
glad for his compliance, but could not wait for his reason.

Mr. Wickham did not play at whist, and with ready delight was he
received at the other table between Elizabeth and Lydia. At first there
seemed danger of Lydia's engrossing him entirely, for she was a most
determined talker; but being likewise extremely fond of lottery tickets,
she soon grew too much interested in the game, too eager in making bets
and exclaiming after prizes to have attention for anyone in particular.
Allowing for the common demands of the game, Mr. Wickham was therefore
at leisure to talk to Elizabeth, and she was very willing to hear
him, though what she chiefly wished to hear she could not hope to be
told--the history of his acquaintance with Mr. Darcy. She dared not
even mention that gentleman. Her curiosity, however, was unexpectedly
relieved. Mr. Wickham began the subject himself. He inquired how far
Netherfield was from Meryton; and, after receiving her answer, asked in
a hesitating manner how long Mr. Darcy had been staying there.

"About a month," said Elizabeth; and then, unwilling to let the subject
drop, added, "He is a man of very large property in Derbyshire, I
understand."

"Yes," replied Mr. Wickham; "his estate there is a noble one. A clear
ten thousand per annum. You could not have met with a person more
capable of giving you certain information on that head than myself, for
I have been connected with his family in a particular manner from my
infancy."

Elizabeth could not but look surprised.

"You may well be surprised, Miss Bennet, at such an assertion, after
seeing, as you probably might, the very cold manner of our meeting
yesterday. Are you much acquainted with Mr. Darcy?"

"As much as I ever wish to be," cried Elizabeth very warmly. "I have
spent four days in the same house with him, and I think him very
disagreeable."

"I have no right to give _my_ opinion," said Wickham, "as to his being
agreeable or otherwise. I am not qualified to form one. I have known him
too long and too well to be a fair judge. It is impossible for _me_
to be impartial. But I believe your opinion of him would in general
astonish--and perhaps you would not express it quite so strongly
anywhere else. Here you are in your own family."

"Upon my word, I say no more _here_ than I might say in any house in
the neighbourhood, except Netherfield. He is not at all liked in
Hertfordshire. Everybody is disgusted with his pride. You will not find
him more favourably spoken of by anyone."

"I cannot pretend to be sorry," said Wickham, after a short
interruption, "that he or that any man should not be estimated beyond
their deserts; but with _him_ I believe it does not often happen. The
world is blinded by his fortune and consequence, or frightened by his
high and imposing manners, and sees him only as he chooses to be seen."

"I should take him, even on _my_ slight acquaintance, to be an
ill-tempered man." Wickham only shook his head.

"I wonder," said he, at the next opportunity of speaking, "whether he is
likely to be in this country much longer."

"I do not at all know; but I _heard_ nothing of his going away when I
was at Netherfield. I hope your plans in favour of the ----shire will
not be affected by his being in the neighbourhood."

"Oh! no--it is not for _me_ to be driven away by Mr. Darcy. If _he_
wishes to avoid seeing _me_, he must go. We are not on friendly terms,
and it always gives me pain to meet him, but I have no reason for
avoiding _him_ but what I might proclaim before all the world, a sense
of very great ill-usage, and most painful regrets at his being what he
is. His father, Miss Bennet, the late Mr. Darcy, was one of the best men
that ever breathed, and the truest friend I ever had; and I can never
be in company with this Mr. Darcy without being grieved to the soul by
a thousand tender recollections. His behaviour to myself has been
scandalous; but I verily believe I could forgive him anything and
everything, rather than his disappointing the hopes and disgracing the
memory of his father."

Elizabeth found the interest of the subject increase, and listened with
all her heart; but the delicacy of it prevented further inquiry.

Mr. Wickham began to speak on more general topics, Meryton, the
neighbourhood, the society, appearing highly pleased with all that
he had yet seen, and speaking of the latter with gentle but very
intelligible gallantry.

"It was the prospect of constant society, and good society," he added,
"which was my chief inducement to enter the ----shire. I knew it to be
a most respectable, agreeable corps, and my friend Denny tempted me
further by his account of their present quarters, and the very great
attentions and excellent acquaintances Meryton had procured them.
Society, I own, is necessary to me. I have been a disappointed man, and
my spirits will not bear solitude. I _must_ have employment and society.
A military life is not what I was intended for, but circumstances have
now made it eligible. The church _ought_ to have been my profession--I
was brought up for the church, and I should at this time have been in
possession of a most valuable living, had it pleased the gentleman we
were speaking of just now."

"Indeed!"

"Yes--the late Mr. Darcy bequeathed me the next presentation of the best
living in his gift. He was my godfather, and excessively attached to me.
I cannot do justice to his kindness. He meant to provide for me amply,
and thought he had done it; but when the living fell, it was given
elsewhere."

"Good heavens!" cried Elizabeth; "but how could _that_ be? How could his
will be disregarded? Why did you not seek legal redress?"

"There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to
give me no hope from law. A man of honour could not have doubted the
intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it--or to treat it as a merely
conditional recommendation, and to assert that I had forfeited all claim
to it by extravagance, imprudence--in short anything or nothing. Certain
it is, that the living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I was
of an age to hold it, and that it was given to another man; and no
less certain is it, that I cannot accuse myself of having really done
anything to deserve to lose it. I have a warm, unguarded temper, and
I may have spoken my opinion _of_ him, and _to_ him, too freely. I can
recall nothing worse. But the fact is, that we are very different sort
of men, and that he hates me."

"This is quite shocking! He deserves to be publicly disgraced."

"Some time or other he _will_ be--but it shall not be by _me_. Till I
can forget his father, I can never defy or expose _him_."

Elizabeth honoured him for such feelings, and thought him handsomer than
ever as he expressed them.

"But what," said she, after a pause, "can have been his motive? What can
have induced him to behave so cruelly?"

"A thorough, determined dislike of me--a dislike which I cannot but
attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. Darcy liked me
less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father's uncommon
attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life. He had
not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood--the sort
of preference which was often given me."

"I had not thought Mr. Darcy so bad as this--though I have never liked
him. I had not thought so very ill of him. I had supposed him to be
despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not suspect him of
descending to such malicious revenge, such injustice, such inhumanity as
this."

After a few minutes' reflection, however, she continued, "I _do_
remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the implacability of
his resentments, of his having an unforgiving temper. His disposition
must be dreadful."

"I will not trust myself on the subject," replied Wickham; "I can hardly
be just to him."

Elizabeth was again deep in thought, and after a time exclaimed, "To
treat in such a manner the godson, the friend, the favourite of his
father!" She could have added, "A young man, too, like _you_, whose very
countenance may vouch for your being amiable"--but she contented herself
with, "and one, too, who had probably been his companion from childhood,
connected together, as I think you said, in the closest manner!"

"We were born in the same parish, within the same park; the greatest
part of our youth was passed together; inmates of the same house,
sharing the same amusements, objects of the same parental care. _My_
father began life in the profession which your uncle, Mr. Phillips,
appears to do so much credit to--but he gave up everything to be of
use to the late Mr. Darcy and devoted all his time to the care of the
Pemberley property. He was most highly esteemed by Mr. Darcy, a most
intimate, confidential friend. Mr. Darcy often acknowledged himself to
be under the greatest obligations to my father's active superintendence,
and when, immediately before my father's death, Mr. Darcy gave him a
voluntary promise of providing for me, I am convinced that he felt it to
be as much a debt of gratitude to _him_, as of his affection to myself."

"How strange!" cried Elizabeth. "How abominable! I wonder that the very
pride of this Mr. Darcy has not made him just to you! If from no better
motive, that he should not have been too proud to be dishonest--for
dishonesty I must call it."

"It _is_ wonderful," replied Wickham, "for almost all his actions may
be traced to pride; and pride had often been his best friend. It has
connected him nearer with virtue than with any other feeling. But we are
none of us consistent, and in his behaviour to me there were stronger
impulses even than pride."

"Can such abominable pride as his have ever done him good?"

"Yes. It has often led him to be liberal and generous, to give his money
freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, and relieve the
poor. Family pride, and _filial_ pride--for he is very proud of what
his father was--have done this. Not to appear to disgrace his family,
to degenerate from the popular qualities, or lose the influence of the
Pemberley House, is a powerful motive. He has also _brotherly_ pride,
which, with _some_ brotherly affection, makes him a very kind and
careful guardian of his sister, and you will hear him generally cried up
as the most attentive and best of brothers."

"What sort of girl is Miss Darcy?"

He shook his head. "I wish I could call her amiable. It gives me pain to
speak ill of a Darcy. But she is too much like her brother--very, very
proud. As a child, she was affectionate and pleasing, and extremely fond
of me; and I have devoted hours and hours to her amusement. But she is
nothing to me now. She is a handsome girl, about fifteen or sixteen,
and, I understand, highly accomplished. Since her father's death, her
home has been London, where a lady lives with her, and superintends her
education."

After many pauses and many trials of other subjects, Elizabeth could not
help reverting once more to the first, and saying:

"I am astonished at his intimacy with Mr. Bingley! How can Mr. Bingley,
who seems good humour itself, and is, I really believe, truly amiable,
be in friendship with such a man? How can they suit each other? Do you
know Mr. Bingley?"

"Not at all."

"He is a sweet-tempered, amiable, charming man. He cannot know what Mr.
Darcy is."

"Probably not; but Mr. Darcy can please where he chooses. He does not
want abilities. He can be a conversible companion if he thinks it worth
his while. Among those who are at all his equals in consequence, he is
a very different man from what he is to the less prosperous. His
pride never deserts him; but with the rich he is liberal-minded, just,
sincere, rational, honourable, and perhaps agreeable--allowing something
for fortune and figure."

The whist party soon afterwards breaking up, the players gathered round
the other table and Mr. Collins took his station between his cousin
Elizabeth and Mrs. Phillips. The usual inquiries as to his success was
made by the latter. It had not been very great; he had lost every
point; but when Mrs. Phillips began to express her concern thereupon,
he assured her with much earnest gravity that it was not of the least
importance, that he considered the money as a mere trifle, and begged
that she would not make herself uneasy.

"I know very well, madam," said he, "that when persons sit down to a
card-table, they must take their chances of these things, and happily I
am not in such circumstances as to make five shillings any object. There
are undoubtedly many who could not say the same, but thanks to Lady
Catherine de Bourgh, I am removed far beyond the necessity of regarding
little matters."

Mr. Wickham's attention was caught; and after observing Mr. Collins for
a few moments, he asked Elizabeth in a low voice whether her relation
was very intimately acquainted with the family of de Bourgh.

"Lady Catherine de Bourgh," she replied, "has very lately given him
a living. I hardly know how Mr. Collins was first introduced to her
notice, but he certainly has not known her long."

"You know of course that Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Anne Darcy
were sisters; consequently that she is aunt to the present Mr. Darcy."

"No, indeed, I did not. I knew nothing at all of Lady Catherine's
connections. I never heard of her existence till the day before
yesterday."

"Her daughter, Miss de Bourgh, will have a very large fortune, and it is
believed that she and her cousin will unite the two estates."

This information made Elizabeth smile, as she thought of poor Miss
Bingley. Vain indeed must be all her attentions, vain and useless her
affection for his sister and her praise of himself, if he were already
self-destined for another.

"Mr. Collins," said she, "speaks highly both of Lady Catherine and her
daughter; but from some particulars that he has related of her ladyship,
I suspect his gratitude misleads him, and that in spite of her being his
patroness, she is an arrogant, conceited woman."

"I believe her to be both in a great degree," replied Wickham; "I have
not seen her for many years, but I very well remember that I never liked
her, and that her manners were dictatorial and insolent. She has the
reputation of being remarkably sensible and clever; but I rather believe
she derives part of her abilities from her rank and fortune, part from
her authoritative manner, and the rest from the pride for her
nephew, who chooses that everyone connected with him should have an
understanding of the first class."

Elizabeth allowed that he had given a very rational account of it, and
they continued talking together, with mutual satisfaction till supper
put an end to cards, and gave the rest of the ladies their share of Mr.
Wickham's attentions. There could be no conversation in the noise
of Mrs. Phillips's supper party, but his manners recommended him to
everybody. Whatever he said, was said well; and whatever he did, done
gracefully. Elizabeth went away with her head full of him. She could
think of nothing but of Mr. Wickham, and of what he had told her, all
the way home; but there was not time for her even to mention his name
as they went, for neither Lydia nor Mr. Collins were once silent. Lydia
talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the
fish she had won; and Mr. Collins in describing the civility of Mr. and
Mrs. Phillips, protesting that he did not in the least regard his losses
at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper, and repeatedly fearing
that he crowded his cousins, had more to say than he could well manage
before the carriage stopped at Longbourn House.



Chapter 17


Elizabeth related to Jane the next day what had passed between Mr.
Wickham and herself. Jane listened with astonishment and concern; she
knew not how to believe that Mr. Darcy could be so unworthy of Mr.
Bingley's regard; and yet, it was not in her nature to question the
veracity of a young man of such amiable appearance as Wickham. The
possibility of his having endured such unkindness, was enough to
interest all her tender feelings; and nothing remained therefore to be
done, but to think well of them both, to defend the conduct of each,
and throw into the account of accident or mistake whatever could not be
otherwise explained.

"They have both," said she, "been deceived, I dare say, in some way
or other, of which we can form no idea. Interested people have perhaps
misrepresented each to the other. It is, in short, impossible for us to
conjecture the causes or circumstances which may have alienated them,
without actual blame on either side."

"Very true, indeed; and now, my dear Jane, what have you got to say on
behalf of the interested people who have probably been concerned in the
business? Do clear _them_ too, or we shall be obliged to think ill of
somebody."

"Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my
opinion. My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a disgraceful light
it places Mr. Darcy, to be treating his father's favourite in such
a manner, one whom his father had promised to provide for. It is
impossible. No man of common humanity, no man who had any value for his
character, could be capable of it. Can his most intimate friends be so
excessively deceived in him? Oh! no."

"I can much more easily believe Mr. Bingley's being imposed on, than
that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself as he gave me
last night; names, facts, everything mentioned without ceremony. If it
be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. Besides, there was truth in his
looks."

"It is difficult indeed--it is distressing. One does not know what to
think."

"I beg your pardon; one knows exactly what to think."

But Jane could think with certainty on only one point--that Mr. Bingley,
if he _had_ been imposed on, would have much to suffer when the affair
became public.

The two young ladies were summoned from the shrubbery, where this
conversation passed, by the arrival of the very persons of whom they had
been speaking; Mr. Bingley and his sisters came to give their personal
invitation for the long-expected ball at Netherfield, which was fixed
for the following Tuesday. The two ladies were delighted to see their
dear friend again, called it an age since they had met, and repeatedly
asked what she had been doing with herself since their separation. To
the rest of the family they paid little attention; avoiding Mrs. Bennet
as much as possible, saying not much to Elizabeth, and nothing at all to
the others. They were soon gone again, rising from their seats with an
activity which took their brother by surprise, and hurrying off as if
eager to escape from Mrs. Bennet's civilities.

The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every
female of the family. Mrs. Bennet chose to consider it as given in
compliment to her eldest daughter, and was particularly flattered
by receiving the invitation from Mr. Bingley himself, instead of a
ceremonious card. Jane pictured to herself a happy evening in the
society of her two friends, and the attentions of her brother; and
Elizabeth thought with pleasure of dancing a great deal with Mr.
Wickham, and of seeing a confirmation of everything in Mr. Darcy's look
and behaviour. The happiness anticipated by Catherine and Lydia depended
less on any single event, or any particular person, for though they
each, like Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham,
he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a ball
was, at any rate, a ball. And even Mary could assure her family that she
had no disinclination for it.

"While I can have my mornings to myself," said she, "it is enough--I
think it is no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening engagements.
Society has claims on us all; and I profess myself one of those
who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for
everybody."

Elizabeth's spirits were so high on this occasion, that though she did
not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Collins, she could not help asking
him whether he intended to accept Mr. Bingley's invitation, and if
he did, whether he would think it proper to join in the evening's
amusement; and she was rather surprised to find that he entertained no
scruple whatever on that head, and was very far from dreading a rebuke
either from the Archbishop, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by venturing to
dance.

"I am by no means of the opinion, I assure you," said he, "that a ball
of this kind, given by a young man of character, to respectable people,
can have any evil tendency; and I am so far from objecting to dancing
myself, that I shall hope to be honoured with the hands of all my fair
cousins in the course of the evening; and I take this opportunity of
soliciting yours, Miss Elizabeth, for the two first dances especially,
a preference which I trust my cousin Jane will attribute to the right
cause, and not to any disrespect for her."

Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in. She had fully proposed being
engaged by Mr. Wickham for those very dances; and to have Mr. Collins
instead! her liveliness had never been worse timed. There was no help
for it, however. Mr. Wickham's happiness and her own were perforce
delayed a little longer, and Mr. Collins's proposal accepted with as
good a grace as she could. She was not the better pleased with his
gallantry from the idea it suggested of something more. It now first
struck her, that _she_ was selected from among her sisters as worthy
of being mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a
quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors.
The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed his increasing
civilities toward herself, and heard his frequent attempt at a
compliment on her wit and vivacity; and though more astonished than
gratified herself by this effect of her charms, it was not long before
her mother gave her to understand that the probability of their marriage
was extremely agreeable to _her_. Elizabeth, however, did not choose
to take the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the
consequence of any reply. Mr. Collins might never make the offer, and
till he did, it was useless to quarrel about him.

If there had not been a Netherfield ball to prepare for and talk of, the
younger Miss Bennets would have been in a very pitiable state at this
time, for from the day of the invitation, to the day of the ball, there
was such a succession of rain as prevented their walking to Meryton
once. No aunt, no officers, no news could be sought after--the very
shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy. Even Elizabeth might have
found some trial of her patience in weather which totally suspended the
improvement of her acquaintance with Mr. Wickham; and nothing less than
a dance on Tuesday, could have made such a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and
Monday endurable to Kitty and Lydia.



Chapter 18


Till Elizabeth entered the drawing-room at Netherfield, and looked in
vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats there assembled, a
doubt of his being present had never occurred to her. The certainty
of meeting him had not been checked by any of those recollections that
might not unreasonably have alarmed her. She had dressed with more than
usual care, and prepared in the highest spirits for the conquest of all
that remained unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more than
might be won in the course of the evening. But in an instant arose
the dreadful suspicion of his being purposely omitted for Mr. Darcy's
pleasure in the Bingleys' invitation to the officers; and though
this was not exactly the case, the absolute fact of his absence was
pronounced by his friend Denny, to whom Lydia eagerly applied, and who
told them that Wickham had been obliged to go to town on business the
day before, and was not yet returned; adding, with a significant smile,
"I do not imagine his business would have called him away just now, if
he had not wanted to avoid a certain gentleman here."

This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was caught by
Elizabeth, and, as it assured her that Darcy was not less answerable for
Wickham's absence than if her first surmise had been just, every
feeling of displeasure against the former was so sharpened by immediate
disappointment, that she could hardly reply with tolerable civility to
the polite inquiries which he directly afterwards approached to make.
Attendance, forbearance, patience with Darcy, was injury to Wickham. She
was resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and turned away
with a degree of ill-humour which she could not wholly surmount even in
speaking to Mr. Bingley, whose blind partiality provoked her.

But Elizabeth was not formed for ill-humour; and though every prospect
of her own was destroyed for the evening, it could not dwell long on her
spirits; and having told all her griefs to Charlotte Lucas, whom she had
not seen for a week, she was soon able to make a voluntary transition
to the oddities of her cousin, and to point him out to her particular
notice. The first two dances, however, brought a return of distress;
they were dances of mortification. Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn,
apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without being
aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable
partner for a couple of dances can give. The moment of her release from
him was ecstasy.

She danced next with an officer, and had the refreshment of talking of
Wickham, and of hearing that he was universally liked. When those dances
were over, she returned to Charlotte Lucas, and was in conversation with
her, when she found herself suddenly addressed by Mr. Darcy who took
her so much by surprise in his application for her hand, that,
without knowing what she did, she accepted him. He walked away again
immediately, and she was left to fret over her own want of presence of
mind; Charlotte tried to console her:

"I dare say you will find him very agreeable."

"Heaven forbid! _That_ would be the greatest misfortune of all! To find
a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! Do not wish me such an
evil."

When the dancing recommenced, however, and Darcy approached to claim her
hand, Charlotte could not help cautioning her in a whisper, not to be a
simpleton, and allow her fancy for Wickham to make her appear unpleasant
in the eyes of a man ten times his consequence. Elizabeth made no
answer, and took her place in the set, amazed at the dignity to which
she was arrived in being allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Darcy, and
reading in her neighbours' looks, their equal amazement in beholding
it. They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to
imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at
first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying that it would
be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made
some slight observation on the dance. He replied, and was again
silent. After a pause of some minutes, she addressed him a second time
with:--"It is _your_ turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked
about the dance, and _you_ ought to make some sort of remark on the size
of the room, or the number of couples."

He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be
said.

"Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and by I may
observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones. But
_now_ we may be silent."

"Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?"

"Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be
entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet for the advantage of
_some_, conversation ought to be so arranged, as that they may have the
trouble of saying as little as possible."

"Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you
imagine that you are gratifying mine?"

"Both," replied Elizabeth archly; "for I have always seen a great
similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial,
taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say
something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to
posterity with all the eclat of a proverb."

"This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure,"
said he. "How near it may be to _mine_, I cannot pretend to say. _You_
think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly."

"I must not decide on my own performance."

He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone down
the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not very often
walk to Meryton. She answered in the affirmative, and, unable to resist
the temptation, added, "When you met us there the other day, we had just
been forming a new acquaintance."

The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of _hauteur_ overspread his
features, but he said not a word, and Elizabeth, though blaming herself
for her own weakness, could not go on. At length Darcy spoke, and in a
constrained manner said, "Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners
as may ensure his _making_ friends--whether he may be equally capable of
_retaining_ them, is less certain."

"He has been so unlucky as to lose _your_ friendship," replied Elizabeth
with emphasis, "and in a manner which he is likely to suffer from all
his life."

Darcy made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the subject. At
that moment, Sir William Lucas appeared close to them, meaning to pass
through the set to the other side of the room; but on perceiving Mr.
Darcy, he stopped with a bow of superior courtesy to compliment him on
his dancing and his partner.

"I have been most highly gratified indeed, my dear sir. Such very
superior dancing is not often seen. It is evident that you belong to the
first circles. Allow me to say, however, that your fair partner does not
disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this pleasure often repeated,
especially when a certain desirable event, my dear Eliza (glancing at
her sister and Bingley) shall take place. What congratulations will then
flow in! I appeal to Mr. Darcy:--but let me not interrupt you, sir. You
will not thank me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that
young lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me."

The latter part of this address was scarcely heard by Darcy; but Sir
William's allusion to his friend seemed to strike him forcibly, and his
eyes were directed with a very serious expression towards Bingley and
Jane, who were dancing together. Recovering himself, however, shortly,
he turned to his partner, and said, "Sir William's interruption has made
me forget what we were talking of."

"I do not think we were speaking at all. Sir William could not have
interrupted two people in the room who had less to say for themselves.
We have tried two or three subjects already without success, and what we
are to talk of next I cannot imagine."

"What think you of books?" said he, smiling.

"Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same
feelings."

"I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be
no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions."

"No--I cannot talk of books in a ball-room; my head is always full of
something else."

"The _present_ always occupies you in such scenes--does it?" said he,
with a look of doubt.

"Yes, always," she replied, without knowing what she said, for her
thoughts had wandered far from the subject, as soon afterwards appeared
by her suddenly exclaiming, "I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy,
that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was
unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its _being
created_."

"I am," said he, with a firm voice.

"And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?"

"I hope not."

"It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion,
to be secure of judging properly at first."

"May I ask to what these questions tend?"

"Merely to the illustration of _your_ character," said she, endeavouring
to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make it out."

"And what is your success?"

She shook her head. "I do not get on at all. I hear such different
accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly."

"I can readily believe," answered he gravely, "that reports may vary
greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were
not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to
fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either."

"But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another
opportunity."

"I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," he coldly replied.
She said no more, and they went down the other dance and parted in
silence; and on each side dissatisfied, though not to an equal degree,
for in Darcy's breast there was a tolerable powerful feeling towards
her, which soon procured her pardon, and directed all his anger against
another.

They had not long separated, when Miss Bingley came towards her, and
with an expression of civil disdain accosted her:

"So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham!
Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand
questions; and I find that the young man quite forgot to tell you, among
his other communication, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late
Mr. Darcy's steward. Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to
give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy's
using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has
always been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated
Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner. I do not know the particulars, but
I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the least to blame, that he
cannot bear to hear George Wickham mentioned, and that though my brother
thought that he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to
the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself
out of the way. His coming into the country at all is a most insolent
thing, indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you,
Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite's guilt; but really,
considering his descent, one could not expect much better."

"His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same," said
Elizabeth angrily; "for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse
than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, and of _that_, I can
assure you, he informed me himself."

"I beg your pardon," replied Miss Bingley, turning away with a sneer.
"Excuse my interference--it was kindly meant."

"Insolent girl!" said Elizabeth to herself. "You are much mistaken
if you expect to influence me by such a paltry attack as this. I see
nothing in it but your own wilful ignorance and the malice of Mr.
Darcy." She then sought her eldest sister, who has undertaken to make
inquiries on the same subject of Bingley. Jane met her with a smile of
such sweet complacency, a glow of such happy expression, as sufficiently
marked how well she was satisfied with the occurrences of the evening.
Elizabeth instantly read her feelings, and at that moment solicitude for
Wickham, resentment against his enemies, and everything else, gave way
before the hope of Jane's being in the fairest way for happiness.

"I want to know," said she, with a countenance no less smiling than her
sister's, "what you have learnt about Mr. Wickham. But perhaps you have
been too pleasantly engaged to think of any third person; in which case
you may be sure of my pardon."

"No," replied Jane, "I have not forgotten him; but I have nothing
satisfactory to tell you. Mr. Bingley does not know the whole of
his history, and is quite ignorant of the circumstances which have
principally offended Mr. Darcy; but he will vouch for the good conduct,
the probity, and honour of his friend, and is perfectly convinced that
Mr. Wickham has deserved much less attention from Mr. Darcy than he has
received; and I am sorry to say by his account as well as his sister's,
Mr. Wickham is by no means a respectable young man. I am afraid he has
been very imprudent, and has deserved to lose Mr. Darcy's regard."

"Mr. Bingley does not know Mr. Wickham himself?"

"No; he never saw him till the other morning at Meryton."

"This account then is what he has received from Mr. Darcy. I am
satisfied. But what does he say of the living?"

"He does not exactly recollect the circumstances, though he has heard
them from Mr. Darcy more than once, but he believes that it was left to
him _conditionally_ only."

"I have not a doubt of Mr. Bingley's sincerity," said Elizabeth warmly;
"but you must excuse my not being convinced by assurances only. Mr.
Bingley's defense of his friend was a very able one, I dare say; but
since he is unacquainted with several parts of the story, and has learnt
the rest from that friend himself, I shall venture to still think of
both gentlemen as I did before."

She then changed the discourse to one more gratifying to each, and on
which there could be no difference of sentiment. Elizabeth listened with
delight to the happy, though modest hopes which Jane entertained of Mr.
Bingley's regard, and said all in her power to heighten her confidence
in it. On their being joined by Mr. Bingley himself, Elizabeth withdrew
to Miss Lucas; to whose inquiry after the pleasantness of her last
partner she had scarcely replied, before Mr. Collins came up to them,
and told her with great exultation that he had just been so fortunate as
to make a most important discovery.

"I have found out," said he, "by a singular accident, that there is now
in the room a near relation of my patroness. I happened to overhear the
gentleman himself mentioning to the young lady who does the honours of
the house the names of his cousin Miss de Bourgh, and of her mother Lady
Catherine. How wonderfully these sort of things occur! Who would have
thought of my meeting with, perhaps, a nephew of Lady Catherine de
Bourgh in this assembly! I am most thankful that the discovery is made
in time for me to pay my respects to him, which I am now going to
do, and trust he will excuse my not having done it before. My total
ignorance of the connection must plead my apology."

"You are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Darcy!"

"Indeed I am. I shall entreat his pardon for not having done it earlier.
I believe him to be Lady Catherine's _nephew_. It will be in my power to
assure him that her ladyship was quite well yesterday se'nnight."

Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme, assuring him
that Mr. Darcy would consider his addressing him without introduction
as an impertinent freedom, rather than a compliment to his aunt; that
it was not in the least necessary there should be any notice on either
side; and that if it were, it must belong to Mr. Darcy, the superior in
consequence, to begin the acquaintance. Mr. Collins listened to her
with the determined air of following his own inclination, and, when she
ceased speaking, replied thus:

"My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world in
your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of your
understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a wide
difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity,
and those which regulate the clergy; for, give me leave to observe that
I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with
the highest rank in the kingdom--provided that a proper humility of
behaviour is at the same time maintained. You must therefore allow me to
follow the dictates of my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to
perform what I look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to
profit by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant
guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted by
education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a young
lady like yourself." And with a low bow he left her to attack Mr.
Darcy, whose reception of his advances she eagerly watched, and whose
astonishment at being so addressed was very evident. Her cousin prefaced
his speech with a solemn bow and though she could not hear a word of
it, she felt as if hearing it all, and saw in the motion of his lips the
words "apology," "Hunsford," and "Lady Catherine de Bourgh." It vexed
her to see him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Darcy was eyeing him
with unrestrained wonder, and when at last Mr. Collins allowed him time
to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr. Collins, however,
was not discouraged from speaking again, and Mr. Darcy's contempt seemed
abundantly increasing with the length of his second speech, and at the
end of it he only made him a slight bow, and moved another way. Mr.
Collins then returned to Elizabeth.

"I have no reason, I assure you," said he, "to be dissatisfied with my
reception. Mr. Darcy seemed much pleased with the attention. He answered
me with the utmost civility, and even paid me the compliment of saying
that he was so well convinced of Lady Catherine's discernment as to be
certain she could never bestow a favour unworthily. It was really a very
handsome thought. Upon the whole, I am much pleased with him."

As Elizabeth had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, she turned
her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr. Bingley; and the
train of agreeable reflections which her observations gave birth to,
made her perhaps almost as happy as Jane. She saw her in idea settled in
that very house, in all the felicity which a marriage of true affection
could bestow; and she felt capable, under such circumstances, of
endeavouring even to like Bingley's two sisters. Her mother's thoughts
she plainly saw were bent the same way, and she determined not to
venture near her, lest she might hear too much. When they sat down to
supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which
placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to find
that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lucas) freely,
openly, and of nothing else but her expectation that Jane would soon
be married to Mr. Bingley. It was an animating subject, and Mrs. Bennet
seemed incapable of fatigue while enumerating the advantages of the
match. His being such a charming young man, and so rich, and living but
three miles from them, were the first points of self-gratulation; and
then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of
Jane, and to be certain that they must desire the connection as much as
she could do. It was, moreover, such a promising thing for her younger
daughters, as Jane's marrying so greatly must throw them in the way of
other rich men; and lastly, it was so pleasant at her time of life to be
able to consign her single daughters to the care of their sister, that
she might not be obliged to go into company more than she liked. It was
necessary to make this circumstance a matter of pleasure, because on
such occasions it is the etiquette; but no one was less likely than Mrs.
Bennet to find comfort in staying home at any period of her life. She
concluded with many good wishes that Lady Lucas might soon be equally
fortunate, though evidently and triumphantly believing there was no
chance of it.

In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother's
words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible
whisper; for, to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the
chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them. Her
mother only scolded her for being nonsensical.

"What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I am
sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged to say
nothing _he_ may not like to hear."

"For heaven's sake, madam, speak lower. What advantage can it be for you
to offend Mr. Darcy? You will never recommend yourself to his friend by
so doing!"

Nothing that she could say, however, had any influence. Her mother would
talk of her views in the same intelligible tone. Elizabeth blushed and
blushed again with shame and vexation. She could not help frequently
glancing her eye at Mr. Darcy, though every glance convinced her of what
she dreaded; for though he was not always looking at her mother, she was
convinced that his attention was invariably fixed by her. The expression
of his face changed gradually from indignant contempt to a composed and
steady gravity.

At length, however, Mrs. Bennet had no more to say; and Lady Lucas, who
had been long yawning at the repetition of delights which she saw no
likelihood of sharing, was left to the comforts of cold ham and
chicken. Elizabeth now began to revive. But not long was the interval of
tranquillity; for, when supper was over, singing was talked of, and
she had the mortification of seeing Mary, after very little entreaty,
preparing to oblige the company. By many significant looks and silent
entreaties, did she endeavour to prevent such a proof of complaisance,
but in vain; Mary would not understand them; such an opportunity of
exhibiting was delightful to her, and she began her song. Elizabeth's
eyes were fixed on her with most painful sensations, and she watched her
progress through the several stanzas with an impatience which was very
ill rewarded at their close; for Mary, on receiving, amongst the thanks
of the table, the hint of a hope that she might be prevailed on to
favour them again, after the pause of half a minute began another.
Mary's powers were by no means fitted for such a display; her voice was
weak, and her manner affected. Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at
Jane, to see how she bore it; but Jane was very composedly talking to
Bingley. She looked at his two sisters, and saw them making signs
of derision at each other, and at Darcy, who continued, however,
imperturbably grave. She looked at her father to entreat his
interference, lest Mary should be singing all night. He took the hint,
and when Mary had finished her second song, said aloud, "That will do
extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other
young ladies have time to exhibit."

Mary, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted; and
Elizabeth, sorry for her, and sorry for her father's speech, was afraid
her anxiety had done no good. Others of the party were now applied to.

"If I," said Mr. Collins, "were so fortunate as to be able to sing, I
should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the company with an
air; for I consider music as a very innocent diversion, and perfectly
compatible with the profession of a clergyman. I do not mean, however,
to assert that we can be justified in devoting too much of our time
to music, for there are certainly other things to be attended to. The
rector of a parish has much to do. In the first place, he must make
such an agreement for tithes as may be beneficial to himself and not
offensive to his patron. He must write his own sermons; and the time
that remains will not be too much for his parish duties, and the care
and improvement of his dwelling, which he cannot be excused from making
as comfortable as possible. And I do not think it of light importance
that he should have attentive and conciliatory manners towards everybody,
especially towards those to whom he owes his preferment. I cannot acquit
him of that duty; nor could I think well of the man who should omit an
occasion of testifying his respect towards anybody connected with the
family." And with a bow to Mr. Darcy, he concluded his speech, which had
been spoken so loud as to be heard by half the room. Many stared--many
smiled; but no one looked more amused than Mr. Bennet himself, while his
wife seriously commended Mr. Collins for having spoken so sensibly,
and observed in a half-whisper to Lady Lucas, that he was a remarkably
clever, good kind of young man.

To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement to
expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would
have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or
finer success; and happy did she think it for Bingley and her sister
that some of the exhibition had escaped his notice, and that his
feelings were not of a sort to be much distressed by the folly which he
must have witnessed. That his two sisters and Mr. Darcy, however, should
have such an opportunity of ridiculing her relations, was bad enough,
and she could not determine whether the silent contempt of the
gentleman, or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more intolerable.

The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was teased by
Mr. Collins, who continued most perseveringly by her side, and though
he could not prevail on her to dance with him again, put it out of her
power to dance with others. In vain did she entreat him to stand up with
somebody else, and offer to introduce him to any young lady in the room.
He assured her, that as to dancing, he was perfectly indifferent to it;
that his chief object was by delicate attentions to recommend himself to
her and that he should therefore make a point of remaining close to her
the whole evening. There was no arguing upon such a project. She owed
her greatest relief to her friend Miss Lucas, who often joined them, and
good-naturedly engaged Mr. Collins's conversation to herself.

She was at least free from the offense of Mr. Darcy's further notice;
though often standing within a very short distance of her, quite
disengaged, he never came near enough to speak. She felt it to be the
probable consequence of her allusions to Mr. Wickham, and rejoiced in
it.

The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart, and, by
a manoeuvre of Mrs. Bennet, had to wait for their carriage a quarter of
an hour after everybody else was gone, which gave them time to see how
heartily they were wished away by some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her
sister scarcely opened their mouths, except to complain of fatigue, and
were evidently impatient to have the house to themselves. They repulsed
every attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation, and by so doing threw a
languor over the whole party, which was very little relieved by the
long speeches of Mr. Collins, who was complimenting Mr. Bingley and his
sisters on the elegance of their entertainment, and the hospitality and
politeness which had marked their behaviour to their guests. Darcy said
nothing at all. Mr. Bennet, in equal silence, was enjoying the scene.
Mr. Bingley and Jane were standing together, a little detached from the
rest, and talked only to each other. Elizabeth preserved as steady a
silence as either Mrs. Hurst or Miss Bingley; and even Lydia was too
much fatigued to utter more than the occasional exclamation of "Lord,
how tired I am!" accompanied by a violent yawn.

When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Bennet was most pressingly
civil in her hope of seeing the whole family soon at Longbourn, and
addressed herself especially to Mr. Bingley, to assure him how happy he
would make them by eating a family dinner with them at any time, without
the ceremony of a formal invitation. Bingley was all grateful pleasure,
and he readily engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on
her, after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the next
day for a short time.

Mrs. Bennet was perfectly satisfied, and quitted the house under the
delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary preparations of
settlements, new carriages, and wedding clothes, she should undoubtedly
see her daughter settled at Netherfield in the course of three or four
months. Of having another daughter married to Mr. Collins, she thought
with equal certainty, and with considerable, though not equal, pleasure.
Elizabeth was the least dear to her of all her children; and though the
man and the match were quite good enough for _her_, the worth of each
was eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield.



Chapter 19


The next day opened a new scene at Longbourn. Mr. Collins made his
declaration in form. Having resolved to do it without loss of time, as
his leave of absence extended only to the following Saturday, and having
no feelings of diffidence to make it distressing to himself even at
the moment, he set about it in a very orderly manner, with all the
observances, which he supposed a regular part of the business. On
finding Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth, and one of the younger girls together,
soon after breakfast, he addressed the mother in these words:

"May I hope, madam, for your interest with your fair daughter Elizabeth,
when I solicit for the honour of a private audience with her in the
course of this morning?"

Before Elizabeth had time for anything but a blush of surprise, Mrs.
Bennet answered instantly, "Oh dear!--yes--certainly. I am sure Lizzy
will be very happy--I am sure she can have no objection. Come, Kitty, I
want you up stairs." And, gathering her work together, she was hastening
away, when Elizabeth called out:

"Dear madam, do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins must excuse
me. He can have nothing to say to me that anybody need not hear. I am
going away myself."

"No, no, nonsense, Lizzy. I desire you to stay where you are." And upon
Elizabeth's seeming really, with vexed and embarrassed looks, about to
escape, she added: "Lizzy, I _insist_ upon your staying and hearing Mr.
Collins."

Elizabeth would not oppose such an injunction--and a moment's
consideration making her also sensible that it would be wisest to get it
over as soon and as quietly as possible, she sat down again and tried to
conceal, by incessant employment the feelings which were divided between
distress and diversion. Mrs. Bennet and Kitty walked off, and as soon as
they were gone, Mr. Collins began.

"Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far from
doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other perfections. You
would have been less amiable in my eyes had there _not_ been this little
unwillingness; but allow me to assure you, that I have your respected
mother's permission for this address. You can hardly doubt the
purport of my discourse, however your natural delicacy may lead you to
dissemble; my attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as
soon as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of
my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this
subject, perhaps it would be advisable for me to state my reasons for
marrying--and, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire with the design
of selecting a wife, as I certainly did."

The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn composure, being run away
with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing, that she could
not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt to stop him further,
and he continued:

"My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for
every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example
of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am convinced that it will
add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly--which perhaps I ought
to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and
recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling
patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked
too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I
left Hunsford--between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was
arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool, that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you
must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly, choose
a gentlewoman for _my_ sake; and for your _own_, let her be an active,
useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small
income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as
you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her.' Allow me, by the
way, to observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice
and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the
advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manners beyond
anything I can describe; and your wit and vivacity, I think, must be
acceptable to her, especially when tempered with the silence and
respect which her rank will inevitably excite. Thus much for my general
intention in favour of matrimony; it remains to be told why my views
were directed towards Longbourn instead of my own neighbourhood, where I
can assure you there are many amiable young women. But the fact is, that
being, as I am, to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured
father (who, however, may live many years longer), I could not satisfy
myself without resolving to choose a wife from among his daughters, that
the loss to them might be as little as possible, when the melancholy
event takes place--which, however, as I have already said, may not
be for several years. This has been my motive, my fair cousin, and
I flatter myself it will not sink me in your esteem. And now nothing
remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the
violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and
shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well
aware that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds
in the four per cents, which will not be yours till after your mother's
decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head,
therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that
no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married."

It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.

"You are too hasty, sir," she cried. "You forget that I have made no
answer. Let me do it without further loss of time. Accept my thanks for
the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible of the honour of
your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than to
decline them."

"I am not now to learn," replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the
hand, "that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the
man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their
favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a
third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just
said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long."

"Upon my word, sir," cried Elizabeth, "your hope is a rather
extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am not
one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so
daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second
time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make _me_
happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who
could make you so. Nay, were your friend Lady Catherine to know me, I
am persuaded she would find me in every respect ill qualified for the
situation."

"Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so," said Mr. Collins
very gravely--"but I cannot imagine that her ladyship would at all
disapprove of you. And you may be certain when I have the honour of
seeing her again, I shall speak in the very highest terms of your
modesty, economy, and other amiable qualification."

"Indeed, Mr. Collins, all praise of me will be unnecessary. You
must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment
of believing what I say. I wish you very happy and very rich, and by
refusing your hand, do all in my power to prevent your being otherwise.
In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the delicacy of your
feelings with regard to my family, and may take possession of Longbourn
estate whenever it falls, without any self-reproach. This matter may
be considered, therefore, as finally settled." And rising as she
thus spoke, she would have quitted the room, had Mr. Collins not thus
addressed her:

"When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on the subject, I
shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than you have now given
me; though I am far from accusing you of cruelty at present, because I
know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on
the first application, and perhaps you have even now said as much to
encourage my suit as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the
female character."

"Really, Mr. Collins," cried Elizabeth with some warmth, "you puzzle me
exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form
of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as
to convince you of its being one."

"You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your
refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. My reasons for
believing it are briefly these: It does not appear to me that my hand is
unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would
be any other than highly desirable. My situation in life, my connections
with the family of de Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are
circumstances highly in my favour; and you should take it into further
consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no
means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you. Your
portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo
the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must
therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me,
I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by
suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females."

"I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind
of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would
rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you
again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but
to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect
forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant
female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking
the truth from her heart."

"You are uniformly charming!" cried he, with an air of awkward
gallantry; "and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express
authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will not fail of
being acceptable."

To such perseverance in wilful self-deception Elizabeth would make
no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew; determined, if
he persisted in considering her repeated refusals as flattering
encouragement, to apply to her father, whose negative might be uttered
in such a manner as to be decisive, and whose behaviour at least could
not be mistaken for the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female.



Chapter 20


Mr. Collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his
successful love; for Mrs. Bennet, having dawdled about in the vestibule
to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw Elizabeth open
the door and with quick step pass her towards the staircase, than she
entered the breakfast-room, and congratulated both him and herself in
warm terms on the happy prospect or their nearer connection. Mr. Collins
received and returned these felicitations with equal pleasure, and then
proceeded to relate the particulars of their interview, with the result
of which he trusted he had every reason to be satisfied, since the
refusal which his cousin had steadfastly given him would naturally flow
from her bashful modesty and the genuine delicacy of her character.

This information, however, startled Mrs. Bennet; she would have been
glad to be equally satisfied that her daughter had meant to encourage
him by protesting against his proposals, but she dared not believe it,
and could not help saying so.

"But, depend upon it, Mr. Collins," she added, "that Lizzy shall be
brought to reason. I will speak to her about it directly. She is a very
headstrong, foolish girl, and does not know her own interest but I will
_make_ her know it."

"Pardon me for interrupting you, madam," cried Mr. Collins; "but if
she is really headstrong and foolish, I know not whether she would
altogether be a very desirable wife to a man in my situation, who
naturally looks for happiness in the marriage state. If therefore she
actually persists in rejecting my suit, perhaps it were better not
to force her into accepting me, because if liable to such defects of
temper, she could not contribute much to my felicity."

"Sir, you quite misunderstand me," said Mrs. Bennet, alarmed. "Lizzy is
only headstrong in such matters as these. In everything else she is as
good-natured a girl as ever lived. I will go directly to Mr. Bennet, and
we shall very soon settle it with her, I am sure."

She would not give him time to reply, but hurrying instantly to her
husband, called out as she entered the library, "Oh! Mr. Bennet, you
are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You must come and make
Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not have him, and if you
do not make haste he will change his mind and not have _her_."

Mr. Bennet raised his eyes from his book as she entered, and fixed them
on her face with a calm unconcern which was not in the least altered by
her communication.

"I have not the pleasure of understanding you," said he, when she had
finished her speech. "Of what are you talking?"

"Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Mr. Collins,
and Mr. Collins begins to say that he will not have Lizzy."

"And what am I to do on the occasion? It seems an hopeless business."

"Speak to Lizzy about it yourself. Tell her that you insist upon her
marrying him."

"Let her be called down. She shall hear my opinion."

Mrs. Bennet rang the bell, and Miss Elizabeth was summoned to the
library.

"Come here, child," cried her father as she appeared. "I have sent for
you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Collins has made
you an offer of marriage. Is it true?" Elizabeth replied that it was.
"Very well--and this offer of marriage you have refused?"

"I have, sir."

"Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your
accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?"

"Yes, or I will never see her again."

"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must
be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you
again if you do _not_ marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again
if you _do_."

Elizabeth could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a beginning,
but Mrs. Bennet, who had persuaded herself that her husband regarded the
affair as she wished, was excessively disappointed.

"What do you mean, Mr. Bennet, in talking this way? You promised me to
_insist_ upon her marrying him."

"My dear," replied her husband, "I have two small favours to request.
First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the
present occasion; and secondly, of my room. I shall be glad to have the
library to myself as soon as may be."

Not yet, however, in spite of her disappointment in her husband, did
Mrs. Bennet give up the point. She talked to Elizabeth again and again;
coaxed and threatened her by turns. She endeavoured to secure Jane
in her interest; but Jane, with all possible mildness, declined
interfering; and Elizabeth, sometimes with real earnestness, and
sometimes with playful gaiety, replied to her attacks. Though her manner
varied, however, her determination never did.

Mr. Collins, meanwhile, was meditating in solitude on what had passed.
He thought too well of himself to comprehend on what motives his cousin
could refuse him; and though his pride was hurt, he suffered in no other
way. His regard for her was quite imaginary; and the possibility of her
deserving her mother's reproach prevented his feeling any regret.

While the family were in this confusion, Charlotte Lucas came to spend
the day with them. She was met in the vestibule by Lydia, who, flying to
her, cried in a half whisper, "I am glad you are come, for there is such
fun here! What do you think has happened this morning? Mr. Collins has
made an offer to Lizzy, and she will not have him."

Charlotte hardly had time to answer, before they were joined by Kitty,
who came to tell the same news; and no sooner had they entered the
breakfast-room, where Mrs. Bennet was alone, than she likewise began on
the subject, calling on Miss Lucas for her compassion, and entreating
her to persuade her friend Lizzy to comply with the wishes of all her
family. "Pray do, my dear Miss Lucas," she added in a melancholy tone,
"for nobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me. I am cruelly used,
nobody feels for my poor nerves."

Charlotte's reply was spared by the entrance of Jane and Elizabeth.

"Aye, there she comes," continued Mrs. Bennet, "looking as unconcerned
as may be, and caring no more for us than if we were at York, provided
she can have her own way. But I tell you, Miss Lizzy--if you take it
into your head to go on refusing every offer of marriage in this way,
you will never get a husband at all--and I am sure I do not know who is
to maintain you when your father is dead. I shall not be able to keep
you--and so I warn you. I have done with you from this very day. I told
you in the library, you know, that I should never speak to you again,
and you will find me as good as my word. I have no pleasure in talking
to undutiful children. Not that I have much pleasure, indeed, in talking
to anybody. People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have
no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it
is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."

Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible that
any attempt to reason with her or soothe her would only increase the
irritation. She talked on, therefore, without interruption from any of
them, till they were joined by Mr. Collins, who entered the room with
an air more stately than usual, and on perceiving whom, she said to
the girls, "Now, I do insist upon it, that you, all of you, hold
your tongues, and let me and Mr. Collins have a little conversation
together."

Elizabeth passed quietly out of the room, Jane and Kitty followed, but
Lydia stood her ground, determined to hear all she could; and Charlotte,
detained first by the civility of Mr. Collins, whose inquiries after
herself and all her family were very minute, and then by a little
curiosity, satisfied herself with walking to the window and pretending
not to hear. In a doleful voice Mrs. Bennet began the projected
conversation: "Oh! Mr. Collins!"

"My dear madam," replied he, "let us be for ever silent on this point.
Far be it from me," he presently continued, in a voice that marked his
displeasure, "to resent the behaviour of your daughter. Resignation
to inevitable evils is the duty of us all; the peculiar duty of a
young man who has been so fortunate as I have been in early preferment;
and I trust I am resigned. Perhaps not the less so from feeling a doubt
of my positive happiness had my fair cousin honoured me with her hand;
for I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as
when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our
estimation. You will not, I hope, consider me as showing any disrespect
to your family, my dear madam, by thus withdrawing my pretensions to
your daughter's favour, without having paid yourself and Mr. Bennet the
compliment of requesting you to interpose your authority in my
behalf. My conduct may, I fear, be objectionable in having accepted my
dismission from your daughter's lips instead of your own. But we are all
liable to error. I have certainly meant well through the whole affair.
My object has been to secure an amiable companion for myself, with due
consideration for the advantage of all your family, and if my _manner_
has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to apologise."



Chapter 21


The discussion of Mr. Collins's offer was now nearly at an end, and
Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings necessarily
attending it, and occasionally from some peevish allusions of her
mother. As for the gentleman himself, _his_ feelings were chiefly
expressed, not by embarrassment or dejection, or by trying to avoid her,
but by stiffness of manner and resentful silence. He scarcely ever spoke
to her, and the assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of
himself were transferred for the rest of the day to Miss Lucas, whose
civility in listening to him was a seasonable relief to them all, and
especially to her friend.

The morrow produced no abatement of Mrs. Bennet's ill-humour or ill
health. Mr. Collins was also in the same state of angry pride. Elizabeth
had hoped that his resentment might shorten his visit, but his plan did
not appear in the least affected by it. He was always to have gone on
Saturday, and to Saturday he meant to stay.

After breakfast, the girls walked to Meryton to inquire if Mr. Wickham
were returned, and to lament over his absence from the Netherfield ball.
He joined them on their entering the town, and attended them to their
aunt's where his regret and vexation, and the concern of everybody, was
well talked over. To Elizabeth, however, he voluntarily acknowledged
that the necessity of his absence _had_ been self-imposed.

"I found," said he, "as the time drew near that I had better not meet
Mr. Darcy; that to be in the same room, the same party with him for so
many hours together, might be more than I could bear, and that scenes
might arise unpleasant to more than myself."

She highly approved his forbearance, and they had leisure for a full
discussion of it, and for all the commendation which they civilly
bestowed on each other, as Wickham and another officer walked back with
them to Longbourn, and during the walk he particularly attended to
her. His accompanying them was a double advantage; she felt all the
compliment it offered to herself, and it was most acceptable as an
occasion of introducing him to her father and mother.

Soon after their return, a letter was delivered to Miss Bennet; it came
from Netherfield. The envelope contained a sheet of elegant, little,
hot-pressed paper, well covered with a lady's fair, flowing hand; and
Elizabeth saw her sister's countenance change as she read it, and saw
her dwelling intently on some particular passages. Jane recollected
herself soon, and putting the letter away, tried to join with her usual
cheerfulness in the general conversation; but Elizabeth felt an anxiety
on the subject which drew off her attention even from Wickham; and no
sooner had he and his companion taken leave, than a glance from Jane
invited her to follow her up stairs. When they had gained their own room,
Jane, taking out the letter, said:

"This is from Caroline Bingley; what it contains has surprised me a good
deal. The whole party have left Netherfield by this time, and are on
their way to town--and without any intention of coming back again. You
shall hear what she says."

She then read the first sentence aloud, which comprised the information
of their having just resolved to follow their brother to town directly,
and of their meaning to dine in Grosvenor Street, where Mr. Hurst had a
house. The next was in these words: "I do not pretend to regret anything
I shall leave in Hertfordshire, except your society, my dearest friend;
but we will hope, at some future period, to enjoy many returns of that
delightful intercourse we have known, and in the meanwhile may
lessen the pain of separation by a very frequent and most unreserved
correspondence. I depend on you for that." To these highflown
expressions Elizabeth listened with all the insensibility of distrust;
and though the suddenness of their removal surprised her, she saw
nothing in it really to lament; it was not to be supposed that their
absence from Netherfield would prevent Mr. Bingley's being there; and as
to the loss of their society, she was persuaded that Jane must cease to
regard it, in the enjoyment of his.

"It is unlucky," said she, after a short pause, "that you should not be
able to see your friends before they leave the country. But may we not
hope that the period of future happiness to which Miss Bingley looks
forward may arrive earlier than she is aware, and that the delightful
intercourse you have known as friends will be renewed with yet greater
satisfaction as sisters? Mr. Bingley will not be detained in London by
them."

"Caroline decidedly says that none of the party will return into
Hertfordshire this winter. I will read it to you:"

"When my brother left us yesterday, he imagined that the business which
took him to London might be concluded in three or four days; but as we
are certain it cannot be so, and at the same time convinced that when
Charles gets to town he will be in no hurry to leave it again, we have
determined on following him thither, that he may not be obliged to spend
his vacant hours in a comfortless hotel. Many of my acquaintances are
already there for the winter; I wish that I could hear that you, my
dearest friend, had any intention of making one of the crowd--but of
that I despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may
abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, and that your
beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your feeling the loss of the
three of whom we shall deprive you."

"It is evident by this," added Jane, "that he comes back no more this
winter."

"It is only evident that Miss Bingley does not mean that he _should_."

"Why will you think so? It must be his own doing. He is his own
master. But you do not know _all_. I _will_ read you the passage which
particularly hurts me. I will have no reserves from _you_."

"Mr. Darcy is impatient to see his sister; and, to confess the truth,
_we_ are scarcely less eager to meet her again. I really do not think
Georgiana Darcy has her equal for beauty, elegance, and accomplishments;
and the affection she inspires in Louisa and myself is heightened into
something still more interesting, from the hope we dare entertain of
her being hereafter our sister. I do not know whether I ever before
mentioned to you my feelings on this subject; but I will not leave the
country without confiding them, and I trust you will not esteem them
unreasonable. My brother admires her greatly already; he will have
frequent opportunity now of seeing her on the most intimate footing;
her relations all wish the connection as much as his own; and a sister's
partiality is not misleading me, I think, when I call Charles most
capable of engaging any woman's heart. With all these circumstances to
favour an attachment, and nothing to prevent it, am I wrong, my dearest
Jane, in indulging the hope of an event which will secure the happiness
of so many?"

"What do you think of _this_ sentence, my dear Lizzy?" said Jane as she
finished it. "Is it not clear enough? Does it not expressly declare that
Caroline neither expects nor wishes me to be her sister; that she is
perfectly convinced of her brother's indifference; and that if she
suspects the nature of my feelings for him, she means (most kindly!) to
put me on my guard? Can there be any other opinion on the subject?"

"Yes, there can; for mine is totally different. Will you hear it?"

"Most willingly."

"You shall have it in a few words. Miss Bingley sees that her brother is
in love with you, and wants him to marry Miss Darcy. She follows him
to town in hope of keeping him there, and tries to persuade you that he
does not care about you."

Jane shook her head.

"Indeed, Jane, you ought to believe me. No one who has ever seen you
together can doubt his affection. Miss Bingley, I am sure, cannot. She
is not such a simpleton. Could she have seen half as much love in Mr.
Darcy for herself, she would have ordered her wedding clothes. But the
case is this: We are not rich enough or grand enough for them; and she
is the more anxious to get Miss Darcy for her brother, from the notion
that when there has been _one_ intermarriage, she may have less trouble
in achieving a second; in which there is certainly some ingenuity, and
I dare say it would succeed, if Miss de Bourgh were out of the way. But,
my dearest Jane, you cannot seriously imagine that because Miss Bingley
tells you her brother greatly admires Miss Darcy, he is in the smallest
degree less sensible of _your_ merit than when he took leave of you on
Tuesday, or that it will be in her power to persuade him that, instead
of being in love with you, he is very much in love with her friend."

"If we thought alike of Miss Bingley," replied Jane, "your
representation of all this might make me quite easy. But I know the
foundation is unjust. Caroline is incapable of wilfully deceiving
anyone; and all that I can hope in this case is that she is deceiving
herself."

"That is right. You could not have started a more happy idea, since you
will not take comfort in mine. Believe her to be deceived, by all means.
You have now done your duty by her, and must fret no longer."

"But, my dear sister, can I be happy, even supposing the best, in
accepting a man whose sisters and friends are all wishing him to marry
elsewhere?"

"You must decide for yourself," said Elizabeth; "and if, upon mature
deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his two sisters is
more than equivalent to the happiness of being his wife, I advise you by
all means to refuse him."

"How can you talk so?" said Jane, faintly smiling. "You must know that
though I should be exceedingly grieved at their disapprobation, I could
not hesitate."

"I did not think you would; and that being the case, I cannot consider
your situation with much compassion."

"But if he returns no more this winter, my choice will never be
required. A thousand things may arise in six months!"

The idea of his returning no more Elizabeth treated with the utmost
contempt. It appeared to her merely the suggestion of Caroline's
interested wishes, and she could not for a moment suppose that those
wishes, however openly or artfully spoken, could influence a young man
so totally independent of everyone.

She represented to her sister as forcibly as possible what she felt
on the subject, and had soon the pleasure of seeing its happy effect.
Jane's temper was not desponding, and she was gradually led to hope,
though the diffidence of affection sometimes overcame the hope, that
Bingley would return to Netherfield and answer every wish of her heart.

They agreed that Mrs. Bennet should only hear of the departure of the
family, without being alarmed on the score of the gentleman's conduct;
but even this partial communication gave her a great deal of concern,
and she bewailed it as exceedingly unlucky that the ladies should happen
to go away just as they were all getting so intimate together. After
lamenting it, however, at some length, she had the consolation that Mr.
Bingley would be soon down again and soon dining at Longbourn, and the
conclusion of all was the comfortable declaration, that though he had
been invited only to a family dinner, she would take care to have two
full courses.



Chapter 22


The Bennets were engaged to dine with the Lucases and again during the
chief of the day was Miss Lucas so kind as to listen to Mr. Collins.
Elizabeth took an opportunity of thanking her. "It keeps him in good
humour," said she, "and I am more obliged to you than I can express."
Charlotte assured her friend of her satisfaction in being useful, and
that it amply repaid her for the little sacrifice of her time. This was
very amiable, but Charlotte's kindness extended farther than Elizabeth
had any conception of; its object was nothing else than to secure her
from any return of Mr. Collins's addresses, by engaging them towards
herself. Such was Miss Lucas's scheme; and appearances were so
favourable, that when they parted at night, she would have felt almost
secure of success if he had not been to leave Hertfordshire so very
soon. But here she did injustice to the fire and independence of his
character, for it led him to escape out of Longbourn House the next
morning with admirable slyness, and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw
himself at her feet. He was anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins,
from a conviction that if they saw him depart, they could not fail to
conjecture his design, and he was not willing to have the attempt known
till its success might be known likewise; for though feeling almost
secure, and with reason, for Charlotte had been tolerably encouraging,
he was comparatively diffident since the adventure of Wednesday.
His reception, however, was of the most flattering kind. Miss Lucas
perceived him from an upper window as he walked towards the house, and
instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane. But little had
she dared to hope that so much love and eloquence awaited her there.

In as short a time as Mr. Collins's long speeches would allow,
everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both; and as
they entered the house he earnestly entreated her to name the day that
was to make him the happiest of men; and though such a solicitation must
be waived for the present, the lady felt no inclination to trifle with
his happiness. The stupidity with which he was favoured by nature must
guard his courtship from any charm that could make a woman wish for its
continuance; and Miss Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure
and disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that
establishment were gained.

Sir William and Lady Lucas were speedily applied to for their consent;
and it was bestowed with a most joyful alacrity. Mr. Collins's present
circumstances made it a most eligible match for their daughter, to whom
they could give little fortune; and his prospects of future wealth were
exceedingly fair. Lady Lucas began directly to calculate, with more
interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer
Mr. Bennet was likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided
opinion, that whenever Mr. Collins should be in possession of the
Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife
should make their appearance at St. James's. The whole family, in short,
were properly overjoyed on the occasion. The younger girls formed hopes
of _coming out_ a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have
done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte's
dying an old maid. Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had
gained her point, and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were
in general satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible
nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must
be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly
either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was
the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune,
and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest
preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained; and at
the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all
the good luck of it. The least agreeable circumstance in the business
was the surprise it must occasion to Elizabeth Bennet, whose friendship
she valued beyond that of any other person. Elizabeth would wonder,
and probably would blame her; and though her resolution was not to be
shaken, her feelings must be hurt by such a disapprobation. She resolved
to give her the information herself, and therefore charged Mr. Collins,
when he returned to Longbourn to dinner, to drop no hint of what had
passed before any of the family. A promise of secrecy was of course very
dutifully given, but it could not be kept without difficulty; for the
curiosity excited by his long absence burst forth in such very direct
questions on his return as required some ingenuity to evade, and he was
at the same time exercising great self-denial, for he was longing to
publish his prosperous love.

As he was to begin his journey too early on the morrow to see any of the
family, the ceremony of leave-taking was performed when the ladies moved
for the night; and Mrs. Bennet, with great politeness and cordiality,
said how happy they should be to see him at Longbourn again, whenever
his engagements might allow him to visit them.

"My dear madam," he replied, "this invitation is particularly
gratifying, because it is what I have been hoping to receive; and
you may be very certain that I shall avail myself of it as soon as
possible."

They were all astonished; and Mr. Bennet, who could by no means wish for
so speedy a return, immediately said:

"But is there not danger of Lady Catherine's disapprobation here, my
good sir? You had better neglect your relations than run the risk of
offending your patroness."

"My dear sir," replied Mr. Collins, "I am particularly obliged to you
for this friendly caution, and you may depend upon my not taking so
material a step without her ladyship's concurrence."

"You cannot be too much upon your guard. Risk anything rather than her
displeasure; and if you find it likely to be raised by your coming to us
again, which I should think exceedingly probable, stay quietly at home,
and be satisfied that _we_ shall take no offence."

"Believe me, my dear sir, my gratitude is warmly excited by such
affectionate attention; and depend upon it, you will speedily receive
from me a letter of thanks for this, and for every other mark of your
regard during my stay in Hertfordshire. As for my fair cousins, though
my absence may not be long enough to render it necessary, I shall now
take the liberty of wishing them health and happiness, not excepting my
cousin Elizabeth."

With proper civilities the ladies then withdrew; all of them equally
surprised that he meditated a quick return. Mrs. Bennet wished to
understand by it that he thought of paying his addresses to one of her
younger girls, and Mary might have been prevailed on to accept him.
She rated his abilities much higher than any of the others; there was
a solidity in his reflections which often struck her, and though by no
means so clever as herself, she thought that if encouraged to read
and improve himself by such an example as hers, he might become a very
agreeable companion. But on the following morning, every hope of this
kind was done away. Miss Lucas called soon after breakfast, and in a
private conference with Elizabeth related the event of the day before.

The possibility of Mr. Collins's fancying himself in love with her
friend had once occurred to Elizabeth within the last day or two; but
that Charlotte could encourage him seemed almost as far from
possibility as she could encourage him herself, and her astonishment was
consequently so great as to overcome at first the bounds of decorum, and
she could not help crying out:

"Engaged to Mr. Collins! My dear Charlotte--impossible!"

The steady countenance which Miss Lucas had commanded in telling her
story, gave way to a momentary confusion here on receiving so direct a
reproach; though, as it was no more than she expected, she soon regained
her composure, and calmly replied:

"Why should you be surprised, my dear Eliza? Do you think it incredible
that Mr. Collins should be able to procure any woman's good opinion,
because he was not so happy as to succeed with you?"

But Elizabeth had now recollected herself, and making a strong effort
for it, was able to assure with tolerable firmness that the prospect of
their relationship was highly grateful to her, and that she wished her
all imaginable happiness.

"I see what you are feeling," replied Charlotte. "You must be surprised,
very much surprised--so lately as Mr. Collins was wishing to marry
you. But when you have had time to think it over, I hope you will be
satisfied with what I have done. I am not romantic, you know; I never
was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins's
character, connection, and situation in life, I am convinced that my
chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on
entering the marriage state."

Elizabeth quietly answered "Undoubtedly;" and after an awkward pause,
they returned to the rest of the family. Charlotte did not stay much
longer, and Elizabeth was then left to reflect on what she had heard.
It was a long time before she became at all reconciled to the idea of so
unsuitable a match. The strangeness of Mr. Collins's making two offers
of marriage within three days was nothing in comparison of his being now
accepted. She had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of matrimony was
not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible
that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better
feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins was a
most humiliating picture! And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself
and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it
was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had
chosen.



Chapter 23


Elizabeth was sitting with her mother and sisters, reflecting on what
she had heard, and doubting whether she was authorised to mention
it, when Sir William Lucas himself appeared, sent by his daughter, to
announce her engagement to the family. With many compliments to them,
and much self-gratulation on the prospect of a connection between the
houses, he unfolded the matter--to an audience not merely wondering, but
incredulous; for Mrs. Bennet, with more perseverance than politeness,
protested he must be entirely mistaken; and Lydia, always unguarded and
often uncivil, boisterously exclaimed:

"Good Lord! Sir William, how can you tell such a story? Do not you know
that Mr. Collins wants to marry Lizzy?"

Nothing less than the complaisance of a courtier could have borne
without anger such treatment; but Sir William's good breeding carried
him through it all; and though he begged leave to be positive as to the
truth of his information, he listened to all their impertinence with the
most forbearing courtesy.

Elizabeth, feeling it incumbent on her to relieve him from so unpleasant
a situation, now put herself forward to confirm his account, by
mentioning her prior knowledge of it from Charlotte herself; and
endeavoured to put a stop to the exclamations of her mother and sisters
by the earnestness of her congratulations to Sir William, in which she
was readily joined by Jane, and by making a variety of remarks on the
happiness that might be expected from the match, the excellent character
of Mr. Collins, and the convenient distance of Hunsford from London.

Mrs. Bennet was in fact too much overpowered to say a great deal while
Sir William remained; but no sooner had he left them than her feelings
found a rapid vent. In the first place, she persisted in disbelieving
the whole of the matter; secondly, she was very sure that Mr. Collins
had been taken in; thirdly, she trusted that they would never be
happy together; and fourthly, that the match might be broken off. Two
inferences, however, were plainly deduced from the whole: one, that
Elizabeth was the real cause of the mischief; and the other that she
herself had been barbarously misused by them all; and on these two
points she principally dwelt during the rest of the day. Nothing could
console and nothing could appease her. Nor did that day wear out her
resentment. A week elapsed before she could see Elizabeth without
scolding her, a month passed away before she could speak to Sir William
or Lady Lucas without being rude, and many months were gone before she
could at all forgive their daughter.

Mr. Bennet's emotions were much more tranquil on the occasion, and such
as he did experience he pronounced to be of a most agreeable sort; for
it gratified him, he said, to discover that Charlotte Lucas, whom he had
been used to think tolerably sensible, was as foolish as his wife, and
more foolish than his daughter!

Jane confessed herself a little surprised at the match; but she said
less of her astonishment than of her earnest desire for their happiness;
nor could Elizabeth persuade her to consider it as improbable. Kitty
and Lydia were far from envying Miss Lucas, for Mr. Collins was only a
clergyman; and it affected them in no other way than as a piece of news
to spread at Meryton.

Lady Lucas could not be insensible of triumph on being able to retort
on Mrs. Bennet the comfort of having a daughter well married; and she
called at Longbourn rather oftener than usual to say how happy she was,
though Mrs. Bennet's sour looks and ill-natured remarks might have been
enough to drive happiness away.

Between Elizabeth and Charlotte there was a restraint which kept them
mutually silent on the subject; and Elizabeth felt persuaded that
no real confidence could ever subsist between them again. Her
disappointment in Charlotte made her turn with fonder regard to her
sister, of whose rectitude and delicacy she was sure her opinion could
never be shaken, and for whose happiness she grew daily more anxious,
as Bingley had now been gone a week and nothing more was heard of his
return.

Jane had sent Caroline an early answer to her letter, and was counting
the days till she might reasonably hope to hear again. The promised
letter of thanks from Mr. Collins arrived on Tuesday, addressed to
their father, and written with all the solemnity of gratitude which a
twelvemonth's abode in the family might have prompted. After discharging
his conscience on that head, he proceeded to inform them, with many
rapturous expressions, of his happiness in having obtained the affection
of their amiable neighbour, Miss Lucas, and then explained that it was
merely with the view of enjoying her society that he had been so ready
to close with their kind wish of seeing him again at Longbourn, whither
he hoped to be able to return on Monday fortnight; for Lady Catherine,
he added, so heartily approved his marriage, that she wished it to take
place as soon as possible, which he trusted would be an unanswerable
argument with his amiable Charlotte to name an early day for making him
the happiest of men.

Mr. Collins's return into Hertfordshire was no longer a matter of
pleasure to Mrs. Bennet. On the contrary, she was as much disposed to
complain of it as her husband. It was very strange that he should come
to Longbourn instead of to Lucas Lodge; it was also very inconvenient
and exceedingly troublesome. She hated having visitors in the house
while her health was so indifferent, and lovers were of all people the
most disagreeable. Such were the gentle murmurs of Mrs. Bennet, and
they gave way only to the greater distress of Mr. Bingley's continued
absence.

Neither Jane nor Elizabeth were comfortable on this subject. Day after
day passed away without bringing any other tidings of him than the
report which shortly prevailed in Meryton of his coming no more to
Netherfield the whole winter; a report which highly incensed Mrs.
Bennet, and which she never failed to contradict as a most scandalous
falsehood.

Even Elizabeth began to fear--not that Bingley was indifferent--but that
his sisters would be successful in keeping him away. Unwilling as
she was to admit an idea so destructive of Jane's happiness, and so
dishonorable to the stability of her lover, she could not prevent its
frequently occurring. The united efforts of his two unfeeling sisters
and of his overpowering friend, assisted by the attractions of Miss
Darcy and the amusements of London might be too much, she feared, for
the strength of his attachment.

As for Jane, _her_ anxiety under this suspense was, of course, more
painful than Elizabeth's, but whatever she felt she was desirous of
concealing, and between herself and Elizabeth, therefore, the subject
was never alluded to. But as no such delicacy restrained her mother,
an hour seldom passed in which she did not talk of Bingley, express her
impatience for his arrival, or even require Jane to confess that if he
did not come back she would think herself very ill used. It needed
all Jane's steady mildness to bear these attacks with tolerable
tranquillity.

Mr. Collins returned most punctually on Monday fortnight, but his
reception at Longbourn was not quite so gracious as it had been on his
first introduction. He was too happy, however, to need much attention;
and luckily for the others, the business of love-making relieved them
from a great deal of his company. The chief of every day was spent by
him at Lucas Lodge, and he sometimes returned to Longbourn only in time
to make an apology for his absence before the family went to bed.

Mrs. Bennet was really in a most pitiable state. The very mention of
anything concerning the match threw her into an agony of ill-humour,
and wherever she went she was sure of hearing it talked of. The sight
of Miss Lucas was odious to her. As her successor in that house, she
regarded her with jealous abhorrence. Whenever Charlotte came to see
them, she concluded her to be anticipating the hour of possession; and
whenever she spoke in a low voice to Mr. Collins, was convinced that
they were talking of the Longbourn estate, and resolving to turn herself
and her daughters out of the house, as soon as Mr. Bennet were dead. She
complained bitterly of all this to her husband.

"Indeed, Mr. Bennet," said she, "it is very hard to think that Charlotte
Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that I should be forced to
make way for _her_, and live to see her take her place in it!"

"My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for
better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor."

This was not very consoling to Mrs. Bennet, and therefore, instead of
making any answer, she went on as before.

"I cannot bear to think that they should have all this estate. If it was
not for the entail, I should not mind it."

"What should not you mind?"

"I should not mind anything at all."

"Let us be thankful that you are preserved from a state of such
insensibility."

"I never can be thankful, Mr. Bennet, for anything about the entail. How
anyone could have the conscience to entail away an estate from one's own
daughters, I cannot understand; and all for the sake of Mr. Collins too!
Why should _he_ have it more than anybody else?"

"I leave it to yourself to determine," said Mr. Bennet.



Chapter 24


Miss Bingley's letter arrived, and put an end to doubt. The very first
sentence conveyed the assurance of their being all settled in London for
the winter, and concluded with her brother's regret at not having had
time to pay his respects to his friends in Hertfordshire before he left
the country.

Hope was over, entirely over; and when Jane could attend to the rest
of the letter, she found little, except the professed affection of the
writer, that could give her any comfort. Miss Darcy's praise occupied
the chief of it. Her many attractions were again dwelt on, and Caroline
boasted joyfully of their increasing intimacy, and ventured to predict
the accomplishment of the wishes which had been unfolded in her former
letter. She wrote also with great pleasure of her brother's being an
inmate of Mr. Darcy's house, and mentioned with raptures some plans of
the latter with regard to new furniture.

Elizabeth, to whom Jane very soon communicated the chief of all this,
heard it in silent indignation. Her heart was divided between concern
for her sister, and resentment against all others. To Caroline's
assertion of her brother's being partial to Miss Darcy she paid no
credit. That he was really fond of Jane, she doubted no more than she
had ever done; and much as she had always been disposed to like him, she
could not think without anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness
of temper, that want of proper resolution, which now made him the slave
of his designing friends, and led him to sacrifice of his own happiness
to the caprice of their inclination. Had his own happiness, however,
been the only sacrifice, he might have been allowed to sport with it in
whatever manner he thought best, but her sister's was involved in it, as
she thought he must be sensible himself. It was a subject, in short,
on which reflection would be long indulged, and must be unavailing. She
could think of nothing else; and yet whether Bingley's regard had really
died away, or were suppressed by his friends' interference; whether
he had been aware of Jane's attachment, or whether it had escaped his
observation; whatever were the case, though her opinion of him must be
materially affected by the difference, her sister's situation remained
the same, her peace equally wounded.

A day or two passed before Jane had courage to speak of her feelings to
Elizabeth; but at last, on Mrs. Bennet's leaving them together, after a
longer irritation than usual about Netherfield and its master, she could
not help saying:

"Oh, that my dear mother had more command over herself! She can have no
idea of the pain she gives me by her continual reflections on him. But
I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall
all be as we were before."

Elizabeth looked at her sister with incredulous solicitude, but said
nothing.

"You doubt me," cried Jane, slightly colouring; "indeed, you have
no reason. He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my
acquaintance, but that is all. I have nothing either to hope or fear,
and nothing to reproach him with. Thank God! I have not _that_ pain. A
little time, therefore--I shall certainly try to get the better."

With a stronger voice she soon added, "I have this comfort immediately,
that it has not been more than an error of fancy on my side, and that it
has done no harm to anyone but myself."

"My dear Jane!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "you are too good. Your sweetness
and disinterestedness are really angelic; I do not know what to say
to you. I feel as if I had never done you justice, or loved you as you
deserve."

Miss Bennet eagerly disclaimed all extraordinary merit, and threw back
the praise on her sister's warm affection.

"Nay," said Elizabeth, "this is not fair. _You_ wish to think all the
world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of anybody. I only want
to think _you_ perfect, and you set yourself against it. Do not
be afraid of my running into any excess, of my encroaching on your
privilege of universal good-will. You need not. There are few people
whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see
of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms
my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the
little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or
sense. I have met with two instances lately, one I will not mention; the
other is Charlotte's marriage. It is unaccountable! In every view it is
unaccountable!"

"My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They will
ruin your happiness. You do not make allowance enough for difference
of situation and temper. Consider Mr. Collins's respectability, and
Charlotte's steady, prudent character. Remember that she is one of a
large family; that as to fortune, it is a most eligible match; and be
ready to believe, for everybody's sake, that she may feel something like
regard and esteem for our cousin."

"To oblige you, I would try to believe almost anything, but no one else
could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that
Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her
understanding than I now do of her heart. My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a
conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as
I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him
cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though
it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual,
change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade
yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of
danger security for happiness."

"I must think your language too strong in speaking of both," replied
Jane; "and I hope you will be convinced of it by seeing them happy
together. But enough of this. You alluded to something else. You
mentioned _two_ instances. I cannot misunderstand you, but I entreat
you, dear Lizzy, not to pain me by thinking _that person_ to blame, and
saying your opinion of him is sunk. We must not be so ready to fancy
ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man
to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but
our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than
it does."

"And men take care that they should."

"If it is designedly done, they cannot be justified; but I have no idea
of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine."

"I am far from attributing any part of Mr. Bingley's conduct to design,"
said Elizabeth; "but without scheming to do wrong, or to make others
unhappy, there may be error, and there may be misery. Thoughtlessness,
want of attention to other people's feelings, and want of resolution,
will do the business."

"And do you impute it to either of those?"

"Yes; to the last. But if I go on, I shall displease you by saying what
I think of persons you esteem. Stop me whilst you can."

"You persist, then, in supposing his sisters influence him?"

"Yes, in conjunction with his friend."

"I cannot believe it. Why should they try to influence him? They can
only wish his happiness; and if he is attached to me, no other woman can
secure it."

"Your first position is false. They may wish many things besides his
happiness; they may wish his increase of wealth and consequence; they
may wish him to marry a girl who has all the importance of money, great
connections, and pride."

"Beyond a doubt, they _do_ wish him to choose Miss Darcy," replied Jane;
"but this may be from better feelings than you are supposing. They have
known her much longer than they have known me; no wonder if they love
her better. But, whatever may be their own wishes, it is very unlikely
they should have opposed their brother's. What sister would think
herself at liberty to do it, unless there were something very
objectionable? If they believed him attached to me, they would not try
to part us; if he were so, they could not succeed. By supposing such an
affection, you make everybody acting unnaturally and wrong, and me most
unhappy. Do not distress me by the idea. I am not ashamed of having been
mistaken--or, at least, it is light, it is nothing in comparison of what
I should feel in thinking ill of him or his sisters. Let me take it in
the best light, in the light in which it may be understood."

Elizabeth could not oppose such a wish; and from this time Mr. Bingley's
name was scarcely ever mentioned between them.

Mrs. Bennet still continued to wonder and repine at his returning no
more, and though a day seldom passed in which Elizabeth did not account
for it clearly, there was little chance of her ever considering it with
less perplexity. Her daughter endeavoured to convince her of what she
did not believe herself, that his attentions to Jane had been merely the
effect of a common and transient liking, which ceased when he saw her
no more; but though the probability of the statement was admitted at
the time, she had the same story to repeat every day. Mrs. Bennet's best
comfort was that Mr. Bingley must be down again in the summer.

Mr. Bennet treated the matter differently. "So, Lizzy," said he one day,
"your sister is crossed in love, I find. I congratulate her. Next to
being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.
It is something to think of, and it gives her a sort of distinction
among her companions. When is your turn to come? You will hardly bear to
be long outdone by Jane. Now is your time. Here are officers enough in
Meryton to disappoint all the young ladies in the country. Let Wickham
be _your_ man. He is a pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably."

"Thank you, sir, but a less agreeable man would satisfy me. We must not
all expect Jane's good fortune."

"True," said Mr. Bennet, "but it is a comfort to think that whatever of
that kind may befall you, you have an affectionate mother who will make
the most of it."

Mr. Wickham's society was of material service in dispelling the gloom
which the late perverse occurrences had thrown on many of the Longbourn
family. They saw him often, and to his other recommendations was now
added that of general unreserve. The whole of what Elizabeth had already
heard, his claims on Mr. Darcy, and all that he had suffered from him,
was now openly acknowledged and publicly canvassed; and everybody was
pleased to know how much they had always disliked Mr. Darcy before they
had known anything of the matter.

Miss Bennet was the only creature who could suppose there might be
any extenuating circumstances in the case, unknown to the society
of Hertfordshire; her mild and steady candour always pleaded for
allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakes--but by everybody else
Mr. Darcy was condemned as the worst of men.



Chapter 25


After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity,
Mr. Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by the arrival of
Saturday. The pain of separation, however, might be alleviated on his
side, by preparations for the reception of his bride; as he had reason
to hope, that shortly after his return into Hertfordshire, the day would
be fixed that was to make him the happiest of men. He took leave of his
relations at Longbourn with as much solemnity as before; wished his fair
cousins health and happiness again, and promised their father another
letter of thanks.

On the following Monday, Mrs. Bennet had the pleasure of receiving
her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend the Christmas
at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner was a sensible, gentlemanlike man, greatly
superior to his sister, as well by nature as education. The Netherfield
ladies would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived
by trade, and within view of his own warehouses, could have been so
well-bred and agreeable. Mrs. Gardiner, who was several years younger
than Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Phillips, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant
woman, and a great favourite with all her Longbourn nieces. Between the
two eldest and herself especially, there subsisted a particular regard.
They had frequently been staying with her in town.

The first part of Mrs. Gardiner's business on her arrival was to
distribute her presents and describe the newest fashions. When this was
done she had a less active part to play. It became her turn to listen.
Mrs. Bennet had many grievances to relate, and much to complain of. They
had all been very ill-used since she last saw her sister. Two of her
girls had been upon the point of marriage, and after all there was
nothing in it.

"I do not blame Jane," she continued, "for Jane would have got Mr.
Bingley if she could. But Lizzy! Oh, sister! It is very hard to think
that she might have been Mr. Collins's wife by this time, had it not
been for her own perverseness. He made her an offer in this very room,
and she refused him. The consequence of it is, that Lady Lucas will have
a daughter married before I have, and that the Longbourn estate is just
as much entailed as ever. The Lucases are very artful people indeed,
sister. They are all for what they can get. I am sorry to say it of
them, but so it is. It makes me very nervous and poorly, to be thwarted
so in my own family, and to have neighbours who think of themselves
before anybody else. However, your coming just at this time is the
greatest of comforts, and I am very glad to hear what you tell us, of
long sleeves."

Mrs. Gardiner, to whom the chief of this news had been given before,
in the course of Jane and Elizabeth's correspondence with her, made her
sister a slight answer, and, in compassion to her nieces, turned the
conversation.

When alone with Elizabeth afterwards, she spoke more on the subject. "It
seems likely to have been a desirable match for Jane," said she. "I am
sorry it went off. But these things happen so often! A young man, such
as you describe Mr. Bingley, so easily falls in love with a pretty girl
for a few weeks, and when accident separates them, so easily forgets
her, that these sort of inconsistencies are very frequent."

"An excellent consolation in its way," said Elizabeth, "but it will not
do for _us_. We do not suffer by _accident_. It does not often
happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of
independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he was violently in
love with only a few days before."

"But that expression of 'violently in love' is so hackneyed, so
doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea. It is as
often applied to feelings which arise from a half-hour's acquaintance,
as to a real, strong attachment. Pray, how _violent was_ Mr. Bingley's
love?"

"I never saw a more promising inclination; he was growing quite
inattentive to other people, and wholly engrossed by her. Every time
they met, it was more decided and remarkable. At his own ball he
offended two or three young ladies, by not asking them to dance; and I
spoke to him twice myself, without receiving an answer. Could there be
finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?"

"Oh, yes!--of that kind of love which I suppose him to have felt. Poor
Jane! I am sorry for her, because, with her disposition, she may not get
over it immediately. It had better have happened to _you_, Lizzy; you
would have laughed yourself out of it sooner. But do you think she
would be prevailed upon to go back with us? Change of scene might be
of service--and perhaps a little relief from home may be as useful as
anything."

Elizabeth was exceedingly pleased with this proposal, and felt persuaded
of her sister's ready acquiescence.

"I hope," added Mrs. Gardiner, "that no consideration with regard to
this young man will influence her. We live in so different a part of
town, all our connections are so different, and, as you well know, we go
out so little, that it is very improbable that they should meet at all,
unless he really comes to see her."

"And _that_ is quite impossible; for he is now in the custody of his
friend, and Mr. Darcy would no more suffer him to call on Jane in such
a part of London! My dear aunt, how could you think of it? Mr. Darcy may
perhaps have _heard_ of such a place as Gracechurch Street, but he
would hardly think a month's ablution enough to cleanse him from its
impurities, were he once to enter it; and depend upon it, Mr. Bingley
never stirs without him."

"So much the better. I hope they will not meet at all. But does not Jane
correspond with his sister? _She_ will not be able to help calling."

"She will drop the acquaintance entirely."

But in spite of the certainty in which Elizabeth affected to place this
point, as well as the still more interesting one of Bingley's being
withheld from seeing Jane, she felt a solicitude on the subject which
convinced her, on examination, that she did not consider it entirely
hopeless. It was possible, and sometimes she thought it probable, that
his affection might be reanimated, and the influence of his friends
successfully combated by the more natural influence of Jane's
attractions.

Miss Bennet accepted her aunt's invitation with pleasure; and the
Bingleys were no otherwise in her thoughts at the same time, than as she
hoped by Caroline's not living in the same house with her brother,
she might occasionally spend a morning with her, without any danger of
seeing him.

The Gardiners stayed a week at Longbourn; and what with the Phillipses,
the Lucases, and the officers, there was not a day without its
engagement. Mrs. Bennet had so carefully provided for the entertainment
of her brother and sister, that they did not once sit down to a family
dinner. When the engagement was for home, some of the officers always
made part of it--of which officers Mr. Wickham was sure to be one; and
on these occasions, Mrs. Gardiner, rendered suspicious by Elizabeth's
warm commendation, narrowly observed them both. Without supposing them,
from what she saw, to be very seriously in love, their preference
of each other was plain enough to make her a little uneasy; and
she resolved to speak to Elizabeth on the subject before she left
Hertfordshire, and represent to her the imprudence of encouraging such
an attachment.

To Mrs. Gardiner, Wickham had one means of affording pleasure,
unconnected with his general powers. About ten or a dozen years ago,
before her marriage, she had spent a considerable time in that very
part of Derbyshire to which he belonged. They had, therefore, many
acquaintances in common; and though Wickham had been little there since
the death of Darcy's father, it was yet in his power to give her fresher
intelligence of her former friends than she had been in the way of
procuring.

Mrs. Gardiner had seen Pemberley, and known the late Mr. Darcy by
character perfectly well. Here consequently was an inexhaustible subject
of discourse. In comparing her recollection of Pemberley with the minute
description which Wickham could give, and in bestowing her tribute of
praise on the character of its late possessor, she was delighting both
him and herself. On being made acquainted with the present Mr. Darcy's
treatment of him, she tried to remember some of that gentleman's
reputed disposition when quite a lad which might agree with it, and
was confident at last that she recollected having heard Mr. Fitzwilliam
Darcy formerly spoken of as a very proud, ill-natured boy.



Chapter 26


Mrs. Gardiner's caution to Elizabeth was punctually and kindly given
on the first favourable opportunity of speaking to her alone; after
honestly telling her what she thought, she thus went on:

"You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely because
you are warned against it; and, therefore, I am not afraid of speaking
openly. Seriously, I would have you be on your guard. Do not involve
yourself or endeavour to involve him in an affection which the want
of fortune would make so very imprudent. I have nothing to say against
_him_; he is a most interesting young man; and if he had the fortune he
ought to have, I should think you could not do better. But as it is, you
must not let your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and we all
expect you to use it. Your father would depend on _your_ resolution and
good conduct, I am sure. You must not disappoint your father."

"My dear aunt, this is being serious indeed."

"Yes, and I hope to engage you to be serious likewise."

"Well, then, you need not be under any alarm. I will take care of
myself, and of Mr. Wickham too. He shall not be in love with me, if I
can prevent it."

"Elizabeth, you are not serious now."

"I beg your pardon, I will try again. At present I am not in love with
Mr. Wickham; no, I certainly am not. But he is, beyond all comparison,
the most agreeable man I ever saw--and if he becomes really attached to
me--I believe it will be better that he should not. I see the imprudence
of it. Oh! _that_ abominable Mr. Darcy! My father's opinion of me does
me the greatest honour, and I should be miserable to forfeit it. My
father, however, is partial to Mr. Wickham. In short, my dear aunt, I
should be very sorry to be the means of making any of you unhappy; but
since we see every day that where there is affection, young people
are seldom withheld by immediate want of fortune from entering into
engagements with each other, how can I promise to be wiser than so many
of my fellow-creatures if I am tempted, or how am I even to know that it
would be wisdom to resist? All that I can promise you, therefore, is not
to be in a hurry. I will not be in a hurry to believe myself his first
object. When I am in company with him, I will not be wishing. In short,
I will do my best."

"Perhaps it will be as well if you discourage his coming here so very
often. At least, you should not _remind_ your mother of inviting him."

"As I did the other day," said Elizabeth with a conscious smile: "very
true, it will be wise in me to refrain from _that_. But do not imagine
that he is always here so often. It is on your account that he has been
so frequently invited this week. You know my mother's ideas as to the
necessity of constant company for her friends. But really, and upon my
honour, I will try to do what I think to be the wisest; and now I hope
you are satisfied."

Her aunt assured her that she was, and Elizabeth having thanked her for
the kindness of her hints, they parted; a wonderful instance of advice
being given on such a point, without being resented.

Mr. Collins returned into Hertfordshire soon after it had been quitted
by the Gardiners and Jane; but as he took up his abode with the Lucases,
his arrival was no great inconvenience to Mrs. Bennet. His marriage was
now fast approaching, and she was at length so far resigned as to think
it inevitable, and even repeatedly to say, in an ill-natured tone, that
she "_wished_ they might be happy." Thursday was to be the wedding day,
and on Wednesday Miss Lucas paid her farewell visit; and when she
rose to take leave, Elizabeth, ashamed of her mother's ungracious and
reluctant good wishes, and sincerely affected herself, accompanied her
out of the room. As they went downstairs together, Charlotte said:

"I shall depend on hearing from you very often, Eliza."

"_That_ you certainly shall."

"And I have another favour to ask you. Will you come and see me?"

"We shall often meet, I hope, in Hertfordshire."

"I am not likely to leave Kent for some time. Promise me, therefore, to
come to Hunsford."

Elizabeth could not refuse, though she foresaw little pleasure in the
visit.

"My father and Maria are coming to me in March," added Charlotte, "and I
hope you will consent to be of the party. Indeed, Eliza, you will be as
welcome as either of them."

The wedding took place; the bride and bridegroom set off for Kent from
the church door, and everybody had as much to say, or to hear, on
the subject as usual. Elizabeth soon heard from her friend; and their
correspondence was as regular and frequent as it had ever been; that
it should be equally unreserved was impossible. Elizabeth could never
address her without feeling that all the comfort of intimacy was over,
and though determined not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the
sake of what had been, rather than what was. Charlotte's first letters
were received with a good deal of eagerness; there could not but be
curiosity to know how she would speak of her new home, how she would
like Lady Catherine, and how happy she would dare pronounce herself to
be; though, when the letters were read, Elizabeth felt that Charlotte
expressed herself on every point exactly as she might have foreseen. She
wrote cheerfully, seemed surrounded with comforts, and mentioned nothing
which she could not praise. The house, furniture, neighbourhood, and
roads, were all to her taste, and Lady Catherine's behaviour was most
friendly and obliging. It was Mr. Collins's picture of Hunsford and
Rosings rationally softened; and Elizabeth perceived that she must wait
for her own visit there to know the rest.

Jane had already written a few lines to her sister to announce their
safe arrival in London; and when she wrote again, Elizabeth hoped it
would be in her power to say something of the Bingleys.

Her impatience for this second letter was as well rewarded as impatience
generally is. Jane had been a week in town without either seeing or
hearing from Caroline. She accounted for it, however, by supposing that
her last letter to her friend from Longbourn had by some accident been
lost.

"My aunt," she continued, "is going to-morrow into that part of the
town, and I shall take the opportunity of calling in Grosvenor Street."

She wrote again when the visit was paid, and she had seen Miss Bingley.
"I did not think Caroline in spirits," were her words, "but she was very
glad to see me, and reproached me for giving her no notice of my coming
to London. I was right, therefore, my last letter had never reached
her. I inquired after their brother, of course. He was well, but so much
engaged with Mr. Darcy that they scarcely ever saw him. I found that
Miss Darcy was expected to dinner. I wish I could see her. My visit was
not long, as Caroline and Mrs. Hurst were going out. I dare say I shall
see them soon here."

Elizabeth shook her head over this letter. It convinced her that
accident only could discover to Mr. Bingley her sister's being in town.

Four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him. She endeavoured to
persuade herself that she did not regret it; but she could no longer be
blind to Miss Bingley's inattention. After waiting at home every morning
for a fortnight, and inventing every evening a fresh excuse for her, the
visitor did at last appear; but the shortness of her stay, and yet more,
the alteration of her manner would allow Jane to deceive herself no
longer. The letter which she wrote on this occasion to her sister will
prove what she felt.

"My dearest Lizzy will, I am sure, be incapable of triumphing in her
better judgement, at my expense, when I confess myself to have been
entirely deceived in Miss Bingley's regard for me. But, my dear sister,
though the event has proved you right, do not think me obstinate if I
still assert that, considering what her behaviour was, my confidence was
as natural as your suspicion. I do not at all comprehend her reason for
wishing to be intimate with me; but if the same circumstances were to
happen again, I am sure I should be deceived again. Caroline did not
return my visit till yesterday; and not a note, not a line, did I
receive in the meantime. When she did come, it was very evident that
she had no pleasure in it; she made a slight, formal apology, for not
calling before, said not a word of wishing to see me again, and was
in every respect so altered a creature, that when she went away I was
perfectly resolved to continue the acquaintance no longer. I pity,
though I cannot help blaming her. She was very wrong in singling me out
as she did; I can safely say that every advance to intimacy began on
her side. But I pity her, because she must feel that she has been acting
wrong, and because I am very sure that anxiety for her brother is the
cause of it. I need not explain myself farther; and though _we_ know
this anxiety to be quite needless, yet if she feels it, it will easily
account for her behaviour to me; and so deservedly dear as he is to
his sister, whatever anxiety she must feel on his behalf is natural and
amiable. I cannot but wonder, however, at her having any such fears now,
because, if he had at all cared about me, we must have met, long ago.
He knows of my being in town, I am certain, from something she said
herself; and yet it would seem, by her manner of talking, as if she
wanted to persuade herself that he is really partial to Miss Darcy. I
cannot understand it. If I were not afraid of judging harshly, I should
be almost tempted to say that there is a strong appearance of duplicity
in all this. But I will endeavour to banish every painful thought,
and think only of what will make me happy--your affection, and the
invariable kindness of my dear uncle and aunt. Let me hear from you very
soon. Miss Bingley said something of his never returning to Netherfield
again, of giving up the house, but not with any certainty. We had better
not mention it. I am extremely glad that you have such pleasant accounts
from our friends at Hunsford. Pray go to see them, with Sir William and
Maria. I am sure you will be very comfortable there.--Yours, etc."

This letter gave Elizabeth some pain; but her spirits returned as she
considered that Jane would no longer be duped, by the sister at least.
All expectation from the brother was now absolutely over. She would not
even wish for a renewal of his attentions. His character sunk on
every review of it; and as a punishment for him, as well as a possible
advantage to Jane, she seriously hoped he might really soon marry Mr.
Darcy's sister, as by Wickham's account, she would make him abundantly
regret what he had thrown away.

Mrs. Gardiner about this time reminded Elizabeth of her promise
concerning that gentleman, and required information; and Elizabeth
had such to send as might rather give contentment to her aunt than to
herself. His apparent partiality had subsided, his attentions were over,
he was the admirer of some one else. Elizabeth was watchful enough to
see it all, but she could see it and write of it without material pain.
Her heart had been but slightly touched, and her vanity was satisfied
with believing that _she_ would have been his only choice, had fortune
permitted it. The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most
remarkable charm of the young lady to whom he was now rendering himself
agreeable; but Elizabeth, less clear-sighted perhaps in this case than
in Charlotte's, did not quarrel with him for his wish of independence.
Nothing, on the contrary, could be more natural; and while able to
suppose that it cost him a few struggles to relinquish her, she was
ready to allow it a wise and desirable measure for both, and could very
sincerely wish him happy.

All this was acknowledged to Mrs. Gardiner; and after relating the
circumstances, she thus went on: "I am now convinced, my dear aunt, that
I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure
and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and
wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial
towards _him_; they are even impartial towards Miss King. I cannot find
out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to
think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this. My
watchfulness has been effectual; and though I certainly should be a more
interesting object to all my acquaintances were I distractedly in love
with him, I cannot say that I regret my comparative insignificance.
Importance may sometimes be purchased too dearly. Kitty and Lydia take
his defection much more to heart than I do. They are young in the
ways of the world, and not yet open to the mortifying conviction that
handsome young men must have something to live on as well as the plain."



Chapter 27


With no greater events than these in the Longbourn family, and otherwise
diversified by little beyond the walks to Meryton, sometimes dirty and
sometimes cold, did January and February pass away. March was to take
Elizabeth to Hunsford. She had not at first thought very seriously of
going thither; but Charlotte, she soon found, was depending on the plan
and she gradually learned to consider it herself with greater pleasure
as well as greater certainty. Absence had increased her desire of seeing
Charlotte again, and weakened her disgust of Mr. Collins. There
was novelty in the scheme, and as, with such a mother and such
uncompanionable sisters, home could not be faultless, a little change
was not unwelcome for its own sake. The journey would moreover give her
a peep at Jane; and, in short, as the time drew near, she would have
been very sorry for any delay. Everything, however, went on smoothly,
and was finally settled according to Charlotte's first sketch. She was
to accompany Sir William and his second daughter. The improvement
of spending a night in London was added in time, and the plan became
perfect as plan could be.

The only pain was in leaving her father, who would certainly miss her,
and who, when it came to the point, so little liked her going, that he
told her to write to him, and almost promised to answer her letter.

The farewell between herself and Mr. Wickham was perfectly friendly; on
his side even more. His present pursuit could not make him forget that
Elizabeth had been the first to excite and to deserve his attention, the
first to listen and to pity, the first to be admired; and in his manner
of bidding her adieu, wishing her every enjoyment, reminding her of
what she was to expect in Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and trusting their
opinion of her--their opinion of everybody--would always coincide, there
was a solicitude, an interest which she felt must ever attach her to
him with a most sincere regard; and she parted from him convinced that,
whether married or single, he must always be her model of the amiable
and pleasing.

Her fellow-travellers the next day were not of a kind to make her
think him less agreeable. Sir William Lucas, and his daughter Maria, a
good-humoured girl, but as empty-headed as himself, had nothing to say
that could be worth hearing, and were listened to with about as much
delight as the rattle of the chaise. Elizabeth loved absurdities, but
she had known Sir William's too long. He could tell her nothing new of
the wonders of his presentation and knighthood; and his civilities were
worn out, like his information.

It was a journey of only twenty-four miles, and they began it so early
as to be in Gracechurch Street by noon. As they drove to Mr. Gardiner's
door, Jane was at a drawing-room window watching their arrival; when
they entered the passage she was there to welcome them, and Elizabeth,
looking earnestly in her face, was pleased to see it healthful and
lovely as ever. On the stairs were a troop of little boys and girls,
whose eagerness for their cousin's appearance would not allow them to
wait in the drawing-room, and whose shyness, as they had not seen
her for a twelvemonth, prevented their coming lower. All was joy and
kindness. The day passed most pleasantly away; the morning in bustle and
shopping, and the evening at one of the theatres.

Elizabeth then contrived to sit by her aunt. Their first object was her
sister; and she was more grieved than astonished to hear, in reply to
her minute inquiries, that though Jane always struggled to support her
spirits, there were periods of dejection. It was reasonable, however,
to hope that they would not continue long. Mrs. Gardiner gave her the
particulars also of Miss Bingley's visit in Gracechurch Street, and
repeated conversations occurring at different times between Jane and
herself, which proved that the former had, from her heart, given up the
acquaintance.

Mrs. Gardiner then rallied her niece on Wickham's desertion, and
complimented her on bearing it so well.

"But my dear Elizabeth," she added, "what sort of girl is Miss King? I
should be sorry to think our friend mercenary."

"Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs,
between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end,
and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me,
because it would be imprudent; and now, because he is trying to get
a girl with only ten thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is
mercenary."

"If you will only tell me what sort of girl Miss King is, I shall know
what to think."

"She is a very good kind of girl, I believe. I know no harm of her."

"But he paid her not the smallest attention till her grandfather's death
made her mistress of this fortune."

"No--why should he? If it were not allowable for him to gain _my_
affections because I had no money, what occasion could there be for
making love to a girl whom he did not care about, and who was equally
poor?"

"But there seems an indelicacy in directing his attentions towards her
so soon after this event."

"A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant
decorums which other people may observe. If _she_ does not object to it,
why should _we_?"

"_Her_ not objecting does not justify _him_. It only shows her being
deficient in something herself--sense or feeling."

"Well," cried Elizabeth, "have it as you choose. _He_ shall be
mercenary, and _she_ shall be foolish."

"No, Lizzy, that is what I do _not_ choose. I should be sorry, you know,
to think ill of a young man who has lived so long in Derbyshire."

"Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who live in
Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire are not
much better. I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going to-morrow
where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has
neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones
worth knowing, after all."

"Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment."

Before they were separated by the conclusion of the play, she had the
unexpected happiness of an invitation to accompany her uncle and aunt in
a tour of pleasure which they proposed taking in the summer.

"We have not determined how far it shall carry us," said Mrs. Gardiner,
"but, perhaps, to the Lakes."

No scheme could have been more agreeable to Elizabeth, and her
acceptance of the invitation was most ready and grateful. "Oh, my dear,
dear aunt," she rapturously cried, "what delight! what felicity! You
give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What
are young men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport
we shall spend! And when we _do_ return, it shall not be like other
travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We
_will_ know where we have gone--we _will_ recollect what we have seen.
Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our
imaginations; nor when we attempt to describe any particular scene,
will we begin quarreling about its relative situation. Let _our_
first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of
travellers."



Chapter 28


Every object in the next day's journey was new and interesting to
Elizabeth; and her spirits were in a state of enjoyment; for she had
seen her sister looking so well as to banish all fear for her health,
and the prospect of her northern tour was a constant source of delight.

When they left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, every eye was in
search of the Parsonage, and every turning expected to bring it in view.
The palings of Rosings Park was their boundary on one side. Elizabeth
smiled at the recollection of all that she had heard of its inhabitants.

At length the Parsonage was discernible. The garden sloping to the
road, the house standing in it, the green pales, and the laurel hedge,
everything declared they were arriving. Mr. Collins and Charlotte
appeared at the door, and the carriage stopped at the small gate which
led by a short gravel walk to the house, amidst the nods and smiles of
the whole party. In a moment they were all out of the chaise, rejoicing
at the sight of each other. Mrs. Collins welcomed her friend with the
liveliest pleasure, and Elizabeth was more and more satisfied with
coming when she found herself so affectionately received. She saw
instantly that her cousin's manners were not altered by his marriage;
his formal civility was just what it had been, and he detained her some
minutes at the gate to hear and satisfy his inquiries after all her
family. They were then, with no other delay than his pointing out the
neatness of the entrance, taken into the house; and as soon as they
were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time, with ostentatious
formality to his humble abode, and punctually repeated all his wife's
offers of refreshment.

Elizabeth was prepared to see him in his glory; and she could not help
in fancying that in displaying the good proportion of the room, its
aspect and its furniture, he addressed himself particularly to her,
as if wishing to make her feel what she had lost in refusing him. But
though everything seemed neat and comfortable, she was not able to
gratify him by any sigh of repentance, and rather looked with wonder at
her friend that she could have so cheerful an air with such a companion.
When Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be
ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily turned her
eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but
in general Charlotte wisely did not hear. After sitting long enough to
admire every article of furniture in the room, from the sideboard to
the fender, to give an account of their journey, and of all that had
happened in London, Mr. Collins invited them to take a stroll in the
garden, which was large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of
which he attended himself. To work in this garden was one of his most
respectable pleasures; and Elizabeth admired the command of countenance
with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of the exercise, and
owned she encouraged it as much as possible. Here, leading the way
through every walk and cross walk, and scarcely allowing them an
interval to utter the praises he asked for, every view was pointed out
with a minuteness which left beauty entirely behind. He could number the
fields in every direction, and could tell how many trees there were in
the most distant clump. But of all the views which his garden, or which
the country or kingdom could boast, none were to be compared with the
prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees that bordered
the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It was a handsome
modern building, well situated on rising ground.

From his garden, Mr. Collins would have led them round his two meadows;
but the ladies, not having shoes to encounter the remains of a white
frost, turned back; and while Sir William accompanied him, Charlotte
took her sister and friend over the house, extremely well pleased,
probably, to have the opportunity of showing it without her husband's
help. It was rather small, but well built and convenient; and everything
was fitted up and arranged with a neatness and consistency of which
Elizabeth gave Charlotte all the credit. When Mr. Collins could be
forgotten, there was really an air of great comfort throughout, and by
Charlotte's evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often
forgotten.

She had already learnt that Lady Catherine was still in the country. It
was spoken of again while they were at dinner, when Mr. Collins joining
in, observed:

"Yes, Miss Elizabeth, you will have the honour of seeing Lady Catherine
de Bourgh on the ensuing Sunday at church, and I need not say you will
be delighted with her. She is all affability and condescension, and I
doubt not but you will be honoured with some portion of her notice
when service is over. I have scarcely any hesitation in saying she
will include you and my sister Maria in every invitation with which she
honours us during your stay here. Her behaviour to my dear Charlotte is
charming. We dine at Rosings twice every week, and are never allowed
to walk home. Her ladyship's carriage is regularly ordered for us. I
_should_ say, one of her ladyship's carriages, for she has several."

"Lady Catherine is a very respectable, sensible woman indeed," added
Charlotte, "and a most attentive neighbour."

"Very true, my dear, that is exactly what I say. She is the sort of
woman whom one cannot regard with too much deference."

The evening was spent chiefly in talking over Hertfordshire news,
and telling again what had already been written; and when it closed,
Elizabeth, in the solitude of her chamber, had to meditate upon
Charlotte's degree of contentment, to understand her address in guiding,
and composure in bearing with, her husband, and to acknowledge that it
was all done very well. She had also to anticipate how her visit
would pass, the quiet tenor of their usual employments, the vexatious
interruptions of Mr. Collins, and the gaieties of their intercourse with
Rosings. A lively imagination soon settled it all.

About the middle of the next day, as she was in her room getting ready
for a walk, a sudden noise below seemed to speak the whole house in
confusion; and, after listening a moment, she heard somebody running
up stairs in a violent hurry, and calling loudly after her. She opened
the door and met Maria in the landing place, who, breathless with
agitation, cried out--

"Oh, my dear Eliza! pray make haste and come into the dining-room, for
there is such a sight to be seen! I will not tell you what it is. Make
haste, and come down this moment."

Elizabeth asked questions in vain; Maria would tell her nothing more,
and down they ran into the dining-room, which fronted the lane, in
quest of this wonder; It was two ladies stopping in a low phaeton at the
garden gate.

"And is this all?" cried Elizabeth. "I expected at least that the pigs
were got into the garden, and here is nothing but Lady Catherine and her
daughter."

"La! my dear," said Maria, quite shocked at the mistake, "it is not
Lady Catherine. The old lady is Mrs. Jenkinson, who lives with them;
the other is Miss de Bourgh. Only look at her. She is quite a little
creature. Who would have thought that she could be so thin and small?"

"She is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all this wind.
Why does she not come in?"

"Oh, Charlotte says she hardly ever does. It is the greatest of favours
when Miss de Bourgh comes in."

"I like her appearance," said Elizabeth, struck with other ideas. "She
looks sickly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well. She will
make him a very proper wife."

Mr. Collins and Charlotte were both standing at the gate in conversation
with the ladies; and Sir William, to Elizabeth's high diversion, was
stationed in the doorway, in earnest contemplation of the greatness
before him, and constantly bowing whenever Miss de Bourgh looked that
way.

At length there was nothing more to be said; the ladies drove on, and
the others returned into the house. Mr. Collins no sooner saw the two
girls than he began to congratulate them on their good fortune, which
Charlotte explained by letting them know that the whole party was asked
to dine at Rosings the next day.



Chapter 29


Mr. Collins's triumph, in consequence of this invitation, was complete.
The power of displaying the grandeur of his patroness to his wondering
visitors, and of letting them see her civility towards himself and his
wife, was exactly what he had wished for; and that an opportunity
of doing it should be given so soon, was such an instance of Lady
Catherine's condescension, as he knew not how to admire enough.

"I confess," said he, "that I should not have been at all surprised by
her ladyship's asking us on Sunday to drink tea and spend the evening at
Rosings. I rather expected, from my knowledge of her affability, that it
would happen. But who could have foreseen such an attention as this? Who
could have imagined that we should receive an invitation to dine there
(an invitation, moreover, including the whole party) so immediately
after your arrival!"

"I am the less surprised at what has happened," replied Sir William,
"from that knowledge of what the manners of the great really are, which
my situation in life has allowed me to acquire. About the court, such
instances of elegant breeding are not uncommon."

Scarcely anything was talked of the whole day or next morning but their
visit to Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing them in what
they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms, so many servants, and
so splendid a dinner, might not wholly overpower them.

When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to Elizabeth--

"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel. Lady
Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us which
becomes herself and her daughter. I would advise you merely to put on
whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest--there is no occasion
for anything more. Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you
for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank
preserved."

While they were dressing, he came two or three times to their different
doors, to recommend their being quick, as Lady Catherine very much
objected to be kept waiting for her dinner. Such formidable accounts of
her ladyship, and her manner of living, quite frightened Maria Lucas
who had been little used to company, and she looked forward to her
introduction at Rosings with as much apprehension as her father had done
to his presentation at St. James's.

As the weather was fine, they had a pleasant walk of about half a
mile across the park. Every park has its beauty and its prospects; and
Elizabeth saw much to be pleased with, though she could not be in such
raptures as Mr. Collins expected the scene to inspire, and was but
slightly affected by his enumeration of the windows in front of the
house, and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally
cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh.

When they ascended the steps to the hall, Maria's alarm was every
moment increasing, and even Sir William did not look perfectly calm.
Elizabeth's courage did not fail her. She had heard nothing of Lady
Catherine that spoke her awful from any extraordinary talents or
miraculous virtue, and the mere stateliness of money or rank she thought
she could witness without trepidation.

From the entrance-hall, of which Mr. Collins pointed out, with a
rapturous air, the fine proportion and the finished ornaments, they
followed the servants through an ante-chamber, to the room where Lady
Catherine, her daughter, and Mrs. Jenkinson were sitting. Her ladyship,
with great condescension, arose to receive them; and as Mrs. Collins had
settled it with her husband that the office of introduction should
be hers, it was performed in a proper manner, without any of those
apologies and thanks which he would have thought necessary.

In spite of having been at St. James's Sir William was so completely
awed by the grandeur surrounding him, that he had but just courage
enough to make a very low bow, and take his seat without saying a word;
and his daughter, frightened almost out of her senses, sat on the edge
of her chair, not knowing which way to look. Elizabeth found herself
quite equal to the scene, and could observe the three ladies before her
composedly. Lady Catherine was a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked
features, which might once have been handsome. Her air was not
conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them such as to make her
visitors forget their inferior rank. She was not rendered formidable by
silence; but whatever she said was spoken in so authoritative a tone,
as marked her self-importance, and brought Mr. Wickham immediately to
Elizabeth's mind; and from the observation of the day altogether, she
believed Lady Catherine to be exactly what he represented.

When, after examining the mother, in whose countenance and deportment
she soon found some resemblance of Mr. Darcy, she turned her eyes on the
daughter, she could almost have joined in Maria's astonishment at her
being so thin and so small. There was neither in figure nor face any
likeness between the ladies. Miss de Bourgh was pale and sickly; her
features, though not plain, were insignificant; and she spoke very
little, except in a low voice, to Mrs. Jenkinson, in whose appearance
there was nothing remarkable, and who was entirely engaged in listening
to what she said, and placing a screen in the proper direction before
her eyes.

After sitting a few minutes, they were all sent to one of the windows to
admire the view, Mr. Collins attending them to point out its beauties,
and Lady Catherine kindly informing them that it was much better worth
looking at in the summer.

The dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were all the servants and
all the articles of plate which Mr. Collins had promised; and, as he had
likewise foretold, he took his seat at the bottom of the table, by her
ladyship's desire, and looked as if he felt that life could furnish
nothing greater. He carved, and ate, and praised with delighted
alacrity; and every dish was commended, first by him and then by Sir
William, who was now enough recovered to echo whatever his son-in-law
said, in a manner which Elizabeth wondered Lady Catherine could bear.
But Lady Catherine seemed gratified by their excessive admiration, and
gave most gracious smiles, especially when any dish on the table proved
a novelty to them. The party did not supply much conversation. Elizabeth
was ready to speak whenever there was an opening, but she was seated
between Charlotte and Miss de Bourgh--the former of whom was engaged in
listening to Lady Catherine, and the latter said not a word to her all
dinner-time. Mrs. Jenkinson was chiefly employed in watching how little
Miss de Bourgh ate, pressing her to try some other dish, and fearing
she was indisposed. Maria thought speaking out of the question, and the
gentlemen did nothing but eat and admire.

When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, there was little to
be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did without any
intermission till coffee came in, delivering her opinion on every
subject in so decisive a manner, as proved that she was not used to
have her judgement controverted. She inquired into Charlotte's domestic
concerns familiarly and minutely, gave her a great deal of advice as
to the management of them all; told her how everything ought to be
regulated in so small a family as hers, and instructed her as to the
care of her cows and her poultry. Elizabeth found that nothing was
beneath this great lady's attention, which could furnish her with an
occasion of dictating to others. In the intervals of her discourse
with Mrs. Collins, she addressed a variety of questions to Maria and
Elizabeth, but especially to the latter, of whose connections she knew
the least, and who she observed to Mrs. Collins was a very genteel,
pretty kind of girl. She asked her, at different times, how many sisters
she had, whether they were older or younger than herself, whether any of
them were likely to be married, whether they were handsome, where they
had been educated, what carriage her father kept, and what had been
her mother's maiden name? Elizabeth felt all the impertinence of
her questions but answered them very composedly. Lady Catherine then
observed,

"Your father's estate is entailed on Mr. Collins, I think. For your
sake," turning to Charlotte, "I am glad of it; but otherwise I see no
occasion for entailing estates from the female line. It was not thought
necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family. Do you play and sing, Miss
Bennet?"

"A little."

"Oh! then--some time or other we shall be happy to hear you. Our
instrument is a capital one, probably superior to----You shall try it
some day. Do your sisters play and sing?"

"One of them does."

"Why did not you all learn? You ought all to have learned. The Miss
Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an income as yours. Do
you draw?"

"No, not at all."

"What, none of you?"

"Not one."

"That is very strange. But I suppose you had no opportunity. Your mother
should have taken you to town every spring for the benefit of masters."

"My mother would have had no objection, but my father hates London."

"Has your governess left you?"

"We never had any governess."

"No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home
without a governess! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must
have been quite a slave to your education."

Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had not been
the case.

"Then, who taught you? who attended to you? Without a governess, you
must have been neglected."

"Compared with some families, I believe we were; but such of us as
wished to learn never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to
read, and had all the masters that were necessary. Those who chose to be
idle, certainly might."

"Aye, no doubt; but that is what a governess will prevent, and if I had
known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage
one. I always say that nothing is to be done in education without steady
and regular instruction, and nobody but a governess can give it. It is
wonderful how many families I have been the means of supplying in that
way. I am always glad to get a young person well placed out. Four nieces
of Mrs. Jenkinson are most delightfully situated through my means; and
it was but the other day that I recommended another young person,
who was merely accidentally mentioned to me, and the family are quite
delighted with her. Mrs. Collins, did I tell you of Lady Metcalf's
calling yesterday to thank me? She finds Miss Pope a treasure. 'Lady
Catherine,' said she, 'you have given me a treasure.' Are any of your
younger sisters out, Miss Bennet?"

"Yes, ma'am, all."

"All! What, all five out at once? Very odd! And you only the second. The
younger ones out before the elder ones are married! Your younger sisters
must be very young?"

"Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps _she_ is full young to be
much in company. But really, ma'am, I think it would be very hard upon
younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and
amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to
marry early. The last-born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth
at the first. And to be kept back on _such_ a motive! I think it would
not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind."

"Upon my word," said her ladyship, "you give your opinion very decidedly
for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?"

"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth, smiling, "your
ladyship can hardly expect me to own it."

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer;
and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever
dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.

"You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure, therefore you need not
conceal your age."

"I am not one-and-twenty."

When the gentlemen had joined them, and tea was over, the card-tables
were placed. Lady Catherine, Sir William, and Mr. and Mrs. Collins sat
down to quadrille; and as Miss de Bourgh chose to play at cassino, the
two girls had the honour of assisting Mrs. Jenkinson to make up her
party. Their table was superlatively stupid. Scarcely a syllable was
uttered that did not relate to the game, except when Mrs. Jenkinson
expressed her fears of Miss de Bourgh's being too hot or too cold, or
having too much or too little light. A great deal more passed at the
other table. Lady Catherine was generally speaking--stating the mistakes
of the three others, or relating some anecdote of herself. Mr. Collins
was employed in agreeing to everything her ladyship said, thanking her
for every fish he won, and apologising if he thought he won too many.
Sir William did not say much. He was storing his memory with anecdotes
and noble names.

When Lady Catherine and her daughter had played as long as they chose,
the tables were broken up, the carriage was offered to Mrs. Collins,
gratefully accepted and immediately ordered. The party then gathered
round the fire to hear Lady Catherine determine what weather they were
to have on the morrow. From these instructions they were summoned by
the arrival of the coach; and with many speeches of thankfulness on Mr.
Collins's side and as many bows on Sir William's they departed. As soon
as they had driven from the door, Elizabeth was called on by her cousin
to give her opinion of all that she had seen at Rosings, which, for
Charlotte's sake, she made more favourable than it really was. But her
commendation, though costing her some trouble, could by no means satisfy
Mr. Collins, and he was very soon obliged to take her ladyship's praise
into his own hands.



Chapter 30


Sir William stayed only a week at Hunsford, but his visit was long
enough to convince him of his daughter's being most comfortably settled,
and of her possessing such a husband and such a neighbour as were not
often met with. While Sir William was with them, Mr. Collins devoted his
morning to driving him out in his gig, and showing him the country; but
when he went away, the whole family returned to their usual employments,
and Elizabeth was thankful to find that they did not see more of her
cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between breakfast
and dinner was now passed by him either at work in the garden or in
reading and writing, and looking out of the window in his own book-room,
which fronted the road. The room in which the ladies sat was backwards.
Elizabeth had at first rather wondered that Charlotte should not prefer
the dining-parlour for common use; it was a better sized room, and had a
more pleasant aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent
reason for what she did, for Mr. Collins would undoubtedly have been
much less in his own apartment, had they sat in one equally lively; and
she gave Charlotte credit for the arrangement.

From the drawing-room they could distinguish nothing in the lane, and
were indebted to Mr. Collins for the knowledge of what carriages went
along, and how often especially Miss de Bourgh drove by in her phaeton,
which he never failed coming to inform them of, though it happened
almost every day. She not unfrequently stopped at the Parsonage, and
had a few minutes' conversation with Charlotte, but was scarcely ever
prevailed upon to get out.

Very few days passed in which Mr. Collins did not walk to Rosings, and
not many in which his wife did not think it necessary to go likewise;
and till Elizabeth recollected that there might be other family livings
to be disposed of, she could not understand the sacrifice of so many
hours. Now and then they were honoured with a call from her ladyship,
and nothing escaped her observation that was passing in the room during
these visits. She examined into their employments, looked at their work,
and advised them to do it differently; found fault with the arrangement
of the furniture; or detected the housemaid in negligence; and if she
accepted any refreshment, seemed to do it only for the sake of finding
out that Mrs. Collins's joints of meat were too large for her family.

Elizabeth soon perceived, that though this great lady was not in
commission of the peace of the county, she was a most active magistrate
in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were carried to her
by Mr. Collins; and whenever any of the cottagers were disposed to
be quarrelsome, discontented, or too poor, she sallied forth into the
village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold
them into harmony and plenty.

The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated about twice a week;
and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, and there being only one
card-table in the evening, every such entertainment was the counterpart
of the first. Their other engagements were few, as the style of living
in the neighbourhood in general was beyond Mr. Collins's reach. This,
however, was no evil to Elizabeth, and upon the whole she spent her time
comfortably enough; there were half-hours of pleasant conversation with
Charlotte, and the weather was so fine for the time of year that she had
often great enjoyment out of doors. Her favourite walk, and where she
frequently went while the others were calling on Lady Catherine, was
along the open grove which edged that side of the park, where there was
a nice sheltered path, which no one seemed to value but herself, and
where she felt beyond the reach of Lady Catherine's curiosity.

In this quiet way, the first fortnight of her visit soon passed away.
Easter was approaching, and the week preceding it was to bring an
addition to the family at Rosings, which in so small a circle must be
important. Elizabeth had heard soon after her arrival that Mr. Darcy was
expected there in the course of a few weeks, and though there were not
many of her acquaintances whom she did not prefer, his coming would
furnish one comparatively new to look at in their Rosings parties, and
she might be amused in seeing how hopeless Miss Bingley's designs on him
were, by his behaviour to his cousin, for whom he was evidently
destined by Lady Catherine, who talked of his coming with the greatest
satisfaction, spoke of him in terms of the highest admiration, and
seemed almost angry to find that he had already been frequently seen by
Miss Lucas and herself.

His arrival was soon known at the Parsonage; for Mr. Collins was walking
the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane,
in order to have the earliest assurance of it, and after making his
bow as the carriage turned into the Park, hurried home with the great
intelligence. On the following morning he hastened to Rosings to pay his
respects. There were two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for
Mr. Darcy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of
his uncle Lord ----, and, to the great surprise of all the party, when
Mr. Collins returned, the gentlemen accompanied him. Charlotte had seen
them from her husband's room, crossing the road, and immediately running
into the other, told the girls what an honour they might expect, adding:

"I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would
never have come so soon to wait upon me."

Elizabeth had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the compliment,
before their approach was announced by the door-bell, and shortly
afterwards the three gentlemen entered the room. Colonel Fitzwilliam,
who led the way, was about thirty, not handsome, but in person and
address most truly the gentleman. Mr. Darcy looked just as he had been
used to look in Hertfordshire--paid his compliments, with his usual
reserve, to Mrs. Collins, and whatever might be his feelings toward her
friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Elizabeth merely
curtseyed to him without saying a word.

Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the
readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but
his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and
garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to anybody.
At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to inquire of
Elizabeth after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual
way, and after a moment's pause, added:

"My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never
happened to see her there?"

She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to see
whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between
the Bingleys and Jane, and she thought he looked a little confused as he
answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet. The
subject was pursued no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went
away.



Chapter 31


Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners were very much admired at the Parsonage,
and the ladies all felt that he must add considerably to the pleasures
of their engagements at Rosings. It was some days, however, before they
received any invitation thither--for while there were visitors in the
house, they could not be necessary; and it was not till Easter-day,
almost a week after the gentlemen's arrival, that they were honoured by
such an attention, and then they were merely asked on leaving church to
come there in the evening. For the last week they had seen very little
of Lady Catherine or her daughter. Colonel Fitzwilliam had called at the
Parsonage more than once during the time, but Mr. Darcy they had seen
only at church.

The invitation was accepted of course, and at a proper hour they joined
the party in Lady Catherine's drawing-room. Her ladyship received
them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by no means so
acceptable as when she could get nobody else; and she was, in fact,
almost engrossed by her nephews, speaking to them, especially to Darcy,
much more than to any other person in the room.

Colonel Fitzwilliam seemed really glad to see them; anything was a
welcome relief to him at Rosings; and Mrs. Collins's pretty friend had
moreover caught his fancy very much. He now seated himself by her, and
talked so agreeably of Kent and Hertfordshire, of travelling and staying
at home, of new books and music, that Elizabeth had never been half so
well entertained in that room before; and they conversed with so much
spirit and flow, as to draw the attention of Lady Catherine herself,
as well as of Mr. Darcy. _His_ eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned
towards them with a look of curiosity; and that her ladyship, after a
while, shared the feeling, was more openly acknowledged, for she did not
scruple to call out:

"What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking
of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is."

"We are speaking of music, madam," said he, when no longer able to avoid
a reply.

"Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I
must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music.
There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment
of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt,
I should have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health
had allowed her to apply. I am confident that she would have performed
delightfully. How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?"

Mr. Darcy spoke with affectionate praise of his sister's proficiency.

"I am very glad to hear such a good account of her," said Lady
Catherine; "and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel
if she does not practice a good deal."

"I assure you, madam," he replied, "that she does not need such advice.
She practises very constantly."

"So much the better. It cannot be done too much; and when I next write
to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any account. I often
tell young ladies that no excellence in music is to be acquired without
constant practice. I have told Miss Bennet several times, that she
will never play really well unless she practises more; and though Mrs.
Collins has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told
her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs.
Jenkinson's room. She would be in nobody's way, you know, in that part
of the house."

Mr. Darcy looked a little ashamed of his aunt's ill-breeding, and made
no answer.

When coffee was over, Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth of having
promised to play to him; and she sat down directly to the instrument. He
drew a chair near her. Lady Catherine listened to half a song, and then
talked, as before, to her other nephew; till the latter walked away
from her, and making with his usual deliberation towards the pianoforte
stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair performer's
countenance. Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first
convenient pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said:

"You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear
me? I will not be alarmed though your sister _does_ play so well. There
is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the
will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate
me."

"I shall not say you are mistaken," he replied, "because you could not
really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have
had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you find
great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are
not your own."

Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to
Colonel Fitzwilliam, "Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of
me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am particularly unlucky
in meeting with a person so able to expose my real character, in a part
of the world where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of
credit. Indeed, Mr. Darcy, it is very ungenerous in you to mention all
that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire--and, give me leave to
say, very impolitic too--for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such
things may come out as will shock your relations to hear."

"I am not afraid of you," said he, smilingly.

"Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of," cried Colonel
Fitzwilliam. "I should like to know how he behaves among strangers."

"You shall hear then--but prepare yourself for something very dreadful.
The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, you must know,
was at a ball--and at this ball, what do you think he did? He danced
only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain
knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a
partner. Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny the fact."

"I had not at that time the honour of knowing any lady in the assembly
beyond my own party."

"True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball-room. Well, Colonel
Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your orders."

"Perhaps," said Darcy, "I should have judged better, had I sought an
introduction; but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers."

"Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?" said Elizabeth, still
addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. "Shall we ask him why a man of sense and
education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend
himself to strangers?"

"I can answer your question," said Fitzwilliam, "without applying to
him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble."

"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy,
"of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot
catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their
concerns, as I often see done."

"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the
masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same
force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I
have always supposed it to be my own fault--because I will not take the
trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe _my_ fingers as
capable as any other woman's of superior execution."

Darcy smiled and said, "You are perfectly right. You have employed your
time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can
think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers."

Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to know
what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began playing again.
Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening for a few minutes, said
to Darcy:

"Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss if she practised more, and
could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very good notion
of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne's. Anne would have
been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn."

Elizabeth looked at Darcy to see how cordially he assented to his
cousin's praise; but neither at that moment nor at any other could she
discern any symptom of love; and from the whole of his behaviour to Miss
de Bourgh she derived this comfort for Miss Bingley, that he might have
been just as likely to marry _her_, had she been his relation.

Lady Catherine continued her remarks on Elizabeth's performance, mixing
with them many instructions on execution and taste. Elizabeth received
them with all the forbearance of civility, and, at the request of the
gentlemen, remained at the instrument till her ladyship's carriage was
ready to take them all home.



Chapter 32


Elizabeth was sitting by herself the next morning, and writing to Jane
while Mrs. Collins and Maria were gone on business into the village,
when she was startled by a ring at the door, the certain signal of a
visitor. As she had heard no carriage, she thought it not unlikely to
be Lady Catherine, and under that apprehension was putting away her
half-finished letter that she might escape all impertinent questions,
when the door opened, and, to her very great surprise, Mr. Darcy, and
Mr. Darcy only, entered the room.

He seemed astonished too on finding her alone, and apologised for his
intrusion by letting her know that he had understood all the ladies were
to be within.

They then sat down, and when her inquiries after Rosings were made,
seemed in danger of sinking into total silence. It was absolutely
necessary, therefore, to think of something, and in this emergence
recollecting _when_ she had seen him last in Hertfordshire, and
feeling curious to know what he would say on the subject of their hasty
departure, she observed:

"How very suddenly you all quitted Netherfield last November, Mr. Darcy!
It must have been a most agreeable surprise to Mr. Bingley to see you
all after him so soon; for, if I recollect right, he went but the day
before. He and his sisters were well, I hope, when you left London?"

"Perfectly so, I thank you."

She found that she was to receive no other answer, and, after a short
pause added:

"I think I have understood that Mr. Bingley has not much idea of ever
returning to Netherfield again?"

"I have never heard him say so; but it is probable that he may spend
very little of his time there in the future. He has many friends, and
is at a time of life when friends and engagements are continually
increasing."

"If he means to be but little at Netherfield, it would be better for
the neighbourhood that he should give up the place entirely, for then we
might possibly get a settled family there. But, perhaps, Mr. Bingley did
not take the house so much for the convenience of the neighbourhood as
for his own, and we must expect him to keep it or quit it on the same
principle."

"I should not be surprised," said Darcy, "if he were to give it up as
soon as any eligible purchase offers."

Elizabeth made no answer. She was afraid of talking longer of his
friend; and, having nothing else to say, was now determined to leave the
trouble of finding a subject to him.

He took the hint, and soon began with, "This seems a very comfortable
house. Lady Catherine, I believe, did a great deal to it when Mr.
Collins first came to Hunsford."

"I believe she did--and I am sure she could not have bestowed her
kindness on a more grateful object."

"Mr. Collins appears to be very fortunate in his choice of a wife."

"Yes, indeed, his friends may well rejoice in his having met with one
of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made
him happy if they had. My friend has an excellent understanding--though
I am not certain that I consider her marrying Mr. Collins as the
wisest thing she ever did. She seems perfectly happy, however, and in a
prudential light it is certainly a very good match for her."

"It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a
distance of her own family and friends."

"An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles."

"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's
journey. Yes, I call it a _very_ easy distance."

"I should never have considered the distance as one of the _advantages_
of the match," cried Elizabeth. "I should never have said Mrs. Collins
was settled _near_ her family."

"It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything beyond
the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far."

As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied she
understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane and
Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered:

"I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her
family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many
varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expenses of
travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the
case _here_. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not
such a one as will allow of frequent journeys--and I am persuaded my
friend would not call herself _near_ her family under less than _half_
the present distance."

Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, "_You_ cannot
have a right to such very strong local attachment. _You_ cannot have
been always at Longbourn."

Elizabeth looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some change of
feeling; he drew back his chair, took a newspaper from the table, and
glancing over it, said, in a colder voice:

"Are you pleased with Kent?"

A short dialogue on the subject of the country ensued, on either side
calm and concise--and soon put an end to by the entrance of Charlotte
and her sister, just returned from her walk. The tete-a-tete surprised
them. Mr. Darcy related the mistake which had occasioned his intruding
on Miss Bennet, and after sitting a few minutes longer without saying
much to anybody, went away.

"What can be the meaning of this?" said Charlotte, as soon as he was
gone. "My dear, Eliza, he must be in love with you, or he would never
have called us in this familiar way."

But when Elizabeth told of his silence; it did not seem very likely,
even to Charlotte's wishes, to be the case; and after various
conjectures, they could at last only suppose his visit to proceed from
the difficulty of finding anything to do, which was the more probable
from the time of year. All field sports were over. Within doors there
was Lady Catherine, books, and a billiard-table, but gentlemen cannot
always be within doors; and in the nearness of the Parsonage, or the
pleasantness of the walk to it, or of the people who lived in it, the
two cousins found a temptation from this period of walking thither
almost every day. They called at various times of the morning, sometimes
separately, sometimes together, and now and then accompanied by their
aunt. It was plain to them all that Colonel Fitzwilliam came because he
had pleasure in their society, a persuasion which of course recommended
him still more; and Elizabeth was reminded by her own satisfaction in
being with him, as well as by his evident admiration of her, of her
former favourite George Wickham; and though, in comparing them, she saw
there was less captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners,
she believed he might have the best informed mind.

But why Mr. Darcy came so often to the Parsonage, it was more difficult
to understand. It could not be for society, as he frequently sat there
ten minutes together without opening his lips; and when he did speak,
it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choice--a sacrifice
to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. He seldom appeared really
animated. Mrs. Collins knew not what to make of him. Colonel
Fitzwilliam's occasionally laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was
generally different, which her own knowledge of him could not have told
her; and as she would liked to have believed this change the effect
of love, and the object of that love her friend Eliza, she set herself
seriously to work to find it out. She watched him whenever they were at
Rosings, and whenever he came to Hunsford; but without much success. He
certainly looked at her friend a great deal, but the expression of that
look was disputable. It was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often
doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it
seemed nothing but absence of mind.

She had once or twice suggested to Elizabeth the possibility of his
being partial to her, but Elizabeth always laughed at the idea; and Mrs.
Collins did not think it right to press the subject, from the danger of
raising expectations which might only end in disappointment; for in her
opinion it admitted not of a doubt, that all her friend's dislike would
vanish, if she could suppose him to be in her power.


In her kind schemes for Elizabeth, she sometimes planned her marrying
Colonel Fitzwilliam. He was beyond comparison the most pleasant man; he
certainly admired her, and his situation in life was most eligible; but,
to counterbalance these advantages, Mr. Darcy had considerable patronage
in the church, and his cousin could have none at all.



Chapter 33


More than once did Elizabeth, in her ramble within the park,
unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. She felt all the perverseness of the
mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought, and, to
prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first that
it was a favourite haunt of hers. How it could occur a second time,
therefore, was very odd! Yet it did, and even a third. It seemed like
wilful ill-nature, or a voluntary penance, for on these occasions it was
not merely a few formal inquiries and an awkward pause and then away,
but he actually thought it necessary to turn back and walk with her. He
never said a great deal, nor did she give herself the trouble of talking
or of listening much; but it struck her in the course of their third
rencontre that he was asking some odd unconnected questions--about
her pleasure in being at Hunsford, her love of solitary walks, and her
opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Collins's happiness; and that in speaking of
Rosings and her not perfectly understanding the house, he seemed to
expect that whenever she came into Kent again she would be staying
_there_ too. His words seemed to imply it. Could he have Colonel
Fitzwilliam in his thoughts? She supposed, if he meant anything, he must
mean an allusion to what might arise in that quarter. It distressed
her a little, and she was quite glad to find herself at the gate in the
pales opposite the Parsonage.

She was engaged one day as she walked, in perusing Jane's last letter,
and dwelling on some passages which proved that Jane had not written in
spirits, when, instead of being again surprised by Mr. Darcy, she saw
on looking up that Colonel Fitzwilliam was meeting her. Putting away the
letter immediately and forcing a smile, she said:

"I did not know before that you ever walked this way."

"I have been making the tour of the park," he replied, "as I generally
do every year, and intend to close it with a call at the Parsonage. Are
you going much farther?"

"No, I should have turned in a moment."

And accordingly she did turn, and they walked towards the Parsonage
together.

"Do you certainly leave Kent on Saturday?" said she.

"Yes--if Darcy does not put it off again. But I am at his disposal. He
arranges the business just as he pleases."

"And if not able to please himself in the arrangement, he has at least
pleasure in the great power of choice. I do not know anybody who seems
more to enjoy the power of doing what he likes than Mr. Darcy."

"He likes to have his own way very well," replied Colonel Fitzwilliam.
"But so we all do. It is only that he has better means of having it
than many others, because he is rich, and many others are poor. I speak
feelingly. A younger son, you know, must be inured to self-denial and
dependence."

"In my opinion, the younger son of an earl can know very little of
either. Now seriously, what have you ever known of self-denial and
dependence? When have you been prevented by want of money from going
wherever you chose, or procuring anything you had a fancy for?"

"These are home questions--and perhaps I cannot say that I have
experienced many hardships of that nature. But in matters of greater
weight, I may suffer from want of money. Younger sons cannot marry where
they like."

"Unless where they like women of fortune, which I think they very often
do."

"Our habits of expense make us too dependent, and there are not many
in my rank of life who can afford to marry without some attention to
money."

"Is this," thought Elizabeth, "meant for me?" and she coloured at the
idea; but, recovering herself, said in a lively tone, "And pray, what
is the usual price of an earl's younger son? Unless the elder brother is
very sickly, I suppose you would not ask above fifty thousand pounds."

He answered her in the same style, and the subject dropped. To interrupt
a silence which might make him fancy her affected with what had passed,
she soon afterwards said:

"I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for the sake of
having someone at his disposal. I wonder he does not marry, to secure a
lasting convenience of that kind. But, perhaps, his sister does as well
for the present, and, as she is under his sole care, he may do what he
likes with her."

"No," said Colonel Fitzwilliam, "that is an advantage which he must
divide with me. I am joined with him in the guardianship of Miss Darcy."

"Are you indeed? And pray what sort of guardians do you make? Does your
charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age are sometimes a
little difficult to manage, and if she has the true Darcy spirit, she
may like to have her own way."

As she spoke she observed him looking at her earnestly; and the manner
in which he immediately asked her why she supposed Miss Darcy likely to
give them any uneasiness, convinced her that she had somehow or other
got pretty near the truth. She directly replied:

"You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her; and I dare
say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world. She is a
very great favourite with some ladies of my acquaintance, Mrs. Hurst and
Miss Bingley. I think I have heard you say that you know them."

"I know them a little. Their brother is a pleasant gentlemanlike man--he
is a great friend of Darcy's."

"Oh! yes," said Elizabeth drily; "Mr. Darcy is uncommonly kind to Mr.
Bingley, and takes a prodigious deal of care of him."

"Care of him! Yes, I really believe Darcy _does_ take care of him in
those points where he most wants care. From something that he told me in
our journey hither, I have reason to think Bingley very much indebted to
him. But I ought to beg his pardon, for I have no right to suppose that
Bingley was the person meant. It was all conjecture."

"What is it you mean?"

"It is a circumstance which Darcy could not wish to be generally known,
because if it were to get round to the lady's family, it would be an
unpleasant thing."

"You may depend upon my not mentioning it."

"And remember that I have not much reason for supposing it to be
Bingley. What he told me was merely this: that he congratulated himself
on having lately saved a friend from the inconveniences of a most
imprudent marriage, but without mentioning names or any other
particulars, and I only suspected it to be Bingley from believing
him the kind of young man to get into a scrape of that sort, and from
knowing them to have been together the whole of last summer."

"Did Mr. Darcy give you reasons for this interference?"

"I understood that there were some very strong objections against the
lady."

"And what arts did he use to separate them?"

"He did not talk to me of his own arts," said Fitzwilliam, smiling. "He
only told me what I have now told you."

Elizabeth made no answer, and walked on, her heart swelling with
indignation. After watching her a little, Fitzwilliam asked her why she
was so thoughtful.

"I am thinking of what you have been telling me," said she. "Your
cousin's conduct does not suit my feelings. Why was he to be the judge?"

"You are rather disposed to call his interference officious?"

"I do not see what right Mr. Darcy had to decide on the propriety of his
friend's inclination, or why, upon his own judgement alone, he was to
determine and direct in what manner his friend was to be happy.
But," she continued, recollecting herself, "as we know none of the
particulars, it is not fair to condemn him. It is not to be supposed
that there was much affection in the case."

"That is not an unnatural surmise," said Fitzwilliam, "but it is a
lessening of the honour of my cousin's triumph very sadly."

This was spoken jestingly; but it appeared to her so just a picture
of Mr. Darcy, that she would not trust herself with an answer, and
therefore, abruptly changing the conversation talked on indifferent
matters until they reached the Parsonage. There, shut into her own room,
as soon as their visitor left them, she could think without interruption
of all that she had heard. It was not to be supposed that any other
people could be meant than those with whom she was connected. There
could not exist in the world _two_ men over whom Mr. Darcy could have
such boundless influence. That he had been concerned in the measures
taken to separate Bingley and Jane she had never doubted; but she had
always attributed to Miss Bingley the principal design and arrangement
of them. If his own vanity, however, did not mislead him, _he_ was
the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of all that Jane had
suffered, and still continued to suffer. He had ruined for a while
every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the
world; and no one could say how lasting an evil he might have inflicted.

"There were some very strong objections against the lady," were Colonel
Fitzwilliam's words; and those strong objections probably were, her
having one uncle who was a country attorney, and another who was in
business in London.

"To Jane herself," she exclaimed, "there could be no possibility of
objection; all loveliness and goodness as she is!--her understanding
excellent, her mind improved, and her manners captivating. Neither
could anything be urged against my father, who, though with some
peculiarities, has abilities Mr. Darcy himself need not disdain, and
respectability which he will probably never reach." When she thought of
her mother, her confidence gave way a little; but she would not allow
that any objections _there_ had material weight with Mr. Darcy, whose
pride, she was convinced, would receive a deeper wound from the want of
importance in his friend's connections, than from their want of sense;
and she was quite decided, at last, that he had been partly governed
by this worst kind of pride, and partly by the wish of retaining Mr.
Bingley for his sister.

The agitation and tears which the subject occasioned, brought on a
headache; and it grew so much worse towards the evening, that, added to
her unwillingness to see Mr. Darcy, it determined her not to attend her
cousins to Rosings, where they were engaged to drink tea. Mrs. Collins,
seeing that she was really unwell, did not press her to go and as much
as possible prevented her husband from pressing her; but Mr. Collins
could not conceal his apprehension of Lady Catherine's being rather
displeased by her staying at home.



Chapter 34


When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate herself
as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her employment the
examination of all the letters which Jane had written to her since her
being in Kent. They contained no actual complaint, nor was there any
revival of past occurrences, or any communication of present suffering.
But in all, and in almost every line of each, there was a want of that
cheerfulness which had been used to characterise her style, and which,
proceeding from the serenity of a mind at ease with itself and kindly
disposed towards everyone, had been scarcely ever clouded. Elizabeth
noticed every sentence conveying the idea of uneasiness, with an
attention which it had hardly received on the first perusal. Mr. Darcy's
shameful boast of what misery he had been able to inflict, gave her
a keener sense of her sister's sufferings. It was some consolation
to think that his visit to Rosings was to end on the day after the
next--and, a still greater, that in less than a fortnight she should
herself be with Jane again, and enabled to contribute to the recovery of
her spirits, by all that affection could do.

She could not think of Darcy's leaving Kent without remembering that
his cousin was to go with him; but Colonel Fitzwilliam had made it clear
that he had no intentions at all, and agreeable as he was, she did not
mean to be unhappy about him.

While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound of the
door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its
being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in
the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her.
But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently
affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the
room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her
health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better.
She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and
then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but
said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her
in an agitated manner, and thus began:

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be
repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love
you."

Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured,
doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement;
and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long felt for her,
immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides
those of the heart to be detailed; and he was not more eloquent on the
subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority--of
its being a degradation--of the family obstacles which had always
opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to
the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his
suit.

In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to
the compliment of such a man's affection, and though her intentions did
not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to
receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she
lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to
answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with
representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite
of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with
expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of
his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt
of a favourable answer. He _spoke_ of apprehension and anxiety, but
his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could
only exasperate farther, and, when he ceased, the colour rose into her
cheeks, and she said:

"In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to
express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however
unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should
be felt, and if I could _feel_ gratitude, I would now thank you. But I
cannot--I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly
bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to
anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be
of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented
the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in
overcoming it after this explanation."

Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed
on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than
surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance
of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the
appearance of composure, and would not open his lips till he believed
himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth's feelings
dreadful. At length, with a voice of forced calmness, he said:

"And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting!
I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little _endeavour_ at
civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance."

"I might as well inquire," replied she, "why with so evident a desire
of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me
against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?
Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I _was_ uncivil? But I have
other provocations. You know I have. Had not my feelings decided against
you--had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you
think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has
been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most
beloved sister?"

As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed colour; but the emotion
was short, and he listened without attempting to interrupt her while she
continued:

"I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can
excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted _there_. You dare not,
you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if not the only means
of dividing them from each other--of exposing one to the censure of the
world for caprice and instability, and the other to its derision for
disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest
kind."

She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening
with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse.
He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.

"Can you deny that you have done it?" she repeated.

With assumed tranquillity he then replied: "I have no wish of denying
that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your
sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards _him_ I have been
kinder than towards myself."

Elizabeth disdained the appearance of noticing this civil reflection,
but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to conciliate her.

"But it is not merely this affair," she continued, "on which my dislike
is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was
decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received
many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to
say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself?
or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?"

"You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns," said Darcy,
in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.

"Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an
interest in him?"

"His misfortunes!" repeated Darcy contemptuously; "yes, his misfortunes
have been great indeed."

"And of your infliction," cried Elizabeth with energy. "You have reduced
him to his present state of poverty--comparative poverty. You have
withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for
him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence
which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this!
and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and
ridicule."

"And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room,
"is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me!
I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this
calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps," added he, stopping in
his walk, and turning towards her, "these offenses might have been
overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the
scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These
bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater
policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of
my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by
reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.
Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and
just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your
connections?--to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose
condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?"

Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to
the utmost to speak with composure when she said:

"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your
declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern
which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more
gentlemanlike manner."

She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued:

"You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible way that
would have tempted me to accept it."

Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an
expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on:

"From the very beginning--from the first moment, I may almost say--of
my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest
belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of
the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of
disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a
dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the
last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."

"You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your
feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been.
Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best
wishes for your health and happiness."

And with these words he hastily left the room, and Elizabeth heard him
the next moment open the front door and quit the house.

The tumult of her mind, was now painfully great. She knew not how
to support herself, and from actual weakness sat down and cried for
half-an-hour. Her astonishment, as she reflected on what had passed,
was increased by every review of it. That she should receive an offer of
marriage from Mr. Darcy! That he should have been in love with her for
so many months! So much in love as to wish to marry her in spite of
all the objections which had made him prevent his friend's marrying
her sister, and which must appear at least with equal force in his
own case--was almost incredible! It was gratifying to have inspired
unconsciously so strong an affection. But his pride, his abominable
pride--his shameless avowal of what he had done with respect to
Jane--his unpardonable assurance in acknowledging, though he could
not justify it, and the unfeeling manner in which he had mentioned Mr.
Wickham, his cruelty towards whom he had not attempted to deny, soon
overcame the pity which the consideration of his attachment had for
a moment excited. She continued in very agitated reflections till the
sound of Lady Catherine's carriage made her feel how unequal she was to
encounter Charlotte's observation, and hurried her away to her room.



Chapter 35


Elizabeth awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and meditations
which had at length closed her eyes. She could not yet recover from the
surprise of what had happened; it was impossible to think of anything
else; and, totally indisposed for employment, she resolved, soon after
breakfast, to indulge herself in air and exercise. She was proceeding
directly to her favourite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Darcy's
sometimes coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park,
she turned up the lane, which led farther from the turnpike-road. The
park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon passed one
of the gates into the ground.

After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she was
tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the gates and
look into the park. The five weeks which she had now passed in Kent had
made a great difference in the country, and every day was adding to the
verdure of the early trees. She was on the point of continuing her walk,
when she caught a glimpse of a gentleman within the sort of grove which
edged the park; he was moving that way; and, fearful of its being Mr.
Darcy, she was directly retreating. But the person who advanced was now
near enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness, pronounced
her name. She had turned away; but on hearing herself called, though
in a voice which proved it to be Mr. Darcy, she moved again towards the
gate. He had by that time reached it also, and, holding out a letter,
which she instinctively took, said, with a look of haughty composure,
"I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you.
Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?" And then, with a
slight bow, turned again into the plantation, and was soon out of sight.

With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity,
Elizabeth opened the letter, and, to her still increasing wonder,
perceived an envelope containing two sheets of letter-paper, written
quite through, in a very close hand. The envelope itself was likewise
full. Pursuing her way along the lane, she then began it. It was dated
from Rosings, at eight o'clock in the morning, and was as follows:--

"Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension
of its containing any repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those
offers which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any
intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes
which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten; and the
effort which the formation and the perusal of this letter must occasion,
should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written
and read. You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand
your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I
demand it of your justice.

"Two offenses of a very different nature, and by no means of equal
magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was,
that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Bingley
from your sister, and the other, that I had, in defiance of various
claims, in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate
prosperity and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham. Wilfully and
wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged
favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other
dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect
its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two young
persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could
bear no comparison. But from the severity of that blame which was last
night so liberally bestowed, respecting each circumstance, I shall hope
to be in the future secured, when the following account of my actions
and their motives has been read. If, in the explanation of them, which
is due to myself, I am under the necessity of relating feelings which
may be offensive to yours, I can only say that I am sorry. The necessity
must be obeyed, and further apology would be absurd.

"I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with
others, that Bingley preferred your elder sister to any other young
woman in the country. But it was not till the evening of the dance
at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his feeling a serious
attachment. I had often seen him in love before. At that ball, while I
had the honour of dancing with you, I was first made acquainted, by Sir
William Lucas's accidental information, that Bingley's attentions to
your sister had given rise to a general expectation of their marriage.
He spoke of it as a certain event, of which the time alone could
be undecided. From that moment I observed my friend's behaviour
attentively; and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss
Bennet was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I also
watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful, and engaging as ever,
but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced
from the evening's scrutiny, that though she received his attentions
with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of
sentiment. If _you_ have not been mistaken here, _I_ must have been
in error. Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter
probable. If it be so, if I have been misled by such error to inflict
pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable. But I shall not
scruple to assert, that the serenity of your sister's countenance and
air was such as might have given the most acute observer a conviction
that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be
easily touched. That I was desirous of believing her indifferent is
certain--but I will venture to say that my investigation and decisions
are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears. I did not believe
her to be indifferent because I wished it; I believed it on impartial
conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason. My objections to the
marriage were not merely those which I last night acknowledged to have
the utmost force of passion to put aside, in my own case; the want of
connection could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me. But
there were other causes of repugnance; causes which, though still
existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances, I had
myself endeavoured to forget, because they were not immediately before
me. These causes must be stated, though briefly. The situation of your
mother's family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison to that
total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by
herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your
father. Pardon me. It pains me to offend you. But amidst your concern
for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this
representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that, to
have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure,
is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your elder sister, than
it is honourable to the sense and disposition of both. I will only say
farther that from what passed that evening, my opinion of all parties
was confirmed, and every inducement heightened which could have led
me before, to preserve my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy
connection. He left Netherfield for London, on the day following, as
you, I am certain, remember, with the design of soon returning.

"The part which I acted is now to be explained. His sisters' uneasiness
had been equally excited with my own; our coincidence of feeling was
soon discovered, and, alike sensible that no time was to be lost in
detaching their brother, we shortly resolved on joining him directly in
London. We accordingly went--and there I readily engaged in the office
of pointing out to my friend the certain evils of such a choice. I
described, and enforced them earnestly. But, however this remonstrance
might have staggered or delayed his determination, I do not suppose
that it would ultimately have prevented the marriage, had it not been
seconded by the assurance that I hesitated not in giving, of your
sister's indifference. He had before believed her to return his
affection with sincere, if not with equal regard. But Bingley has great
natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my judgement than on his
own. To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived himself, was
no very difficult point. To persuade him against returning into
Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the
work of a moment. I cannot blame myself for having done thus much. There
is but one part of my conduct in the whole affair on which I do not
reflect with satisfaction; it is that I condescended to adopt the
measures of art so far as to conceal from him your sister's being in
town. I knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Bingley; but her
brother is even yet ignorant of it. That they might have met without
ill consequence is perhaps probable; but his regard did not appear to me
enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger. Perhaps this
concealment, this disguise was beneath me; it is done, however, and it
was done for the best. On this subject I have nothing more to say, no
other apology to offer. If I have wounded your sister's feelings, it
was unknowingly done and though the motives which governed me may to
you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn
them.

"With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having injured
Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his
connection with my family. Of what he has _particularly_ accused me I
am ignorant; but of the truth of what I shall relate, I can summon more
than one witness of undoubted veracity.

"Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many
years the management of all the Pemberley estates, and whose good
conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally inclined my father to
be of service to him; and on George Wickham, who was his godson, his
kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My father supported him at
school, and afterwards at Cambridge--most important assistance, as his
own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have
been unable to give him a gentleman's education. My father was not only
fond of this young man's society, whose manners were always engaging; he
had also the highest opinion of him, and hoping the church would be
his profession, intended to provide for him in it. As for myself, it is
many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very different
manner. The vicious propensities--the want of principle, which he was
careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape
the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself,
and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which Mr.
Darcy could not have. Here again I shall give you pain--to what degree
you only can tell. But whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham
has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from
unfolding his real character--it adds even another motive.

"My excellent father died about five years ago; and his attachment to
Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his will he particularly
recommended it to me, to promote his advancement in the best manner
that his profession might allow--and if he took orders, desired that a
valuable family living might be his as soon as it became vacant. There
was also a legacy of one thousand pounds. His own father did not long
survive mine, and within half a year from these events, Mr. Wickham
wrote to inform me that, having finally resolved against taking orders,
he hoped I should not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more
immediate pecuniary advantage, in lieu of the preferment, by which he
could not be benefited. He had some intention, he added, of studying
law, and I must be aware that the interest of one thousand pounds would
be a very insufficient support therein. I rather wished, than believed
him to be sincere; but, at any rate, was perfectly ready to accede to
his proposal. I knew that Mr. Wickham ought not to be a clergyman; the
business was therefore soon settled--he resigned all claim to assistance
in the church, were it possible that he could ever be in a situation to
receive it, and accepted in return three thousand pounds. All connection
between us seemed now dissolved. I thought too ill of him to invite him
to Pemberley, or admit his society in town. In town I believe he chiefly
lived, but his studying the law was a mere pretence, and being now free
from all restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation.
For about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of the
incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to
me again by letter for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured
me, and I had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He
had found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely
resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in
question--of which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was
well assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could not
have forgotten my revered father's intentions. You will hardly blame
me for refusing to comply with this entreaty, or for resisting every
repetition to it. His resentment was in proportion to the distress of
his circumstances--and he was doubtless as violent in his abuse of me
to others as in his reproaches to myself. After this period every
appearance of acquaintance was dropped. How he lived I know not. But
last summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice.

"I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself,
and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold
to any human being. Having said thus much, I feel no doubt of your
secrecy. My sister, who is more than ten years my junior, was left to
the guardianship of my mother's nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and myself.
About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed
for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided
over it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by
design; for there proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him
and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived; and
by her connivance and aid, he so far recommended himself to Georgiana,
whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression of his kindness to
her as a child, that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and
to consent to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her
excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add, that I owed
the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two
before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the
idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as
a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You may imagine what I felt and
how I acted. Regard for my sister's credit and feelings prevented
any public exposure; but I wrote to Mr. Wickham, who left the place
immediately, and Mrs. Younge was of course removed from her charge. Mr.
Wickham's chief object was unquestionably my sister's fortune, which
is thirty thousand pounds; but I cannot help supposing that the hope of
revenging himself on me was a strong inducement. His revenge would have
been complete indeed.

"This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have
been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject it as
false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty towards Mr.
Wickham. I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood he
had imposed on you; but his success is not perhaps to be wondered
at. Ignorant as you previously were of everything concerning either,
detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in
your inclination.

"You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last night; but
I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to
be revealed. For the truth of everything here related, I can appeal more
particularly to the testimony of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our
near relationship and constant intimacy, and, still more, as one of
the executors of my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted
with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of _me_
should make _my_ assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by
the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be
the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some
opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of the
morning. I will only add, God bless you.

"FITZWILLIAM DARCY"



Chapter 36


If Elizabeth, when Mr. Darcy gave her the letter, did not expect it to
contain a renewal of his offers, she had formed no expectation at all of
its contents. But such as they were, it may well be supposed how eagerly
she went through them, and what a contrariety of emotion they excited.
Her feelings as she read were scarcely to be defined. With amazement did
she first understand that he believed any apology to be in his power;
and steadfastly was she persuaded, that he could have no explanation
to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal. With a strong
prejudice against everything he might say, she began his account of what
had happened at Netherfield. She read with an eagerness which hardly
left her power of comprehension, and from impatience of knowing what the
next sentence might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of
the one before her eyes. His belief of her sister's insensibility she
instantly resolved to be false; and his account of the real, the worst
objections to the match, made her too angry to have any wish of doing
him justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done which satisfied
her; his style was not penitent, but haughty. It was all pride and
insolence.

But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr. Wickham--when
she read with somewhat clearer attention a relation of events which,
if true, must overthrow every cherished opinion of his worth, and which
bore so alarming an affinity to his own history of himself--her
feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of definition.
Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She wished
to discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, "This must be false!
This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!"--and when she had
gone through the whole letter, though scarcely knowing anything of the
last page or two, put it hastily away, protesting that she would not
regard it, that she would never look in it again.

In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on
nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the letter
was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she could, she
again began the mortifying perusal of all that related to Wickham, and
commanded herself so far as to examine the meaning of every sentence.
The account of his connection with the Pemberley family was exactly what
he had related himself; and the kindness of the late Mr. Darcy, though
she had not before known its extent, agreed equally well with his own
words. So far each recital confirmed the other; but when she came to the
will, the difference was great. What Wickham had said of the living
was fresh in her memory, and as she recalled his very words, it was
impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side or the
other; and, for a few moments, she flattered herself that her wishes did
not err. But when she read and re-read with the closest attention, the
particulars immediately following of Wickham's resigning all pretensions
to the living, of his receiving in lieu so considerable a sum as three
thousand pounds, again was she forced to hesitate. She put down
the letter, weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be
impartiality--deliberated on the probability of each statement--but with
little success. On both sides it was only assertion. Again she read
on; but every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had
believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent as to
render Mr. Darcy's conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a
turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole.

The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay at
Mr. Wickham's charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could
bring no proof of its injustice. She had never heard of him before his
entrance into the ----shire Militia, in which he had engaged at the
persuasion of the young man who, on meeting him accidentally in town,
had there renewed a slight acquaintance. Of his former way of life
nothing had been known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As
to his real character, had information been in her power, she had
never felt a wish of inquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had
established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried
to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of
integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of
Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those
casual errors under which she would endeavour to class what Mr. Darcy
had described as the idleness and vice of many years' continuance. But
no such recollection befriended her. She could see him instantly before
her, in every charm of air and address; but she could remember no more
substantial good than the general approbation of the neighbourhood, and
the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess. After
pausing on this point a considerable while, she once more continued to
read. But, alas! the story which followed, of his designs on Miss
Darcy, received some confirmation from what had passed between Colonel
Fitzwilliam and herself only the morning before; and at last she was
referred for the truth of every particular to Colonel Fitzwilliam
himself--from whom she had previously received the information of his
near concern in all his cousin's affairs, and whose character she had no
reason to question. At one time she had almost resolved on applying to
him, but the idea was checked by the awkwardness of the application, and
at length wholly banished by the conviction that Mr. Darcy would never
have hazarded such a proposal, if he had not been well assured of his
cousin's corroboration.

She perfectly remembered everything that had passed in conversation
between Wickham and herself, in their first evening at Mr. Phillips's.
Many of his expressions were still fresh in her memory. She was _now_
struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and
wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting
himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions
with his conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear
of seeing Mr. Darcy--that Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that
_he_ should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield ball
the very next week. She remembered also that, till the Netherfield
family had quitted the country, he had told his story to no one but
herself; but that after their removal it had been everywhere discussed;
that he had then no reserves, no scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy's
character, though he had assured her that respect for the father would
always prevent his exposing the son.

How differently did everything now appear in which he was concerned!
His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and
hatefully mercenary; and the mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer
the moderation of his wishes, but his eagerness to grasp at anything.
His behaviour to herself could now have had no tolerable motive; he had
either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying
his vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had most
incautiously shown. Every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter
and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not
but allow that Mr. Bingley, when questioned by Jane, had long ago
asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as
were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their
acquaintance--an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much
together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways--seen anything
that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust--anything that spoke him
of irreligious or immoral habits; that among his own connections he was
esteemed and valued--that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a
brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his
sister as to prove him capable of _some_ amiable feeling; that had his
actions been what Mr. Wickham represented them, so gross a violation of
everything right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and
that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man
as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible.

She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham
could she think without feeling she had been blind, partial, prejudiced,
absurd.

"How despicably I have acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself
on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have
often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified
my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this
discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could
not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my
folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect
of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted
prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were
concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself."

From herself to Jane--from Jane to Bingley, her thoughts were in a line
which soon brought to her recollection that Mr. Darcy's explanation
_there_ had appeared very insufficient, and she read it again. Widely
different was the effect of a second perusal. How could she deny that
credit to his assertions in one instance, which she had been obliged to
give in the other? He declared himself to be totally unsuspicious of her
sister's attachment; and she could not help remembering what Charlotte's
opinion had always been. Neither could she deny the justice of his
description of Jane. She felt that Jane's feelings, though fervent, were
little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air
and manner not often united with great sensibility.

When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were
mentioned in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her sense
of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly
for denial, and the circumstances to which he particularly alluded as
having passed at the Netherfield ball, and as confirming all his first
disapprobation, could not have made a stronger impression on his mind
than on hers.

The compliment to herself and her sister was not unfelt. It soothed,
but it could not console her for the contempt which had thus been
self-attracted by the rest of her family; and as she considered
that Jane's disappointment had in fact been the work of her nearest
relations, and reflected how materially the credit of both must be hurt
by such impropriety of conduct, she felt depressed beyond anything she
had ever known before.

After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every
variety of thought--re-considering events, determining probabilities,
and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to a change so sudden and
so important, fatigue, and a recollection of her long absence, made
her at length return home; and she entered the house with the wish
of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such
reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.

She was immediately told that the two gentlemen from Rosings had each
called during her absence; Mr. Darcy, only for a few minutes, to take
leave--but that Colonel Fitzwilliam had been sitting with them at least
an hour, hoping for her return, and almost resolving to walk after her
till she could be found. Elizabeth could but just _affect_ concern
in missing him; she really rejoiced at it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was no
longer an object; she could think only of her letter.



Chapter 37


The two gentlemen left Rosings the next morning, and Mr. Collins having
been in waiting near the lodges, to make them his parting obeisance, was
able to bring home the pleasing intelligence, of their appearing in very
good health, and in as tolerable spirits as could be expected, after the
melancholy scene so lately gone through at Rosings. To Rosings he then
hastened, to console Lady Catherine and her daughter; and on his return
brought back, with great satisfaction, a message from her ladyship,
importing that she felt herself so dull as to make her very desirous of
having them all to dine with her.

Elizabeth could not see Lady Catherine without recollecting that, had
she chosen it, she might by this time have been presented to her as
her future niece; nor could she think, without a smile, of what her
ladyship's indignation would have been. "What would she have said? how
would she have behaved?" were questions with which she amused herself.

Their first subject was the diminution of the Rosings party. "I assure
you, I feel it exceedingly," said Lady Catherine; "I believe no one
feels the loss of friends so much as I do. But I am particularly
attached to these young men, and know them to be so much attached to
me! They were excessively sorry to go! But so they always are. The
dear Colonel rallied his spirits tolerably till just at last; but Darcy
seemed to feel it most acutely, more, I think, than last year. His
attachment to Rosings certainly increases."

Mr. Collins had a compliment, and an allusion to throw in here, which
were kindly smiled on by the mother and daughter.

Lady Catherine observed, after dinner, that Miss Bennet seemed out of
spirits, and immediately accounting for it by herself, by supposing that
she did not like to go home again so soon, she added:

"But if that is the case, you must write to your mother and beg that
you may stay a little longer. Mrs. Collins will be very glad of your
company, I am sure."

"I am much obliged to your ladyship for your kind invitation," replied
Elizabeth, "but it is not in my power to accept it. I must be in town
next Saturday."

"Why, at that rate, you will have been here only six weeks. I expected
you to stay two months. I told Mrs. Collins so before you came. There
can be no occasion for your going so soon. Mrs. Bennet could certainly
spare you for another fortnight."

"But my father cannot. He wrote last week to hurry my return."

"Oh! your father of course may spare you, if your mother can. Daughters
are never of so much consequence to a father. And if you will stay
another _month_ complete, it will be in my power to take one of you as
far as London, for I am going there early in June, for a week; and as
Dawson does not object to the barouche-box, there will be very good room
for one of you--and indeed, if the weather should happen to be cool, I
should not object to taking you both, as you are neither of you large."

"You are all kindness, madam; but I believe we must abide by our
original plan."

Lady Catherine seemed resigned. "Mrs. Collins, you must send a servant
with them. You know I always speak my mind, and I cannot bear the idea
of two young women travelling post by themselves. It is highly improper.
You must contrive to send somebody. I have the greatest dislike in
the world to that sort of thing. Young women should always be properly
guarded and attended, according to their situation in life. When my
niece Georgiana went to Ramsgate last summer, I made a point of her
having two men-servants go with her. Miss Darcy, the daughter of
Mr. Darcy, of Pemberley, and Lady Anne, could not have appeared with
propriety in a different manner. I am excessively attentive to all those
things. You must send John with the young ladies, Mrs. Collins. I
am glad it occurred to me to mention it; for it would really be
discreditable to _you_ to let them go alone."

"My uncle is to send a servant for us."

"Oh! Your uncle! He keeps a man-servant, does he? I am very glad you
have somebody who thinks of these things. Where shall you change horses?
Oh! Bromley, of course. If you mention my name at the Bell, you will be
attended to."

Lady Catherine had many other questions to ask respecting their journey,
and as she did not answer them all herself, attention was necessary,
which Elizabeth believed to be lucky for her; or, with a mind so
occupied, she might have forgotten where she was. Reflection must be
reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it
as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary
walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant
recollections.

Mr. Darcy's letter she was in a fair way of soon knowing by heart. She
studied every sentence; and her feelings towards its writer were at
times widely different. When she remembered the style of his address,
she was still full of indignation; but when she considered how unjustly
she had condemned and upbraided him, her anger was turned against
herself; and his disappointed feelings became the object of compassion.
His attachment excited gratitude, his general character respect; but she
could not approve him; nor could she for a moment repent her refusal,
or feel the slightest inclination ever to see him again. In her own past
behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret; and in
the unhappy defects of her family, a subject of yet heavier chagrin.
They were hopeless of remedy. Her father, contented with laughing at
them, would never exert himself to restrain the wild giddiness of his
youngest daughters; and her mother, with manners so far from right
herself, was entirely insensible of the evil. Elizabeth had frequently
united with Jane in an endeavour to check the imprudence of Catherine
and Lydia; but while they were supported by their mother's indulgence,
what chance could there be of improvement? Catherine, weak-spirited,
irritable, and completely under Lydia's guidance, had been always
affronted by their advice; and Lydia, self-willed and careless, would
scarcely give them a hearing. They were ignorant, idle, and vain. While
there was an officer in Meryton, they would flirt with him; and while
Meryton was within a walk of Longbourn, they would be going there
forever.

Anxiety on Jane's behalf was another prevailing concern; and Mr. Darcy's
explanation, by restoring Bingley to all her former good opinion,
heightened the sense of what Jane had lost. His affection was proved
to have been sincere, and his conduct cleared of all blame, unless any
could attach to the implicitness of his confidence in his friend. How
grievous then was the thought that, of a situation so desirable in every
respect, so replete with advantage, so promising for happiness, Jane had
been deprived, by the folly and indecorum of her own family!

When to these recollections was added the development of Wickham's
character, it may be easily believed that the happy spirits which had
seldom been depressed before, were now so much affected as to make it
almost impossible for her to appear tolerably cheerful.

Their engagements at Rosings were as frequent during the last week of
her stay as they had been at first. The very last evening was spent
there; and her ladyship again inquired minutely into the particulars of
their journey, gave them directions as to the best method of packing,
and was so urgent on the necessity of placing gowns in the only right
way, that Maria thought herself obliged, on her return, to undo all the
work of the morning, and pack her trunk afresh.

When they parted, Lady Catherine, with great condescension, wished them
a good journey, and invited them to come to Hunsford again next year;
and Miss de Bourgh exerted herself so far as to curtsey and hold out her
hand to both.



Chapter 38


On Saturday morning Elizabeth and Mr. Collins met for breakfast a few
minutes before the others appeared; and he took the opportunity of
paying the parting civilities which he deemed indispensably necessary.

"I know not, Miss Elizabeth," said he, "whether Mrs. Collins has yet
expressed her sense of your kindness in coming to us; but I am very
certain you will not leave the house without receiving her thanks for
it. The favour of your company has been much felt, I assure you. We
know how little there is to tempt anyone to our humble abode. Our plain
manner of living, our small rooms and few domestics, and the little we
see of the world, must make Hunsford extremely dull to a young lady like
yourself; but I hope you will believe us grateful for the condescension,
and that we have done everything in our power to prevent your spending
your time unpleasantly."

Elizabeth was eager with her thanks and assurances of happiness. She
had spent six weeks with great enjoyment; and the pleasure of being with
Charlotte, and the kind attentions she had received, must make _her_
feel the obliged. Mr. Collins was gratified, and with a more smiling
solemnity replied:

"It gives me great pleasure to hear that you have passed your time not
disagreeably. We have certainly done our best; and most fortunately
having it in our power to introduce you to very superior society, and,
from our connection with Rosings, the frequent means of varying the
humble home scene, I think we may flatter ourselves that your Hunsford
visit cannot have been entirely irksome. Our situation with regard to
Lady Catherine's family is indeed the sort of extraordinary advantage
and blessing which few can boast. You see on what a footing we are. You
see how continually we are engaged there. In truth I must acknowledge
that, with all the disadvantages of this humble parsonage, I should
not think anyone abiding in it an object of compassion, while they are
sharers of our intimacy at Rosings."

Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings; and he was
obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to unite civility
and truth in a few short sentences.

"You may, in fact, carry a very favourable report of us into
Hertfordshire, my dear cousin. I flatter myself at least that you will
be able to do so. Lady Catherine's great attentions to Mrs. Collins you
have been a daily witness of; and altogether I trust it does not appear
that your friend has drawn an unfortunate--but on this point it will be
as well to be silent. Only let me assure you, my dear Miss Elizabeth,
that I can from my heart most cordially wish you equal felicity in
marriage. My dear Charlotte and I have but one mind and one way of
thinking. There is in everything a most remarkable resemblance of
character and ideas between us. We seem to have been designed for each
other."

Elizabeth could safely say that it was a great happiness where that was
the case, and with equal sincerity could add, that she firmly believed
and rejoiced in his domestic comforts. She was not sorry, however, to
have the recital of them interrupted by the lady from whom they sprang.
Poor Charlotte! it was melancholy to leave her to such society! But she
had chosen it with her eyes open; and though evidently regretting that
her visitors were to go, she did not seem to ask for compassion. Her
home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their
dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.

At length the chaise arrived, the trunks were fastened on, the parcels
placed within, and it was pronounced to be ready. After an affectionate
parting between the friends, Elizabeth was attended to the carriage by
Mr. Collins, and as they walked down the garden he was commissioning her
with his best respects to all her family, not forgetting his thanks
for the kindness he had received at Longbourn in the winter, and his
compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, though unknown. He then handed her
in, Maria followed, and the door was on the point of being closed,
when he suddenly reminded them, with some consternation, that they had
hitherto forgotten to leave any message for the ladies at Rosings.

"But," he added, "you will of course wish to have your humble respects
delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their kindness to you
while you have been here."

Elizabeth made no objection; the door was then allowed to be shut, and
the carriage drove off.

"Good gracious!" cried Maria, after a few minutes' silence, "it seems
but a day or two since we first came! and yet how many things have
happened!"

"A great many indeed," said her companion with a sigh.

"We have dined nine times at Rosings, besides drinking tea there twice!
How much I shall have to tell!"

Elizabeth added privately, "And how much I shall have to conceal!"

Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any alarm; and
within four hours of their leaving Hunsford they reached Mr. Gardiner's
house, where they were to remain a few days.

Jane looked well, and Elizabeth had little opportunity of studying her
spirits, amidst the various engagements which the kindness of her
aunt had reserved for them. But Jane was to go home with her, and at
Longbourn there would be leisure enough for observation.

It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait even for
Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy's proposals. To know
that she had the power of revealing what would so exceedingly astonish
Jane, and must, at the same time, so highly gratify whatever of her own
vanity she had not yet been able to reason away, was such a temptation
to openness as nothing could have conquered but the state of indecision
in which she remained as to the extent of what she should communicate;
and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried
into repeating something of Bingley which might only grieve her sister
further.



Chapter 39


It was the second week in May, in which the three young ladies set out
together from Gracechurch Street for the town of ----, in Hertfordshire;
and, as they drew near the appointed inn where Mr. Bennet's carriage
was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in token of the coachman's
punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia looking out of a dining-room up stairs.
These two girls had been above an hour in the place, happily employed
in visiting an opposite milliner, watching the sentinel on guard, and
dressing a salad and cucumber.

After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table set
out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, exclaiming,
"Is not this nice? Is not this an agreeable surprise?"

"And we mean to treat you all," added Lydia, "but you must lend us the
money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there." Then, showing
her purchases--"Look here, I have bought this bonnet. I do not think
it is very pretty; but I thought I might as well buy it as not. I shall
pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, and see if I can make it up any
better."

And when her sisters abused it as ugly, she added, with perfect
unconcern, "Oh! but there were two or three much uglier in the shop; and
when I have bought some prettier-coloured satin to trim it with fresh, I
think it will be very tolerable. Besides, it will not much signify what
one wears this summer, after the ----shire have left Meryton, and they
are going in a fortnight."

"Are they indeed!" cried Elizabeth, with the greatest satisfaction.

"They are going to be encamped near Brighton; and I do so want papa to
take us all there for the summer! It would be such a delicious scheme;
and I dare say would hardly cost anything at all. Mamma would like to
go too of all things! Only think what a miserable summer else we shall
have!"

"Yes," thought Elizabeth, "_that_ would be a delightful scheme indeed,
and completely do for us at once. Good Heaven! Brighton, and a whole
campful of soldiers, to us, who have been overset already by one poor
regiment of militia, and the monthly balls of Meryton!"

"Now I have got some news for you," said Lydia, as they sat down at
table. "What do you think? It is excellent news--capital news--and about
a certain person we all like!"

Jane and Elizabeth looked at each other, and the waiter was told he need
not stay. Lydia laughed, and said:

"Aye, that is just like your formality and discretion. You thought the
waiter must not hear, as if he cared! I dare say he often hears worse
things said than I am going to say. But he is an ugly fellow! I am glad
he is gone. I never saw such a long chin in my life. Well, but now for
my news; it is about dear Wickham; too good for the waiter, is it not?
There is no danger of Wickham's marrying Mary King. There's for you! She
is gone down to her uncle at Liverpool: gone to stay. Wickham is safe."

"And Mary King is safe!" added Elizabeth; "safe from a connection
imprudent as to fortune."

"She is a great fool for going away, if she liked him."

"But I hope there is no strong attachment on either side," said Jane.

"I am sure there is not on _his_. I will answer for it, he never cared
three straws about her--who could about such a nasty little freckled
thing?"

Elizabeth was shocked to think that, however incapable of such
coarseness of _expression_ herself, the coarseness of the _sentiment_
was little other than her own breast had harboured and fancied liberal!

As soon as all had ate, and the elder ones paid, the carriage was
ordered; and after some contrivance, the whole party, with all their
boxes, work-bags, and parcels, and the unwelcome addition of Kitty's and
Lydia's purchases, were seated in it.

"How nicely we are all crammed in," cried Lydia. "I am glad I bought my
bonnet, if it is only for the fun of having another bandbox! Well, now
let us be quite comfortable and snug, and talk and laugh all the way
home. And in the first place, let us hear what has happened to you all
since you went away. Have you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any
flirting? I was in great hopes that one of you would have got a husband
before you came back. Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare.
She is almost three-and-twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not
being married before three-and-twenty! My aunt Phillips wants you so to
get husbands, you can't think. She says Lizzy had better have taken Mr.
Collins; but _I_ do not think there would have been any fun in it. Lord!
how I should like to be married before any of you; and then I would
chaperon you about to all the balls. Dear me! we had such a good piece
of fun the other day at Colonel Forster's. Kitty and me were to spend
the day there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a little dance in the
evening; (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are _such_ friends!) and so
she asked the two Harringtons to come, but Harriet was ill, and so Pen
was forced to come by herself; and then, what do you think we did? We
dressed up Chamberlayne in woman's clothes on purpose to pass for a
lady, only think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs.
Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow
one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how well he looked! When Denny,
and Wickham, and Pratt, and two or three more of the men came in, they
did not know him in the least. Lord! how I laughed! and so did Mrs.
Forster. I thought I should have died. And _that_ made the men suspect
something, and then they soon found out what was the matter."

With such kinds of histories of their parties and good jokes, did
Lydia, assisted by Kitty's hints and additions, endeavour to amuse her
companions all the way to Longbourn. Elizabeth listened as little as she
could, but there was no escaping the frequent mention of Wickham's name.

Their reception at home was most kind. Mrs. Bennet rejoiced to see Jane
in undiminished beauty; and more than once during dinner did Mr. Bennet
say voluntarily to Elizabeth:

"I am glad you are come back, Lizzy."

Their party in the dining-room was large, for almost all the Lucases
came to meet Maria and hear the news; and various were the subjects that
occupied them: Lady Lucas was inquiring of Maria, after the welfare and
poultry of her eldest daughter; Mrs. Bennet was doubly engaged, on one
hand collecting an account of the present fashions from Jane, who sat
some way below her, and, on the other, retailing them all to the younger
Lucases; and Lydia, in a voice rather louder than any other person's,
was enumerating the various pleasures of the morning to anybody who
would hear her.

"Oh! Mary," said she, "I wish you had gone with us, for we had such fun!
As we went along, Kitty and I drew up the blinds, and pretended there
was nobody in the coach; and I should have gone so all the way, if Kitty
had not been sick; and when we got to the George, I do think we behaved
very handsomely, for we treated the other three with the nicest cold
luncheon in the world, and if you would have gone, we would have treated
you too. And then when we came away it was such fun! I thought we never
should have got into the coach. I was ready to die of laughter. And then
we were so merry all the way home! we talked and laughed so loud, that
anybody might have heard us ten miles off!"

To this Mary very gravely replied, "Far be it from me, my dear sister,
to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be congenial with the
generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for
_me_--I should infinitely prefer a book."

But of this answer Lydia heard not a word. She seldom listened to
anybody for more than half a minute, and never attended to Mary at all.

In the afternoon Lydia was urgent with the rest of the girls to walk
to Meryton, and to see how everybody went on; but Elizabeth steadily
opposed the scheme. It should not be said that the Miss Bennets could
not be at home half a day before they were in pursuit of the officers.
There was another reason too for her opposition. She dreaded seeing Mr.
Wickham again, and was resolved to avoid it as long as possible. The
comfort to _her_ of the regiment's approaching removal was indeed beyond
expression. In a fortnight they were to go--and once gone, she hoped
there could be nothing more to plague her on his account.

She had not been many hours at home before she found that the Brighton
scheme, of which Lydia had given them a hint at the inn, was under
frequent discussion between her parents. Elizabeth saw directly that her
father had not the smallest intention of yielding; but his answers were
at the same time so vague and equivocal, that her mother, though often
disheartened, had never yet despaired of succeeding at last.



Chapter 40


Elizabeth's impatience to acquaint Jane with what had happened could
no longer be overcome; and at length, resolving to suppress every
particular in which her sister was concerned, and preparing her to be
surprised, she related to her the next morning the chief of the scene
between Mr. Darcy and herself.

Miss Bennet's astonishment was soon lessened by the strong sisterly
partiality which made any admiration of Elizabeth appear perfectly
natural; and all surprise was shortly lost in other feelings. She was
sorry that Mr. Darcy should have delivered his sentiments in a manner so
little suited to recommend them; but still more was she grieved for the
unhappiness which her sister's refusal must have given him.

"His being so sure of succeeding was wrong," said she, "and certainly
ought not to have appeared; but consider how much it must increase his
disappointment!"

"Indeed," replied Elizabeth, "I am heartily sorry for him; but he has
other feelings, which will probably soon drive away his regard for me.
You do not blame me, however, for refusing him?"

"Blame you! Oh, no."

"But you blame me for having spoken so warmly of Wickham?"

"No--I do not know that you were wrong in saying what you did."

"But you _will_ know it, when I tell you what happened the very next
day."

She then spoke of the letter, repeating the whole of its contents as far
as they concerned George Wickham. What a stroke was this for poor Jane!
who would willingly have gone through the world without believing that
so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind, as was here
collected in one individual. Nor was Darcy's vindication, though
grateful to her feelings, capable of consoling her for such discovery.
Most earnestly did she labour to prove the probability of error, and
seek to clear the one without involving the other.

"This will not do," said Elizabeth; "you never will be able to make both
of them good for anything. Take your choice, but you must be satisfied
with only one. There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just
enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting
about pretty much. For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy's;
but you shall do as you choose."

It was some time, however, before a smile could be extorted from Jane.

"I do not know when I have been more shocked," said she. "Wickham so
very bad! It is almost past belief. And poor Mr. Darcy! Dear Lizzy, only
consider what he must have suffered. Such a disappointment! and with the
knowledge of your ill opinion, too! and having to relate such a thing
of his sister! It is really too distressing. I am sure you must feel it
so."

"Oh! no, my regret and compassion are all done away by seeing you so
full of both. I know you will do him such ample justice, that I am
growing every moment more unconcerned and indifferent. Your profusion
makes me saving; and if you lament over him much longer, my heart will
be as light as a feather."

"Poor Wickham! there is such an expression of goodness in his
countenance! such an openness and gentleness in his manner!"

"There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those
two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the
appearance of it."

"I never thought Mr. Darcy so deficient in the _appearance_ of it as you
used to do."

"And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike
to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an
opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually
abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot always be laughing
at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

"Lizzy, when you first read that letter, I am sure you could not treat
the matter as you do now."

"Indeed, I could not. I was uncomfortable enough, I may say unhappy. And
with no one to speak to about what I felt, no Jane to comfort me and say
that I had not been so very weak and vain and nonsensical as I knew I
had! Oh! how I wanted you!"

"How unfortunate that you should have used such very strong expressions
in speaking of Wickham to Mr. Darcy, for now they _do_ appear wholly
undeserved."

"Certainly. But the misfortune of speaking with bitterness is a most
natural consequence of the prejudices I had been encouraging. There
is one point on which I want your advice. I want to be told whether I
ought, or ought not, to make our acquaintances in general understand
Wickham's character."

Miss Bennet paused a little, and then replied, "Surely there can be no
occasion for exposing him so dreadfully. What is your opinion?"

"That it ought not to be attempted. Mr. Darcy has not authorised me
to make his communication public. On the contrary, every particular
relative to his sister was meant to be kept as much as possible to
myself; and if I endeavour to undeceive people as to the rest of his
conduct, who will believe me? The general prejudice against Mr. Darcy
is so violent, that it would be the death of half the good people in
Meryton to attempt to place him in an amiable light. I am not equal
to it. Wickham will soon be gone; and therefore it will not signify to
anyone here what he really is. Some time hence it will be all found out,
and then we may laugh at their stupidity in not knowing it before. At
present I will say nothing about it."

"You are quite right. To have his errors made public might ruin him for
ever. He is now, perhaps, sorry for what he has done, and anxious to
re-establish a character. We must not make him desperate."

The tumult of Elizabeth's mind was allayed by this conversation. She had
got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her for a fortnight,
and was certain of a willing listener in Jane, whenever she might wish
to talk again of either. But there was still something lurking behind,
of which prudence forbade the disclosure. She dared not relate the other
half of Mr. Darcy's letter, nor explain to her sister how sincerely she
had been valued by her friend. Here was knowledge in which no one
could partake; and she was sensible that nothing less than a perfect
understanding between the parties could justify her in throwing off
this last encumbrance of mystery. "And then," said she, "if that very
improbable event should ever take place, I shall merely be able to
tell what Bingley may tell in a much more agreeable manner himself. The
liberty of communication cannot be mine till it has lost all its value!"

She was now, on being settled at home, at leisure to observe the real
state of her sister's spirits. Jane was not happy. She still cherished a
very tender affection for Bingley. Having never even fancied herself
in love before, her regard had all the warmth of first attachment,
and, from her age and disposition, greater steadiness than most first
attachments often boast; and so fervently did she value his remembrance,
and prefer him to every other man, that all her good sense, and all her
attention to the feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the
indulgence of those regrets which must have been injurious to her own
health and their tranquillity.

"Well, Lizzy," said Mrs. Bennet one day, "what is your opinion _now_ of
this sad business of Jane's? For my part, I am determined never to speak
of it again to anybody. I told my sister Phillips so the other day. But
I cannot find out that Jane saw anything of him in London. Well, he is
a very undeserving young man--and I do not suppose there's the least
chance in the world of her ever getting him now. There is no talk of
his coming to Netherfield again in the summer; and I have inquired of
everybody, too, who is likely to know."

"I do not believe he will ever live at Netherfield any more."

"Oh well! it is just as he chooses. Nobody wants him to come. Though I
shall always say he used my daughter extremely ill; and if I was her, I
would not have put up with it. Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will
die of a broken heart; and then he will be sorry for what he has done."

But as Elizabeth could not receive comfort from any such expectation,
she made no answer.

"Well, Lizzy," continued her mother, soon afterwards, "and so the
Collinses live very comfortable, do they? Well, well, I only hope
it will last. And what sort of table do they keep? Charlotte is an
excellent manager, I dare say. If she is half as sharp as her
mother, she is saving enough. There is nothing extravagant in _their_
housekeeping, I dare say."

"No, nothing at all."

"A great deal of good management, depend upon it. Yes, yes. _they_ will
take care not to outrun their income. _They_ will never be distressed
for money. Well, much good may it do them! And so, I suppose, they often
talk of having Longbourn when your father is dead. They look upon it as
quite their own, I dare say, whenever that happens."

"It was a subject which they could not mention before me."

"No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt they
often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an
estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be
ashamed of having one that was only entailed on me."



Chapter 41


The first week of their return was soon gone. The second began. It was
the last of the regiment's stay in Meryton, and all the young ladies
in the neighbourhood were drooping apace. The dejection was almost
universal. The elder Miss Bennets alone were still able to eat, drink,
and sleep, and pursue the usual course of their employments. Very
frequently were they reproached for this insensibility by Kitty and
Lydia, whose own misery was extreme, and who could not comprehend such
hard-heartedness in any of the family.

"Good Heaven! what is to become of us? What are we to do?" would they
often exclaim in the bitterness of woe. "How can you be smiling so,
Lizzy?"

Their affectionate mother shared all their grief; she remembered what
she had herself endured on a similar occasion, five-and-twenty years
ago.

"I am sure," said she, "I cried for two days together when Colonel
Miller's regiment went away. I thought I should have broken my heart."

"I am sure I shall break _mine_," said Lydia.

"If one could but go to Brighton!" observed Mrs. Bennet.

"Oh, yes!--if one could but go to Brighton! But papa is so
disagreeable."

"A little sea-bathing would set me up forever."

"And my aunt Phillips is sure it would do _me_ a great deal of good,"
added Kitty.

Such were the kind of lamentations resounding perpetually through
Longbourn House. Elizabeth tried to be diverted by them; but all sense
of pleasure was lost in shame. She felt anew the justice of Mr. Darcy's
objections; and never had she been so much disposed to pardon his
interference in the views of his friend.

But the gloom of Lydia's prospect was shortly cleared away; for she
received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the colonel of
the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton. This invaluable friend was a
very young woman, and very lately married. A resemblance in good humour
and good spirits had recommended her and Lydia to each other, and out of
their _three_ months' acquaintance they had been intimate _two_.

The rapture of Lydia on this occasion, her adoration of Mrs. Forster,
the delight of Mrs. Bennet, and the mortification of Kitty, are scarcely
to be described. Wholly inattentive to her sister's feelings, Lydia
flew about the house in restless ecstasy, calling for everyone's
congratulations, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever;
whilst the luckless Kitty continued in the parlour repined at her fate
in terms as unreasonable as her accent was peevish.

"I cannot see why Mrs. Forster should not ask _me_ as well as Lydia,"
said she, "Though I am _not_ her particular friend. I have just as much
right to be asked as she has, and more too, for I am two years older."

In vain did Elizabeth attempt to make her reasonable, and Jane to make
her resigned. As for Elizabeth herself, this invitation was so far from
exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother and Lydia, that she
considered it as the death warrant of all possibility of common sense
for the latter; and detestable as such a step must make her were it
known, she could not help secretly advising her father not to let her
go. She represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia's general
behaviour, the little advantage she could derive from the friendship of
such a woman as Mrs. Forster, and the probability of her being yet more
imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the temptations must
be greater than at home. He heard her attentively, and then said:

"Lydia will never be easy until she has exposed herself in some public
place or other, and we can never expect her to do it with so
little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the present
circumstances."

"If you were aware," said Elizabeth, "of the very great disadvantage to
us all which must arise from the public notice of Lydia's unguarded and
imprudent manner--nay, which has already arisen from it, I am sure you
would judge differently in the affair."

"Already arisen?" repeated Mr. Bennet. "What, has she frightened away
some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy! But do not be cast down. Such
squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity
are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the list of pitiful fellows who
have been kept aloof by Lydia's folly."

"Indeed you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. It is not
of particular, but of general evils, which I am now complaining. Our
importance, our respectability in the world must be affected by the
wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark
Lydia's character. Excuse me, for I must speak plainly. If you, my dear
father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and
of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of
her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character
will be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt
that ever made herself or her family ridiculous; a flirt, too, in the
worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction beyond
youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance and emptiness
of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal
contempt which her rage for admiration will excite. In this danger
Kitty also is comprehended. She will follow wherever Lydia leads. Vain,
ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled! Oh! my dear father, can you
suppose it possible that they will not be censured and despised wherever
they are known, and that their sisters will not be often involved in the
disgrace?"

Mr. Bennet saw that her whole heart was in the subject, and
affectionately taking her hand said in reply:

"Do not make yourself uneasy, my love. Wherever you and Jane are known
you must be respected and valued; and you will not appear to less
advantage for having a couple of--or I may say, three--very silly
sisters. We shall have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to
Brighton. Let her go, then. Colonel Forster is a sensible man, and will
keep her out of any real mischief; and she is luckily too poor to be an
object of prey to anybody. At Brighton she will be of less importance
even as a common flirt than she has been here. The officers will find
women better worth their notice. Let us hope, therefore, that her being
there may teach her her own insignificance. At any rate, she cannot grow
many degrees worse, without authorising us to lock her up for the rest
of her life."

With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content; but her own opinion
continued the same, and she left him disappointed and sorry. It was not
in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on
them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret
over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part of her
disposition.

Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of her conference with her
father, their indignation would hardly have found expression in their
united volubility. In Lydia's imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised
every possibility of earthly happiness. She saw, with the creative eye
of fancy, the streets of that gay bathing-place covered with officers.
She saw herself the object of attention, to tens and to scores of them
at present unknown. She saw all the glories of the camp--its tents
stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young
and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the view, she
saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six
officers at once.

Had she known her sister sought to tear her from such prospects and such
realities as these, what would have been her sensations? They could have
been understood only by her mother, who might have felt nearly the same.
Lydia's going to Brighton was all that consoled her for her melancholy
conviction of her husband's never intending to go there himself.

But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed; and their raptures
continued, with little intermission, to the very day of Lydia's leaving
home.

Elizabeth was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time. Having been
frequently in company with him since her return, agitation was pretty
well over; the agitations of formal partiality entirely so. She had even
learnt to detect, in the very gentleness which had first delighted
her, an affectation and a sameness to disgust and weary. In his present
behaviour to herself, moreover, she had a fresh source of displeasure,
for the inclination he soon testified of renewing those intentions which
had marked the early part of their acquaintance could only serve, after
what had since passed, to provoke her. She lost all concern for him in
finding herself thus selected as the object of such idle and frivolous
gallantry; and while she steadily repressed it, could not but feel the
reproof contained in his believing, that however long, and for whatever
cause, his attentions had been withdrawn, her vanity would be gratified,
and her preference secured at any time by their renewal.

On the very last day of the regiment's remaining at Meryton, he dined,
with other of the officers, at Longbourn; and so little was Elizabeth
disposed to part from him in good humour, that on his making some
inquiry as to the manner in which her time had passed at Hunsford, she
mentioned Colonel Fitzwilliam's and Mr. Darcy's having both spent three
weeks at Rosings, and asked him, if he was acquainted with the former.

He looked surprised, displeased, alarmed; but with a moment's
recollection and a returning smile, replied, that he had formerly seen
him often; and, after observing that he was a very gentlemanlike man,
asked her how she had liked him. Her answer was warmly in his favour.
With an air of indifference he soon afterwards added:

"How long did you say he was at Rosings?"

"Nearly three weeks."

"And you saw him frequently?"

"Yes, almost every day."

"His manners are very different from his cousin's."

"Yes, very different. But I think Mr. Darcy improves upon acquaintance."

"Indeed!" cried Mr. Wickham with a look which did not escape her. "And
pray, may I ask?--" But checking himself, he added, in a gayer tone, "Is
it in address that he improves? Has he deigned to add aught of civility
to his ordinary style?--for I dare not hope," he continued in a lower
and more serious tone, "that he is improved in essentials."

"Oh, no!" said Elizabeth. "In essentials, I believe, he is very much
what he ever was."

While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to
rejoice over her words, or to distrust their meaning. There was a
something in her countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive
and anxious attention, while she added:

"When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that
his mind or his manners were in a state of improvement, but that, from
knowing him better, his disposition was better understood."

Wickham's alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated
look; for a few minutes he was silent, till, shaking off his
embarrassment, he turned to her again, and said in the gentlest of
accents:

"You, who so well know my feeling towards Mr. Darcy, will readily
comprehend how sincerely I must rejoice that he is wise enough to assume
even the _appearance_ of what is right. His pride, in that direction,
may be of service, if not to himself, to many others, for it must only
deter him from such foul misconduct as I have suffered by. I only
fear that the sort of cautiousness to which you, I imagine, have been
alluding, is merely adopted on his visits to his aunt, of whose good
opinion and judgement he stands much in awe. His fear of her has always
operated, I know, when they were together; and a good deal is to be
imputed to his wish of forwarding the match with Miss de Bourgh, which I
am certain he has very much at heart."

Elizabeth could not repress a smile at this, but she answered only by a
slight inclination of the head. She saw that he wanted to engage her on
the old subject of his grievances, and she was in no humour to indulge
him. The rest of the evening passed with the _appearance_, on his
side, of usual cheerfulness, but with no further attempt to distinguish
Elizabeth; and they parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a
mutual desire of never meeting again.

When the party broke up, Lydia returned with Mrs. Forster to Meryton,
from whence they were to set out early the next morning. The separation
between her and her family was rather noisy than pathetic. Kitty was the
only one who shed tears; but she did weep from vexation and envy. Mrs.
Bennet was diffuse in her good wishes for the felicity of her daughter,
and impressive in her injunctions that she should not miss the
opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possible--advice which
there was every reason to believe would be well attended to; and in
the clamorous happiness of Lydia herself in bidding farewell, the more
gentle adieus of her sisters were uttered without being heard.



Chapter 42


Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could
not have formed a very pleasing opinion of conjugal felicity or domestic
comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance
of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a
woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in
their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect,
esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever; and all his views
of domestic happiness were overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of
a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own
imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often
console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice. He was fond of
the country and of books; and from these tastes had arisen his principal
enjoyments. To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, than as
her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not
the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his
wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true
philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.

Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her
father's behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but
respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of
herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to
banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation
and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own
children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so
strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so
unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising
from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents, which, rightly used,
might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even
if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.

When Elizabeth had rejoiced over Wickham's departure she found little
other cause for satisfaction in the loss of the regiment. Their parties
abroad were less varied than before, and at home she had a mother and
sister whose constant repinings at the dullness of everything around
them threw a real gloom over their domestic circle; and, though Kitty
might in time regain her natural degree of sense, since the disturbers
of her brain were removed, her other sister, from whose disposition
greater evil might be apprehended, was likely to be hardened in all
her folly and assurance by a situation of such double danger as a
watering-place and a camp. Upon the whole, therefore, she found, what
has been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had been
looking with impatient desire did not, in taking place, bring all the
satisfaction she had promised herself. It was consequently necessary to
name some other period for the commencement of actual felicity--to have
some other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by
again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the
present, and prepare for another disappointment. Her tour to the Lakes
was now the object of her happiest thoughts; it was her best consolation
for all the uncomfortable hours which the discontentedness of her mother
and Kitty made inevitable; and could she have included Jane in the
scheme, every part of it would have been perfect.

"But it is fortunate," thought she, "that I have something to wish for.
Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would be certain.
But here, by carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret in my
sister's absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of
pleasure realised. A scheme of which every part promises delight can
never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by
the defence of some little peculiar vexation."

When Lydia went away she promised to write very often and very minutely
to her mother and Kitty; but her letters were always long expected, and
always very short. Those to her mother contained little else than that
they were just returned from the library, where such and such officers
had attended them, and where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as
made her quite wild; that she had a new gown, or a new parasol, which
she would have described more fully, but was obliged to leave off in a
violent hurry, as Mrs. Forster called her, and they were going off to
the camp; and from her correspondence with her sister, there was still
less to be learnt--for her letters to Kitty, though rather longer, were
much too full of lines under the words to be made public.

After the first fortnight or three weeks of her absence, health, good
humour, and cheerfulness began to reappear at Longbourn. Everything wore
a happier aspect. The families who had been in town for the winter came
back again, and summer finery and summer engagements arose. Mrs. Bennet
was restored to her usual querulous serenity; and, by the middle of
June, Kitty was so much recovered as to be able to enter Meryton without
tears; an event of such happy promise as to make Elizabeth hope that by
the following Christmas she might be so tolerably reasonable as not to
mention an officer above once a day, unless, by some cruel and malicious
arrangement at the War Office, another regiment should be quartered in
Meryton.

The time fixed for the beginning of their northern tour was now fast
approaching, and a fortnight only was wanting of it, when a letter
arrived from Mrs. Gardiner, which at once delayed its commencement and
curtailed its extent. Mr. Gardiner would be prevented by business from
setting out till a fortnight later in July, and must be in London again
within a month, and as that left too short a period for them to go so
far, and see so much as they had proposed, or at least to see it with
the leisure and comfort they had built on, they were obliged to give up
the Lakes, and substitute a more contracted tour, and, according to the
present plan, were to go no farther northwards than Derbyshire. In that
county there was enough to be seen to occupy the chief of their three
weeks; and to Mrs. Gardiner it had a peculiarly strong attraction. The
town where she had formerly passed some years of her life, and where
they were now to spend a few days, was probably as great an object of
her curiosity as all the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth,
Dovedale, or the Peak.

Elizabeth was excessively disappointed; she had set her heart on seeing
the Lakes, and still thought there might have been time enough. But it
was her business to be satisfied--and certainly her temper to be happy;
and all was soon right again.

With the mention of Derbyshire there were many ideas connected. It was
impossible for her to see the word without thinking of Pemberley and its
owner. "But surely," said she, "I may enter his county with impunity,
and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me."

The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to pass away
before her uncle and aunt's arrival. But they did pass away, and Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at
Longbourn. The children, two girls of six and eight years old, and two
younger boys, were to be left under the particular care of their
cousin Jane, who was the general favourite, and whose steady sense and
sweetness of temper exactly adapted her for attending to them in every
way--teaching them, playing with them, and loving them.

The Gardiners stayed only one night at Longbourn, and set off the
next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and amusement.
One enjoyment was certain--that of suitableness of companions;
a suitableness which comprehended health and temper to bear
inconveniences--cheerfulness to enhance every pleasure--and affection
and intelligence, which might supply it among themselves if there were
disappointments abroad.

It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire,
nor of any of the remarkable places through which their route thither
lay; Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenilworth, Birmingham, etc. are
sufficiently known. A small part of Derbyshire is all the present
concern. To the little town of Lambton, the scene of Mrs. Gardiner's
former residence, and where she had lately learned some acquaintance
still remained, they bent their steps, after having seen all the
principal wonders of the country; and within five miles of Lambton,
Elizabeth found from her aunt that Pemberley was situated. It was not
in their direct road, nor more than a mile or two out of it. In
talking over their route the evening before, Mrs. Gardiner expressed
an inclination to see the place again. Mr. Gardiner declared his
willingness, and Elizabeth was applied to for her approbation.

"My love, should not you like to see a place of which you have heard
so much?" said her aunt; "a place, too, with which so many of your
acquaintances are connected. Wickham passed all his youth there, you
know."

Elizabeth was distressed. She felt that she had no business at
Pemberley, and was obliged to assume a disinclination for seeing it. She
must own that she was tired of seeing great houses; after going over so
many, she really had no pleasure in fine carpets or satin curtains.

Mrs. Gardiner abused her stupidity. "If it were merely a fine house
richly furnished," said she, "I should not care about it myself; but
the grounds are delightful. They have some of the finest woods in the
country."

Elizabeth said no more--but her mind could not acquiesce. The
possibility of meeting Mr. Darcy, while viewing the place, instantly
occurred. It would be dreadful! She blushed at the very idea, and
thought it would be better to speak openly to her aunt than to run such
a risk. But against this there were objections; and she finally resolved
that it could be the last resource, if her private inquiries to the
absence of the family were unfavourably answered.

Accordingly, when she retired at night, she asked the chambermaid
whether Pemberley were not a very fine place? what was the name of its
proprietor? and, with no little alarm, whether the family were down for
the summer? A most welcome negative followed the last question--and her
alarms now being removed, she was at leisure to feel a great deal of
curiosity to see the house herself; and when the subject was revived the
next morning, and she was again applied to, could readily answer, and
with a proper air of indifference, that she had not really any dislike
to the scheme. To Pemberley, therefore, they were to go.



Chapter 43


Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of
Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length they turned
in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter.

The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They
entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through
a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent.

Elizabeth's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired
every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for
half-a-mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable
eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by
Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which
the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone
building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of
high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was
swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks
were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She
had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural
beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were
all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that
to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!

They descended the hill, crossed the bridge, and drove to the door; and,
while examining the nearer aspect of the house, all her apprehension of
meeting its owner returned. She dreaded lest the chambermaid had been
mistaken. On applying to see the place, they were admitted into the
hall; and Elizabeth, as they waited for the housekeeper, had leisure to
wonder at her being where she was.

The housekeeper came; a respectable-looking elderly woman, much less
fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of finding her. They
followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large, well proportioned
room, handsomely fitted up. Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went
to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, which
they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance,
was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and
she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its
banks and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it,
with delight. As they passed into other rooms these objects were taking
different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be
seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to
the fortune of its proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of
his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of
splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.

"And of this place," thought she, "I might have been mistress! With
these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of
viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and
welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt. But no,"--recollecting
herself--"that could never be; my uncle and aunt would have been lost to
me; I should not have been allowed to invite them."

This was a lucky recollection--it saved her from something very like
regret.

She longed to inquire of the housekeeper whether her master was really
absent, but had not the courage for it. At length however, the question
was asked by her uncle; and she turned away with alarm, while Mrs.
Reynolds replied that he was, adding, "But we expect him to-morrow, with
a large party of friends." How rejoiced was Elizabeth that their own
journey had not by any circumstance been delayed a day!

Her aunt now called her to look at a picture. She approached and saw the
likeness of Mr. Wickham, suspended, amongst several other miniatures,
over the mantelpiece. Her aunt asked her, smilingly, how she liked it.
The housekeeper came forward, and told them it was a picture of a young
gentleman, the son of her late master's steward, who had been brought
up by him at his own expense. "He is now gone into the army," she added;
"but I am afraid he has turned out very wild."

Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece with a smile, but Elizabeth could not
return it.

"And that," said Mrs. Reynolds, pointing to another of the miniatures,
"is my master--and very like him. It was drawn at the same time as the
other--about eight years ago."

"I have heard much of your master's fine person," said Mrs. Gardiner,
looking at the picture; "it is a handsome face. But, Lizzy, you can tell
us whether it is like or not."

Mrs. Reynolds respect for Elizabeth seemed to increase on this
intimation of her knowing her master.

"Does that young lady know Mr. Darcy?"

Elizabeth coloured, and said: "A little."

"And do not you think him a very handsome gentleman, ma'am?"

"Yes, very handsome."

"I am sure I know none so handsome; but in the gallery up stairs you
will see a finer, larger picture of him than this. This room was my late
master's favourite room, and these miniatures are just as they used to
be then. He was very fond of them."

This accounted to Elizabeth for Mr. Wickham's being among them.

Mrs. Reynolds then directed their attention to one of Miss Darcy, drawn
when she was only eight years old.

"And is Miss Darcy as handsome as her brother?" said Mrs. Gardiner.

"Oh! yes--the handsomest young lady that ever was seen; and so
accomplished!--She plays and sings all day long. In the next room is
a new instrument just come down for her--a present from my master; she
comes here to-morrow with him."

Mr. Gardiner, whose manners were very easy and pleasant, encouraged her
communicativeness by his questions and remarks; Mrs. Reynolds, either
by pride or attachment, had evidently great pleasure in talking of her
master and his sister.

"Is your master much at Pemberley in the course of the year?"

"Not so much as I could wish, sir; but I dare say he may spend half his
time here; and Miss Darcy is always down for the summer months."

"Except," thought Elizabeth, "when she goes to Ramsgate."

"If your master would marry, you might see more of him."

"Yes, sir; but I do not know when _that_ will be. I do not know who is
good enough for him."

Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner smiled. Elizabeth could not help saying, "It is
very much to his credit, I am sure, that you should think so."

"I say no more than the truth, and everybody will say that knows him,"
replied the other. Elizabeth thought this was going pretty far; and she
listened with increasing astonishment as the housekeeper added, "I have
never known a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever
since he was four years old."

This was praise, of all others most extraordinary, most opposite to her
ideas. That he was not a good-tempered man had been her firmest opinion.
Her keenest attention was awakened; she longed to hear more, and was
grateful to her uncle for saying:

"There are very few people of whom so much can be said. You are lucky in
having such a master."

"Yes, sir, I know I am. If I were to go through the world, I could
not meet with a better. But I have always observed, that they who are
good-natured when children, are good-natured when they grow up; and
he was always the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the
world."

Elizabeth almost stared at her. "Can this be Mr. Darcy?" thought she.

"His father was an excellent man," said Mrs. Gardiner.

"Yes, ma'am, that he was indeed; and his son will be just like him--just
as affable to the poor."

Elizabeth listened, wondered, doubted, and was impatient for more. Mrs.
Reynolds could interest her on no other point. She related the subjects
of the pictures, the dimensions of the rooms, and the price of the
furniture, in vain. Mr. Gardiner, highly amused by the kind of family
prejudice to which he attributed her excessive commendation of her
master, soon led again to the subject; and she dwelt with energy on his
many merits as they proceeded together up the great staircase.

"He is the best landlord, and the best master," said she, "that ever
lived; not like the wild young men nowadays, who think of nothing but
themselves. There is not one of his tenants or servants but will give
him a good name. Some people call him proud; but I am sure I never saw
anything of it. To my fancy, it is only because he does not rattle away
like other young men."

"In what an amiable light does this place him!" thought Elizabeth.

"This fine account of him," whispered her aunt as they walked, "is not
quite consistent with his behaviour to our poor friend."

"Perhaps we might be deceived."

"That is not very likely; our authority was too good."

On reaching the spacious lobby above they were shown into a very pretty
sitting-room, lately fitted up with greater elegance and lightness than
the apartments below; and were informed that it was but just done to
give pleasure to Miss Darcy, who had taken a liking to the room when
last at Pemberley.

"He is certainly a good brother," said Elizabeth, as she walked towards
one of the windows.

Mrs. Reynolds anticipated Miss Darcy's delight, when she should enter
the room. "And this is always the way with him," she added. "Whatever
can give his sister any pleasure is sure to be done in a moment. There
is nothing he would not do for her."

The picture-gallery, and two or three of the principal bedrooms, were
all that remained to be shown. In the former were many good paintings;
but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art; and from such as had been already
visible below, she had willingly turned to look at some drawings of Miss
Darcy's, in crayons, whose subjects were usually more interesting, and
also more intelligible.

In the gallery there were many family portraits, but they could have
little to fix the attention of a stranger. Elizabeth walked in quest of
the only face whose features would be known to her. At last it arrested
her--and she beheld a striking resemblance to Mr. Darcy, with such a
smile over the face as she remembered to have sometimes seen when he
looked at her. She stood several minutes before the picture, in earnest
contemplation, and returned to it again before they quitted the gallery.
Mrs. Reynolds informed them that it had been taken in his father's
lifetime.

There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth's mind, a more gentle
sensation towards the original than she had ever felt at the height of
their acquaintance. The commendation bestowed on him by Mrs. Reynolds
was of no trifling nature. What praise is more valuable than the praise
of an intelligent servant? As a brother, a landlord, a master, she
considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship!--how
much of pleasure or pain was it in his power to bestow!--how much of
good or evil must be done by him! Every idea that had been brought
forward by the housekeeper was favourable to his character, and as she
stood before the canvas on which he was represented, and fixed his
eyes upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of
gratitude than it had ever raised before; she remembered its warmth, and
softened its impropriety of expression.

When all of the house that was open to general inspection had been seen,
they returned downstairs, and, taking leave of the housekeeper, were
consigned over to the gardener, who met them at the hall-door.

As they walked across the hall towards the river, Elizabeth turned back
to look again; her uncle and aunt stopped also, and while the former
was conjecturing as to the date of the building, the owner of it himself
suddenly came forward from the road, which led behind it to the stables.

They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was his
appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their eyes
instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest
blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immovable from
surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced towards the party,
and spoke to Elizabeth, if not in terms of perfect composure, at least
of perfect civility.

She had instinctively turned away; but stopping on his approach,
received his compliments with an embarrassment impossible to be
overcome. Had his first appearance, or his resemblance to the picture
they had just been examining, been insufficient to assure the other two
that they now saw Mr. Darcy, the gardener's expression of surprise, on
beholding his master, must immediately have told it. They stood a little
aloof while he was talking to their niece, who, astonished and confused,
scarcely dared lift her eyes to his face, and knew not what answer
she returned to his civil inquiries after her family. Amazed at the
alteration of his manner since they last parted, every sentence that
he uttered was increasing her embarrassment; and every idea of the
impropriety of her being found there recurring to her mind, the few
minutes in which they continued were some of the most uncomfortable in
her life. Nor did he seem much more at ease; when he spoke, his accent
had none of its usual sedateness; and he repeated his inquiries as
to the time of her having left Longbourn, and of her having stayed in
Derbyshire, so often, and in so hurried a way, as plainly spoke the
distraction of his thoughts.

At length every idea seemed to fail him; and, after standing a few
moments without saying a word, he suddenly recollected himself, and took
leave.

The others then joined her, and expressed admiration of his figure; but
Elizabeth heard not a word, and wholly engrossed by her own feelings,
followed them in silence. She was overpowered by shame and vexation. Her
coming there was the most unfortunate, the most ill-judged thing in the
world! How strange it must appear to him! In what a disgraceful light
might it not strike so vain a man! It might seem as if she had purposely
thrown herself in his way again! Oh! why did she come? Or, why did he
thus come a day before he was expected? Had they been only ten minutes
sooner, they should have been beyond the reach of his discrimination;
for it was plain that he was that moment arrived--that moment alighted
from his horse or his carriage. She blushed again and again over
the perverseness of the meeting. And his behaviour, so strikingly
altered--what could it mean? That he should even speak to her was
amazing!--but to speak with such civility, to inquire after her family!
Never in her life had she seen his manners so little dignified, never
had he spoken with such gentleness as on this unexpected meeting. What
a contrast did it offer to his last address in Rosings Park, when he put
his letter into her hand! She knew not what to think, or how to account
for it.

They had now entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water, and
every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or a finer
reach of the woods to which they were approaching; but it was some time
before Elizabeth was sensible of any of it; and, though she answered
mechanically to the repeated appeals of her uncle and aunt, and
seemed to direct her eyes to such objects as they pointed out, she
distinguished no part of the scene. Her thoughts were all fixed on that
one spot of Pemberley House, whichever it might be, where Mr. Darcy then
was. She longed to know what at the moment was passing in his mind--in
what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything,
she was still dear to him. Perhaps he had been civil only because he
felt himself at ease; yet there had been _that_ in his voice which was
not like ease. Whether he had felt more of pain or of pleasure in
seeing her she could not tell, but he certainly had not seen her with
composure.

At length, however, the remarks of her companions on her absence of mind
aroused her, and she felt the necessity of appearing more like herself.

They entered the woods, and bidding adieu to the river for a while,
ascended some of the higher grounds; when, in spots where the opening of
the trees gave the eye power to wander, were many charming views of the
valley, the opposite hills, with the long range of woods overspreading
many, and occasionally part of the stream. Mr. Gardiner expressed a wish
of going round the whole park, but feared it might be beyond a walk.
With a triumphant smile they were told that it was ten miles round.
It settled the matter; and they pursued the accustomed circuit; which
brought them again, after some time, in a descent among hanging woods,
to the edge of the water, and one of its narrowest parts. They crossed
it by a simple bridge, in character with the general air of the scene;
it was a spot less adorned than any they had yet visited; and the
valley, here contracted into a glen, allowed room only for the stream,
and a narrow walk amidst the rough coppice-wood which bordered it.
Elizabeth longed to explore its windings; but when they had crossed the
bridge, and perceived their distance from the house, Mrs. Gardiner,
who was not a great walker, could go no farther, and thought only
of returning to the carriage as quickly as possible. Her niece was,
therefore, obliged to submit, and they took their way towards the house
on the opposite side of the river, in the nearest direction; but their
progress was slow, for Mr. Gardiner, though seldom able to indulge the
taste, was very fond of fishing, and was so much engaged in watching the
occasional appearance of some trout in the water, and talking to the
man about them, that he advanced but little. Whilst wandering on in this
slow manner, they were again surprised, and Elizabeth's astonishment
was quite equal to what it had been at first, by the sight of Mr. Darcy
approaching them, and at no great distance. The walk being here
less sheltered than on the other side, allowed them to see him before
they met. Elizabeth, however astonished, was at least more prepared
for an interview than before, and resolved to appear and to speak with
calmness, if he really intended to meet them. For a few moments, indeed,
she felt that he would probably strike into some other path. The idea
lasted while a turning in the walk concealed him from their view; the
turning past, he was immediately before them. With a glance, she saw
that he had lost none of his recent civility; and, to imitate his
politeness, she began, as they met, to admire the beauty of the place;
but she had not got beyond the words "delightful," and "charming," when
some unlucky recollections obtruded, and she fancied that praise of
Pemberley from her might be mischievously construed. Her colour changed,
and she said no more.

Mrs. Gardiner was standing a little behind; and on her pausing, he asked
her if she would do him the honour of introducing him to her friends.
This was a stroke of civility for which she was quite unprepared;
and she could hardly suppress a smile at his being now seeking the
acquaintance of some of those very people against whom his pride had
revolted in his offer to herself. "What will be his surprise," thought
she, "when he knows who they are? He takes them now for people of
fashion."

The introduction, however, was immediately made; and as she named their
relationship to herself, she stole a sly look at him, to see how he bore
it, and was not without the expectation of his decamping as fast as he
could from such disgraceful companions. That he was _surprised_ by the
connection was evident; he sustained it, however, with fortitude, and
so far from going away, turned back with them, and entered into
conversation with Mr. Gardiner. Elizabeth could not but be pleased,
could not but triumph. It was consoling that he should know she had
some relations for whom there was no need to blush. She listened most
attentively to all that passed between them, and gloried in every
expression, every sentence of her uncle, which marked his intelligence,
his taste, or his good manners.

The conversation soon turned upon fishing; and she heard Mr. Darcy
invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as often as he
chose while he continued in the neighbourhood, offering at the same time
to supply him with fishing tackle, and pointing out those parts of
the stream where there was usually most sport. Mrs. Gardiner, who was
walking arm-in-arm with Elizabeth, gave her a look expressive of wonder.
Elizabeth said nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly; the compliment
must be all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was extreme, and
continually was she repeating, "Why is he so altered? From what can
it proceed? It cannot be for _me_--it cannot be for _my_ sake that his
manners are thus softened. My reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a
change as this. It is impossible that he should still love me."

After walking some time in this way, the two ladies in front, the two
gentlemen behind, on resuming their places, after descending to
the brink of the river for the better inspection of some curious
water-plant, there chanced to be a little alteration. It originated
in Mrs. Gardiner, who, fatigued by the exercise of the morning, found
Elizabeth's arm inadequate to her support, and consequently preferred
her husband's. Mr. Darcy took her place by her niece, and they walked on
together. After a short silence, the lady first spoke. She wished him
to know that she had been assured of his absence before she came to the
place, and accordingly began by observing, that his arrival had been
very unexpected--"for your housekeeper," she added, "informed us that
you would certainly not be here till to-morrow; and indeed, before we
left Bakewell, we understood that you were not immediately expected
in the country." He acknowledged the truth of it all, and said that
business with his steward had occasioned his coming forward a few hours
before the rest of the party with whom he had been travelling. "They
will join me early to-morrow," he continued, "and among them are some
who will claim an acquaintance with you--Mr. Bingley and his sisters."

Elizabeth answered only by a slight bow. Her thoughts were instantly
driven back to the time when Mr. Bingley's name had been the last
mentioned between them; and, if she might judge by his complexion, _his_
mind was not very differently engaged.

"There is also one other person in the party," he continued after a
pause, "who more particularly wishes to be known to you. Will you allow
me, or do I ask too much, to introduce my sister to your acquaintance
during your stay at Lambton?"

The surprise of such an application was great indeed; it was too great
for her to know in what manner she acceded to it. She immediately felt
that whatever desire Miss Darcy might have of being acquainted with her
must be the work of her brother, and, without looking farther, it was
satisfactory; it was gratifying to know that his resentment had not made
him think really ill of her.

They now walked on in silence, each of them deep in thought. Elizabeth
was not comfortable; that was impossible; but she was flattered and
pleased. His wish of introducing his sister to her was a compliment of
the highest kind. They soon outstripped the others, and when they had
reached the carriage, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner were half a quarter of a
mile behind.

He then asked her to walk into the house--but she declared herself not
tired, and they stood together on the lawn. At such a time much might
have been said, and silence was very awkward. She wanted to talk, but
there seemed to be an embargo on every subject. At last she recollected
that she had been travelling, and they talked of Matlock and Dove Dale
with great perseverance. Yet time and her aunt moved slowly--and her
patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tete-a-tete was
over. On Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's coming up they were all pressed to go
into the house and take some refreshment; but this was declined, and
they parted on each side with utmost politeness. Mr. Darcy handed the
ladies into the carriage; and when it drove off, Elizabeth saw him
walking slowly towards the house.

The observations of her uncle and aunt now began; and each of them
pronounced him to be infinitely superior to anything they had expected.
"He is perfectly well behaved, polite, and unassuming," said her uncle.

"There _is_ something a little stately in him, to be sure," replied her
aunt, "but it is confined to his air, and is not unbecoming. I can now
say with the housekeeper, that though some people may call him proud, I
have seen nothing of it."

"I was never more surprised than by his behaviour to us. It was more
than civil; it was really attentive; and there was no necessity for such
attention. His acquaintance with Elizabeth was very trifling."

"To be sure, Lizzy," said her aunt, "he is not so handsome as Wickham;
or, rather, he has not Wickham's countenance, for his features
are perfectly good. But how came you to tell me that he was so
disagreeable?"

Elizabeth excused herself as well as she could; said that she had liked
him better when they had met in Kent than before, and that she had never
seen him so pleasant as this morning.

"But perhaps he may be a little whimsical in his civilities," replied
her uncle. "Your great men often are; and therefore I shall not take him
at his word, as he might change his mind another day, and warn me off
his grounds."

Elizabeth felt that they had entirely misunderstood his character, but
said nothing.

"From what we have seen of him," continued Mrs. Gardiner, "I really
should not have thought that he could have behaved in so cruel a way by
anybody as he has done by poor Wickham. He has not an ill-natured look.
On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he
speaks. And there is something of dignity in his countenance that would
not give one an unfavourable idea of his heart. But, to be sure, the
good lady who showed us his house did give him a most flaming character!
I could hardly help laughing aloud sometimes. But he is a liberal
master, I suppose, and _that_ in the eye of a servant comprehends every
virtue."

Elizabeth here felt herself called on to say something in vindication of
his behaviour to Wickham; and therefore gave them to understand, in
as guarded a manner as she could, that by what she had heard from
his relations in Kent, his actions were capable of a very different
construction; and that his character was by no means so faulty, nor
Wickham's so amiable, as they had been considered in Hertfordshire. In
confirmation of this, she related the particulars of all the pecuniary
transactions in which they had been connected, without actually naming
her authority, but stating it to be such as might be relied on.

Mrs. Gardiner was surprised and concerned; but as they were now
approaching the scene of her former pleasures, every idea gave way to
the charm of recollection; and she was too much engaged in pointing out
to her husband all the interesting spots in its environs to think of
anything else. Fatigued as she had been by the morning's walk they
had no sooner dined than she set off again in quest of her former
acquaintance, and the evening was spent in the satisfactions of a
intercourse renewed after many years' discontinuance.

The occurrences of the day were too full of interest to leave Elizabeth
much attention for any of these new friends; and she could do nothing
but think, and think with wonder, of Mr. Darcy's civility, and, above
all, of his wishing her to be acquainted with his sister.



Chapter 44


Elizabeth had settled it that Mr. Darcy would bring his sister to visit
her the very day after her reaching Pemberley; and was consequently
resolved not to be out of sight of the inn the whole of that morning.
But her conclusion was false; for on the very morning after their
arrival at Lambton, these visitors came. They had been walking about the
place with some of their new friends, and were just returning to the inn
to dress themselves for dining with the same family, when the sound of a
carriage drew them to a window, and they saw a gentleman and a lady in
a curricle driving up the street. Elizabeth immediately recognizing
the livery, guessed what it meant, and imparted no small degree of her
surprise to her relations by acquainting them with the honour which she
expected. Her uncle and aunt were all amazement; and the embarrassment
of her manner as she spoke, joined to the circumstance itself, and many
of the circumstances of the preceding day, opened to them a new idea on
the business. Nothing had ever suggested it before, but they felt that
there was no other way of accounting for such attentions from such a
quarter than by supposing a partiality for their niece. While these
newly-born notions were passing in their heads, the perturbation of
Elizabeth's feelings was at every moment increasing. She was quite
amazed at her own discomposure; but amongst other causes of disquiet,
she dreaded lest the partiality of the brother should have said too much
in her favour; and, more than commonly anxious to please, she naturally
suspected that every power of pleasing would fail her.

She retreated from the window, fearful of being seen; and as she walked
up and down the room, endeavouring to compose herself, saw such looks of
inquiring surprise in her uncle and aunt as made everything worse.

Miss Darcy and her brother appeared, and this formidable introduction
took place. With astonishment did Elizabeth see that her new
acquaintance was at least as much embarrassed as herself. Since her
being at Lambton, she had heard that Miss Darcy was exceedingly proud;
but the observation of a very few minutes convinced her that she was
only exceedingly shy. She found it difficult to obtain even a word from
her beyond a monosyllable.

Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and, though
little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance
womanly and graceful. She was less handsome than her brother; but there
was sense and good humour in her face, and her manners were perfectly
unassuming and gentle. Elizabeth, who had expected to find in her as
acute and unembarrassed an observer as ever Mr. Darcy had been, was much
relieved by discerning such different feelings.

They had not long been together before Mr. Darcy told her that Bingley
was also coming to wait on her; and she had barely time to express her
satisfaction, and prepare for such a visitor, when Bingley's quick
step was heard on the stairs, and in a moment he entered the room. All
Elizabeth's anger against him had been long done away; but had she still
felt any, it could hardly have stood its ground against the unaffected
cordiality with which he expressed himself on seeing her again. He
inquired in a friendly, though general way, after her family, and looked
and spoke with the same good-humoured ease that he had ever done.

To Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner he was scarcely a less interesting personage
than to herself. They had long wished to see him. The whole party before
them, indeed, excited a lively attention. The suspicions which had just
arisen of Mr. Darcy and their niece directed their observation towards
each with an earnest though guarded inquiry; and they soon drew from
those inquiries the full conviction that one of them at least knew
what it was to love. Of the lady's sensations they remained a little
in doubt; but that the gentleman was overflowing with admiration was
evident enough.

Elizabeth, on her side, had much to do. She wanted to ascertain the
feelings of each of her visitors; she wanted to compose her own, and
to make herself agreeable to all; and in the latter object, where she
feared most to fail, she was most sure of success, for those to whom she
endeavoured to give pleasure were prepossessed in her favour. Bingley
was ready, Georgiana was eager, and Darcy determined, to be pleased.

In seeing Bingley, her thoughts naturally flew to her sister; and, oh!
how ardently did she long to know whether any of his were directed in
a like manner. Sometimes she could fancy that he talked less than on
former occasions, and once or twice pleased herself with the notion
that, as he looked at her, he was trying to trace a resemblance. But,
though this might be imaginary, she could not be deceived as to his
behaviour to Miss Darcy, who had been set up as a rival to Jane. No look
appeared on either side that spoke particular regard. Nothing occurred
between them that could justify the hopes of his sister. On this point
she was soon satisfied; and two or three little circumstances occurred
ere they parted, which, in her anxious interpretation, denoted a
recollection of Jane not untinctured by tenderness, and a wish of saying
more that might lead to the mention of her, had he dared. He observed
to her, at a moment when the others were talking together, and in a tone
which had something of real regret, that it "was a very long time since
he had had the pleasure of seeing her;" and, before she could reply,
he added, "It is above eight months. We have not met since the 26th of
November, when we were all dancing together at Netherfield."

Elizabeth was pleased to find his memory so exact; and he afterwards
took occasion to ask her, when unattended to by any of the rest, whether
_all_ her sisters were at Longbourn. There was not much in the question,
nor in the preceding remark; but there was a look and a manner which
gave them meaning.

It was not often that she could turn her eyes on Mr. Darcy himself;
but, whenever she did catch a glimpse, she saw an expression of general
complaisance, and in all that he said she heard an accent so removed
from _hauteur_ or disdain of his companions, as convinced her that
the improvement of manners which she had yesterday witnessed however
temporary its existence might prove, had at least outlived one day. When
she saw him thus seeking the acquaintance and courting the good opinion
of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a
disgrace--when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to the
very relations whom he had openly disdained, and recollected their last
lively scene in Hunsford Parsonage--the difference, the change was
so great, and struck so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly
restrain her astonishment from being visible. Never, even in the company
of his dear friends at Netherfield, or his dignified relations
at Rosings, had she seen him so desirous to please, so free from
self-consequence or unbending reserve, as now, when no importance
could result from the success of his endeavours, and when even the
acquaintance of those to whom his attentions were addressed would draw
down the ridicule and censure of the ladies both of Netherfield and
Rosings.

Their visitors stayed with them above half-an-hour; and when they arose
to depart, Mr. Darcy called on his sister to join him in expressing
their wish of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, and Miss Bennet, to dinner
at Pemberley, before they left the country. Miss Darcy, though with a
diffidence which marked her little in the habit of giving invitations,
readily obeyed. Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece, desirous of knowing
how _she_, whom the invitation most concerned, felt disposed as to its
acceptance, but Elizabeth had turned away her head. Presuming however,
that this studied avoidance spoke rather a momentary embarrassment than
any dislike of the proposal, and seeing in her husband, who was fond of
society, a perfect willingness to accept it, she ventured to engage for
her attendance, and the day after the next was fixed on.

Bingley expressed great pleasure in the certainty of seeing Elizabeth
again, having still a great deal to say to her, and many inquiries to
make after all their Hertfordshire friends. Elizabeth, construing all
this into a wish of hearing her speak of her sister, was pleased, and on
this account, as well as some others, found herself, when their
visitors left them, capable of considering the last half-hour with some
satisfaction, though while it was passing, the enjoyment of it had been
little. Eager to be alone, and fearful of inquiries or hints from her
uncle and aunt, she stayed with them only long enough to hear their
favourable opinion of Bingley, and then hurried away to dress.

But she had no reason to fear Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's curiosity; it was
not their wish to force her communication. It was evident that she was
much better acquainted with Mr. Darcy than they had before any idea of;
it was evident that he was very much in love with her. They saw much to
interest, but nothing to justify inquiry.

Of Mr. Darcy it was now a matter of anxiety to think well; and, as far
as their acquaintance reached, there was no fault to find. They could
not be untouched by his politeness; and had they drawn his character
from their own feelings and his servant's report, without any reference
to any other account, the circle in Hertfordshire to which he was known
would not have recognized it for Mr. Darcy. There was now an interest,
however, in believing the housekeeper; and they soon became sensible
that the authority of a servant who had known him since he was four
years old, and whose own manners indicated respectability, was not to be
hastily rejected. Neither had anything occurred in the intelligence of
their Lambton friends that could materially lessen its weight. They had
nothing to accuse him of but pride; pride he probably had, and if not,
it would certainly be imputed by the inhabitants of a small market-town
where the family did not visit. It was acknowledged, however, that he
was a liberal man, and did much good among the poor.

With respect to Wickham, the travellers soon found that he was not held
there in much estimation; for though the chief of his concerns with the
son of his patron were imperfectly understood, it was yet a well-known
fact that, on his quitting Derbyshire, he had left many debts behind
him, which Mr. Darcy afterwards discharged.

As for Elizabeth, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening more than
the last; and the evening, though as it passed it seemed long, was not
long enough to determine her feelings towards _one_ in that mansion;
and she lay awake two whole hours endeavouring to make them out. She
certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she
had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him,
that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his
valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some
time ceased to be repugnant to her feeling; and it was now heightened
into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in
his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in so amiable a light,
which yesterday had produced. But above all, above respect and esteem,
there was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be overlooked.
It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her,
but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and
acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations
accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid
her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most
eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display
of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only
were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent
on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much
pride exciting not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent
love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a
sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not be
exactly defined. She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him,
she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how
far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far it would
be for the happiness of both that she should employ the power, which her
fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing on her the renewal of
his addresses.

It had been settled in the evening between the aunt and the niece, that
such a striking civility as Miss Darcy's in coming to see them on the
very day of her arrival at Pemberley, for she had reached it only to a
late breakfast, ought to be imitated, though it could not be equalled,
by some exertion of politeness on their side; and, consequently, that
it would be highly expedient to wait on her at Pemberley the following
morning. They were, therefore, to go. Elizabeth was pleased; though when
she asked herself the reason, she had very little to say in reply.

Mr. Gardiner left them soon after breakfast. The fishing scheme had been
renewed the day before, and a positive engagement made of his meeting
some of the gentlemen at Pemberley before noon.



Chapter 45


Convinced as Elizabeth now was that Miss Bingley's dislike of her had
originated in jealousy, she could not help feeling how unwelcome her
appearance at Pemberley must be to her, and was curious to know with how
much civility on that lady's side the acquaintance would now be renewed.

On reaching the house, they were shown through the hall into the saloon,
whose northern aspect rendered it delightful for summer. Its windows
opening to the ground, admitted a most refreshing view of the high woody
hills behind the house, and of the beautiful oaks and Spanish chestnuts
which were scattered over the intermediate lawn.

In this house they were received by Miss Darcy, who was sitting there
with Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, and the lady with whom she lived in
London. Georgiana's reception of them was very civil, but attended with
all the embarrassment which, though proceeding from shyness and the fear
of doing wrong, would easily give to those who felt themselves inferior
the belief of her being proud and reserved. Mrs. Gardiner and her niece,
however, did her justice, and pitied her.

By Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley they were noticed only by a curtsey; and,
on their being seated, a pause, awkward as such pauses must always be,
succeeded for a few moments. It was first broken by Mrs. Annesley, a
genteel, agreeable-looking woman, whose endeavour to introduce some kind
of discourse proved her to be more truly well-bred than either of the
others; and between her and Mrs. Gardiner, with occasional help from
Elizabeth, the conversation was carried on. Miss Darcy looked as if she
wished for courage enough to join in it; and sometimes did venture a
short sentence when there was least danger of its being heard.

Elizabeth soon saw that she was herself closely watched by Miss Bingley,
and that she could not speak a word, especially to Miss Darcy, without
calling her attention. This observation would not have prevented her
from trying to talk to the latter, had they not been seated at an
inconvenient distance; but she was not sorry to be spared the necessity
of saying much. Her own thoughts were employing her. She expected every
moment that some of the gentlemen would enter the room. She wished, she
feared that the master of the house might be amongst them; and whether
she wished or feared it most, she could scarcely determine. After
sitting in this manner a quarter of an hour without hearing Miss
Bingley's voice, Elizabeth was roused by receiving from her a cold
inquiry after the health of her family. She answered with equal
indifference and brevity, and the other said no more.

The next variation which their visit afforded was produced by the
entrance of servants with cold meat, cake, and a variety of all the
finest fruits in season; but this did not take place till after many
a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley to Miss Darcy had been
given, to remind her of her post. There was now employment for the whole
party--for though they could not all talk, they could all eat; and the
beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines, and peaches soon collected
them round the table.

While thus engaged, Elizabeth had a fair opportunity of deciding whether
she most feared or wished for the appearance of Mr. Darcy, by the
feelings which prevailed on his entering the room; and then, though but
a moment before she had believed her wishes to predominate, she began to
regret that he came.

He had been some time with Mr. Gardiner, who, with two or three other
gentlemen from the house, was engaged by the river, and had left him
only on learning that the ladies of the family intended a visit to
Georgiana that morning. No sooner did he appear than Elizabeth wisely
resolved to be perfectly easy and unembarrassed; a resolution the more
necessary to be made, but perhaps not the more easily kept, because she
saw that the suspicions of the whole party were awakened against them,
and that there was scarcely an eye which did not watch his behaviour
when he first came into the room. In no countenance was attentive
curiosity so strongly marked as in Miss Bingley's, in spite of the
smiles which overspread her face whenever she spoke to one of its
objects; for jealousy had not yet made her desperate, and her attentions
to Mr. Darcy were by no means over. Miss Darcy, on her brother's
entrance, exerted herself much more to talk, and Elizabeth saw that he
was anxious for his sister and herself to get acquainted, and forwarded
as much as possible, every attempt at conversation on either side. Miss
Bingley saw all this likewise; and, in the imprudence of anger, took the
first opportunity of saying, with sneering civility:

"Pray, Miss Eliza, are not the ----shire Militia removed from Meryton?
They must be a great loss to _your_ family."

In Darcy's presence she dared not mention Wickham's name; but Elizabeth
instantly comprehended that he was uppermost in her thoughts; and the
various recollections connected with him gave her a moment's distress;
but exerting herself vigorously to repel the ill-natured attack, she
presently answered the question in a tolerably detached tone. While
she spoke, an involuntary glance showed her Darcy, with a heightened
complexion, earnestly looking at her, and his sister overcome with
confusion, and unable to lift up her eyes. Had Miss Bingley known what
pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would
have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose
Elizabeth by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed
her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in
Darcy's opinion, and, perhaps, to remind the latter of all the follies
and absurdities by which some part of her family were connected
with that corps. Not a syllable had ever reached her of Miss Darcy's
meditated elopement. To no creature had it been revealed, where secrecy
was possible, except to Elizabeth; and from all Bingley's connections
her brother was particularly anxious to conceal it, from the very
wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to him, of their becoming
hereafter her own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and without
meaning that it should effect his endeavour to separate him from Miss
Bennet, it is probable that it might add something to his lively concern
for the welfare of his friend.

Elizabeth's collected behaviour, however, soon quieted his emotion; and
as Miss Bingley, vexed and disappointed, dared not approach nearer to
Wickham, Georgiana also recovered in time, though not enough to be able
to speak any more. Her brother, whose eye she feared to meet, scarcely
recollected her interest in the affair, and the very circumstance which
had been designed to turn his thoughts from Elizabeth seemed to have
fixed them on her more and more cheerfully.

Their visit did not continue long after the question and answer above
mentioned; and while Mr. Darcy was attending them to their carriage Miss
Bingley was venting her feelings in criticisms on Elizabeth's person,
behaviour, and dress. But Georgiana would not join her. Her brother's
recommendation was enough to ensure her favour; his judgement could not
err. And he had spoken in such terms of Elizabeth as to leave Georgiana
without the power of finding her otherwise than lovely and amiable. When
Darcy returned to the saloon, Miss Bingley could not help repeating to
him some part of what she had been saying to his sister.

"How very ill Miss Eliza Bennet looks this morning, Mr. Darcy," she
cried; "I never in my life saw anyone so much altered as she is since
the winter. She is grown so brown and coarse! Louisa and I were agreeing
that we should not have known her again."

However little Mr. Darcy might have liked such an address, he contented
himself with coolly replying that he perceived no other alteration than
her being rather tanned, no miraculous consequence of travelling in the
summer.

"For my own part," she rejoined, "I must confess that I never could
see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin; her complexion has no
brilliancy; and her features are not at all handsome. Her nose
wants character--there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are
tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes,
which have sometimes been called so fine, I could never see anything
extraordinary in them. They have a sharp, shrewish look, which I do
not like at all; and in her air altogether there is a self-sufficiency
without fashion, which is intolerable."

Persuaded as Miss Bingley was that Darcy admired Elizabeth, this was not
the best method of recommending herself; but angry people are not always
wise; and in seeing him at last look somewhat nettled, she had all the
success she expected. He was resolutely silent, however, and, from a
determination of making him speak, she continued:

"I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed we all
were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I particularly recollect
your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, '_She_
a beauty!--I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she
seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at
one time."

"Yes," replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, "but _that_
was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have
considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance."

He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of
having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.

Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth talked of all that had occurred during their
visit, as they returned, except what had particularly interested them
both. The look and behaviour of everybody they had seen were discussed,
except of the person who had mostly engaged their attention. They talked
of his sister, his friends, his house, his fruit--of everything but
himself; yet Elizabeth was longing to know what Mrs. Gardiner thought of
him, and Mrs. Gardiner would have been highly gratified by her niece's
beginning the subject.



Chapter 46


Elizabeth had been a good deal disappointed in not finding a letter from
Jane on their first arrival at Lambton; and this disappointment had been
renewed on each of the mornings that had now been spent there; but
on the third her repining was over, and her sister justified, by the
receipt of two letters from her at once, on one of which was marked that
it had been missent elsewhere. Elizabeth was not surprised at it, as
Jane had written the direction remarkably ill.

They had just been preparing to walk as the letters came in; and
her uncle and aunt, leaving her to enjoy them in quiet, set off by
themselves. The one missent must first be attended to; it had been
written five days ago. The beginning contained an account of all their
little parties and engagements, with such news as the country afforded;
but the latter half, which was dated a day later, and written in evident
agitation, gave more important intelligence. It was to this effect:

"Since writing the above, dearest Lizzy, something has occurred of a
most unexpected and serious nature; but I am afraid of alarming you--be
assured that we are all well. What I have to say relates to poor Lydia.
An express came at twelve last night, just as we were all gone to bed,
from Colonel Forster, to inform us that she was gone off to Scotland
with one of his officers; to own the truth, with Wickham! Imagine our
surprise. To Kitty, however, it does not seem so wholly unexpected. I am
very, very sorry. So imprudent a match on both sides! But I am willing
to hope the best, and that his character has been misunderstood.
Thoughtless and indiscreet I can easily believe him, but this step
(and let us rejoice over it) marks nothing bad at heart. His choice is
disinterested at least, for he must know my father can give her nothing.
Our poor mother is sadly grieved. My father bears it better. How
thankful am I that we never let them know what has been said against
him; we must forget it ourselves. They were off Saturday night about
twelve, as is conjectured, but were not missed till yesterday morning at
eight. The express was sent off directly. My dear Lizzy, they must have
passed within ten miles of us. Colonel Forster gives us reason to expect
him here soon. Lydia left a few lines for his wife, informing her of
their intention. I must conclude, for I cannot be long from my poor
mother. I am afraid you will not be able to make it out, but I hardly
know what I have written."

Without allowing herself time for consideration, and scarcely knowing
what she felt, Elizabeth on finishing this letter instantly seized the
other, and opening it with the utmost impatience, read as follows: it
had been written a day later than the conclusion of the first.

"By this time, my dearest sister, you have received my hurried letter; I
wish this may be more intelligible, but though not confined for time, my
head is so bewildered that I cannot answer for being coherent. Dearest
Lizzy, I hardly know what I would write, but I have bad news for you,
and it cannot be delayed. Imprudent as the marriage between Mr. Wickham
and our poor Lydia would be, we are now anxious to be assured it has
taken place, for there is but too much reason to fear they are not gone
to Scotland. Colonel Forster came yesterday, having left Brighton the
day before, not many hours after the express. Though Lydia's short
letter to Mrs. F. gave them to understand that they were going to Gretna
Green, something was dropped by Denny expressing his belief that W.
never intended to go there, or to marry Lydia at all, which was
repeated to Colonel F., who, instantly taking the alarm, set off from B.
intending to trace their route. He did trace them easily to Clapham,
but no further; for on entering that place, they removed into a hackney
coach, and dismissed the chaise that brought them from Epsom. All that
is known after this is, that they were seen to continue the London road.
I know not what to think. After making every possible inquiry on that
side London, Colonel F. came on into Hertfordshire, anxiously renewing
them at all the turnpikes, and at the inns in Barnet and Hatfield, but
without any success--no such people had been seen to pass through. With
the kindest concern he came on to Longbourn, and broke his apprehensions
to us in a manner most creditable to his heart. I am sincerely grieved
for him and Mrs. F., but no one can throw any blame on them. Our
distress, my dear Lizzy, is very great. My father and mother believe the
worst, but I cannot think so ill of him. Many circumstances might make
it more eligible for them to be married privately in town than to pursue
their first plan; and even if _he_ could form such a design against a
young woman of Lydia's connections, which is not likely, can I suppose
her so lost to everything? Impossible! I grieve to find, however, that
Colonel F. is not disposed to depend upon their marriage; he shook his
head when I expressed my hopes, and said he feared W. was not a man to
be trusted. My poor mother is really ill, and keeps her room. Could she
exert herself, it would be better; but this is not to be expected. And
as to my father, I never in my life saw him so affected. Poor Kitty has
anger for having concealed their attachment; but as it was a matter of
confidence, one cannot wonder. I am truly glad, dearest Lizzy, that you
have been spared something of these distressing scenes; but now, as the
first shock is over, shall I own that I long for your return? I am not
so selfish, however, as to press for it, if inconvenient. Adieu! I
take up my pen again to do what I have just told you I would not; but
circumstances are such that I cannot help earnestly begging you all to
come here as soon as possible. I know my dear uncle and aunt so well,
that I am not afraid of requesting it, though I have still something
more to ask of the former. My father is going to London with Colonel
Forster instantly, to try to discover her. What he means to do I am sure
I know not; but his excessive distress will not allow him to pursue any
measure in the best and safest way, and Colonel Forster is obliged to
be at Brighton again to-morrow evening. In such an exigence, my
uncle's advice and assistance would be everything in the world; he will
immediately comprehend what I must feel, and I rely upon his goodness."

"Oh! where, where is my uncle?" cried Elizabeth, darting from her seat
as she finished the letter, in eagerness to follow him, without losing
a moment of the time so precious; but as she reached the door it was
opened by a servant, and Mr. Darcy appeared. Her pale face and impetuous
manner made him start, and before he could recover himself to speak,
she, in whose mind every idea was superseded by Lydia's situation,
hastily exclaimed, "I beg your pardon, but I must leave you. I must find
Mr. Gardiner this moment, on business that cannot be delayed; I have not
an instant to lose."

"Good God! what is the matter?" cried he, with more feeling than
politeness; then recollecting himself, "I will not detain you a minute;
but let me, or let the servant go after Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. You are
not well enough; you cannot go yourself."

Elizabeth hesitated, but her knees trembled under her and she felt how
little would be gained by her attempting to pursue them. Calling back
the servant, therefore, she commissioned him, though in so breathless
an accent as made her almost unintelligible, to fetch his master and
mistress home instantly.

On his quitting the room she sat down, unable to support herself, and
looking so miserably ill, that it was impossible for Darcy to leave her,
or to refrain from saying, in a tone of gentleness and commiseration,
"Let me call your maid. Is there nothing you could take to give you
present relief? A glass of wine; shall I get you one? You are very ill."

"No, I thank you," she replied, endeavouring to recover herself. "There
is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well; I am only distressed by
some dreadful news which I have just received from Longbourn."

She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes could
not speak another word. Darcy, in wretched suspense, could only say
something indistinctly of his concern, and observe her in compassionate
silence. At length she spoke again. "I have just had a letter from Jane,
with such dreadful news. It cannot be concealed from anyone. My younger
sister has left all her friends--has eloped; has thrown herself into
the power of--of Mr. Wickham. They are gone off together from Brighton.
_You_ know him too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no
connections, nothing that can tempt him to--she is lost for ever."

Darcy was fixed in astonishment. "When I consider," she added in a yet
more agitated voice, "that I might have prevented it! I, who knew what
he was. Had I but explained some part of it only--some part of what I
learnt, to my own family! Had his character been known, this could not
have happened. But it is all--all too late now."

"I am grieved indeed," cried Darcy; "grieved--shocked. But is it
certain--absolutely certain?"

"Oh, yes! They left Brighton together on Sunday night, and were traced
almost to London, but not beyond; they are certainly not gone to
Scotland."

"And what has been done, what has been attempted, to recover her?"

"My father is gone to London, and Jane has written to beg my uncle's
immediate assistance; and we shall be off, I hope, in half-an-hour. But
nothing can be done--I know very well that nothing can be done. How is
such a man to be worked on? How are they even to be discovered? I have
not the smallest hope. It is every way horrible!"

Darcy shook his head in silent acquiescence.

"When _my_ eyes were opened to his real character--Oh! had I known what
I ought, what I dared to do! But I knew not--I was afraid of doing too
much. Wretched, wretched mistake!"

Darcy made no answer. He seemed scarcely to hear her, and was walking
up and down the room in earnest meditation, his brow contracted, his air
gloomy. Elizabeth soon observed, and instantly understood it. Her
power was sinking; everything _must_ sink under such a proof of family
weakness, such an assurance of the deepest disgrace. She could neither
wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing
consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress. It
was, on the contrary, exactly calculated to make her understand her own
wishes; and never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved
him, as now, when all love must be vain.

But self, though it would intrude, could not engross her. Lydia--the
humiliation, the misery she was bringing on them all, soon swallowed
up every private care; and covering her face with her handkerchief,
Elizabeth was soon lost to everything else; and, after a pause of
several minutes, was only recalled to a sense of her situation by
the voice of her companion, who, in a manner which, though it spoke
compassion, spoke likewise restraint, said, "I am afraid you have been
long desiring my absence, nor have I anything to plead in excuse of my
stay, but real, though unavailing concern. Would to Heaven that anything
could be either said or done on my part that might offer consolation to
such distress! But I will not torment you with vain wishes, which may
seem purposely to ask for your thanks. This unfortunate affair will, I
fear, prevent my sister's having the pleasure of seeing you at Pemberley
to-day."

"Oh, yes. Be so kind as to apologise for us to Miss Darcy. Say that
urgent business calls us home immediately. Conceal the unhappy truth as
long as it is possible, I know it cannot be long."

He readily assured her of his secrecy; again expressed his sorrow for
her distress, wished it a happier conclusion than there was at present
reason to hope, and leaving his compliments for her relations, with only
one serious, parting look, went away.

As he quitted the room, Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that they
should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as
had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she threw a
retrospective glance over the whole of their acquaintance, so full
of contradictions and varieties, sighed at the perverseness of those
feelings which would now have promoted its continuance, and would
formerly have rejoiced in its termination.

If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's
change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if
otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or
unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on
a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been
exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given
somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham,
and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other
less interesting mode of attachment. Be that as it may, she saw him
go with regret; and in this early example of what Lydia's infamy must
produce, found additional anguish as she reflected on that wretched
business. Never, since reading Jane's second letter, had she entertained
a hope of Wickham's meaning to marry her. No one but Jane, she thought,
could flatter herself with such an expectation. Surprise was the least
of her feelings on this development. While the contents of the first
letter remained in her mind, she was all surprise--all astonishment that
Wickham should marry a girl whom it was impossible he could marry
for money; and how Lydia could ever have attached him had appeared
incomprehensible. But now it was all too natural. For such an attachment
as this she might have sufficient charms; and though she did not suppose
Lydia to be deliberately engaging in an elopement without the intention
of marriage, she had no difficulty in believing that neither her virtue
nor her understanding would preserve her from falling an easy prey.

She had never perceived, while the regiment was in Hertfordshire, that
Lydia had any partiality for him; but she was convinced that Lydia
wanted only encouragement to attach herself to anybody. Sometimes one
officer, sometimes another, had been her favourite, as their attentions
raised them in her opinion. Her affections had continually been
fluctuating but never without an object. The mischief of neglect and
mistaken indulgence towards such a girl--oh! how acutely did she now
feel it!

She was wild to be at home--to hear, to see, to be upon the spot to
share with Jane in the cares that must now fall wholly upon her, in a
family so deranged, a father absent, a mother incapable of exertion, and
requiring constant attendance; and though almost persuaded that nothing
could be done for Lydia, her uncle's interference seemed of the utmost
importance, and till he entered the room her impatience was severe. Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner had hurried back in alarm, supposing by the servant's
account that their niece was taken suddenly ill; but satisfying them
instantly on that head, she eagerly communicated the cause of their
summons, reading the two letters aloud, and dwelling on the postscript
of the last with trembling energy, though Lydia had never been a
favourite with them, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner could not but be deeply
afflicted. Not Lydia only, but all were concerned in it; and after the
first exclamations of surprise and horror, Mr. Gardiner promised every
assistance in his power. Elizabeth, though expecting no less, thanked
him with tears of gratitude; and all three being actuated by one spirit,
everything relating to their journey was speedily settled. They were to
be off as soon as possible. "But what is to be done about Pemberley?"
cried Mrs. Gardiner. "John told us Mr. Darcy was here when you sent for
us; was it so?"

"Yes; and I told him we should not be able to keep our engagement.
_That_ is all settled."

"What is all settled?" repeated the other, as she ran into her room to
prepare. "And are they upon such terms as for her to disclose the real
truth? Oh, that I knew how it was!"

But wishes were vain, or at least could only serve to amuse her in the
hurry and confusion of the following hour. Had Elizabeth been at leisure
to be idle, she would have remained certain that all employment was
impossible to one so wretched as herself; but she had her share of
business as well as her aunt, and amongst the rest there were notes to
be written to all their friends at Lambton, with false excuses for their
sudden departure. An hour, however, saw the whole completed; and Mr.
Gardiner meanwhile having settled his account at the inn, nothing
remained to be done but to go; and Elizabeth, after all the misery of
the morning, found herself, in a shorter space of time than she could
have supposed, seated in the carriage, and on the road to Longbourn.



Chapter 47


"I have been thinking it over again, Elizabeth," said her uncle, as they
drove from the town; "and really, upon serious consideration, I am much
more inclined than I was to judge as your eldest sister does on the
matter. It appears to me so very unlikely that any young man should
form such a design against a girl who is by no means unprotected or
friendless, and who was actually staying in his colonel's family, that I
am strongly inclined to hope the best. Could he expect that her friends
would not step forward? Could he expect to be noticed again by the
regiment, after such an affront to Colonel Forster? His temptation is
not adequate to the risk!"

"Do you really think so?" cried Elizabeth, brightening up for a moment.

"Upon my word," said Mrs. Gardiner, "I begin to be of your uncle's
opinion. It is really too great a violation of decency, honour, and
interest, for him to be guilty of. I cannot think so very ill of
Wickham. Can you yourself, Lizzy, so wholly give him up, as to believe
him capable of it?"

"Not, perhaps, of neglecting his own interest; but of every other
neglect I can believe him capable. If, indeed, it should be so! But I
dare not hope it. Why should they not go on to Scotland if that had been
the case?"

"In the first place," replied Mr. Gardiner, "there is no absolute proof
that they are not gone to Scotland."

"Oh! but their removing from the chaise into a hackney coach is such
a presumption! And, besides, no traces of them were to be found on the
Barnet road."

"Well, then--supposing them to be in London. They may be there, though
for the purpose of concealment, for no more exceptional purpose. It is
not likely that money should be very abundant on either side; and it
might strike them that they could be more economically, though less
expeditiously, married in London than in Scotland."

"But why all this secrecy? Why any fear of detection? Why must their
marriage be private? Oh, no, no--this is not likely. His most particular
friend, you see by Jane's account, was persuaded of his never intending
to marry her. Wickham will never marry a woman without some money. He
cannot afford it. And what claims has Lydia--what attraction has she
beyond youth, health, and good humour that could make him, for her sake,
forego every chance of benefiting himself by marrying well? As to what
restraint the apprehensions of disgrace in the corps might throw on a
dishonourable elopement with her, I am not able to judge; for I know
nothing of the effects that such a step might produce. But as to your
other objection, I am afraid it will hardly hold good. Lydia has
no brothers to step forward; and he might imagine, from my father's
behaviour, from his indolence and the little attention he has ever
seemed to give to what was going forward in his family, that _he_ would
do as little, and think as little about it, as any father could do, in
such a matter."

"But can you think that Lydia is so lost to everything but love of him
as to consent to live with him on any terms other than marriage?"

"It does seem, and it is most shocking indeed," replied Elizabeth, with
tears in her eyes, "that a sister's sense of decency and virtue in such
a point should admit of doubt. But, really, I know not what to say.
Perhaps I am not doing her justice. But she is very young; she has never
been taught to think on serious subjects; and for the last half-year,
nay, for a twelvemonth--she has been given up to nothing but amusement
and vanity. She has been allowed to dispose of her time in the most idle
and frivolous manner, and to adopt any opinions that came in her way.
Since the ----shire were first quartered in Meryton, nothing but love,
flirtation, and officers have been in her head. She has been doing
everything in her power by thinking and talking on the subject, to give
greater--what shall I call it? susceptibility to her feelings; which are
naturally lively enough. And we all know that Wickham has every charm of
person and address that can captivate a woman."

"But you see that Jane," said her aunt, "does not think so very ill of
Wickham as to believe him capable of the attempt."

"Of whom does Jane ever think ill? And who is there, whatever might be
their former conduct, that she would think capable of such an attempt,
till it were proved against them? But Jane knows, as well as I do, what
Wickham really is. We both know that he has been profligate in every
sense of the word; that he has neither integrity nor honour; that he is
as false and deceitful as he is insinuating."

"And do you really know all this?" cried Mrs. Gardiner, whose curiosity
as to the mode of her intelligence was all alive.

"I do indeed," replied Elizabeth, colouring. "I told you, the other day,
of his infamous behaviour to Mr. Darcy; and you yourself, when last at
Longbourn, heard in what manner he spoke of the man who had behaved
with such forbearance and liberality towards him. And there are other
circumstances which I am not at liberty--which it is not worth while to
relate; but his lies about the whole Pemberley family are endless. From
what he said of Miss Darcy I was thoroughly prepared to see a proud,
reserved, disagreeable girl. Yet he knew to the contrary himself. He
must know that she was as amiable and unpretending as we have found
her."

"But does Lydia know nothing of this? can she be ignorant of what you
and Jane seem so well to understand?"

"Oh, yes!--that, that is the worst of all. Till I was in Kent, and saw
so much both of Mr. Darcy and his relation Colonel Fitzwilliam, I was
ignorant of the truth myself. And when I returned home, the ----shire
was to leave Meryton in a week or fortnight's time. As that was the
case, neither Jane, to whom I related the whole, nor I, thought it
necessary to make our knowledge public; for of what use could
it apparently be to any one, that the good opinion which all the
neighbourhood had of him should then be overthrown? And even when it was
settled that Lydia should go with Mrs. Forster, the necessity of opening
her eyes to his character never occurred to me. That _she_ could be
in any danger from the deception never entered my head. That such a
consequence as _this_ could ensue, you may easily believe, was far
enough from my thoughts."

"When they all removed to Brighton, therefore, you had no reason, I
suppose, to believe them fond of each other?"

"Not the slightest. I can remember no symptom of affection on either
side; and had anything of the kind been perceptible, you must be aware
that ours is not a family on which it could be thrown away. When first
he entered the corps, she was ready enough to admire him; but so we all
were. Every girl in or near Meryton was out of her senses about him for
the first two months; but he never distinguished _her_ by any particular
attention; and, consequently, after a moderate period of extravagant and
wild admiration, her fancy for him gave way, and others of the regiment,
who treated her with more distinction, again became her favourites."

                          * * * * *

It may be easily believed, that however little of novelty could be added
to their fears, hopes, and conjectures, on this interesting subject, by
its repeated discussion, no other could detain them from it long, during
the whole of the journey. From Elizabeth's thoughts it was never absent.
Fixed there by the keenest of all anguish, self-reproach, she could find
no interval of ease or forgetfulness.

They travelled as expeditiously as possible, and, sleeping one night
on the road, reached Longbourn by dinner time the next day. It was a
comfort to Elizabeth to consider that Jane could not have been wearied
by long expectations.

The little Gardiners, attracted by the sight of a chaise, were standing
on the steps of the house as they entered the paddock; and, when the
carriage drove up to the door, the joyful surprise that lighted up their
faces, and displayed itself over their whole bodies, in a variety of
capers and frisks, was the first pleasing earnest of their welcome.

Elizabeth jumped out; and, after giving each of them a hasty kiss,
hurried into the vestibule, where Jane, who came running down from her
mother's apartment, immediately met her.

Elizabeth, as she affectionately embraced her, whilst tears filled the
eyes of both, lost not a moment in asking whether anything had been
heard of the fugitives.

"Not yet," replied Jane. "But now that my dear uncle is come, I hope
everything will be well."

"Is my father in town?"

"Yes, he went on Tuesday, as I wrote you word."

"And have you heard from him often?"

"We have heard only twice. He wrote me a few lines on Wednesday to say
that he had arrived in safety, and to give me his directions, which I
particularly begged him to do. He merely added that he should not write
again till he had something of importance to mention."

"And my mother--how is she? How are you all?"

"My mother is tolerably well, I trust; though her spirits are greatly
shaken. She is up stairs and will have great satisfaction in seeing you
all. She does not yet leave her dressing-room. Mary and Kitty, thank
Heaven, are quite well."

"But you--how are you?" cried Elizabeth. "You look pale. How much you
must have gone through!"

Her sister, however, assured her of her being perfectly well; and their
conversation, which had been passing while Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner were
engaged with their children, was now put an end to by the approach
of the whole party. Jane ran to her uncle and aunt, and welcomed and
thanked them both, with alternate smiles and tears.

When they were all in the drawing-room, the questions which Elizabeth
had already asked were of course repeated by the others, and they soon
found that Jane had no intelligence to give. The sanguine hope of
good, however, which the benevolence of her heart suggested had not yet
deserted her; she still expected that it would all end well, and that
every morning would bring some letter, either from Lydia or her father,
to explain their proceedings, and, perhaps, announce their marriage.

Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes'
conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected; with
tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villainous
conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill-usage;
blaming everybody but the person to whose ill-judging indulgence the
errors of her daughter must principally be owing.

"If I had been able," said she, "to carry my point in going to Brighton,
with all my family, _this_ would not have happened; but poor dear Lydia
had nobody to take care of her. Why did the Forsters ever let her go out
of their sight? I am sure there was some great neglect or other on their
side, for she is not the kind of girl to do such a thing if she had been
well looked after. I always thought they were very unfit to have the
charge of her; but I was overruled, as I always am. Poor dear child!
And now here's Mr. Bennet gone away, and I know he will fight Wickham,
wherever he meets him and then he will be killed, and what is to become
of us all? The Collinses will turn us out before he is cold in his
grave, and if you are not kind to us, brother, I do not know what we
shall do."

They all exclaimed against such terrific ideas; and Mr. Gardiner, after
general assurances of his affection for her and all her family, told her
that he meant to be in London the very next day, and would assist Mr.
Bennet in every endeavour for recovering Lydia.

"Do not give way to useless alarm," added he; "though it is right to be
prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.
It is not quite a week since they left Brighton. In a few days more we
may gain some news of them; and till we know that they are not married,
and have no design of marrying, do not let us give the matter over as
lost. As soon as I get to town I shall go to my brother, and make
him come home with me to Gracechurch Street; and then we may consult
together as to what is to be done."

"Oh! my dear brother," replied Mrs. Bennet, "that is exactly what I
could most wish for. And now do, when you get to town, find them out,
wherever they may be; and if they are not married already, _make_ them
marry. And as for wedding clothes, do not let them wait for that, but
tell Lydia she shall have as much money as she chooses to buy them,
after they are married. And, above all, keep Mr. Bennet from fighting.
Tell him what a dreadful state I am in, that I am frighted out of my
wits--and have such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me--such
spasms in my side and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that
I can get no rest by night nor by day. And tell my dear Lydia not to
give any directions about her clothes till she has seen me, for she does
not know which are the best warehouses. Oh, brother, how kind you are! I
know you will contrive it all."

But Mr. Gardiner, though he assured her again of his earnest endeavours
in the cause, could not avoid recommending moderation to her, as well
in her hopes as her fear; and after talking with her in this manner till
dinner was on the table, they all left her to vent all her feelings on
the housekeeper, who attended in the absence of her daughters.

Though her brother and sister were persuaded that there was no real
occasion for such a seclusion from the family, they did not attempt to
oppose it, for they knew that she had not prudence enough to hold her
tongue before the servants, while they waited at table, and judged it
better that _one_ only of the household, and the one whom they could
most trust should comprehend all her fears and solicitude on the
subject.

In the dining-room they were soon joined by Mary and Kitty, who had been
too busily engaged in their separate apartments to make their appearance
before. One came from her books, and the other from her toilette. The
faces of both, however, were tolerably calm; and no change was visible
in either, except that the loss of her favourite sister, or the anger
which she had herself incurred in this business, had given more of
fretfulness than usual to the accents of Kitty. As for Mary, she was
mistress enough of herself to whisper to Elizabeth, with a countenance
of grave reflection, soon after they were seated at table:

"This is a most unfortunate affair, and will probably be much talked of.
But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of
each other the balm of sisterly consolation."

Then, perceiving in Elizabeth no inclination of replying, she added,
"Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful
lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one
false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less
brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in
her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex."

Elizabeth lifted up her eyes in amazement, but was too much oppressed
to make any reply. Mary, however, continued to console herself with such
kind of moral extractions from the evil before them.

In the afternoon, the two elder Miss Bennets were able to be for
half-an-hour by themselves; and Elizabeth instantly availed herself of
the opportunity of making any inquiries, which Jane was equally eager to
satisfy. After joining in general lamentations over the dreadful sequel
of this event, which Elizabeth considered as all but certain, and Miss
Bennet could not assert to be wholly impossible, the former continued
the subject, by saying, "But tell me all and everything about it which
I have not already heard. Give me further particulars. What did Colonel
Forster say? Had they no apprehension of anything before the elopement
took place? They must have seen them together for ever."

"Colonel Forster did own that he had often suspected some partiality,
especially on Lydia's side, but nothing to give him any alarm. I am so
grieved for him! His behaviour was attentive and kind to the utmost. He
_was_ coming to us, in order to assure us of his concern, before he had
any idea of their not being gone to Scotland: when that apprehension
first got abroad, it hastened his journey."

"And was Denny convinced that Wickham would not marry? Did he know of
their intending to go off? Had Colonel Forster seen Denny himself?"

"Yes; but, when questioned by _him_, Denny denied knowing anything of
their plans, and would not give his real opinion about it. He did not
repeat his persuasion of their not marrying--and from _that_, I am
inclined to hope, he might have been misunderstood before."

"And till Colonel Forster came himself, not one of you entertained a
doubt, I suppose, of their being really married?"

"How was it possible that such an idea should enter our brains? I felt
a little uneasy--a little fearful of my sister's happiness with him
in marriage, because I knew that his conduct had not been always quite
right. My father and mother knew nothing of that; they only felt how
imprudent a match it must be. Kitty then owned, with a very natural
triumph on knowing more than the rest of us, that in Lydia's last letter
she had prepared her for such a step. She had known, it seems, of their
being in love with each other, many weeks."

"But not before they went to Brighton?"

"No, I believe not."

"And did Colonel Forster appear to think well of Wickham himself? Does
he know his real character?"

"I must confess that he did not speak so well of Wickham as he formerly
did. He believed him to be imprudent and extravagant. And since this sad
affair has taken place, it is said that he left Meryton greatly in debt;
but I hope this may be false."

"Oh, Jane, had we been less secret, had we told what we knew of him,
this could not have happened!"

"Perhaps it would have been better," replied her sister. "But to expose
the former faults of any person without knowing what their present
feelings were, seemed unjustifiable. We acted with the best intentions."

"Could Colonel Forster repeat the particulars of Lydia's note to his
wife?"

"He brought it with him for us to see."

Jane then took it from her pocket-book, and gave it to Elizabeth. These
were the contents:

"MY DEAR HARRIET,

"You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help
laughing myself at your surprise to-morrow morning, as soon as I am
missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who,
I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I
love, and he is an angel. I should never be happy without him, so think
it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Longbourn of my
going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater,
when I write to them and sign my name 'Lydia Wickham.' What a good joke
it will be! I can hardly write for laughing. Pray make my excuses to
Pratt for not keeping my engagement, and dancing with him to-night.
Tell him I hope he will excuse me when he knows all; and tell him I will
dance with him at the next ball we meet, with great pleasure. I shall
send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn; but I wish you would tell
Sally to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown before they are
packed up. Good-bye. Give my love to Colonel Forster. I hope you will
drink to our good journey.

"Your affectionate friend,

"LYDIA BENNET."

"Oh! thoughtless, thoughtless Lydia!" cried Elizabeth when she had
finished it. "What a letter is this, to be written at such a moment!
But at least it shows that _she_ was serious on the subject of their
journey. Whatever he might afterwards persuade her to, it was not on her
side a _scheme_ of infamy. My poor father! how he must have felt it!"

"I never saw anyone so shocked. He could not speak a word for full ten
minutes. My mother was taken ill immediately, and the whole house in
such confusion!"

"Oh! Jane," cried Elizabeth, "was there a servant belonging to it who
did not know the whole story before the end of the day?"

"I do not know. I hope there was. But to be guarded at such a time is
very difficult. My mother was in hysterics, and though I endeavoured to
give her every assistance in my power, I am afraid I did not do so
much as I might have done! But the horror of what might possibly happen
almost took from me my faculties."

"Your attendance upon her has been too much for you. You do not look
well. Oh that I had been with you! you have had every care and anxiety
upon yourself alone."

"Mary and Kitty have been very kind, and would have shared in every
fatigue, I am sure; but I did not think it right for either of them.
Kitty is slight and delicate; and Mary studies so much, that her hours
of repose should not be broken in on. My aunt Phillips came to Longbourn
on Tuesday, after my father went away; and was so good as to stay till
Thursday with me. She was of great use and comfort to us all. And
Lady Lucas has been very kind; she walked here on Wednesday morning to
condole with us, and offered her services, or any of her daughters', if
they should be of use to us."

"She had better have stayed at home," cried Elizabeth; "perhaps she
_meant_ well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one cannot see
too little of one's neighbours. Assistance is impossible; condolence
insufferable. Let them triumph over us at a distance, and be satisfied."

She then proceeded to inquire into the measures which her father had
intended to pursue, while in town, for the recovery of his daughter.

"He meant I believe," replied Jane, "to go to Epsom, the place where
they last changed horses, see the postilions and try if anything could
be made out from them. His principal object must be to discover the
number of the hackney coach which took them from Clapham. It had come
with a fare from London; and as he thought that the circumstance of a
gentleman and lady's removing from one carriage into another might
be remarked he meant to make inquiries at Clapham. If he could anyhow
discover at what house the coachman had before set down his fare, he
determined to make inquiries there, and hoped it might not be impossible
to find out the stand and number of the coach. I do not know of any
other designs that he had formed; but he was in such a hurry to be gone,
and his spirits so greatly discomposed, that I had difficulty in finding
out even so much as this."



Chapter 48


The whole party were in hopes of a letter from Mr. Bennet the next
morning, but the post came in without bringing a single line from him.
His family knew him to be, on all common occasions, a most negligent and
dilatory correspondent; but at such a time they had hoped for exertion.
They were forced to conclude that he had no pleasing intelligence to
send; but even of _that_ they would have been glad to be certain. Mr.
Gardiner had waited only for the letters before he set off.

When he was gone, they were certain at least of receiving constant
information of what was going on, and their uncle promised, at parting,
to prevail on Mr. Bennet to return to Longbourn, as soon as he could,
to the great consolation of his sister, who considered it as the only
security for her husband's not being killed in a duel.

Mrs. Gardiner and the children were to remain in Hertfordshire a few
days longer, as the former thought her presence might be serviceable
to her nieces. She shared in their attendance on Mrs. Bennet, and was a
great comfort to them in their hours of freedom. Their other aunt also
visited them frequently, and always, as she said, with the design of
cheering and heartening them up--though, as she never came without
reporting some fresh instance of Wickham's extravagance or irregularity,
she seldom went away without leaving them more dispirited than she found
them.

All Meryton seemed striving to blacken the man who, but three months
before, had been almost an angel of light. He was declared to be in debt
to every tradesman in the place, and his intrigues, all honoured with
the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman's family.
Everybody declared that he was the wickedest young man in the world;
and everybody began to find out that they had always distrusted the
appearance of his goodness. Elizabeth, though she did not credit above
half of what was said, believed enough to make her former assurance of
her sister's ruin more certain; and even Jane, who believed still less
of it, became almost hopeless, more especially as the time was now come
when, if they had gone to Scotland, which she had never before entirely
despaired of, they must in all probability have gained some news of
them.

Mr. Gardiner left Longbourn on Sunday; on Tuesday his wife received a
letter from him; it told them that, on his arrival, he had immediately
found out his brother, and persuaded him to come to Gracechurch Street;
that Mr. Bennet had been to Epsom and Clapham, before his arrival,
but without gaining any satisfactory information; and that he was now
determined to inquire at all the principal hotels in town, as Mr. Bennet
thought it possible they might have gone to one of them, on their first
coming to London, before they procured lodgings. Mr. Gardiner himself
did not expect any success from this measure, but as his brother was
eager in it, he meant to assist him in pursuing it. He added that Mr.
Bennet seemed wholly disinclined at present to leave London and promised
to write again very soon. There was also a postscript to this effect:

"I have written to Colonel Forster to desire him to find out, if
possible, from some of the young man's intimates in the regiment,
whether Wickham has any relations or connections who would be likely to
know in what part of town he has now concealed himself. If there were
anyone that one could apply to with a probability of gaining such a
clue as that, it might be of essential consequence. At present we have
nothing to guide us. Colonel Forster will, I dare say, do everything in
his power to satisfy us on this head. But, on second thoughts, perhaps,
Lizzy could tell us what relations he has now living, better than any
other person."

Elizabeth was at no loss to understand from whence this deference to her
authority proceeded; but it was not in her power to give any information
of so satisfactory a nature as the compliment deserved. She had never
heard of his having had any relations, except a father and mother, both
of whom had been dead many years. It was possible, however, that some of
his companions in the ----shire might be able to give more information;
and though she was not very sanguine in expecting it, the application
was a something to look forward to.

Every day at Longbourn was now a day of anxiety; but the most anxious
part of each was when the post was expected. The arrival of letters
was the grand object of every morning's impatience. Through letters,
whatever of good or bad was to be told would be communicated, and every
succeeding day was expected to bring some news of importance.

But before they heard again from Mr. Gardiner, a letter arrived for
their father, from a different quarter, from Mr. Collins; which, as Jane
had received directions to open all that came for him in his absence,
she accordingly read; and Elizabeth, who knew what curiosities his
letters always were, looked over her, and read it likewise. It was as
follows:

"MY DEAR SIR,

"I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my situation
in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now
suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from
Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs. Collins and myself
sincerely sympathise with you and all your respectable family, in
your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because
proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. No arguments shall be
wanting on my part that can alleviate so severe a misfortune--or that
may comfort you, under a circumstance that must be of all others the
most afflicting to a parent's mind. The death of your daughter would
have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to
be lamented, because there is reason to suppose as my dear Charlotte
informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has
proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence; though, at the same time,
for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think
that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be
guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. Howsoever that may be,
you are grievously to be pitied; in which opinion I am not only joined
by Mrs. Collins, but likewise by Lady Catherine and her daughter, to
whom I have related the affair. They agree with me in apprehending that
this false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of
all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says,
will connect themselves with such a family? And this consideration leads
me moreover to reflect, with augmented satisfaction, on a certain event
of last November; for had it been otherwise, I must have been involved
in all your sorrow and disgrace. Let me then advise you, dear sir, to
console yourself as much as possible, to throw off your unworthy child
from your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of her
own heinous offense.

"I am, dear sir, etc., etc."

Mr. Gardiner did not write again till he had received an answer from
Colonel Forster; and then he had nothing of a pleasant nature to send.
It was not known that Wickham had a single relationship with whom he
kept up any connection, and it was certain that he had no near one
living. His former acquaintances had been numerous; but since he
had been in the militia, it did not appear that he was on terms of
particular friendship with any of them. There was no one, therefore,
who could be pointed out as likely to give any news of him. And in the
wretched state of his own finances, there was a very powerful motive for
secrecy, in addition to his fear of discovery by Lydia's relations, for
it had just transpired that he had left gaming debts behind him to a
very considerable amount. Colonel Forster believed that more than a
thousand pounds would be necessary to clear his expenses at Brighton.
He owed a good deal in town, but his debts of honour were still more
formidable. Mr. Gardiner did not attempt to conceal these particulars
from the Longbourn family. Jane heard them with horror. "A gamester!"
she cried. "This is wholly unexpected. I had not an idea of it."

Mr. Gardiner added in his letter, that they might expect to see their
father at home on the following day, which was Saturday. Rendered
spiritless by the ill-success of all their endeavours, he had yielded
to his brother-in-law's entreaty that he would return to his family, and
leave it to him to do whatever occasion might suggest to be advisable
for continuing their pursuit. When Mrs. Bennet was told of this, she did
not express so much satisfaction as her children expected, considering
what her anxiety for his life had been before.

"What, is he coming home, and without poor Lydia?" she cried. "Sure he
will not leave London before he has found them. Who is to fight Wickham,
and make him marry her, if he comes away?"

As Mrs. Gardiner began to wish to be at home, it was settled that she
and the children should go to London, at the same time that Mr. Bennet
came from it. The coach, therefore, took them the first stage of their
journey, and brought its master back to Longbourn.

Mrs. Gardiner went away in all the perplexity about Elizabeth and her
Derbyshire friend that had attended her from that part of the world. His
name had never been voluntarily mentioned before them by her niece; and
the kind of half-expectation which Mrs. Gardiner had formed, of their
being followed by a letter from him, had ended in nothing. Elizabeth had
received none since her return that could come from Pemberley.

The present unhappy state of the family rendered any other excuse for
the lowness of her spirits unnecessary; nothing, therefore, could be
fairly conjectured from _that_, though Elizabeth, who was by this time
tolerably well acquainted with her own feelings, was perfectly aware
that, had she known nothing of Darcy, she could have borne the dread of
Lydia's infamy somewhat better. It would have spared her, she thought,
one sleepless night out of two.

When Mr. Bennet arrived, he had all the appearance of his usual
philosophic composure. He said as little as he had ever been in the
habit of saying; made no mention of the business that had taken him
away, and it was some time before his daughters had courage to speak of
it.

It was not till the afternoon, when he had joined them at tea, that
Elizabeth ventured to introduce the subject; and then, on her briefly
expressing her sorrow for what he must have endured, he replied, "Say
nothing of that. Who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing,
and I ought to feel it."

"You must not be too severe upon yourself," replied Elizabeth.

"You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is so prone
to fall into it! No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have
been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression.
It will pass away soon enough."

"Do you suppose them to be in London?"

"Yes; where else can they be so well concealed?"

"And Lydia used to want to go to London," added Kitty.

"She is happy then," said her father drily; "and her residence there
will probably be of some duration."

Then after a short silence he continued:

"Lizzy, I bear you no ill-will for being justified in your advice to me
last May, which, considering the event, shows some greatness of mind."

They were interrupted by Miss Bennet, who came to fetch her mother's
tea.

"This is a parade," he cried, "which does one good; it gives such an
elegance to misfortune! Another day I will do the same; I will sit in my
library, in my nightcap and powdering gown, and give as much trouble as
I can; or, perhaps, I may defer it till Kitty runs away."

"I am not going to run away, papa," said Kitty fretfully. "If I should
ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia."

"_You_ go to Brighton. I would not trust you so near it as Eastbourne
for fifty pounds! No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to be cautious, and
you will feel the effects of it. No officer is ever to enter into
my house again, nor even to pass through the village. Balls will be
absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up with one of your sisters.
And you are never to stir out of doors till you can prove that you have
spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner."

Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to cry.

"Well, well," said he, "do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good
girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of
them."



Chapter 49


Two days after Mr. Bennet's return, as Jane and Elizabeth were walking
together in the shrubbery behind the house, they saw the housekeeper
coming towards them, and, concluding that she came to call them to their
mother, went forward to meet her; but, instead of the expected summons,
when they approached her, she said to Miss Bennet, "I beg your pardon,
madam, for interrupting you, but I was in hopes you might have got some
good news from town, so I took the liberty of coming to ask."

"What do you mean, Hill? We have heard nothing from town."

"Dear madam," cried Mrs. Hill, in great astonishment, "don't you know
there is an express come for master from Mr. Gardiner? He has been here
this half-hour, and master has had a letter."

Away ran the girls, too eager to get in to have time for speech. They
ran through the vestibule into the breakfast-room; from thence to the
library; their father was in neither; and they were on the point of
seeking him up stairs with their mother, when they were met by the
butler, who said:

"If you are looking for my master, ma'am, he is walking towards the
little copse."

Upon this information, they instantly passed through the hall once
more, and ran across the lawn after their father, who was deliberately
pursuing his way towards a small wood on one side of the paddock.

Jane, who was not so light nor so much in the habit of running as
Elizabeth, soon lagged behind, while her sister, panting for breath,
came up with him, and eagerly cried out:

"Oh, papa, what news--what news? Have you heard from my uncle?"

"Yes I have had a letter from him by express."

"Well, and what news does it bring--good or bad?"

"What is there of good to be expected?" said he, taking the letter from
his pocket. "But perhaps you would like to read it."

Elizabeth impatiently caught it from his hand. Jane now came up.

"Read it aloud," said their father, "for I hardly know myself what it is
about."

"Gracechurch Street, Monday, August 2.

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"At last I am able to send you some tidings of my niece, and such as,
upon the whole, I hope it will give you satisfaction. Soon after you
left me on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to find out in what part of
London they were. The particulars I reserve till we meet; it is enough
to know they are discovered. I have seen them both--"

"Then it is as I always hoped," cried Jane; "they are married!"

Elizabeth read on:

"I have seen them both. They are not married, nor can I find there
was any intention of being so; but if you are willing to perform the
engagements which I have ventured to make on your side, I hope it will
not be long before they are. All that is required of you is, to assure
to your daughter, by settlement, her equal share of the five thousand
pounds secured among your children after the decease of yourself and
my sister; and, moreover, to enter into an engagement of allowing her,
during your life, one hundred pounds per annum. These are conditions
which, considering everything, I had no hesitation in complying with,
as far as I thought myself privileged, for you. I shall send this by
express, that no time may be lost in bringing me your answer. You
will easily comprehend, from these particulars, that Mr. Wickham's
circumstances are not so hopeless as they are generally believed to be.
The world has been deceived in that respect; and I am happy to say there
will be some little money, even when all his debts are discharged, to
settle on my niece, in addition to her own fortune. If, as I conclude
will be the case, you send me full powers to act in your name throughout
the whole of this business, I will immediately give directions to
Haggerston for preparing a proper settlement. There will not be the
smallest occasion for your coming to town again; therefore stay quiet at
Longbourn, and depend on my diligence and care. Send back your answer as
fast as you can, and be careful to write explicitly. We have judged it
best that my niece should be married from this house, of which I hope
you will approve. She comes to us to-day. I shall write again as soon as
anything more is determined on. Yours, etc.,

"EDW. GARDINER."

"Is it possible?" cried Elizabeth, when she had finished. "Can it be
possible that he will marry her?"

"Wickham is not so undeserving, then, as we thought him," said her
sister. "My dear father, I congratulate you."

"And have you answered the letter?" cried Elizabeth.

"No; but it must be done soon."

Most earnestly did she then entreaty him to lose no more time before he
wrote.

"Oh! my dear father," she cried, "come back and write immediately.
Consider how important every moment is in such a case."

"Let me write for you," said Jane, "if you dislike the trouble
yourself."

"I dislike it very much," he replied; "but it must be done."

And so saying, he turned back with them, and walked towards the house.

"And may I ask--" said Elizabeth; "but the terms, I suppose, must be
complied with."

"Complied with! I am only ashamed of his asking so little."

"And they _must_ marry! Yet he is _such_ a man!"

"Yes, yes, they must marry. There is nothing else to be done. But there
are two things that I want very much to know; one is, how much money
your uncle has laid down to bring it about; and the other, how am I ever
to pay him."

"Money! My uncle!" cried Jane, "what do you mean, sir?"

"I mean, that no man in his senses would marry Lydia on so slight a
temptation as one hundred a year during my life, and fifty after I am
gone."

"That is very true," said Elizabeth; "though it had not occurred to me
before. His debts to be discharged, and something still to remain! Oh!
it must be my uncle's doings! Generous, good man, I am afraid he has
distressed himself. A small sum could not do all this."

"No," said her father; "Wickham's a fool if he takes her with a farthing
less than ten thousand pounds. I should be sorry to think so ill of him,
in the very beginning of our relationship."

"Ten thousand pounds! Heaven forbid! How is half such a sum to be
repaid?"

Mr. Bennet made no answer, and each of them, deep in thought, continued
silent till they reached the house. Their father then went on to the
library to write, and the girls walked into the breakfast-room.

"And they are really to be married!" cried Elizabeth, as soon as they
were by themselves. "How strange this is! And for _this_ we are to be
thankful. That they should marry, small as is their chance of happiness,
and wretched as is his character, we are forced to rejoice. Oh, Lydia!"

"I comfort myself with thinking," replied Jane, "that he certainly would
not marry Lydia if he had not a real regard for her. Though our kind
uncle has done something towards clearing him, I cannot believe that ten
thousand pounds, or anything like it, has been advanced. He has children
of his own, and may have more. How could he spare half ten thousand
pounds?"

"If he were ever able to learn what Wickham's debts have been," said
Elizabeth, "and how much is settled on his side on our sister, we shall
exactly know what Mr. Gardiner has done for them, because Wickham has
not sixpence of his own. The kindness of my uncle and aunt can never
be requited. Their taking her home, and affording her their personal
protection and countenance, is such a sacrifice to her advantage as
years of gratitude cannot enough acknowledge. By this time she is
actually with them! If such goodness does not make her miserable now,
she will never deserve to be happy! What a meeting for her, when she
first sees my aunt!"

"We must endeavour to forget all that has passed on either side," said
Jane: "I hope and trust they will yet be happy. His consenting to
marry her is a proof, I will believe, that he is come to a right way of
thinking. Their mutual affection will steady them; and I flatter myself
they will settle so quietly, and live in so rational a manner, as may in
time make their past imprudence forgotten."

"Their conduct has been such," replied Elizabeth, "as neither you, nor
I, nor anybody can ever forget. It is useless to talk of it."

It now occurred to the girls that their mother was in all likelihood
perfectly ignorant of what had happened. They went to the library,
therefore, and asked their father whether he would not wish them to make
it known to her. He was writing and, without raising his head, coolly
replied:

"Just as you please."

"May we take my uncle's letter to read to her?"

"Take whatever you like, and get away."

Elizabeth took the letter from his writing-table, and they went up stairs
together. Mary and Kitty were both with Mrs. Bennet: one communication
would, therefore, do for all. After a slight preparation for good news,
the letter was read aloud. Mrs. Bennet could hardly contain herself. As
soon as Jane had read Mr. Gardiner's hope of Lydia's being soon
married, her joy burst forth, and every following sentence added to its
exuberance. She was now in an irritation as violent from delight, as she
had ever been fidgety from alarm and vexation. To know that her daughter
would be married was enough. She was disturbed by no fear for her
felicity, nor humbled by any remembrance of her misconduct.

"My dear, dear Lydia!" she cried. "This is delightful indeed! She will
be married! I shall see her again! She will be married at sixteen!
My good, kind brother! I knew how it would be. I knew he would manage
everything! How I long to see her! and to see dear Wickham too! But the
clothes, the wedding clothes! I will write to my sister Gardiner about
them directly. Lizzy, my dear, run down to your father, and ask him
how much he will give her. Stay, stay, I will go myself. Ring the bell,
Kitty, for Hill. I will put on my things in a moment. My dear, dear
Lydia! How merry we shall be together when we meet!"

Her eldest daughter endeavoured to give some relief to the violence of
these transports, by leading her thoughts to the obligations which Mr.
Gardiner's behaviour laid them all under.

"For we must attribute this happy conclusion," she added, "in a great
measure to his kindness. We are persuaded that he has pledged himself to
assist Mr. Wickham with money."

"Well," cried her mother, "it is all very right; who should do it but
her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and my children
must have had all his money, you know; and it is the first time we have
ever had anything from him, except a few presents. Well! I am so happy!
In a short time I shall have a daughter married. Mrs. Wickham! How well
it sounds! And she was only sixteen last June. My dear Jane, I am in
such a flutter, that I am sure I can't write; so I will dictate, and
you write for me. We will settle with your father about the money
afterwards; but the things should be ordered immediately."

She was then proceeding to all the particulars of calico, muslin, and
cambric, and would shortly have dictated some very plentiful orders, had
not Jane, though with some difficulty, persuaded her to wait till her
father was at leisure to be consulted. One day's delay, she observed,
would be of small importance; and her mother was too happy to be quite
so obstinate as usual. Other schemes, too, came into her head.

"I will go to Meryton," said she, "as soon as I am dressed, and tell the
good, good news to my sister Philips. And as I come back, I can call
on Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long. Kitty, run down and order the carriage.
An airing would do me a great deal of good, I am sure. Girls, can I do
anything for you in Meryton? Oh! Here comes Hill! My dear Hill, have you
heard the good news? Miss Lydia is going to be married; and you shall
all have a bowl of punch to make merry at her wedding."

Mrs. Hill began instantly to express her joy. Elizabeth received her
congratulations amongst the rest, and then, sick of this folly, took
refuge in her own room, that she might think with freedom.

Poor Lydia's situation must, at best, be bad enough; but that it was
no worse, she had need to be thankful. She felt it so; and though, in
looking forward, neither rational happiness nor worldly prosperity could
be justly expected for her sister, in looking back to what they had
feared, only two hours ago, she felt all the advantages of what they had
gained.



Chapter 50


Mr. Bennet had very often wished before this period of his life that,
instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum for
the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived
him. He now wished it more than ever. Had he done his duty in that
respect, Lydia need not have been indebted to her uncle for whatever
of honour or credit could now be purchased for her. The satisfaction of
prevailing on one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be
her husband might then have rested in its proper place.

He was seriously concerned that a cause of so little advantage to anyone
should be forwarded at the sole expense of his brother-in-law, and he
was determined, if possible, to find out the extent of his assistance,
and to discharge the obligation as soon as he could.

When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be perfectly
useless, for, of course, they were to have a son. The son was to join
in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow
and younger children would by that means be provided for. Five daughters
successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs.
Bennet, for many years after Lydia's birth, had been certain that he
would. This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then
too late to be saving. Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and her
husband's love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their
income.

Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs. Bennet and
the children. But in what proportions it should be divided amongst the
latter depended on the will of the parents. This was one point, with
regard to Lydia, at least, which was now to be settled, and Mr. Bennet
could have no hesitation in acceding to the proposal before him. In
terms of grateful acknowledgment for the kindness of his brother,
though expressed most concisely, he then delivered on paper his perfect
approbation of all that was done, and his willingness to fulfil the
engagements that had been made for him. He had never before supposed
that, could Wickham be prevailed on to marry his daughter, it would
be done with so little inconvenience to himself as by the present
arrangement. He would scarcely be ten pounds a year the loser by the
hundred that was to be paid them; for, what with her board and pocket
allowance, and the continual presents in money which passed to her
through her mother's hands, Lydia's expenses had been very little within
that sum.

That it would be done with such trifling exertion on his side, too, was
another very welcome surprise; for his wish at present was to have as
little trouble in the business as possible. When the first transports
of rage which had produced his activity in seeking her were over, he
naturally returned to all his former indolence. His letter was soon
dispatched; for, though dilatory in undertaking business, he was quick
in its execution. He begged to know further particulars of what he
was indebted to his brother, but was too angry with Lydia to send any
message to her.

The good news spread quickly through the house, and with proportionate
speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne in the latter with decent
philosophy. To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage
of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the
happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant
farmhouse. But there was much to be talked of in marrying her; and the
good-natured wishes for her well-doing which had proceeded before from
all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton lost but a little of their spirit
in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband her misery
was considered certain.

It was a fortnight since Mrs. Bennet had been downstairs; but on this
happy day she again took her seat at the head of her table, and in
spirits oppressively high. No sentiment of shame gave a damp to her
triumph. The marriage of a daughter, which had been the first object
of her wishes since Jane was sixteen, was now on the point of
accomplishment, and her thoughts and her words ran wholly on those
attendants of elegant nuptials, fine muslins, new carriages, and
servants. She was busily searching through the neighbourhood for a
proper situation for her daughter, and, without knowing or considering
what their income might be, rejected many as deficient in size and
importance.

"Haye Park might do," said she, "if the Gouldings could quit it--or the
great house at Stoke, if the drawing-room were larger; but Ashworth is
too far off! I could not bear to have her ten miles from me; and as for
Pulvis Lodge, the attics are dreadful."

Her husband allowed her to talk on without interruption while the
servants remained. But when they had withdrawn, he said to her: "Mrs.
Bennet, before you take any or all of these houses for your son and
daughter, let us come to a right understanding. Into _one_ house in this
neighbourhood they shall never have admittance. I will not encourage the
impudence of either, by receiving them at Longbourn."

A long dispute followed this declaration; but Mr. Bennet was firm. It
soon led to another; and Mrs. Bennet found, with amazement and horror,
that her husband would not advance a guinea to buy clothes for his
daughter. He protested that she should receive from him no mark of
affection whatever on the occasion. Mrs. Bennet could hardly comprehend
it. That his anger could be carried to such a point of inconceivable
resentment as to refuse his daughter a privilege without which her
marriage would scarcely seem valid, exceeded all she could believe
possible. She was more alive to the disgrace which her want of new
clothes must reflect on her daughter's nuptials, than to any sense of
shame at her eloping and living with Wickham a fortnight before they
took place.

Elizabeth was now most heartily sorry that she had, from the distress of
the moment, been led to make Mr. Darcy acquainted with their fears for
her sister; for since her marriage would so shortly give the
proper termination to the elopement, they might hope to conceal its
unfavourable beginning from all those who were not immediately on the
spot.

She had no fear of its spreading farther through his means. There were
few people on whose secrecy she would have more confidently depended;
but, at the same time, there was no one whose knowledge of a sister's
frailty would have mortified her so much--not, however, from any fear
of disadvantage from it individually to herself, for, at any rate,
there seemed a gulf impassable between them. Had Lydia's marriage been
concluded on the most honourable terms, it was not to be supposed that
Mr. Darcy would connect himself with a family where, to every other
objection, would now be added an alliance and relationship of the
nearest kind with a man whom he so justly scorned.

From such a connection she could not wonder that he would shrink. The
wish of procuring her regard, which she had assured herself of his
feeling in Derbyshire, could not in rational expectation survive such a
blow as this. She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she
hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no
longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there
seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that
she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they
should meet.

What a triumph for him, as she often thought, could he know that the
proposals which she had proudly spurned only four months ago, would now
have been most gladly and gratefully received! He was as generous, she
doubted not, as the most generous of his sex; but while he was mortal,
there must be a triumph.

She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in
disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and
temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It
was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease
and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved;
and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she
must have received benefit of greater importance.

But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what
connubial felicity really was. An union of a different tendency, and
precluding the possibility of the other, was soon to be formed in their
family.

How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence,
she could not imagine. But how little of permanent happiness could
belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions
were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.

                          * * * * *

Mr. Gardiner soon wrote again to his brother. To Mr. Bennet's
acknowledgments he briefly replied, with assurance of his eagerness to
promote the welfare of any of his family; and concluded with entreaties
that the subject might never be mentioned to him again. The principal
purport of his letter was to inform them that Mr. Wickham had resolved
on quitting the militia.

"It was greatly my wish that he should do so," he added, "as soon as
his marriage was fixed on. And I think you will agree with me, in
considering the removal from that corps as highly advisable, both on
his account and my niece's. It is Mr. Wickham's intention to go into
the regulars; and among his former friends, there are still some who
are able and willing to assist him in the army. He has the promise of an
ensigncy in General ----'s regiment, now quartered in the North. It
is an advantage to have it so far from this part of the kingdom. He
promises fairly; and I hope among different people, where they may each
have a character to preserve, they will both be more prudent. I have
written to Colonel Forster, to inform him of our present arrangements,
and to request that he will satisfy the various creditors of Mr. Wickham
in and near Brighton, with assurances of speedy payment, for which I
have pledged myself. And will you give yourself the trouble of carrying
similar assurances to his creditors in Meryton, of whom I shall subjoin
a list according to his information? He has given in all his debts; I
hope at least he has not deceived us. Haggerston has our directions,
and all will be completed in a week. They will then join his regiment,
unless they are first invited to Longbourn; and I understand from Mrs.
Gardiner, that my niece is very desirous of seeing you all before she
leaves the South. She is well, and begs to be dutifully remembered to
you and your mother.--Yours, etc.,

"E. GARDINER."

Mr. Bennet and his daughters saw all the advantages of Wickham's removal
from the ----shire as clearly as Mr. Gardiner could do. But Mrs. Bennet
was not so well pleased with it. Lydia's being settled in the North,
just when she had expected most pleasure and pride in her company,
for she had by no means given up her plan of their residing in
Hertfordshire, was a severe disappointment; and, besides, it was such a
pity that Lydia should be taken from a regiment where she was acquainted
with everybody, and had so many favourites.

"She is so fond of Mrs. Forster," said she, "it will be quite shocking
to send her away! And there are several of the young men, too, that she
likes very much. The officers may not be so pleasant in General ----'s
regiment."

His daughter's request, for such it might be considered, of being
admitted into her family again before she set off for the North,
received at first an absolute negative. But Jane and Elizabeth,
who agreed in wishing, for the sake of their sister's feelings and
consequence, that she should be noticed on her marriage by her parents,
urged him so earnestly yet so rationally and so mildly, to receive her
and her husband at Longbourn, as soon as they were married, that he was
prevailed on to think as they thought, and act as they wished. And their
mother had the satisfaction of knowing that she would be able to show
her married daughter in the neighbourhood before she was banished to the
North. When Mr. Bennet wrote again to his brother, therefore, he sent
his permission for them to come; and it was settled, that as soon as
the ceremony was over, they should proceed to Longbourn. Elizabeth was
surprised, however, that Wickham should consent to such a scheme, and
had she consulted only her own inclination, any meeting with him would
have been the last object of her wishes.



Chapter 51


Their sister's wedding day arrived; and Jane and Elizabeth felt for her
probably more than she felt for herself. The carriage was sent to
meet them at ----, and they were to return in it by dinner-time. Their
arrival was dreaded by the elder Miss Bennets, and Jane more especially,
who gave Lydia the feelings which would have attended herself, had she
been the culprit, and was wretched in the thought of what her sister
must endure.

They came. The family were assembled in the breakfast room to receive
them. Smiles decked the face of Mrs. Bennet as the carriage drove up to
the door; her husband looked impenetrably grave; her daughters, alarmed,
anxious, uneasy.

Lydia's voice was heard in the vestibule; the door was thrown open, and
she ran into the room. Her mother stepped forwards, embraced her, and
welcomed her with rapture; gave her hand, with an affectionate smile,
to Wickham, who followed his lady; and wished them both joy with an
alacrity which shewed no doubt of their happiness.

Their reception from Mr. Bennet, to whom they then turned, was not quite
so cordial. His countenance rather gained in austerity; and he scarcely
opened his lips. The easy assurance of the young couple, indeed, was
enough to provoke him. Elizabeth was disgusted, and even Miss Bennet
was shocked. Lydia was Lydia still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy,
and fearless. She turned from sister to sister, demanding their
congratulations; and when at length they all sat down, looked eagerly
round the room, took notice of some little alteration in it, and
observed, with a laugh, that it was a great while since she had been
there.

Wickham was not at all more distressed than herself, but his manners
were always so pleasing, that had his character and his marriage been
exactly what they ought, his smiles and his easy address, while he
claimed their relationship, would have delighted them all. Elizabeth had
not before believed him quite equal to such assurance; but she sat down,
resolving within herself to draw no limits in future to the impudence
of an impudent man. She blushed, and Jane blushed; but the cheeks of the
two who caused their confusion suffered no variation of colour.

There was no want of discourse. The bride and her mother could neither
of them talk fast enough; and Wickham, who happened to sit near
Elizabeth, began inquiring after his acquaintance in that neighbourhood,
with a good humoured ease which she felt very unable to equal in her
replies. They seemed each of them to have the happiest memories in the
world. Nothing of the past was recollected with pain; and Lydia led
voluntarily to subjects which her sisters would not have alluded to for
the world.

"Only think of its being three months," she cried, "since I went away;
it seems but a fortnight I declare; and yet there have been things
enough happened in the time. Good gracious! when I went away, I am sure
I had no more idea of being married till I came back again! though I
thought it would be very good fun if I was."

Her father lifted up his eyes. Jane was distressed. Elizabeth looked
expressively at Lydia; but she, who never heard nor saw anything of
which she chose to be insensible, gaily continued, "Oh! mamma, do the
people hereabouts know I am married to-day? I was afraid they might not;
and we overtook William Goulding in his curricle, so I was determined he
should know it, and so I let down the side-glass next to him, and took
off my glove, and let my hand just rest upon the window frame, so that
he might see the ring, and then I bowed and smiled like anything."

Elizabeth could bear it no longer. She got up, and ran out of the room;
and returned no more, till she heard them passing through the hall to
the dining parlour. She then joined them soon enough to see Lydia, with
anxious parade, walk up to her mother's right hand, and hear her say
to her eldest sister, "Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go
lower, because I am a married woman."

It was not to be supposed that time would give Lydia that embarrassment
from which she had been so wholly free at first. Her ease and good
spirits increased. She longed to see Mrs. Phillips, the Lucases, and
all their other neighbours, and to hear herself called "Mrs. Wickham"
by each of them; and in the mean time, she went after dinner to show her
ring, and boast of being married, to Mrs. Hill and the two housemaids.

"Well, mamma," said she, when they were all returned to the breakfast
room, "and what do you think of my husband? Is not he a charming man? I
am sure my sisters must all envy me. I only hope they may have half
my good luck. They must all go to Brighton. That is the place to get
husbands. What a pity it is, mamma, we did not all go."

"Very true; and if I had my will, we should. But my dear Lydia, I don't
at all like your going such a way off. Must it be so?"

"Oh, lord! yes;--there is nothing in that. I shall like it of all
things. You and papa, and my sisters, must come down and see us. We
shall be at Newcastle all the winter, and I dare say there will be some
balls, and I will take care to get good partners for them all."

"I should like it beyond anything!" said her mother.

"And then when you go away, you may leave one or two of my sisters
behind you; and I dare say I shall get husbands for them before the
winter is over."

"I thank you for my share of the favour," said Elizabeth; "but I do not
particularly like your way of getting husbands."

Their visitors were not to remain above ten days with them. Mr. Wickham
had received his commission before he left London, and he was to join
his regiment at the end of a fortnight.

No one but Mrs. Bennet regretted that their stay would be so short; and
she made the most of the time by visiting about with her daughter, and
having very frequent parties at home. These parties were acceptable to
all; to avoid a family circle was even more desirable to such as did
think, than such as did not.

Wickham's affection for Lydia was just what Elizabeth had expected
to find it; not equal to Lydia's for him. She had scarcely needed her
present observation to be satisfied, from the reason of things, that
their elopement had been brought on by the strength of her love, rather
than by his; and she would have wondered why, without violently caring
for her, he chose to elope with her at all, had she not felt certain
that his flight was rendered necessary by distress of circumstances; and
if that were the case, he was not the young man to resist an opportunity
of having a companion.

Lydia was exceedingly fond of him. He was her dear Wickham on every
occasion; no one was to be put in competition with him. He did every
thing best in the world; and she was sure he would kill more birds on
the first of September, than any body else in the country.

One morning, soon after their arrival, as she was sitting with her two
elder sisters, she said to Elizabeth:

"Lizzy, I never gave _you_ an account of my wedding, I believe. You
were not by, when I told mamma and the others all about it. Are not you
curious to hear how it was managed?"

"No really," replied Elizabeth; "I think there cannot be too little said
on the subject."

"La! You are so strange! But I must tell you how it went off. We were
married, you know, at St. Clement's, because Wickham's lodgings were in
that parish. And it was settled that we should all be there by eleven
o'clock. My uncle and aunt and I were to go together; and the others
were to meet us at the church. Well, Monday morning came, and I was in
such a fuss! I was so afraid, you know, that something would happen to
put it off, and then I should have gone quite distracted. And there was
my aunt, all the time I was dressing, preaching and talking away just as
if she was reading a sermon. However, I did not hear above one word in
ten, for I was thinking, you may suppose, of my dear Wickham. I longed
to know whether he would be married in his blue coat."

"Well, and so we breakfasted at ten as usual; I thought it would never
be over; for, by the bye, you are to understand, that my uncle and aunt
were horrid unpleasant all the time I was with them. If you'll believe
me, I did not once put my foot out of doors, though I was there a
fortnight. Not one party, or scheme, or anything. To be sure London was
rather thin, but, however, the Little Theatre was open. Well, and so
just as the carriage came to the door, my uncle was called away upon
business to that horrid man Mr. Stone. And then, you know, when once
they get together, there is no end of it. Well, I was so frightened I
did not know what to do, for my uncle was to give me away; and if we
were beyond the hour, we could not be married all day. But, luckily, he
came back again in ten minutes' time, and then we all set out. However,
I recollected afterwards that if he had been prevented going, the
wedding need not be put off, for Mr. Darcy might have done as well."

"Mr. Darcy!" repeated Elizabeth, in utter amazement.

"Oh, yes!--he was to come there with Wickham, you know. But gracious
me! I quite forgot! I ought not to have said a word about it. I promised
them so faithfully! What will Wickham say? It was to be such a secret!"

"If it was to be secret," said Jane, "say not another word on the
subject. You may depend upon my seeking no further."

"Oh! certainly," said Elizabeth, though burning with curiosity; "we will
ask you no questions."

"Thank you," said Lydia, "for if you did, I should certainly tell you
all, and then Wickham would be angry."

On such encouragement to ask, Elizabeth was forced to put it out of her
power, by running away.

But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible; or at least
it was impossible not to try for information. Mr. Darcy had been at
her sister's wedding. It was exactly a scene, and exactly among people,
where he had apparently least to do, and least temptation to go.
Conjectures as to the meaning of it, rapid and wild, hurried into her
brain; but she was satisfied with none. Those that best pleased her, as
placing his conduct in the noblest light, seemed most improbable. She
could not bear such suspense; and hastily seizing a sheet of paper,
wrote a short letter to her aunt, to request an explanation of what
Lydia had dropt, if it were compatible with the secrecy which had been
intended.

"You may readily comprehend," she added, "what my curiosity must be
to know how a person unconnected with any of us, and (comparatively
speaking) a stranger to our family, should have been amongst you at such
a time. Pray write instantly, and let me understand it--unless it is,
for very cogent reasons, to remain in the secrecy which Lydia seems
to think necessary; and then I must endeavour to be satisfied with
ignorance."

"Not that I _shall_, though," she added to herself, as she finished
the letter; "and my dear aunt, if you do not tell me in an honourable
manner, I shall certainly be reduced to tricks and stratagems to find it
out."

Jane's delicate sense of honour would not allow her to speak to
Elizabeth privately of what Lydia had let fall; Elizabeth was glad
of it;--till it appeared whether her inquiries would receive any
satisfaction, she had rather be without a confidante.



Chapter 52


Elizabeth had the satisfaction of receiving an answer to her letter as
soon as she possibly could. She was no sooner in possession of it
than, hurrying into the little copse, where she was least likely to
be interrupted, she sat down on one of the benches and prepared to
be happy; for the length of the letter convinced her that it did not
contain a denial.

"Gracechurch street, Sept. 6.

"MY DEAR NIECE,

"I have just received your letter, and shall devote this whole morning
to answering it, as I foresee that a _little_ writing will not comprise
what I have to tell you. I must confess myself surprised by your
application; I did not expect it from _you_. Don't think me angry,
however, for I only mean to let you know that I had not imagined such
inquiries to be necessary on _your_ side. If you do not choose to
understand me, forgive my impertinence. Your uncle is as much surprised
as I am--and nothing but the belief of your being a party concerned
would have allowed him to act as he has done. But if you are really
innocent and ignorant, I must be more explicit.

"On the very day of my coming home from Longbourn, your uncle had a most
unexpected visitor. Mr. Darcy called, and was shut up with him several
hours. It was all over before I arrived; so my curiosity was not so
dreadfully racked as _yours_ seems to have been. He came to tell Mr.
Gardiner that he had found out where your sister and Mr. Wickham were,
and that he had seen and talked with them both; Wickham repeatedly,
Lydia once. From what I can collect, he left Derbyshire only one day
after ourselves, and came to town with the resolution of hunting for
them. The motive professed was his conviction of its being owing to
himself that Wickham's worthlessness had not been so well known as to
make it impossible for any young woman of character to love or confide
in him. He generously imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and
confessed that he had before thought it beneath him to lay his private
actions open to the world. His character was to speak for itself. He
called it, therefore, his duty to step forward, and endeavour to remedy
an evil which had been brought on by himself. If he _had another_
motive, I am sure it would never disgrace him. He had been some days
in town, before he was able to discover them; but he had something to
direct his search, which was more than _we_ had; and the consciousness
of this was another reason for his resolving to follow us.

"There is a lady, it seems, a Mrs. Younge, who was some time ago
governess to Miss Darcy, and was dismissed from her charge on some cause
of disapprobation, though he did not say what. She then took a large
house in Edward-street, and has since maintained herself by letting
lodgings. This Mrs. Younge was, he knew, intimately acquainted with
Wickham; and he went to her for intelligence of him as soon as he got to
town. But it was two or three days before he could get from her what he
wanted. She would not betray her trust, I suppose, without bribery and
corruption, for she really did know where her friend was to be found.
Wickham indeed had gone to her on their first arrival in London, and had
she been able to receive them into her house, they would have taken up
their abode with her. At length, however, our kind friend procured the
wished-for direction. They were in ---- street. He saw Wickham, and
afterwards insisted on seeing Lydia. His first object with her, he
acknowledged, had been to persuade her to quit her present disgraceful
situation, and return to her friends as soon as they could be prevailed
on to receive her, offering his assistance, as far as it would go. But
he found Lydia absolutely resolved on remaining where she was. She cared
for none of her friends; she wanted no help of his; she would not hear
of leaving Wickham. She was sure they should be married some time or
other, and it did not much signify when. Since such were her feelings,
it only remained, he thought, to secure and expedite a marriage, which,
in his very first conversation with Wickham, he easily learnt had never
been _his_ design. He confessed himself obliged to leave the regiment,
on account of some debts of honour, which were very pressing; and
scrupled not to lay all the ill-consequences of Lydia's flight on her
own folly alone. He meant to resign his commission immediately; and as
to his future situation, he could conjecture very little about it. He
must go somewhere, but he did not know where, and he knew he should have
nothing to live on.

"Mr. Darcy asked him why he had not married your sister at once. Though
Mr. Bennet was not imagined to be very rich, he would have been able
to do something for him, and his situation must have been benefited by
marriage. But he found, in reply to this question, that Wickham still
cherished the hope of more effectually making his fortune by marriage in
some other country. Under such circumstances, however, he was not likely
to be proof against the temptation of immediate relief.

"They met several times, for there was much to be discussed. Wickham of
course wanted more than he could get; but at length was reduced to be
reasonable.

"Every thing being settled between _them_, Mr. Darcy's next step was to
make your uncle acquainted with it, and he first called in Gracechurch
street the evening before I came home. But Mr. Gardiner could not be
seen, and Mr. Darcy found, on further inquiry, that your father was
still with him, but would quit town the next morning. He did not judge
your father to be a person whom he could so properly consult as your
uncle, and therefore readily postponed seeing him till after the
departure of the former. He did not leave his name, and till the next
day it was only known that a gentleman had called on business.

"On Saturday he came again. Your father was gone, your uncle at home,
and, as I said before, they had a great deal of talk together.

"They met again on Sunday, and then _I_ saw him too. It was not all
settled before Monday: as soon as it was, the express was sent off to
Longbourn. But our visitor was very obstinate. I fancy, Lizzy, that
obstinacy is the real defect of his character, after all. He has been
accused of many faults at different times, but _this_ is the true one.
Nothing was to be done that he did not do himself; though I am sure (and
I do not speak it to be thanked, therefore say nothing about it), your
uncle would most readily have settled the whole.

"They battled it together for a long time, which was more than either
the gentleman or lady concerned in it deserved. But at last your uncle
was forced to yield, and instead of being allowed to be of use to his
niece, was forced to put up with only having the probable credit of it,
which went sorely against the grain; and I really believe your letter
this morning gave him great pleasure, because it required an explanation
that would rob him of his borrowed feathers, and give the praise where
it was due. But, Lizzy, this must go no farther than yourself, or Jane
at most.

"You know pretty well, I suppose, what has been done for the young
people. His debts are to be paid, amounting, I believe, to considerably
more than a thousand pounds, another thousand in addition to her own
settled upon _her_, and his commission purchased. The reason why all
this was to be done by him alone, was such as I have given above. It
was owing to him, to his reserve and want of proper consideration, that
Wickham's character had been so misunderstood, and consequently that he
had been received and noticed as he was. Perhaps there was some truth
in _this_; though I doubt whether _his_ reserve, or _anybody's_ reserve,
can be answerable for the event. But in spite of all this fine talking,
my dear Lizzy, you may rest perfectly assured that your uncle would
never have yielded, if we had not given him credit for _another
interest_ in the affair.

"When all this was resolved on, he returned again to his friends, who
were still staying at Pemberley; but it was agreed that he should be in
London once more when the wedding took place, and all money matters were
then to receive the last finish.

"I believe I have now told you every thing. It is a relation which
you tell me is to give you great surprise; I hope at least it will not
afford you any displeasure. Lydia came to us; and Wickham had constant
admission to the house. _He_ was exactly what he had been, when I
knew him in Hertfordshire; but I would not tell you how little I was
satisfied with her behaviour while she staid with us, if I had not
perceived, by Jane's letter last Wednesday, that her conduct on coming
home was exactly of a piece with it, and therefore what I now tell
you can give you no fresh pain. I talked to her repeatedly in the most
serious manner, representing to her all the wickedness of what she had
done, and all the unhappiness she had brought on her family. If she
heard me, it was by good luck, for I am sure she did not listen. I was
sometimes quite provoked, but then I recollected my dear Elizabeth and
Jane, and for their sakes had patience with her.

"Mr. Darcy was punctual in his return, and as Lydia informed you,
attended the wedding. He dined with us the next day, and was to leave
town again on Wednesday or Thursday. Will you be very angry with me, my
dear Lizzy, if I take this opportunity of saying (what I was never bold
enough to say before) how much I like him. His behaviour to us has,
in every respect, been as pleasing as when we were in Derbyshire. His
understanding and opinions all please me; he wants nothing but a little
more liveliness, and _that_, if he marry _prudently_, his wife may teach
him. I thought him very sly;--he hardly ever mentioned your name. But
slyness seems the fashion.

"Pray forgive me if I have been very presuming, or at least do not
punish me so far as to exclude me from P. I shall never be quite happy
till I have been all round the park. A low phaeton, with a nice little
pair of ponies, would be the very thing.

"But I must write no more. The children have been wanting me this half
hour.

"Yours, very sincerely,

"M. GARDINER."

The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits,
in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the
greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had
produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's
match, which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too
great to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be just, from the
pain of obligation, were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true!
He had followed them purposely to town, he had taken on himself all
the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research; in which
supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and
despise, and where he was reduced to meet, frequently meet, reason
with, persuade, and finally bribe, the man whom he always most wished to
avoid, and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had
done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her
heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly
checked by other considerations, and she soon felt that even her vanity
was insufficient, when required to depend on his affection for her--for
a woman who had already refused him--as able to overcome a sentiment so
natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law
of Wickham! Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had,
to be sure, done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had
given a reason for his interference, which asked no extraordinary
stretch of belief. It was reasonable that he should feel he had been
wrong; he had liberality, and he had the means of exercising it; and
though she would not place herself as his principal inducement, she
could, perhaps, believe that remaining partiality for her might assist
his endeavours in a cause where her peace of mind must be materially
concerned. It was painful, exceedingly painful, to know that they were
under obligations to a person who could never receive a return. They
owed the restoration of Lydia, her character, every thing, to him. Oh!
how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever
encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For
herself she was humbled; but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause
of compassion and honour, he had been able to get the better of himself.
She read over her aunt's commendation of him again and again. It
was hardly enough; but it pleased her. She was even sensible of some
pleasure, though mixed with regret, on finding how steadfastly both she
and her uncle had been persuaded that affection and confidence subsisted
between Mr. Darcy and herself.

She was roused from her seat, and her reflections, by some one's
approach; and before she could strike into another path, she was
overtaken by Wickham.

"I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister?" said he,
as he joined her.

"You certainly do," she replied with a smile; "but it does not follow
that the interruption must be unwelcome."

"I should be sorry indeed, if it were. We were always good friends; and
now we are better."

"True. Are the others coming out?"

"I do not know. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia are going in the carriage to
Meryton. And so, my dear sister, I find, from our uncle and aunt, that
you have actually seen Pemberley."

She replied in the affirmative.

"I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would be too much
for me, or else I could take it in my way to Newcastle. And you saw the
old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor Reynolds, she was always very fond of
me. But of course she did not mention my name to you."

"Yes, she did."

"And what did she say?"

"That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid had--not turned
out well. At such a distance as _that_, you know, things are strangely
misrepresented."

"Certainly," he replied, biting his lips. Elizabeth hoped she had
silenced him; but he soon afterwards said:

"I was surprised to see Darcy in town last month. We passed each other
several times. I wonder what he can be doing there."

"Perhaps preparing for his marriage with Miss de Bourgh," said
Elizabeth. "It must be something particular, to take him there at this
time of year."

"Undoubtedly. Did you see him while you were at Lambton? I thought I
understood from the Gardiners that you had."

"Yes; he introduced us to his sister."

"And do you like her?"

"Very much."

"I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within this year
or two. When I last saw her, she was not very promising. I am very glad
you liked her. I hope she will turn out well."

"I dare say she will; she has got over the most trying age."

"Did you go by the village of Kympton?"

"I do not recollect that we did."

"I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have had. A
most delightful place!--Excellent Parsonage House! It would have suited
me in every respect."

"How should you have liked making sermons?"

"Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my duty,
and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought not to
repine;--but, to be sure, it would have been such a thing for me! The
quiet, the retirement of such a life would have answered all my ideas
of happiness! But it was not to be. Did you ever hear Darcy mention the
circumstance, when you were in Kent?"

"I have heard from authority, which I thought _as good_, that it was
left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patron."

"You have. Yes, there was something in _that_; I told you so from the
first, you may remember."

"I _did_ hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not
so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you actually
declared your resolution of never taking orders, and that the business
had been compromised accordingly."

"You did! and it was not wholly without foundation. You may remember
what I told you on that point, when first we talked of it."

They were now almost at the door of the house, for she had walked fast
to get rid of him; and unwilling, for her sister's sake, to provoke him,
she only said in reply, with a good-humoured smile:

"Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not let
us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we shall be always of one
mind."

She held out her hand; he kissed it with affectionate gallantry, though
he hardly knew how to look, and they entered the house.



Chapter 53


Mr. Wickham was so perfectly satisfied with this conversation that he
never again distressed himself, or provoked his dear sister Elizabeth,
by introducing the subject of it; and she was pleased to find that she
had said enough to keep him quiet.

The day of his and Lydia's departure soon came, and Mrs. Bennet was
forced to submit to a separation, which, as her husband by no means
entered into her scheme of their all going to Newcastle, was likely to
continue at least a twelvemonth.

"Oh! my dear Lydia," she cried, "when shall we meet again?"

"Oh, lord! I don't know. Not these two or three years, perhaps."

"Write to me very often, my dear."

"As often as I can. But you know married women have never much time for
writing. My sisters may write to _me_. They will have nothing else to
do."

Mr. Wickham's adieus were much more affectionate than his wife's. He
smiled, looked handsome, and said many pretty things.

"He is as fine a fellow," said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were out of
the house, "as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to
us all. I am prodigiously proud of him. I defy even Sir William Lucas
himself to produce a more valuable son-in-law."

The loss of her daughter made Mrs. Bennet very dull for several days.

"I often think," said she, "that there is nothing so bad as parting with
one's friends. One seems so forlorn without them."

"This is the consequence, you see, Madam, of marrying a daughter," said
Elizabeth. "It must make you better satisfied that your other four are
single."

"It is no such thing. Lydia does not leave me because she is married,
but only because her husband's regiment happens to be so far off. If
that had been nearer, she would not have gone so soon."

But the spiritless condition which this event threw her into was shortly
relieved, and her mind opened again to the agitation of hope, by an
article of news which then began to be in circulation. The housekeeper
at Netherfield had received orders to prepare for the arrival of her
master, who was coming down in a day or two, to shoot there for several
weeks. Mrs. Bennet was quite in the fidgets. She looked at Jane, and
smiled and shook her head by turns.

"Well, well, and so Mr. Bingley is coming down, sister," (for Mrs.
Phillips first brought her the news). "Well, so much the better. Not
that I care about it, though. He is nothing to us, you know, and I am
sure _I_ never want to see him again. But, however, he is very welcome
to come to Netherfield, if he likes it. And who knows what _may_ happen?
But that is nothing to us. You know, sister, we agreed long ago never to
mention a word about it. And so, is it quite certain he is coming?"

"You may depend on it," replied the other, "for Mrs. Nicholls was in
Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself on purpose
to know the truth of it; and she told me that it was certain true. He
comes down on Thursday at the latest, very likely on Wednesday. She was
going to the butcher's, she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on
Wednesday, and she has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed."

Miss Bennet had not been able to hear of his coming without changing
colour. It was many months since she had mentioned his name to
Elizabeth; but now, as soon as they were alone together, she said:

"I saw you look at me to-day, Lizzy, when my aunt told us of the present
report; and I know I appeared distressed. But don't imagine it was from
any silly cause. I was only confused for the moment, because I felt that
I _should_ be looked at. I do assure you that the news does not affect
me either with pleasure or pain. I am glad of one thing, that he comes
alone; because we shall see the less of him. Not that I am afraid of
_myself_, but I dread other people's remarks."

Elizabeth did not know what to make of it. Had she not seen him in
Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of coming there with no
other view than what was acknowledged; but she still thought him partial
to Jane, and she wavered as to the greater probability of his coming
there _with_ his friend's permission, or being bold enough to come
without it.

"Yet it is hard," she sometimes thought, "that this poor man cannot
come to a house which he has legally hired, without raising all this
speculation! I _will_ leave him to himself."

In spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be her
feelings in the expectation of his arrival, Elizabeth could easily
perceive that her spirits were affected by it. They were more disturbed,
more unequal, than she had often seen them.

The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents,
about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.

"As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear," said Mrs. Bennet, "you
will wait on him of course."

"No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised, if I
went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in
nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool's errand again."

His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an attention
would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his returning to
Netherfield.

"'Tis an etiquette I despise," said he. "If he wants our society,
let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend my hours
in running after my neighbours every time they go away and come back
again."

"Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait
on him. But, however, that shan't prevent my asking him to dine here, I
am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and the Gouldings soon. That will
make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for
him."

Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her
husband's incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that her
neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it, before
_they_ did. As the day of his arrival drew near,--

"I begin to be sorry that he comes at all," said Jane to her sister. "It
would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can
hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well;
but she does not know, no one can know, how much I suffer from what she
says. Happy shall I be, when his stay at Netherfield is over!"

"I wish I could say anything to comfort you," replied Elizabeth; "but it
is wholly out of my power. You must feel it; and the usual satisfaction
of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have
always so much."

Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants,
contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety
and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could. She counted
the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent;
hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his
arrival in Hertfordshire, she saw him, from her dressing-room window,
enter the paddock and ride towards the house.

Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely
kept her place at the table; but Elizabeth, to satisfy her mother, went
to the window--she looked,--she saw Mr. Darcy with him, and sat down
again by her sister.

"There is a gentleman with him, mamma," said Kitty; "who can it be?"

"Some acquaintance or other, my dear, I suppose; I am sure I do not
know."

"La!" replied Kitty, "it looks just like that man that used to be with
him before. Mr. what's-his-name. That tall, proud man."

"Good gracious! Mr. Darcy!--and so it does, I vow. Well, any friend of
Mr. Bingley's will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must
say that I hate the very sight of him."

Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern. She knew but little
of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the awkwardness
which must attend her sister, in seeing him almost for the first time
after receiving his explanatory letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable
enough. Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves; and their
mother talked on, of her dislike of Mr. Darcy, and her resolution to be
civil to him only as Mr. Bingley's friend, without being heard by either
of them. But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not be
suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to shew Mrs.
Gardiner's letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment towards him.
To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused,
and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive
information, he was the person to whom the whole family were indebted
for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an
interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just as
what Jane felt for Bingley. Her astonishment at his coming--at his
coming to Netherfield, to Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again,
was almost equal to what she had known on first witnessing his altered
behaviour in Derbyshire.

The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half a
minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added lustre to
her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that his affection and
wishes must still be unshaken. But she would not be secure.

"Let me first see how he behaves," said she; "it will then be early
enough for expectation."

She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without daring to
lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of
her sister as the servant was approaching the door. Jane looked a little
paler than usual, but more sedate than Elizabeth had expected. On the
gentlemen's appearing, her colour increased; yet she received them with
tolerable ease, and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any
symptom of resentment or any unnecessary complaisance.

Elizabeth said as little to either as civility would allow, and sat down
again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not often command. She
had ventured only one glance at Darcy. He looked serious, as usual; and,
she thought, more as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire, than as
she had seen him at Pemberley. But, perhaps he could not in her mother's
presence be what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, but
not an improbable, conjecture.

Bingley, she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that short period
saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He was received by Mrs.
Bennet with a degree of civility which made her two daughters ashamed,
especially when contrasted with the cold and ceremonious politeness of
her curtsey and address to his friend.

Elizabeth, particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the latter
the preservation of her favourite daughter from irremediable infamy,
was hurt and distressed to a most painful degree by a distinction so ill
applied.

Darcy, after inquiring of her how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner did, a question
which she could not answer without confusion, said scarcely anything. He
was not seated by her; perhaps that was the reason of his silence; but
it had not been so in Derbyshire. There he had talked to her friends,
when he could not to herself. But now several minutes elapsed without
bringing the sound of his voice; and when occasionally, unable to resist
the impulse of curiosity, she raised her eyes to his face, she as often
found him looking at Jane as at herself, and frequently on no object but
the ground. More thoughtfulness and less anxiety to please, than when
they last met, were plainly expressed. She was disappointed, and angry
with herself for being so.

"Could I expect it to be otherwise!" said she. "Yet why did he come?"

She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself; and to
him she had hardly courage to speak.

She inquired after his sister, but could do no more.

"It is a long time, Mr. Bingley, since you went away," said Mrs. Bennet.

He readily agreed to it.

"I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People _did_ say
you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas; but, however, I hope
it is not true. A great many changes have happened in the neighbourhood,
since you went away. Miss Lucas is married and settled. And one of my
own daughters. I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have
seen it in the papers. It was in The Times and The Courier, I know;
though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, 'Lately,
George Wickham, Esq. to Miss Lydia Bennet,' without there being a
syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or anything.
It was my brother Gardiner's drawing up too, and I wonder how he came to
make such an awkward business of it. Did you see it?"

Bingley replied that he did, and made his congratulations. Elizabeth
dared not lift up her eyes. How Mr. Darcy looked, therefore, she could
not tell.

"It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter well married,"
continued her mother, "but at the same time, Mr. Bingley, it is very
hard to have her taken such a way from me. They are gone down to
Newcastle, a place quite northward, it seems, and there they are to stay
I do not know how long. His regiment is there; for I suppose you have
heard of his leaving the ----shire, and of his being gone into the
regulars. Thank Heaven! he has _some_ friends, though perhaps not so
many as he deserves."

Elizabeth, who knew this to be levelled at Mr. Darcy, was in such
misery of shame, that she could hardly keep her seat. It drew from her,
however, the exertion of speaking, which nothing else had so effectually
done before; and she asked Bingley whether he meant to make any stay in
the country at present. A few weeks, he believed.

"When you have killed all your own birds, Mr. Bingley," said her mother,
"I beg you will come here, and shoot as many as you please on Mr.
Bennet's manor. I am sure he will be vastly happy to oblige you, and
will save all the best of the covies for you."

Elizabeth's misery increased, at such unnecessary, such officious
attention! Were the same fair prospect to arise at present as had
flattered them a year ago, every thing, she was persuaded, would be
hastening to the same vexatious conclusion. At that instant, she felt
that years of happiness could not make Jane or herself amends for
moments of such painful confusion.

"The first wish of my heart," said she to herself, "is never more to
be in company with either of them. Their society can afford no pleasure
that will atone for such wretchedness as this! Let me never see either
one or the other again!"

Yet the misery, for which years of happiness were to offer no
compensation, received soon afterwards material relief, from observing
how much the beauty of her sister re-kindled the admiration of her
former lover. When first he came in, he had spoken to her but little;
but every five minutes seemed to be giving her more of his attention. He
found her as handsome as she had been last year; as good natured, and
as unaffected, though not quite so chatty. Jane was anxious that no
difference should be perceived in her at all, and was really persuaded
that she talked as much as ever. But her mind was so busily engaged,
that she did not always know when she was silent.

When the gentlemen rose to go away, Mrs. Bennet was mindful of her
intended civility, and they were invited and engaged to dine at
Longbourn in a few days time.

"You are quite a visit in my debt, Mr. Bingley," she added, "for when
you went to town last winter, you promised to take a family dinner with
us, as soon as you returned. I have not forgot, you see; and I assure
you, I was very much disappointed that you did not come back and keep
your engagement."

Bingley looked a little silly at this reflection, and said something of
his concern at having been prevented by business. They then went away.

Mrs. Bennet had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and dine
there that day; but, though she always kept a very good table, she did
not think anything less than two courses could be good enough for a man
on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride
of one who had ten thousand a year.



Chapter 54


As soon as they were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover her spirits;
or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that
must deaden them more. Mr. Darcy's behaviour astonished and vexed her.

"Why, if he came only to be silent, grave, and indifferent," said she,
"did he come at all?"

She could settle it in no way that gave her pleasure.

"He could be still amiable, still pleasing, to my uncle and aunt, when
he was in town; and why not to me? If he fears me, why come hither? If
he no longer cares for me, why silent? Teasing, teasing, man! I will
think no more about him."

Her resolution was for a short time involuntarily kept by the approach
of her sister, who joined her with a cheerful look, which showed her
better satisfied with their visitors, than Elizabeth.

"Now," said she, "that this first meeting is over, I feel perfectly
easy. I know my own strength, and I shall never be embarrassed again by
his coming. I am glad he dines here on Tuesday. It will then be publicly
seen that, on both sides, we meet only as common and indifferent
acquaintance."

"Yes, very indifferent indeed," said Elizabeth, laughingly. "Oh, Jane,
take care."

"My dear Lizzy, you cannot think me so weak, as to be in danger now?"

"I think you are in very great danger of making him as much in love with
you as ever."

                          * * * * *

They did not see the gentlemen again till Tuesday; and Mrs. Bennet, in
the meanwhile, was giving way to all the happy schemes, which the good
humour and common politeness of Bingley, in half an hour's visit, had
revived.

On Tuesday there was a large party assembled at Longbourn; and the two
who were most anxiously expected, to the credit of their punctuality
as sportsmen, were in very good time. When they repaired to the
dining-room, Elizabeth eagerly watched to see whether Bingley would take
the place, which, in all their former parties, had belonged to him, by
her sister. Her prudent mother, occupied by the same ideas, forbore
to invite him to sit by herself. On entering the room, he seemed to
hesitate; but Jane happened to look round, and happened to smile: it was
decided. He placed himself by her.

Elizabeth, with a triumphant sensation, looked towards his friend.
He bore it with noble indifference, and she would have imagined that
Bingley had received his sanction to be happy, had she not seen his eyes
likewise turned towards Mr. Darcy, with an expression of half-laughing
alarm.

His behaviour to her sister was such, during dinner time, as showed an
admiration of her, which, though more guarded than formerly, persuaded
Elizabeth, that if left wholly to himself, Jane's happiness, and his
own, would be speedily secured. Though she dared not depend upon the
consequence, she yet received pleasure from observing his behaviour. It
gave her all the animation that her spirits could boast; for she was in
no cheerful humour. Mr. Darcy was almost as far from her as the table
could divide them. He was on one side of her mother. She knew how little
such a situation would give pleasure to either, or make either appear to
advantage. She was not near enough to hear any of their discourse, but
she could see how seldom they spoke to each other, and how formal and
cold was their manner whenever they did. Her mother's ungraciousness,
made the sense of what they owed him more painful to Elizabeth's mind;
and she would, at times, have given anything to be privileged to tell
him that his kindness was neither unknown nor unfelt by the whole of the
family.

She was in hopes that the evening would afford some opportunity of
bringing them together; that the whole of the visit would not pass away
without enabling them to enter into something more of conversation than
the mere ceremonious salutation attending his entrance. Anxious
and uneasy, the period which passed in the drawing-room, before the
gentlemen came, was wearisome and dull to a degree that almost made her
uncivil. She looked forward to their entrance as the point on which all
her chance of pleasure for the evening must depend.

"If he does not come to me, _then_," said she, "I shall give him up for
ever."

The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as if he would have
answered her hopes; but, alas! the ladies had crowded round the table,
where Miss Bennet was making tea, and Elizabeth pouring out the coffee,
in so close a confederacy that there was not a single vacancy near her
which would admit of a chair. And on the gentlemen's approaching, one of
the girls moved closer to her than ever, and said, in a whisper:

"The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them;
do we?"

Darcy had walked away to another part of the room. She followed him with
her eyes, envied everyone to whom he spoke, had scarcely patience enough
to help anybody to coffee; and then was enraged against herself for
being so silly!

"A man who has once been refused! How could I ever be foolish enough to
expect a renewal of his love? Is there one among the sex, who would not
protest against such a weakness as a second proposal to the same woman?
There is no indignity so abhorrent to their feelings!"

She was a little revived, however, by his bringing back his coffee cup
himself; and she seized the opportunity of saying:

"Is your sister at Pemberley still?"

"Yes, she will remain there till Christmas."

"And quite alone? Have all her friends left her?"

"Mrs. Annesley is with her. The others have been gone on to Scarborough,
these three weeks."

She could think of nothing more to say; but if he wished to converse
with her, he might have better success. He stood by her, however, for
some minutes, in silence; and, at last, on the young lady's whispering
to Elizabeth again, he walked away.

When the tea-things were removed, and the card-tables placed, the ladies
all rose, and Elizabeth was then hoping to be soon joined by him,
when all her views were overthrown by seeing him fall a victim to her
mother's rapacity for whist players, and in a few moments after seated
with the rest of the party. She now lost every expectation of pleasure.
They were confined for the evening at different tables, and she had
nothing to hope, but that his eyes were so often turned towards her side
of the room, as to make him play as unsuccessfully as herself.

Mrs. Bennet had designed to keep the two Netherfield gentlemen to
supper; but their carriage was unluckily ordered before any of the
others, and she had no opportunity of detaining them.

"Well girls," said she, as soon as they were left to themselves, "What
say you to the day? I think every thing has passed off uncommonly well,
I assure you. The dinner was as well dressed as any I ever saw. The
venison was roasted to a turn--and everybody said they never saw so
fat a haunch. The soup was fifty times better than what we had at the
Lucases' last week; and even Mr. Darcy acknowledged, that the partridges
were remarkably well done; and I suppose he has two or three French
cooks at least. And, my dear Jane, I never saw you look in greater
beauty. Mrs. Long said so too, for I asked her whether you did not. And
what do you think she said besides? 'Ah! Mrs. Bennet, we shall have her
at Netherfield at last.' She did indeed. I do think Mrs. Long is as good
a creature as ever lived--and her nieces are very pretty behaved girls,
and not at all handsome: I like them prodigiously."

Mrs. Bennet, in short, was in very great spirits; she had seen enough of
Bingley's behaviour to Jane, to be convinced that she would get him at
last; and her expectations of advantage to her family, when in a happy
humour, were so far beyond reason, that she was quite disappointed at
not seeing him there again the next day, to make his proposals.

"It has been a very agreeable day," said Miss Bennet to Elizabeth. "The
party seemed so well selected, so suitable one with the other. I hope we
may often meet again."

Elizabeth smiled.

"Lizzy, you must not do so. You must not suspect me. It mortifies me.
I assure you that I have now learnt to enjoy his conversation as an
agreeable and sensible young man, without having a wish beyond it. I am
perfectly satisfied, from what his manners now are, that he never had
any design of engaging my affection. It is only that he is blessed
with greater sweetness of address, and a stronger desire of generally
pleasing, than any other man."

"You are very cruel," said her sister, "you will not let me smile, and
are provoking me to it every moment."

"How hard it is in some cases to be believed!"

"And how impossible in others!"

"But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I
acknowledge?"

"That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all love to
instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing. Forgive
me; and if you persist in indifference, do not make me your confidante."



Chapter 55


A few days after this visit, Mr. Bingley called again, and alone. His
friend had left him that morning for London, but was to return home in
ten days time. He sat with them above an hour, and was in remarkably
good spirits. Mrs. Bennet invited him to dine with them; but, with many
expressions of concern, he confessed himself engaged elsewhere.

"Next time you call," said she, "I hope we shall be more lucky."

He should be particularly happy at any time, etc. etc.; and if she would
give him leave, would take an early opportunity of waiting on them.

"Can you come to-morrow?"

Yes, he had no engagement at all for to-morrow; and her invitation was
accepted with alacrity.

He came, and in such very good time that the ladies were none of them
dressed. In ran Mrs. Bennet to her daughter's room, in her dressing
gown, and with her hair half finished, crying out:

"My dear Jane, make haste and hurry down. He is come--Mr. Bingley is
come. He is, indeed. Make haste, make haste. Here, Sarah, come to Miss
Bennet this moment, and help her on with her gown. Never mind Miss
Lizzy's hair."

"We will be down as soon as we can," said Jane; "but I dare say Kitty is
forwarder than either of us, for she went up stairs half an hour ago."

"Oh! hang Kitty! what has she to do with it? Come be quick, be quick!
Where is your sash, my dear?"

But when her mother was gone, Jane would not be prevailed on to go down
without one of her sisters.

The same anxiety to get them by themselves was visible again in the
evening. After tea, Mr. Bennet retired to the library, as was his
custom, and Mary went up stairs to her instrument. Two obstacles of
the five being thus removed, Mrs. Bennet sat looking and winking at
Elizabeth and Catherine for a considerable time, without making any
impression on them. Elizabeth would not observe her; and when at last
Kitty did, she very innocently said, "What is the matter mamma? What do
you keep winking at me for? What am I to do?"

"Nothing child, nothing. I did not wink at you." She then sat still
five minutes longer; but unable to waste such a precious occasion, she
suddenly got up, and saying to Kitty, "Come here, my love, I want to
speak to you," took her out of the room. Jane instantly gave a look
at Elizabeth which spoke her distress at such premeditation, and her
entreaty that _she_ would not give in to it. In a few minutes, Mrs.
Bennet half-opened the door and called out:

"Lizzy, my dear, I want to speak with you."

Elizabeth was forced to go.

"We may as well leave them by themselves you know;" said her mother, as
soon as she was in the hall. "Kitty and I are going up stairs to sit in
my dressing-room."

Elizabeth made no attempt to reason with her mother, but remained
quietly in the hall, till she and Kitty were out of sight, then returned
into the drawing-room.

Mrs. Bennet's schemes for this day were ineffectual. Bingley was every
thing that was charming, except the professed lover of her daughter. His
ease and cheerfulness rendered him a most agreeable addition to their
evening party; and he bore with the ill-judged officiousness of the
mother, and heard all her silly remarks with a forbearance and command
of countenance particularly grateful to the daughter.

He scarcely needed an invitation to stay supper; and before he went
away, an engagement was formed, chiefly through his own and Mrs.
Bennet's means, for his coming next morning to shoot with her husband.

After this day, Jane said no more of her indifference. Not a word passed
between the sisters concerning Bingley; but Elizabeth went to bed in
the happy belief that all must speedily be concluded, unless Mr. Darcy
returned within the stated time. Seriously, however, she felt tolerably
persuaded that all this must have taken place with that gentleman's
concurrence.

Bingley was punctual to his appointment; and he and Mr. Bennet spent
the morning together, as had been agreed on. The latter was much more
agreeable than his companion expected. There was nothing of presumption
or folly in Bingley that could provoke his ridicule, or disgust him into
silence; and he was more communicative, and less eccentric, than the
other had ever seen him. Bingley of course returned with him to dinner;
and in the evening Mrs. Bennet's invention was again at work to get
every body away from him and her daughter. Elizabeth, who had a letter
to write, went into the breakfast room for that purpose soon after tea;
for as the others were all going to sit down to cards, she could not be
wanted to counteract her mother's schemes.

But on returning to the drawing-room, when her letter was finished, she
saw, to her infinite surprise, there was reason to fear that her mother
had been too ingenious for her. On opening the door, she perceived her
sister and Bingley standing together over the hearth, as if engaged in
earnest conversation; and had this led to no suspicion, the faces of
both, as they hastily turned round and moved away from each other, would
have told it all. Their situation was awkward enough; but _hers_ she
thought was still worse. Not a syllable was uttered by either; and
Elizabeth was on the point of going away again, when Bingley, who as
well as the other had sat down, suddenly rose, and whispering a few
words to her sister, ran out of the room.

Jane could have no reserves from Elizabeth, where confidence would give
pleasure; and instantly embracing her, acknowledged, with the liveliest
emotion, that she was the happiest creature in the world.

"'Tis too much!" she added, "by far too much. I do not deserve it. Oh!
why is not everybody as happy?"

Elizabeth's congratulations were given with a sincerity, a warmth,
a delight, which words could but poorly express. Every sentence of
kindness was a fresh source of happiness to Jane. But she would not
allow herself to stay with her sister, or say half that remained to be
said for the present.

"I must go instantly to my mother;" she cried. "I would not on any
account trifle with her affectionate solicitude; or allow her to hear it
from anyone but myself. He is gone to my father already. Oh! Lizzy, to
know that what I have to relate will give such pleasure to all my dear
family! how shall I bear so much happiness!"

She then hastened away to her mother, who had purposely broken up the
card party, and was sitting up stairs with Kitty.

Elizabeth, who was left by herself, now smiled at the rapidity and ease
with which an affair was finally settled, that had given them so many
previous months of suspense and vexation.

"And this," said she, "is the end of all his friend's anxious
circumspection! of all his sister's falsehood and contrivance! the
happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!"

In a few minutes she was joined by Bingley, whose conference with her
father had been short and to the purpose.

"Where is your sister?" said he hastily, as he opened the door.

"With my mother up stairs. She will be down in a moment, I dare say."

He then shut the door, and, coming up to her, claimed the good wishes
and affection of a sister. Elizabeth honestly and heartily expressed
her delight in the prospect of their relationship. They shook hands with
great cordiality; and then, till her sister came down, she had to listen
to all he had to say of his own happiness, and of Jane's perfections;
and in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed all his
expectations of felicity to be rationally founded, because they had for
basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of
Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and
himself.

It was an evening of no common delight to them all; the satisfaction of
Miss Bennet's mind gave a glow of such sweet animation to her face, as
made her look handsomer than ever. Kitty simpered and smiled, and hoped
her turn was coming soon. Mrs. Bennet could not give her consent or
speak her approbation in terms warm enough to satisfy her feelings,
though she talked to Bingley of nothing else for half an hour; and when
Mr. Bennet joined them at supper, his voice and manner plainly showed
how really happy he was.

Not a word, however, passed his lips in allusion to it, till their
visitor took his leave for the night; but as soon as he was gone, he
turned to his daughter, and said:

"Jane, I congratulate you. You will be a very happy woman."

Jane went to him instantly, kissed him, and thanked him for his
goodness.

"You are a good girl;" he replied, "and I have great pleasure in
thinking you will be so happily settled. I have not a doubt of your
doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are
each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so
easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will
always exceed your income."

"I hope not so. Imprudence or thoughtlessness in money matters would be
unpardonable in me."

"Exceed their income! My dear Mr. Bennet," cried his wife, "what are you
talking of? Why, he has four or five thousand a year, and very likely
more." Then addressing her daughter, "Oh! my dear, dear Jane, I am so
happy! I am sure I shan't get a wink of sleep all night. I knew how it
would be. I always said it must be so, at last. I was sure you could not
be so beautiful for nothing! I remember, as soon as ever I saw him, when
he first came into Hertfordshire last year, I thought how likely it was
that you should come together. Oh! he is the handsomest young man that
ever was seen!"

Wickham, Lydia, were all forgotten. Jane was beyond competition her
favourite child. At that moment, she cared for no other. Her younger
sisters soon began to make interest with her for objects of happiness
which she might in future be able to dispense.

Mary petitioned for the use of the library at Netherfield; and Kitty
begged very hard for a few balls there every winter.

Bingley, from this time, was of course a daily visitor at Longbourn;
coming frequently before breakfast, and always remaining till after
supper; unless when some barbarous neighbour, who could not be enough
detested, had given him an invitation to dinner which he thought himself
obliged to accept.

Elizabeth had now but little time for conversation with her sister; for
while he was present, Jane had no attention to bestow on anyone else;
but she found herself considerably useful to both of them in those hours
of separation that must sometimes occur. In the absence of Jane, he
always attached himself to Elizabeth, for the pleasure of talking of
her; and when Bingley was gone, Jane constantly sought the same means of
relief.

"He has made me so happy," said she, one evening, "by telling me that he
was totally ignorant of my being in town last spring! I had not believed
it possible."

"I suspected as much," replied Elizabeth. "But how did he account for
it?"

"It must have been his sister's doing. They were certainly no friends to
his acquaintance with me, which I cannot wonder at, since he might have
chosen so much more advantageously in many respects. But when they see,
as I trust they will, that their brother is happy with me, they will
learn to be contented, and we shall be on good terms again; though we
can never be what we once were to each other."

"That is the most unforgiving speech," said Elizabeth, "that I ever
heard you utter. Good girl! It would vex me, indeed, to see you again
the dupe of Miss Bingley's pretended regard."

"Would you believe it, Lizzy, that when he went to town last November,
he really loved me, and nothing but a persuasion of _my_ being
indifferent would have prevented his coming down again!"

"He made a little mistake to be sure; but it is to the credit of his
modesty."

This naturally introduced a panegyric from Jane on his diffidence, and
the little value he put on his own good qualities. Elizabeth was pleased
to find that he had not betrayed the interference of his friend; for,
though Jane had the most generous and forgiving heart in the world, she
knew it was a circumstance which must prejudice her against him.

"I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!" cried
Jane. "Oh! Lizzy, why am I thus singled from my family, and blessed
above them all! If I could but see _you_ as happy! If there _were_ but
such another man for you!"

"If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as
you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your
happiness. No, no, let me shift for myself; and, perhaps, if I have very
good luck, I may meet with another Mr. Collins in time."

The situation of affairs in the Longbourn family could not be long a
secret. Mrs. Bennet was privileged to whisper it to Mrs. Phillips,
and she ventured, without any permission, to do the same by all her
neighbours in Meryton.

The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in the
world, though only a few weeks before, when Lydia had first run away,
they had been generally proved to be marked out for misfortune.



Chapter 56


One morning, about a week after Bingley's engagement with Jane had been
formed, as he and the females of the family were sitting together in the
dining-room, their attention was suddenly drawn to the window, by the
sound of a carriage; and they perceived a chaise and four driving up
the lawn. It was too early in the morning for visitors, and besides, the
equipage did not answer to that of any of their neighbours. The horses
were post; and neither the carriage, nor the livery of the servant who
preceded it, were familiar to them. As it was certain, however, that
somebody was coming, Bingley instantly prevailed on Miss Bennet to avoid
the confinement of such an intrusion, and walk away with him into the
shrubbery. They both set off, and the conjectures of the remaining three
continued, though with little satisfaction, till the door was thrown
open and their visitor entered. It was Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

They were of course all intending to be surprised; but their
astonishment was beyond their expectation; and on the part of Mrs.
Bennet and Kitty, though she was perfectly unknown to them, even
inferior to what Elizabeth felt.

She entered the room with an air more than usually ungracious, made no
other reply to Elizabeth's salutation than a slight inclination of the
head, and sat down without saying a word. Elizabeth had mentioned her
name to her mother on her ladyship's entrance, though no request of
introduction had been made.

Mrs. Bennet, all amazement, though flattered by having a guest of such
high importance, received her with the utmost politeness. After sitting
for a moment in silence, she said very stiffly to Elizabeth,

"I hope you are well, Miss Bennet. That lady, I suppose, is your
mother."

Elizabeth replied very concisely that she was.

"And _that_ I suppose is one of your sisters."

"Yes, madam," said Mrs. Bennet, delighted to speak to Lady Catherine.
"She is my youngest girl but one. My youngest of all is lately married,
and my eldest is somewhere about the grounds, walking with a young man
who, I believe, will soon become a part of the family."

"You have a very small park here," returned Lady Catherine after a short
silence.

"It is nothing in comparison of Rosings, my lady, I dare say; but I
assure you it is much larger than Sir William Lucas's."

"This must be a most inconvenient sitting room for the evening, in
summer; the windows are full west."

Mrs. Bennet assured her that they never sat there after dinner, and then
added:

"May I take the liberty of asking your ladyship whether you left Mr. and
Mrs. Collins well."

"Yes, very well. I saw them the night before last."

Elizabeth now expected that she would produce a letter for her from
Charlotte, as it seemed the only probable motive for her calling. But no
letter appeared, and she was completely puzzled.

Mrs. Bennet, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take some
refreshment; but Lady Catherine very resolutely, and not very politely,
declined eating anything; and then, rising up, said to Elizabeth,

"Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness
on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you
will favour me with your company."

"Go, my dear," cried her mother, "and show her ladyship about the
different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage."

Elizabeth obeyed, and running into her own room for her parasol,
attended her noble guest downstairs. As they passed through the
hall, Lady Catherine opened the doors into the dining-parlour and
drawing-room, and pronouncing them, after a short survey, to be decent
looking rooms, walked on.

Her carriage remained at the door, and Elizabeth saw that her
waiting-woman was in it. They proceeded in silence along the gravel walk
that led to the copse; Elizabeth was determined to make no effort for
conversation with a woman who was now more than usually insolent and
disagreeable.

"How could I ever think her like her nephew?" said she, as she looked in
her face.

As soon as they entered the copse, Lady Catherine began in the following
manner:--

"You can be at no loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason of my
journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I
come."

Elizabeth looked with unaffected astonishment.

"Indeed, you are mistaken, Madam. I have not been at all able to account
for the honour of seeing you here."

"Miss Bennet," replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, "you ought to
know, that I am not to be trifled with. But however insincere _you_ may
choose to be, you shall not find _me_ so. My character has ever been
celebrated for its sincerity and frankness, and in a cause of such
moment as this, I shall certainly not depart from it. A report of a most
alarming nature reached me two days ago. I was told that not only your
sister was on the point of being most advantageously married, but that
you, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet, would, in all likelihood, be soon
afterwards united to my nephew, my own nephew, Mr. Darcy. Though I
_know_ it must be a scandalous falsehood, though I would not injure him
so much as to suppose the truth of it possible, I instantly resolved
on setting off for this place, that I might make my sentiments known to
you."

"If you believed it impossible to be true," said Elizabeth, colouring
with astonishment and disdain, "I wonder you took the trouble of coming
so far. What could your ladyship propose by it?"

"At once to insist upon having such a report universally contradicted."

"Your coming to Longbourn, to see me and my family," said Elizabeth
coolly, "will be rather a confirmation of it; if, indeed, such a report
is in existence."

"If! Do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been
industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such a
report is spread abroad?"

"I never heard that it was."

"And can you likewise declare, that there is no foundation for it?"

"I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship. You may
ask questions which I shall not choose to answer."

"This is not to be borne. Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has
he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?"

"Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible."

"It ought to be so; it must be so, while he retains the use of his
reason. But your arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation,
have made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family. You
may have drawn him in."

"If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it."

"Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? I have not been accustomed to such
language as this. I am almost the nearest relation he has in the world,
and am entitled to know all his dearest concerns."

"But you are not entitled to know mine; nor will such behaviour as this,
ever induce me to be explicit."

"Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have the
presumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. Mr. Darcy is
engaged to my daughter. Now what have you to say?"

"Only this; that if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose he will
make an offer to me."

Lady Catherine hesitated for a moment, and then replied:

"The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. From their infancy,
they have been intended for each other. It was the favourite wish of
_his_ mother, as well as of hers. While in their cradles, we planned
the union: and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would
be accomplished in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of
inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to
the family! Do you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? To his
tacit engagement with Miss de Bourgh? Are you lost to every feeling of
propriety and delicacy? Have you not heard me say that from his earliest
hours he was destined for his cousin?"

"Yes, and I had heard it before. But what is that to me? If there is
no other objection to my marrying your nephew, I shall certainly not
be kept from it by knowing that his mother and aunt wished him to
marry Miss de Bourgh. You both did as much as you could in planning the
marriage. Its completion depended on others. If Mr. Darcy is neither
by honour nor inclination confined to his cousin, why is not he to make
another choice? And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?"

"Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. Yes,
Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or
friends, if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all. You will
be censured, slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him.
Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned
by any of us."

"These are heavy misfortunes," replied Elizabeth. "But the wife of Mr.
Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily
attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause
to repine."

"Obstinate, headstrong girl! I am ashamed of you! Is this your gratitude
for my attentions to you last spring? Is nothing due to me on that
score? Let us sit down. You are to understand, Miss Bennet, that I came
here with the determined resolution of carrying my purpose; nor will
I be dissuaded from it. I have not been used to submit to any person's
whims. I have not been in the habit of brooking disappointment."

"_That_ will make your ladyship's situation at present more pitiable;
but it will have no effect on me."

"I will not be interrupted. Hear me in silence. My daughter and my
nephew are formed for each other. They are descended, on the maternal
side, from the same noble line; and, on the father's, from respectable,
honourable, and ancient--though untitled--families. Their fortune on
both sides is splendid. They are destined for each other by the voice of
every member of their respective houses; and what is to divide them?
The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections,
or fortune. Is this to be endured! But it must not, shall not be. If you
were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit the sphere in
which you have been brought up."

"In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that
sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are
equal."

"True. You _are_ a gentleman's daughter. But who was your mother?
Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their
condition."

"Whatever my connections may be," said Elizabeth, "if your nephew does
not object to them, they can be nothing to _you_."

"Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?"

Though Elizabeth would not, for the mere purpose of obliging Lady
Catherine, have answered this question, she could not but say, after a
moment's deliberation:

"I am not."

Lady Catherine seemed pleased.

"And will you promise me, never to enter into such an engagement?"

"I will make no promise of the kind."

"Miss Bennet I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a more
reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into a belief that
I will ever recede. I shall not go away till you have given me the
assurance I require."

"And I certainly _never_ shall give it. I am not to be intimidated into
anything so wholly unreasonable. Your ladyship wants Mr. Darcy to marry
your daughter; but would my giving you the wished-for promise make their
marriage at all more probable? Supposing him to be attached to me, would
my refusing to accept his hand make him wish to bestow it on his cousin?
Allow me to say, Lady Catherine, that the arguments with which you have
supported this extraordinary application have been as frivolous as the
application was ill-judged. You have widely mistaken my character, if
you think I can be worked on by such persuasions as these. How far your
nephew might approve of your interference in his affairs, I cannot tell;
but you have certainly no right to concern yourself in mine. I must beg,
therefore, to be importuned no farther on the subject."

"Not so hasty, if you please. I have by no means done. To all the
objections I have already urged, I have still another to add. I am
no stranger to the particulars of your youngest sister's infamous
elopement. I know it all; that the young man's marrying her was a
patched-up business, at the expence of your father and uncles. And is
such a girl to be my nephew's sister? Is her husband, is the son of his
late father's steward, to be his brother? Heaven and earth!--of what are
you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"

"You can now have nothing further to say," she resentfully answered.
"You have insulted me in every possible method. I must beg to return to
the house."

And she rose as she spoke. Lady Catherine rose also, and they turned
back. Her ladyship was highly incensed.

"You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of my nephew!
Unfeeling, selfish girl! Do you not consider that a connection with you
must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?"

"Lady Catherine, I have nothing further to say. You know my sentiments."

"You are then resolved to have him?"

"I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that manner,
which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without
reference to _you_, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me."

"It is well. You refuse, then, to oblige me. You refuse to obey the
claims of duty, honour, and gratitude. You are determined to ruin him in
the opinion of all his friends, and make him the contempt of the world."

"Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude," replied Elizabeth, "have any
possible claim on me, in the present instance. No principle of either
would be violated by my marriage with Mr. Darcy. And with regard to the
resentment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former
_were_ excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's
concern--and the world in general would have too much sense to join in
the scorn."

"And this is your real opinion! This is your final resolve! Very well.
I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet, that your
ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you
reasonable; but, depend upon it, I will carry my point."

In this manner Lady Catherine talked on, till they were at the door of
the carriage, when, turning hastily round, she added, "I take no leave
of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve
no such attention. I am most seriously displeased."

Elizabeth made no answer; and without attempting to persuade her
ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it herself. She
heard the carriage drive away as she proceeded up stairs. Her mother
impatiently met her at the door of the dressing-room, to ask why Lady
Catherine would not come in again and rest herself.

"She did not choose it," said her daughter, "she would go."

"She is a very fine-looking woman! and her calling here was prodigiously
civil! for she only came, I suppose, to tell us the Collinses were
well. She is on her road somewhere, I dare say, and so, passing through
Meryton, thought she might as well call on you. I suppose she had
nothing particular to say to you, Lizzy?"

Elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here; for to
acknowledge the substance of their conversation was impossible.



Chapter 57


The discomposure of spirits which this extraordinary visit threw
Elizabeth into, could not be easily overcome; nor could she, for many
hours, learn to think of it less than incessantly. Lady Catherine, it
appeared, had actually taken the trouble of this journey from Rosings,
for the sole purpose of breaking off her supposed engagement with Mr.
Darcy. It was a rational scheme, to be sure! but from what the report
of their engagement could originate, Elizabeth was at a loss to imagine;
till she recollected that _his_ being the intimate friend of Bingley,
and _her_ being the sister of Jane, was enough, at a time when the
expectation of one wedding made everybody eager for another, to supply
the idea. She had not herself forgotten to feel that the marriage of her
sister must bring them more frequently together. And her neighbours
at Lucas Lodge, therefore (for through their communication with the
Collinses, the report, she concluded, had reached Lady Catherine), had
only set that down as almost certain and immediate, which she had looked
forward to as possible at some future time.

In revolving Lady Catherine's expressions, however, she could not help
feeling some uneasiness as to the possible consequence of her persisting
in this interference. From what she had said of her resolution to
prevent their marriage, it occurred to Elizabeth that she must meditate
an application to her nephew; and how _he_ might take a similar
representation of the evils attached to a connection with her, she dared
not pronounce. She knew not the exact degree of his affection for his
aunt, or his dependence on her judgment, but it was natural to suppose
that he thought much higher of her ladyship than _she_ could do; and it
was certain that, in enumerating the miseries of a marriage with _one_,
whose immediate connections were so unequal to his own, his aunt would
address him on his weakest side. With his notions of dignity, he would
probably feel that the arguments, which to Elizabeth had appeared weak
and ridiculous, contained much good sense and solid reasoning.

If he had been wavering before as to what he should do, which had often
seemed likely, the advice and entreaty of so near a relation might
settle every doubt, and determine him at once to be as happy as dignity
unblemished could make him. In that case he would return no more. Lady
Catherine might see him in her way through town; and his engagement to
Bingley of coming again to Netherfield must give way.

"If, therefore, an excuse for not keeping his promise should come to his
friend within a few days," she added, "I shall know how to understand
it. I shall then give over every expectation, every wish of his
constancy. If he is satisfied with only regretting me, when he might
have obtained my affections and hand, I shall soon cease to regret him
at all."

                          * * * * *

The surprise of the rest of the family, on hearing who their visitor had
been, was very great; but they obligingly satisfied it, with the same
kind of supposition which had appeased Mrs. Bennet's curiosity; and
Elizabeth was spared from much teasing on the subject.

The next morning, as she was going downstairs, she was met by her
father, who came out of his library with a letter in his hand.

"Lizzy," said he, "I was going to look for you; come into my room."

She followed him thither; and her curiosity to know what he had to
tell her was heightened by the supposition of its being in some manner
connected with the letter he held. It suddenly struck her that it
might be from Lady Catherine; and she anticipated with dismay all the
consequent explanations.

She followed her father to the fire place, and they both sat down. He
then said,

"I have received a letter this morning that has astonished me
exceedingly. As it principally concerns yourself, you ought to know its
contents. I did not know before, that I had two daughters on the brink
of matrimony. Let me congratulate you on a very important conquest."

The colour now rushed into Elizabeth's cheeks in the instantaneous
conviction of its being a letter from the nephew, instead of the aunt;
and she was undetermined whether most to be pleased that he explained
himself at all, or offended that his letter was not rather addressed to
herself; when her father continued:

"You look conscious. Young ladies have great penetration in such matters
as these; but I think I may defy even _your_ sagacity, to discover the
name of your admirer. This letter is from Mr. Collins."

"From Mr. Collins! and what can _he_ have to say?"

"Something very much to the purpose of course. He begins with
congratulations on the approaching nuptials of my eldest daughter, of
which, it seems, he has been told by some of the good-natured, gossiping
Lucases. I shall not sport with your impatience, by reading what he says
on that point. What relates to yourself, is as follows: 'Having thus
offered you the sincere congratulations of Mrs. Collins and myself on
this happy event, let me now add a short hint on the subject of another;
of which we have been advertised by the same authority. Your daughter
Elizabeth, it is presumed, will not long bear the name of Bennet, after
her elder sister has resigned it, and the chosen partner of her fate may
be reasonably looked up to as one of the most illustrious personages in
this land.'

"Can you possibly guess, Lizzy, who is meant by this?" 'This young
gentleman is blessed, in a peculiar way, with every thing the heart of
mortal can most desire,--splendid property, noble kindred, and extensive
patronage. Yet in spite of all these temptations, let me warn my cousin
Elizabeth, and yourself, of what evils you may incur by a precipitate
closure with this gentleman's proposals, which, of course, you will be
inclined to take immediate advantage of.'

"Have you any idea, Lizzy, who this gentleman is? But now it comes out:

"'My motive for cautioning you is as follows. We have reason to imagine
that his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, does not look on the match with
a friendly eye.'

"_Mr. Darcy_, you see, is the man! Now, Lizzy, I think I _have_
surprised you. Could he, or the Lucases, have pitched on any man within
the circle of our acquaintance, whose name would have given the lie
more effectually to what they related? Mr. Darcy, who never looks at any
woman but to see a blemish, and who probably never looked at you in his
life! It is admirable!"

Elizabeth tried to join in her father's pleasantry, but could only force
one most reluctant smile. Never had his wit been directed in a manner so
little agreeable to her.

"Are you not diverted?"

"Oh! yes. Pray read on."

"'After mentioning the likelihood of this marriage to her ladyship last
night, she immediately, with her usual condescension, expressed what she
felt on the occasion; when it became apparent, that on the score of some
family objections on the part of my cousin, she would never give her
consent to what she termed so disgraceful a match. I thought it my duty
to give the speediest intelligence of this to my cousin, that she and
her noble admirer may be aware of what they are about, and not run
hastily into a marriage which has not been properly sanctioned.' Mr.
Collins moreover adds, 'I am truly rejoiced that my cousin Lydia's sad
business has been so well hushed up, and am only concerned that their
living together before the marriage took place should be so generally
known. I must not, however, neglect the duties of my station, or refrain
from declaring my amazement at hearing that you received the young
couple into your house as soon as they were married. It was an
encouragement of vice; and had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should
very strenuously have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them,
as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their
names to be mentioned in your hearing.' That is his notion of Christian
forgiveness! The rest of his letter is only about his dear Charlotte's
situation, and his expectation of a young olive-branch. But, Lizzy, you
look as if you did not enjoy it. You are not going to be _missish_,
I hope, and pretend to be affronted at an idle report. For what do we
live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our
turn?"

"Oh!" cried Elizabeth, "I am excessively diverted. But it is so
strange!"

"Yes--_that_ is what makes it amusing. Had they fixed on any other man
it would have been nothing; but _his_ perfect indifference, and _your_
pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd! Much as I abominate
writing, I would not give up Mr. Collins's correspondence for any
consideration. Nay, when I read a letter of his, I cannot help giving
him the preference even over Wickham, much as I value the impudence and
hypocrisy of my son-in-law. And pray, Lizzy, what said Lady Catherine
about this report? Did she call to refuse her consent?"

To this question his daughter replied only with a laugh; and as it had
been asked without the least suspicion, she was not distressed by
his repeating it. Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her
feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she
would rather have cried. Her father had most cruelly mortified her, by
what he said of Mr. Darcy's indifference, and she could do nothing but
wonder at such a want of penetration, or fear that perhaps, instead of
his seeing too little, she might have fancied too much.



Chapter 58


Instead of receiving any such letter of excuse from his friend, as
Elizabeth half expected Mr. Bingley to do, he was able to bring Darcy
with him to Longbourn before many days had passed after Lady Catherine's
visit. The gentlemen arrived early; and, before Mrs. Bennet had time
to tell him of their having seen his aunt, of which her daughter sat
in momentary dread, Bingley, who wanted to be alone with Jane, proposed
their all walking out. It was agreed to. Mrs. Bennet was not in the
habit of walking; Mary could never spare time; but the remaining five
set off together. Bingley and Jane, however, soon allowed the others
to outstrip them. They lagged behind, while Elizabeth, Kitty, and Darcy
were to entertain each other. Very little was said by either; Kitty
was too much afraid of him to talk; Elizabeth was secretly forming a
desperate resolution; and perhaps he might be doing the same.

They walked towards the Lucases, because Kitty wished to call upon
Maria; and as Elizabeth saw no occasion for making it a general concern,
when Kitty left them she went boldly on with him alone. Now was the
moment for her resolution to be executed, and, while her courage was
high, she immediately said:

"Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish creature; and, for the sake of giving
relief to my own feelings, care not how much I may be wounding yours. I
can no longer help thanking you for your unexampled kindness to my
poor sister. Ever since I have known it, I have been most anxious to
acknowledge to you how gratefully I feel it. Were it known to the rest
of my family, I should not have merely my own gratitude to express."

"I am sorry, exceedingly sorry," replied Darcy, in a tone of surprise
and emotion, "that you have ever been informed of what may, in a
mistaken light, have given you uneasiness. I did not think Mrs. Gardiner
was so little to be trusted."

"You must not blame my aunt. Lydia's thoughtlessness first betrayed to
me that you had been concerned in the matter; and, of course, I could
not rest till I knew the particulars. Let me thank you again and again,
in the name of all my family, for that generous compassion which induced
you to take so much trouble, and bear so many mortifications, for the
sake of discovering them."

"If you _will_ thank me," he replied, "let it be for yourself alone.
That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other
inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your
_family_ owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought
only of _you_."

Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word. After a short pause,
her companion added, "You are too generous to trifle with me. If your
feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. _My_
affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence
me on this subject for ever."

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of
his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not
very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone
so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make
her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The
happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never
felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as
warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth
been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the
expression of heartfelt delight, diffused over his face, became him;
but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of
feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his
affection every moment more valuable.

They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to
be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects. She
soon learnt that they were indebted for their present good understanding
to the efforts of his aunt, who did call on him in her return through
London, and there relate her journey to Longbourn, its motive, and the
substance of her conversation with Elizabeth; dwelling emphatically on
every expression of the latter which, in her ladyship's apprehension,
peculiarly denoted her perverseness and assurance; in the belief that
such a relation must assist her endeavours to obtain that promise
from her nephew which she had refused to give. But, unluckily for her
ladyship, its effect had been exactly contrariwise.

"It taught me to hope," said he, "as I had scarcely ever allowed myself
to hope before. I knew enough of your disposition to be certain that,
had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided against me, you would have
acknowledged it to Lady Catherine, frankly and openly."

Elizabeth coloured and laughed as she replied, "Yes, you know enough
of my frankness to believe me capable of _that_. After abusing you so
abominably to your face, I could have no scruple in abusing you to all
your relations."

"What did you say of me, that I did not deserve? For, though your
accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my
behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was
unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence."

"We will not quarrel for the greater share of blame annexed to that
evening," said Elizabeth. "The conduct of neither, if strictly examined,
will be irreproachable; but since then, we have both, I hope, improved
in civility."

"I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself. The recollection of what I
then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of
it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your
reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: 'had you behaved in a
more gentlemanlike manner.' Those were your words. You know not, you can
scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;--though it was some time,
I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice."

"I was certainly very far from expecting them to make so strong an
impression. I had not the smallest idea of their being ever felt in such
a way."

"I can easily believe it. You thought me then devoid of every proper
feeling, I am sure you did. The turn of your countenance I shall never
forget, as you said that I could not have addressed you in any possible
way that would induce you to accept me."

"Oh! do not repeat what I then said. These recollections will not do at
all. I assure you that I have long been most heartily ashamed of it."

Darcy mentioned his letter. "Did it," said he, "did it soon make you
think better of me? Did you, on reading it, give any credit to its
contents?"

She explained what its effect on her had been, and how gradually all her
former prejudices had been removed.

"I knew," said he, "that what I wrote must give you pain, but it was
necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter. There was one part
especially, the opening of it, which I should dread your having the
power of reading again. I can remember some expressions which might
justly make you hate me."

"The letter shall certainly be burnt, if you believe it essential to the
preservation of my regard; but, though we have both reason to think my
opinions not entirely unalterable, they are not, I hope, quite so easily
changed as that implies."

"When I wrote that letter," replied Darcy, "I believed myself perfectly
calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was written in a
dreadful bitterness of spirit."

"The letter, perhaps, began in bitterness, but it did not end so. The
adieu is charity itself. But think no more of the letter. The feelings
of the person who wrote, and the person who received it, are now
so widely different from what they were then, that every unpleasant
circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten. You must learn some
of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you
pleasure."

"I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind. Your
retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment
arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of
innocence. But with me, it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude
which cannot, which ought not, to be repelled. I have been a selfish
being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I
was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I
was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.
Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt
by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all
that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught
me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family
circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least
to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I
was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been
but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You
taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you,
I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception.
You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman
worthy of being pleased."

"Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?"

"Indeed I had. What will you think of my vanity? I believed you to be
wishing, expecting my addresses."

"My manners must have been in fault, but not intentionally, I assure
you. I never meant to deceive you, but my spirits might often lead me
wrong. How you must have hated me after _that_ evening?"

"Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began to take
a proper direction."

"I am almost afraid of asking what you thought of me, when we met at
Pemberley. You blamed me for coming?"

"No indeed; I felt nothing but surprise."

"Your surprise could not be greater than _mine_ in being noticed by you.
My conscience told me that I deserved no extraordinary politeness, and I
confess that I did not expect to receive _more_ than my due."

"My object then," replied Darcy, "was to show you, by every civility in
my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to
obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you
see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes
introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an
hour after I had seen you."

He then told her of Georgiana's delight in her acquaintance, and of her
disappointment at its sudden interruption; which naturally leading to
the cause of that interruption, she soon learnt that his resolution of
following her from Derbyshire in quest of her sister had been formed
before he quitted the inn, and that his gravity and thoughtfulness
there had arisen from no other struggles than what such a purpose must
comprehend.

She expressed her gratitude again, but it was too painful a subject to
each, to be dwelt on farther.

After walking several miles in a leisurely manner, and too busy to know
anything about it, they found at last, on examining their watches, that
it was time to be at home.

"What could become of Mr. Bingley and Jane!" was a wonder which
introduced the discussion of their affairs. Darcy was delighted with
their engagement; his friend had given him the earliest information of
it.

"I must ask whether you were surprised?" said Elizabeth.

"Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon happen."

"That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as much." And
though he exclaimed at the term, she found that it had been pretty much
the case.

"On the evening before my going to London," said he, "I made a
confession to him, which I believe I ought to have made long ago. I
told him of all that had occurred to make my former interference in his
affairs absurd and impertinent. His surprise was great. He had never had
the slightest suspicion. I told him, moreover, that I believed myself
mistaken in supposing, as I had done, that your sister was indifferent
to him; and as I could easily perceive that his attachment to her was
unabated, I felt no doubt of their happiness together."

Elizabeth could not help smiling at his easy manner of directing his
friend.

"Did you speak from your own observation," said she, "when you told him
that my sister loved him, or merely from my information last spring?"

"From the former. I had narrowly observed her during the two visits
which I had lately made here; and I was convinced of her affection."

"And your assurance of it, I suppose, carried immediate conviction to
him."

"It did. Bingley is most unaffectedly modest. His diffidence had
prevented his depending on his own judgment in so anxious a case, but
his reliance on mine made every thing easy. I was obliged to confess
one thing, which for a time, and not unjustly, offended him. I could not
allow myself to conceal that your sister had been in town three months
last winter, that I had known it, and purposely kept it from him. He was
angry. But his anger, I am persuaded, lasted no longer than he remained
in any doubt of your sister's sentiments. He has heartily forgiven me
now."

Elizabeth longed to observe that Mr. Bingley had been a most delightful
friend; so easily guided that his worth was invaluable; but she checked
herself. She remembered that he had yet to learn to be laughed at,
and it was rather too early to begin. In anticipating the happiness
of Bingley, which of course was to be inferior only to his own, he
continued the conversation till they reached the house. In the hall they
parted.



Chapter 59


"My dear Lizzy, where can you have been walking to?" was a question
which Elizabeth received from Jane as soon as she entered their room,
and from all the others when they sat down to table. She had only to
say in reply, that they had wandered about, till she was beyond her own
knowledge. She coloured as she spoke; but neither that, nor anything
else, awakened a suspicion of the truth.

The evening passed quietly, unmarked by anything extraordinary. The
acknowledged lovers talked and laughed, the unacknowledged were silent.
Darcy was not of a disposition in which happiness overflows in mirth;
and Elizabeth, agitated and confused, rather _knew_ that she was happy
than _felt_ herself to be so; for, besides the immediate embarrassment,
there were other evils before her. She anticipated what would be felt
in the family when her situation became known; she was aware that no
one liked him but Jane; and even feared that with the others it was a
dislike which not all his fortune and consequence might do away.

At night she opened her heart to Jane. Though suspicion was very far
from Miss Bennet's general habits, she was absolutely incredulous here.

"You are joking, Lizzy. This cannot be!--engaged to Mr. Darcy! No, no,
you shall not deceive me. I know it to be impossible."

"This is a wretched beginning indeed! My sole dependence was on you; and
I am sure nobody else will believe me, if you do not. Yet, indeed, I am
in earnest. I speak nothing but the truth. He still loves me, and we are
engaged."

Jane looked at her doubtingly. "Oh, Lizzy! it cannot be. I know how much
you dislike him."

"You know nothing of the matter. _That_ is all to be forgot. Perhaps I
did not always love him so well as I do now. But in such cases as
these, a good memory is unpardonable. This is the last time I shall ever
remember it myself."

Miss Bennet still looked all amazement. Elizabeth again, and more
seriously assured her of its truth.

"Good Heaven! can it be really so! Yet now I must believe you," cried
Jane. "My dear, dear Lizzy, I would--I do congratulate you--but are you
certain? forgive the question--are you quite certain that you can be
happy with him?"

"There can be no doubt of that. It is settled between us already, that
we are to be the happiest couple in the world. But are you pleased,
Jane? Shall you like to have such a brother?"

"Very, very much. Nothing could give either Bingley or myself more
delight. But we considered it, we talked of it as impossible. And do you
really love him quite well enough? Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than
marry without affection. Are you quite sure that you feel what you ought
to do?"

"Oh, yes! You will only think I feel _more_ than I ought to do, when I
tell you all."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I must confess that I love him better than I do Bingley. I am
afraid you will be angry."

"My dearest sister, now _be_ serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let
me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me
how long you have loved him?"

"It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began.
But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds
at Pemberley."

Another entreaty that she would be serious, however, produced the
desired effect; and she soon satisfied Jane by her solemn assurances
of attachment. When convinced on that article, Miss Bennet had nothing
further to wish.

"Now I am quite happy," said she, "for you will be as happy as myself.
I always had a value for him. Were it for nothing but his love of you,
I must always have esteemed him; but now, as Bingley's friend and your
husband, there can be only Bingley and yourself more dear to me. But
Lizzy, you have been very sly, very reserved with me. How little did you
tell me of what passed at Pemberley and Lambton! I owe all that I know
of it to another, not to you."

Elizabeth told her the motives of her secrecy. She had been unwilling
to mention Bingley; and the unsettled state of her own feelings had made
her equally avoid the name of his friend. But now she would no longer
conceal from her his share in Lydia's marriage. All was acknowledged,
and half the night spent in conversation.

                          * * * * *

"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Bennet, as she stood at a window the next
morning, "if that disagreeable Mr. Darcy is not coming here again with
our dear Bingley! What can he mean by being so tiresome as to be always
coming here? I had no notion but he would go a-shooting, or something or
other, and not disturb us with his company. What shall we do with him?
Lizzy, you must walk out with him again, that he may not be in Bingley's
way."

Elizabeth could hardly help laughing at so convenient a proposal; yet
was really vexed that her mother should be always giving him such an
epithet.

As soon as they entered, Bingley looked at her so expressively, and
shook hands with such warmth, as left no doubt of his good information;
and he soon afterwards said aloud, "Mrs. Bennet, have you no more lanes
hereabouts in which Lizzy may lose her way again to-day?"

"I advise Mr. Darcy, and Lizzy, and Kitty," said Mrs. Bennet, "to walk
to Oakham Mount this morning. It is a nice long walk, and Mr. Darcy has
never seen the view."

"It may do very well for the others," replied Mr. Bingley; "but I am
sure it will be too much for Kitty. Won't it, Kitty?" Kitty owned that
she had rather stay at home. Darcy professed a great curiosity to see
the view from the Mount, and Elizabeth silently consented. As she went
up stairs to get ready, Mrs. Bennet followed her, saying:

"I am quite sorry, Lizzy, that you should be forced to have that
disagreeable man all to yourself. But I hope you will not mind it: it is
all for Jane's sake, you know; and there is no occasion for talking
to him, except just now and then. So, do not put yourself to
inconvenience."

During their walk, it was resolved that Mr. Bennet's consent should be
asked in the course of the evening. Elizabeth reserved to herself the
application for her mother's. She could not determine how her mother
would take it; sometimes doubting whether all his wealth and grandeur
would be enough to overcome her abhorrence of the man. But whether she
were violently set against the match, or violently delighted with it, it
was certain that her manner would be equally ill adapted to do credit
to her sense; and she could no more bear that Mr. Darcy should hear
the first raptures of her joy, than the first vehemence of her
disapprobation.

                          * * * * *

In the evening, soon after Mr. Bennet withdrew to the library, she saw
Mr. Darcy rise also and follow him, and her agitation on seeing it was
extreme. She did not fear her father's opposition, but he was going to
be made unhappy; and that it should be through her means--that _she_,
his favourite child, should be distressing him by her choice, should be
filling him with fears and regrets in disposing of her--was a wretched
reflection, and she sat in misery till Mr. Darcy appeared again, when,
looking at him, she was a little relieved by his smile. In a few minutes
he approached the table where she was sitting with Kitty; and, while
pretending to admire her work said in a whisper, "Go to your father, he
wants you in the library." She was gone directly.

Her father was walking about the room, looking grave and anxious.
"Lizzy," said he, "what are you doing? Are you out of your senses, to be
accepting this man? Have not you always hated him?"

How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had been more
reasonable, her expressions more moderate! It would have spared her from
explanations and professions which it was exceedingly awkward to give;
but they were now necessary, and she assured him, with some confusion,
of her attachment to Mr. Darcy.

"Or, in other words, you are determined to have him. He is rich, to be
sure, and you may have more fine clothes and fine carriages than Jane.
But will they make you happy?"

"Have you any other objection," said Elizabeth, "than your belief of my
indifference?"

"None at all. We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but
this would be nothing if you really liked him."

"I do, I do like him," she replied, with tears in her eyes, "I love him.
Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable. You do not
know what he really is; then pray do not pain me by speaking of him in
such terms."

"Lizzy," said her father, "I have given him my consent. He is the kind
of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse anything, which he
condescended to ask. I now give it to _you_, if you are resolved on
having him. But let me advise you to think better of it. I know
your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor
respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked
up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the
greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape
discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing
_you_ unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are
about."

Elizabeth, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her reply; and
at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Darcy was really the object
of her choice, by explaining the gradual change which her estimation of
him had undergone, relating her absolute certainty that his affection
was not the work of a day, but had stood the test of many months'
suspense, and enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did
conquer her father's incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.

"Well, my dear," said he, when she ceased speaking, "I have no more to
say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with
you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy."

To complete the favourable impression, she then told him what Mr. Darcy
had voluntarily done for Lydia. He heard her with astonishment.

"This is an evening of wonders, indeed! And so, Darcy did every thing;
made up the match, gave the money, paid the fellow's debts, and got him
his commission! So much the better. It will save me a world of trouble
and economy. Had it been your uncle's doing, I must and _would_ have
paid him; but these violent young lovers carry every thing their own
way. I shall offer to pay him to-morrow; he will rant and storm about
his love for you, and there will be an end of the matter."

He then recollected her embarrassment a few days before, on his reading
Mr. Collins's letter; and after laughing at her some time, allowed her
at last to go--saying, as she quitted the room, "If any young men come
for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure."

Elizabeth's mind was now relieved from a very heavy weight; and, after
half an hour's quiet reflection in her own room, she was able to join
the others with tolerable composure. Every thing was too recent for
gaiety, but the evening passed tranquilly away; there was no longer
anything material to be dreaded, and the comfort of ease and familiarity
would come in time.

When her mother went up to her dressing-room at night, she followed her,
and made the important communication. Its effect was most extraordinary;
for on first hearing it, Mrs. Bennet sat quite still, and unable to
utter a syllable. Nor was it under many, many minutes that she could
comprehend what she heard; though not in general backward to credit
what was for the advantage of her family, or that came in the shape of a
lover to any of them. She began at length to recover, to fidget about in
her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and bless herself.

"Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would
have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich
and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages
you will have! Jane's is nothing to it--nothing at all. I am so
pleased--so happy. Such a charming man!--so handsome! so tall!--Oh, my
dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I
hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Every thing
that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh,
Lord! What will become of me. I shall go distracted."

This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be doubted: and
Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard only by herself,
soon went away. But before she had been three minutes in her own room,
her mother followed her.

"My dearest child," she cried, "I can think of nothing else! Ten
thousand a year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a Lord! And a
special licence. You must and shall be married by a special licence. But
my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of,
that I may have it to-morrow."

This was a sad omen of what her mother's behaviour to the gentleman
himself might be; and Elizabeth found that, though in the certain
possession of his warmest affection, and secure of her relations'
consent, there was still something to be wished for. But the morrow
passed off much better than she expected; for Mrs. Bennet luckily stood
in such awe of her intended son-in-law that she ventured not to speak to
him, unless it was in her power to offer him any attention, or mark her
deference for his opinion.

Elizabeth had the satisfaction of seeing her father taking pains to get
acquainted with him; and Mr. Bennet soon assured her that he was rising
every hour in his esteem.

"I admire all my three sons-in-law highly," said he. "Wickham, perhaps,
is my favourite; but I think I shall like _your_ husband quite as well
as Jane's."



Chapter 60


Elizabeth's spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr.
Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. "How could
you begin?" said she. "I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when
you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first
place?"

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which
laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I
knew that I _had_ begun."

"My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners--my behaviour
to _you_ was at least always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke
to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now be sincere;
did you admire me for my impertinence?"

"For the liveliness of your mind, I did."

"You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less.
The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious
attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking,
and looking, and thinking for _your_ approbation alone. I roused, and
interested you, because I was so unlike _them_. Had you not been really
amiable, you would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you
took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and
in your heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously
courted you. There--I have saved you the trouble of accounting for
it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it perfectly
reasonable. To be sure, you knew no actual good of me--but nobody thinks
of _that_ when they fall in love."

"Was there no good in your affectionate behaviour to Jane while she was
ill at Netherfield?"

"Dearest Jane! who could have done less for her? But make a virtue of it
by all means. My good qualities are under your protection, and you are
to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me
to find occasions for teasing and quarrelling with you as often as may
be; and I shall begin directly by asking you what made you so unwilling
to come to the point at last. What made you so shy of me, when you first
called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did
you look as if you did not care about me?"

"Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement."

"But I was embarrassed."

"And so was I."

"You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner."

"A man who had felt less, might."

"How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give, and that
I should be so reasonable as to admit it! But I wonder how long you
_would_ have gone on, if you had been left to yourself. I wonder when
you _would_ have spoken, if I had not asked you! My resolution of
thanking you for your kindness to Lydia had certainly great effect.
_Too much_, I am afraid; for what becomes of the moral, if our comfort
springs from a breach of promise? for I ought not to have mentioned the
subject. This will never do."

"You need not distress yourself. The moral will be perfectly fair. Lady
Catherine's unjustifiable endeavours to separate us were the means of
removing all my doubts. I am not indebted for my present happiness to
your eager desire of expressing your gratitude. I was not in a humour
to wait for any opening of yours. My aunt's intelligence had given me
hope, and I was determined at once to know every thing."

"Lady Catherine has been of infinite use, which ought to make her happy,
for she loves to be of use. But tell me, what did you come down to
Netherfield for? Was it merely to ride to Longbourn and be embarrassed?
or had you intended any more serious consequence?"

"My real purpose was to see _you_, and to judge, if I could, whether I
might ever hope to make you love me. My avowed one, or what I avowed to
myself, was to see whether your sister were still partial to Bingley,
and if she were, to make the confession to him which I have since made."

"Shall you ever have courage to announce to Lady Catherine what is to
befall her?"

"I am more likely to want more time than courage, Elizabeth. But it
ought to be done, and if you will give me a sheet of paper, it shall be
done directly."

"And if I had not a letter to write myself, I might sit by you and
admire the evenness of your writing, as another young lady once did. But
I have an aunt, too, who must not be longer neglected."

From an unwillingness to confess how much her intimacy with Mr. Darcy
had been over-rated, Elizabeth had never yet answered Mrs. Gardiner's
long letter; but now, having _that_ to communicate which she knew would
be most welcome, she was almost ashamed to find that her uncle and
aunt had already lost three days of happiness, and immediately wrote as
follows:

"I would have thanked you before, my dear aunt, as I ought to have done,
for your long, kind, satisfactory, detail of particulars; but to say the
truth, I was too cross to write. You supposed more than really existed.
But _now_ suppose as much as you choose; give a loose rein to your
fancy, indulge your imagination in every possible flight which the
subject will afford, and unless you believe me actually married, you
cannot greatly err. You must write again very soon, and praise him a
great deal more than you did in your last. I thank you, again and again,
for not going to the Lakes. How could I be so silly as to wish it! Your
idea of the ponies is delightful. We will go round the Park every day. I
am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so
before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she
only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that
he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.
Yours, etc."

Mr. Darcy's letter to Lady Catherine was in a different style; and still
different from either was what Mr. Bennet sent to Mr. Collins, in reply
to his last.

"DEAR SIR,

"I must trouble you once more for congratulations. Elizabeth will soon
be the wife of Mr. Darcy. Console Lady Catherine as well as you can.
But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.

"Yours sincerely, etc."

Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching
marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere. She wrote even
to Jane on the occasion, to express her delight, and repeat all her
former professions of regard. Jane was not deceived, but she was
affected; and though feeling no reliance on her, could not help writing
her a much kinder answer than she knew was deserved.

The joy which Miss Darcy expressed on receiving similar information,
was as sincere as her brother's in sending it. Four sides of paper were
insufficient to contain all her delight, and all her earnest desire of
being loved by her sister.

Before any answer could arrive from Mr. Collins, or any congratulations
to Elizabeth from his wife, the Longbourn family heard that the
Collinses were come themselves to Lucas Lodge. The reason of this
sudden removal was soon evident. Lady Catherine had been rendered
so exceedingly angry by the contents of her nephew's letter, that
Charlotte, really rejoicing in the match, was anxious to get away till
the storm was blown over. At such a moment, the arrival of her friend
was a sincere pleasure to Elizabeth, though in the course of their
meetings she must sometimes think the pleasure dearly bought, when she
saw Mr. Darcy exposed to all the parading and obsequious civility of
her husband. He bore it, however, with admirable calmness. He could even
listen to Sir William Lucas, when he complimented him on carrying away
the brightest jewel of the country, and expressed his hopes of their all
meeting frequently at St. James's, with very decent composure. If he did
shrug his shoulders, it was not till Sir William was out of sight.

Mrs. Phillips's vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, tax on his
forbearance; and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as her sister, stood in
too much awe of him to speak with the familiarity which Bingley's good
humour encouraged, yet, whenever she _did_ speak, she must be vulgar.
Nor was her respect for him, though it made her more quiet, at all
likely to make her more elegant. Elizabeth did all she could to shield
him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep
him to herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse
without mortification; and though the uncomfortable feelings arising
from all this took from the season of courtship much of its pleasure, it
added to the hope of the future; and she looked forward with delight to
the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing
to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at
Pemberley.



Chapter 61


Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got
rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride
she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley, and talked of Mrs. Darcy, may
be guessed. I wish I could say, for the sake of her family, that the
accomplishment of her earnest desire in the establishment of so many
of her children produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible,
amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though perhaps it
was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity
in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous and
invariably silly.

Mr. Bennet missed his second daughter exceedingly; his affection for her
drew him oftener from home than anything else could do. He delighted in
going to Pemberley, especially when he was least expected.

Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. So near
a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not desirable even to
_his_ easy temper, or _her_ affectionate heart. The darling wish of his
sisters was then gratified; he bought an estate in a neighbouring county
to Derbyshire, and Jane and Elizabeth, in addition to every other source
of happiness, were within thirty miles of each other.

Kitty, to her very material advantage, spent the chief of her time with
her two elder sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally
known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a
temper as Lydia; and, removed from the influence of Lydia's example,
she became, by proper attention and management, less irritable, less
ignorant, and less insipid. From the further disadvantage of Lydia's
society she was of course carefully kept, and though Mrs. Wickham
frequently invited her to come and stay with her, with the promise of
balls and young men, her father would never consent to her going.

Mary was the only daughter who remained at home; and she was necessarily
drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by Mrs. Bennet's being quite
unable to sit alone. Mary was obliged to mix more with the world, but
she could still moralize over every morning visit; and as she was no
longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters' beauty and her own,
it was suspected by her father that she submitted to the change without
much reluctance.

As for Wickham and Lydia, their characters suffered no revolution from
the marriage of her sisters. He bore with philosophy the conviction that
Elizabeth must now become acquainted with whatever of his ingratitude
and falsehood had before been unknown to her; and in spite of every
thing, was not wholly without hope that Darcy might yet be prevailed on
to make his fortune. The congratulatory letter which Elizabeth received
from Lydia on her marriage, explained to her that, by his wife at least,
if not by himself, such a hope was cherished. The letter was to this
effect:

"MY DEAR LIZZY,

"I wish you joy. If you love Mr. Darcy half as well as I do my dear
Wickham, you must be very happy. It is a great comfort to have you so
rich, and when you have nothing else to do, I hope you will think of us.
I am sure Wickham would like a place at court very much, and I do not
think we shall have quite money enough to live upon without some help.
Any place would do, of about three or four hundred a year; but however,
do not speak to Mr. Darcy about it, if you had rather not.

"Yours, etc."

As it happened that Elizabeth had _much_ rather not, she endeavoured in
her answer to put an end to every entreaty and expectation of the kind.
Such relief, however, as it was in her power to afford, by the practice
of what might be called economy in her own private expences, she
frequently sent them. It had always been evident to her that such an
income as theirs, under the direction of two persons so extravagant in
their wants, and heedless of the future, must be very insufficient to
their support; and whenever they changed their quarters, either Jane or
herself were sure of being applied to for some little assistance
towards discharging their bills. Their manner of living, even when the
restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the
extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap
situation, and always spending more than they ought. His affection for
her soon sunk into indifference; hers lasted a little longer; and
in spite of her youth and her manners, she retained all the claims to
reputation which her marriage had given her.

Though Darcy could never receive _him_ at Pemberley, yet, for
Elizabeth's sake, he assisted him further in his profession. Lydia was
occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was gone to enjoy himself
in London or Bath; and with the Bingleys they both of them frequently
staid so long, that even Bingley's good humour was overcome, and he
proceeded so far as to talk of giving them a hint to be gone.

Miss Bingley was very deeply mortified by Darcy's marriage; but as she
thought it advisable to retain the right of visiting at Pemberley, she
dropt all her resentment; was fonder than ever of Georgiana, almost as
attentive to Darcy as heretofore, and paid off every arrear of civility
to Elizabeth.

Pemberley was now Georgiana's home; and the attachment of the sisters
was exactly what Darcy had hoped to see. They were able to love each
other even as well as they intended. Georgiana had the highest opinion
in the world of Elizabeth; though at first she often listened with
an astonishment bordering on alarm at her lively, sportive, manner of
talking to her brother. He, who had always inspired in herself a respect
which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open
pleasantry. Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen
in her way. By Elizabeth's instructions, she began to comprehend that
a woman may take liberties with her husband which a brother will not
always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself.

Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew;
and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her character in
her reply to the letter which announced its arrangement, she sent him
language so very abusive, especially of Elizabeth, that for some time
all intercourse was at an end. But at length, by Elizabeth's persuasion,
he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation;
and, after a little further resistance on the part of his aunt, her
resentment gave way, either to her affection for him, or her curiosity
to see how his wife conducted herself; and she condescended to wait
on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods had
received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but the
visits of her uncle and aunt from the city.

With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms.
Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever
sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing
her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.





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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: The Call of the Wild

Author: Jack London

Release Date: July 1, 2008 [EBook #215]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CALL OF THE WILD ***




Produced by Ryan, Kirstin, Linda and Rick Trapp in Loving
Memory of Ivan Louis Reese






THE CALL OF THE WILD

by Jack London




      Contents

      I     Into the Primitive
      II    The Law of Club and Fang
      III   The Dominant Primordial Beast
      IV    Who Has Won to Mastership
      V     The Toil of Trace and Tail
      VI    For the Love of a Man
      VII   The Sounding of the Call





Chapter I. Into the Primitive


         "Old longings nomadic leap,
          Chafing at custom's chain;
          Again from its brumal sleep
          Wakens the ferine strain."

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble
was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong
of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal,
and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the
find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted
dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by
which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge
Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden
among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide
cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by
gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and
under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on
even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables,
where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants'
cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors,
green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping
plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge
Miller's boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot
afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he
had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other
dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did
not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or lived
obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the
Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless,--strange creatures that
rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand,
there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped
fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them
and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his.
He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge's sons;
he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge's daughters, on long twilight
or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge's feet
before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge's grandsons on his
back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through
wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even
beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches. Among the
terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly
ignored, for he was king,--king over all creeping, crawling, flying
things of Judge Miller's place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's inseparable
companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was
not so large,--he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds,--for his
mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred
and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of good
living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right
royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived
the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even
a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of
their insular situation. But he had saved himself by not becoming a mere
pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had kept down
the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as to the cold-tubbing
races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when the
Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North.
But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel,
one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel
had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his
gambling, he had one besetting weakness--faith in a system; and this
made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while
the wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and
numerous progeny.

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and the
boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night of
Manuel's treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard
on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a
solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known
as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between
them.

"You might wrap up the goods before you deliver 'm," the stranger said
gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck's neck
under the collar.

"Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee," said Manuel, and the stranger
grunted a ready affirmative.

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an
unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to
give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when the ends
of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he growled menacingly.
He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride believing that to
intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope tightened around
his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at the man,
who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft
twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly,
while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and
his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life had he been so
vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry. But his
strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was
flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and
that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse
shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was. He
had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation of
riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the
unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his throat, but
Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they
relax till his senses were choked out of him once more.

"Yep, has fits," the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the
baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. "I'm
takin' 'm up for the boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks
that he can cure 'm."

Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke most eloquently for himself,
in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco water front.

"All I get is fifty for it," he grumbled; "an' I wouldn't do it over for
a thousand, cold cash."

His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser leg
was ripped from knee to ankle.

"How much did the other mug get?" the saloon-keeper demanded.

"A hundred," was the reply. "Wouldn't take a sou less, so help me."

"That makes a hundred and fifty," the saloon-keeper calculated; "and
he's worth it, or I'm a squarehead."

The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his lacerated
hand. "If I don't get the hydrophoby--"

"It'll be because you was born to hang," laughed the saloon-keeper.
"Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight," he added.

Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the life
half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors. But he
was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in filing the
heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then the rope was removed, and he
was flung into a cagelike crate.

There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath and
wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did they
want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him pent up in
this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt oppressed by the
vague sense of impending calamity. Several times during the night he
sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see the
Judge, or the boys at least. But each time it was the bulging face of
the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow
candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck's throat was
twisted into a savage growl.

But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men entered
and picked up the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided, for they were
evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed and raged at
them through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks at him, which
he promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized that that was what
they wanted. Whereupon he lay down sullenly and allowed the crate to be
lifted into a wagon. Then he, and the crate in which he was imprisoned,
began a passage through many hands. Clerks in the express office took
charge of him; he was carted about in another wagon; a truck carried
him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he
was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot, and finally he
was deposited in an express car.

For two days and nights this express car was dragged along at the tail
of shrieking locomotives; and for two days and nights Buck neither ate
nor drank. In his anger he had met the first advances of the express
messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing him. When he
flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed
at him and taunted him. They growled and barked like detestable dogs,
mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. It was all very silly, he
knew; but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed
and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water
caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For
that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had
flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched
and swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given
them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them.
They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was
resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during
those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath
that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned
blood-shot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed was
he that the Judge himself would not have recognized him; and the express
messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the train at
Seattle.

Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small,
high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged
generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver.
That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled
himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a
hatchet and a club.

"You ain't going to take him out now?" the driver asked.

"Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.

There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried
it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to watch the
performance.

Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging
and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was
there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get
out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.

"Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had made an opening
sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he dropped
the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.

And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for the
spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his blood-shot
eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds
of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In
mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received
a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an
agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and
side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not
understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again
on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he
was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was
the club, but his madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and
as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.

After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to
rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth
and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver.
Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on
the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the
exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lionlike in its
ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the
club from right to left, coolly caught him by the under jaw, at the same
time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete circle
in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the ground on his head
and chest.

For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had
purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down,
knocked utterly senseless.

"He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's wot I say," one of the men on
the wall cried enthusiastically.

"Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays," was the reply of
the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started the horses.

Buck's senses came back to him, but not his strength. He lay where he
had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater.

"'Answers to the name of Buck,'" the man soliloquized, quoting from the
saloon-keeper's letter which had announced the consignment of the crate
and contents. "Well, Buck, my boy," he went on in a genial voice, "we've
had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let it go at
that. You've learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good dog and all
'll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I'll whale the
stuffin' outa you. Understand?"

As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly pounded,
and though Buck's hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the hand,
he endured it without protest. When the man brought him water he drank
eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by chunk,
from the man's hand.

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for
all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned
the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was
a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law,
and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer
aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the
latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs
came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging
and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass
under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he
looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck:
a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not
necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he
did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails,
and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate
nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.

Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, wheedlingly,
and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And at such
times that money passed between them the strangers took one or more of
the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they went, for they never
came back; but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was
glad each time when he was not selected.

Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened man who
spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck
could not understand.

"Sacredam!" he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. "Dat one dam bully
dog! Eh? How moch?"

"Three hundred, and a present at that," was the prompt reply of the man
in the red sweater. "And seem' it's government money, you ain't got no
kick coming, eh, Perrault?"

Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed
skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine
an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would its
despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at
Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand--"One in ten t'ousand," he
commented mentally.

Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when Curly, a
good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little weazened
man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as
Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the Narwhal, it
was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken below
by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant called Francois.
Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but Francois was a
French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy. They were a new kind
of men to Buck (of which he was destined to see many more), and while
he developed no affection for them, he none the less grew honestly to
respect them. He speedily learned that Perrault and Francois were fair
men, calm and impartial in administering justice, and too wise in the
way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.

In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two other
dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen who had
been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied
a Geological Survey into the Barrens. He was friendly, in a treacherous
sort of way, smiling into one's face the while he meditated some
underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck's food at the
first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip
sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained
to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of Francois, he decided,
and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's estimation.

The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not
attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow, and
he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone, and
further, that there would be trouble if he were not left alone. "Dave"
he was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and took
interest in nothing, not even when the Narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte
Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing possessed. When
Buck and Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, he raised his head as
though annoyed, favored them with an incurious glance, yawned, and went
to sleep again.

Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller,
and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that
the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the
propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere of
excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change
was at hand. Francois leashed them and brought them on deck. At the
first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a white mushy
something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white
stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell
upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It
bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried
it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and
he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.




Chapter II. The Law of Club and Fang


Buck's first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was
filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the
heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.
No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be
bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All
was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.
There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men
were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no
law but the law of club and fang.

He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought, and his
first experience taught him an unforgetable lesson. It is true, it was
a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it.
Curly was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in
her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown
wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning, only a leap
in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and
Curly's face was ripped open from eye to jaw.

It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; but there
was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and
surrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did not
comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager way with which they
were licking their chops. Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again
and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a peculiar
fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She never regained them, This
was what the onlooking huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her,
snarling and yelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony, beneath
the bristling mass of bodies.

So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that Buck was taken aback. He saw
Spitz run out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laughing; and he saw
Francois, swinging an axe, spring into the mess of dogs. Three men
with clubs were helping him to scatter them. It did not take long. Two
minutes from the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants were
clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled
snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing
over her and cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck to
trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fair play. Once down,
that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he never went
down. Spitz ran out his tongue and laughed again, and from that moment
Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless hatred.

Before he had recovered from the shock caused by the tragic passing
of Curly, he received another shock. Francois fastened upon him an
arrangement of straps and buckles. It was a harness, such as he had seen
the grooms put on the horses at home. And as he had seen horses work,
so he was set to work, hauling Francois on a sled to the forest that
fringed the valley, and returning with a load of firewood. Though his
dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draught animal, he was too
wise to rebel. He buckled down with a will and did his best, though
it was all new and strange. Francois was stern, demanding instant
obedience, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedience;
while Dave, who was an experienced wheeler, nipped Buck's hind quarters
whenever he was in error. Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced,
and while he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp reproof now
and again, or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck
into the way he should go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined
tuition of his two mates and Francois made remarkable progress. Ere they
returned to camp he knew enough to stop at "ho," to go ahead at "mush,"
to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler when the
loaded sled shot downhill at their heels.

"T'ree vair' good dogs," Francois told Perrault. "Dat Buck, heem pool
lak hell. I tich heem queek as anyt'ing."

By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be on the trail with his
despatches, returned with two more dogs. "Billee" and "Joe" he called
them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother though
they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee's one fault
was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and
introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received
them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to
thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail appeasingly,
turned to run when he saw that appeasement was of no avail, and cried
(still appeasingly) when Spitz's sharp teeth scored his flank. But no
matter how Spitz circled, Joe whirled around on his heels to face
him, mane bristling, ears laid back, lips writhing and snarling, jaws
clipping together as fast as he could snap, and eyes diabolically
gleaming--the incarnation of belligerent fear. So terrible was his
appearance that Spitz was forced to forego disciplining him; but to
cover his own discomfiture he turned upon the inoffensive and wailing
Billee and drove him to the confines of the camp.

By evening Perrault secured another dog, an old husky, long and lean
and gaunt, with a battle-scarred face and a single eye which flashed a
warning of prowess that commanded respect. He was called Sol-leks, which
means the Angry One. Like Dave, he asked nothing, gave nothing, expected
nothing; and when he marched slowly and deliberately into their midst,
even Spitz left him alone. He had one peculiarity which Buck was unlucky
enough to discover. He did not like to be approached on his blind side.
Of this offence Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the first knowledge he
had of his indiscretion was when Sol-leks whirled upon him and slashed
his shoulder to the bone for three inches up and down. Forever after
Buck avoided his blind side, and to the last of their comradeship had
no more trouble. His only apparent ambition, like Dave's, was to be left
alone; though, as Buck was afterward to learn, each of them possessed
one other and even more vital ambition.

That night Buck faced the great problem of sleeping. The tent, illumined
by a candle, glowed warmly in the midst of the white plain; and when he,
as a matter of course, entered it, both Perrault and Francois bombarded
him with curses and cooking utensils, till he recovered from his
consternation and fled ignominiously into the outer cold. A chill wind
was blowing that nipped him sharply and bit with especial venom into his
wounded shoulder. He lay down on the snow and attempted to sleep,
but the frost soon drove him shivering to his feet. Miserable and
disconsolate, he wandered about among the many tents, only to find that
one place was as cold as another. Here and there savage dogs rushed
upon him, but he bristled his neck-hair and snarled (for he was learning
fast), and they let him go his way unmolested.

Finally an idea came to him. He would return and see how his own
team-mates were making out. To his astonishment, they had disappeared.
Again he wandered about through the great camp, looking for them, and
again he returned. Were they in the tent? No, that could not be, else he
would not have been driven out. Then where could they possibly be? With
drooping tail and shivering body, very forlorn indeed, he aimlessly
circled the tent. Suddenly the snow gave way beneath his fore legs
and he sank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back,
bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But a
friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate. A
whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under
the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed and
wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a
bribe for peace, to lick Buck's face with his warm wet tongue.

Another lesson. So that was the way they did it, eh? Buck confidently
selected a spot, and with much fuss and waste effort proceeded to dig a
hole for himself. In a trice the heat from his body filled the confined
space and he was asleep. The day had been long and arduous, and he slept
soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with
bad dreams.

Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of the waking camp.
At first he did not know where he was. It had snowed during the night
and he was completely buried. The snow walls pressed him on every side,
and a great surge of fear swept through him--the fear of the wild thing
for the trap. It was a token that he was harking back through his own
life to the lives of his forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an
unduly civilized dog, and of his own experience knew no trap and so
could not of himself fear it. The muscles of his whole body contracted
spasmodically and instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders
stood on end, and with a ferocious snarl he bounded straight up into
the blinding day, the snow flying about him in a flashing cloud. Ere he
landed on his feet, he saw the white camp spread out before him and knew
where he was and remembered all that had passed from the time he went
for a stroll with Manuel to the hole he had dug for himself the night
before.

A shout from Francois hailed his appearance. "Wot I say?" the dog-driver
cried to Perrault. "Dat Buck for sure learn queek as anyt'ing."

Perrault nodded gravely. As courier for the Canadian Government, bearing
important despatches, he was anxious to secure the best dogs, and he was
particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck.

Three more huskies were added to the team inside an hour, making a total
of nine, and before another quarter of an hour had passed they were in
harness and swinging up the trail toward the Dyea Canon. Buck was
glad to be gone, and though the work was hard he found he did not
particularly despise it. He was surprised at the eagerness which
animated the whole team and which was communicated to him; but still
more surprising was the change wrought in Dave and Sol-leks. They
were new dogs, utterly transformed by the harness. All passiveness and
unconcern had dropped from them. They were alert and active, anxious
that the work should go well, and fiercely irritable with whatever, by
delay or confusion, retarded that work. The toil of the traces seemed
the supreme expression of their being, and all that they lived for and
the only thing in which they took delight.

Dave was wheeler or sled dog, pulling in front of him was Buck, then
came Sol-leks; the rest of the team was strung out ahead, single file,
to the leader, which position was filled by Spitz.

Buck had been purposely placed between Dave and Sol-leks so that he
might receive instruction. Apt scholar that he was, they were equally
apt teachers, never allowing him to linger long in error, and enforcing
their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave was fair and very wise. He
never nipped Buck without cause, and he never failed to nip him when he
stood in need of it. As Francois's whip backed him up, Buck found it
to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. Once, during a brief
halt, when he got tangled in the traces and delayed the start, both
Dave and Solleks flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. The
resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keep the
traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well had he
mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him. Francois's whip
snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck by lifting up
his feet and carefully examining them.

It was a hard day's run, up the Canon, through Sheep Camp, past the
Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts hundreds of
feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands between
the salt water and the fresh and guards forbiddingly the sad and lonely
North. They made good time down the chain of lakes which fills the
craters of extinct volcanoes, and late that night pulled into the huge
camp at the head of Lake Bennett, where thousands of goldseekers were
building boats against the break-up of the ice in the spring. Buck made
his hole in the snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all
too early was routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed with his
mates to the sled.

That day they made forty miles, the trail being packed; but the next
day, and for many days to follow, they broke their own trail, worked
harder, and made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault travelled ahead of
the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to make it easier for them.
Francois, guiding the sled at the gee-pole, sometimes exchanged places
with him, but not often. Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided himself
on his knowledge of ice, which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall
ice was very thin, and where there was swift water, there was no ice at
all.

Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces. Always,
they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them
hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind them. And always
they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and crawling
to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous. The pound and a half of
sun-dried salmon, which was his ration for each day, seemed to go
nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs.
Yet the other dogs, because they weighed less and were born to the life,
received a pound only of the fish and managed to keep in good condition.

He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old life.
A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first, robbed him of
his unfinished ration. There was no defending it. While he was fighting
off two or three, it was disappearing down the throats of the others. To
remedy this, he ate as fast as they; and, so greatly did hunger compel
him, he was not above taking what did not belong to him. He watched and
learned. When he saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and
thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned,
he duplicated the performance the following day, getting away with the
whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was unsuspected; while
Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting caught, was punished
for Buck's misdeed.

This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland
environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself
to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and
terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his
moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for
existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of
love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings;
but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such
things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he
would fail to prosper.

Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was all, and
unconsciously he accommodated himself to the new mode of life. All his
days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But
the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more
fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a
moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller's riding-whip; but
the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability
to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his
hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his
stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of
respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because
it was easier to do them than not to do them.

His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became hard as
iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal
as well as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how
loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach
extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it
to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and
stoutest of tissues. Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his
hearing developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest
sound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned to bite
the ice out with his teeth when it collected between his toes; and when
he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of ice over the water hole, he
would break it by rearing and striking it with stiff fore legs. His most
conspicuous trait was an ability to scent the wind and forecast it a
night in advance. No matter how breathless the air when he dug his
nest by tree or bank, the wind that later blew inevitably found him to
leeward, sheltered and snug.

And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became
alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways
he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs
ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as
they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut
and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten
ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks
which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks.
They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been
his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a
star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust,
pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through
him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced
their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, and the
cold, and dark.

Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is, the ancient song surged
through him and he came into his own again; and he came because men had
found a yellow metal in the North, and because Manuel was a gardener's
helper whose wages did not lap over the needs of his wife and divers
small copies of himself.




Chapter III. The Dominant Primordial Beast


The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce
conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth.
His newborn cunning gave him poise and control. He was too busy
adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease, and not only did
he not pick fights, but he avoided them whenever possible. A certain
deliberateness characterized his attitude. He was not prone to rashness
and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and Spitz
he betrayed no impatience, shunned all offensive acts.

On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous
rival, Spitz never lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. He even
went out of his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to start the
fight which could end only in the death of one or the other. Early in
the trip this might have taken place had it not been for an unwonted
accident. At the end of this day they made a bleak and miserable camp
on the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind that cut like a
white-hot knife, and darkness had forced them to grope for a camping
place. They could hardly have fared worse. At their backs rose a
perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and Francois were compelled to
make their fire and spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake
itself. The tent they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel light.
A few sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire that thawed down
through the ice and left them to eat supper in the dark.

Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made his nest. So snug and warm
was it, that he was loath to leave it when Francois distributed the
fish which he had first thawed over the fire. But when Buck finished his
ration and returned, he found his nest occupied. A warning snarl told
him that the trespasser was Spitz. Till now Buck had avoided trouble
with his enemy, but this was too much. The beast in him roared. He
sprang upon Spitz with a fury which surprised them both, and Spitz
particularly, for his whole experience with Buck had gone to teach him
that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own
only because of his great weight and size.

Francois was surprised, too, when they shot out in a tangle from the
disrupted nest and he divined the cause of the trouble. "A-a-ah!"
he cried to Buck. "Gif it to heem, by Gar! Gif it to heem, the dirty
t'eef!"

Spitz was equally willing. He was crying with sheer rage and eagerness
as he circled back and forth for a chance to spring in. Buck was no less
eager, and no less cautious, as he likewise circled back and forth for
the advantage. But it was then that the unexpected happened, the thing
which projected their struggle for supremacy far into the future, past
many a weary mile of trail and toil.

An oath from Perrault, the resounding impact of a club upon a bony
frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of
pandemonium. The camp was suddenly discovered to be alive with skulking
furry forms,--starving huskies, four or five score of them, who had
scented the camp from some Indian village. They had crept in while Buck
and Spitz were fighting, and when the two men sprang among them with
stout clubs they showed their teeth and fought back. They were crazed
by the smell of the food. Perrault found one with head buried in the
grub-box. His club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs, and the grub-box
was capsized on the ground. On the instant a score of the famished
brutes were scrambling for the bread and bacon. The clubs fell upon them
unheeded. They yelped and howled under the rain of blows, but struggled
none the less madly till the last crumb had been devoured.

In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had burst out of their nests
only to be set upon by the fierce invaders. Never had Buck seen such
dogs. It seemed as though their bones would burst through their skins.
They were mere skeletons, draped loosely in draggled hides, with blazing
eyes and slavered fangs. But the hunger-madness made them terrifying,
irresistible. There was no opposing them. The team-dogs were swept back
against the cliff at the first onset. Buck was beset by three huskies,
and in a trice his head and shoulders were ripped and slashed. The din
was frightful. Billee was crying as usual. Dave and Sol-leks, dripping
blood from a score of wounds, were fighting bravely side by side. Joe
was snapping like a demon. Once, his teeth closed on the fore leg of
a husky, and he crunched down through the bone. Pike, the malingerer,
leaped upon the crippled animal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of
teeth and a jerk, Buck got a frothing adversary by the throat, and was
sprayed with blood when his teeth sank through the jugular. The warm
taste of it in his mouth goaded him to greater fierceness. He flung
himself upon another, and at the same time felt teeth sink into his own
throat. It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from the side.

Perrault and Francois, having cleaned out their part of the camp,
hurried to save their sled-dogs. The wild wave of famished beasts rolled
back before them, and Buck shook himself free. But it was only for a
moment. The two men were compelled to run back to save the grub, upon
which the huskies returned to the attack on the team. Billee, terrified
into bravery, sprang through the savage circle and fled away over the
ice. Pike and Dub followed on his heels, with the rest of the team
behind. As Buck drew himself together to spring after them, out of the
tail of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evident intention
of overthrowing him. Once off his feet and under that mass of huskies,
there was no hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock of Spitz's
charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.

Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in the
forest. Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There was not
one who was not wounded in four or five places, while some were wounded
grievously. Dub was badly injured in a hind leg; Dolly, the last husky
added to the team at Dyea, had a badly torn throat; Joe had lost an eye;
while Billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons,
cried and whimpered throughout the night. At daybreak they limped warily
back to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers.
Fully half their grub supply was gone. The huskies had chewed through
the sled lashings and canvas coverings. In fact, nothing, no matter how
remotely eatable, had escaped them. They had eaten a pair of Perrault's
moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces, and even two
feet of lash from the end of Francois's whip. He broke from a mournful
contemplation of it to look over his wounded dogs.

"Ah, my frien's," he said softly, "mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose many
bites. Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t'ink, eh, Perrault?"

The courier shook his head dubiously. With four hundred miles of trail
still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have madness break
out among his dogs. Two hours of cursing and exertion got the harnesses
into shape, and the wound-stiffened team was under way, struggling
painfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered,
and for that matter, the hardest between them and Dawson.

The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the frost,
and it was in the eddies only and in the quiet places that the ice held
at all. Six days of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty
terrible miles. And terrible they were, for every foot of them was
accomplished at the risk of life to dog and man. A dozen times,
Perrault, nosing the way broke through the ice bridges, being saved by
the long pole he carried, which he so held that it fell each time across
the hole made by his body. But a cold snap was on, the thermometer
registering fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he was
compelled for very life to build a fire and dry his garments.

Nothing daunted him. It was because nothing daunted him that he had been
chosen for government courier. He took all manner of risks, resolutely
thrusting his little weazened face into the frost and struggling on from
dim dawn to dark. He skirted the frowning shores on rim ice that bent
and crackled under foot and upon which they dared not halt. Once, the
sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, and they were half-frozen and
all but drowned by the time they were dragged out. The usual fire was
necessary to save them. They were coated solidly with ice, and the two
men kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing, so close
that they were singed by the flames.

At another time Spitz went through, dragging the whole team after him up
to Buck, who strained backward with all his strength, his fore paws on
the slippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all around. But
behind him was Dave, likewise straining backward, and behind the sled
was Francois, pulling till his tendons cracked.

Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was no escape
except up the cliff. Perrault scaled it by a miracle, while Francois
prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and
the last bit of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs were hoisted,
one by one, to the cliff crest. Francois came up last, after the sled
and load. Then came the search for a place to descend, which descent was
ultimately made by the aid of the rope, and night found them back on the
river with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit.

By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good ice, Buck was played out.
The rest of the dogs were in like condition; but Perrault, to make
up lost time, pushed them late and early. The first day they covered
thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon; the next day thirty-five more to
the Little Salmon; the third day forty miles, which brought them well up
toward the Five Fingers.

Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies.
His had softened during the many generations since the day his last
wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he
limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as
he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish, which Francois
had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's feet for half
an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own
moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great relief, and
Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a
grin one morning, when Francois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his
back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge
without them. Later his feet grew hard to the trail, and the worn-out
foot-gear was thrown away.

At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, Dolly, who had
never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad. She announced
her condition by a long, heartbreaking wolf howl that sent every dog
bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck. He had never seen a
dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear madness; yet he knew
that here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic. Straight away he
raced, with Dolly, panting and frothing, one leap behind; nor could she
gain on him, so great was his terror, nor could he leave her, so great
was her madness. He plunged through the wooded breast of the island,
flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with rough ice
to another island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river,
and in desperation started to cross it. And all the time, though he
did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap behind. Francois
called to him a quarter of a mile away and he doubled back, still one
leap ahead, gasping painfully for air and putting all his faith in that
Francois would save him. The dog-driver held the axe poised in his hand,
and as Buck shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly's head.

Buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, sobbing for breath,
helpless. This was Spitz's opportunity. He sprang upon Buck, and twice
his teeth sank into his unresisting foe and ripped and tore the flesh to
the bone. Then Francois's lash descended, and Buck had the satisfaction
of watching Spitz receive the worst whipping as yet administered to any
of the teams.

"One devil, dat Spitz," remarked Perrault. "Some dam day heem keel dat
Buck."

"Dat Buck two devils," was Francois's rejoinder. "All de tam I watch dat
Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day heem get mad lak hell
an' den heem chew dat Spitz all up an' spit heem out on de snow. Sure. I
know."

From then on it was war between them. Spitz, as lead-dog and
acknowledged master of the team, felt his supremacy threatened by this
strange Southland dog. And strange Buck was to him, for of the many
Southland dogs he had known, not one had shown up worthily in camp and
on trail. They were all too soft, dying under the toil, the frost, and
starvation. Buck was the exception. He alone endured and prospered,
matching the husky in strength, savagery, and cunning. Then he was a
masterful dog, and what made him dangerous was the fact that the club of
the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rashness out
of his desire for mastery. He was preeminently cunning, and could bide
his time with a patience that was nothing less than primitive.

It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck wanted
it. He wanted it because it was his nature, because he had been
gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and
trace--that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which
lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts
if they are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of Dave as
wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride
that laid hold of them at break of camp, transforming them from sour and
sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride
that spurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night,
letting them fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent. This was the
pride that bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered
and shirked in the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning.
Likewise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a possible
lead-dog. And this was Buck's pride, too.

He openly threatened the other's leadership. He came between him and the
shirks he should have punished. And he did it deliberately. One night
there was a heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike, the malingerer,
did not appear. He was securely hidden in his nest under a foot of snow.
Francois called him and sought him in vain. Spitz was wild with wrath.
He raged through the camp, smelling and digging in every likely
place, snarling so frightfully that Pike heard and shivered in his
hiding-place.

But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew at him to punish him,
Buck flew, with equal rage, in between. So unexpected was it, and so
shrewdly managed, that Spitz was hurled backward and off his feet. Pike,
who had been trembling abjectly, took heart at this open mutiny,
and sprang upon his overthrown leader. Buck, to whom fair play was a
forgotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But Francois, chuckling at
the incident while unswerving in the administration of justice, brought
his lash down upon Buck with all his might. This failed to drive Buck
from his prostrate rival, and the butt of the whip was brought into
play. Half-stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backward and the lash
laid upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished the many
times offending Pike.

In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck still
continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it
craftily, when Francois was not around, With the covert mutiny of Buck,
a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks
were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse.
Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling.
Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept
Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the
life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place
sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling
and strife among the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe,
fearful that Buck and Spitz were at it.

But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into Dawson
one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come. Here were many
men, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work. It seemed the
ordained order of things that dogs should work. All day they swung up
and down the main street in long teams, and in the night their jingling
bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and firewood, freighted up
to the mines, and did all manner of work that horses did in the Santa
Clara Valley. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main
they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at
twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant,
in which it was Buck's delight to join.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping
in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow,
this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it
was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and
was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It
was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the
younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe
of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely
stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that
was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the
cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be
stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through
the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling
ages.

Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the
steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and
Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches if anything more urgent
than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him,
and he purposed to make the record trip of the year. Several things
favored him in this. The week's rest had recuperated the dogs and put
them in thorough trim. The trail they had broken into the country was
packed hard by later journeyers. And further, the police had arranged
in two or three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was
travelling light.

They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day; and
the second day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly.
But such splendid running was achieved not without great trouble and
vexation on the part of Francois. The insidious revolt led by Buck
had destroyed the solidarity of the team. It no longer was as one dog
leaping in the traces. The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them
into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz a leader greatly
to be feared. The old awe departed, and they grew equal to challenging
his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one night, and gulped
it down under the protection of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought
Spitz and made him forego the punishment they deserved. And even
Billee, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and whined not half
so placatingly as in former days. Buck never came near Spitz without
snarling and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct approached that
of a bully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz's
very nose.

The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the dogs in their
relations with one another. They quarrelled and bickered more than ever
among themselves, till at times the camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and
Sol-leks alone were unaltered, though they were made irritable by the
unending squabbling. Francois swore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped
the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair. His lash was always singing
among the dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned
they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck
backed up the remainder of the team. Francois knew he was behind all the
trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever ever again to be
caught red-handed. He worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil
had become a delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly to
precipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the traces.

At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, Dub turned up a
snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed. In a second the whole team
was in full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest
Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. The rabbit
sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of
which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while
the dogs ploughed through by main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty
strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low
to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap
by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale
frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.

All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men
out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things
by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to
kill--all this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was
ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living
meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm
blood.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life
cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when
one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is
alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist,
caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the
soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came
to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after
the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the
moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of
his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.
He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being,
the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was
everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing
itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face
of dead matter that did not move.

But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the pack
and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long bend
around. Buck did not know of this, and as he rounded the bend, the frost
wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him, he saw another and larger
frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank into the immediate path of
the rabbit. It was Spitz. The rabbit could not turn, and as the white
teeth broke its back in mid air it shrieked as loudly as a stricken man
may shriek. At sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life's
apex in the grip of Death, the fall pack at Buck's heels raised a hell's
chorus of delight.

Buck did not cry out. He did not check himself, but drove in upon Spitz,
shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat. They rolled
over and over in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his feet almost as
though he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck down the shoulder and
leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of
a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lips
that writhed and snarled.

In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As
they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the
advantage, the scene came to Buck with a sense of familiarity. He seemed
to remember it all,--the white woods, and earth, and moonlight, and the
thrill of battle. Over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm.
There was not the faintest whisper of air--nothing moved, not a leaf
quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs rising slowly and lingering in
the frosty air. They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these
dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in an
expectant circle. They, too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming and
their breaths drifting slowly upward. To Buck it was nothing new or
strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it had always been,
the wonted way of things.

Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and
across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner of
dogs and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but never
blind rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his
enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. He never rushed till
he was prepared to receive a rush; never attacked till he had first
defended that attack.

In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big white dog.
Wherever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were countered by
the fangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleeding,
but Buck could not penetrate his enemy's guard. Then he warmed up and
enveloped Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he tried
for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and
each time and every time Spitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took
to rushing, as though for the throat, when, suddenly drawing back his
head and curving in from the side, he would drive his shoulder at the
shoulder of Spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him. But instead,
Buck's shoulder was slashed down each time as Spitz leaped lightly away.

Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming with blood and panting
hard. The fight was growing desperate. And all the while the silent and
wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down. As Buck
grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he kept him staggering for
footing. Once Buck went over, and the whole circle of sixty dogs started
up; but he recovered himself, almost in mid air, and the circle sank
down again and waited.

But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness--imagination. He
fought by instinct, but he could fight by head as well. He rushed, as
though attempting the old shoulder trick, but at the last instant swept
low to the snow and in. His teeth closed on Spitz's left fore leg. There
was a crunch of breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three
legs. Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated the trick and
broke the right fore leg. Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz
struggled madly to keep up. He saw the silent circle, with gleaming
eyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in
upon him as he had seen similar circles close in upon beaten antagonists
in the past. Only this time he was the one who was beaten.

There was no hope for him. Buck was inexorable. Mercy was a thing
reserved for gentler climes. He manoeuvred for the final rush. The
circle had tightened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on
his flanks. He could see them, beyond Spitz and to either side, half
crouching for the spring, their eyes fixed upon him. A pause seemed to
fall. Every animal was motionless as though turned to stone. Only Spitz
quivered and bristled as he staggered back and forth, snarling with
horrible menace, as though to frighten off impending death. Then Buck
sprang in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at last squarely
met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as
Spitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful
champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found
it good.




Chapter IV. Who Has Won to Mastership


"Eh? Wot I say? I spik true w'en I say dat Buck two devils." This was
Francois's speech next morning when he discovered Spitz missing and Buck
covered with wounds. He drew him to the fire and by its light pointed
them out.

"Dat Spitz fight lak hell," said Perrault, as he surveyed the gaping
rips and cuts.

"An' dat Buck fight lak two hells," was Francois's answer. "An' now we
make good time. No more Spitz, no more trouble, sure."

While Perrault packed the camp outfit and loaded the sled, the
dog-driver proceeded to harness the dogs. Buck trotted up to the place
Spitz would have occupied as leader; but Francois, not noticing him,
brought Sol-leks to the coveted position. In his judgment, Sol-leks was
the best lead-dog left. Buck sprang upon Sol-leks in a fury, driving him
back and standing in his place.

"Eh? eh?" Francois cried, slapping his thighs gleefully. "Look at dat
Buck. Heem keel dat Spitz, heem t'ink to take de job."

"Go 'way, Chook!" he cried, but Buck refused to budge.

He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and though the dog growled
threateningly, dragged him to one side and replaced Sol-leks. The old
dog did not like it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck.
Francois was obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck again displaced
Sol-leks, who was not at all unwilling to go.

Francois was angry. "Now, by Gar, I feex you!" he cried, coming back
with a heavy club in his hand.

Buck remembered the man in the red sweater, and retreated slowly; nor
did he attempt to charge in when Sol-leks was once more brought
forward. But he circled just beyond the range of the club, snarling with
bitterness and rage; and while he circled he watched the club so as to
dodge it if thrown by Francois, for he was become wise in the way of
clubs. The driver went about his work, and he called to Buck when he was
ready to put him in his old place in front of Dave. Buck retreated two
or three steps. Francois followed him up, whereupon he again retreated.
After some time of this, Francois threw down the club, thinking that
Buck feared a thrashing. But Buck was in open revolt. He wanted, not to
escape a clubbing, but to have the leadership. It was his by right. He
had earned it, and he would not be content with less.

Perrault took a hand. Between them they ran him about for the better
part of an hour. They threw clubs at him. He dodged. They cursed him,
and his fathers and mothers before him, and all his seed to come after
him down to the remotest generation, and every hair on his body and drop
of blood in his veins; and he answered curse with snarl and kept out of
their reach. He did not try to run away, but retreated around and around
the camp, advertising plainly that when his desire was met, he would
come in and be good.

Francois sat down and scratched his head. Perrault looked at his watch
and swore. Time was flying, and they should have been on the trail an
hour gone. Francois scratched his head again. He shook it and grinned
sheepishly at the courier, who shrugged his shoulders in sign that they
were beaten. Then Francois went up to where Sol-leks stood and called
to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept his distance. Francois
unfastened Sol-leks's traces and put him back in his old place. The team
stood harnessed to the sled in an unbroken line, ready for the trail.
There was no place for Buck save at the front. Once more Francois
called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.

"T'row down de club," Perrault commanded.

Francois complied, whereupon Buck trotted in, laughing triumphantly,
and swung around into position at the head of the team. His traces were
fastened, the sled broken out, and with both men running they dashed out
on to the river trail.

Highly as the dog-driver had forevalued Buck, with his two devils, he
found, while the day was yet young, that he had undervalued. At a bound
Buck took up the duties of leadership; and where judgment was required,
and quick thinking and quick acting, he showed himself the superior even
of Spitz, of whom Francois had never seen an equal.

But it was in giving the law and making his mates live up to it, that
Buck excelled. Dave and Sol-leks did not mind the change in leadership.
It was none of their business. Their business was to toil, and toil
mightily, in the traces. So long as that were not interfered with, they
did not care what happened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all
they cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of the team, however, had
grown unruly during the last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great
now that Buck proceeded to lick them into shape.

Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and who never put an ounce more of his
weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was swiftly
and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done he was
pulling more than ever before in his life. The first night in camp,
Joe, the sour one, was punished roundly--a thing that Spitz had never
succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue of superior
weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and began to whine for
mercy.

The general tone of the team picked up immediately. It recovered its
old-time solidarity, and once more the dogs leaped as one dog in the
traces. At the Rink Rapids two native huskies, Teek and Koona, were
added; and the celerity with which Buck broke them in took away
Francois's breath.

"Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck!" he cried. "No, nevaire! Heem worth one
t'ousan' dollair, by Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Perrault?"

And Perrault nodded. He was ahead of the record then, and gaining day
by day. The trail was in excellent condition, well packed and hard, and
there was no new-fallen snow with which to contend. It was not too cold.
The temperature dropped to fifty below zero and remained there the whole
trip. The men rode and ran by turn, and the dogs were kept on the jump,
with but infrequent stoppages.

The Thirty Mile River was comparatively coated with ice, and they
covered in one day going out what had taken them ten days coming in. In
one run they made a sixty-mile dash from the foot of Lake Le Barge to
the White Horse Rapids. Across Marsh, Tagish, and Bennett (seventy miles
of lakes), they flew so fast that the man whose turn it was to run
towed behind the sled at the end of a rope. And on the last night of the
second week they topped White Pass and dropped down the sea slope with
the lights of Skaguay and of the shipping at their feet.

It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged forty
miles. For three days Perrault and Francois threw chests up and down the
main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to drink, while
the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-busters
and mushers. Then three or four western bad men aspired to clean out
the town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for their pains, and public
interest turned to other idols. Next came official orders. Francois
called Buck to him, threw his arms around him, wept over him. And that
was the last of Francois and Perrault. Like other men, they passed out
of Buck's life for good.

A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates, and in company
with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary trail to
Dawson. It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy toil
each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train,
carrying word from the world to the men who sought gold under the shadow
of the Pole.

Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the work, taking pride in
it after the manner of Dave and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates,
whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It was a
monotonous life, operating with machine-like regularity. One day was
very like another. At a certain time each morning the cooks turned out,
fires were built, and breakfast was eaten. Then, while some broke camp,
others harnessed the dogs, and they were under way an hour or so before
the darkness fell which gave warning of dawn. At night, camp was made.
Some pitched the flies, others cut firewood and pine boughs for the
beds, and still others carried water or ice for the cooks. Also, the
dogs were fed. To them, this was the one feature of the day, though it
was good to loaf around, after the fish was eaten, for an hour or so
with the other dogs, of which there were fivescore and odd. There were
fierce fighters among them, but three battles with the fiercest brought
Buck to mastery, so that when he bristled and showed his teeth they got
out of his way.

Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs crouched
under him, fore legs stretched out in front, head raised, and eyes
blinking dreamily at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge Miller's
big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the cement
swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, and Toots, the Japanese
pug; but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, the death of
Curly, the great fight with Spitz, and the good things he had eaten or
would like to eat. He was not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and
distant, and such memories had no power over him. Far more potent were
the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never seen before
a seeming familiarity; the instincts (which were but the memories of
his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later days, and still
later, in him, quickened and become alive again.

Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames, it
seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as he crouched
by this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed
cook before him. This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm,
with muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and
swelling. The hair of this man was long and matted, and his head slanted
back under it from the eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very
much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching
in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a
heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and
fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there
was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and down
the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a thick
fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from
the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was
a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick
alertness as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and
unseen.

At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head between
his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on his knees, his
hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms.
And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many
gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be the
eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their
bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night.
And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the
fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to
rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his
neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the
half-breed cook shouted at him, "Hey, you Buck, wake up!" Whereupon the
other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and he
would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep.

It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy work wore
them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition when they
made Dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest at
least. But in two days' time they dropped down the Yukon bank from the
Barracks, loaded with letters for the outside. The dogs were tired, the
drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day. This
meant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling
for the dogs; yet the drivers were fair through it all, and did their
best for the animals.

Each night the dogs were attended to first. They ate before the drivers
ate, and no man sought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the feet of
the dogs he drove. Still, their strength went down. Since the beginning
of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles, dragging sleds
the whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles will tell upon life
of the toughest. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their work and
maintaining discipline, though he, too, was very tired. Billee cried and
whimpered regularly in his sleep each night. Joe was sourer than ever,
and Sol-leks was unapproachable, blind side or other side.

But it was Dave who suffered most of all. Something had gone wrong with
him. He became more morose and irritable, and when camp was pitched at
once made his nest, where his driver fed him. Once out of the harness
and down, he did not get on his feet again till harness-up time in the
morning. Sometimes, in the traces, when jerked by a sudden stoppage of
the sled, or by straining to start it, he would cry out with pain. The
driver examined him, but could find nothing. All the drivers became
interested in his case. They talked it over at meal-time, and over their
last pipes before going to bed, and one night they held a consultation.
He was brought from his nest to the fire and was pressed and prodded
till he cried out many times. Something was wrong inside, but they could
locate no broken bones, could not make it out.

By the time Cassiar Bar was reached, he was so weak that he was falling
repeatedly in the traces. The Scotch half-breed called a halt and took
him out of the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the sled.
His intention was to rest Dave, letting him run free behind the sled.
Sick as he was, Dave resented being taken out, grunting and growling
while the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-heartedly when
he saw Sol-leks in the position he had held and served so long. For the
pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not
bear that another dog should do his work.

When the sled started, he floundered in the soft snow alongside the
beaten trail, attacking Sol-leks with his teeth, rushing against him and
trying to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side, striving
to leap inside his traces and get between him and the sled, and all the
while whining and yelping and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed
tried to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the
stinging lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave
refused to run quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was
easy, but continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where the
going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he
fell, howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds churned by.

With the last remnant of his strength he managed to stagger along behind
till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the sleds to
his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered a moment
to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he returned and
started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with remarkable lack of
exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped in surprise. The
driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He called his
comrades to witness the sight. Dave had bitten through both of
Sol-leks's traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in his
proper place.

He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed. His
comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being denied
the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known, where
dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were cut
out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die
anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So
he was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more
than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt.
Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the
sled ran upon him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs.

But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a place for
him by the fire. Morning found him too weak to travel. At harness-up
time he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts he got on
his feet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward slowly
toward where the harnesses were being put on his mates. He would advance
his fore legs and drag up his body with a sort of hitching movement,
when he would advance his fore legs and hitch ahead again for a few more
inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates saw of him he lay
gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. But they could hear him
mournfully howling till they passed out of sight behind a belt of river
timber.

Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his
steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot
rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells
tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and
every dog knew, what had taken place behind the belt of river trees.




Chapter V. The Toil of Trace and Trail


Thirty days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt Water Mail, with Buck
and his mates at the fore, arrived at Skaguay. They were in a wretched
state, worn out and worn down. Buck's one hundred and forty pounds
had dwindled to one hundred and fifteen. The rest of his mates, though
lighter dogs, had relatively lost more weight than he. Pike, the
malingerer, who, in his lifetime of deceit, had often successfully
feigned a hurt leg, was now limping in earnest. Sol-leks was limping,
and Dub was suffering from a wrenched shoulder-blade.

They were all terribly footsore. No spring or rebound was left in them.
Their feet fell heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and doubling
the fatigue of a day's travel. There was nothing the matter with them
except that they were dead tired. It was not the dead-tiredness that
comes through brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is a
matter of hours; but it was the dead-tiredness that comes through the
slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There was no
power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had
been all used, the last least bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre,
every cell, was tired, dead tired. And there was reason for it. In less
than five months they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, during
the last eighteen hundred of which they had had but five days' rest.
When they arrived at Skaguay they were apparently on their last legs.
They could barely keep the traces taut, and on the down grades just
managed to keep out of the way of the sled.

"Mush on, poor sore feets," the driver encouraged them as they tottered
down the main street of Skaguay. "Dis is de las'. Den we get one long
res'. Eh? For sure. One bully long res'."

The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. Themselves, they had
covered twelve hundred miles with two days' rest, and in the nature of
reason and common justice they deserved an interval of loafing. But so
many were the men who had rushed into the Klondike, and so many were the
sweethearts, wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the congested
mail was taking on Alpine proportions; also, there were official orders.
Fresh batches of Hudson Bay dogs were to take the places of those
worthless for the trail. The worthless ones were to be got rid of, and,
since dogs count for little against dollars, they were to be sold.

Three days passed, by which time Buck and his mates found how really
tired and weak they were. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, two
men from the States came along and bought them, harness and all, for a
song. The men addressed each other as "Hal" and "Charles." Charles was
a middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and watery eyes and a
mustache that twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the
limply drooping lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen or
twenty, with a big Colt's revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about
him on a belt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was the
most salient thing about him. It advertised his callowness--a callowness
sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out of place, and why
such as they should adventure the North is part of the mystery of things
that passes understanding.

Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass between the man and the
Government agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and the mail-train
drivers were passing out of his life on the heels of Perrault and
Francois and the others who had gone before. When driven with his mates
to the new owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tent
half stretched, dishes unwashed, everything in disorder; also, he saw a
woman. "Mercedes" the men called her. She was Charles's wife and Hal's
sister--a nice family party.

Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take down the tent
and load the sled. There was a great deal of effort about their manner,
but no businesslike method. The tent was rolled into an awkward bundle
three times as large as it should have been. The tin dishes were packed
away unwashed. Mercedes continually fluttered in the way of her men and
kept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance and advice. When they put
a clothes-sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should go on
the back; and when they had put it on the back, and covered it over
with a couple of other bundles, she discovered overlooked articles which
could abide nowhere else but in that very sack, and they unloaded again.

Three men from a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinning and
winking at one another.

"You've got a right smart load as it is," said one of them; "and it's
not me should tell you your business, but I wouldn't tote that tent
along if I was you."

"Undreamed of!" cried Mercedes, throwing up her hands in dainty dismay.
"However in the world could I manage without a tent?"

"It's springtime, and you won't get any more cold weather," the man
replied.

She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and Hal put the last odds and
ends on top the mountainous load.

"Think it'll ride?" one of the men asked.

"Why shouldn't it?" Charles demanded rather shortly.

"Oh, that's all right, that's all right," the man hastened meekly to
say. "I was just a-wonderin', that is all. It seemed a mite top-heavy."

Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as he could,
which was not in the least well.

"An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with that contraption
behind them," affirmed a second of the men.

"Certainly," said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold of the
gee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip from the other. "Mush!" he
shouted. "Mush on there!"

The dogs sprang against the breast-bands, strained hard for a few
moments, then relaxed. They were unable to move the sled.

"The lazy brutes, I'll show them," he cried, preparing to lash out at
them with the whip.

But Mercedes interfered, crying, "Oh, Hal, you mustn't," as she caught
hold of the whip and wrenched it from him. "The poor dears! Now you
must promise you won't be harsh with them for the rest of the trip, or I
won't go a step."

"Precious lot you know about dogs," her brother sneered; "and I wish
you'd leave me alone. They're lazy, I tell you, and you've got to whip
them to get anything out of them. That's their way. You ask any one. Ask
one of those men."

Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold repugnance at sight of pain
written in her pretty face.

"They're weak as water, if you want to know," came the reply from one
of the men. "Plum tuckered out, that's what's the matter. They need a
rest."

"Rest be blanked," said Hal, with his beardless lips; and Mercedes said,
"Oh!" in pain and sorrow at the oath.

But she was a clannish creature, and rushed at once to the defence of
her brother. "Never mind that man," she said pointedly. "You're driving
our dogs, and you do what you think best with them."

Again Hal's whip fell upon the dogs. They threw themselves against the
breast-bands, dug their feet into the packed snow, got down low to it,
and put forth all their strength. The sled held as though it were an
anchor. After two efforts, they stood still, panting. The whip was
whistling savagely, when once more Mercedes interfered. She dropped on
her knees before Buck, with tears in her eyes, and put her arms around
his neck.

"You poor, poor dears," she cried sympathetically, "why don't you pull
hard?--then you wouldn't be whipped." Buck did not like her, but he
was feeling too miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the day's
miserable work.

One of the onlookers, who had been clenching his teeth to suppress hot
speech, now spoke up:--

"It's not that I care a whoop what becomes of you, but for the dogs'
sakes I just want to tell you, you can help them a mighty lot by
breaking out that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw your weight
against the gee-pole, right and left, and break it out."

A third time the attempt was made, but this time, following the advice,
Hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to the snow. The
overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates struggling
frantically under the rain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the path
turned and sloped steeply into the main street. It would have required
an experienced man to keep the top-heavy sled upright, and Hal was not
such a man. As they swung on the turn the sled went over, spilling
half its load through the loose lashings. The dogs never stopped. The
lightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They were angry because
of the ill treatment they had received and the unjust load. Buck was
raging. He broke into a run, the team following his lead. Hal cried
"Whoa! whoa!" but they gave no heed. He tripped and was pulled off his
feet. The capsized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up the
street, adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the remainder
of the outfit along its chief thoroughfare.

Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered up the scattered
belongings. Also, they gave advice. Half the load and twice the dogs,
if they ever expected to reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal and
his sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent, and
overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were turned out that made men laugh,
for canned goods on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about. "Blankets
for a hotel" quoth one of the men who laughed and helped. "Half as
many is too much; get rid of them. Throw away that tent, and all those
dishes,--who's going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you think
you're travelling on a Pullman?"

And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous. Mercedes
cried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and article
after article was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried in
particular over each discarded thing. She clasped hands about knees,
rocking back and forth broken-heartedly. She averred she would not go
an inch, not for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody and to
everything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out even
articles of apparel that were imperative necessaries. And in her zeal,
when she had finished with her own, she attacked the belongings of her
men and went through them like a tornado.

This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still a
formidable bulk. Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought six
Outside dogs. These, added to the six of the original team, and Teek
and Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record
trip, brought the team up to fourteen. But the Outside dogs, though
practically broken in since their landing, did not amount to much. Three
were short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, and the other
two were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They did not seem to know
anything, these newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon them with
disgust, and though he speedily taught them their places and what not
to do, he could not teach them what to do. They did not take kindly
to trace and trail. With the exception of the two mongrels, they were
bewildered and spirit-broken by the strange savage environment in which
they found themselves and by the ill treatment they had received. The
two mongrels were without spirit at all; bones were the only things
breakable about them.

With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and the old team worn out by
twenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook was anything
but bright. The two men, however, were quite cheerful. And they were
proud, too. They were doing the thing in style, with fourteen dogs. They
had seen other sleds depart over the Pass for Dawson, or come in from
Dawson, but never had they seen a sled with so many as fourteen dogs. In
the nature of Arctic travel there was a reason why fourteen dogs should
not drag one sled, and that was that one sled could not carry the food
for fourteen dogs. But Charles and Hal did not know this. They had
worked the trip out with a pencil, so much to a dog, so many dogs,
so many days, Q.E.D. Mercedes looked over their shoulders and nodded
comprehensively, it was all so very simple.

Late next morning Buck led the long team up the street. There was
nothing lively about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows. They were
starting dead weary. Four times he had covered the distance between Salt
Water and Dawson, and the knowledge that, jaded and tired, he was facing
the same trail once more, made him bitter. His heart was not in
the work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Outsides were timid and
frightened, the Insides without confidence in their masters.

Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon these two men and the
woman. They did not know how to do anything, and as the days went by
it became apparent that they could not learn. They were slack in all
things, without order or discipline. It took them half the night to
pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get
the sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they
were occupied in stopping and rearranging the load. Some days they did
not make ten miles. On other days they were unable to get started
at all. And on no day did they succeed in making more than half the
distance used by the men as a basis in their dog-food computation.

It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. But they
hastened it by overfeeding, bringing the day nearer when underfeeding
would commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained
by chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites.
And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal
decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And to
cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver
in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she
stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that
Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they were making poor
time, the heavy load they dragged sapped their strength severely.

Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke one day to the fact that his
dog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered; further,
that for love or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained. So
he cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to increase the day's
travel. His sister and brother-in-law seconded him; but they were
frustrated by their heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It was a
simple matter to give the dogs less food; but it was impossible to
make the dogs travel faster, while their own inability to get under way
earlier in the morning prevented them from travelling longer hours. Not
only did they not know how to work dogs, but they did not know how to
work themselves.

The first to go was Dub. Poor blundering thief that he was, always
getting caught and punished, he had none the less been a faithful
worker. His wrenched shoulder-blade, untreated and unrested, went from
bad to worse, till finally Hal shot him with the big Colt's revolver. It
is a saying of the country that an Outside dog starves to death on the
ration of the husky, so the six Outside dogs under Buck could do no less
than die on half the ration of the husky. The Newfoundland went first,
followed by the three short-haired pointers, the two mongrels hanging
more grittily on to life, but going in the end.

By this time all the amenities and gentlenesses of the Southland had
fallen away from the three people. Shorn of its glamour and romance,
Arctic travel became to them a reality too harsh for their manhood and
womanhood. Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being too occupied
with weeping over herself and with quarrelling with her husband and
brother. To quarrel was the one thing they were never too weary to do.
Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it, doubled
upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail which
comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech
and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had no
inkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; their muscles
ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached; and because of this
they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in
the morning and last at night.

Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes gave them a chance. It was
the cherished belief of each that he did more than his share of the
work, and neither forbore to speak this belief at every opportunity.
Sometimes Mercedes sided with her husband, sometimes with her brother.
The result was a beautiful and unending family quarrel. Starting from
a dispute as to which should chop a few sticks for the fire (a dispute
which concerned only Charles and Hal), presently would be lugged in the
rest of the family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people thousands
of miles away, and some of them dead. That Hal's views on art, or the
sort of society plays his mother's brother wrote, should have
anything to do with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood, passes
comprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tend in that
direction as in the direction of Charles's political prejudices. And
that Charles's sister's tale-bearing tongue should be relevant to the
building of a Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mercedes, who disburdened
herself of copious opinions upon that topic, and incidentally upon a
few other traits unpleasantly peculiar to her husband's family. In the
meantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs
unfed.

Mercedes nursed a special grievance--the grievance of sex. She was
pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But
the present treatment by her husband and brother was everything save
chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Upon
which impeachment of what to her was her most essential sex-prerogative,
she made their lives unendurable. She no longer considered the dogs, and
because she was sore and tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. She
was pretty and soft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds--a
lusty last straw to the load dragged by the weak and starving animals.
She rode for days, till they fell in the traces and the sled stood
still. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her,
entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a recital of
their brutality.

On one occasion they took her off the sled by main strength. They never
did it again. She let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and sat
down on the trail. They went on their way, but she did not move. After
they had travelled three miles they unloaded the sled, came back for
her, and by main strength put her on the sled again.

In the excess of their own misery they were callous to the suffering of
their animals. Hal's theory, which he practised on others, was that one
must get hardened. He had started out preaching it to his sister and
brother-in-law. Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs with a club.
At the Five Fingers the dog-food gave out, and a toothless old squaw
offered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt's
revolver that kept the big hunting-knife company at Hal's hip. A poor
substitute for food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from the
starved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state it
was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into
his stomach it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and
into a mass of short hair, irritating and indigestible.

And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team as in
a nightmare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longer pull, he
fell down and remained down till blows from whip or club drove him
to his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had gone out of his
beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down, limp and draggled, or matted
with dried blood where Hal's club had bruised him. His muscles had
wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so
that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly
through the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was
heartbreaking, only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the red
sweater had proved that.

As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates. They were perambulating
skeletons. There were seven all together, including him. In their very
great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the
bruise of the club. The pain of the beating was dull and distant,
just as the things their eyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull and
distant. They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply
so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly. When a
halt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and the
spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or whip
fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered to
their feet and staggered on.

There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could not rise.
Hal had traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and knocked Billee
on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the
harness and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and his mates saw, and
they knew that this thing was very close to them. On the next day Koona
went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant;
Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious enough
longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil
of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with
which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and who
was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck,
still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or
striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping
the trail by the loom of it and by the dim feel of his feet.

It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans were aware
of it. Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by three
in the morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole long
day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence had given way
to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all
the land, fraught with the joy of living. It came from the things that
lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had not
moved during the long months of frost. The sap was rising in the pines.
The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines
were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, and
in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth into
the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in the
forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked
the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the
air.

From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the music of
unseen fountains. All things were thawing, bending, snapping. The Yukon
was straining to break loose the ice that bound it down. It ate away
from beneath; the sun ate from above. Air-holes formed, fissures sprang
and spread apart, while thin sections of ice fell through bodily into
the river. And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of awakening
life, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighing breezes, like
wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies.

With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing
innocuously, and Charles's eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into
John Thornton's camp at the mouth of White River. When they halted,
the dogs dropped down as though they had all been struck dead. Mercedes
dried her eyes and looked at John Thornton. Charles sat down on a log
to rest. He sat down very slowly and painstakingly what of his great
stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton was whittling the last
touches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. He whittled
and listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse
advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that
it would not be followed.

"They told us up above that the bottom was dropping out of the trail and
that the best thing for us to do was to lay over," Hal said in response
to Thornton's warning to take no more chances on the rotten ice. "They
told us we couldn't make White River, and here we are." This last with a
sneering ring of triumph in it.

"And they told you true," John Thornton answered. "The bottom's likely
to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with the blind luck of fools,
could have made it. I tell you straight, I wouldn't risk my carcass on
that ice for all the gold in Alaska."

"That's because you're not a fool, I suppose," said Hal. "All the same,
we'll go on to Dawson." He uncoiled his whip. "Get up there, Buck! Hi!
Get up there! Mush on!"

Thornton went on whittling. It was idle, he knew, to get between a fool
and his folly; while two or three fools more or less would not alter the
scheme of things.

But the team did not get up at the command. It had long since passed
into the stage where blows were required to rouse it. The whip flashed
out, here and there, on its merciless errands. John Thornton compressed
his lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet. Teek followed.
Joe came next, yelping with pain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice he
fell over, when half up, and on the third attempt managed to rise. Buck
made no effort. He lay quietly where he had fallen. The lash bit into
him again and again, but he neither whined nor struggled. Several times
Thornton started, as though to speak, but changed his mind. A moisture
came into his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, he arose and walked
irresolutely up and down.

This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason
to drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for the customary club.
Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon
him. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them, he
had made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of impending
doom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled in to the bank, and
it had not departed from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had
felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at
hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive
him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone was
he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fall upon
him, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearly
out. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was
aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He
no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of
the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far
away.

And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was
inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang
upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, as
though struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked on
wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of his
stiffness.

John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too
convulsed with rage to speak.

"If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you," he at last managed to say
in a choking voice.

"It's my dog," Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as he came
back. "Get out of my way, or I'll fix you. I'm going to Dawson."

Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention of getting
out of the way. Hal drew his long hunting-knife. Mercedes screamed,
cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria.
Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the axe-handle, knocking the knife
to the ground. He rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up.
Then he stooped, picked it up himself, and with two strokes cut Buck's
traces.

Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands were full with his
sister, or his arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead to be of
further use in hauling the sled. A few minutes later they pulled out
from the bank and down the river. Buck heard them go and raised his head
to see, Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at the wheel, and between were
Joe and Teek. They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding the
loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along in
the rear.

As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly
hands searched for broken bones. By the time his search had disclosed
nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the
sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man watched it crawling along
over the ice. Suddenly, they saw its back end drop down, as into a rut,
and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air. Mercedes's
scream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step to
run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans
disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen. The bottom had
dropped out of the trail.

John Thornton and Buck looked at each other.

"You poor devil," said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.




Chapter VI. For the Love of a Man


When John Thornton froze his feet in the previous December his partners
had made him comfortable and left him to get well, going on themselves
up the river to get out a raft of saw-logs for Dawson. He was still
limping slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but with the continued
warm weather even the slight limp left him. And here, lying by the river
bank through the long spring days, watching the running water, listening
lazily to the songs of birds and the hum of nature, Buck slowly won back
his strength.

A rest comes very good after one has travelled three thousand miles,
and it must be confessed that Buck waxed lazy as his wounds healed, his
muscles swelled out, and the flesh came back to cover his bones. For
that matter, they were all loafing,--Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet
and Nig,--waiting for the raft to come that was to carry them down to
Dawson. Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with
Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her first
advances. She had the doctor trait which some dogs possess; and as a
mother cat washes her kittens, so she washed and cleansed Buck's
wounds. Regularly, each morning after he had finished his breakfast,
she performed her self-appointed task, till he came to look for her
ministrations as much as he did for Thornton's. Nig, equally friendly,
though less demonstrative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and
half deerhound, with eyes that laughed and a boundless good nature.

To Buck's surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy toward him. They
seemed to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton. As Buck
grew stronger they enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games, in
which Thornton himself could not forbear to join; and in this fashion
Buck romped through his convalescence and into a new existence. Love,
genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never
experienced at Judge Miller's down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
With the Judge's sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a working
partnership; with the Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship;
and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified friendship. But love
that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it
had taken John Thornton to arouse.

This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he was
the ideal master. Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs from a
sense of duty and business expediency; he saw to the welfare of his as
if they were his own children, because he could not help it. And he saw
further. He never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to
sit down for a long talk with them ("gas" he called it) was as much his
delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck's head roughly between
his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck's, of shaking him back
and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love
names. Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of
murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart
would be shaken out of his body so great was its ecstasy. And when,
released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent,
his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained
without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, "God! you can
all but speak!"

Buck had a trick of love expression that was akin to hurt. He would
often seize Thornton's hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that the
flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some time afterward. And as
Buck understood the oaths to be love words, so the man understood this
feigned bite for a caress.

For the most part, however, Buck's love was expressed in adoration.
While he went wild with happiness when Thornton touched him or spoke to
him, he did not seek these tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove
her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge and nudge till petted, or Nig,
who would stalk up and rest his great head on Thornton's knee, Buck was
content to adore at a distance. He would lie by the hour, eager, alert,
at Thornton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon it, studying
it, following with keenest interest each fleeting expression, every
movement or change of feature. Or, as chance might have it, he would lie
farther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines of the man and
the occasional movements of his body. And often, such was the communion
in which they lived, the strength of Buck's gaze would draw John
Thornton's head around, and he would return the gaze, without speech,
his heart shining out of his eyes as Buck's heart shone out.

For a long time after his rescue, Buck did not like Thornton to get out
of his sight. From the moment he left the tent to when he entered it
again, Buck would follow at his heels. His transient masters since he
had come into the Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could
be permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his life as
Perrault and Francois and the Scotch half-breed had passed out. Even in
the night, in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear. At such times
he would shake off sleep and creep through the chill to the flap of
the tent, where he would stand and listen to the sound of his master's
breathing.

But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton, which seemed
to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive,
which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active.
Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet
he retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come
in from the wild to sit by John Thornton's fire, rather than a dog
of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations of
civilization. Because of his very great love, he could not steal from
this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate
an instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape
detection.

His face and body were scored by the teeth of many dogs, and he
fought as fiercely as ever and more shrewdly. Skeet and Nig were too
good-natured for quarrelling,--besides, they belonged to John Thornton;
but the strange dog, no matter what the breed or valor, swiftly
acknowledged Buck's supremacy or found himself struggling for life with
a terrible antagonist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned well the
law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back
from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from
Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew
there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show
mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was
misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill
or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out
of the depths of Time, he obeyed.

He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He
linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed
through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and
seasons swayed. He sat by John Thornton's fire, a broad-breasted dog,
white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all
manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting,
tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank,
scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the
sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods,
directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down,
and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff
of his dreams.

So peremptorily did these shades beckon him, that each day mankind and
the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a
call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously
thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire
and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on
and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the
call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. But as often as he gained
the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton
drew him back to the fire again.

Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing. Chance
travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all,
and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. When
Thornton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft,
Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton;
after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors
from them as though he favored them by accepting. They were of the same
large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and
seeing clearly; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by the
saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did not
insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig.

For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among
men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in the summer travelling. Nothing
was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had
grub-staked themselves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson
for the head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on the
crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three
hundred feet below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his
shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention
of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he
commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he
was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were
dragging them back into safety.

"It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their
speech.

Thornton shook his head. "No, it is splendid, and it is terrible, too.
Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid."

"I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands on you while he's
around," Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head toward Buck.

"Py Jingo!" was Hans's contribution. "Not mineself either."

It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions
were realized. "Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had
been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton
stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a
corner, head on paws, watching his master's every action. Burton struck
out, without warning, straight from the shoulder. Thornton was sent
spinning, and saved himself from falling only by clutching the rail of
the bar.

Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark nor yelp, but a
something which is best described as a roar, and they saw Buck's body
rise up in the air as he left the floor for Burton's throat. The man
saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled
backward to the floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his teeth
from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This time
the man succeeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was torn open.
Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a surgeon
checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling furiously,
attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an array of hostile
clubs. A "miners' meeting," called on the spot, decided that the dog had
sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged. But his reputation was
made, and from that day his name spread through every camp in Alaska.

Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John Thornton's life in
quite another fashion. The three partners were lining a long and narrow
poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans
and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from
tree to tree, while Thornton remained in the boat, helping its descent
by means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore. Buck, on the
bank, worried and anxious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off
his master.

At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely submerged rocks
jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thornton
poled the boat out into the stream, ran down the bank with the end in
his hand to snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it did,
and was flying down-stream in a current as swift as a mill-race, when
Hans checked it with the rope and checked too suddenly. The boat flirted
over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, flung sheer
out of it, was carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids,
a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live.

Buck had sprung in on the instant; and at the end of three hundred
yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton. When he felt
him grasp his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his
splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow; the progress
down-stream amazingly rapid. From below came the fatal roaring where the
wild current went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray by the rocks
which thrust through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck of the
water as it took the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful,
and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible. He scraped furiously
over a rock, bruised across a second, and struck a third with crushing
force. He clutched its slippery top with both hands, releasing Buck, and
above the roar of the churning water shouted: "Go, Buck! Go!"

Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down-stream, struggling
desperately, but unable to win back. When he heard Thornton's command
repeated, he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head high, as
though for a last look, then turned obediently toward the bank. He swam
powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point
where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction began.

They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock in the face
of that driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as
they could up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was hanging
on. They attached the line with which they had been snubbing the boat to
Buck's neck and shoulders, being careful that it should neither strangle
him nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the stream. He struck
out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream. He discovered the
mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half-dozen
strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past.

Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were a boat. The
rope thus tightening on him in the sweep of the current, he was jerked
under the surface, and under the surface he remained till his body
struck against the bank and he was hauled out. He was half drowned, and
Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him
and the water out of him. He staggered to his feet and fell down. The
faint sound of Thornton's voice came to them, and though they could not
make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his extremity. His
master's voice acted on Buck like an electric shock, He sprang to his
feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous
departure.

Again the rope was attached and he was launched, and again he struck
out, but this time straight into the stream. He had miscalculated once,
but he would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid out the rope,
permitting no slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck held on
till he was on a line straight above Thornton; then he turned, and with
the speed of an express train headed down upon him. Thornton saw him
coming, and, as Buck struck him like a battering ram, with the whole
force of the current behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms
around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and
Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water. Strangling, suffocating,
sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the
jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the
bank.

Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently propelled back
and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete. His first glance was for
Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a
howl, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was
himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck's body,
when he had been brought around, finding three broken ribs.

"That settles it," he announced. "We camp right here." And camp they
did, till Buck's ribs knitted and he was able to travel.

That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit, not so heroic,
perhaps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the totem-pole
of Alaskan fame. This exploit was particularly gratifying to the three
men; for they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and were
enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where miners
had not yet appeared. It was brought about by a conversation in the
Eldorado Saloon, in which men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs.
Buck, because of his record, was the target for these men, and Thornton
was driven stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an hour one man
stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and
walk off with it; a second bragged six hundred for his dog; and a third,
seven hundred.

"Pooh! pooh!" said John Thornton; "Buck can start a thousand pounds."

"And break it out? and walk off with it for a hundred yards?" demanded
Matthewson, a Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred vaunt.

"And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards," John
Thornton said coolly.

"Well," Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so that all could
hear, "I've got a thousand dollars that says he can't. And there it
is." So saying, he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna
sausage down upon the bar.

Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff, if bluff it was, had been called. He
could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up his face. His tongue had
tricked him. He did not know whether Buck could start a thousand pounds.
Half a ton! The enormousness of it appalled him. He had great faith in
Buck's strength and had often thought him capable of starting such a
load; but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it, the eyes
of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and waiting. Further, he had no
thousand dollars; nor had Hans or Pete.

"I've got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fiftypound sacks of
flour on it," Matthewson went on with brutal directness; "so don't let
that hinder you."

Thornton did not reply. He did not know what to say. He glanced from
face to face in the absent way of a man who has lost the power of
thought and is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start
it going again. The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon King and old-time
comrade, caught his eyes. It was as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him
to do what he would never have dreamed of doing.

"Can you lend me a thousand?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

"Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack by the side of
Matthewson's. "Though it's little faith I'm having, John, that the beast
can do the trick."

The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to see the test. The
tables were deserted, and the dealers and gamekeepers came forth to see
the outcome of the wager and to lay odds. Several hundred men, furred
and mittened, banked around the sled within easy distance. Matthewson's
sled, loaded with a thousand pounds of flour, had been standing for a
couple of hours, and in the intense cold (it was sixty below zero) the
runners had frozen fast to the hard-packed snow. Men offered odds of two
to one that Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble arose concerning
the phrase "break out." O'Brien contended it was Thornton's privilege
to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to "break it out" from a dead
standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase included breaking the
runners from the frozen grip of the snow. A majority of the men who had
witnessed the making of the bet decided in his favor, whereat the odds
went up to three to one against Buck.

There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat.
Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and now that
he looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, with the regular team
of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible the
task appeared. Matthewson waxed jubilant.

"Three to one!" he proclaimed. "I'll lay you another thousand at that
figure, Thornton. What d'ye say?"

Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but his fighting spirit was
aroused--the fighting spirit that soars above odds, fails to recognize
the impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called
Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own the three
partners could rake together only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of
their fortunes, this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it
unhesitatingly against Matthewson's six hundred.

The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck, with his own harness, was
put into the sled. He had caught the contagion of the excitement, and
he felt that in some way he must do a great thing for John Thornton.
Murmurs of admiration at his splendid appearance went up. He was in
perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one
hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many pounds of grit and
virility. His furry coat shone with the sheen of silk. Down the neck and
across the shoulders, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled and
seemed to lift with every movement, as though excess of vigor made each
particular hair alive and active. The great breast and heavy fore legs
were no more than in proportion with the rest of the body, where the
muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Men felt these
muscles and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds went down to two
to one.

"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" stuttered a member of the latest dynasty, a king
of the Skookum Benches. "I offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before
the test, sir; eight hundred just as he stands."

Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck's side.

"You must stand off from him," Matthewson protested. "Free play and
plenty of room."

The crowd fell silent; only could be heard the voices of the gamblers
vainly offering two to one. Everybody acknowledged Buck a magnificent
animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in their
eyes for them to loosen their pouch-strings.

Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head in his two hands
and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was his
wont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear. "As you
love me, Buck. As you love me," was what he whispered. Buck whined with
suppressed eagerness.

The crowd was watching curiously. The affair was growing mysterious. It
seemed like a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet, Buck seized his
mittened hand between his jaws, pressing in with his teeth and releasing
slowly, half-reluctantly. It was the answer, in terms, not of speech,
but of love. Thornton stepped well back.

"Now, Buck," he said.

Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them for a matter of several
inches. It was the way he had learned.

"Gee!" Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the tense silence.

Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in a plunge that took up
the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty
pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners arose a crisp
crackling.

"Haw!" Thornton commanded.

Buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time to the left. The crackling
turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the runners slipping and
grating several inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men were
holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact.

"Now, MUSH!"

Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol-shot. Buck threw himself
forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body
was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles
writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great
chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his
feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in
parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward.
One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled
lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it
never really came to a dead stop again...half an inch...an inch... two
inches... The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained momentum,
he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.

Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they
had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck
with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he
neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards,
a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed
the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose,
even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were
shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a
general incoherent babel.

But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head,
and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him
cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and
lovingly.

"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" spluttered the Skookum Bench king. "I'll give you
a thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir--twelve hundred, sir."

Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The tears were streaming
frankly down his cheeks. "Sir," he said to the Skookum Bench king, "no,
sir. You can go to hell, sir. It's the best I can do for you, sir."

Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thornton shook him back and
forth. As though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back
to a respectful distance; nor were they again indiscreet enough to
interrupt.




Chapter VII. The Sounding of the Call


When Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for John
Thornton, he made it possible for his master to pay off certain debts
and to journey with his partners into the East after a fabled lost mine,
the history of which was as old as the history of the country. Many men
had sought it; few had found it; and more than a few there were who had
never returned from the quest. This lost mine was steeped in tragedy and
shrouded in mystery. No one knew of the first man. The oldest tradition
stopped before it got back to him. From the beginning there had been an
ancient and ramshackle cabin. Dying men had sworn to it, and to the mine
the site of which it marked, clinching their testimony with nuggets that
were unlike any known grade of gold in the Northland.

But no living man had looted this treasure house, and the dead were
dead; wherefore John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half a
dozen other dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to achieve
where men and dogs as good as themselves had failed. They sledded
seventy miles up the Yukon, swung to the left into the Stewart River,
passed the Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stewart itself
became a streamlet, threading the upstanding peaks which marked the
backbone of the continent.

John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of the
wild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into the
wilderness and fare wherever he pleased and as long as he pleased. Being
in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course of the
day's travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept on
travelling, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would come
to it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the
bill of fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the
sled, and the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.

To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinite
wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold
on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here
and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen
muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of the
fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all
according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer
arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across blue
mountain lakes, and descended or ascended unknown rivers in slender
boats whipsawed from the standing forest.

The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through the
uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had been if
the Lost Cabin were true. They went across divides in summer blizzards,
shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber
line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming
gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and
flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast. In the fall
of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sad and silent,
where wildfowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign of
life--only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered
places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.

And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails of
men who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed through the
forest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. But the
path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained mystery, as the
man who made it and the reason he made it remained mystery. Another time
they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and
amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton found a long-barrelled
flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson Bay Company gun of the young days
in the Northwest, when such a gun was worth its height in beaver skins
packed flat, And that was all--no hint as to the man who in an early day
had reared the lodge and left the gun among the blankets.

Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering they
found, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley where
the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-pan.
They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them thousands of
dollars in clean dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The gold
was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag, and piled
like so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like giants they
toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they heaped
the treasure up.

There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat now
and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing by
the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more
frequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often,
blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which
he remembered.

The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched the
hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and hands
clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts and
awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darkness
and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach of a sea,
where the hairy man gathered shellfish and ate them as he gathered,
it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger and with legs
prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through the
forest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and they
were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving and
nostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The
hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on
the ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a dozen
feet apart, letting go and catching, never falling, never missing his
grip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the
ground; and Buck had memories of nights of vigil spent beneath trees
wherein the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he slept.

And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still
sounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest
and strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness,
and he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what.
Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though
it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might
dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the
black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth
smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind
fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to all
that moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that he hoped
to surprise this call he could not understand. But he did not know why
he did these various things. He was impelled to do them, and did not
reason about them at all.

Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp, dozing
lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and his
ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feet
and dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and
across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved to run
down dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the
woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he could
watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. But especially
he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening
to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and
sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something
that called--called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.

One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrils
quivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrent waves. From the
forest came the call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted),
distinct and definite as never before,--a long-drawn howl, like, yet
unlike, any noise made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiar
way, as a sound heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp and in
swift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cry
he went more slowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to an
open place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on haunches, with
nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber wolf.

He had made no noise, yet it ceased from its howling and tried to sense
his presence. Buck stalked into the open, half crouching, body gathered
compactly together, tail straight and stiff, feet falling with unwonted
care. Every movement advertised commingled threatening and overture of
friendliness. It was the menacing truce that marks the meeting of wild
beasts that prey. But the wolf fled at sight of him. He followed, with
wild leapings, in a frenzy to overtake. He ran him into a blind channel,
in the bed of the creek where a timber jam barred the way. The wolf
whirled about, pivoting on his hind legs after the fashion of Joe and
of all cornered husky dogs, snarling and bristling, clipping his teeth
together in a continuous and rapid succession of snaps.

Buck did not attack, but circled him about and hedged him in with
friendly advances. The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck made
three of him in weight, while his head barely reached Buck's shoulder.
Watching his chance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed. Time
and again he was cornered, and the thing repeated, though he was in poor
condition, or Buck could not so easily have overtaken him. He would run
till Buck's head was even with his flank, when he would whirl around at
bay, only to dash away again at the first opportunity.

But in the end Buck's pertinacity was rewarded; for the wolf, finding
that no harm was intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then they
became friendly, and played about in the nervous, half-coy way with
which fierce beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this the
wolf started off at an easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he was
going somewhere. He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and they
ran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creek bed,
into the gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak divide where
it took its rise.

On the opposite slope of the watershed they came down into a level
country where were great stretches of forest and many streams, and
through these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the
sun rising higher and the day growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. He
knew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of his wood
brother toward the place from where the call surely came. Old memories
were coming upon him fast, and he was stirring to them as of old he
stirred to the realities of which they were the shadows. He had done
this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world,
and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the unpacked
earth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.

They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, stopping, Buck
remembered John Thornton. He sat down. The wolf started on toward the
place from where the call surely came, then returned to him, sniffing
noses and making actions as though to encourage him. But Buck turned
about and started slowly on the back track. For the better part of an
hour the wild brother ran by his side, whining softly. Then he sat down,
pointed his nose upward, and howled. It was a mournful howl, and as Buck
held steadily on his way he heard it grow faint and fainter until it was
lost in the distance.

John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp and sprang
upon him in a frenzy of affection, overturning him, scrambling upon him,
licking his face, biting his hand--"playing the general tom-fool," as
John Thornton characterized it, the while he shook Buck back and forth
and cursed him lovingly.

For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thornton out of
his sight. He followed him about at his work, watched him while he ate,
saw him into his blankets at night and out of them in the morning. But
after two days the call in the forest began to sound more imperiously
than ever. Buck's restlessness came back on him, and he was haunted by
recollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land beyond the
divide and the run side by side through the wide forest stretches. Once
again he took to wandering in the woods, but the wild brother came no
more; and though he listened through long vigils, the mournful howl was
never raised.

He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at a
time; and once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and went
down into the land of timber and streams. There he wandered for a week,
seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meat as
he travelled and travelling with the long, easy lope that seems never to
tire. He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhere into
the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded by
the mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and raging through the forest
helpless and terrible. Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the
last latent remnants of Buck's ferocity. And two days later, when he
returned to his kill and found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over the
spoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behind
who would quarrel no more.

The blood-longing became stronger than ever before. He was a killer, a
thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone,
by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a
hostile environment where only the strong survived. Because of all this
he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated
itself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised itself
in all his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke
plainly as speech in the way he carried himself, and made his glorious
furry coat if anything more glorious. But for the stray brown on his
muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran
midmost down his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic
wolf, larger than the largest of the breed. From his St. Bernard father
he had inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who
had given shape to that size and weight. His muzzle was the long wolf
muzzle, save that it was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head,
somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale.

His cunning was wolf cunning, and wild cunning; his intelligence,
shepherd intelligence and St. Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus
an experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable
a creature as any that roamed the wild. A carnivorous
animal living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the
high tide of his life, overspilling with vigor and virility. When
Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and
crackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism
at the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was
keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a
perfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which
required action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as
a husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap
twice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard sound, and responded
in less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing or
hearing. He perceived and determined and responded in the same instant.
In point of fact the three actions of perceiving, determining, and
responding were sequential; but so infinitesimal were the intervals
of time between them that they appeared simultaneous. His muscles were
surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel
springs. Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant,
until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and
pour forth generously over the world.

"Never was there such a dog," said John Thornton one day, as the
partners watched Buck marching out of camp.

"When he was made, the mould was broke," said Pete.

"Py jingo! I t'ink so mineself," Hans affirmed.

They saw him marching out of camp, but they did not see the instant and
terrible transformation which took place as soon as he was within the
secrecy of the forest. He no longer marched. At once he became a thing
of the wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a passing shadow
that appeared and disappeared among the shadows. He knew how to take
advantage of every cover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a
snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan from its nest, kill
a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid air the little chipmunks fleeing
a second too late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quick
for him; nor were beaver, mending their dams, too wary. He killed
to eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he killed
himself. So a lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was his
delight to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them, to
let them go, chattering in mortal fear to the treetops.

As the fall of the year came on, the moose appeared in greater
abundance, moving slowly down to meet the winter in the lower and less
rigorous valleys. Buck had already dragged down a stray part-grown calf;
but he wished strongly for larger and more formidable quarry, and he
came upon it one day on the divide at the head of the creek. A band of
twenty moose had crossed over from the land of streams and timber,
and chief among them was a great bull. He was in a savage temper, and,
standing over six feet from the ground, was as formidable an antagonist
as even Buck could desire. Back and forth the bull tossed his great
palmated antlers, branching to fourteen points and embracing seven feet
within the tips. His small eyes burned with a vicious and bitter light,
while he roared with fury at sight of Buck.

From the bull's side, just forward of the flank, protruded a feathered
arrow-end, which accounted for his savageness. Guided by that instinct
which came from the old hunting days of the primordial world, Buck
proceeded to cut the bull out from the herd. It was no slight task. He
would bark and dance about in front of the bull, just out of reach
of the great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs which could have
stamped his life out with a single blow. Unable to turn his back on
the fanged danger and go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms of
rage. At such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, luring
him on by a simulated inability to escape. But when he was thus
separated from his fellows, two or three of the younger bulls would
charge back upon Buck and enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd.

There is a patience of the wild--dogged, tireless, persistent as life
itself--that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web,
the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience
belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it
belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd, retarding
its march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with their
half-grown calves, and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage.
For half a day this continued. Buck multiplied himself, attacking from
all sides, enveloping the herd in a whirlwind of menace, cutting out his
victim as fast as it could rejoin its mates, wearing out the patience of
creatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than that of creatures
preying.

As the day wore along and the sun dropped to its bed in the northwest
(the darkness had come back and the fall nights were six hours long),
the young bulls retraced their steps more and more reluctantly to the
aid of their beset leader. The down-coming winter was harrying them
on to the lower levels, and it seemed they could never shake off this
tireless creature that held them back. Besides, it was not the life of
the herd, or of the young bulls, that was threatened. The life of only
one member was demanded, which was a remoter interest than their lives,
and in the end they were content to pay the toll.

As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his
mates--the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he
had mastered--as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading
light. He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless
fanged terror that would not let him go. Three hundredweight more than
half a ton he weighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fight
and struggle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a creature
whose head did not reach beyond his great knuckled knees.

From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it a
moment's rest, never permitted it to browse the leaves of trees or
the shoots of young birch and willow. Nor did he give the wounded bull
opportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender trickling streams
they crossed. Often, in desperation, he burst into long stretches of
flight. At such times Buck did not attempt to stay him, but loped easily
at his heels, satisfied with the way the game was played, lying down
when the moose stood still, attacking him fiercely when he strove to eat
or drink.

The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and
the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for long
periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and
Buck found more time in which to get water for himself and in which to
rest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes
fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to Buck that a change was coming
over the face of things. He could feel a new stir in the land. As the
moose were coming into the land, other kinds of life were coming in.
Forest and stream and air seemed palpitant with their presence. The news
of it was borne in upon him, not by sight, or sound, or smell, but by
some other and subtler sense. He heard nothing, saw nothing, yet knew
that the land was somehow different; that through it strange things were
afoot and ranging; and he resolved to investigate after he had finished
the business in hand.

At last, at the end of the fourth day, he pulled the great moose down.
For a day and a night he remained by the kill, eating and sleeping, turn
and turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face
toward camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long easy lope, and
went on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading
straight home through strange country with a certitude of direction that
put man and his magnetic needle to shame.

As he held on he became more and more conscious of the new stir in the
land. There was life abroad in it different from the life which had been
there throughout the summer. No longer was this fact borne in upon him
in some subtle, mysterious way. The birds talked of it, the squirrels
chattered about it, the very breeze whispered of it. Several times he
stopped and drew in the fresh morning air in great sniffs, reading a
message which made him leap on with greater speed. He was oppressed with
a sense of calamity happening, if it were not calamity already happened;
and as he crossed the last watershed and dropped down into the valley
toward camp, he proceeded with greater caution.

Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail that sent his neck hair
rippling and bristling, It led straight toward camp and John Thornton.
Buck hurried on, swiftly and stealthily, every nerve straining and
tense, alert to the multitudinous details which told a story--all but
the end. His nose gave him a varying description of the passage of the
life on the heels of which he was travelling. He remarked the pregnant
silence of the forest. The bird life had flitted. The squirrels were in
hiding. One only he saw,--a sleek gray fellow, flattened against a gray
dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the
wood itself.

As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow, his nose
was jerked suddenly to the side as though a positive force had gripped
and pulled it. He followed the new scent into a thicket and found Nig.
He was lying on his side, dead where he had dragged himself, an arrow
protruding, head and feathers, from either side of his body.

A hundred yards farther on, Buck came upon one of the sled-dogs Thornton
had bought in Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a death-struggle,
directly on the trail, and Buck passed around him without stopping. From
the camp came the faint sound of many voices, rising and falling in a
sing-song chant. Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found
Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine. At the
same instant Buck peered out where the spruce-bough lodge had been and
saw what made his hair leap straight up on his neck and shoulders.
A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know that he
growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the last
time in his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and it
was because of his great love for John Thornton that he lost his head.

The Yeehats were dancing about the wreckage of the spruce-bough lodge
when they heard a fearful roaring and saw rushing upon them an animal
the like of which they had never seen before. It was Buck, a live
hurricane of fury, hurling himself upon them in a frenzy to destroy. He
sprang at the foremost man (it was the chief of the Yeehats), ripping
the throat wide open till the rent jugular spouted a fountain of blood.
He did not pause to worry the victim, but ripped in passing, with
the next bound tearing wide the throat of a second man. There was
no withstanding him. He plunged about in their very midst, tearing,
rending, destroying, in constant and terrific motion which defied the
arrows they discharged at him. In fact, so inconceivably rapid were his
movements, and so closely were the Indians tangled together, that they
shot one another with the arrows; and one young hunter, hurling a spear
at Buck in mid air, drove it through the chest of another hunter with
such force that the point broke through the skin of the back and stood
out beyond. Then a panic seized the Yeehats, and they fled in terror to
the woods, proclaiming as they fled the advent of the Evil Spirit.

And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels and
dragging them down like deer as they raced through the trees. It was
a fateful day for the Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the
country, and it was not till a week later that the last of the survivors
gathered together in a lower valley and counted their losses. As for
Buck, wearying of the pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. He
found Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the first moment
of surprise. Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-written on the
earth, and Buck scented every detail of it down to the edge of a deep
pool. By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay Skeet, faithful
to the last. The pool itself, muddy and discolored from the sluice
boxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John
Thornton; for Buck followed his trace into the water, from which no
trace led away.

All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed restlessly about the camp.
Death, as a cessation of movement, as a passing out and away from the
lives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It
left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which
ached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he paused
to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot the pain of it;
and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,--a pride
greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest
game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang.
He sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It was harder
to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were it
not for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would be
unafraid of them except when they bore in their hands their arrows,
spears, and clubs.

Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees into the sky,
lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with the coming
of the night, brooding and mourning by the pool, Buck became alive to a
stirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehats
had made, He stood up, listening and scenting. From far away drifted a
faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As the
moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew them
as things heard in that other world which persisted in his memory. He
walked to the centre of the open space and listened. It was the call,
the many-noted call, sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever
before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was
dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound
him.

Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were hunting it, on the flanks
of the migrating moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the
land of streams and timber and invaded Buck's valley. Into the clearing
where the moonlight streamed, they poured in a silvery flood; and in the
centre of the clearing stood Buck, motionless as a statue, waiting their
coming. They were awed, so still and large he stood, and a moment's
pause fell, till the boldest one leaped straight for him. Like a flash
Buck struck, breaking the neck. Then he stood, without movement, as
before, the stricken wolf rolling in agony behind him. Three others
tried it in sharp succession; and one after the other they drew back,
streaming blood from slashed throats or shoulders.

This was sufficient to fling the whole pack forward, pell-mell, crowded
together, blocked and confused by its eagerness to pull down the
prey. Buck's marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead.
Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was everywhere
at once, presenting a front which was apparently unbroken so swiftly did
he whirl and guard from side to side. But to prevent them from getting
behind him, he was forced back, down past the pool and into the creek
bed, till he brought up against a high gravel bank. He worked along to a
right angle in the bank which the men had made in the course of mining,
and in this angle he came to bay, protected on three sides and with
nothing to do but face the front.

And so well did he face it, that at the end of half an hour the wolves
drew back discomfited. The tongues of all were out and lolling, the
white fangs showing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were lying down
with heads raised and ears pricked forward; others stood on their feet,
watching him; and still others were lapping water from the pool. One
wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in a friendly manner,
and Buck recognized the wild brother with whom he had run for a night
and a day. He was whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they touched
noses.

Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came forward. Buck writhed
his lips into the preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him,
Whereupon the old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and broke
out the long wolf howl. The others sat down and howled. And now the call
came to Buck in unmistakable accents. He, too, sat down and howled. This
over, he came out of his angle and the pack crowded around him, sniffing
in half-friendly, half-savage manner. The leaders lifted the yelp of the
pack and sprang away into the woods. The wolves swung in behind, yelping
in chorus. And Buck ran with them, side by side with the wild brother,
yelping as he ran.

   *  *  *  *  *

And here may well end the story of Buck. The years were not many when
the Yeehats noted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for some were
seen with splashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a rift of white
centring down the chest. But more remarkable than this, the Yeehats tell
of a Ghost Dog that runs at the head of the pack. They are afraid of
this Ghost Dog, for it has cunning greater than they, stealing from
their camps in fierce winters, robbing their traps, slaying their dogs,
and defying their bravest hunters.

Nay, the tale grows worse. Hunters there are who fail to return to
the camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with
throats slashed cruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow
greater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yeehats follow
the movement of the moose, there is a certain valley which they never
enter. And women there are who become sad when the word goes over
the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that valley for an
abiding-place.

In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which
the Yeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like,
and yet unlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling
timber land and comes down into an open space among the trees. Here
a yellow stream flows from rotted moose-hide sacks and sinks into
the ground, with long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould
overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses for
a time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.

But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the
wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running
at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering
borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow
as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.





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The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: A Princess of Mars

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Release Date: June 23, 2008 [EBook #62]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PRINCESS OF MARS ***















[Frontispiece: With my back against a golden throne, I fought once
again for Dejah Thoris]




A PRINCESS OF MARS


by

Edgar Rice Burroughs



To My Son Jack




FOREWORD


To the Reader of this Work:

In submitting Captain Carter's strange manuscript to you in book form,
I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable personality will
be of interest.

My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he spent
at my father's home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of the civil
war.  I was then a child of but five years, yet I well remember the
tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man whom I called Uncle Jack.

He seemed always to be laughing; and he entered into the sports of the
children with the same hearty good fellowship he displayed toward those
pastimes in which the men and women of his own age indulged; or he
would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old grandmother with
stories of his strange, wild life in all parts of the world.  We all
loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod.

He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over
six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the
trained fighting man.  His features were regular and clear cut, his
hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray,
reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and
initiative.  His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of
a typical southern gentleman of the highest type.

His horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight
even in that country of magnificent horsemen.  I have often heard my
father caution him against his wild recklessness, but he would only
laugh, and say that the tumble that killed him would be from the back
of a horse yet unfoaled.

When the war broke out he left us, nor did I see him again for some
fifteen or sixteen years.  When he returned it was without warning, and
I was much surprised to note that he had not aged apparently a moment,
nor had he changed in any other outward way.  He was, when others were
with him, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of old, but when
he thought himself alone I have seen him sit for hours gazing off into
space, his face set in a look of wistful longing and hopeless misery;
and at night he would sit thus looking up into the heavens, at what I
did not know until I read his manuscript years afterward.

He told us that he had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part of
the time since the war; and that he had been very successful was
evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he was supplied.
As to the details of his life during these years he was very reticent,
in fact he would not talk of them at all.

He remained with us for about a year and then went to New York, where
he purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited him once a
year on the occasions of my trips to the New York market--my father and
I owning and operating a string of general stores throughout Virginia
at that time.  Captain Carter had a small but beautiful cottage,
situated on a bluff overlooking the river, and during one of my last
visits, in the winter of 1885, I observed he was much occupied in
writing, I presume now, upon this manuscript.

He told me at this time that if anything should happen to him he wished
me to take charge of his estate, and he gave me a key to a compartment
in the safe which stood in his study, telling me I would find his will
there and some personal instructions which he had me pledge myself to
carry out with absolute fidelity.

After I had retired for the night I have seen him from my window
standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the
Hudson with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in appeal.
I thought at the time that he was praying, although I never understood
that he was in the strict sense of the term a religious man.

Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the first
of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him asking me to
come to him at once.  I had always been his favorite among the younger
generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with his demand.

I arrived at the little station, about a mile from his grounds, on the
morning of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery man to drive me
out to Captain Carter's he replied that if I was a friend of the
Captain's he had some very bad news for me; the Captain had been found
dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the watchman attached
to an adjoining property.

For some reason this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out to his
place as quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of the body
and of his affairs.

I found the watchman who had discovered him, together with the local
police chief and several townspeople, assembled in his little study.
The watchman related the few details connected with the finding of the
body, which he said had been still warm when he came upon it.  It lay,
he said, stretched full length in the snow with the arms outstretched
above the head toward the edge of the bluff, and when he showed me the
spot it flashed upon me that it was the identical one where I had seen
him on those other nights, with his arms raised in supplication to the
skies.

There were no marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of a
local physician the coroner's jury quickly reached a decision of death
from heart failure.  Left alone in the study, I opened the safe and
withdrew the contents of the drawer in which he had told me I would
find my instructions.  They were in part peculiar indeed, but I have
followed them to each last detail as faithfully as I was able.

He directed that I remove his body to Virginia without embalming, and
that he be laid in an open coffin within a tomb which he previously had
had constructed and which, as I later learned, was well ventilated.
The instructions impressed upon me that I must personally see that this
was carried out just as he directed, even in secrecy if necessary.

His property was left in such a way that I was to receive the entire
income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to become mine.
His further instructions related to this manuscript which I was to
retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for eleven years; nor was
I to divulge its contents until twenty-one years after his death.

A strange feature about the tomb, where his body still lies, is that
the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated spring
lock which can be opened _only from the inside_.

Yours very sincerely,

Edgar Rice Burroughs.




CONTENTS

      I  On the Arizona Hills
     II  The Escape of the Dead
    III  My Advent on Mars
     IV  A Prisoner
      V  I Elude My Watch Dog
     VI  A Fight That Won Friends
    VII  Child-Raising on Mars
   VIII  A Fair Captive from the Sky
     IX  I Learn the Language
      X  Champion and Chief
     XI  With Dejah Thoris
    XII  A Prisoner with Power
   XIII  Love-Making on Mars
    XIV  A Duel to the Death
     XV  Sola Tells Me Her Story
    XVI  We Plan Escape
   XVII  A Costly Recapture
  XVIII  Chained in Warhoon
    XIX  Battling in the Arena
     XX  In the Atmosphere Factory
    XXI  An Air Scout for Zodanga
   XXII  I Find Dejah
  XXIII  Lost in the Sky
   XXIV  Tars Tarkas Finds a Friend
    XXV  The Looting of Zodanga
   XXVI  Through Carnage to Joy
  XXVII  From Joy to Death
 XXVIII  At the Arizona Cave




ILLUSTRATIONS


With my back against a golden throne,
  I fought once again for Dejah Thoris . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

I sought out Dejah Thoris in the throng of departing chariots.

She drew upon the marble floor the first map of the
  Barsoomian territory I had ever seen.

The old man sat and talked with me for hours.




CHAPTER I

ON THE ARIZONA HILLS


I am a very old man; how old I do not know.  Possibly I am a hundred,
possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other
men, nor do I remember any childhood.  So far as I can recollect I have
always been a man, a man of about thirty.  I appear today as I did
forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living
forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is
no resurrection.  I do not know why I should fear death, I who have
died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as
you who have never died, and it is because of this terror of death, I
believe, that I am so convinced of my mortality.

And because of this conviction I have determined to write down the
story of the interesting periods of my life and of my death.  I cannot
explain the phenomena; I can only set down here in the words of an
ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events that
befell me during the ten years that my dead body lay undiscovered in an
Arizona cave.

I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this manuscript
until after I have passed over for eternity.  I know that the average
human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not
purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and
held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths
which some day science will substantiate.  Possibly the suggestions
which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I can set down in
this chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding of the mysteries
of our sister planet; mysteries to you, but no longer mysteries to me.

My name is John Carter; I am better known as Captain Jack Carter of
Virginia.  At the close of the Civil War I found myself possessed of
several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain's
commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed; the
servant of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the South.
Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood, fighting,
gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and attempt to
retrieve my fallen fortunes in a search for gold.

I spent nearly a year prospecting in company with another Confederate
officer, Captain James K. Powell of Richmond.  We were extremely
fortunate, for late in the winter of 1865, after many hardships and
privations, we located the most remarkable gold-bearing quartz vein
that our wildest dreams had ever pictured.  Powell, who was a mining
engineer by education, stated that we had uncovered over a million
dollars worth of ore in a trifle over three months.

As our equipment was crude in the extreme we decided that one of us
must return to civilization, purchase the necessary machinery and
return with a sufficient force of men properly to work the mine.

As Powell was familiar with the country, as well as with the mechanical
requirements of mining we determined that it would be best for him to
make the trip.  It was agreed that I was to hold down our claim against
the remote possibility of its being jumped by some wandering prospector.

On March 3, 1866, Powell and I packed his provisions on two of our
burros, and bidding me good-bye he mounted his horse, and started down
the mountainside toward the valley, across which led the first stage of
his journey.

The morning of Powell's departure was, like nearly all Arizona
mornings, clear and beautiful; I could see him and his little pack
animals picking their way down the mountainside toward the valley, and
all during the morning I would catch occasional glimpses of them as
they topped a hog back or came out upon a level plateau.  My last sight
of Powell was about three in the afternoon as he entered the shadows of
the range on the opposite side of the valley.

Some half hour later I happened to glance casually across the valley
and was much surprised to note three little dots in about the same
place I had last seen my friend and his two pack animals.  I am not
given to needless worrying, but the more I tried to convince myself
that all was well with Powell, and that the dots I had seen on his
trail were antelope or wild horses, the less I was able to assure
myself.

Since we had entered the territory we had not seen a hostile Indian,
and we had, therefore, become careless in the extreme, and were wont to
ridicule the stories we had heard of the great numbers of these vicious
marauders that were supposed to haunt the trails, taking their toll in
lives and torture of every white party which fell into their merciless
clutches.

Powell, I knew, was well armed and, further, an experienced Indian
fighter; but I too had lived and fought for years among the Sioux in
the North, and I knew that his chances were small against a party of
cunning trailing Apaches.  Finally I could endure the suspense no
longer, and, arming myself with my two Colt revolvers and a carbine, I
strapped two belts of cartridges about me and catching my saddle horse,
started down the trail taken by Powell in the morning.

As soon as I reached comparatively level ground I urged my mount into a
canter and continued this, where the going permitted, until, close upon
dusk, I discovered the point where other tracks joined those of Powell.
They were the tracks of unshod ponies, three of them, and the ponies
had been galloping.

I followed rapidly until, darkness shutting down, I was forced to await
the rising of the moon, and given an opportunity to speculate on the
question of the wisdom of my chase.  Possibly I had conjured up
impossible dangers, like some nervous old housewife, and when I should
catch up with Powell would get a good laugh for my pains.  However, I
am not prone to sensitiveness, and the following of a sense of duty,
wherever it may lead, has always been a kind of fetich with me
throughout my life; which may account for the honors bestowed upon me
by three republics and the decorations and friendships of an old and
powerful emperor and several lesser kings, in whose service my sword
has been red many a time.

About nine o'clock the moon was sufficiently bright for me to proceed
on my way and I had no difficulty in following the trail at a fast
walk, and in some places at a brisk trot until, about midnight, I
reached the water hole where Powell had expected to camp.  I came upon
the spot unexpectedly, finding it entirely deserted, with no signs of
having been recently occupied as a camp.

I was interested to note that the tracks of the pursuing horsemen, for
such I was now convinced they must be, continued after Powell with only
a brief stop at the hole for water; and always at the same rate of
speed as his.

I was positive now that the trailers were Apaches and that they wished
to capture Powell alive for the fiendish pleasure of the torture, so I
urged my horse onward at a most dangerous pace, hoping against hope
that I would catch up with the red rascals before they attacked him.

Further speculation was suddenly cut short by the faint report of two
shots far ahead of me.  I knew that Powell would need me now if ever,
and I instantly urged my horse to his topmost speed up the narrow and
difficult mountain trail.

I had forged ahead for perhaps a mile or more without hearing further
sounds, when the trail suddenly debouched onto a small, open plateau
near the summit of the pass.  I had passed through a narrow,
overhanging gorge just before entering suddenly upon this table land,
and the sight which met my eyes filled me with consternation and dismay.

The little stretch of level land was white with Indian tepees, and
there were probably half a thousand red warriors clustered around some
object near the center of the camp.  Their attention was so wholly
riveted to this point of interest that they did not notice me, and I
easily could have turned back into the dark recesses of the gorge and
made my escape with perfect safety.  The fact, however, that this
thought did not occur to me until the following day removes any
possible right to a claim to heroism to which the narration of this
episode might possibly otherwise entitle me.

I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes,
because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts
have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one
where any alternative step to that I took occurred to me until many
hours later.  My mind is evidently so constituted that I am
subconsciously forced into the path of duty without recourse to
tiresome mental processes.  However that may be, I have never regretted
that cowardice is not optional with me.

In this instance I was, of course, positive that Powell was the center
of attraction, but whether I thought or acted first I do not know, but
within an instant from the moment the scene broke upon my view I had
whipped out my revolvers and was charging down upon the entire army of
warriors, shooting rapidly, and whooping at the top of my lungs.
Singlehanded, I could not have pursued better tactics, for the red men,
convinced by sudden surprise that not less than a regiment of regulars
was upon them, turned and fled in every direction for their bows,
arrows, and rifles.

The view which their hurried routing disclosed filled me with
apprehension and with rage.  Under the clear rays of the Arizona moon
lay Powell, his body fairly bristling with the hostile arrows of the
braves.  That he was already dead I could not but be convinced, and yet
I would have saved his body from mutilation at the hands of the Apaches
as quickly as I would have saved the man himself from death.

Riding close to him I reached down from the saddle, and grasping his
cartridge belt drew him up across the withers of my mount.  A backward
glance convinced me that to return by the way I had come would be more
hazardous than to continue across the plateau, so, putting spurs to my
poor beast, I made a dash for the opening to the pass which I could
distinguish on the far side of the table land.

The Indians had by this time discovered that I was alone and I was
pursued with imprecations, arrows, and rifle balls.  The fact that it
is difficult to aim anything but imprecations accurately by moonlight,
that they were upset by the sudden and unexpected manner of my advent,
and that I was a rather rapidly moving target saved me from the various
deadly projectiles of the enemy and permitted me to reach the shadows
of the surrounding peaks before an orderly pursuit could be organized.

My horse was traveling practically unguided as I knew that I had
probably less knowledge of the exact location of the trail to the pass
than he, and thus it happened that he entered a defile which led to the
summit of the range and not to the pass which I had hoped would carry
me to the valley and to safety.  It is probable, however, that to this
fact I owe my life and the remarkable experiences and adventures which
befell me during the following ten years.

My first knowledge that I was on the wrong trail came when I heard the
yells of the pursuing savages suddenly grow fainter and fainter far off
to my left.

I knew then that they had passed to the left of the jagged rock
formation at the edge of the plateau, to the right of which my horse
had borne me and the body of Powell.

I drew rein on a little level promontory overlooking the trail below
and to my left, and saw the party of pursuing savages disappearing
around the point of a neighboring peak.

I knew the Indians would soon discover that they were on the wrong
trail and that the search for me would be renewed in the right
direction as soon as they located my tracks.

I had gone but a short distance further when what seemed to be an
excellent trail opened up around the face of a high cliff.  The trail
was level and quite broad and led upward and in the general direction I
wished to go.  The cliff arose for several hundred feet on my right,
and on my left was an equal and nearly perpendicular drop to the bottom
of a rocky ravine.

I had followed this trail for perhaps a hundred yards when a sharp turn
to the right brought me to the mouth of a large cave.  The opening was
about four feet in height and three to four feet wide, and at this
opening the trail ended.

It was now morning, and, with the customary lack of dawn which is a
startling characteristic of Arizona, it had become daylight almost
without warning.

Dismounting, I laid Powell upon the ground, but the most painstaking
examination failed to reveal the faintest spark of life.  I forced
water from my canteen between his dead lips, bathed his face and rubbed
his hands, working over him continuously for the better part of an hour
in the face of the fact that I knew him to be dead.

I was very fond of Powell; he was thoroughly a man in every respect; a
polished southern gentleman; a staunch and true friend; and it was with
a feeling of the deepest grief that I finally gave up my crude
endeavors at resuscitation.

Leaving Powell's body where it lay on the ledge I crept into the cave
to reconnoiter.  I found a large chamber, possibly a hundred feet in
diameter and thirty or forty feet in height; a smooth and well-worn
floor, and many other evidences that the cave had, at some remote
period, been inhabited.  The back of the cave was so lost in dense
shadow that I could not distinguish whether there were openings into
other apartments or not.

As I was continuing my examination I commenced to feel a pleasant
drowsiness creeping over me which I attributed to the fatigue of my
long and strenuous ride, and the reaction from the excitement of the
fight and the pursuit.  I felt comparatively safe in my present
location as I knew that one man could defend the trail to the cave
against an army.

I soon became so drowsy that I could scarcely resist the strong desire
to throw myself on the floor of the cave for a few moments' rest, but I
knew that this would never do, as it would mean certain death at the
hands of my red friends, who might be upon me at any moment.  With an
effort I started toward the opening of the cave only to reel drunkenly
against a side wall, and from there slip prone upon the floor.




CHAPTER II

THE ESCAPE OF THE DEAD


A sense of delicious dreaminess overcame me, my muscles relaxed, and I
was on the point of giving way to my desire to sleep when the sound of
approaching horses reached my ears.  I attempted to spring to my feet
but was horrified to discover that my muscles refused to respond to my
will.  I was now thoroughly awake, but as unable to move a muscle as
though turned to stone.  It was then, for the first time, that I
noticed a slight vapor filling the cave.  It was extremely tenuous and
only noticeable against the opening which led to daylight.  There also
came to my nostrils a faintly pungent odor, and I could only assume
that I had been overcome by some poisonous gas, but why I should retain
my mental faculties and yet be unable to move I could not fathom.

I lay facing the opening of the cave and where I could see the short
stretch of trail which lay between the cave and the turn of the cliff
around which the trail led.  The noise of the approaching horses had
ceased, and I judged the Indians were creeping stealthily upon me along
the little ledge which led to my living tomb.  I remember that I hoped
they would make short work of me as I did not particularly relish the
thought of the innumerable things they might do to me if the spirit
prompted them.

I had not long to wait before a stealthy sound apprised me of their
nearness, and then a war-bonneted, paint-streaked face was thrust
cautiously around the shoulder of the cliff, and savage eyes looked
into mine.  That he could see me in the dim light of the cave I was
sure for the early morning sun was falling full upon me through the
opening.

The fellow, instead of approaching, merely stood and stared; his eyes
bulging and his jaw dropped.  And then another savage face appeared,
and a third and fourth and fifth, craning their necks over the
shoulders of their fellows whom they could not pass upon the narrow
ledge.  Each face was the picture of awe and fear, but for what reason
I did not know, nor did I learn until ten years later.  That there were
still other braves behind those who regarded me was apparent from the
fact that the leaders passed back whispered word to those behind them.

Suddenly a low but distinct moaning sound issued from the recesses of
the cave behind me, and, as it reached the ears of the Indians, they
turned and fled in terror, panic-stricken.  So frantic were their
efforts to escape from the unseen thing behind me that one of the
braves was hurled headlong from the cliff to the rocks below.  Their
wild cries echoed in the canyon for a short time, and then all was
still once more.

The sound which had frightened them was not repeated, but it had been
sufficient as it was to start me speculating on the possible horror
which lurked in the shadows at my back.  Fear is a relative term and so
I can only measure my feelings at that time by what I had experienced
in previous positions of danger and by those that I have passed through
since; but I can say without shame that if the sensations I endured
during the next few minutes were fear, then may God help the coward,
for cowardice is of a surety its own punishment.

To be held paralyzed, with one's back toward some horrible and unknown
danger from the very sound of which the ferocious Apache warriors turn
in wild stampede, as a flock of sheep would madly flee from a pack of
wolves, seems to me the last word in fearsome predicaments for a man
who had ever been used to fighting for his life with all the energy of
a powerful physique.

Several times I thought I heard faint sounds behind me as of somebody
moving cautiously, but eventually even these ceased, and I was left to
the contemplation of my position without interruption.  I could but
vaguely conjecture the cause of my paralysis, and my only hope lay in
that it might pass off as suddenly as it had fallen upon me.

Late in the afternoon my horse, which had been standing with dragging
rein before the cave, started slowly down the trail, evidently in
search of food and water, and I was left alone with my mysterious
unknown companion and the dead body of my friend, which lay just within
my range of vision upon the ledge where I had placed it in the early
morning.

From then until possibly midnight all was silence, the silence of the
dead; then, suddenly, the awful moan of the morning broke upon my
startled ears, and there came again from the black shadows the sound of
a moving thing, and a faint rustling as of dead leaves.  The shock to
my already overstrained nervous system was terrible in the extreme, and
with a superhuman effort I strove to break my awful bonds.  It was an
effort of the mind, of the will, of the nerves; not muscular, for I
could not move even so much as my little finger, but none the less
mighty for all that.  And then something gave, there was a momentary
feeling of nausea, a sharp click as of the snapping of a steel wire,
and I stood with my back against the wall of the cave facing my unknown
foe.

And then the moonlight flooded the cave, and there before me lay my own
body as it had been lying all these hours, with the eyes staring toward
the open ledge and the hands resting limply upon the ground.  I looked
first at my lifeless clay there upon the floor of the cave and then
down at myself in utter bewilderment; for there I lay clothed, and yet
here I stood but naked as at the minute of my birth.

The transition had been so sudden and so unexpected that it left me for
a moment forgetful of aught else than my strange metamorphosis.  My
first thought was, is this then death!  Have I indeed passed over
forever into that other life!  But I could not well believe this, as I
could feel my heart pounding against my ribs from the exertion of my
efforts to release myself from the anaesthesis which had held me.  My
breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out from
every pore of my body, and the ancient experiment of pinching revealed
the fact that I was anything other than a wraith.

Again was I suddenly recalled to my immediate surroundings by a
repetition of the weird moan from the depths of the cave.  Naked and
unarmed as I was, I had no desire to face the unseen thing which
menaced me.

My revolvers were strapped to my lifeless body which, for some
unfathomable reason, I could not bring myself to touch.  My carbine was
in its boot, strapped to my saddle, and as my horse had wandered off I
was left without means of defense.  My only alternative seemed to lie
in flight and my decision was crystallized by a recurrence of the
rustling sound from the thing which now seemed, in the darkness of the
cave and to my distorted imagination, to be creeping stealthily upon me.

Unable longer to resist the temptation to escape this horrible place I
leaped quickly through the opening into the starlight of a clear
Arizona night.  The crisp, fresh mountain air outside the cave acted as
an immediate tonic and I felt new life and new courage coursing through
me.  Pausing upon the brink of the ledge I upbraided myself for what
now seemed to me wholly unwarranted apprehension.  I reasoned with
myself that I had lain helpless for many hours within the cave, yet
nothing had molested me, and my better judgment, when permitted the
direction of clear and logical reasoning, convinced me that the noises
I had heard must have resulted from purely natural and harmless causes;
probably the conformation of the cave was such that a slight breeze had
caused the sounds I heard.

I decided to investigate, but first I lifted my head to fill my lungs
with the pure, invigorating night air of the mountains.  As I did so I
saw stretching far below me the beautiful vista of rocky gorge, and
level, cacti-studded flat, wrought by the moonlight into a miracle of
soft splendor and wondrous enchantment.

Few western wonders are more inspiring than the beauties of an Arizona
moonlit landscape; the silvered mountains in the distance, the strange
lights and shadows upon hog back and arroyo, and the grotesque details
of the stiff, yet beautiful cacti form a picture at once enchanting and
inspiring; as though one were catching for the first time a glimpse of
some dead and forgotten world, so different is it from the aspect of
any other spot upon our earth.

As I stood thus meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to the
heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for
the wonders of the earthly scene.  My attention was quickly riveted by
a large red star close to the distant horizon.  As I gazed upon it I
felt a spell of overpowering fascination--it was Mars, the god of war,
and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of
irresistible enchantment.  As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it
seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw
me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron.

My longing was beyond the power of opposition; I closed my eyes,
stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself
drawn with the suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity of
space.  There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness.




CHAPTER III

MY ADVENT ON MARS


I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape.  I knew that I was
on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness.  I
was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner consciousness told
me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you
that you are upon Earth.  You do not question the fact; neither did I.

I found myself lying prone upon a bed of yellowish, mosslike vegetation
which stretched around me in all directions for interminable miles.  I
seemed to be lying in a deep, circular basin, along the outer verge of
which I could distinguish the irregularities of low hills.

It was midday, the sun was shining full upon me and the heat of it was
rather intense upon my naked body, yet no greater than would have been
true under similar conditions on an Arizona desert.  Here and there
were slight outcroppings of quartz-bearing rock which glistened in the
sunlight; and a little to my left, perhaps a hundred yards, appeared a
low, walled enclosure about four feet in height.  No water, and no
other vegetation than the moss was in evidence, and as I was somewhat
thirsty I determined to do a little exploring.

Springing to my feet I received my first Martian surprise, for the
effort, which on Earth would have brought me standing upright, carried
me into the Martian air to the height of about three yards.  I alighted
softly upon the ground, however, without appreciable shock or jar.  Now
commenced a series of evolutions which even then seemed ludicrous in
the extreme.  I found that I must learn to walk all over again, as the
muscular exertion which carried me easily and safely upon Earth played
strange antics with me upon Mars.

Instead of progressing in a sane and dignified manner, my attempts to
walk resulted in a variety of hops which took me clear of the ground a
couple of feet at each step and landed me sprawling upon my face or
back at the end of each second or third hop.  My muscles, perfectly
attuned and accustomed to the force of gravity on Earth, played the
mischief with me in attempting for the first time to cope with the
lesser gravitation and lower air pressure on Mars.

I was determined, however, to explore the low structure which was the
only evidence of habitation in sight, and so I hit upon the unique plan
of reverting to first principles in locomotion, creeping.  I did fairly
well at this and in a few moments had reached the low, encircling wall
of the enclosure.

There appeared to be no doors or windows upon the side nearest me, but
as the wall was but about four feet high I cautiously gained my feet
and peered over the top upon the strangest sight it had ever been given
me to see.

The roof of the enclosure was of solid glass about four or five inches
in thickness, and beneath this were several hundred large eggs,
perfectly round and snowy white.  The eggs were nearly uniform in size
being about two and one-half feet in diameter.

Five or six had already hatched and the grotesque caricatures which sat
blinking in the sunlight were enough to cause me to doubt my sanity.
They seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, long necks and six
legs, or, as I afterward learned, two legs and two arms, with an
intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will either as arms
or legs.  Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a
trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could
be directed either forward or back and also independently of each
other, thus permitting this queer animal to look in any direction, or
in two directions at once, without the necessity of turning the head.

The ears, which were slightly above the eyes and closer together, were
small, cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on these
young specimens.  Their noses were but longitudinal slits in the center
of their faces, midway between their mouths and ears.

There was no hair on their bodies, which were of a very light
yellowish-green color.  In the adults, as I was to learn quite soon,
this color deepens to an olive green and is darker in the male than in
the female.  Further, the heads of the adults are not so out of
proportion to their bodies as in the case of the young.

The iris of the eyes is blood red, as in Albinos, while the pupil is
dark.  The eyeball itself is very white, as are the teeth.  These
latter add a most ferocious appearance to an otherwise fearsome and
terrible countenance, as the lower tusks curve upward to sharp points
which end about where the eyes of earthly human beings are located.
The whiteness of the teeth is not that of ivory, but of the snowiest
and most gleaming of china.  Against the dark background of their olive
skins their tusks stand out in a most striking manner, making these
weapons present a singularly formidable appearance.

Most of these details I noted later, for I was given but little time to
speculate on the wonders of my new discovery.  I had seen that the eggs
were in the process of hatching, and as I stood watching the hideous
little monsters break from their shells I failed to note the approach
of a score of full-grown Martians from behind me.

Coming, as they did, over the soft and soundless moss, which covers
practically the entire surface of Mars with the exception of the frozen
areas at the poles and the scattered cultivated districts, they might
have captured me easily, but their intentions were far more sinister.
It was the rattling of the accouterments of the foremost warrior which
warned me.

On such a little thing my life hung that I often marvel that I escaped
so easily.  Had not the rifle of the leader of the party swung from its
fastenings beside his saddle in such a way as to strike against the
butt of his great metal-shod spear I should have snuffed out without
ever knowing that death was near me.  But the little sound caused me to
turn, and there upon me, not ten feet from my breast, was the point of
that huge spear, a spear forty feet long, tipped with gleaming metal,
and held low at the side of a mounted replica of the little devils I
had been watching.

But how puny and harmless they now looked beside this huge and terrific
incarnation of hate, of vengeance and of death.  The man himself, for
such I may call him, was fully fifteen feet in height and, on Earth,
would have weighed some four hundred pounds.  He sat his mount as we
sit a horse, grasping the animal's barrel with his lower limbs, while
the hands of his two right arms held his immense spear low at the side
of his mount; his two left arms were outstretched laterally to help
preserve his balance, the thing he rode having neither bridle or reins
of any description for guidance.

And his mount!  How can earthly words describe it!  It towered ten feet
at the shoulder; had four legs on either side; a broad flat tail,
larger at the tip than at the root, and which it held straight out
behind while running; a gaping mouth which split its head from its
snout to its long, massive neck.

Like its master, it was entirely devoid of hair, but was of a dark
slate color and exceeding smooth and glossy.  Its belly was white, and
its legs shaded from the slate of its shoulders and hips to a vivid
yellow at the feet.  The feet themselves were heavily padded and
nailless, which fact had also contributed to the noiselessness of their
approach, and, in common with a multiplicity of legs, is a
characteristic feature of the fauna of Mars.  The highest type of man
and one other animal, the only mammal existing on Mars, alone have
well-formed nails, and there are absolutely no hoofed animals in
existence there.

Behind this first charging demon trailed nineteen others, similar in
all respects, but, as I learned later, bearing individual
characteristics peculiar to themselves; precisely as no two of us are
identical although we are all cast in a similar mold.  This picture, or
rather materialized nightmare, which I have described at length, made
but one terrible and swift impression on me as I turned to meet it.

Unarmed and naked as I was, the first law of nature manifested itself
in the only possible solution of my immediate problem, and that was to
get out of the vicinity of the point of the charging spear.
Consequently I gave a very earthly and at the same time superhuman leap
to reach the top of the Martian incubator, for such I had determined it
must be.

My effort was crowned with a success which appalled me no less than it
seemed to surprise the Martian warriors, for it carried me fully thirty
feet into the air and landed me a hundred feet from my pursuers and on
the opposite side of the enclosure.

I alighted upon the soft moss easily and without mishap, and turning
saw my enemies lined up along the further wall.  Some were surveying me
with expressions which I afterward discovered marked extreme
astonishment, and the others were evidently satisfying themselves that
I had not molested their young.

They were conversing together in low tones, and gesticulating and
pointing toward me.  Their discovery that I had not harmed the little
Martians, and that I was unarmed, must have caused them to look upon me
with less ferocity; but, as I was to learn later, the thing which
weighed most in my favor was my exhibition of hurdling.

While the Martians are immense, their bones are very large and they are
muscled only in proportion to the gravitation which they must overcome.
The result is that they are infinitely less agile and less powerful, in
proportion to their weight, than an Earth man, and I doubt that were
one of them suddenly to be transported to Earth he could lift his own
weight from the ground; in fact, I am convinced that he could not do so.

My feat then was as marvelous upon Mars as it would have been upon
Earth, and from desiring to annihilate me they suddenly looked upon me
as a wonderful discovery to be captured and exhibited among their
fellows.

The respite my unexpected agility had given me permitted me to
formulate plans for the immediate future and to note more closely the
appearance of the warriors, for I could not disassociate these people
in my mind from those other warriors who, only the day before, had been
pursuing me.

I noted that each was armed with several other weapons in addition to
the huge spear which I have described.  The weapon which caused me to
decide against an attempt at escape by flight was what was evidently a
rifle of some description, and which I felt, for some reason, they were
peculiarly efficient in handling.

These rifles were of a white metal stocked with wood, which I learned
later was a very light and intensely hard growth much prized on Mars,
and entirely unknown to us denizens of Earth.  The metal of the barrel
is an alloy composed principally of aluminum and steel which they have
learned to temper to a hardness far exceeding that of the steel with
which we are familiar.  The weight of these rifles is comparatively
little, and with the small caliber, explosive, radium projectiles which
they use, and the great length of the barrel, they are deadly in the
extreme and at ranges which would be unthinkable on Earth.  The
theoretic effective radius of this rifle is three hundred miles, but
the best they can do in actual service when equipped with their
wireless finders and sighters is but a trifle over two hundred miles.

This is quite far enough to imbue me with great respect for the Martian
firearm, and some telepathic force must have warned me against an
attempt to escape in broad daylight from under the muzzles of twenty of
these death-dealing machines.

The Martians, after conversing for a short time, turned and rode away
in the direction from which they had come, leaving one of their number
alone by the enclosure.  When they had covered perhaps two hundred
yards they halted, and turning their mounts toward us sat watching the
warrior by the enclosure.

He was the one whose spear had so nearly transfixed me, and was
evidently the leader of the band, as I had noted that they seemed to
have moved to their present position at his direction.  When his force
had come to a halt he dismounted, threw down his spear and small arms,
and came around the end of the incubator toward me, entirely unarmed
and as naked as I, except for the ornaments strapped upon his head,
limbs, and breast.

When he was within about fifty feet of me he unclasped an enormous
metal armlet, and holding it toward me in the open palm of his hand,
addressed me in a clear, resonant voice, but in a language, it is
needless to say, I could not understand.  He then stopped as though
waiting for my reply, pricking up his antennae-like ears and cocking
his strange-looking eyes still further toward me.

As the silence became painful I concluded to hazard a little
conversation on my own part, as I had guessed that he was making
overtures of peace.  The throwing down of his weapons and the
withdrawing of his troop before his advance toward me would have
signified a peaceful mission anywhere on Earth, so why not, then, on
Mars!

Placing my hand over my heart I bowed low to the Martian and explained
to him that while I did not understand his language, his actions spoke
for the peace and friendship that at the present moment were most dear
to my heart.  Of course I might have been a babbling brook for all the
intelligence my speech carried to him, but he understood the action
with which I immediately followed my words.

Stretching my hand toward him, I advanced and took the armlet from his
open palm, clasping it about my arm above the elbow; smiled at him and
stood waiting.  His wide mouth spread into an answering smile, and
locking one of his intermediary arms in mine we turned and walked back
toward his mount.  At the same time he motioned his followers to
advance.  They started toward us on a wild run, but were checked by a
signal from him.  Evidently he feared that were I to be really
frightened again I might jump entirely out of the landscape.

He exchanged a few words with his men, motioned to me that I would ride
behind one of them, and then mounted his own animal.  The fellow
designated reached down two or three hands and lifted me up behind him
on the glossy back of his mount, where I hung on as best I could by the
belts and straps which held the Martian's weapons and ornaments.

The entire cavalcade then turned and galloped away toward the range of
hills in the distance.




CHAPTER IV

A PRISONER


We had gone perhaps ten miles when the ground began to rise very
rapidly.  We were, as I was later to learn, nearing the edge of one of
Mars' long-dead seas, in the bottom of which my encounter with the
Martians had taken place.

In a short time we gained the foot of the mountains, and after
traversing a narrow gorge came to an open valley, at the far extremity
of which was a low table land upon which I beheld an enormous city.
Toward this we galloped, entering it by what appeared to be a ruined
roadway leading out from the city, but only to the edge of the table
land, where it ended abruptly in a flight of broad steps.

Upon closer observation I saw as we passed them that the buildings were
deserted, and while not greatly decayed had the appearance of not
having been tenanted for years, possibly for ages.  Toward the center
of the city was a large plaza, and upon this and in the buildings
immediately surrounding it were camped some nine or ten hundred
creatures of the same breed as my captors, for such I now considered
them despite the suave manner in which I had been trapped.

With the exception of their ornaments all were naked.  The women varied
in appearance but little from the men, except that their tusks were
much larger in proportion to their height, in some instances curving
nearly to their high-set ears.  Their bodies were smaller and lighter
in color, and their fingers and toes bore the rudiments of nails, which
were entirely lacking among the males.  The adult females ranged in
height from ten to twelve feet.

The children were light in color, even lighter than the women, and all
looked precisely alike to me, except that some were taller than others;
older, I presumed.

I saw no signs of extreme age among them, nor is there any appreciable
difference in their appearance from the age of maturity, about forty,
until, at about the age of one thousand years, they go voluntarily upon
their last strange pilgrimage down the river Iss, which leads no living
Martian knows whither and from whose bosom no Martian has ever
returned, or would be allowed to live did he return after once
embarking upon its cold, dark waters.

Only about one Martian in a thousand dies of sickness or disease, and
possibly about twenty take the voluntary pilgrimage.  The other nine
hundred and seventy-nine die violent deaths in duels, in hunting, in
aviation and in war; but perhaps by far the greatest death loss comes
during the age of childhood, when vast numbers of the little Martians
fall victims to the great white apes of Mars.

The average life expectancy of a Martian after the age of maturity is
about three hundred years, but would be nearer the one-thousand mark
were it not for the various means leading to violent death.  Owing to
the waning resources of the planet it evidently became necessary to
counteract the increasing longevity which their remarkable skill in
therapeutics and surgery produced, and so human life has come to be
considered but lightly on Mars, as is evidenced by their dangerous
sports and the almost continual warfare between the various communities.

There are other and natural causes tending toward a diminution of
population, but nothing contributes so greatly to this end as the fact
that no male or female Martian is ever voluntarily without a weapon of
destruction.

As we neared the plaza and my presence was discovered we were
immediately surrounded by hundreds of the creatures who seemed anxious
to pluck me from my seat behind my guard.  A word from the leader of
the party stilled their clamor, and we proceeded at a trot across the
plaza to the entrance of as magnificent an edifice as mortal eye has
rested upon.

The building was low, but covered an enormous area.  It was constructed
of gleaming white marble inlaid with gold and brilliant stones which
sparkled and scintillated in the sunlight.  The main entrance was some
hundred feet in width and projected from the building proper to form a
huge canopy above the entrance hall.  There was no stairway, but a
gentle incline to the first floor of the building opened into an
enormous chamber encircled by galleries.

On the floor of this chamber, which was dotted with highly carved
wooden desks and chairs, were assembled about forty or fifty male
Martians around the steps of a rostrum.  On the platform proper
squatted an enormous warrior heavily loaded with metal ornaments,
gay-colored feathers and beautifully wrought leather trappings
ingeniously set with precious stones.  From his shoulders depended a
short cape of white fur lined with brilliant scarlet silk.

What struck me as most remarkable about this assemblage and the hall in
which they were congregated was the fact that the creatures were
entirely out of proportion to the desks, chairs, and other furnishings;
these being of a size adapted to human beings such as I, whereas the
great bulks of the Martians could scarcely have squeezed into the
chairs, nor was there room beneath the desks for their long legs.
Evidently, then, there were other denizens on Mars than the wild and
grotesque creatures into whose hands I had fallen, but the evidences of
extreme antiquity which showed all around me indicated that these
buildings might have belonged to some long-extinct and forgotten race
in the dim antiquity of Mars.

Our party had halted at the entrance to the building, and at a sign
from the leader I had been lowered to the ground.  Again locking his
arm in mine, we had proceeded into the audience chamber.  There were
few formalities observed in approaching the Martian chieftain.  My
captor merely strode up to the rostrum, the others making way for him
as he advanced.  The chieftain rose to his feet and uttered the name of
my escort who, in turn, halted and repeated the name of the ruler
followed by his title.

At the time, this ceremony and the words they uttered meant nothing to
me, but later I came to know that this was the customary greeting
between green Martians.  Had the men been strangers, and therefore
unable to exchange names, they would have silently exchanged ornaments,
had their missions been peaceful--otherwise they would have exchanged
shots, or have fought out their introduction with some other of their
various weapons.

My captor, whose name was Tars Tarkas, was virtually the vice-chieftain
of the community, and a man of great ability as a statesman and
warrior.  He evidently explained briefly the incidents connected with
his expedition, including my capture, and when he had concluded the
chieftain addressed me at some length.

I replied in our good old English tongue merely to convince him that
neither of us could understand the other; but I noticed that when I
smiled slightly on concluding, he did likewise.  This fact, and the
similar occurrence during my first talk with Tars Tarkas, convinced me
that we had at least something in common; the ability to smile,
therefore to laugh; denoting a sense of humor.  But I was to learn that
the Martian smile is merely perfunctory, and that the Martian laugh is
a thing to cause strong men to blanch in horror.

The ideas of humor among the green men of Mars are widely at variance
with our conceptions of incitants to merriment.  The death agonies of a
fellow being are, to these strange creatures provocative of the wildest
hilarity, while their chief form of commonest amusement is to inflict
death on their prisoners of war in various ingenious and horrible ways.

The assembled warriors and chieftains examined me closely, feeling my
muscles and the texture of my skin.  The principal chieftain then
evidently signified a desire to see me perform, and, motioning me to
follow, he started with Tars Tarkas for the open plaza.

Now, I had made no attempt to walk, since my first signal failure,
except while tightly grasping Tars Tarkas' arm, and so now I went
skipping and flitting about among the desks and chairs like some
monstrous grasshopper.  After bruising myself severely, much to the
amusement of the Martians, I again had recourse to creeping, but this
did not suit them and I was roughly jerked to my feet by a towering
fellow who had laughed most heartily at my misfortunes.

As he banged me down upon my feet his face was bent close to mine and I
did the only thing a gentleman might do under the circumstances of
brutality, boorishness, and lack of consideration for a stranger's
rights; I swung my fist squarely to his jaw and he went down like a
felled ox.  As he sunk to the floor I wheeled around with my back
toward the nearest desk, expecting to be overwhelmed by the vengeance
of his fellows, but determined to give them as good a battle as the
unequal odds would permit before I gave up my life.

My fears were groundless, however, as the other Martians, at first
struck dumb with wonderment, finally broke into wild peals of laughter
and applause.  I did not recognize the applause as such, but later,
when I had become acquainted with their customs, I learned that I had
won what they seldom accord, a manifestation of approbation.

The fellow whom I had struck lay where he had fallen, nor did any of
his mates approach him.  Tars Tarkas advanced toward me, holding out
one of his arms, and we thus proceeded to the plaza without further
mishap.  I did not, of course, know the reason for which we had come to
the open, but I was not long in being enlightened.  They first repeated
the word "sak" a number of times, and then Tars Tarkas made several
jumps, repeating the same word before each leap; then, turning to me,
he said, "sak!"  I saw what they were after, and gathering myself
together I "sakked" with such marvelous success that I cleared a good
hundred and fifty feet; nor did I this time, lose my equilibrium, but
landed squarely upon my feet without falling.  I then returned by easy
jumps of twenty-five or thirty feet to the little group of warriors.

My exhibition had been witnessed by several hundred lesser Martians,
and they immediately broke into demands for a repetition, which the
chieftain then ordered me to make; but I was both hungry and thirsty,
and determined on the spot that my only method of salvation was to
demand the consideration from these creatures which they evidently
would not voluntarily accord.  I therefore ignored the repeated
commands to "sak," and each time they were made I motioned to my mouth
and rubbed my stomach.

Tars Tarkas and the chief exchanged a few words, and the former,
calling to a young female among the throng, gave her some instructions
and motioned me to accompany her.  I grasped her proffered arm and
together we crossed the plaza toward a large building on the far side.

My fair companion was about eight feet tall, having just arrived at
maturity, but not yet to her full height.  She was of a light
olive-green color, with a smooth, glossy hide.  Her name, as I
afterward learned, was Sola, and she belonged to the retinue of Tars
Tarkas.  She conducted me to a spacious chamber in one of the buildings
fronting on the plaza, and which, from the litter of silks and furs
upon the floor, I took to be the sleeping quarters of several of the
natives.

The room was well lighted by a number of large windows and was
beautifully decorated with mural paintings and mosaics, but upon all
there seemed to rest that indefinable touch of the finger of antiquity
which convinced me that the architects and builders of these wondrous
creations had nothing in common with the crude half-brutes which now
occupied them.

Sola motioned me to be seated upon a pile of silks near the center of
the room, and, turning, made a peculiar hissing sound, as though
signaling to someone in an adjoining room.  In response to her call I
obtained my first sight of a new Martian wonder.  It waddled in on its
ten short legs, and squatted down before the girl like an obedient
puppy.  The thing was about the size of a Shetland pony, but its head
bore a slight resemblance to that of a frog, except that the jaws were
equipped with three rows of long, sharp tusks.




CHAPTER V

I ELUDE MY WATCH DOG


Sola stared into the brute's wicked-looking eyes, muttered a word or
two of command, pointed to me, and left the chamber.  I could not but
wonder what this ferocious-looking monstrosity might do when left alone
in such close proximity to such a relatively tender morsel of meat; but
my fears were groundless, as the beast, after surveying me intently for
a moment, crossed the room to the only exit which led to the street,
and lay down full length across the threshold.

This was my first experience with a Martian watch dog, but it was
destined not to be my last, for this fellow guarded me carefully during
the time I remained a captive among these green men; twice saving my
life, and never voluntarily being away from me a moment.

While Sola was away I took occasion to examine more minutely the room
in which I found myself captive.  The mural painting depicted scenes of
rare and wonderful beauty; mountains, rivers, lake, ocean, meadow,
trees and flowers, winding roadways, sun-kissed gardens--scenes which
might have portrayed earthly views but for the different colorings of
the vegetation.  The work had evidently been wrought by a master hand,
so subtle the atmosphere, so perfect the technique; yet nowhere was
there a representation of a living animal, either human or brute, by
which I could guess at the likeness of these other and perhaps extinct
denizens of Mars.

While I was allowing my fancy to run riot in wild conjecture on the
possible explanation of the strange anomalies which I had so far met
with on Mars, Sola returned bearing both food and drink.  These she
placed on the floor beside me, and seating herself a short ways off
regarded me intently.  The food consisted of about a pound of some
solid substance of the consistency of cheese and almost tasteless,
while the liquid was apparently milk from some animal.  It was not
unpleasant to the taste, though slightly acid, and I learned in a short
time to prize it very highly.  It came, as I later discovered, not from
an animal, as there is only one mammal on Mars and that one very rare
indeed, but from a large plant which grows practically without water,
but seems to distill its plentiful supply of milk from the products of
the soil, the moisture of the air, and the rays of the sun.  A single
plant of this species will give eight or ten quarts of milk per day.

After I had eaten I was greatly invigorated, but feeling the need of
rest I stretched out upon the silks and was soon asleep.  I must have
slept several hours, as it was dark when I awoke, and I was very cold.
I noticed that someone had thrown a fur over me, but it had become
partially dislodged and in the darkness I could not see to replace it.
Suddenly a hand reached out and pulled the fur over me, shortly
afterwards adding another to my covering.

I presumed that my watchful guardian was Sola, nor was I wrong.  This
girl alone, among all the green Martians with whom I came in contact,
disclosed characteristics of sympathy, kindliness, and affection; her
ministrations to my bodily wants were unfailing, and her solicitous
care saved me from much suffering and many hardships.

As I was to learn, the Martian nights are extremely cold, and as there
is practically no twilight or dawn, the changes in temperature are
sudden and most uncomfortable, as are the transitions from brilliant
daylight to darkness.  The nights are either brilliantly illumined or
very dark, for if neither of the two moons of Mars happen to be in the
sky almost total darkness results, since the lack of atmosphere, or,
rather, the very thin atmosphere, fails to diffuse the starlight to any
great extent; on the other hand, if both of the moons are in the
heavens at night the surface of the ground is brightly illuminated.

Both of Mars' moons are vastly nearer her than is our moon to Earth;
the nearer moon being but about five thousand miles distant, while the
further is but little more than fourteen thousand miles away, against
the nearly one-quarter million miles which separate us from our moon.
The nearer moon of Mars makes a complete revolution around the planet
in a little over seven and one-half hours, so that she may be seen
hurtling through the sky like some huge meteor two or three times each
night, revealing all her phases during each transit of the heavens.

The further moon revolves about Mars in something over thirty and
one-quarter hours, and with her sister satellite makes a nocturnal
Martian scene one of splendid and weird grandeur.  And it is well that
nature has so graciously and abundantly lighted the Martian night, for
the green men of Mars, being a nomadic race without high intellectual
development, have but crude means for artificial lighting; depending
principally upon torches, a kind of candle, and a peculiar oil lamp
which generates a gas and burns without a wick.

This last device produces an intensely brilliant far-reaching white
light, but as the natural oil which it requires can only be obtained by
mining in one of several widely separated and remote localities it is
seldom used by these creatures whose only thought is for today, and
whose hatred for manual labor has kept them in a semi-barbaric state
for countless ages.

After Sola had replenished my coverings I again slept, nor did I awaken
until daylight.  The other occupants of the room, five in number, were
all females, and they were still sleeping, piled high with a motley
array of silks and furs.  Across the threshold lay stretched the
sleepless guardian brute, just as I had last seen him on the preceding
day; apparently he had not moved a muscle; his eyes were fairly glued
upon me, and I fell to wondering just what might befall me should I
endeavor to escape.

I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and
experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.  It
therefore now occurred to me that the surest way of learning the exact
attitude of this beast toward me would be to attempt to leave the room.
I felt fairly secure in my belief that I could escape him should he
pursue me once I was outside the building, for I had begun to take
great pride in my ability as a jumper.  Furthermore, I could see from
the shortness of his legs that the brute himself was no jumper and
probably no runner.

Slowly and carefully, therefore, I gained my feet, only to see that my
watcher did the same; cautiously I advanced toward him, finding that by
moving with a shuffling gait I could retain my balance as well as make
reasonably rapid progress.  As I neared the brute he backed cautiously
away from me, and when I had reached the open he moved to one side to
let me pass.  He then fell in behind me and followed about ten paces in
my rear as I made my way along the deserted street.

Evidently his mission was to protect me only, I thought, but when we
reached the edge of the city he suddenly sprang before me, uttering
strange sounds and baring his ugly and ferocious tusks.  Thinking to
have some amusement at his expense, I rushed toward him, and when
almost upon him sprang into the air, alighting far beyond him and away
from the city.  He wheeled instantly and charged me with the most
appalling speed I had ever beheld.  I had thought his short legs a bar
to swiftness, but had he been coursing with greyhounds the latter would
have appeared as though asleep on a door mat.  As I was to learn, this
is the fleetest animal on Mars, and owing to its intelligence, loyalty,
and ferocity is used in hunting, in war, and as the protector of the
Martian man.

I quickly saw that I would have difficulty in escaping the fangs of the
beast on a straightaway course, and so I met his charge by doubling in
my tracks and leaping over him as he was almost upon me.  This maneuver
gave me a considerable advantage, and I was able to reach the city
quite a bit ahead of him, and as he came tearing after me I jumped for
a window about thirty feet from the ground in the face of one of the
buildings overlooking the valley.

Grasping the sill I pulled myself up to a sitting posture without
looking into the building, and gazed down at the baffled animal beneath
me.  My exultation was short-lived, however, for scarcely had I gained
a secure seat upon the sill than a huge hand grasped me by the neck
from behind and dragged me violently into the room.  Here I was thrown
upon my back, and beheld standing over me a colossal ape-like creature,
white and hairless except for an enormous shock of bristly hair upon
its head.




CHAPTER VI

A FIGHT THAT WON FRIENDS


The thing, which more nearly resembled our earthly men than it did the
Martians I had seen, held me pinioned to the ground with one huge foot,
while it jabbered and gesticulated at some answering creature behind
me.  This other, which was evidently its mate, soon came toward us,
bearing a mighty stone cudgel with which it evidently intended to brain
me.

The creatures were about ten or fifteen feet tall, standing erect, and
had, like the green Martians, an intermediary set of arms or legs,
midway between their upper and lower limbs.  Their eyes were close
together and non-protruding; their ears were high set, but more
laterally located than those of the Martians, while their snouts and
teeth were strikingly like those of our African gorilla.  Altogether
they were not unlovely when viewed in comparison with the green
Martians.

The cudgel was swinging in the arc which ended upon my upturned face
when a bolt of myriad-legged horror hurled itself through the doorway
full upon the breast of my executioner.  With a shriek of fear the ape
which held me leaped through the open window, but its mate closed in a
terrific death struggle with my preserver, which was nothing less than
my faithful watch-thing; I cannot bring myself to call so hideous a
creature a dog.

As quickly as possible I gained my feet and backing against the wall I
witnessed such a battle as it is vouchsafed few beings to see.  The
strength, agility, and blind ferocity of these two creatures is
approached by nothing known to earthly man.  My beast had an advantage
in his first hold, having sunk his mighty fangs far into the breast of
his adversary; but the great arms and paws of the ape, backed by
muscles far transcending those of the Martian men I had seen, had
locked the throat of my guardian and slowly were choking out his life,
and bending back his head and neck upon his body, where I momentarily
expected the former to fall limp at the end of a broken neck.

In accomplishing this the ape was tearing away the entire front of its
breast, which was held in the vise-like grip of the powerful jaws.
Back and forth upon the floor they rolled, neither one emitting a sound
of fear or pain.  Presently I saw the great eyes of my beast bulging
completely from their sockets and blood flowing from its nostrils.
That he was weakening perceptibly was evident, but so also was the ape,
whose struggles were growing momentarily less.

Suddenly I came to myself and, with that strange instinct which seems
ever to prompt me to my duty, I seized the cudgel, which had fallen to
the floor at the commencement of the battle, and swinging it with all
the power of my earthly arms I crashed it full upon the head of the
ape, crushing his skull as though it had been an eggshell.

Scarcely had the blow descended when I was confronted with a new
danger.  The ape's mate, recovered from its first shock of terror, had
returned to the scene of the encounter by way of the interior of the
building.  I glimpsed him just before he reached the doorway and the
sight of him, now roaring as he perceived his lifeless fellow stretched
upon the floor, and frothing at the mouth, in the extremity of his
rage, filled me, I must confess, with dire forebodings.

I am ever willing to stand and fight when the odds are not too
overwhelmingly against me, but in this instance I perceived neither
glory nor profit in pitting my relatively puny strength against the
iron muscles and brutal ferocity of this enraged denizen of an unknown
world; in fact, the only outcome of such an encounter, so far as I
might be concerned, seemed sudden death.

I was standing near the window and I knew that once in the street I
might gain the plaza and safety before the creature could overtake me;
at least there was a chance for safety in flight, against almost
certain death should I remain and fight however desperately.

It is true I held the cudgel, but what could I do with it against his
four great arms?  Even should I break one of them with my first blow,
for I figured that he would attempt to ward off the cudgel, he could
reach out and annihilate me with the others before I could recover for
a second attack.

In the instant that these thoughts passed through my mind I had turned
to make for the window, but my eyes alighting on the form of my
erstwhile guardian threw all thoughts of flight to the four winds.  He
lay gasping upon the floor of the chamber, his great eyes fastened upon
me in what seemed a pitiful appeal for protection.  I could not
withstand that look, nor could I, on second thought, have deserted my
rescuer without giving as good an account of myself in his behalf as he
had in mine.

Without more ado, therefore, I turned to meet the charge of the
infuriated bull ape.  He was now too close upon me for the cudgel to
prove of any effective assistance, so I merely threw it as heavily as I
could at his advancing bulk.  It struck him just below the knees,
eliciting a howl of pain and rage, and so throwing him off his balance
that he lunged full upon me with arms wide stretched to ease his fall.

Again, as on the preceding day, I had recourse to earthly tactics, and
swinging my right fist full upon the point of his chin I followed it
with a smashing left to the pit of his stomach.  The effect was
marvelous, for, as I lightly sidestepped, after delivering the second
blow, he reeled and fell upon the floor doubled up with pain and
gasping for wind.  Leaping over his prostrate body, I seized the cudgel
and finished the monster before he could regain his feet.

As I delivered the blow a low laugh rang out behind me, and, turning, I
beheld Tars Tarkas, Sola, and three or four warriors standing in the
doorway of the chamber.  As my eyes met theirs I was, for the second
time, the recipient of their zealously guarded applause.

My absence had been noted by Sola on her awakening, and she had quickly
informed Tars Tarkas, who had set out immediately with a handful of
warriors to search for me.  As they had approached the limits of the
city they had witnessed the actions of the bull ape as he bolted into
the building, frothing with rage.

They had followed immediately behind him, thinking it barely possible
that his actions might prove a clew to my whereabouts and had witnessed
my short but decisive battle with him.  This encounter, together with
my set-to with the Martian warrior on the previous day and my feats of
jumping placed me upon a high pinnacle in their regard.  Evidently
devoid of all the finer sentiments of friendship, love, or affection,
these people fairly worship physical prowess and bravery, and nothing
is too good for the object of their adoration as long as he maintains
his position by repeated examples of his skill, strength, and courage.

Sola, who had accompanied the searching party of her own volition, was
the only one of the Martians whose face had not been twisted in
laughter as I battled for my life.  She, on the contrary, was sober
with apparent solicitude and, as soon as I had finished the monster,
rushed to me and carefully examined my body for possible wounds or
injuries.  Satisfying herself that I had come off unscathed she smiled
quietly, and, taking my hand, started toward the door of the chamber.

Tars Tarkas and the other warriors had entered and were standing over
the now rapidly reviving brute which had saved my life, and whose life
I, in turn, had rescued.  They seemed to be deep in argument, and
finally one of them addressed me, but remembering my ignorance of his
language turned back to Tars Tarkas, who, with a word and gesture, gave
some command to the fellow and turned to follow us from the room.

There seemed something menacing in their attitude toward my beast, and
I hesitated to leave until I had learned the outcome.  It was well I
did so, for the warrior drew an evil looking pistol from its holster
and was on the point of putting an end to the creature when I sprang
forward and struck up his arm.  The bullet striking the wooden casing
of the window exploded, blowing a hole completely through the wood and
masonry.

I then knelt down beside the fearsome-looking thing, and raising it to
its feet motioned for it to follow me.  The looks of surprise which my
actions elicited from the Martians were ludicrous; they could not
understand, except in a feeble and childish way, such attributes as
gratitude and compassion.  The warrior whose gun I had struck up looked
enquiringly at Tars Tarkas, but the latter signed that I be left to my
own devices, and so we returned to the plaza with my great beast
following close at heel, and Sola grasping me tightly by the arm.

I had at least two friends on Mars; a young woman who watched over me
with motherly solicitude, and a dumb brute which, as I later came to
know, held in its poor ugly carcass more love, more loyalty, more
gratitude than could have been found in the entire five million green
Martians who rove the deserted cities and dead sea bottoms of Mars.




CHAPTER VII

CHILD-RAISING ON MARS


After a breakfast, which was an exact replica of the meal of the
preceding day and an index of practically every meal which followed
while I was with the green men of Mars, Sola escorted me to the plaza,
where I found the entire community engaged in watching or helping at
the harnessing of huge mastodonian animals to great three-wheeled
chariots.  There were about two hundred and fifty of these vehicles,
each drawn by a single animal, any one of which, from their appearance,
might easily have drawn the entire wagon train when fully loaded.

The chariots themselves were large, commodious, and gorgeously
decorated.  In each was seated a female Martian loaded with ornaments
of metal, with jewels and silks and furs, and upon the back of each of
the beasts which drew the chariots was perched a young Martian driver.
Like the animals upon which the warriors were mounted, the heavier
draft animals wore neither bit nor bridle, but were guided entirely by
telepathic means.

This power is wonderfully developed in all Martians, and accounts
largely for the simplicity of their language and the relatively few
spoken words exchanged even in long conversations.  It is the universal
language of Mars, through the medium of which the higher and lower
animals of this world of paradoxes are able to communicate to a greater
or less extent, depending upon the intellectual sphere of the species
and the development of the individual.

As the cavalcade took up the line of march in single file, Sola dragged
me into an empty chariot and we proceeded with the procession toward
the point by which I had entered the city the day before.  At the head
of the caravan rode some two hundred warriors, five abreast, and a like
number brought up the rear, while twenty-five or thirty outriders
flanked us on either side.

Every one but myself--men, women, and children--were heavily armed, and
at the tail of each chariot trotted a Martian hound, my own beast
following closely behind ours; in fact, the faithful creature never
left me voluntarily during the entire ten years I spent on Mars.  Our
way led out across the little valley before the city, through the
hills, and down into the dead sea bottom which I had traversed on my
journey from the incubator to the plaza.  The incubator, as it proved,
was the terminal point of our journey this day, and, as the entire
cavalcade broke into a mad gallop as soon as we reached the level
expanse of sea bottom, we were soon within sight of our goal.

On reaching it the chariots were parked with military precision on the
four sides of the enclosure, and half a score of warriors, headed by
the enormous chieftain, and including Tars Tarkas and several other
lesser chiefs, dismounted and advanced toward it.  I could see Tars
Tarkas explaining something to the principal chieftain, whose name, by
the way, was, as nearly as I can translate it into English, Lorquas
Ptomel, Jed; jed being his title.

I was soon appraised of the subject of their conversation, as, calling
to Sola, Tars Tarkas signed for her to send me to him.  I had by this
time mastered the intricacies of walking under Martian conditions, and
quickly responding to his command I advanced to the side of the
incubator where the warriors stood.

As I reached their side a glance showed me that all but a very few eggs
had hatched, the incubator being fairly alive with the hideous little
devils.  They ranged in height from three to four feet, and were moving
restlessly about the enclosure as though searching for food.

As I came to a halt before him, Tars Tarkas pointed over the incubator
and said, "Sak."  I saw that he wanted me to repeat my performance of
yesterday for the edification of Lorquas Ptomel, and, as I must confess
that my prowess gave me no little satisfaction, I responded quickly,
leaping entirely over the parked chariots on the far side of the
incubator.  As I returned, Lorquas Ptomel grunted something at me, and
turning to his warriors gave a few words of command relative to the
incubator.  They paid no further attention to me and I was thus
permitted to remain close and watch their operations, which consisted
in breaking an opening in the wall of the incubator large enough to
permit of the exit of the young Martians.

On either side of this opening the women and the younger Martians, both
male and female, formed two solid walls leading out through the
chariots and quite away into the plain beyond.  Between these walls the
little Martians scampered, wild as deer; being permitted to run the
full length of the aisle, where they were captured one at a time by the
women and older children; the last in the line capturing the first
little one to reach the end of the gauntlet, her opposite in the line
capturing the second, and so on until all the little fellows had left
the enclosure and been appropriated by some youth or female.  As the
women caught the young they fell out of line and returned to their
respective chariots, while those who fell into the hands of the young
men were later turned over to some of the women.

I saw that the ceremony, if it could be dignified by such a name, was
over, and seeking out Sola I found her in our chariot with a hideous
little creature held tightly in her arms.

The work of rearing young, green Martians consists solely in teaching
them to talk, and to use the weapons of warfare with which they are
loaded down from the very first year of their lives.  Coming from eggs
in which they have lain for five years, the period of incubation, they
step forth into the world perfectly developed except in size.  Entirely
unknown to their mothers, who, in turn, would have difficulty in
pointing out the fathers with any degree of accuracy, they are the
common children of the community, and their education devolves upon the
females who chance to capture them as they leave the incubator.

Their foster mothers may not even have had an egg in the incubator, as
was the case with Sola, who had not commenced to lay, until less than a
year before she became the mother of another woman's offspring.  But
this counts for little among the green Martians, as parental and filial
love is as unknown to them as it is common among us.  I believe this
horrible system which has been carried on for ages is the direct cause
of the loss of all the finer feelings and higher humanitarian instincts
among these poor creatures.  From birth they know no father or mother
love, they know not the meaning of the word home; they are taught that
they are only suffered to live until they can demonstrate by their
physique and ferocity that they are fit to live.  Should they prove
deformed or defective in any way they are promptly shot; nor do they
see a tear shed for a single one of the many cruel hardships they pass
through from earliest infancy.

I do not mean that the adult Martians are unnecessarily or
intentionally cruel to the young, but theirs is a hard and pitiless
struggle for existence upon a dying planet, the natural resources of
which have dwindled to a point where the support of each additional
life means an added tax upon the community into which it is thrown.

By careful selection they rear only the hardiest specimens of each
species, and with almost supernatural foresight they regulate the birth
rate to merely offset the loss by death.

Each adult Martian female brings forth about thirteen eggs each year,
and those which meet the size, weight, and specific gravity tests are
hidden in the recesses of some subterranean vault where the temperature
is too low for incubation.  Every year these eggs are carefully
examined by a council of twenty chieftains, and all but about one
hundred of the most perfect are destroyed out of each yearly supply.
At the end of five years about five hundred almost perfect eggs have
been chosen from the thousands brought forth.  These are then placed in
the almost air-tight incubators to be hatched by the sun's rays after a
period of another five years.  The hatching which we had witnessed
today was a fairly representative event of its kind, all but about one
per cent of the eggs hatching in two days.  If the remaining eggs ever
hatched we knew nothing of the fate of the little Martians.  They were
not wanted, as their offspring might inherit and transmit the tendency
to prolonged incubation, and thus upset the system which has maintained
for ages and which permits the adult Martians to figure the proper time
for return to the incubators, almost to an hour.

The incubators are built in remote fastnesses, where there is little or
no likelihood of their being discovered by other tribes.  The result of
such a catastrophe would mean no children in the community for another
five years.  I was later to witness the results of the discovery of an
alien incubator.

The community of which the green Martians with whom my lot was cast
formed a part was composed of some thirty thousand souls.  They roamed
an enormous tract of arid and semi-arid land between forty and eighty
degrees south latitude, and bounded on the east and west by two large
fertile tracts.  Their headquarters lay in the southwest corner of this
district, near the crossing of two of the so-called Martian canals.

As the incubator had been placed far north of their own territory in a
supposedly uninhabited and unfrequented area, we had before us a
tremendous journey, concerning which I, of course, knew nothing.

After our return to the dead city I passed several days in comparative
idleness.  On the day following our return all the warriors had ridden
forth early in the morning and had not returned until just before
darkness fell.  As I later learned, they had been to the subterranean
vaults in which the eggs were kept and had transported them to the
incubator, which they had then walled up for another five years, and
which, in all probability, would not be visited again during that
period.

The vaults which hid the eggs until they were ready for the incubator
were located many miles south of the incubator, and would be visited
yearly by the council of twenty chieftains.  Why they did not arrange
to build their vaults and incubators nearer home has always been a
mystery to me, and, like many other Martian mysteries, unsolved and
unsolvable by earthly reasoning and customs.

Sola's duties were now doubled, as she was compelled to care for the
young Martian as well as for me, but neither one of us required much
attention, and as we were both about equally advanced in Martian
education, Sola took it upon herself to train us together.

Her prize consisted in a male about four feet tall, very strong and
physically perfect; also, he learned quickly, and we had considerable
amusement, at least I did, over the keen rivalry we displayed.  The
Martian language, as I have said, is extremely simple, and in a week I
could make all my wants known and understand nearly everything that was
said to me.  Likewise, under Sola's tutelage, I developed my telepathic
powers so that I shortly could sense practically everything that went
on around me.

What surprised Sola most in me was that while I could catch telepathic
messages easily from others, and often when they were not intended for
me, no one could read a jot from my mind under any circumstances.  At
first this vexed me, but later I was very glad of it, as it gave me an
undoubted advantage over the Martians.




CHAPTER VIII

A FAIR CAPTIVE FROM THE SKY


The third day after the incubator ceremony we set forth toward home,
but scarcely had the head of the procession debouched into the open
ground before the city than orders were given for an immediate and
hasty return.  As though trained for years in this particular
evolution, the green Martians melted like mist into the spacious
doorways of the nearby buildings, until, in less than three minutes,
the entire cavalcade of chariots, mastodons and mounted warriors was
nowhere to be seen.

Sola and I had entered a building upon the front of the city, in fact,
the same one in which I had had my encounter with the apes, and,
wishing to see what had caused the sudden retreat, I mounted to an
upper floor and peered from the window out over the valley and the
hills beyond; and there I saw the cause of their sudden scurrying to
cover.  A huge craft, long, low, and gray-painted, swung slowly over
the crest of the nearest hill.  Following it came another, and another,
and another, until twenty of them, swinging low above the ground,
sailed slowly and majestically toward us.

Each carried a strange banner swung from stem to stern above the upper
works, and upon the prow of each was painted some odd device that
gleamed in the sunlight and showed plainly even at the distance at
which we were from the vessels.  I could see figures crowding the
forward decks and upper works of the air craft.  Whether they had
discovered us or simply were looking at the deserted city I could not
say, but in any event they received a rude reception, for suddenly and
without warning the green Martian warriors fired a terrific volley from
the windows of the buildings facing the little valley across which the
great ships were so peacefully advancing.

Instantly the scene changed as by magic; the foremost vessel swung
broadside toward us, and bringing her guns into play returned our fire,
at the same time moving parallel to our front for a short distance and
then turning back with the evident intention of completing a great
circle which would bring her up to position once more opposite our
firing line; the other vessels followed in her wake, each one opening
upon us as she swung into position.  Our own fire never diminished, and
I doubt if twenty-five per cent of our shots went wild.  It had never
been given me to see such deadly accuracy of aim, and it seemed as
though a little figure on one of the craft dropped at the explosion of
each bullet, while the banners and upper works dissolved in spurts of
flame as the irresistible projectiles of our warriors mowed through
them.

The fire from the vessels was most ineffectual, owing, as I afterward
learned, to the unexpected suddenness of the first volley, which caught
the ship's crews entirely unprepared and the sighting apparatus of the
guns unprotected from the deadly aim of our warriors.

It seems that each green warrior has certain objective points for his
fire under relatively identical circumstances of warfare.  For example,
a proportion of them, always the best marksmen, direct their fire
entirely upon the wireless finding and sighting apparatus of the big
guns of an attacking naval force; another detail attends to the smaller
guns in the same way; others pick off the gunners; still others the
officers; while certain other quotas concentrate their attention upon
the other members of the crew, upon the upper works, and upon the
steering gear and propellers.

Twenty minutes after the first volley the great fleet swung trailing
off in the direction from which it had first appeared.  Several of the
craft were limping perceptibly, and seemed but barely under the control
of their depleted crews.  Their fire had ceased entirely and all their
energies seemed focused upon escape.  Our warriors then rushed up to
the roofs of the buildings which we occupied and followed the
retreating armada with a continuous fusillade of deadly fire.

One by one, however, the ships managed to dip below the crests of the
outlying hills until only one barely moving craft was in sight.  This
had received the brunt of our fire and seemed to be entirely unmanned,
as not a moving figure was visible upon her decks.  Slowly she swung
from her course, circling back toward us in an erratic and pitiful
manner.  Instantly the warriors ceased firing, for it was quite
apparent that the vessel was entirely helpless, and, far from being in
a position to inflict harm upon us, she could not even control herself
sufficiently to escape.

As she neared the city the warriors rushed out upon the plain to meet
her, but it was evident that she still was too high for them to hope to
reach her decks.  From my vantage point in the window I could see the
bodies of her crew strewn about, although I could not make out what
manner of creatures they might be.  Not a sign of life was manifest
upon her as she drifted slowly with the light breeze in a southeasterly
direction.

She was drifting some fifty feet above the ground, followed by all but
some hundred of the warriors who had been ordered back to the roofs to
cover the possibility of a return of the fleet, or of reinforcements.
It soon became evident that she would strike the face of the buildings
about a mile south of our position, and as I watched the progress of
the chase I saw a number of warriors gallop ahead, dismount and enter
the building she seemed destined to touch.

As the craft neared the building, and just before she struck, the
Martian warriors swarmed upon her from the windows, and with their
great spears eased the shock of the collision, and in a few moments
they had thrown out grappling hooks and the big boat was being hauled
to ground by their fellows below.

After making her fast, they swarmed the sides and searched the vessel
from stem to stern.  I could see them examining the dead sailors,
evidently for signs of life, and presently a party of them appeared
from below dragging a little figure among them.  The creature was
considerably less than half as tall as the green Martian warriors, and
from my balcony I could see that it walked erect upon two legs and
surmised that it was some new and strange Martian monstrosity with
which I had not as yet become acquainted.

They removed their prisoner to the ground and then commenced a
systematic rifling of the vessel.  This operation required several
hours, during which time a number of the chariots were requisitioned to
transport the loot, which consisted in arms, ammunition, silks, furs,
jewels, strangely carved stone vessels, and a quantity of solid foods
and liquids, including many casks of water, the first I had seen since
my advent upon Mars.

After the last load had been removed the warriors made lines fast to
the craft and towed her far out into the valley in a southwesterly
direction.  A few of them then boarded her and were busily engaged in
what appeared, from my distant position, as the emptying of the
contents of various carboys upon the dead bodies of the sailors and
over the decks and works of the vessel.

This operation concluded, they hastily clambered over her sides,
sliding down the guy ropes to the ground.  The last warrior to leave
the deck turned and threw something back upon the vessel, waiting an
instant to note the outcome of his act.  As a faint spurt of flame rose
from the point where the missile struck he swung over the side and was
quickly upon the ground.  Scarcely had he alighted than the guy ropes
were simultaneous released, and the great warship, lightened by the
removal of the loot, soared majestically into the air, her decks and
upper works a mass of roaring flames.

Slowly she drifted to the southeast, rising higher and higher as the
flames ate away her wooden parts and diminished the weight upon her.
Ascending to the roof of the building I watched her for hours, until
finally she was lost in the dim vistas of the distance.  The sight was
awe-inspiring in the extreme as one contemplated this mighty floating
funeral pyre, drifting unguided and unmanned through the lonely wastes
of the Martian heavens; a derelict of death and destruction, typifying
the life story of these strange and ferocious creatures into whose
unfriendly hands fate had carried it.

Much depressed, and, to me, unaccountably so, I slowly descended to the
street.  The scene I had witnessed seemed to mark the defeat and
annihilation of the forces of a kindred people, rather than the routing
by our green warriors of a horde of similar, though unfriendly,
creatures.  I could not fathom the seeming hallucination, nor could I
free myself from it; but somewhere in the innermost recesses of my soul
I felt a strange yearning toward these unknown foemen, and a mighty
hope surged through me that the fleet would return and demand a
reckoning from the green warriors who had so ruthlessly and wantonly
attacked it.

Close at my heel, in his now accustomed place, followed Woola, the
hound, and as I emerged upon the street Sola rushed up to me as though
I had been the object of some search on her part.  The cavalcade was
returning to the plaza, the homeward march having been given up for
that day; nor, in fact, was it recommenced for more than a week, owing
to the fear of a return attack by the air craft.

Lorquas Ptomel was too astute an old warrior to be caught upon the open
plains with a caravan of chariots and children, and so we remained at
the deserted city until the danger seemed passed.

As Sola and I entered the plaza a sight met my eyes which filled my
whole being with a great surge of mingled hope, fear, exultation, and
depression, and yet most dominant was a subtle sense of relief and
happiness; for just as we neared the throng of Martians I caught a
glimpse of the prisoner from the battle craft who was being roughly
dragged into a nearby building by a couple of green Martian females.

And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure,
similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life.  She did
not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the
portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her
eyes met mine.  Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her
every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and
lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair,
caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure.  Her skin was of a
light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her
cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a
strangely enhancing effect.

She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied
her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely
naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect
and symmetrical figure.

As her gaze rested on me her eyes opened wide in astonishment, and she
made a little sign with her free hand; a sign which I did not, of
course, understand.  Just a moment we gazed upon each other, and then
the look of hope and renewed courage which had glorified her face as
she discovered me, faded into one of utter dejection, mingled with
loathing and contempt.  I realized I had not answered her signal, and
ignorant as I was of Martian customs, I intuitively felt that she had
made an appeal for succor and protection which my unfortunate ignorance
had prevented me from answering.  And then she was dragged out of my
sight into the depths of the deserted edifice.




CHAPTER IX

I LEARN THE LANGUAGE


As I came back to myself I glanced at Sola, who had witnessed this
encounter and I was surprised to note a strange expression upon her
usually expressionless countenance.  What her thoughts were I did not
know, for as yet I had learned but little of the Martian tongue; enough
only to suffice for my daily needs.

As I reached the doorway of our building a strange surprise awaited me.
A warrior approached bearing the arms, ornaments, and full
accouterments of his kind.  These he presented to me with a few
unintelligible words, and a bearing at once respectful and menacing.

Later, Sola, with the aid of several of the other women, remodeled the
trappings to fit my lesser proportions, and after they completed the
work I went about garbed in all the panoply of war.

From then on Sola instructed me in the mysteries of the various
weapons, and with the Martian young I spent several hours each day
practicing upon the plaza.  I was not yet proficient with all the
weapons, but my great familiarity with similar earthly weapons made me
an unusually apt pupil, and I progressed in a very satisfactory manner.

The training of myself and the young Martians was conducted solely by
the women, who not only attend to the education of the young in the
arts of individual defense and offense, but are also the artisans who
produce every manufactured article wrought by the green Martians.  They
make the powder, the cartridges, the firearms; in fact everything of
value is produced by the females.  In time of actual warfare they form
a part of the reserves, and when the necessity arises fight with even
greater intelligence and ferocity than the men.

The men are trained in the higher branches of the art of war; in
strategy and the maneuvering of large bodies of troops.  They make the
laws as they are needed; a new law for each emergency.  They are
unfettered by precedent in the administration of justice.  Customs have
been handed down by ages of repetition, but the punishment for ignoring
a custom is a matter for individual treatment by a jury of the
culprit's peers, and I may say that justice seldom misses fire, but
seems rather to rule in inverse ratio to the ascendency of law.  In one
respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers.

I did not see the prisoner again for several days subsequent to our
first encounter, and then only to catch a fleeting glimpse of her as
she was being conducted to the great audience chamber where I had had
my first meeting with Lorquas Ptomel.  I could not but note the
unnecessary harshness and brutality with which her guards treated her;
so different from the almost maternal kindliness which Sola manifested
toward me, and the respectful attitude of the few green Martians who
took the trouble to notice me at all.

I had observed on the two occasions when I had seen her that the
prisoner exchanged words with her guards, and this convinced me that
they spoke, or at least could make themselves understood by a common
language.  With this added incentive I nearly drove Sola distracted by
my importunities to hasten on my education and within a few more days I
had mastered the Martian tongue sufficiently well to enable me to carry
on a passable conversation and to fully understand practically all that
I heard.

At this time our sleeping quarters were occupied by three or four
females and a couple of the recently hatched young, beside Sola and her
youthful ward, myself, and Woola the hound.  After they had retired for
the night it was customary for the adults to carry on a desultory
conversation for a short time before lapsing into sleep, and now that I
could understand their language I was always a keen listener, although
I never proffered any remarks myself.

On the night following the prisoner's visit to the audience chamber the
conversation finally fell upon this subject, and I was all ears on the
instant.  I had feared to question Sola relative to the beautiful
captive, as I could not but recall the strange expression I had noted
upon her face after my first encounter with the prisoner.  That it
denoted jealousy I could not say, and yet, judging all things by
mundane standards as I still did, I felt it safer to affect
indifference in the matter until I learned more surely Sola's attitude
toward the object of my solicitude.

Sarkoja, one of the older women who shared our domicile, had been
present at the audience as one of the captive's guards, and it was
toward her the question turned.

"When," asked one of the women, "will we enjoy the death throes of the
red one? or does Lorquas Ptomel, Jed, intend holding her for ransom?"

"They have decided to carry her with us back to Thark, and exhibit her
last agonies at the great games before Tal Hajus," replied Sarkoja.

"What will be the manner of her going out?" inquired Sola.  "She is
very small and very beautiful; I had hoped that they would hold her for
ransom."

Sarkoja and the other women grunted angrily at this evidence of
weakness on the part of Sola.

"It is sad, Sola, that you were not born a million years ago," snapped
Sarkoja, "when all the hollows of the land were filled with water, and
the peoples were as soft as the stuff they sailed upon.  In our day we
have progressed to a point where such sentiments mark weakness and
atavism.  It will not be well for you to permit Tars Tarkas to learn
that you hold such degenerate sentiments, as I doubt that he would care
to entrust such as you with the grave responsibilities of maternity."

"I see nothing wrong with my expression of interest in this red woman,"
retorted Sola.  "She has never harmed us, nor would she should we have
fallen into her hands.  It is only the men of her kind who war upon us,
and I have ever thought that their attitude toward us is but the
reflection of ours toward them.  They live at peace with all their
fellows, except when duty calls upon them to make war, while we are at
peace with none; forever warring among our own kind as well as upon the
red men, and even in our own communities the individuals fight amongst
themselves.  Oh, it is one continual, awful period of bloodshed from
the time we break the shell until we gladly embrace the bosom of the
river of mystery, the dark and ancient Iss which carries us to an
unknown, but at least no more frightful and terrible existence!
Fortunate indeed is he who meets his end in an early death.  Say what
you please to Tars Tarkas, he can mete out no worse fate to me than a
continuation of the horrible existence we are forced to lead in this
life."

This wild outbreak on the part of Sola so greatly surprised and shocked
the other women, that, after a few words of general reprimand, they all
lapsed into silence and were soon asleep.  One thing the episode had
accomplished was to assure me of Sola's friendliness toward the poor
girl, and also to convince me that I had been extremely fortunate in
falling into her hands rather than those of some of the other females.
I knew that she was fond of me, and now that I had discovered that she
hated cruelty and barbarity I was confident that I could depend upon
her to aid me and the girl captive to escape, provided of course that
such a thing was within the range of possibilities.

I did not even know that there were any better conditions to escape to,
but I was more than willing to take my chances among people fashioned
after my own mold rather than to remain longer among the hideous and
bloodthirsty green men of Mars.  But where to go, and how, was as much
of a puzzle to me as the age-old search for the spring of eternal life
has been to earthly men since the beginning of time.

I decided that at the first opportunity I would take Sola into my
confidence and openly ask her to aid me, and with this resolution
strong upon me I turned among my silks and furs and slept the dreamless
and refreshing sleep of Mars.




CHAPTER X

CHAMPION AND CHIEF


Early the next morning I was astir.  Considerable freedom was allowed
me, as Sola had informed me that so long as I did not attempt to leave
the city I was free to go and come as I pleased.  She had warned me,
however, against venturing forth unarmed, as this city, like all other
deserted metropolises of an ancient Martian civilization, was peopled
by the great white apes of my second day's adventure.

In advising me that I must not leave the boundaries of the city Sola
had explained that Woola would prevent this anyway should I attempt it,
and she warned me most urgently not to arouse his fierce nature by
ignoring his warnings should I venture too close to the forbidden
territory.  His nature was such, she said, that he would bring me back
into the city dead or alive should I persist in opposing him;
"preferably dead," she added.

On this morning I had chosen a new street to explore when suddenly I
found myself at the limits of the city.  Before me were low hills
pierced by narrow and inviting ravines.  I longed to explore the
country before me, and, like the pioneer stock from which I sprang, to
view what the landscape beyond the encircling hills might disclose from
the summits which shut out my view.

It also occurred to me that this would prove an excellent opportunity
to test the qualities of Woola.  I was convinced that the brute loved
me; I had seen more evidences of affection in him than in any other
Martian animal, man or beast, and I was sure that gratitude for the
acts that had twice saved his life would more than outweigh his loyalty
to the duty imposed upon him by cruel and loveless masters.

As I approached the boundary line Woola ran anxiously before me, and
thrust his body against my legs.  His expression was pleading rather
than ferocious, nor did he bare his great tusks or utter his fearful
guttural warnings.  Denied the friendship and companionship of my kind,
I had developed considerable affection for Woola and Sola, for the
normal earthly man must have some outlet for his natural affections,
and so I decided upon an appeal to a like instinct in this great brute,
sure that I would not be disappointed.

I had never petted nor fondled him, but now I sat upon the ground and
putting my arms around his heavy neck I stroked and coaxed him, talking
in my newly acquired Martian tongue as I would have to my hound at
home, as I would have talked to any other friend among the lower
animals.  His response to my manifestation of affection was remarkable
to a degree; he stretched his great mouth to its full width, baring the
entire expanse of his upper rows of tusks and wrinkling his snout until
his great eyes were almost hidden by the folds of flesh.  If you have
ever seen a collie smile you may have some idea of Woola's facial
distortion.

He threw himself upon his back and fairly wallowed at my feet; jumped
up and sprang upon me, rolling me upon the ground by his great weight;
then wriggling and squirming around me like a playful puppy presenting
its back for the petting it craves.  I could not resist the
ludicrousness of the spectacle, and holding my sides I rocked back and
forth in the first laughter which had passed my lips in many days; the
first, in fact, since the morning Powell had left camp when his horse,
long unused, had precipitately and unexpectedly bucked him off
headforemost into a pot of frijoles.

My laughter frightened Woola, his antics ceased and he crawled
pitifully toward me, poking his ugly head far into my lap; and then I
remembered what laughter signified on Mars--torture, suffering, death.
Quieting myself, I rubbed the poor old fellow's head and back, talked
to him for a few minutes, and then in an authoritative tone commanded
him to follow me, and arising started for the hills.

There was no further question of authority between us; Woola was my
devoted slave from that moment hence, and I his only and undisputed
master.  My walk to the hills occupied but a few minutes, and I found
nothing of particular interest to reward me.  Numerous brilliantly
colored and strangely formed wild flowers dotted the ravines and from
the summit of the first hill I saw still other hills stretching off
toward the north, and rising, one range above another, until lost in
mountains of quite respectable dimensions; though I afterward found
that only a few peaks on all Mars exceed four thousand feet in height;
the suggestion of magnitude was merely relative.

My morning's walk had been large with importance to me for it had
resulted in a perfect understanding with Woola, upon whom Tars Tarkas
relied for my safe keeping.  I now knew that while theoretically a
prisoner I was virtually free, and I hastened to regain the city limits
before the defection of Woola could be discovered by his erstwhile
masters.  The adventure decided me never again to leave the limits of
my prescribed stamping grounds until I was ready to venture forth for
good and all, as it would certainly result in a curtailment of my
liberties, as well as the probable death of Woola, were we to be
discovered.

On regaining the plaza I had my third glimpse of the captive girl.  She
was standing with her guards before the entrance to the audience
chamber, and as I approached she gave me one haughty glance and turned
her back full upon me.  The act was so womanly, so earthly womanly,
that though it stung my pride it also warmed my heart with a feeling of
companionship; it was good to know that someone else on Mars beside
myself had human instincts of a civilized order, even though the
manifestation of them was so painful and mortifying.

Had a green Martian woman desired to show dislike or contempt she
would, in all likelihood, have done it with a sword thrust or a
movement of her trigger finger; but as their sentiments are mostly
atrophied it would have required a serious injury to have aroused such
passions in them.  Sola, let me add, was an exception; I never saw her
perform a cruel or uncouth act, or fail in uniform kindliness and good
nature.  She was indeed, as her fellow Martian had said of her, an
atavism; a dear and precious reversion to a former type of loved and
loving ancestor.

Seeing that the prisoner seemed the center of attraction I halted to
view the proceedings.  I had not long to wait for presently Lorquas
Ptomel and his retinue of chieftains approached the building and,
signing the guards to follow with the prisoner entered the audience
chamber.  Realizing that I was a somewhat favored character, and also
convinced that the warriors did not know of my proficiency in their
language, as I had pleaded with Sola to keep this a secret on the
grounds that I did not wish to be forced to talk with the men until I
had perfectly mastered the Martian tongue, I chanced an attempt to
enter the audience chamber and listen to the proceedings.

The council squatted upon the steps of the rostrum, while below them
stood the prisoner and her two guards.  I saw that one of the women was
Sarkoja, and thus understood how she had been present at the hearing of
the preceding day, the results of which she had reported to the
occupants of our dormitory last night.  Her attitude toward the captive
was most harsh and brutal.  When she held her, she sunk her rudimentary
nails into the poor girl's flesh, or twisted her arm in a most painful
manner.  When it was necessary to move from one spot to another she
either jerked her roughly, or pushed her headlong before her.  She
seemed to be venting upon this poor defenseless creature all the
hatred, cruelty, ferocity, and spite of her nine hundred years, backed
by unguessable ages of fierce and brutal ancestors.

The other woman was less cruel because she was entirely indifferent; if
the prisoner had been left to her alone, and fortunately she was at
night, she would have received no harsh treatment, nor, by the same
token would she have received any attention at all.

As Lorquas Ptomel raised his eyes to address the prisoner they fell on
me and he turned to Tars Tarkas with a word, and gesture of impatience.
Tars Tarkas made some reply which I could not catch, but which caused
Lorquas Ptomel to smile; after which they paid no further attention to
me.

"What is your name?" asked Lorquas Ptomel, addressing the prisoner.

"Dejah Thoris, daughter of Mors Kajak of Helium."

"And the nature of your expedition?" he continued.

"It was a purely scientific research party sent out by my father's
father, the Jeddak of Helium, to rechart the air currents, and to take
atmospheric density tests," replied the fair prisoner, in a low,
well-modulated voice.

"We were unprepared for battle," she continued, "as we were on a
peaceful mission, as our banners and the colors of our craft denoted.
The work we were doing was as much in your interests as in ours, for
you know full well that were it not for our labors and the fruits of
our scientific operations there would not be enough air or water on
Mars to support a single human life.  For ages we have maintained the
air and water supply at practically the same point without an
appreciable loss, and we have done this in the face of the brutal and
ignorant interference of your green men.

"Why, oh, why will you not learn to live in amity with your fellows,
must you ever go on down the ages to your final extinction but little
above the plane of the dumb brutes that serve you!  A people without
written language, without art, without homes, without love; the victim
of eons of the horrible community idea.  Owning everything in common,
even to your women and children, has resulted in your owning nothing in
common.  You hate each other as you hate all else except yourselves.
Come back to the ways of our common ancestors, come back to the light
of kindliness and fellowship.  The way is open to you, you will find
the hands of the red men stretched out to aid you.  Together we may do
still more to regenerate our dying planet.  The granddaughter of the
greatest and mightiest of the red jeddaks has asked you.  Will you
come?"

Lorquas Ptomel and the warriors sat looking silently and intently at
the young woman for several moments after she had ceased speaking.
What was passing in their minds no man may know, but that they were
moved I truly believe, and if one man high among them had been strong
enough to rise above custom, that moment would have marked a new and
mighty era for Mars.

I saw Tars Tarkas rise to speak, and on his face was such an expression
as I had never seen upon the countenance of a green Martian warrior.
It bespoke an inward and mighty battle with self, with heredity, with
age-old custom, and as he opened his mouth to speak, a look almost of
benignity, of kindliness, momentarily lighted up his fierce and
terrible countenance.

What words of moment were to have fallen from his lips were never
spoken, as just then a young warrior, evidently sensing the trend of
thought among the older men, leaped down from the steps of the rostrum,
and striking the frail captive a powerful blow across the face, which
felled her to the floor, placed his foot upon her prostrate form and
turning toward the assembled council broke into peals of horrid,
mirthless laughter.

For an instant I thought Tars Tarkas would strike him dead, nor did the
aspect of Lorquas Ptomel augur any too favorably for the brute, but the
mood passed, their old selves reasserted their ascendency, and they
smiled.  It was portentous however that they did not laugh aloud, for
the brute's act constituted a side-splitting witticism according to the
ethics which rule green Martian humor.

That I have taken moments to write down a part of what occurred as that
blow fell does not signify that I remained inactive for any such length
of time.  I think I must have sensed something of what was coming, for
I realize now that I was crouched as for a spring as I saw the blow
aimed at her beautiful, upturned, pleading face, and ere the hand
descended I was halfway across the hall.

Scarcely had his hideous laugh rang out but once, when I was upon him.
The brute was twelve feet in height and armed to the teeth, but I
believe that I could have accounted for the whole roomful in the
terrific intensity of my rage.  Springing upward, I struck him full in
the face as he turned at my warning cry and then as he drew his
short-sword I drew mine and sprang up again upon his breast, hooking
one leg over the butt of his pistol and grasping one of his huge tusks
with my left hand while I delivered blow after blow upon his enormous
chest.

He could not use his short-sword to advantage because I was too close
to him, nor could he draw his pistol, which he attempted to do in
direct opposition to Martian custom which says that you may not fight a
fellow warrior in private combat with any other than the weapon with
which you are attacked.  In fact he could do nothing but make a wild
and futile attempt to dislodge me.  With all his immense bulk he was
little if any stronger than I, and it was but the matter of a moment or
two before he sank, bleeding and lifeless, to the floor.

Dejah Thoris had raised herself upon one elbow and was watching the
battle with wide, staring eyes.  When I had regained my feet I raised
her in my arms and bore her to one of the benches at the side of the
room.

Again no Martian interfered with me, and tearing a piece of silk from
my cape I endeavored to staunch the flow of blood from her nostrils.  I
was soon successful as her injuries amounted to little more than an
ordinary nosebleed, and when she could speak she placed her hand upon
my arm and looking up into my eyes, said:

"Why did you do it?  You who refused me even friendly recognition in
the first hour of my peril!  And now you risk your life and kill one of
your companions for my sake.  I cannot understand.  What strange manner
of man are you, that you consort with the green men, though your form
is that of my race, while your color is little darker than that of the
white ape?  Tell me, are you human, or are you more than human?"

"It is a strange tale," I replied, "too long to attempt to tell you
now, and one which I so much doubt the credibility of myself that I
fear to hope that others will believe it.  Suffice it, for the present,
that I am your friend, and, so far as our captors will permit, your
protector and your servant."

"Then you too are a prisoner?  But why, then, those arms and the
regalia of a Tharkian chieftain?  What is your name?  Where your
country?"

"Yes, Dejah Thoris, I too am a prisoner; my name is John Carter, and I
claim Virginia, one of the United States of America, Earth, as my home;
but why I am permitted to wear arms I do not know, nor was I aware that
my regalia was that of a chieftain."

We were interrupted at this juncture by the approach of one of the
warriors, bearing arms, accouterments and ornaments, and in a flash one
of her questions was answered and a puzzle cleared up for me.  I saw
that the body of my dead antagonist had been stripped, and I read in
the menacing yet respectful attitude of the warrior who had brought me
these trophies of the kill the same demeanor as that evinced by the
other who had brought me my original equipment, and now for the first
time I realized that my blow, on the occasion of my first battle in the
audience chamber had resulted in the death of my adversary.

The reason for the whole attitude displayed toward me was now apparent;
I had won my spurs, so to speak, and in the crude justice, which always
marks Martian dealings, and which, among other things, has caused me to
call her the planet of paradoxes, I was accorded the honors due a
conqueror; the trappings and the position of the man I killed.  In
truth, I was a Martian chieftain, and this I learned later was the
cause of my great freedom and my toleration in the audience chamber.

As I had turned to receive the dead warrior's chattels I had noticed
that Tars Tarkas and several others had pushed forward toward us, and
the eyes of the former rested upon me in a most quizzical manner.
Finally he addressed me:

"You speak the tongue of Barsoom quite readily for one who was deaf and
dumb to us a few short days ago.  Where did you learn it, John Carter?"

"You, yourself, are responsible, Tars Tarkas," I replied, "in that you
furnished me with an instructress of remarkable ability; I have to
thank Sola for my learning."

"She has done well," he answered, "but your education in other respects
needs considerable polish.  Do you know what your unprecedented
temerity would have cost you had you failed to kill either of the two
chieftains whose metal you now wear?"

"I presume that that one whom I had failed to kill, would have killed
me," I answered, smiling.

"No, you are wrong.  Only in the last extremity of self-defense would a
Martian warrior kill a prisoner; we like to save them for other
purposes," and his face bespoke possibilities that were not pleasant to
dwell upon.

"But one thing can save you now," he continued.  "Should you, in
recognition of your remarkable valor, ferocity, and prowess, be
considered by Tal Hajus as worthy of his service you may be taken into
the community and become a full-fledged Tharkian.  Until we reach the
headquarters of Tal Hajus it is the will of Lorquas Ptomel that you be
accorded the respect your acts have earned you.  You will be treated by
us as a Tharkian chieftain, but you must not forget that every chief
who ranks you is responsible for your safe delivery to our mighty and
most ferocious ruler.  I am done."

"I hear you, Tars Tarkas," I answered.  "As you know I am not of
Barsoom; your ways are not my ways, and I can only act in the future as
I have in the past, in accordance with the dictates of my conscience
and guided by the standards of mine own people.  If you will leave me
alone I will go in peace, but if not, let the individual Barsoomians
with whom I must deal either respect my rights as a stranger among you,
or take whatever consequences may befall.  Of one thing let us be sure,
whatever may be your ultimate intentions toward this unfortunate young
woman, whoever would offer her injury or insult in the future must
figure on making a full accounting to me.  I understand that you
belittle all sentiments of generosity and kindliness, but I do not, and
I can convince your most doughty warrior that these characteristics are
not incompatible with an ability to fight."

Ordinarily I am not given to long speeches, nor ever before had I
descended to bombast, but I had guessed at the keynote which would
strike an answering chord in the breasts of the green Martians, nor was
I wrong, for my harangue evidently deeply impressed them, and their
attitude toward me thereafter was still further respectful.

Tars Tarkas himself seemed pleased with my reply, but his only comment
was more or less enigmatical--"And I think I know Tal Hajus, Jeddak of
Thark."

I now turned my attention to Dejah Thoris, and assisting her to her
feet I turned with her toward the exit, ignoring her hovering guardian
harpies as well as the inquiring glances of the chieftains.  Was I not
now a chieftain also!  Well, then, I would assume the responsibilities
of one.  They did not molest us, and so Dejah Thoris, Princess of
Helium, and John Carter, gentleman of Virginia, followed by the
faithful Woola, passed through utter silence from the audience chamber
of Lorquas Ptomel, Jed among the Tharks of Barsoom.




CHAPTER XI

WITH DEJAH THORIS


As we reached the open the two female guards who had been detailed to
watch over Dejah Thoris hurried up and made as though to assume custody
of her once more.  The poor child shrank against me and I felt her two
little hands fold tightly over my arm.  Waving the women away, I
informed them that Sola would attend the captive hereafter, and I
further warned Sarkoja that any more of her cruel attentions bestowed
upon Dejah Thoris would result in Sarkoja's sudden and painful demise.

My threat was unfortunate and resulted in more harm than good to Dejah
Thoris, for, as I learned later, men do not kill women upon Mars, nor
women, men.  So Sarkoja merely gave us an ugly look and departed to
hatch up deviltries against us.

I soon found Sola and explained to her that I wished her to guard Dejah
Thoris as she had guarded me; that I wished her to find other quarters
where they would not be molested by Sarkoja, and I finally informed her
that I myself would take up my quarters among the men.

Sola glanced at the accouterments which were carried in my hand and
slung across my shoulder.

"You are a great chieftain now, John Carter," she said, "and I must do
your bidding, though indeed I am glad to do it under any circumstances.
The man whose metal you carry was young, but he was a great warrior,
and had by his promotions and kills won his way close to the rank of
Tars Tarkas, who, as you know, is second to Lorquas Ptomel only.  You
are eleventh, there are but ten chieftains in this community who rank
you in prowess."

"And if I should kill Lorquas Ptomel?" I asked.

"You would be first, John Carter; but you may only win that honor by
the will of the entire council that Lorquas Ptomel meet you in combat,
or should he attack you, you may kill him in self-defense, and thus win
first place."

I laughed, and changed the subject.  I had no particular desire to kill
Lorquas Ptomel, and less to be a jed among the Tharks.

I accompanied Sola and Dejah Thoris in a search for new quarters, which
we found in a building nearer the audience chamber and of far more
pretentious architecture than our former habitation.  We also found in
this building real sleeping apartments with ancient beds of highly
wrought metal swinging from enormous gold chains depending from the
marble ceilings.  The decoration of the walls was most elaborate, and,
unlike the frescoes in the other buildings I had examined, portrayed
many human figures in the compositions.  These were of people like
myself, and of a much lighter color than Dejah Thoris.  They were clad
in graceful, flowing robes, highly ornamented with metal and jewels,
and their luxuriant hair was of a beautiful golden and reddish bronze.
The men were beardless and only a few wore arms.  The scenes depicted
for the most part, a fair-skinned, fair-haired people at play.

Dejah Thoris clasped her hands with an exclamation of rapture as she
gazed upon these magnificent works of art, wrought by a people long
extinct; while Sola, on the other hand, apparently did not see them.

We decided to use this room, on the second floor and overlooking the
plaza, for Dejah Thoris and Sola, and another room adjoining and in the
rear for the cooking and supplies.  I then dispatched Sola to bring the
bedding and such food and utensils as she might need, telling her that
I would guard Dejah Thoris until her return.

As Sola departed Dejah Thoris turned to me with a faint smile.

"And whereto, then, would your prisoner escape should you leave her,
unless it was to follow you and crave your protection, and ask your
pardon for the cruel thoughts she has harbored against you these past
few days?"

"You are right," I answered, "there is no escape for either of us
unless we go together."

"I heard your challenge to the creature you call Tars Tarkas, and I
think I understand your position among these people, but what I cannot
fathom is your statement that you are not of Barsoom."

"In the name of my first ancestor, then," she continued, "where may you
be from?  You are like unto my people, and yet so unlike.  You speak my
language, and yet I heard you tell Tars Tarkas that you had but learned
it recently.  All Barsoomians speak the same tongue from the ice-clad
south to the ice-clad north, though their written languages differ.
Only in the valley Dor, where the river Iss empties into the lost sea
of Korus, is there supposed to be a different language spoken, and,
except in the legends of our ancestors, there is no record of a
Barsoomian returning up the river Iss, from the shores of Korus in the
valley of Dor.  Do not tell me that you have thus returned!  They would
kill you horribly anywhere upon the surface of Barsoom if that were
true; tell me it is not!"

Her eyes were filled with a strange, weird light; her voice was
pleading, and her little hands, reached up upon my breast, were pressed
against me as though to wring a denial from my very heart.

"I do not know your customs, Dejah Thoris, but in my own Virginia a
gentleman does not lie to save himself; I am not of Dor; I have never
seen the mysterious Iss; the lost sea of Korus is still lost, so far as
I am concerned.  Do you believe me?"

And then it struck me suddenly that I was very anxious that she should
believe me.  It was not that I feared the results which would follow a
general belief that I had returned from the Barsoomian heaven or hell,
or whatever it was.  Why was it, then!  Why should I care what she
thought?  I looked down at her; her beautiful face upturned, and her
wonderful eyes opening up the very depth of her soul; and as my eyes
met hers I knew why, and--I shuddered.

A similar wave of feeling seemed to stir her; she drew away from me
with a sigh, and with her earnest, beautiful face turned up to mine,
she whispered: "I believe you, John Carter; I do not know what a
'gentleman' is, nor have I ever heard before of Virginia; but on
Barsoom no man lies; if he does not wish to speak the truth he is
silent.  Where is this Virginia, your country, John Carter?" she asked,
and it seemed that this fair name of my fair land had never sounded
more beautiful than as it fell from those perfect lips on that far-gone
day.

"I am of another world," I answered, "the great planet Earth, which
revolves about our common sun and next within the orbit of your
Barsoom, which we know as Mars.  How I came here I cannot tell you, for
I do not know; but here I am, and since my presence has permitted me to
serve Dejah Thoris I am glad that I am here."

She gazed at me with troubled eyes, long and questioningly.  That it
was difficult to believe my statement I well knew, nor could I hope
that she would do so however much I craved her confidence and respect.
I would much rather not have told her anything of my antecedents, but
no man could look into the depth of those eyes and refuse her slightest
behest.

Finally she smiled, and, rising, said: "I shall have to believe even
though I cannot understand.  I can readily perceive that you are not of
the Barsoom of today; you are like us, yet different--but why should I
trouble my poor head with such a problem, when my heart tells me that I
believe because I wish to believe!"

It was good logic, good, earthly, feminine logic, and if it satisfied
her I certainly could pick no flaws in it.  As a matter of fact it was
about the only kind of logic that could be brought to bear upon my
problem.  We fell into a general conversation then, asking and
answering many questions on each side.  She was curious to learn of the
customs of my people and displayed a remarkable knowledge of events on
Earth.  When I questioned her closely on this seeming familiarity with
earthly things she laughed, and cried out:

"Why, every school boy on Barsoom knows the geography, and much
concerning the fauna and flora, as well as the history of your planet
fully as well as of his own.  Can we not see everything which takes
place upon Earth, as you call it; is it not hanging there in the
heavens in plain sight?"

This baffled me, I must confess, fully as much as my statements had
confounded her; and I told her so.  She then explained in general the
instruments her people had used and been perfecting for ages, which
permit them to throw upon a screen a perfect image of what is
transpiring upon any planet and upon many of the stars.  These pictures
are so perfect in detail that, when photographed and enlarged, objects
no greater than a blade of grass may be distinctly recognized.  I
afterward, in Helium, saw many of these pictures, as well as the
instruments which produced them.

"If, then, you are so familiar with earthly things," I asked, "why is
it that you do not recognize me as identical with the inhabitants of
that planet?"

She smiled again as one might in bored indulgence of a questioning
child.

"Because, John Carter," she replied, "nearly every planet and star
having atmospheric conditions at all approaching those of Barsoom,
shows forms of animal life almost identical with you and me; and,
further, Earth men, almost without exception, cover their bodies with
strange, unsightly pieces of cloth, and their heads with hideous
contraptions the purpose of which we have been unable to conceive;
while you, when found by the Tharkian warriors, were entirely
undisfigured and unadorned.

"The fact that you wore no ornaments is a strong proof of your
un-Barsoomian origin, while the absence of grotesque coverings might
cause a doubt as to your earthliness."

I then narrated the details of my departure from the Earth, explaining
that my body there lay fully clothed in all the, to her, strange
garments of mundane dwellers.  At this point Sola returned with our
meager belongings and her young Martian protege, who, of course, would
have to share the quarters with them.

Sola asked us if we had had a visitor during her absence, and seemed
much surprised when we answered in the negative.  It seemed that as she
had mounted the approach to the upper floors where our quarters were
located, she had met Sarkoja descending.  We decided that she must have
been eavesdropping, but as we could recall nothing of importance that
had passed between us we dismissed the matter as of little consequence,
merely promising ourselves to be warned to the utmost caution in the
future.

Dejah Thoris and I then fell to examining the architecture and
decorations of the beautiful chambers of the building we were
occupying.  She told me that these people had presumably flourished
over a hundred thousand years before.  They were the early progenitors
of her race, but had mixed with the other great race of early Martians,
who were very dark, almost black, and also with the reddish yellow race
which had flourished at the same time.

These three great divisions of the higher Martians had been forced into
a mighty alliance as the drying up of the Martian seas had compelled
them to seek the comparatively few and always diminishing fertile
areas, and to defend themselves, under new conditions of life, against
the wild hordes of green men.

Ages of close relationship and intermarrying had resulted in the race
of red men, of which Dejah Thoris was a fair and beautiful daughter.
During the ages of hardships and incessant warring between their own
various races, as well as with the green men, and before they had
fitted themselves to the changed conditions, much of the high
civilization and many of the arts of the fair-haired Martians had
become lost; but the red race of today has reached a point where it
feels that it has made up in new discoveries and in a more practical
civilization for all that lies irretrievably buried with the ancient
Barsoomians, beneath the countless intervening ages.

These ancient Martians had been a highly cultivated and literary race,
but during the vicissitudes of those trying centuries of readjustment
to new conditions, not only did their advancement and production cease
entirely, but practically all their archives, records, and literature
were lost.

Dejah Thoris related many interesting facts and legends concerning this
lost race of noble and kindly people.  She said that the city in which
we were camping was supposed to have been a center of commerce and
culture known as Korad.  It had been built upon a beautiful, natural
harbor, landlocked by magnificent hills.  The little valley on the west
front of the city, she explained, was all that remained of the harbor,
while the pass through the hills to the old sea bottom had been the
channel through which the shipping passed up to the city's gates.

The shores of the ancient seas were dotted with just such cities, and
lesser ones, in diminishing numbers, were to be found converging toward
the center of the oceans, as the people had found it necessary to
follow the receding waters until necessity had forced upon them their
ultimate salvation, the so-called Martian canals.

We had been so engrossed in exploration of the building and in our
conversation that it was late in the afternoon before we realized it.
We were brought back to a realization of our present conditions by a
messenger bearing a summons from Lorquas Ptomel directing me to appear
before him forthwith.  Bidding Dejah Thoris and Sola farewell, and
commanding Woola to remain on guard, I hastened to the audience
chamber, where I found Lorquas Ptomel and Tars Tarkas seated upon the
rostrum.




CHAPTER XII

A PRISONER WITH POWER


As I entered and saluted, Lorquas Ptomel signaled me to advance, and,
fixing his great, hideous eyes upon me, addressed me thus:

"You have been with us a few days, yet during that time you have by
your prowess won a high position among us.  Be that as it may, you are
not one of us; you owe us no allegiance.

"Your position is a peculiar one," he continued; "you are a prisoner
and yet you give commands which must be obeyed; you are an alien and
yet you are a Tharkian chieftain; you are a midget and yet you can kill
a mighty warrior with one blow of your fist.  And now you are reported
to have been plotting to escape with another prisoner of another race;
a prisoner who, from her own admission, half believes you are returned
from the valley of Dor.  Either one of these accusations, if proved,
would be sufficient grounds for your execution, but we are a just
people and you shall have a trial on our return to Thark, if Tal Hajus
so commands.

"But," he continued, in his fierce guttural tones, "if you run off with
the red girl it is I who shall have to account to Tal Hajus; it is I
who shall have to face Tars Tarkas, and either demonstrate my right to
command, or the metal from my dead carcass will go to a better man, for
such is the custom of the Tharks.

"I have no quarrel with Tars Tarkas; together we rule supreme the
greatest of the lesser communities among the green men; we do not wish
to fight between ourselves; and so if you were dead, John Carter, I
should be glad.  Under two conditions only, however, may you be killed
by us without orders from Tal Hajus; in personal combat in
self-defense, should you attack one of us, or were you apprehended in
an attempt to escape.

"As a matter of justice I must warn you that we only await one of these
two excuses for ridding ourselves of so great a responsibility.  The
safe delivery of the red girl to Tal Hajus is of the greatest
importance.  Not in a thousand years have the Tharks made such a
capture; she is the granddaughter of the greatest of the red jeddaks,
who is also our bitterest enemy.  I have spoken.  The red girl told us
that we were without the softer sentiments of humanity, but we are a
just and truthful race.  You may go."

Turning, I left the audience chamber.  So this was the beginning of
Sarkoja's persecution!  I knew that none other could be responsible for
this report which had reached the ears of Lorquas Ptomel so quickly,
and now I recalled those portions of our conversation which had touched
upon escape and upon my origin.

Sarkoja was at this time Tars Tarkas' oldest and most trusted female.
As such she was a mighty power behind the throne, for no warrior had
the confidence of Lorquas Ptomel to such an extent as did his ablest
lieutenant, Tars Tarkas.

However, instead of putting thoughts of possible escape from my mind,
my audience with Lorquas Ptomel only served to center my every faculty
on this subject.  Now, more than before, the absolute necessity for
escape, in so far as Dejah Thoris was concerned, was impressed upon me,
for I was convinced that some horrible fate awaited her at the
headquarters of Tal Hajus.

As described by Sola, this monster was the exaggerated personification
of all the ages of cruelty, ferocity, and brutality from which he had
descended.  Cold, cunning, calculating; he was, also, in marked
contrast to most of his fellows, a slave to that brute passion which
the waning demands for procreation upon their dying planet has almost
stilled in the Martian breast.

The thought that the divine Dejah Thoris might fall into the clutches
of such an abysmal atavism started the cold sweat upon me.  Far better
that we save friendly bullets for ourselves at the last moment, as did
those brave frontier women of my lost land, who took their own lives
rather than fall into the hands of the Indian braves.

As I wandered about the plaza lost in my gloomy forebodings Tars Tarkas
approached me on his way from the audience chamber.  His demeanor
toward me was unchanged, and he greeted me as though we had not just
parted a few moments before.

"Where are your quarters, John Carter?" he asked.

"I have selected none," I replied.  "It seemed best that I quartered
either by myself or among the other warriors, and I was awaiting an
opportunity to ask your advice.  As you know," and I smiled, "I am not
yet familiar with all the customs of the Tharks."

"Come with me," he directed, and together we moved off across the plaza
to a building which I was glad to see adjoined that occupied by Sola
and her charges.

"My quarters are on the first floor of this building," he said, "and
the second floor also is fully occupied by warriors, but the third
floor and the floors above are vacant; you may take your choice of
these.

"I understand," he continued, "that you have given up your woman to the
red prisoner.  Well, as you have said, your ways are not our ways, but
you can fight well enough to do about as you please, and so, if you
wish to give your woman to a captive, it is your own affair; but as a
chieftain you should have those to serve you, and in accordance with
our customs you may select any or all the females from the retinues of
the chieftains whose metal you now wear."

I thanked him, but assured him that I could get along very nicely
without assistance except in the matter of preparing food, and so he
promised to send women to me for this purpose and also for the care of
my arms and the manufacture of my ammunition, which he said would be
necessary.  I suggested that they might also bring some of the sleeping
silks and furs which belonged to me as spoils of combat, for the nights
were cold and I had none of my own.

He promised to do so, and departed.  Left alone, I ascended the winding
corridor to the upper floors in search of suitable quarters.  The
beauties of the other buildings were repeated in this, and, as usual, I
was soon lost in a tour of investigation and discovery.

I finally chose a front room on the third floor, because this brought
me nearer to Dejah Thoris, whose apartment was on the second floor of
the adjoining building, and it flashed upon me that I could rig up some
means of communication whereby she might signal me in case she needed
either my services or my protection.

Adjoining my sleeping apartment were baths, dressing rooms, and other
sleeping and living apartments, in all some ten rooms on this floor.
The windows of the back rooms overlooked an enormous court, which
formed the center of the square made by the buildings which faced the
four contiguous streets, and which was now given over to the quartering
of the various animals belonging to the warriors occupying the
adjoining buildings.

While the court was entirely overgrown with the yellow, moss-like
vegetation which blankets practically the entire surface of Mars, yet
numerous fountains, statuary, benches, and pergola-like contraptions
bore witness to the beauty which the court must have presented in
bygone times, when graced by the fair-haired, laughing people whom
stern and unalterable cosmic laws had driven not only from their homes,
but from all except the vague legends of their descendants.

One could easily picture the gorgeous foliage of the luxuriant Martian
vegetation which once filled this scene with life and color; the
graceful figures of the beautiful women, the straight and handsome men;
the happy frolicking children--all sunlight, happiness and peace.  It
was difficult to realize that they had gone; down through ages of
darkness, cruelty, and ignorance, until their hereditary instincts of
culture and humanitarianism had risen ascendant once more in the final
composite race which now is dominant upon Mars.

My thoughts were cut short by the advent of several young females
bearing loads of weapons, silks, furs, jewels, cooking utensils, and
casks of food and drink, including considerable loot from the air
craft.  All this, it seemed, had been the property of the two
chieftains I had slain, and now, by the customs of the Tharks, it had
become mine.  At my direction they placed the stuff in one of the back
rooms, and then departed, only to return with a second load, which they
advised me constituted the balance of my goods.  On the second trip
they were accompanied by ten or fifteen other women and youths, who, it
seemed, formed the retinues of the two chieftains.

They were not their families, nor their wives, nor their servants; the
relationship was peculiar, and so unlike anything known to us that it
is most difficult to describe.  All property among the green Martians
is owned in common by the community, except the personal weapons,
ornaments and sleeping silks and furs of the individuals.  These alone
can one claim undisputed right to, nor may he accumulate more of these
than are required for his actual needs.  The surplus he holds merely as
custodian, and it is passed on to the younger members of the community
as necessity demands.

The women and children of a man's retinue may be likened to a military
unit for which he is responsible in various ways, as in matters of
instruction, discipline, sustenance, and the exigencies of their
continual roamings and their unending strife with other communities and
with the red Martians.  His women are in no sense wives.  The green
Martians use no word corresponding in meaning with this earthly word.
Their mating is a matter of community interest solely, and is directed
without reference to natural selection.  The council of chieftains of
each community control the matter as surely as the owner of a Kentucky
racing stud directs the scientific breeding of his stock for the
improvement of the whole.

In theory it may sound well, as is often the case with theories, but
the results of ages of this unnatural practice, coupled with the
community interest in the offspring being held paramount to that of the
mother, is shown in the cold, cruel creatures, and their gloomy,
loveless, mirthless existence.

It is true that the green Martians are absolutely virtuous, both men
and women, with the exception of such degenerates as Tal Hajus; but
better far a finer balance of human characteristics even at the expense
of a slight and occasional loss of chastity.

Finding that I must assume responsibility for these creatures, whether
I would or not, I made the best of it and directed them to find
quarters on the upper floors, leaving the third floor to me.  One of
the girls I charged with the duties of my simple cuisine, and directed
the others to take up the various activities which had formerly
constituted their vocations.  Thereafter I saw little of them, nor did
I care to.




CHAPTER XIII

LOVE-MAKING ON MARS


Following the battle with the air ships, the community remained within
the city for several days, abandoning the homeward march until they
could feel reasonably assured that the ships would not return; for to
be caught on the open plains with a cavalcade of chariots and children
was far from the desire of even so warlike a people as the green
Martians.

During our period of inactivity, Tars Tarkas had instructed me in many
of the customs and arts of war familiar to the Tharks, including
lessons in riding and guiding the great beasts which bore the warriors.
These creatures, which are known as thoats, are as dangerous and
vicious as their masters, but when once subdued are sufficiently
tractable for the purposes of the green Martians.

Two of these animals had fallen to me from the warriors whose metal I
wore, and in a short time I could handle them quite as well as the
native warriors.  The method was not at all complicated.  If the thoats
did not respond with sufficient celerity to the telepathic instructions
of their riders they were dealt a terrific blow between the ears with
the butt of a pistol, and if they showed fight this treatment was
continued until the brutes either were subdued, or had unseated their
riders.

In the latter case it became a life and death struggle between the man
and the beast.  If the former were quick enough with his pistol he
might live to ride again, though upon some other beast; if not, his
torn and mangled body was gathered up by his women and burned in
accordance with Tharkian custom.

My experience with Woola determined me to attempt the experiment of
kindness in my treatment of my thoats.  First I taught them that they
could not unseat me, and even rapped them sharply between the ears to
impress upon them my authority and mastery.  Then, by degrees, I won
their confidence in much the same manner as I had adopted countless
times with my many mundane mounts.  I was ever a good hand with
animals, and by inclination, as well as because it brought more lasting
and satisfactory results, I was always kind and humane in my dealings
with the lower orders.  I could take a human life, if necessary, with
far less compunction than that of a poor, unreasoning, irresponsible
brute.

In the course of a few days my thoats were the wonder of the entire
community.  They would follow me like dogs, rubbing their great snouts
against my body in awkward evidence of affection, and respond to my
every command with an alacrity and docility which caused the Martian
warriors to ascribe to me the possession of some earthly power unknown
on Mars.

"How have you bewitched them?" asked Tars Tarkas one afternoon, when he
had seen me run my arm far between the great jaws of one of my thoats
which had wedged a piece of stone between two of his teeth while
feeding upon the moss-like vegetation within our court yard.

"By kindness," I replied.  "You see, Tars Tarkas, the softer sentiments
have their value, even to a warrior.  In the height of battle as well
as upon the march I know that my thoats will obey my every command, and
therefore my fighting efficiency is enhanced, and I am a better warrior
for the reason that I am a kind master.  Your other warriors would find
it to the advantage of themselves as well as of the community to adopt
my methods in this respect.  Only a few days since you, yourself, told
me that these great brutes, by the uncertainty of their tempers, often
were the means of turning victory into defeat, since, at a crucial
moment, they might elect to unseat and rend their riders."

"Show me how you accomplish these results," was Tars Tarkas' only
rejoinder.

And so I explained as carefully as I could the entire method of
training I had adopted with my beasts, and later he had me repeat it
before Lorquas Ptomel and the assembled warriors.  That moment marked
the beginning of a new existence for the poor thoats, and before I left
the community of Lorquas Ptomel I had the satisfaction of observing a
regiment of as tractable and docile mounts as one might care to see.
The effect on the precision and celerity of the military movements was
so remarkable that Lorquas Ptomel presented me with a massive anklet of
gold from his own leg, as a sign of his appreciation of my service to
the horde.

On the seventh day following the battle with the air craft we again
took up the march toward Thark, all probability of another attack being
deemed remote by Lorquas Ptomel.

During the days just preceding our departure I had seen but little of
Dejah Thoris, as I had been kept very busy by Tars Tarkas with my
lessons in the art of Martian warfare, as well as in the training of my
thoats.  The few times I had visited her quarters she had been absent,
walking upon the streets with Sola, or investigating the buildings in
the near vicinity of the plaza.  I had warned them against venturing
far from the plaza for fear of the great white apes, whose ferocity I
was only too well acquainted with.  However, since Woola accompanied
them on all their excursions, and as Sola was well armed, there was
comparatively little cause for fear.

On the evening before our departure I saw them approaching along one of
the great avenues which lead into the plaza from the east.  I advanced
to meet them, and telling Sola that I would take the responsibility for
Dejah Thoris' safekeeping, I directed her to return to her quarters on
some trivial errand.  I liked and trusted Sola, but for some reason I
desired to be alone with Dejah Thoris, who represented to me all that I
had left behind upon Earth in agreeable and congenial companionship.
There seemed bonds of mutual interest between us as powerful as though
we had been born under the same roof rather than upon different
planets, hurtling through space some forty-eight million miles apart.

That she shared my sentiments in this respect I was positive, for on my
approach the look of pitiful hopelessness left her sweet countenance to
be replaced by a smile of joyful welcome, as she placed her little
right hand upon my left shoulder in true red Martian salute.

"Sarkoja told Sola that you had become a true Thark," she said, "and
that I would now see no more of you than of any of the other warriors."

"Sarkoja is a liar of the first magnitude," I replied, "notwithstanding
the proud claim of the Tharks to absolute verity."

Dejah Thoris laughed.

"I knew that even though you became a member of the community you would
not cease to be my friend; 'A warrior may change his metal, but not his
heart,' as the saying is upon Barsoom."

"I think they have been trying to keep us apart," she continued, "for
whenever you have been off duty one of the older women of Tars Tarkas'
retinue has always arranged to trump up some excuse to get Sola and me
out of sight.  They have had me down in the pits below the buildings
helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make their terrible
projectiles.  You know that these have to be manufactured by artificial
light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an explosion.  You
have noticed that their bullets explode when they strike an object?
Well, the opaque, outer coating is broken by the impact, exposing a
glass cylinder, almost solid, in the forward end of which is a minute
particle of radium powder.  The moment the sunlight, even though
diffused, strikes this powder it explodes with a violence which nothing
can withstand.  If you ever witness a night battle you will note the
absence of these explosions, while the morning following the battle
will be filled at sunrise with the sharp detonations of exploding
missiles fired the preceding night.  As a rule, however, non-exploding
projectiles are used at night."  [I have used the word radium in
describing this powder because in the light of recent discoveries on
Earth I believe it to be a mixture of which radium is the base.  In
Captain Carter's manuscript it is mentioned always by the name used in
the written language of Helium and is spelled in hieroglyphics which it
would be difficult and useless to reproduce.]

While I was much interested in Dejah Thoris' explanation of this
wonderful adjunct to Martian warfare, I was more concerned by the
immediate problem of their treatment of her.  That they were keeping
her away from me was not a matter for surprise, but that they should
subject her to dangerous and arduous labor filled me with rage.

"Have they ever subjected you to cruelty and ignominy, Dejah Thoris?" I
asked, feeling the hot blood of my fighting ancestors leap in my veins
as I awaited her reply.

"Only in little ways, John Carter," she answered.  "Nothing that can
harm me outside my pride.  They know that I am the daughter of ten
thousand jeddaks, that I trace my ancestry straight back without a
break to the builder of the first great waterway, and they, who do not
even know their own mothers, are jealous of me.  At heart they hate
their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for
everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can
attain.  Let us pity them, my chieftain, for even though we die at
their hands we can afford them pity, since we are greater than they and
they know it."

Had I known the significance of those words "my chieftain," as applied
by a red Martian woman to a man, I should have had the surprise of my
life, but I did not know at that time, nor for many months thereafter.
Yes, I still had much to learn upon Barsoom.

"I presume it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with
as good grace as possible, Dejah Thoris; but I hope, nevertheless, that
I may be present the next time that any Martian, green, red, pink, or
violet, has the temerity to even so much as frown on you, my princess."

Dejah Thoris caught her breath at my last words, and gazed upon me with
dilated eyes and quickening breath, and then, with an odd little laugh,
which brought roguish dimples to the corners of her mouth, she shook
her head and cried:

"What a child!  A great warrior and yet a stumbling little child."

"What have I done now?" I asked, in sore perplexity.

"Some day you shall know, John Carter, if we live; but I may not tell
you.  And I, the daughter of Mors Kajak, son of Tardos Mors, have
listened without anger," she soliloquized in conclusion.

Then she broke out again into one of her gay, happy, laughing moods;
joking with me on my prowess as a Thark warrior as contrasted with my
soft heart and natural kindliness.

"I presume that should you accidentally wound an enemy you would take
him home and nurse him back to health," she laughed.

"That is precisely what we do on Earth," I answered.  "At least among
civilized men."

This made her laugh again.  She could not understand it, for, with all
her tenderness and womanly sweetness, she was still a Martian, and to a
Martian the only good enemy is a dead enemy; for every dead foeman
means so much more to divide between those who live.

I was very curious to know what I had said or done to cause her so much
perturbation a moment before and so I continued to importune her to
enlighten me.

"No," she exclaimed, "it is enough that you have said it and that I
have listened.  And when you learn, John Carter, and if I be dead, as
likely I shall be ere the further moon has circled Barsoom another
twelve times, remember that I listened and that I--smiled."

It was all Greek to me, but the more I begged her to explain the more
positive became her denials of my request, and, so, in very
hopelessness, I desisted.

Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great
avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down
upon us out of her luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in
the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be so.

The chill of the Martian night was upon us, and removing my silks I
threw them across the shoulders of Dejah Thoris.  As my arm rested for
an instant upon her I felt a thrill pass through every fiber of my
being such as contact with no other mortal had even produced; and it
seemed to me that she had leaned slightly toward me, but of that I was
not sure.  Only I knew that as my arm rested there across her shoulders
longer than the act of adjusting the silk required she did not draw
away, nor did she speak.  And so, in silence, we walked the surface of
a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least had been born
that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.

I loved Dejah Thoris.  The touch of my arm upon her naked shoulder had
spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had loved
her since the first moment that my eyes had met hers that first time in
the plaza of the dead city of Korad.




CHAPTER XIV

A DUEL TO THE DEATH


My first impulse was to tell her of my love, and then I thought of the
helplessness of her position wherein I alone could lighten the burdens
of her captivity, and protect her in my poor way against the thousands
of hereditary enemies she must face upon our arrival at Thark.  I could
not chance causing her additional pain or sorrow by declaring a love
which, in all probability she did not return.  Should I be so
indiscreet, her position would be even more unbearable than now, and
the thought that she might feel that I was taking advantage of her
helplessness, to influence her decision was the final argument which
sealed my lips.

"Why are you so quiet, Dejah Thoris?" I asked.  "Possibly you would
rather return to Sola and your quarters."

"No," she murmured, "I am happy here.  I do not know why it is that I
should always be happy and contented when you, John Carter, a stranger,
are with me; yet at such times it seems that I am safe and that, with
you, I shall soon return to my father's court and feel his strong arms
about me and my mother's tears and kisses on my cheek."

"Do people kiss, then, upon Barsoom?" I asked, when she had explained
the word she used, in answer to my inquiry as to its meaning.

"Parents, brothers, and sisters, yes; and," she added in a low,
thoughtful tone, "lovers."

"And you, Dejah Thoris, have parents and brothers and sisters?"

"Yes."

"And a--lover?"

She was silent, nor could I venture to repeat the question.

"The man of Barsoom," she finally ventured, "does not ask personal
questions of women, except his mother, and the woman he has fought for
and won."

"But I have fought--" I started, and then I wished my tongue had been
cut from my mouth; for she turned even as I caught myself and ceased,
and drawing my silks from her shoulder she held them out to me, and
without a word, and with head held high, she moved with the carriage of
the queen she was toward the plaza and the doorway of her quarters.

I did not attempt to follow her, other than to see that she reached the
building in safety, but, directing Woola to accompany her, I turned
disconsolately and entered my own house.  I sat for hours cross-legged,
and cross-tempered, upon my silks meditating upon the queer freaks
chance plays upon us poor devils of mortals.

So this was love!  I had escaped it for all the years I had roamed the
five continents and their encircling seas; in spite of beautiful women
and urging opportunity; in spite of a half-desire for love and a
constant search for my ideal, it had remained for me to fall furiously
and hopelessly in love with a creature from another world, of a species
similar possibly, yet not identical with mine.  A woman who was hatched
from an egg, and whose span of life might cover a thousand years; whose
people had strange customs and ideas; a woman whose hopes, whose
pleasures, whose standards of virtue and of right and wrong might vary
as greatly from mine as did those of the green Martians.

Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the
greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise for
all the riches of Barsoom.  Such is love, and such are lovers wherever
love is known.

To me, Dejah Thoris was all that was perfect; all that was virtuous and
beautiful and noble and good.  I believed that from the bottom of my
heart, from the depth of my soul on that night in Korad as I sat
cross-legged upon my silks while the nearer moon of Barsoom raced
through the western sky toward the horizon, and lighted up the gold and
marble, and jeweled mosaics of my world-old chamber, and I believe it
today as I sit at my desk in the little study overlooking the Hudson.
Twenty years have intervened; for ten of them I lived and fought for
Dejah Thoris and her people, and for ten I have lived upon her memory.

The morning of our departure for Thark dawned clear and hot, as do all
Martian mornings except for the six weeks when the snow melts at the
poles.

I sought out Dejah Thoris in the throng of departing chariots, but she
turned her shoulder to me, and I could see the red blood mount to her
cheek.  With the foolish inconsistency of love I held my peace when I
might have plead ignorance of the nature of my offense, or at least the
gravity of it, and so have effected, at worst, a half conciliation.

[Illustration: I sought out Dejah Thoris in the throng of departing
chariots.]

My duty dictated that I must see that she was comfortable, and so I
glanced into her chariot and rearranged her silks and furs.  In doing
so I noted with horror that she was heavily chained by one ankle to the
side of the vehicle.

"What does this mean?" I cried, turning to Sola.

"Sarkoja thought it best," she answered, her face betokening her
disapproval of the procedure.

Examining the manacles I saw that they fastened with a massive spring
lock.

"Where is the key, Sola?  Let me have it."

"Sarkoja wears it, John Carter," she answered.

I turned without further word and sought out Tars Tarkas, to whom I
vehemently objected to the unnecessary humiliations and cruelties, as
they seemed to my lover's eyes, that were being heaped upon Dejah
Thoris.

"John Carter," he answered, "if ever you and Dejah Thoris escape the
Tharks it will be upon this journey.  We know that you will not go
without her.  You have shown yourself a mighty fighter, and we do not
wish to manacle you, so we hold you both in the easiest way that will
yet ensure security.  I have spoken."

I saw the strength of his reasoning at a flash, and knew that it were
futile to appeal from his decision, but I asked that the key be taken
from Sarkoja and that she be directed to leave the prisoner alone in
future.

"This much, Tars Tarkas, you may do for me in return for the friendship
that, I must confess, I feel for you."

"Friendship?" he replied.  "There is no such thing, John Carter; but
have your will.  I shall direct that Sarkoja cease to annoy the girl,
and I myself will take the custody of the key."

"Unless you wish me to assume the responsibility," I said, smiling.

He looked at me long and earnestly before he spoke.

"Were you to give me your word that neither you nor Dejah Thoris would
attempt to escape until after we have safely reached the court of Tal
Hajus you might have the key and throw the chains into the river Iss."

"It were better that you held the key, Tars Tarkas," I replied

He smiled, and said no more, but that night as we were making camp I
saw him unfasten Dejah Thoris' fetters himself.

With all his cruel ferocity and coldness there was an undercurrent of
something in Tars Tarkas which he seemed ever battling to subdue.
Could it be a vestige of some human instinct come back from an ancient
forbear to haunt him with the horror of his people's ways!

As I was approaching Dejah Thoris' chariot I passed Sarkoja, and the
black, venomous look she accorded me was the sweetest balm I had felt
for many hours.  Lord, how she hated me!  It bristled from her so
palpably that one might almost have cut it with a sword.

A few moments later I saw her deep in conversation with a warrior named
Zad; a big, hulking, powerful brute, but one who had never made a kill
among his own chieftains, and so was still as an _o mad_, or man with
one name; he could win a second name only with the metal of some
chieftain.  It was this custom which entitled me to the names of either
of the chieftains I had killed; in fact, some of the warriors addressed
me as Dotar Sojat, a combination of the surnames of the two warrior
chieftains whose metal I had taken, or, in other words, whom I had
slain in fair fight.

As Sarkoja talked with Zad he cast occasional glances in my direction,
while she seemed to be urging him very strongly to some action.  I paid
little attention to it at the time, but the next day I had good reason
to recall the circumstances, and at the same time gain a slight insight
into the depths of Sarkoja's hatred and the lengths to which she was
capable of going to wreak her horrid vengeance on me.

Dejah Thoris would have none of me again on this evening, and though I
spoke her name she neither replied, nor conceded by so much as the
flutter of an eyelid that she realized my existence.  In my extremity I
did what most other lovers would have done; I sought word from her
through an intimate.  In this instance it was Sola whom I intercepted
in another part of camp.

"What is the matter with Dejah Thoris?" I blurted out at her.  "Why
will she not speak to me?"

Sola seemed puzzled herself, as though such strange actions on the part
of two humans were quite beyond her, as indeed they were, poor child.

"She says you have angered her, and that is all she will say, except
that she is the daughter of a jed and the granddaughter of a jeddak and
she has been humiliated by a creature who could not polish the teeth of
her grandmother's sorak."

I pondered over this report for some time, finally asking, "What might
a sorak be, Sola?"

"A little animal about as big as my hand, which the red Martian women
keep to play with," explained Sola.

Not fit to polish the teeth of her grandmother's cat!  I must rank
pretty low in the consideration of Dejah Thoris, I thought; but I could
not help laughing at the strange figure of speech, so homely and in
this respect so earthly.  It made me homesick, for it sounded very much
like "not fit to polish her shoes."  And then commenced a train of
thought quite new to me.  I began to wonder what my people at home were
doing.  I had not seen them for years.  There was a family of Carters
in Virginia who claimed close relationship with me; I was supposed to
be a great uncle, or something of the kind equally foolish.  I could
pass anywhere for twenty-five to thirty years of age, and to be a great
uncle always seemed the height of incongruity, for my thoughts and
feelings were those of a boy.  There were two little kiddies in the
Carter family whom I had loved and who had thought there was no one on
Earth like Uncle Jack; I could see them just as plainly, as I stood
there under the moonlit skies of Barsoom, and I longed for them as I
had never longed for any mortals before.  By nature a wanderer, I had
never known the true meaning of the word home, but the great hall of
the Carters had always stood for all that the word did mean to me, and
now my heart turned toward it from the cold and unfriendly peoples I
had been thrown amongst.  For did not even Dejah Thoris despise me!  I
was a low creature, so low in fact that I was not even fit to polish
the teeth of her grandmother's cat; and then my saving sense of humor
came to my rescue, and laughing I turned into my silks and furs and
slept upon the moon-haunted ground the sleep of a tired and healthy
fighting man.

We broke camp the next day at an early hour and marched with only a
single halt until just before dark.  Two incidents broke the
tediousness of the march.  About noon we espied far to our right what
was evidently an incubator, and Lorquas Ptomel directed Tars Tarkas to
investigate it.  The latter took a dozen warriors, including myself,
and we raced across the velvety carpeting of moss to the little
enclosure.

It was indeed an incubator, but the eggs were very small in comparison
with those I had seen hatching in ours at the time of my arrival on
Mars.

Tars Tarkas dismounted and examined the enclosure minutely, finally
announcing that it belonged to the green men of Warhoon and that the
cement was scarcely dry where it had been walled up.

"They cannot be a day's march ahead of us," he exclaimed, the light of
battle leaping to his fierce face.

The work at the incubator was short indeed.  The warriors tore open the
entrance and a couple of them, crawling in, soon demolished all the
eggs with their short-swords.  Then remounting we dashed back to join
the cavalcade.  During the ride I took occasion to ask Tars Tarkas if
these Warhoons whose eggs we had destroyed were a smaller people than
his Tharks.

"I noticed that their eggs were so much smaller than those I saw
hatching in your incubator," I added.

He explained that the eggs had just been placed there; but, like all
green Martian eggs, they would grow during the five-year period of
incubation until they obtained the size of those I had seen hatching on
the day of my arrival on Barsoom.  This was indeed an interesting piece
of information, for it had always seemed remarkable to me that the
green Martian women, large as they were, could bring forth such
enormous eggs as I had seen the four-foot infants emerging from.  As a
matter of fact, the new-laid egg is but little larger than an ordinary
goose egg, and as it does not commence to grow until subjected to the
light of the sun the chieftains have little difficulty in transporting
several hundreds of them at one time from the storage vaults to the
incubators.

Shortly after the incident of the Warhoon eggs we halted to rest the
animals, and it was during this halt that the second of the day's
interesting episodes occurred.  I was engaged in changing my riding
cloths from one of my thoats to the other, for I divided the day's work
between them, when Zad approached me, and without a word struck my
animal a terrific blow with his long-sword.

I did not need a manual of green Martian etiquette to know what reply
to make, for, in fact, I was so wild with anger that I could scarcely
refrain from drawing my pistol and shooting him down for the brute he
was; but he stood waiting with drawn long-sword, and my only choice was
to draw my own and meet him in fair fight with his choice of weapons or
a lesser one.

This latter alternative is always permissible, therefore I could have
used my short-sword, my dagger, my hatchet, or my fists had I wished,
and been entirely within my rights, but I could not use firearms or a
spear while he held only his long-sword.

I chose the same weapon he had drawn because I knew he prided himself
upon his ability with it, and I wished, if I worsted him at all, to do
it with his own weapon.  The fight that followed was a long one and
delayed the resumption of the march for an hour.  The entire community
surrounded us, leaving a clear space about one hundred feet in diameter
for our battle.

Zad first attempted to rush me down as a bull might a wolf, but I was
much too quick for him, and each time I side-stepped his rushes he
would go lunging past me, only to receive a nick from my sword upon his
arm or back.  He was soon streaming blood from a half dozen minor
wounds, but I could not obtain an opening to deliver an effective
thrust.  Then he changed his tactics, and fighting warily and with
extreme dexterity, he tried to do by science what he was unable to do
by brute strength.  I must admit that he was a magnificent swordsman,
and had it not been for my greater endurance and the remarkable agility
the lesser gravitation of Mars lent me I might not have been able to
put up the creditable fight I did against him.

We circled for some time without doing much damage on either side; the
long, straight, needle-like swords flashing in the sunlight, and
ringing out upon the stillness as they crashed together with each
effective parry.  Finally Zad, realizing that he was tiring more than
I, evidently decided to close in and end the battle in a final blaze of
glory for himself; just as he rushed me a blinding flash of light
struck full in my eyes, so that I could not see his approach and could
only leap blindly to one side in an effort to escape the mighty blade
that it seemed I could already feel in my vitals.  I was only partially
successful, as a sharp pain in my left shoulder attested, but in the
sweep of my glance as I sought to again locate my adversary, a sight
met my astonished gaze which paid me well for the wound the temporary
blindness had caused me.  There, upon Dejah Thoris' chariot stood three
figures, for the purpose evidently of witnessing the encounter above
the heads of the intervening Tharks.  There were Dejah Thoris, Sola,
and Sarkoja, and as my fleeting glance swept over them a little tableau
was presented which will stand graven in my memory to the day of my
death.

As I looked, Dejah Thoris turned upon Sarkoja with the fury of a young
tigress and struck something from her upraised hand; something which
flashed in the sunlight as it spun to the ground.  Then I knew what had
blinded me at that crucial moment of the fight, and how Sarkoja had
found a way to kill me without herself delivering the final thrust.
Another thing I saw, too, which almost lost my life for me then and
there, for it took my mind for the fraction of an instant entirely from
my antagonist; for, as Dejah Thoris struck the tiny mirror from her
hand, Sarkoja, her face livid with hatred and baffled rage, whipped out
her dagger and aimed a terrific blow at Dejah Thoris; and then Sola,
our dear and faithful Sola, sprang between them; the last I saw was the
great knife descending upon her shielding breast.

My enemy had recovered from his thrust and was making it extremely
interesting for me, so I reluctantly gave my attention to the work in
hand, but my mind was not upon the battle.

We rushed each other furiously time after time, 'til suddenly, feeling
the sharp point of his sword at my breast in a thrust I could neither
parry nor escape, I threw myself upon him with outstretched sword and
with all the weight of my body, determined that I would not die alone
if I could prevent it.  I felt the steel tear into my chest, all went
black before me, my head whirled in dizziness, and I felt my knees
giving beneath me.




CHAPTER XV

SOLA TELLS ME HER STORY


When consciousness returned, and, as I soon learned, I was down but a
moment, I sprang quickly to my feet searching for my sword, and there I
found it, buried to the hilt in the green breast of Zad, who lay stone
dead upon the ochre moss of the ancient sea bottom.  As I regained my
full senses I found his weapon piercing my left breast, but only
through the flesh and muscles which cover my ribs, entering near the
center of my chest and coming out below the shoulder.  As I had lunged
I had turned so that his sword merely passed beneath the muscles,
inflicting a painful but not dangerous wound.

Removing the blade from my body I also regained my own, and turning my
back upon his ugly carcass, I moved, sick, sore, and disgusted, toward
the chariots which bore my retinue and my belongings.  A murmur of
Martian applause greeted me, but I cared not for it.

Bleeding and weak I reached my women, who, accustomed to such
happenings, dressed my wounds, applying the wonderful healing and
remedial agents which make only the most instantaneous of death blows
fatal.  Give a Martian woman a chance and death must take a back seat.
They soon had me patched up so that, except for weakness from loss of
blood and a little soreness around the wound, I suffered no great
distress from this thrust which, under earthly treatment, undoubtedly
would have put me flat on my back for days.

As soon as they were through with me I hastened to the chariot of Dejah
Thoris, where I found my poor Sola with her chest swathed in bandages,
but apparently little the worse for her encounter with Sarkoja, whose
dagger it seemed had struck the edge of one of Sola's metal breast
ornaments and, thus deflected, had inflicted but a slight flesh wound.

As I approached I found Dejah Thoris lying prone upon her silks and
furs, her lithe form wracked with sobs.  She did not notice my
presence, nor did she hear me speaking with Sola, who was standing a
short distance from the vehicle.

"Is she injured?" I asked of Sola, indicating Dejah Thoris by an
inclination of my head.

"No," she answered, "she thinks that you are dead."

"And that her grandmother's cat may now have no one to polish its
teeth?" I queried, smiling.

"I think you wrong her, John Carter," said Sola.  "I do not understand
either her ways or yours, but I am sure the granddaughter of ten
thousand jeddaks would never grieve like this over any who held but the
highest claim upon her affections.  They are a proud race, but they are
just, as are all Barsoomians, and you must have hurt or wronged her
grievously that she will not admit your existence living, though she
mourns you dead.

"Tears are a strange sight upon Barsoom," she continued, "and so it is
difficult for me to interpret them.  I have seen but two people weep in
all my life, other than Dejah Thoris; one wept from sorrow, the other
from baffled rage.  The first was my mother, years ago before they
killed her; the other was Sarkoja, when they dragged her from me today."

"Your mother!" I exclaimed, "but, Sola, you could not have known your
mother, child."

"But I did.  And my father also," she added.  "If you would like to
hear the strange and un-Barsoomian story come to the chariot tonight,
John Carter, and I will tell you that of which I have never spoken in
all my life before.  And now the signal has been given to resume the
march, you must go."

"I will come tonight, Sola," I promised.  "Be sure to tell Dejah Thoris
I am alive and well.  I shall not force myself upon her, and be sure
that you do not let her know I saw her tears.  If she would speak with
me I but await her command."

Sola mounted the chariot, which was swinging into its place in line,
and I hastened to my waiting thoat and galloped to my station beside
Tars Tarkas at the rear of the column.

We made a most imposing and awe-inspiring spectacle as we strung out
across the yellow landscape; the two hundred and fifty ornate and
brightly colored chariots, preceded by an advance guard of some two
hundred mounted warriors and chieftains riding five abreast and one
hundred yards apart, and followed by a like number in the same
formation, with a score or more of flankers on either side; the fifty
extra mastodons, or heavy draught animals, known as zitidars, and the
five or six hundred extra thoats of the warriors running loose within
the hollow square formed by the surrounding warriors.  The gleaming
metal and jewels of the gorgeous ornaments of the men and women,
duplicated in the trappings of the zitidars and thoats, and
interspersed with the flashing colors of magnificent silks and furs and
feathers, lent a barbaric splendor to the caravan which would have
turned an East Indian potentate green with envy.

The enormous broad tires of the chariots and the padded feet of the
animals brought forth no sound from the moss-covered sea bottom; and so
we moved in utter silence, like some huge phantasmagoria, except when
the stillness was broken by the guttural growling of a goaded zitidar,
or the squealing of fighting thoats.  The green Martians converse but
little, and then usually in monosyllables, low and like the faint
rumbling of distant thunder.

We traversed a trackless waste of moss which, bending to the pressure
of broad tire or padded foot, rose up again behind us, leaving no sign
that we had passed.  We might indeed have been the wraiths of the
departed dead upon the dead sea of that dying planet for all the sound
or sign we made in passing.  It was the first march of a large body of
men and animals I had ever witnessed which raised no dust and left no
spoor; for there is no dust upon Mars except in the cultivated
districts during the winter months, and even then the absence of high
winds renders it almost unnoticeable.

We camped that night at the foot of the hills we had been approaching
for two days and which marked the southern boundary of this particular
sea.  Our animals had been two days without drink, nor had they had
water for nearly two months, not since shortly after leaving Thark;
but, as Tars Tarkas explained to me, they require but little and can
live almost indefinitely upon the moss which covers Barsoom, and which,
he told me, holds in its tiny stems sufficient moisture to meet the
limited demands of the animals.

After partaking of my evening meal of cheese-like food and vegetable
milk I sought out Sola, whom I found working by the light of a torch
upon some of Tars Tarkas' trappings.  She looked up at my approach, her
face lighting with pleasure and with welcome.

"I am glad you came," she said; "Dejah Thoris sleeps and I am lonely.
Mine own people do not care for me, John Carter; I am too unlike them.
It is a sad fate, since I must live my life amongst them, and I often
wish that I were a true green Martian woman, without love and without
hope; but I have known love and so I am lost.

"I promised to tell you my story, or rather the story of my parents.
From what I have learned of you and the ways of your people I am sure
that the tale will not seem strange to you, but among green Martians it
has no parallel within the memory of the oldest living Thark, nor do
our legends hold many similar tales.

"My mother was rather small, in fact too small to be allowed the
responsibilities of maternity, as our chieftains breed principally for
size.  She was also less cold and cruel than most green Martian women,
and caring little for their society, she often roamed the deserted
avenues of Thark alone, or went and sat among the wild flowers that
deck the nearby hills, thinking thoughts and wishing wishes which I
believe I alone among Tharkian women today may understand, for am I not
the child of my mother?

"And there among the hills she met a young warrior, whose duty it was
to guard the feeding zitidars and thoats and see that they roamed not
beyond the hills.  They spoke at first only of such things as interest
a community of Tharks, but gradually, as they came to meet more often,
and, as was now quite evident to both, no longer by chance, they talked
about themselves, their likes, their ambitions and their hopes.  She
trusted him and told him of the awful repugnance she felt for the
cruelties of their kind, for the hideous, loveless lives they must ever
lead, and then she waited for the storm of denunciation to break from
his cold, hard lips; but instead he took her in his arms and kissed her.

"They kept their love a secret for six long years.  She, my mother, was
of the retinue of the great Tal Hajus, while her lover was a simple
warrior, wearing only his own metal.  Had their defection from the
traditions of the Tharks been discovered both would have paid the
penalty in the great arena before Tal Hajus and the assembled hordes.

"The egg from which I came was hidden beneath a great glass vessel upon
the highest and most inaccessible of the partially ruined towers of
ancient Thark.  Once each year my mother visited it for the five long
years it lay there in the process of incubation.  She dared not come
oftener, for in the mighty guilt of her conscience she feared that her
every move was watched.  During this period my father gained great
distinction as a warrior and had taken the metal from several
chieftains.  His love for my mother had never diminished, and his own
ambition in life was to reach a point where he might wrest the metal
from Tal Hajus himself, and thus, as ruler of the Tharks, be free to
claim her as his own, as well as, by the might of his power, protect
the child which otherwise would be quickly dispatched should the truth
become known.

"It was a wild dream, that of wresting the metal from Tal Hajus in five
short years, but his advance was rapid, and he soon stood high in the
councils of Thark.  But one day the chance was lost forever, in so far
as it could come in time to save his loved ones, for he was ordered
away upon a long expedition to the ice-clad south, to make war upon the
natives there and despoil them of their furs, for such is the manner of
the green Barsoomian; he does not labor for what he can wrest in battle
from others.

"He was gone for four years, and when he returned all had been over for
three; for about a year after his departure, and shortly before the
time for the return of an expedition which had gone forth to fetch the
fruits of a community incubator, the egg had hatched.  Thereafter my
mother continued to keep me in the old tower, visiting me nightly and
lavishing upon me the love the community life would have robbed us both
of.  She hoped, upon the return of the expedition from the incubator,
to mix me with the other young assigned to the quarters of Tal Hajus,
and thus escape the fate which would surely follow discovery of her sin
against the ancient traditions of the green men.

"She taught me rapidly the language and customs of my kind, and one
night she told me the story I have told to you up to this point,
impressing upon me the necessity for absolute secrecy and the great
caution I must exercise after she had placed me with the other young
Tharks to permit no one to guess that I was further advanced in
education than they, nor by any sign to divulge in the presence of
others my affection for her, or my knowledge of my parentage; and then
drawing me close to her she whispered in my ear the name of my father.

"And then a light flashed out upon the darkness of the tower chamber,
and there stood Sarkoja, her gleaming, baleful eyes fixed in a frenzy
of loathing and contempt upon my mother.  The torrent of hatred and
abuse she poured out upon her turned my young heart cold in terror.
That she had heard the entire story was apparent, and that she had
suspected something wrong from my mother's long nightly absences from
her quarters accounted for her presence there on that fateful night.

"One thing she had not heard, nor did she know, the whispered name of
my father.  This was apparent from her repeated demands upon my mother
to disclose the name of her partner in sin, but no amount of abuse or
threats could wring this from her, and to save me from needless torture
she lied, for she told Sarkoja that she alone knew nor would she even
tell her child.

"With final imprecations, Sarkoja hastened away to Tal Hajus to report
her discovery, and while she was gone my mother, wrapping me in the
silks and furs of her night coverings, so that I was scarcely
noticeable, descended to the streets and ran wildly away toward the
outskirts of the city, in the direction which led to the far south, out
toward the man whose protection she might not claim, but on whose face
she wished to look once more before she died.

"As we neared the city's southern extremity a sound came to us from
across the mossy flat, from the direction of the only pass through the
hills which led to the gates, the pass by which caravans from either
north or south or east or west would enter the city.  The sounds we
heard were the squealing of thoats and the grumbling of zitidars, with
the occasional clank of arms which announced the approach of a body of
warriors.  The thought uppermost in her mind was that it was my father
returned from his expedition, but the cunning of the Thark held her
from headlong and precipitate flight to greet him.

"Retreating into the shadows of a doorway she awaited the coming of the
cavalcade which shortly entered the avenue, breaking its formation and
thronging the thoroughfare from wall to wall.  As the head of the
procession passed us the lesser moon swung clear of the overhanging
roofs and lit up the scene with all the brilliancy of her wondrous
light.  My mother shrank further back into the friendly shadows, and
from her hiding place saw that the expedition was not that of my
father, but the returning caravan bearing the young Tharks.  Instantly
her plan was formed, and as a great chariot swung close to our hiding
place she slipped stealthily in upon the trailing tailboard, crouching
low in the shadow of the high side, straining me to her bosom in a
frenzy of love.

"She knew, what I did not, that never again after that night would she
hold me to her breast, nor was it likely we would ever look upon each
other's face again.  In the confusion of the plaza she mixed me with
the other children, whose guardians during the journey were now free to
relinquish their responsibility.  We were herded together into a great
room, fed by women who had not accompanied the expedition, and the next
day we were parceled out among the retinues of the chieftains.

"I never saw my mother after that night.  She was imprisoned by Tal
Hajus, and every effort, including the most horrible and shameful
torture, was brought to bear upon her to wring from her lips the name
of my father; but she remained steadfast and loyal, dying at last
amidst the laughter of Tal Hajus and his chieftains during some awful
torture she was undergoing.

"I learned afterwards that she told them that she had killed me to save
me from a like fate at their hands, and that she had thrown my body to
the white apes.  Sarkoja alone disbelieved her, and I feel to this day
that she suspects my true origin, but does not dare expose me, at the
present, at all events, because she also guesses, I am sure, the
identity of my father.

"When he returned from his expedition and learned the story of my
mother's fate I was present as Tal Hajus told him; but never by the
quiver of a muscle did he betray the slightest emotion; only he did not
laugh as Tal Hajus gleefully described her death struggles.  From that
moment on he was the cruelest of the cruel, and I am awaiting the day
when he shall win the goal of his ambition, and feel the carcass of Tal
Hajus beneath his foot, for I am as sure that he but waits the
opportunity to wreak a terrible vengeance, and that his great love is
as strong in his breast as when it first transfigured him nearly forty
years ago, as I am that we sit here upon the edge of a world-old ocean
while sensible people sleep, John Carter."

"And your father, Sola, is he with us now?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, "but he does not know me for what I am, nor does he
know who betrayed my mother to Tal Hajus.  I alone know my father's
name, and only I and Tal Hajus and Sarkoja know that it was she who
carried the tale that brought death and torture upon her he loved."

We sat silent for a few moments, she wrapped in the gloomy thoughts of
her terrible past, and I in pity for the poor creatures whom the
heartless, senseless customs of their race had doomed to loveless lives
of cruelty and of hate.  Presently she spoke.

"John Carter, if ever a real man walked the cold, dead bosom of Barsoom
you are one.  I know that I can trust you, and because the knowledge
may someday help you or him or Dejah Thoris or myself, I am going to
tell you the name of my father, nor place any restrictions or
conditions upon your tongue.  When the time comes, speak the truth if
it seems best to you.  I trust you because I know that you are not
cursed with the terrible trait of absolute and unswerving truthfulness,
that you could lie like one of your own Virginia gentlemen if a lie
would save others from sorrow or suffering.  My father's name is Tars
Tarkas."




CHAPTER XVI

WE PLAN ESCAPE


The remainder of our journey to Thark was uneventful.  We were twenty
days upon the road, crossing two sea bottoms and passing through or
around a number of ruined cities, mostly smaller than Korad.  Twice we
crossed the famous Martian waterways, or canals, so-called by our
earthly astronomers.  When we approached these points a warrior would
be sent far ahead with a powerful field glass, and if no great body of
red Martian troops was in sight we would advance as close as possible
without chance of being seen and then camp until dark, when we would
slowly approach the cultivated tract, and, locating one of the
numerous, broad highways which cross these areas at regular intervals,
creep silently and stealthily across to the arid lands upon the other
side.  It required five hours to make one of these crossings without a
single halt, and the other consumed the entire night, so that we were
just leaving the confines of the high-walled fields when the sun broke
out upon us.

Crossing in the darkness, as we did, I was unable to see but little,
except as the nearer moon, in her wild and ceaseless hurtling through
the Barsoomian heavens, lit up little patches of the landscape from
time to time, disclosing walled fields and low, rambling buildings,
presenting much the appearance of earthly farms.  There were many
trees, methodically arranged, and some of them were of enormous height;
there were animals in some of the enclosures, and they announced their
presence by terrified squealings and snortings as they scented our
queer, wild beasts and wilder human beings.

Only once did I perceive a human being, and that was at the
intersection of our crossroad with the wide, white turnpike which cuts
each cultivated district longitudinally at its exact center.  The
fellow must have been sleeping beside the road, for, as I came abreast
of him, he raised upon one elbow and after a single glance at the
approaching caravan leaped shrieking to his feet and fled madly down
the road, scaling a nearby wall with the agility of a scared cat.  The
Tharks paid him not the slightest attention; they were not out upon the
warpath, and the only sign that I had that they had seen him was a
quickening of the pace of the caravan as we hastened toward the
bordering desert which marked our entrance into the realm of Tal Hajus.

Not once did I have speech with Dejah Thoris, as she sent no word to me
that I would be welcome at her chariot, and my foolish pride kept me
from making any advances.  I verily believe that a man's way with women
is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men.  The weakling and the
saphead have often great ability to charm the fair sex, while the
fighting man who can face a thousand real dangers unafraid, sits hiding
in the shadows like some frightened child.

Just thirty days after my advent upon Barsoom we entered the ancient
city of Thark, from whose long-forgotten people this horde of green men
have stolen even their name.  The hordes of Thark number some thirty
thousand souls, and are divided into twenty-five communities.  Each
community has its own jed and lesser chieftains, but all are under the
rule of Tal Hajus, Jeddak of Thark.  Five communities make their
headquarters at the city of Thark, and the balance are scattered among
other deserted cities of ancient Mars throughout the district claimed
by Tal Hajus.

We made our entry into the great central plaza early in the afternoon.
There were no enthusiastic friendly greetings for the returned
expedition.  Those who chanced to be in sight spoke the names of
warriors or women with whom they came in direct contact, in the formal
greeting of their kind, but when it was discovered that they brought
two captives a greater interest was aroused, and Dejah Thoris and I
were the centers of inquiring groups.

We were soon assigned to new quarters, and the balance of the day was
devoted to settling ourselves to the changed conditions.  My home now
was upon an avenue leading into the plaza from the south, the main
artery down which we had marched from the gates of the city.  I was at
the far end of the square and had an entire building to myself.  The
same grandeur of architecture which was so noticeable a characteristic
of Korad was in evidence here, only, if that were possible, on a larger
and richer scale.  My quarters would have been suitable for housing the
greatest of earthly emperors, but to these queer creatures nothing
about a building appealed to them but its size and the enormity of its
chambers; the larger the building, the more desirable; and so Tal Hajus
occupied what must have been an enormous public building, the largest
in the city, but entirely unfitted for residence purposes; the next
largest was reserved for Lorquas Ptomel, the next for the jed of a
lesser rank, and so on to the bottom of the list of five jeds.  The
warriors occupied the buildings with the chieftains to whose retinues
they belonged; or, if they preferred, sought shelter among any of the
thousands of untenanted buildings in their own quarter of town; each
community being assigned a certain section of the city.  The selection
of building had to be made in accordance with these divisions, except
in so far as the jeds were concerned, they all occupying edifices which
fronted upon the plaza.

When I had finally put my house in order, or rather seen that it had
been done, it was nearing sunset, and I hastened out with the intention
of locating Sola and her charges, as I had determined upon having
speech with Dejah Thoris and trying to impress on her the necessity of
our at least patching up a truce until I could find some way of aiding
her to escape.  I searched in vain until the upper rim of the great red
sun was just disappearing behind the horizon and then I spied the ugly
head of Woola peering from a second-story window on the opposite side
of the very street where I was quartered, but nearer the plaza.

Without waiting for a further invitation I bolted up the winding runway
which led to the second floor, and entering a great chamber at the
front of the building was greeted by the frenzied Woola, who threw his
great carcass upon me, nearly hurling me to the floor; the poor old
fellow was so glad to see me that I thought he would devour me, his
head split from ear to ear, showing his three rows of tusks in his
hobgoblin smile.

Quieting him with a word of command and a caress, I looked hurriedly
through the approaching gloom for a sign of Dejah Thoris, and then, not
seeing her, I called her name.  There was an answering murmur from the
far corner of the apartment, and with a couple of quick strides I was
standing beside her where she crouched among the furs and silks upon an
ancient carved wooden seat.  As I waited she rose to her full height
and looking me straight in the eye said:

"What would Dotar Sojat, Thark, of Dejah Thoris his captive?"

"Dejah Thoris, I do not know how I have angered you.  It was furtherest
from my desire to hurt or offend you, whom I had hoped to protect and
comfort.  Have none of me if it is your will, but that you must aid me
in effecting your escape, if such a thing be possible, is not my
request, but my command.  When you are safe once more at your father's
court you may do with me as you please, but from now on until that day
I am your master, and you must obey and aid me."

She looked at me long and earnestly and I thought that she was
softening toward me.

"I understand your words, Dotar Sojat," she replied, "but you I do not
understand.  You are a queer mixture of child and man, of brute and
noble.  I only wish that I might read your heart."

"Look down at your feet, Dejah Thoris; it lies there now where it has
lain since that other night at Korad, and where it will ever lie
beating alone for you until death stills it forever."

She took a little step toward me, her beautiful hands outstretched in a
strange, groping gesture.

"What do you mean, John Carter?" she whispered.  "What are you saying
to me?"

"I am saying what I had promised myself that I would not say to you, at
least until you were no longer a captive among the green men; what from
your attitude toward me for the past twenty days I had thought never to
say to you; I am saying, Dejah Thoris, that I am yours, body and soul,
to serve you, to fight for you, and to die for you.  Only one thing I
ask of you in return, and that is that you make no sign, either of
condemnation or of approbation of my words until you are safe among
your own people, and that whatever sentiments you harbor toward me they
be not influenced or colored by gratitude; whatever I may do to serve
you will be prompted solely from selfish motives, since it gives me
more pleasure to serve you than not."

"I will respect your wishes, John Carter, because I understand the
motives which prompt them, and I accept your service no more willingly
than I bow to your authority; your word shall be my law.  I have twice
wronged you in my thoughts and again I ask your forgiveness."

Further conversation of a personal nature was prevented by the entrance
of Sola, who was much agitated and wholly unlike her usual calm and
possessed self.

"That horrible Sarkoja has been before Tal Hajus," she cried, "and from
what I heard upon the plaza there is little hope for either of you."

"What do they say?" inquired Dejah Thoris.

"That you will be thrown to the wild calots [dogs] in the great arena
as soon as the hordes have assembled for the yearly games."

"Sola," I said, "you are a Thark, but you hate and loathe the customs
of your people as much as we do.  Will you not accompany us in one
supreme effort to escape?  I am sure that Dejah Thoris can offer you a
home and protection among her people, and your fate can be no worse
among them than it must ever be here."

"Yes," cried Dejah Thoris, "come with us, Sola, you will be better off
among the red men of Helium than you are here, and I can promise you
not only a home with us, but the love and affection your nature craves
and which must always be denied you by the customs of your own race.
Come with us, Sola; we might go without you, but your fate would be
terrible if they thought you had connived to aid us.  I know that even
that fear would not tempt you to interfere in our escape, but we want
you with us, we want you to come to a land of sunshine and happiness,
amongst a people who know the meaning of love, of sympathy, and of
gratitude.  Say that you will, Sola; tell me that you will."

"The great waterway which leads to Helium is but fifty miles to the
south," murmured Sola, half to herself; "a swift thoat might make it in
three hours; and then to Helium it is five hundred miles, most of the
way through thinly settled districts.  They would know and they would
follow us.  We might hide among the great trees for a time, but the
chances are small indeed for escape.  They would follow us to the very
gates of Helium, and they would take toll of life at every step; you do
not know them."

"Is there no other way we might reach Helium?" I asked.  "Can you not
draw me a rough map of the country we must traverse, Dejah Thoris?"

"Yes," she replied, and taking a great diamond from her hair she drew
upon the marble floor the first map of Barsoomian territory I had ever
seen.  It was crisscrossed in every direction with long straight lines,
sometimes running parallel and sometimes converging toward some great
circle.  The lines, she said, were waterways; the circles, cities; and
one far to the northwest of us she pointed out as Helium.  There were
other cities closer, but she said she feared to enter many of them, as
they were not all friendly toward Helium.

[Illustration: She drew upon the marble floor the first map of the
Barsoomian territory I had ever seen.]

Finally, after studying the map carefully in the moonlight which now
flooded the room, I pointed out a waterway far to the north of us which
also seemed to lead to Helium.

"Does not this pierce your grandfather's territory?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered, "but it is two hundred miles north of us; it is
one of the waterways we crossed on the trip to Thark."

"They would never suspect that we would try for that distant waterway,"
I answered, "and that is why I think that it is the best route for our
escape."

Sola agreed with me, and it was decided that we should leave Thark this
same night; just as quickly, in fact, as I could find and saddle my
thoats.  Sola was to ride one and Dejah Thoris and I the other; each of
us carrying sufficient food and drink to last us for two days, since
the animals could not be urged too rapidly for so long a distance.

I directed Sola to proceed with Dejah Thoris along one of the less
frequented avenues to the southern boundary of the city, where I would
overtake them with the thoats as quickly as possible; then, leaving
them to gather what food, silks, and furs we were to need, I slipped
quietly to the rear of the first floor, and entered the courtyard,
where our animals were moving restlessly about, as was their habit,
before settling down for the night.

In the shadows of the buildings and out beneath the radiance of the
Martian moons moved the great herd of thoats and zitidars, the latter
grunting their low gutturals and the former occasionally emitting the
sharp squeal which denotes the almost habitual state of rage in which
these creatures passed their existence.  They were quieter now, owing
to the absence of man, but as they scented me they became more restless
and their hideous noise increased.  It was risky business, this
entering a paddock of thoats alone and at night; first, because their
increasing noisiness might warn the nearby warriors that something was
amiss, and also because for the slightest cause, or for no cause at all
some great bull thoat might take it upon himself to lead a charge upon
me.

Having no desire to awaken their nasty tempers upon such a night as
this, where so much depended upon secrecy and dispatch, I hugged the
shadows of the buildings, ready at an instant's warning to leap into
the safety of a nearby door or window.  Thus I moved silently to the
great gates which opened upon the street at the back of the court, and
as I neared the exit I called softly to my two animals.  How I thanked
the kind providence which had given me the foresight to win the love
and confidence of these wild dumb brutes, for presently from the far
side of the court I saw two huge bulks forcing their way toward me
through the surging mountains of flesh.

They came quite close to me, rubbing their muzzles against my body and
nosing for the bits of food it was always my practice to reward them
with.  Opening the gates I ordered the two great beasts to pass out,
and then slipping quietly after them I closed the portals behind me.

I did not saddle or mount the animals there, but instead walked quietly
in the shadows of the buildings toward an unfrequented avenue which led
toward the point I had arranged to meet Dejah Thoris and Sola.  With
the noiselessness of disembodied spirits we moved stealthily along the
deserted streets, but not until we were within sight of the plain
beyond the city did I commence to breathe freely.  I was sure that Sola
and Dejah Thoris would find no difficulty in reaching our rendezvous
undetected, but with my great thoats I was not so sure for myself, as
it was quite unusual for warriors to leave the city after dark; in fact
there was no place for them to go within any but a long ride.

I reached the appointed meeting place safely, but as Dejah Thoris and
Sola were not there I led my animals into the entrance hall of one of
the large buildings.  Presuming that one of the other women of the same
household may have come in to speak to Sola, and so delayed their
departure, I did not feel any undue apprehension until nearly an hour
had passed without a sign of them, and by the time another half hour
had crawled away I was becoming filled with grave anxiety.  Then there
broke upon the stillness of the night the sound of an approaching
party, which, from the noise, I knew could be no fugitives creeping
stealthily toward liberty.  Soon the party was near me, and from the
black shadows of my entranceway I perceived a score of mounted
warriors, who, in passing, dropped a dozen words that fetched my heart
clean into the top of my head.

"He would likely have arranged to meet them just without the city, and
so--"  I heard no more, they had passed on; but it was enough.  Our
plan had been discovered, and the chances for escape from now on to the
fearful end would be small indeed.  My one hope now was to return
undetected to the quarters of Dejah Thoris and learn what fate had
overtaken her, but how to do it with these great monstrous thoats upon
my hands, now that the city probably was aroused by the knowledge of my
escape was a problem of no mean proportions.

Suddenly an idea occurred to me, and acting on my knowledge of the
construction of the buildings of these ancient Martian cities with a
hollow court within the center of each square, I groped my way blindly
through the dark chambers, calling the great thoats after me.  They had
difficulty in negotiating some of the doorways, but as the buildings
fronting the city's principal exposures were all designed upon a
magnificent scale, they were able to wriggle through without sticking
fast; and thus we finally made the inner court where I found, as I had
expected, the usual carpet of moss-like vegetation which would prove
their food and drink until I could return them to their own enclosure.
That they would be as quiet and contented here as elsewhere I was
confident, nor was there but the remotest possibility that they would
be discovered, as the green men had no great desire to enter these
outlying buildings, which were frequented by the only thing, I believe,
which caused them the sensation of fear--the great white apes of
Barsoom.

Removing the saddle trappings, I hid them just within the rear doorway
of the building through which we had entered the court, and, turning
the beasts loose, quickly made my way across the court to the rear of
the buildings upon the further side, and thence to the avenue beyond.
Waiting in the doorway of the building until I was assured that no one
was approaching, I hurried across to the opposite side and through the
first doorway to the court beyond; thus, crossing through court after
court with only the slight chance of detection which the necessary
crossing of the avenues entailed, I made my way in safety to the
courtyard in the rear of Dejah Thoris' quarters.

Here, of course, I found the beasts of the warriors who quartered in
the adjacent buildings, and the warriors themselves I might expect to
meet within if I entered; but, fortunately for me, I had another and
safer method of reaching the upper story where Dejah Thoris should be
found, and, after first determining as nearly as possible which of the
buildings she occupied, for I had never observed them before from the
court side, I took advantage of my relatively great strength and
agility and sprang upward until I grasped the sill of a second-story
window which I thought to be in the rear of her apartment.  Drawing
myself inside the room I moved stealthily toward the front of the
building, and not until I had quite reached the doorway of her room was
I made aware by voices that it was occupied.

I did not rush headlong in, but listened without to assure myself that
it was Dejah Thoris and that it was safe to venture within.  It was
well indeed that I took this precaution, for the conversation I heard
was in the low gutturals of men, and the words which finally came to me
proved a most timely warning.  The speaker was a chieftain and he was
giving orders to four of his warriors.

"And when he returns to this chamber," he was saying, "as he surely
will when he finds she does not meet him at the city's edge, you four
are to spring upon him and disarm him.  It will require the combined
strength of all of you to do it if the reports they bring back from
Korad are correct.  When you have him fast bound bear him to the vaults
beneath the jeddak's quarters and chain him securely where he may be
found when Tal Hajus wishes him.  Allow him to speak with none, nor
permit any other to enter this apartment before he comes.  There will
be no danger of the girl returning, for by this time she is safe in the
arms of Tal Hajus, and may all her ancestors have pity upon her, for
Tal Hajus will have none; the great Sarkoja has done a noble night's
work.  I go, and if you fail to capture him when he comes, I commend
your carcasses to the cold bosom of Iss."




CHAPTER XVII

A COSTLY RECAPTURE


As the speaker ceased he turned to leave the apartment by the door
where I was standing, but I needed to wait no longer; I had heard
enough to fill my soul with dread, and stealing quietly away I returned
to the courtyard by the way I had come.  My plan of action was formed
upon the instant, and crossing the square and the bordering avenue upon
the opposite side I soon stood within the courtyard of Tal Hajus.

The brilliantly lighted apartments of the first floor told me where
first to seek, and advancing to the windows I peered within.  I soon
discovered that my approach was not to be the easy thing I had hoped,
for the rear rooms bordering the court were filled with warriors and
women.  I then glanced up at the stories above, discovering that the
third was apparently unlighted, and so decided to make my entrance to
the building from that point.  It was the work of but a moment for me
to reach the windows above, and soon I had drawn myself within the
sheltering shadows of the unlighted third floor.

Fortunately the room I had selected was untenanted, and creeping
noiselessly to the corridor beyond I discovered a light in the
apartments ahead of me.  Reaching what appeared to be a doorway I
discovered that it was but an opening upon an immense inner chamber
which towered from the first floor, two stories below me, to the
dome-like roof of the building, high above my head.  The floor of this
great circular hall was thronged with chieftains, warriors and women,
and at one end was a great raised platform upon which squatted the most
hideous beast I had ever put my eyes upon.  He had all the cold, hard,
cruel, terrible features of the green warriors, but accentuated and
debased by the animal passions to which he had given himself over for
many years.  There was not a mark of dignity or pride upon his bestial
countenance, while his enormous bulk spread itself out upon the
platform where he squatted like some huge devil fish, his six limbs
accentuating the similarity in a horrible and startling manner.

But the sight that froze me with apprehension was that of Dejah Thoris
and Sola standing there before him, and the fiendish leer of him as he
let his great protruding eyes gloat upon the lines of her beautiful
figure.  She was speaking, but I could not hear what she said, nor
could I make out the low grumbling of his reply.  She stood there erect
before him, her head high held, and even at the distance I was from
them I could read the scorn and disgust upon her face as she let her
haughty glance rest without sign of fear upon him.  She was indeed the
proud daughter of a thousand jeddaks, every inch of her dear, precious
little body; so small, so frail beside the towering warriors around
her, but in her majesty dwarfing them into insignificance; she was the
mightiest figure among them and I verily believe that they felt it.

Presently Tal Hajus made a sign that the chamber be cleared, and that
the prisoners be left alone before him.  Slowly the chieftains, the
warriors and the women melted away into the shadows of the surrounding
chambers, and Dejah Thoris and Sola stood alone before the jeddak of
the Tharks.

One chieftain alone had hesitated before departing; I saw him standing
in the shadows of a mighty column, his fingers nervously toying with
the hilt of his great-sword and his cruel eyes bent in implacable
hatred upon Tal Hajus.  It was Tars Tarkas, and I could read his
thoughts as they were an open book for the undisguised loathing upon
his face.  He was thinking of that other woman who, forty years ago,
had stood before this beast, and could I have spoken a word into his
ear at that moment the reign of Tal Hajus would have been over; but
finally he also strode from the room, not knowing that he left his own
daughter at the mercy of the creature he most loathed.

Tal Hajus arose, and I, half fearing, half anticipating his intentions,
hurried to the winding runway which led to the floors below.  No one
was near to intercept me, and I reached the main floor of the chamber
unobserved, taking my station in the shadow of the same column that
Tars Tarkas had but just deserted.  As I reached the floor Tal Hajus
was speaking.

"Princess of Helium, I might wring a mighty ransom from your people
would I but return you to them unharmed, but a thousand times rather
would I watch that beautiful face writhe in the agony of torture; it
shall be long drawn out, that I promise you; ten days of pleasure were
all too short to show the love I harbor for your race.  The terrors of
your death shall haunt the slumbers of the red men through all the ages
to come; they will shudder in the shadows of the night as their fathers
tell them of the awful vengeance of the green men; of the power and
might and hate and cruelty of Tal Hajus.  But before the torture you
shall be mine for one short hour, and word of that too shall go forth
to Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium, your grandfather, that he may grovel
upon the ground in the agony of his sorrow.  Tomorrow the torture will
commence; tonight thou art Tal Hajus'; come!"

He sprang down from the platform and grasped her roughly by the arm,
but scarcely had he touched her than I leaped between them.  My
short-sword, sharp and gleaming was in my right hand; I could have
plunged it into his putrid heart before he realized that I was upon
him; but as I raised my arm to strike I thought of Tars Tarkas, and,
with all my rage, with all my hatred, I could not rob him of that sweet
moment for which he had lived and hoped all these long, weary years,
and so, instead, I swung my good right fist full upon the point of his
jaw.  Without a sound he slipped to the floor as one dead.

In the same deathly silence I grasped Dejah Thoris by the hand, and
motioning Sola to follow we sped noiselessly from the chamber and to
the floor above.  Unseen we reached a rear window and with the straps
and leather of my trappings I lowered, first Sola and then Dejah Thoris
to the ground below.  Dropping lightly after them I drew them rapidly
around the court in the shadows of the buildings, and thus we returned
over the same course I had so recently followed from the distant
boundary of the city.

We finally came upon my thoats in the courtyard where I had left them,
and placing the trappings upon them we hastened through the building to
the avenue beyond.  Mounting, Sola upon one beast, and Dejah Thoris
behind me upon the other, we rode from the city of Thark through the
hills to the south.

Instead of circling back around the city to the northwest and toward
the nearest waterway which lay so short a distance from us, we turned
to the northeast and struck out upon the mossy waste across which, for
two hundred dangerous and weary miles, lay another main artery leading
to Helium.

No word was spoken until we had left the city far behind, but I could
hear the quiet sobbing of Dejah Thoris as she clung to me with her dear
head resting against my shoulder.

"If we make it, my chieftain, the debt of Helium will be a mighty one;
greater than she can ever pay you; and should we not make it," she
continued, "the debt is no less, though Helium will never know, for you
have saved the last of our line from worse than death."

I did not answer, but instead reached to my side and pressed the little
fingers of her I loved where they clung to me for support, and then, in
unbroken silence, we sped over the yellow, moonlit moss; each of us
occupied with his own thoughts.  For my part I could not be other than
joyful had I tried, with Dejah Thoris' warm body pressed close to mine,
and with all our unpassed danger my heart was singing as gaily as
though we were already entering the gates of Helium.

Our earlier plans had been so sadly upset that we now found ourselves
without food or drink, and I alone was armed.  We therefore urged our
beasts to a speed that must tell on them sorely before we could hope to
sight the ending of the first stage of our journey.

We rode all night and all the following day with only a few short
rests.  On the second night both we and our animals were completely
fagged, and so we lay down upon the moss and slept for some five or six
hours, taking up the journey once more before daylight.  All the
following day we rode, and when, late in the afternoon we had sighted
no distant trees, the mark of the great waterways throughout all
Barsoom, the terrible truth flashed upon us--we were lost.

Evidently we had circled, but which way it was difficult to say, nor
did it seem possible with the sun to guide us by day and the moons and
stars by night.  At any rate no waterway was in sight, and the entire
party was almost ready to drop from hunger, thirst and fatigue.  Far
ahead of us and a trifle to the right we could distinguish the outlines
of low mountains.  These we decided to attempt to reach in the hope
that from some ridge we might discern the missing waterway.  Night fell
upon us before we reached our goal, and, almost fainting from weariness
and weakness, we lay down and slept.

I was awakened early in the morning by some huge body pressing close to
mine, and opening my eyes with a start I beheld my blessed old Woola
snuggling close to me; the faithful brute had followed us across that
trackless waste to share our fate, whatever it might be.  Putting my
arms about his neck I pressed my cheek close to his, nor am I ashamed
that I did it, nor of the tears that came to my eyes as I thought of
his love for me.  Shortly after this Dejah Thoris and Sola awakened,
and it was decided that we push on at once in an effort to gain the
hills.

We had gone scarcely a mile when I noticed that my thoat was commencing
to stumble and stagger in a most pitiful manner, although we had not
attempted to force them out of a walk since about noon of the preceding
day.  Suddenly he lurched wildly to one side and pitched violently to
the ground.  Dejah Thoris and I were thrown clear of him and fell upon
the soft moss with scarcely a jar; but the poor beast was in a pitiable
condition, not even being able to rise, although relieved of our
weight.  Sola told me that the coolness of the night, when it fell,
together with the rest would doubtless revive him, and so I decided not
to kill him, as was my first intention, as I had thought it cruel to
leave him alone there to die of hunger and thirst.  Relieving him of
his trappings, which I flung down beside him, we left the poor fellow
to his fate, and pushed on with the one thoat as best we could.  Sola
and I walked, making Dejah Thoris ride, much against her will.  In this
way we had progressed to within about a mile of the hills we were
endeavoring to reach when Dejah Thoris, from her point of vantage upon
the thoat, cried out that she saw a great party of mounted men filing
down from a pass in the hills several miles away.  Sola and I both
looked in the direction she indicated, and there, plainly discernible,
were several hundred mounted warriors.  They seemed to be headed in a
southwesterly direction, which would take them away from us.

They doubtless were Thark warriors who had been sent out to capture us,
and we breathed a great sigh of relief that they were traveling in the
opposite direction.  Quickly lifting Dejah Thoris from the thoat, I
commanded the animal to lie down and we three did the same, presenting
as small an object as possible for fear of attracting the attention of
the warriors toward us.

We could see them as they filed out of the pass, just for an instant,
before they were lost to view behind a friendly ridge; to us a most
providential ridge; since, had they been in view for any great length
of time, they scarcely could have failed to discover us.  As what
proved to be the last warrior came into view from the pass, he halted
and, to our consternation, threw his small but powerful fieldglass to
his eye and scanned the sea bottom in all directions.  Evidently he was
a chieftain, for in certain marching formations among the green men a
chieftain brings up the extreme rear of the column.  As his glass swung
toward us our hearts stopped in our breasts, and I could feel the cold
sweat start from every pore in my body.

Presently it swung full upon us and--stopped.  The tension on our
nerves was near the breaking point, and I doubt if any of us breathed
for the few moments he held us covered by his glass; and then he
lowered it and we could see him shout a command to the warriors who had
passed from our sight behind the ridge.  He did not wait for them to
join him, however, instead he wheeled his thoat and came tearing madly
in our direction.

There was but one slight chance and that we must take quickly.  Raising
my strange Martian rifle to my shoulder I sighted and touched the
button which controlled the trigger; there was a sharp explosion as the
missile reached its goal, and the charging chieftain pitched backward
from his flying mount.

Springing to my feet I urged the thoat to rise, and directed Sola to
take Dejah Thoris with her upon him and make a mighty effort to reach
the hills before the green warriors were upon us.  I knew that in the
ravines and gullies they might find a temporary hiding place, and even
though they died there of hunger and thirst it would be better so than
that they fell into the hands of the Tharks.  Forcing my two revolvers
upon them as a slight means of protection, and, as a last resort, as an
escape for themselves from the horrid death which recapture would
surely mean, I lifted Dejah Thoris in my arms and placed her upon the
thoat behind Sola, who had already mounted at my command.

"Good-bye, my princess," I whispered, "we may meet in Helium yet.  I
have escaped from worse plights than this," and I tried to smile as I
lied.

"What," she cried, "are you not coming with us?"

"How may I, Dejah Thoris?  Someone must hold these fellows off for a
while, and I can better escape them alone than could the three of us
together."

She sprang quickly from the thoat and, throwing her dear arms about my
neck, turned to Sola, saying with quiet dignity: "Fly, Sola!  Dejah
Thoris remains to die with the man she loves."

Those words are engraved upon my heart.  Ah, gladly would I give up my
life a thousand times could I only hear them once again; but I could
not then give even a second to the rapture of her sweet embrace, and
pressing my lips to hers for the first time, I picked her up bodily and
tossed her to her seat behind Sola again, commanding the latter in
peremptory tones to hold her there by force, and then, slapping the
thoat upon the flank, I saw them borne away; Dejah Thoris struggling to
the last to free herself from Sola's grasp.

Turning, I beheld the green warriors mounting the ridge and looking for
their chieftain.  In a moment they saw him, and then me; but scarcely
had they discovered me than I commenced firing, lying flat upon my
belly in the moss.  I had an even hundred rounds in the magazine of my
rifle, and another hundred in the belt at my back, and I kept up a
continuous stream of fire until I saw all of the warriors who had been
first to return from behind the ridge either dead or scurrying to cover.

My respite was short-lived however, for soon the entire party,
numbering some thousand men, came charging into view, racing madly
toward me.  I fired until my rifle was empty and they were almost upon
me, and then a glance showing me that Dejah Thoris and Sola had
disappeared among the hills, I sprang up, throwing down my useless gun,
and started away in the direction opposite to that taken by Sola and
her charge.

If ever Martians had an exhibition of jumping, it was granted those
astonished warriors on that day long years ago, but while it led them
away from Dejah Thoris it did not distract their attention from
endeavoring to capture me.

They raced wildly after me until, finally, my foot struck a projecting
piece of quartz, and down I went sprawling upon the moss.  As I looked
up they were upon me, and although I drew my long-sword in an attempt
to sell my life as dearly as possible, it was soon over.  I reeled
beneath their blows which fell upon me in perfect torrents; my head
swam; all was black, and I went down beneath them to oblivion.




CHAPTER XVIII

CHAINED IN WARHOON


It must have been several hours before I regained consciousness and I
well remember the feeling of surprise which swept over me as I realized
that I was not dead.

I was lying among a pile of sleeping silks and furs in the corner of a
small room in which were several green warriors, and bending over me
was an ancient and ugly female.

As I opened my eyes she turned to one of the warriors, saying,

"He will live, O Jed."

"'Tis well," replied the one so addressed, rising and approaching my
couch, "he should render rare sport for the great games."

And now as my eyes fell upon him, I saw that he was no Thark, for his
ornaments and metal were not of that horde.  He was a huge fellow,
terribly scarred about the face and chest, and with one broken tusk and
a missing ear.  Strapped on either breast were human skulls and
depending from these a number of dried human hands.

His reference to the great games of which I had heard so much while
among the Tharks convinced me that I had but jumped from purgatory into
gehenna.

After a few more words with the female, during which she assured him
that I was now fully fit to travel, the jed ordered that we mount and
ride after the main column.

I was strapped securely to as wild and unmanageable a thoat as I had
ever seen, and, with a mounted warrior on either side to prevent the
beast from bolting, we rode forth at a furious pace in pursuit of the
column.  My wounds gave me but little pain, so wonderfully and rapidly
had the applications and injections of the female exercised their
therapeutic powers, and so deftly had she bound and plastered the
injuries.

Just before dark we reached the main body of troops shortly after they
had made camp for the night.  I was immediately taken before the
leader, who proved to be the jeddak of the hordes of Warhoon.

Like the jed who had brought me, he was frightfully scarred, and also
decorated with the breastplate of human skulls and dried dead hands
which seemed to mark all the greater warriors among the Warhoons, as
well as to indicate their awful ferocity, which greatly transcends even
that of the Tharks.

The jeddak, Bar Comas, who was comparatively young, was the object of
the fierce and jealous hatred of his old lieutenant, Dak Kova, the jed
who had captured me, and I could not but note the almost studied
efforts which the latter made to affront his superior.

He entirely omitted the usual formal salutation as we entered the
presence of the jeddak, and as he pushed me roughly before the ruler he
exclaimed in a loud and menacing voice.

"I have brought a strange creature wearing the metal of a Thark whom it
is my pleasure to have battle with a wild thoat at the great games."

"He will die as Bar Comas, your jeddak, sees fit, if at all," replied
the young ruler, with emphasis and dignity.

"If at all?" roared Dak Kova.  "By the dead hands at my throat but he
shall die, Bar Comas.  No maudlin weakness on your part shall save him.
O, would that Warhoon were ruled by a real jeddak rather than by a
water-hearted weakling from whom even old Dak Kova could tear the metal
with his bare hands!"

Bar Comas eyed the defiant and insubordinate chieftain for an instant,
his expression one of haughty, fearless contempt and hate, and then
without drawing a weapon and without uttering a word he hurled himself
at the throat of his defamer.

I never before had seen two green Martian warriors battle with nature's
weapons and the exhibition of animal ferocity which ensued was as
fearful a thing as the most disordered imagination could picture.  They
tore at each others' eyes and ears with their hands and with their
gleaming tusks repeatedly slashed and gored until both were cut fairly
to ribbons from head to foot.

Bar Comas had much the better of the battle as he was stronger, quicker
and more intelligent.  It soon seemed that the encounter was done
saving only the final death thrust when Bar Comas slipped in breaking
away from a clinch.  It was the one little opening that Dak Kova
needed, and hurling himself at the body of his adversary he buried his
single mighty tusk in Bar Comas' groin and with a last powerful effort
ripped the young jeddak wide open the full length of his body, the
great tusk finally wedging in the bones of Bar Comas' jaw.  Victor and
vanquished rolled limp and lifeless upon the moss, a huge mass of torn
and bloody flesh.

Bar Comas was stone dead, and only the most herculean efforts on the
part of Dak Kova's females saved him from the fate he deserved.  Three
days later he walked without assistance to the body of Bar Comas which,
by custom, had not been moved from where it fell, and placing his foot
upon the neck of his erstwhile ruler he assumed the title of Jeddak of
Warhoon.

The dead jeddak's hands and head were removed to be added to the
ornaments of his conqueror, and then his women cremated what remained,
amid wild and terrible laughter.

The injuries to Dak Kova had delayed the march so greatly that it was
decided to give up the expedition, which was a raid upon a small Thark
community in retaliation for the destruction of the incubator, until
after the great games, and the entire body of warriors, ten thousand in
number, turned back toward Warhoon.

My introduction to these cruel and bloodthirsty people was but an index
to the scenes I witnessed almost daily while with them.  They are a
smaller horde than the Tharks but much more ferocious.  Not a day
passed but that some members of the various Warhoon communities met in
deadly combat.  I have seen as high as eight mortal duels within a
single day.

We reached the city of Warhoon after some three days march and I was
immediately cast into a dungeon and heavily chained to the floor and
walls.  Food was brought me at intervals but owing to the utter
darkness of the place I do not know whether I lay there days, or weeks,
or months.  It was the most horrible experience of all my life and that
my mind did not give way to the terrors of that inky blackness has been
a wonder to me ever since.  The place was filled with creeping,
crawling things; cold, sinuous bodies passed over me when I lay down,
and in the darkness I occasionally caught glimpses of gleaming, fiery
eyes, fixed in horrible intentness upon me.  No sound reached me from
the world above and no word would my jailer vouchsafe when my food was
brought to me, although I at first bombarded him with questions.

Finally all the hatred and maniacal loathing for these awful creatures
who had placed me in this horrible place was centered by my tottering
reason upon this single emissary who represented to me the entire horde
of Warhoons.

I had noticed that he always advanced with his dim torch to where he
could place the food within my reach and as he stooped to place it upon
the floor his head was about on a level with my breast.  So, with the
cunning of a madman, I backed into the far corner of my cell when next
I heard him approaching and gathering a little slack of the great chain
which held me in my hand I waited his coming, crouching like some beast
of prey.  As he stooped to place my food upon the ground I swung the
chain above my head and crashed the links with all my strength upon his
skull.  Without a sound he slipped to the floor, stone dead.

Laughing and chattering like the idiot I was fast becoming I fell upon
his prostrate form my fingers feeling for his dead throat.  Presently
they came in contact with a small chain at the end of which dangled a
number of keys.  The touch of my fingers on these keys brought back my
reason with the suddenness of thought.  No longer was I a jibbering
idiot, but a sane, reasoning man with the means of escape within my
very hands.

As I was groping to remove the chain from about my victim's neck I
glanced up into the darkness to see six pairs of gleaming eyes fixed,
unwinking, upon me.  Slowly they approached and slowly I shrank back
from the awful horror of them.  Back into my corner I crouched holding
my hands palms out, before me, and stealthily on came the awful eyes
until they reached the dead body at my feet.  Then slowly they
retreated but this time with a strange grating sound and finally they
disappeared in some black and distant recess of my dungeon.




CHAPTER XIX

BATTLING IN THE ARENA


Slowly I regained my composure and finally essayed again to attempt to
remove the keys from the dead body of my former jailer.  But as I
reached out into the darkness to locate it I found to my horror that it
was gone.  Then the truth flashed on me; the owners of those gleaming
eyes had dragged my prize away from me to be devoured in their
neighboring lair; as they had been waiting for days, for weeks, for
months, through all this awful eternity of my imprisonment to drag my
dead carcass to their feast.

For two days no food was brought me, but then a new messenger appeared
and my incarceration went on as before, but not again did I allow my
reason to be submerged by the horror of my position.

Shortly after this episode another prisoner was brought in and chained
near me.  By the dim torch light I saw that he was a red Martian and I
could scarcely await the departure of his guards to address him.  As
their retreating footsteps died away in the distance, I called out
softly the Martian word of greeting, kaor.

"Who are you who speaks out of the darkness?" he answered

"John Carter, a friend of the red men of Helium."

"I am of Helium," he said, "but I do not recall your name."

And then I told him my story as I have written it here, omitting only
any reference to my love for Dejah Thoris.  He was much excited by the
news of Helium's princess and seemed quite positive that she and Sola
could easily have reached a point of safety from where they left me.
He said that he knew the place well because the defile through which
the Warhoon warriors had passed when they discovered us was the only
one ever used by them when marching to the south.

"Dejah Thoris and Sola entered the hills not five miles from a great
waterway and are now probably quite safe," he assured me.

My fellow prisoner was Kantos Kan, a padwar (lieutenant) in the navy of
Helium.  He had been a member of the ill-fated expedition which had
fallen into the hands of the Tharks at the time of Dejah Thoris'
capture, and he briefly related the events which followed the defeat of
the battleships.

Badly injured and only partially manned they had limped slowly toward
Helium, but while passing near the city of Zodanga, the capital of
Helium's hereditary enemies among the red men of Barsoom, they had been
attacked by a great body of war vessels and all but the craft to which
Kantos Kan belonged were either destroyed or captured.  His vessel was
chased for days by three of the Zodangan war ships but finally escaped
during the darkness of a moonless night.

Thirty days after the capture of Dejah Thoris, or about the time of our
coming to Thark, his vessel had reached Helium with about ten survivors
of the original crew of seven hundred officers and men.  Immediately
seven great fleets, each of one hundred mighty war ships, had been
dispatched to search for Dejah Thoris, and from these vessels two
thousand smaller craft had been kept out continuously in futile search
for the missing princess.

Two green Martian communities had been wiped off the face of Barsoom by
the avenging fleets, but no trace of Dejah Thoris had been found.  They
had been searching among the northern hordes, and only within the past
few days had they extended their quest to the south.

Kantos Kan had been detailed to one of the small one-man fliers and had
had the misfortune to be discovered by the Warhoons while exploring
their city.  The bravery and daring of the man won my greatest respect
and admiration.  Alone he had landed at the city's boundary and on foot
had penetrated to the buildings surrounding the plaza.  For two days
and nights he had explored their quarters and their dungeons in search
of his beloved princess only to fall into the hands of a party of
Warhoons as he was about to leave, after assuring himself that Dejah
Thoris was not a captive there.

During the period of our incarceration Kantos Kan and I became well
acquainted, and formed a warm personal friendship.  A few days only
elapsed, however, before we were dragged forth from our dungeon for the
great games.  We were conducted early one morning to an enormous
amphitheater, which instead of having been built upon the surface of
the ground was excavated below the surface.  It had partially filled
with debris so that how large it had originally been was difficult to
say.  In its present condition it held the entire twenty thousand
Warhoons of the assembled hordes.

The arena was immense but extremely uneven and unkempt.  Around it the
Warhoons had piled building stone from some of the ruined edifices of
the ancient city to prevent the animals and the captives from escaping
into the audience, and at each end had been constructed cages to hold
them until their turns came to meet some horrible death upon the arena.

Kantos Kan and I were confined together in one of the cages.  In the
others were wild calots, thoats, mad zitidars, green warriors, and
women of other hordes, and many strange and ferocious wild beasts of
Barsoom which I had never before seen.  The din of their roaring,
growling and squealing was deafening and the formidable appearance of
any one of them was enough to make the stoutest heart feel grave
forebodings.

Kantos Kan explained to me that at the end of the day one of these
prisoners would gain freedom and the others would lie dead about the
arena.  The winners in the various contests of the day would be pitted
against each other until only two remained alive; the victor in the
last encounter being set free, whether animal or man.  The following
morning the cages would be filled with a new consignment of victims,
and so on throughout the ten days of the games.

Shortly after we had been caged the amphitheater began to fill and
within an hour every available part of the seating space was occupied.
Dak Kova, with his jeds and chieftains, sat at the center of one side
of the arena upon a large raised platform.

At a signal from Dak Kova the doors of two cages were thrown open and a
dozen green Martian females were driven to the center of the arena.
Each was given a dagger and then, at the far end, a pack of twelve
calots, or wild dogs were loosed upon them.

As the brutes, growling and foaming, rushed upon the almost defenseless
women I turned my head that I might not see the horrid sight.  The
yells and laughter of the green horde bore witness to the excellent
quality of the sport and when I turned back to the arena, as Kantos Kan
told me it was over, I saw three victorious calots, snarling and
growling over the bodies of their prey.  The women had given a good
account of themselves.

Next a mad zitidar was loosed among the remaining dogs, and so it went
throughout the long, hot, horrible day.

During the day I was pitted against first men and then beasts, but as I
was armed with a long-sword and always outclassed my adversary in
agility and generally in strength as well, it proved but child's play
to me.  Time and time again I won the applause of the bloodthirsty
multitude, and toward the end there were cries that I be taken from the
arena and be made a member of the hordes of Warhoon.

Finally there were but three of us left, a great green warrior of some
far northern horde, Kantos Kan, and myself.

The other two were to battle and then I to fight the conqueror for the
liberty which was accorded the final winner.

Kantos Kan had fought several times during the day and like myself had
always proven victorious, but occasionally by the smallest of margins,
especially when pitted against the green warriors.  I had little hope
that he could best his giant adversary who had mowed down all before
him during the day.  The fellow towered nearly sixteen feet in height,
while Kantos Kan was some inches under six feet.  As they advanced to
meet one another I saw for the first time a trick of Martian
swordsmanship which centered Kantos Kan's every hope of victory and
life on one cast of the dice, for, as he came to within about twenty
feet of the huge fellow he threw his sword arm far behind him over his
shoulder and with a mighty sweep hurled his weapon point foremost at
the green warrior.  It flew true as an arrow and piercing the poor
devil's heart laid him dead upon the arena.

Kantos Kan and I were now pitted against each other but as we
approached to the encounter I whispered to him to prolong the battle
until nearly dark in the hope that we might find some means of escape.
The horde evidently guessed that we had no hearts to fight each other
and so they howled in rage as neither of us placed a fatal thrust.
Just as I saw the sudden coming of dark I whispered to Kantos Kan to
thrust his sword between my left arm and my body.  As he did so I
staggered back clasping the sword tightly with my arm and thus fell to
the ground with his weapon apparently protruding from my chest.  Kantos
Kan perceived my coup and stepping quickly to my side he placed his
foot upon my neck and withdrawing his sword from my body gave me the
final death blow through the neck which is supposed to sever the
jugular vein, but in this instance the cold blade slipped harmlessly
into the sand of the arena.  In the darkness which had now fallen none
could tell but that he had really finished me.  I whispered to him to
go and claim his freedom and then look for me in the hills east of the
city, and so he left me.

When the amphitheater had cleared I crept stealthily to the top and as
the great excavation lay far from the plaza and in an untenanted
portion of the great dead city I had little trouble in reaching the
hills beyond.




CHAPTER XX

IN THE ATMOSPHERE FACTORY


For two days I waited there for Kantos Kan, but as he did not come I
started off on foot in a northwesterly direction toward a point where
he had told me lay the nearest waterway.  My only food consisted of
vegetable milk from the plants which gave so bounteously of this
priceless fluid.

Through two long weeks I wandered, stumbling through the nights guided
only by the stars and hiding during the days behind some protruding
rock or among the occasional hills I traversed.  Several times I was
attacked by wild beasts; strange, uncouth monstrosities that leaped
upon me in the dark, so that I had ever to grasp my long-sword in my
hand that I might be ready for them.  Usually my strange, newly
acquired telepathic power warned me in ample time, but once I was down
with vicious fangs at my jugular and a hairy face pressed close to mine
before I knew that I was even threatened.

What manner of thing was upon me I did not know, but that it was large
and heavy and many-legged I could feel.  My hands were at its throat
before the fangs had a chance to bury themselves in my neck, and slowly
I forced the hairy face from me and closed my fingers, vise-like, upon
its windpipe.

Without sound we lay there, the beast exerting every effort to reach me
with those awful fangs, and I straining to maintain my grip and choke
the life from it as I kept it from my throat.  Slowly my arms gave to
the unequal struggle, and inch by inch the burning eyes and gleaming
tusks of my antagonist crept toward me, until, as the hairy face
touched mine again, I realized that all was over.  And then a living
mass of destruction sprang from the surrounding darkness full upon the
creature that held me pinioned to the ground.  The two rolled growling
upon the moss, tearing and rending one another in a frightful manner,
but it was soon over and my preserver stood with lowered head above the
throat of the dead thing which would have killed me.

The nearer moon, hurtling suddenly above the horizon and lighting up
the Barsoomian scene, showed me that my preserver was Woola, but from
whence he had come, or how found me, I was at a loss to know.  That I
was glad of his companionship it is needless to say, but my pleasure at
seeing him was tempered by anxiety as to the reason of his leaving
Dejah Thoris.  Only her death I felt sure, could account for his
absence from her, so faithful I knew him to be to my commands.

By the light of the now brilliant moons I saw that he was but a shadow
of his former self, and as he turned from my caress and commenced
greedily to devour the dead carcass at my feet I realized that the poor
fellow was more than half starved.  I, myself, was in but little better
plight but I could not bring myself to eat the uncooked flesh and I had
no means of making a fire.  When Woola had finished his meal I again
took up my weary and seemingly endless wandering in quest of the
elusive waterway.

At daybreak of the fifteenth day of my search I was overjoyed to see
the high trees that denoted the object of my search.  About noon I
dragged myself wearily to the portals of a huge building which covered
perhaps four square miles and towered two hundred feet in the air.  It
showed no aperture in the mighty walls other than the tiny door at
which I sank exhausted, nor was there any sign of life about it.

I could find no bell or other method of making my presence known to the
inmates of the place, unless a small round role in the wall near the
door was for that purpose.  It was of about the bigness of a lead
pencil and thinking that it might be in the nature of a speaking tube I
put my mouth to it and was about to call into it when a voice issued
from it asking me whom I might be, where from, and the nature of my
errand.

I explained that I had escaped from the Warhoons and was dying of
starvation and exhaustion.

"You wear the metal of a green warrior and are followed by a calot, yet
you are of the figure of a red man.  In color you are neither green nor
red.  In the name of the ninth day, what manner of creature are you?"

"I am a friend of the red men of Barsoom and I am starving.  In the
name of humanity open to us," I replied.

Presently the door commenced to recede before me until it had sunk into
the wall fifty feet, then it stopped and slid easily to the left,
exposing a short, narrow corridor of concrete, at the further end of
which was another door, similar in every respect to the one I had just
passed.  No one was in sight, yet immediately we passed the first door
it slid gently into place behind us and receded rapidly to its original
position in the front wall of the building.  As the door had slipped
aside I had noted its great thickness, fully twenty feet, and as it
reached its place once more after closing behind us, great cylinders of
steel had dropped from the ceiling behind it and fitted their lower
ends into apertures countersunk in the floor.

A second and third door receded before me and slipped to one side as
the first, before I reached a large inner chamber where I found food
and drink set out upon a great stone table.  A voice directed me to
satisfy my hunger and to feed my calot, and while I was thus engaged my
invisible host put me through a severe and searching cross-examination.

"Your statements are most remarkable," said the voice, on concluding
its questioning, "but you are evidently speaking the truth, and it is
equally evident that you are not of Barsoom.  I can tell that by the
conformation of your brain and the strange location of your internal
organs and the shape and size of your heart."

"Can you see through me?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, I can see all but your thoughts, and were you a Barsoomian I
could read those."

Then a door opened at the far side of the chamber and a strange, dried
up, little mummy of a man came toward me.  He wore but a single article
of clothing or adornment, a small collar of gold from which depended
upon his chest a great ornament as large as a dinner plate set solid
with huge diamonds, except for the exact center which was occupied by a
strange stone, an inch in diameter, that scintillated nine different
and distinct rays; the seven colors of our earthly prism and two
beautiful rays which, to me, were new and nameless.  I cannot describe
them any more than you could describe red to a blind man.  I only know
that they were beautiful in the extreme.

The old man sat and talked with me for hours, and the strangest part of
our intercourse was that I could read his every thought while he could
not fathom an iota from my mind unless I spoke.

[Illustration: The old man sat and talked with me for hours.]

I did not apprise him of my ability to sense his mental operations, and
thus I learned a great deal which proved of immense value to me later
and which I would never have known had he suspected my strange power,
for the Martians have such perfect control of their mental machinery
that they are able to direct their thoughts with absolute precision.

The building in which I found myself contained the machinery which
produces that artificial atmosphere which sustains life on Mars.  The
secret of the entire process hinges on the use of the ninth ray, one of
the beautiful scintillations which I had noted emanating from the great
stone in my host's diadem.

This ray is separated from the other rays of the sun by means of finely
adjusted instruments placed upon the roof of the huge building,
three-quarters of which is used for reservoirs in which the ninth ray
is stored.  This product is then treated electrically, or rather
certain proportions of refined electric vibrations are incorporated
with it, and the result is then pumped to the five principal air
centers of the planet where, as it is released, contact with the ether
of space transforms it into atmosphere.

There is always sufficient reserve of the ninth ray stored in the great
building to maintain the present Martian atmosphere for a thousand
years, and the only fear, as my new friend told me, was that some
accident might befall the pumping apparatus.

He led me to an inner chamber where I beheld a battery of twenty radium
pumps any one of which was equal to the task of furnishing all Mars
with the atmosphere compound.  For eight hundred years, he told me, he
had watched these pumps which are used alternately a day each at a
stretch, or a little over twenty-four and one-half Earth hours.  He has
one assistant who divides the watch with him.  Half a Martian year,
about three hundred and forty-four of our days, each of these men spend
alone in this huge, isolated plant.

Every red Martian is taught during earliest childhood the principles of
the manufacture of atmosphere, but only two at one time ever hold the
secret of ingress to the great building, which, built as it is with
walls a hundred and fifty feet thick, is absolutely unassailable, even
the roof being guarded from assault by air craft by a glass covering
five feet thick.

The only fear they entertain of attack is from the green Martians or
some demented red man, as all Barsoomians realize that the very
existence of every form of life of Mars is dependent upon the
uninterrupted working of this plant.

One curious fact I discovered as I watched his thoughts was that the
outer doors are manipulated by telepathic means.  The locks are so
finely adjusted that the doors are released by the action of a certain
combination of thought waves.  To experiment with my new-found toy I
thought to surprise him into revealing this combination and so I asked
him in a casual manner how he had managed to unlock the massive doors
for me from the inner chambers of the building.  As quick as a flash
there leaped to his mind nine Martian sounds, but as quickly faded as
he answered that this was a secret he must not divulge.

From then on his manner toward me changed as though he feared that he
had been surprised into divulging his great secret, and I read
suspicion and fear in his looks and thoughts, though his words were
still fair.

Before I retired for the night he promised to give me a letter to a
nearby agricultural officer who would help me on my way to Zodanga,
which he said, was the nearest Martian city.

"But be sure that you do not let them know you are bound for Helium as
they are at war with that country.  My assistant and I are of no
country, we belong to all Barsoom and this talisman which we wear
protects us in all lands, even among the green men--though we do not
trust ourselves to their hands if we can avoid it," he added.

"And so good-night, my friend," he continued, "may you have a long and
restful sleep--yes, a long sleep."

And though he smiled pleasantly I saw in his thoughts the wish that he
had never admitted me, and then a picture of him standing over me in
the night, and the swift thrust of a long dagger and the half formed
words, "I am sorry, but it is for the best good of Barsoom."

As he closed the door of my chamber behind him his thoughts were cut
off from me as was the sight of him, which seemed strange to me in my
little knowledge of thought transference.

What was I to do?  How could I escape through these mighty walls?
Easily could I kill him now that I was warned, but once he was dead I
could no more escape, and with the stopping of the machinery of the
great plant I should die with all the other inhabitants of the
planet--all, even Dejah Thoris were she not already dead.  For the
others I did not give the snap of my finger, but the thought of Dejah
Thoris drove from my mind all desire to kill my mistaken host.

Cautiously I opened the door of my apartment and, followed by Woola,
sought the inner of the great doors.  A wild scheme had come to me; I
would attempt to force the great locks by the nine thought waves I had
read in my host's mind.

Creeping stealthily through corridor after corridor and down winding
runways which turned hither and thither I finally reached the great
hall in which I had broken my long fast that morning.  Nowhere had I
seen my host, nor did I know where he kept himself by night.

I was on the point of stepping boldly out into the room when a slight
noise behind me warned me back into the shadows of a recess in the
corridor.  Dragging Woola after me I crouched low in the darkness.

Presently the old man passed close by me, and as he entered the dimly
lighted chamber which I had been about to pass through I saw that he
held a long thin dagger in his hand and that he was sharpening it upon
a stone.  In his mind was the decision to inspect the radium pumps,
which would take about thirty minutes, and then return to my bed
chamber and finish me.

As he passed through the great hall and disappeared down the runway
which led to the pump-room, I stole stealthily from my hiding place and
crossed to the great door, the inner of the three which stood between
me and liberty.

Concentrating my mind upon the massive lock I hurled the nine thought
waves against it.  In breathless expectancy I waited, when finally the
great door moved softly toward me and slid quietly to one side.  One
after the other the remaining mighty portals opened at my command and
Woola and I stepped forth into the darkness, free, but little better
off than we had been before, other than that we had full stomachs.

Hastening away from the shadows of the formidable pile I made for the
first crossroad, intending to strike the central turnpike as quickly as
possible.  This I reached about morning and entering the first
enclosure I came to I searched for some evidences of a habitation.

There were low rambling buildings of concrete barred with heavy
impassable doors, and no amount of hammering and hallooing brought any
response.  Weary and exhausted from sleeplessness I threw myself upon
the ground commanding Woola to stand guard.

Some time later I was awakened by his frightful growlings and opened my
eyes to see three red Martians standing a short distance from us and
covering me with their rifles.

"I am unarmed and no enemy," I hastened to explain.  "I have been a
prisoner among the green men and am on my way to Zodanga.  All I ask is
food and rest for myself and my calot and the proper directions for
reaching my destination."

They lowered their rifles and advanced pleasantly toward me placing
their right hands upon my left shoulder, after the manner of their
custom of salute, and asking me many questions about myself and my
wanderings.  They then took me to the house of one of them which was
only a short distance away.

The buildings I had been hammering at in the early morning were
occupied only by stock and farm produce, the house proper standing
among a grove of enormous trees, and, like all red-Martian homes, had
been raised at night some forty or fifty feet from the ground on a
large round metal shaft which slid up or down within a sleeve sunk in
the ground, and was operated by a tiny radium engine in the entrance
hall of the building.  Instead of bothering with bolts and bars for
their dwellings, the red Martians simply run them up out of harm's way
during the night.  They also have private means for lowering or raising
them from the ground without if they wish to go away and leave them.

These brothers, with their wives and children, occupied three similar
houses on this farm.  They did no work themselves, being government
officers in charge.  The labor was performed by convicts, prisoners of
war, delinquent debtors and confirmed bachelors who were too poor to
pay the high celibate tax which all red-Martian governments impose.

They were the personification of cordiality and hospitality and I spent
several days with them, resting and recuperating from my long and
arduous experiences.

When they had heard my story--I omitted all reference to Dejah Thoris
and the old man of the atmosphere plant--they advised me to color my
body to more nearly resemble their own race and then attempt to find
employment in Zodanga, either in the army or the navy.

"The chances are small that your tale will be believed until after you
have proven your trustworthiness and won friends among the higher
nobles of the court.  This you can most easily do through military
service, as we are a warlike people on Barsoom," explained one of them,
"and save our richest favors for the fighting man."

When I was ready to depart they furnished me with a small domestic bull
thoat, such as is used for saddle purposes by all red Martians.  The
animal is about the size of a horse and quite gentle, but in color and
shape an exact replica of his huge and fierce cousin of the wilds.

The brothers had supplied me with a reddish oil with which I anointed
my entire body and one of them cut my hair, which had grown quite long,
in the prevailing fashion of the time, square at the back and banged in
front, so that I could have passed anywhere upon Barsoom as a
full-fledged red Martian.  My metal and ornaments were also renewed in
the style of a Zodangan gentleman, attached to the house of Ptor, which
was the family name of my benefactors.

They filled a little sack at my side with Zodangan money.  The medium
of exchange upon Mars is not dissimilar from our own except that the
coins are oval.  Paper money is issued by individuals as they require
it and redeemed twice yearly.  If a man issues more than he can redeem,
the government pays his creditors in full and the debtor works out the
amount upon the farms or in mines, which are all owned by the
government.  This suits everybody except the debtor as it has been a
difficult thing to obtain sufficient voluntary labor to work the great
isolated farm lands of Mars, stretching as they do like narrow ribbons
from pole to pole, through wild stretches peopled by wild animals and
wilder men.

When I mentioned my inability to repay them for their kindness to me
they assured me that I would have ample opportunity if I lived long
upon Barsoom, and bidding me farewell they watched me until I was out
of sight upon the broad white turnpike.




CHAPTER XXI

AN AIR SCOUT FOR ZODANGA


As I proceeded on my journey toward Zodanga many strange and
interesting sights arrested my attention, and at the several farm
houses where I stopped I learned a number of new and instructive things
concerning the methods and manners of Barsoom.

The water which supplies the farms of Mars is collected in immense
underground reservoirs at either pole from the melting ice caps, and
pumped through long conduits to the various populated centers.  Along
either side of these conduits, and extending their entire length, lie
the cultivated districts.  These are divided into tracts of about the
same size, each tract being under the supervision of one or more
government officers.

Instead of flooding the surface of the fields, and thus wasting immense
quantities of water by evaporation, the precious liquid is carried
underground through a vast network of small pipes directly to the roots
of the vegetation.  The crops upon Mars are always uniform, for there
are no droughts, no rains, no high winds, and no insects, or destroying
birds.

On this trip I tasted the first meat I had eaten since leaving
Earth--large, juicy steaks and chops from the well-fed domestic animals
of the farms.  Also I enjoyed luscious fruits and vegetables, but not a
single article of food which was exactly similar to anything on Earth.
Every plant and flower and vegetable and animal has been so refined by
ages of careful, scientific cultivation and breeding that the like of
them on Earth dwindled into pale, gray, characterless nothingness by
comparison.

At a second stop I met some highly cultivated people of the noble class
and while in conversation we chanced to speak of Helium.  One of the
older men had been there on a diplomatic mission several years before
and spoke with regret of the conditions which seemed destined ever to
keep these two countries at war.

"Helium," he said, "rightly boasts the most beautiful women of Barsoom,
and of all her treasures the wondrous daughter of Mors Kajak, Dejah
Thoris, is the most exquisite flower.

"Why," he added, "the people really worship the ground she walks upon
and since her loss on that ill-starred expedition all Helium has been
draped in mourning.

"That our ruler should have attacked the disabled fleet as it was
returning to Helium was but another of his awful blunders which I fear
will sooner or later compel Zodanga to elevate a wiser man to his
place."

"Even now, though our victorious armies are surrounding Helium, the
people of Zodanga are voicing their displeasure, for the war is not a
popular one, since it is not based on right or justice.  Our forces
took advantage of the absence of the principal fleet of Helium on their
search for the princess, and so we have been able easily to reduce the
city to a sorry plight.  It is said she will fall within the next few
passages of the further moon."

"And what, think you, may have been the fate of the princess, Dejah
Thoris?" I asked as casually as possible.

"She is dead," he answered.  "This much was learned from a green
warrior recently captured by our forces in the south.  She escaped from
the hordes of Thark with a strange creature of another world, only to
fall into the hands of the Warhoons.  Their thoats were found wandering
upon the sea bottom and evidences of a bloody conflict were discovered
nearby."

While this information was in no way reassuring, neither was it at all
conclusive proof of the death of Dejah Thoris, and so I determined to
make every effort possible to reach Helium as quickly as I could and
carry to Tardos Mors such news of his granddaughter's possible
whereabouts as lay in my power.

Ten days after leaving the three Ptor brothers I arrived at Zodanga.
From the moment that I had come in contact with the red inhabitants of
Mars I had noticed that Woola drew a great amount of unwelcome
attention to me, since the huge brute belonged to a species which is
never domesticated by the red men.  Were one to stroll down Broadway
with a Numidian lion at his heels the effect would be somewhat similar
to that which I should have produced had I entered Zodanga with Woola.

The very thought of parting with the faithful fellow caused me so great
regret and genuine sorrow that I put it off until just before we
arrived at the city's gates; but then, finally, it became imperative
that we separate.  Had nothing further than my own safety or pleasure
been at stake no argument could have prevailed upon me to turn away the
one creature upon Barsoom that had never failed in a demonstration of
affection and loyalty; but as I would willingly have offered my life in
the service of her in search of whom I was about to challenge the
unknown dangers of this, to me, mysterious city, I could not permit
even Woola's life to threaten the success of my venture, much less his
momentary happiness, for I doubted not he soon would forget me.  And so
I bade the poor beast an affectionate farewell, promising him, however,
that if I came through my adventure in safety that in some way I should
find the means to search him out.

He seemed to understand me fully, and when I pointed back in the
direction of Thark he turned sorrowfully away, nor could I bear to
watch him go; but resolutely set my face toward Zodanga and with a
touch of heartsickness approached her frowning walls.

The letter I bore from them gained me immediate entrance to the vast,
walled city.  It was still very early in the morning and the streets
were practically deserted.  The residences, raised high upon their
metal columns, resembled huge rookeries, while the uprights themselves
presented the appearance of steel tree trunks.  The shops as a rule
were not raised from the ground nor were their doors bolted or barred,
since thievery is practically unknown upon Barsoom.  Assassination is
the ever-present fear of all Barsoomians, and for this reason alone
their homes are raised high above the ground at night, or in times of
danger.

The Ptor brothers had given me explicit directions for reaching the
point of the city where I could find living accommodations and be near
the offices of the government agents to whom they had given me letters.
My way led to the central square or plaza, which is a characteristic of
all Martian cities.

The plaza of Zodanga covers a square mile and is bounded by the palaces
of the jeddak, the jeds, and other members of the royalty and nobility
of Zodanga, as well as by the principal public buildings, cafes, and
shops.

As I was crossing the great square lost in wonder and admiration of the
magnificent architecture and the gorgeous scarlet vegetation which
carpeted the broad lawns I discovered a red Martian walking briskly
toward me from one of the avenues.  He paid not the slightest attention
to me, but as he came abreast I recognized him, and turning I placed my
hand upon his shoulder, calling out:

"Kaor, Kantos Kan!"

Like lightning he wheeled and before I could so much as lower my hand
the point of his long-sword was at my breast.

"Who are you?" he growled, and then as a backward leap carried me fifty
feet from his sword he dropped the point to the ground and exclaimed,
laughing,

"I do not need a better reply, there is but one man upon all Barsoom
who can bounce about like a rubber ball.  By the mother of the further
moon, John Carter, how came you here, and have you become a Darseen
that you can change your color at will?"

"You gave me a bad half minute my friend," he continued, after I had
briefly outlined my adventures since parting with him in the arena at
Warhoon.  "Were my name and city known to the Zodangans I would shortly
be sitting on the banks of the lost sea of Korus with my revered and
departed ancestors.  I am here in the interest of Tardos Mors, Jeddak
of Helium, to discover the whereabouts of Dejah Thoris, our princess.
Sab Than, prince of Zodanga, has her hidden in the city and has fallen
madly in love with her.  His father, Than Kosis, Jeddak of Zodanga, has
made her voluntary marriage to his son the price of peace between our
countries, but Tardos Mors will not accede to the demands and has sent
word that he and his people would rather look upon the dead face of
their princess than see her wed to any than her own choice, and that
personally he would prefer being engulfed in the ashes of a lost and
burning Helium to joining the metal of his house with that of Than
Kosis.  His reply was the deadliest affront he could have put upon Than
Kosis and the Zodangans, but his people love him the more for it and
his strength in Helium is greater today than ever.

"I have been here three days," continued Kantos Kan, "but I have not
yet found where Dejah Thoris is imprisoned.  Today I join the Zodangan
navy as an air scout and I hope in this way to win the confidence of
Sab Than, the prince, who is commander of this division of the navy,
and thus learn the whereabouts of Dejah Thoris.  I am glad that you are
here, John Carter, for I know your loyalty to my princess and two of us
working together should be able to accomplish much."

The plaza was now commencing to fill with people going and coming upon
the daily activities of their duties.  The shops were opening and the
cafes filling with early morning patrons.  Kantos Kan led me to one of
these gorgeous eating places where we were served entirely by
mechanical apparatus.  No hand touched the food from the time it
entered the building in its raw state until it emerged hot and
delicious upon the tables before the guests, in response to the
touching of tiny buttons to indicate their desires.

After our meal, Kantos Kan took me with him to the headquarters of the
air-scout squadron and introducing me to his superior asked that I be
enrolled as a member of the corps.  In accordance with custom an
examination was necessary, but Kantos Kan had told me to have no fear
on this score as he would attend to that part of the matter.  He
accomplished this by taking my order for examination to the examining
officer and representing himself as John Carter.

"This ruse will be discovered later," he cheerfully explained, "when
they check up my weights, measurements, and other personal
identification data, but it will be several months before this is done
and our mission should be accomplished or have failed long before that
time."

The next few days were spent by Kantos Kan in teaching me the
intricacies of flying and of repairing the dainty little contrivances
which the Martians use for this purpose.  The body of the one-man air
craft is about sixteen feet long, two feet wide and three inches thick,
tapering to a point at each end.  The driver sits on top of this plane
upon a seat constructed over the small, noiseless radium engine which
propels it.  The medium of buoyancy is contained within the thin metal
walls of the body and consists of the eighth Barsoomian ray, or ray of
propulsion, as it may be termed in view of its properties.

This ray, like the ninth ray, is unknown on Earth, but the Martians
have discovered that it is an inherent property of all light no matter
from what source it emanates.  They have learned that it is the solar
eighth ray which propels the light of the sun to the various planets,
and that it is the individual eighth ray of each planet which
"reflects," or propels the light thus obtained out into space once
more.  The solar eighth ray would be absorbed by the surface of
Barsoom, but the Barsoomian eighth ray, which tends to propel light
from Mars into space, is constantly streaming out from the planet
constituting a force of repulsion of gravity which when confined is
able to lift enormous weights from the surface of the ground.

It is this ray which has enabled them to so perfect aviation that
battle ships far outweighing anything known upon Earth sail as
gracefully and lightly through the thin air of Barsoom as a toy balloon
in the heavy atmosphere of Earth.

During the early years of the discovery of this ray many strange
accidents occurred before the Martians learned to measure and control
the wonderful power they had found.  In one instance, some nine hundred
years before, the first great battle ship to be built with eighth ray
reservoirs was stored with too great a quantity of the rays and she had
sailed up from Helium with five hundred officers and men, never to
return.

Her power of repulsion for the planet was so great that it had carried
her far into space, where she can be seen today, by the aid of powerful
telescopes, hurtling through the heavens ten thousand miles from Mars;
a tiny satellite that will thus encircle Barsoom to the end of time.

The fourth day after my arrival at Zodanga I made my first flight, and
as a result of it I won a promotion which included quarters in the
palace of Than Kosis.

As I rose above the city I circled several times, as I had seen Kantos
Kan do, and then throwing my engine into top speed I raced at terrific
velocity toward the south, following one of the great waterways which
enter Zodanga from that direction.

I had traversed perhaps two hundred miles in a little less than an hour
when I descried far below me a party of three green warriors racing
madly toward a small figure on foot which seemed to be trying to reach
the confines of one of the walled fields.

Dropping my machine rapidly toward them, and circling to the rear of
the warriors, I soon saw that the object of their pursuit was a red
Martian wearing the metal of the scout squadron to which I was
attached.  A short distance away lay his tiny flier, surrounded by the
tools with which he had evidently been occupied in repairing some
damage when surprised by the green warriors.

They were now almost upon him; their flying mounts charging down on the
relatively puny figure at terrific speed, while the warriors leaned low
to the right, with their great metal-shod spears.  Each seemed striving
to be the first to impale the poor Zodangan and in another moment his
fate would have been sealed had it not been for my timely arrival.

Driving my fleet air craft at high speed directly behind the warriors I
soon overtook them and without diminishing my speed I rammed the prow
of my little flier between the shoulders of the nearest.  The impact
sufficient to have torn through inches of solid steel, hurled the
fellow's headless body into the air over the head of his thoat, where
it fell sprawling upon the moss.  The mounts of the other two warriors
turned squealing in terror, and bolted in opposite directions.

Reducing my speed I circled and came to the ground at the feet of the
astonished Zodangan.  He was warm in his thanks for my timely aid and
promised that my day's work would bring the reward it merited, for it
was none other than a cousin of the jeddak of Zodanga whose life I had
saved.

We wasted no time in talk as we knew that the warriors would surely
return as soon as they had gained control of their mounts.  Hastening
to his damaged machine we were bending every effort to finish the
needed repairs and had almost completed them when we saw the two green
monsters returning at top speed from opposite sides of us.  When they
had approached within a hundred yards their thoats again became
unmanageable and absolutely refused to advance further toward the air
craft which had frightened them.

The warriors finally dismounted and hobbling their animals advanced
toward us on foot with drawn long-swords.

I advanced to meet the larger, telling the Zodangan to do the best he
could with the other.  Finishing my man with almost no effort, as had
now from much practice become habitual with me, I hastened to return to
my new acquaintance whom I found indeed in desperate straits.

He was wounded and down with the huge foot of his antagonist upon his
throat and the great long-sword raised to deal the final thrust.  With
a bound I cleared the fifty feet intervening between us, and with
outstretched point drove my sword completely through the body of the
green warrior.  His sword fell, harmless, to the ground and he sank
limply upon the prostrate form of the Zodangan.

A cursory examination of the latter revealed no mortal injuries and
after a brief rest he asserted that he felt fit to attempt the return
voyage.  He would have to pilot his own craft, however, as these frail
vessels are not intended to convey but a single person.

Quickly completing the repairs we rose together into the still,
cloudless Martian sky, and at great speed and without further mishap
returned to Zodanga.

As we neared the city we discovered a mighty concourse of civilians and
troops assembled upon the plain before the city.  The sky was black
with naval vessels and private and public pleasure craft, flying long
streamers of gay-colored silks, and banners and flags of odd and
picturesque design.

My companion signaled that I slow down, and running his machine close
beside mine suggested that we approach and watch the ceremony, which,
he said, was for the purpose of conferring honors on individual
officers and men for bravery and other distinguished service.  He then
unfurled a little ensign which denoted that his craft bore a member of
the royal family of Zodanga, and together we made our way through the
maze of low-lying air vessels until we hung directly over the jeddak of
Zodanga and his staff.  All were mounted upon the small domestic bull
thoats of the red Martians, and their trappings and ornamentation bore
such a quantity of gorgeously colored feathers that I could not but be
struck with the startling resemblance the concourse bore to a band of
the red Indians of my own Earth.

One of the staff called the attention of Than Kosis to the presence of
my companion above them and the ruler motioned for him to descend.  As
they waited for the troops to move into position facing the jeddak the
two talked earnestly together, the jeddak and his staff occasionally
glancing up at me.  I could not hear their conversation and presently
it ceased and all dismounted, as the last body of troops had wheeled
into position before their emperor.  A member of the staff advanced
toward the troops, and calling the name of a soldier commanded him to
advance.  The officer then recited the nature of the heroic act which
had won the approval of the jeddak, and the latter advanced and placed
a metal ornament upon the left arm of the lucky man.

Ten men had been so decorated when the aide called out,

"John Carter, air scout!"

Never in my life had I been so surprised, but the habit of military
discipline is strong within me, and I dropped my little machine lightly
to the ground and advanced on foot as I had seen the others do.  As I
halted before the officer, he addressed me in a voice audible to the
entire assemblage of troops and spectators.

"In recognition, John Carter," he said, "of your remarkable courage and
skill in defending the person of the cousin of the jeddak Than Kosis
and, singlehanded, vanquishing three green warriors, it is the pleasure
of our jeddak to confer on you the mark of his esteem."

Than Kosis then advanced toward me and placing an ornament upon me,
said:

"My cousin has narrated the details of your wonderful achievement,
which seems little short of miraculous, and if you can so well defend a
cousin of the jeddak how much better could you defend the person of the
jeddak himself.  You are therefore appointed a padwar of The Guards and
will be quartered in my palace hereafter."

I thanked him, and at his direction joined the members of his staff.
After the ceremony I returned my machine to its quarters on the roof of
the barracks of the air-scout squadron, and with an orderly from the
palace to guide me I reported to the officer in charge of the palace.




CHAPTER XXII

I FIND DEJAH


The major-domo to whom I reported had been given instructions to
station me near the person of the jeddak, who, in time of war, is
always in great danger of assassination, as the rule that all is fair
in war seems to constitute the entire ethics of Martian conflict.

He therefore escorted me immediately to the apartment in which Than
Kosis then was.  The ruler was engaged in conversation with his son,
Sab Than, and several courtiers of his household, and did not perceive
my entrance.

The walls of the apartment were completely hung with splendid
tapestries which hid any windows or doors which may have pierced them.
The room was lighted by imprisoned rays of sunshine held between the
ceiling proper and what appeared to be a ground-glass false ceiling a
few inches below.

My guide drew aside one of the tapestries, disclosing a passage which
encircled the room, between the hangings and the walls of the chamber.
Within this passage I was to remain, he said, so long as Than Kosis was
in the apartment.  When he left I was to follow.  My only duty was to
guard the ruler and keep out of sight as much as possible.  I would be
relieved after a period of four hours.  The major-domo then left me.

The tapestries were of a strange weaving which gave the appearance of
heavy solidity from one side, but from my hiding place I could perceive
all that took place within the room as readily as though there had been
no curtain intervening.

Scarcely had I gained my post than the tapestry at the opposite end of
the chamber separated and four soldiers of The Guard entered,
surrounding a female figure.  As they approached Than Kosis the
soldiers fell to either side and there standing before the jeddak and
not ten feet from me, her beautiful face radiant with smiles, was Dejah
Thoris.

Sab Than, Prince of Zodanga, advanced to meet her, and hand in hand
they approached close to the jeddak.  Than Kosis looked up in surprise,
and, rising, saluted her.

"To what strange freak do I owe this visit from the Princess of Helium,
who, two days ago, with rare consideration for my pride, assured me
that she would prefer Tal Hajus, the green Thark, to my son?"

Dejah Thoris only smiled the more and with the roguish dimples playing
at the corners of her mouth she made answer:

"From the beginning of time upon Barsoom it has been the prerogative of
woman to change her mind as she listed and to dissemble in matters
concerning her heart.  That you will forgive, Than Kosis, as has your
son.  Two days ago I was not sure of his love for me, but now I am, and
I have come to beg of you to forget my rash words and to accept the
assurance of the Princess of Helium that when the time comes she will
wed Sab Than, Prince of Zodanga."

"I am glad that you have so decided," replied Than Kosis.  "It is far
from my desire to push war further against the people of Helium, and,
your promise shall be recorded and a proclamation to my people issued
forthwith."

"It were better, Than Kosis," interrupted Dejah Thoris, "that the
proclamation wait the ending of this war.  It would look strange indeed
to my people and to yours were the Princess of Helium to give herself
to her country's enemy in the midst of hostilities."

"Cannot the war be ended at once?" spoke Sab Than.  "It requires but
the word of Than Kosis to bring peace.  Say it, my father, say the word
that will hasten my happiness, and end this unpopular strife."

"We shall see," replied Than Kosis, "how the people of Helium take to
peace.  I shall at least offer it to them."

Dejah Thoris, after a few words, turned and left the apartment, still
followed by her guards.

Thus was the edifice of my brief dream of happiness dashed, broken, to
the ground of reality.  The woman for whom I had offered my life, and
from whose lips I had so recently heard a declaration of love for me,
had lightly forgotten my very existence and smilingly given herself to
the son of her people's most hated enemy.

Although I had heard it with my own ears I could not believe it.  I
must search out her apartments and force her to repeat the cruel truth
to me alone before I would be convinced, and so I deserted my post and
hastened through the passage behind the tapestries toward the door by
which she had left the chamber.  Slipping quietly through this opening
I discovered a maze of winding corridors, branching and turning in
every direction.

Running rapidly down first one and then another of them I soon became
hopelessly lost and was standing panting against a side wall when I
heard voices near me.  Apparently they were coming from the opposite
side of the partition against which I leaned and presently I made out
the tones of Dejah Thoris.  I could not hear the words but I knew that
I could not possibly be mistaken in the voice.

Moving on a few steps I discovered another passageway at the end of
which lay a door.  Walking boldly forward I pushed into the room only
to find myself in a small antechamber in which were the four guards who
had accompanied her.  One of them instantly arose and accosted me,
asking the nature of my business.

"I am from Than Kosis," I replied, "and wish to speak privately with
Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium."

"And your order?" asked the fellow.

I did not know what he meant, but replied that I was a member of The
Guard, and without waiting for a reply from him I strode toward the
opposite door of the antechamber, behind which I could hear Dejah
Thoris conversing.

But my entrance was not to be so easily accomplished.  The guardsman
stepped before me, saying,

"No one comes from Than Kosis without carrying an order or the
password.  You must give me one or the other before you may pass."

"The only order I require, my friend, to enter where I will, hangs at
my side," I answered, tapping my long-sword; "will you let me pass in
peace or no?"

For reply he whipped out his own sword, calling to the others to join
him, and thus the four stood, with drawn weapons, barring my further
progress.

"You are not here by the order of Than Kosis," cried the one who had
first addressed me, "and not only shall you not enter the apartments of
the Princess of Helium but you shall go back to Than Kosis under guard
to explain this unwarranted temerity.  Throw down your sword; you
cannot hope to overcome four of us," he added with a grim smile.

My reply was a quick thrust which left me but three antagonists and I
can assure you that they were worthy of my metal.  They had me backed
against the wall in no time, fighting for my life.  Slowly I worked my
way to a corner of the room where I could force them to come at me only
one at a time, and thus we fought upward of twenty minutes; the
clanging of steel on steel producing a veritable bedlam in the little
room.

The noise had brought Dejah Thoris to the door of her apartment, and
there she stood throughout the conflict with Sola at her back peering
over her shoulder.  Her face was set and emotionless and I knew that
she did not recognize me, nor did Sola.

Finally a lucky cut brought down a second guardsman and then, with only
two opposing me, I changed my tactics and rushed them down after the
fashion of my fighting that had won me many a victory.  The third fell
within ten seconds after the second, and the last lay dead upon the
bloody floor a few moments later.  They were brave men and noble
fighters, and it grieved me that I had been forced to kill them, but I
would have willingly depopulated all Barsoom could I have reached the
side of my Dejah Thoris in no other way.

Sheathing my bloody blade I advanced toward my Martian Princess, who
still stood mutely gazing at me without sign of recognition.

"Who are you, Zodangan?" she whispered.  "Another enemy to harass me in
my misery?"

"I am a friend," I answered, "a once cherished friend."

"No friend of Helium's princess wears that metal," she replied, "and
yet the voice!  I have heard it before; it is not--it cannot be--no,
for he is dead."

"It is, though, my Princess, none other than John Carter," I said.  "Do
you not recognize, even through paint and strange metal, the heart of
your chieftain?"

As I came close to her she swayed toward me with outstretched hands,
but as I reached to take her in my arms she drew back with a shudder
and a little moan of misery.

"Too late, too late," she grieved.  "O my chieftain that was, and whom
I thought dead, had you but returned one little hour before--but now it
is too late, too late."

"What do you mean, Dejah Thoris?" I cried.  "That you would not have
promised yourself to the Zodangan prince had you known that I lived?"

"Think you, John Carter, that I would give my heart to you yesterday
and today to another?  I thought that it lay buried with your ashes in
the pits of Warhoon, and so today I have promised my body to another to
save my people from the curse of a victorious Zodangan army."

"But I am not dead, my princess.  I have come to claim you, and all
Zodanga cannot prevent it."

"It is too late, John Carter, my promise is given, and on Barsoom that
is final.  The ceremonies which follow later are but meaningless
formalities.  They make the fact of marriage no more certain than does
the funeral cortege of a jeddak again place the seal of death upon him.
I am as good as married, John Carter.  No longer may you call me your
princess.  No longer are you my chieftain."

"I know but little of your customs here upon Barsoom, Dejah Thoris, but
I do know that I love you, and if you meant the last words you spoke to
me that day as the hordes of Warhoon were charging down upon us, no
other man shall ever claim you as his bride.  You meant them then, my
princess, and you mean them still!  Say that it is true."

"I meant them, John Carter," she whispered.  "I cannot repeat them now
for I have given myself to another.  Ah, if you had only known our
ways, my friend," she continued, half to herself, "the promise would
have been yours long months ago, and you could have claimed me before
all others.  It might have meant the fall of Helium, but I would have
given my empire for my Tharkian chief."

Then aloud she said: "Do you remember the night when you offended me?
You called me your princess without having asked my hand of me, and
then you boasted that you had fought for me.  You did not know, and I
should not have been offended; I see that now.  But there was no one to
tell you what I could not, that upon Barsoom there are two kinds of
women in the cities of the red men.  The one they fight for that they
may ask them in marriage; the other kind they fight for also, but never
ask their hands.  When a man has won a woman he may address her as his
princess, or in any of the several terms which signify possession.  You
had fought for me, but had never asked me in marriage, and so when you
called me your princess, you see," she faltered, "I was hurt, but even
then, John Carter, I did not repulse you, as I should have done, until
you made it doubly worse by taunting me with having won me through
combat."

"I do not need ask your forgiveness now, Dejah Thoris," I cried.  "You
must know that my fault was of ignorance of your Barsoomian customs.
What I failed to do, through implicit belief that my petition would be
presumptuous and unwelcome, I do now, Dejah Thoris; I ask you to be my
wife, and by all the Virginian fighting blood that flows in my veins
you shall be."

"No, John Carter, it is useless," she cried, hopelessly, "I may never
be yours while Sab Than lives."

"You have sealed his death warrant, my princess--Sab Than dies."

"Nor that either," she hastened to explain.  "I may not wed the man who
slays my husband, even in self-defense.  It is custom.  We are ruled by
custom upon Barsoom.  It is useless, my friend.  You must bear the
sorrow with me.  That at least we may share in common.  That, and the
memory of the brief days among the Tharks.  You must go now, nor ever
see me again.  Good-bye, my chieftain that was."

Disheartened and dejected, I withdrew from the room, but I was not
entirely discouraged, nor would I admit that Dejah Thoris was lost to
me until the ceremony had actually been performed.

As I wandered along the corridors, I was as absolutely lost in the
mazes of winding passageways as I had been before I discovered Dejah
Thoris' apartments.

I knew that my only hope lay in escape from the city of Zodanga, for
the matter of the four dead guardsmen would have to be explained, and
as I could never reach my original post without a guide, suspicion
would surely rest on me so soon as I was discovered wandering aimlessly
through the palace.

Presently I came upon a spiral runway leading to a lower floor, and
this I followed downward for several stories until I reached the
doorway of a large apartment in which were a number of guardsmen.  The
walls of this room were hung with transparent tapestries behind which I
secreted myself without being apprehended.

The conversation of the guardsmen was general, and awakened no interest
in me until an officer entered the room and ordered four of the men to
relieve the detail who were guarding the Princess of Helium.  Now, I
knew, my troubles would commence in earnest and indeed they were upon
me all too soon, for it seemed that the squad had scarcely left the
guardroom before one of their number burst in again breathlessly,
crying that they had found their four comrades butchered in the
antechamber.

In a moment the entire palace was alive with people.  Guardsmen,
officers, courtiers, servants, and slaves ran helter-skelter through
the corridors and apartments carrying messages and orders, and
searching for signs of the assassin.

This was my opportunity and slim as it appeared I grasped it, for as a
number of soldiers came hurrying past my hiding place I fell in behind
them and followed through the mazes of the palace until, in passing
through a great hall, I saw the blessed light of day coming in through
a series of larger windows.

Here I left my guides, and, slipping to the nearest window, sought for
an avenue of escape.  The windows opened upon a great balcony which
overlooked one of the broad avenues of Zodanga.  The ground was about
thirty feet below, and at a like distance from the building was a wall
fully twenty feet high, constructed of polished glass about a foot in
thickness.  To a red Martian escape by this path would have appeared
impossible, but to me, with my earthly strength and agility, it seemed
already accomplished.  My only fear was in being detected before
darkness fell, for I could not make the leap in broad daylight while
the court below and the avenue beyond were crowded with Zodangans.

Accordingly I searched for a hiding place and finally found one by
accident, inside a huge hanging ornament which swung from the ceiling
of the hall, and about ten feet from the floor.  Into the capacious
bowl-like vase I sprang with ease, and scarcely had I settled down
within it than I heard a number of people enter the apartment.  The
group stopped beneath my hiding place and I could plainly overhear
their every word.

"It is the work of Heliumites," said one of the men.

"Yes, O Jeddak, but how had they access to the palace?  I could believe
that even with the diligent care of your guardsmen a single enemy might
reach the inner chambers, but how a force of six or eight fighting men
could have done so unobserved is beyond me.  We shall soon know,
however, for here comes the royal psychologist."

Another man now joined the group, and, after making his formal
greetings to his ruler, said:

"O mighty Jeddak, it is a strange tale I read in the dead minds of your
faithful guardsmen.  They were felled not by a number of fighting men,
but by a single opponent."

He paused to let the full weight of this announcement impress his
hearers, and that his statement was scarcely credited was evidenced by
the impatient exclamation of incredulity which escaped the lips of Than
Kosis.

"What manner of weird tale are you bringing me, Notan?" he cried.

"It is the truth, my Jeddak," replied the psychologist.  "In fact the
impressions were strongly marked on the brain of each of the four
guardsmen.  Their antagonist was a very tall man, wearing the metal of
one of your own guardsmen, and his fighting ability was little short of
marvelous for he fought fair against the entire four and vanquished
them by his surpassing skill and superhuman strength and endurance.
Though he wore the metal of Zodanga, my Jeddak, such a man was never
seen before in this or any other country upon Barsoom.

"The mind of the Princess of Helium whom I have examined and questioned
was a blank to me, she has perfect control, and I could not read one
iota of it.  She said that she witnessed a portion of the encounter,
and that when she looked there was but one man engaged with the
guardsmen; a man whom she did not recognize as ever having seen."

"Where is my erstwhile savior?" spoke another of the party, and I
recognized the voice of the cousin of Than Kosis, whom I had rescued
from the green warriors.  "By the metal of my first ancestor," he went
on, "but the description fits him to perfection, especially as to his
fighting ability."

"Where is this man?" cried Than Kosis.  "Have him brought to me at
once.  What know you of him, cousin?  It seemed strange to me now that
I think upon it that there should have been such a fighting man in
Zodanga, of whose name, even, we were ignorant before today.  And his
name too, John Carter, who ever heard of such a name upon Barsoom!"

Word was soon brought that I was nowhere to be found, either in the
palace or at my former quarters in the barracks of the air-scout
squadron.  Kantos Kan, they had found and questioned, but he knew
nothing of my whereabouts, and as to my past, he had told them he knew
as little, since he had but recently met me during our captivity among
the Warhoons.

"Keep your eyes on this other one," commanded Than Kosis.  "He also is
a stranger and likely as not they both hail from Helium, and where one
is we shall sooner or later find the other.  Quadruple the air patrol,
and let every man who leaves the city by air or ground be subjected to
the closest scrutiny."

Another messenger now entered with word that I was still within the
palace walls.

"The likeness of every person who has entered or left the palace
grounds today has been carefully examined," concluded the fellow, "and
not one approaches the likeness of this new padwar of the guards, other
than that which was recorded of him at the time he entered."

"Then we will have him shortly," commented Than Kosis contentedly, "and
in the meanwhile we will repair to the apartments of the Princess of
Helium and question her in regard to the affair.  She may know more
than she cared to divulge to you, Notan.  Come."

They left the hall, and, as darkness had fallen without, I slipped
lightly from my hiding place and hastened to the balcony.  Few were in
sight, and choosing a moment when none seemed near I sprang quickly to
the top of the glass wall and from there to the avenue beyond the
palace grounds.




CHAPTER XXIII

LOST IN THE SKY


Without effort at concealment I hastened to the vicinity of our
quarters, where I felt sure I should find Kantos Kan.  As I neared the
building I became more careful, as I judged, and rightly, that the
place would be guarded.  Several men in civilian metal loitered near
the front entrance and in the rear were others.  My only means of
reaching, unseen, the upper story where our apartments were situated
was through an adjoining building, and after considerable maneuvering I
managed to attain the roof of a shop several doors away.

Leaping from roof to roof, I soon reached an open window in the
building where I hoped to find the Heliumite, and in another moment I
stood in the room before him.  He was alone and showed no surprise at
my coming, saying he had expected me much earlier, as my tour of duty
must have ended some time since.

I saw that he knew nothing of the events of the day at the palace, and
when I had enlightened him he was all excitement.  The news that Dejah
Thoris had promised her hand to Sab Than filled him with dismay.

"It cannot be," he exclaimed.  "It is impossible!  Why no man in all
Helium but would prefer death to the selling of our loved princess to
the ruling house of Zodanga.  She must have lost her mind to have
assented to such an atrocious bargain.  You, who do not know how we of
Helium love the members of our ruling house, cannot appreciate the
horror with which I contemplate such an unholy alliance."

"What can be done, John Carter?" he continued.  "You are a resourceful
man.  Can you not think of some way to save Helium from this disgrace?"

"If I can come within sword's reach of Sab Than," I answered, "I can
solve the difficulty in so far as Helium is concerned, but for personal
reasons I would prefer that another struck the blow that frees Dejah
Thoris."

Kantos Kan eyed me narrowly before he spoke.

"You love her!" he said.  "Does she know it?"

"She knows it, Kantos Kan, and repulses me only because she is promised
to Sab Than."

The splendid fellow sprang to his feet, and grasping me by the shoulder
raised his sword on high, exclaiming:

"And had the choice been left to me I could not have chosen a more
fitting mate for the first princess of Barsoom.  Here is my hand upon
your shoulder, John Carter, and my word that Sab Than shall go out at
the point of my sword for the sake of my love for Helium, for Dejah
Thoris, and for you.  This very night I shall try to reach his quarters
in the palace."

"How?" I asked.  "You are strongly guarded and a quadruple force
patrols the sky."

He bent his head in thought a moment, then raised it with an air of
confidence.

"I only need to pass these guards and I can do it," he said at last.
"I know a secret entrance to the palace through the pinnacle of the
highest tower.  I fell upon it by chance one day as I was passing above
the palace on patrol duty.  In this work it is required that we
investigate any unusual occurrence we may witness, and a face peering
from the pinnacle of the high tower of the palace was, to me, most
unusual.  I therefore drew near and discovered that the possessor of
the peering face was none other than Sab Than.  He was slightly put out
at being detected and commanded me to keep the matter to myself,
explaining that the passage from the tower led directly to his
apartments, and was known only to him.  If I can reach the roof of the
barracks and get my machine I can be in Sab Than's quarters in five
minutes; but how am I to escape from this building, guarded as you say
it is?"

"How well are the machine sheds at the barracks guarded?" I asked.

"There is usually but one man on duty there at night upon the roof."

"Go to the roof of this building, Kantos Kan, and wait me there."

Without stopping to explain my plans I retraced my way to the street
and hastened to the barracks.  I did not dare to enter the building,
filled as it was with members of the air-scout squadron, who, in common
with all Zodanga, were on the lookout for me.

The building was an enormous one, rearing its lofty head fully a
thousand feet into the air.  But few buildings in Zodanga were higher
than these barracks, though several topped it by a few hundred feet;
the docks of the great battleships of the line standing some fifteen
hundred feet from the ground, while the freight and passenger stations
of the merchant squadrons rose nearly as high.

It was a long climb up the face of the building, and one fraught with
much danger, but there was no other way, and so I essayed the task.
The fact that Barsoomian architecture is extremely ornate made the feat
much simpler than I had anticipated, since I found ornamental ledges
and projections which fairly formed a perfect ladder for me all the way
to the eaves of the building.  Here I met my first real obstacle.  The
eaves projected nearly twenty feet from the wall to which I clung, and
though I encircled the great building I could find no opening through
them.

The top floor was alight, and filled with soldiers engaged in the
pastimes of their kind; I could not, therefore, reach the roof through
the building.

There was one slight, desperate chance, and that I decided I must
take--it was for Dejah Thoris, and no man has lived who would not risk
a thousand deaths for such as she.

Clinging to the wall with my feet and one hand, I unloosened one of the
long leather straps of my trappings at the end of which dangled a great
hook by which air sailors are hung to the sides and bottoms of their
craft for various purposes of repair, and by means of which landing
parties are lowered to the ground from the battleships.

I swung this hook cautiously to the roof several times before it
finally found lodgment; gently I pulled on it to strengthen its hold,
but whether it would bear the weight of my body I did not know.  It
might be barely caught upon the very outer verge of the roof, so that
as my body swung out at the end of the strap it would slip off and
launch me to the pavement a thousand feet below.

An instant I hesitated, and then, releasing my grasp upon the
supporting ornament, I swung out into space at the end of the strap.
Far below me lay the brilliantly lighted streets, the hard pavements,
and death.  There was a little jerk at the top of the supporting eaves,
and a nasty slipping, grating sound which turned me cold with
apprehension; then the hook caught and I was safe.

Clambering quickly aloft I grasped the edge of the eaves and drew
myself to the surface of the roof above.  As I gained my feet I was
confronted by the sentry on duty, into the muzzle of whose revolver I
found myself looking.

"Who are you and whence came you?" he cried.

"I am an air scout, friend, and very near a dead one, for just by the
merest chance I escaped falling to the avenue below," I replied.

"But how came you upon the roof, man?  No one has landed or come up
from the building for the past hour.  Quick, explain yourself, or I
call the guard."

"Look you here, sentry, and you shall see how I came and how close a
shave I had to not coming at all," I answered, turning toward the edge
of the roof, where, twenty feet below, at the end of my strap, hung all
my weapons.

The fellow, acting on impulse of curiosity, stepped to my side and to
his undoing, for as he leaned to peer over the eaves I grasped him by
his throat and his pistol arm and threw him heavily to the roof.  The
weapon dropped from his grasp, and my fingers choked off his attempted
cry for assistance.  I gagged and bound him and then hung him over the
edge of the roof as I myself had hung a few moments before.  I knew it
would be morning before he would be discovered, and I needed all the
time that I could gain.

Donning my trappings and weapons I hastened to the sheds, and soon had
out both my machine and Kantos Kan's.  Making his fast behind mine I
started my engine, and skimming over the edge of the roof I dove down
into the streets of the city far below the plane usually occupied by
the air patrol.  In less than a minute I was settling safely upon the
roof of our apartment beside the astonished Kantos Kan.

I lost no time in explanation, but plunged immediately into a
discussion of our plans for the immediate future.  It was decided that
I was to try to make Helium while Kantos Kan was to enter the palace
and dispatch Sab Than.  If successful he was then to follow me.  He set
my compass for me, a clever little device which will remain steadfastly
fixed upon any given point on the surface of Barsoom, and bidding each
other farewell we rose together and sped in the direction of the palace
which lay in the route which I must take to reach Helium.

As we neared the high tower a patrol shot down from above, throwing its
piercing searchlight full upon my craft, and a voice roared out a
command to halt, following with a shot as I paid no attention to his
hail.  Kantos Kan dropped quickly into the darkness, while I rose
steadily and at terrific speed raced through the Martian sky followed
by a dozen of the air-scout craft which had joined the pursuit, and
later by a swift cruiser carrying a hundred men and a battery of
rapid-fire guns.  By twisting and turning my little machine, now rising
and now falling, I managed to elude their search-lights most of the
time, but I was also losing ground by these tactics, and so I decided
to hazard everything on a straight-away course and leave the result to
fate and the speed of my machine.

Kantos Kan had shown me a trick of gearing, which is known only to the
navy of Helium, that greatly increased the speed of our machines, so
that I felt sure I could distance my pursuers if I could dodge their
projectiles for a few moments.

As I sped through the air the screeching of the bullets around me
convinced me that only by a miracle could I escape, but the die was
cast, and throwing on full speed I raced a straight course toward
Helium.  Gradually I left my pursuers further and further behind, and I
was just congratulating myself on my lucky escape, when a well-directed
shot from the cruiser exploded at the prow of my little craft.  The
concussion nearly capsized her, and with a sickening plunge she hurtled
downward through the dark night.

How far I fell before I regained control of the plane I do not know,
but I must have been very close to the ground when I started to rise
again, as I plainly heard the squealing of animals below me.  Rising
again I scanned the heavens for my pursuers, and finally making out
their lights far behind me, saw that they were landing, evidently in
search of me.

Not until their lights were no longer discernible did I venture to
flash my little lamp upon my compass, and then I found to my
consternation that a fragment of the projectile had utterly destroyed
my only guide, as well as my speedometer.  It was true I could follow
the stars in the general direction of Helium, but without knowing the
exact location of the city or the speed at which I was traveling my
chances for finding it were slim.

Helium lies a thousand miles southwest of Zodanga, and with my compass
intact I should have made the trip, barring accidents, in between four
and five hours.  As it turned out, however, morning found me speeding
over a vast expanse of dead sea bottom after nearly six hours of
continuous flight at high speed.  Presently a great city showed below
me, but it was not Helium, as that alone of all Barsoomian metropolises
consists in two immense circular walled cities about seventy-five miles
apart and would have been easily distinguishable from the altitude at
which I was flying.

Believing that I had come too far to the north and west, I turned back
in a southeasterly direction, passing during the forenoon several other
large cities, but none resembling the description which Kantos Kan had
given me of Helium.  In addition to the twin-city formation of Helium,
another distinguishing feature is the two immense towers, one of vivid
scarlet rising nearly a mile into the air from the center of one of the
cities, while the other, of bright yellow and of the same height, marks
her sister.




CHAPTER XXIV

TARS TARKAS FINDS A FRIEND


About noon I passed low over a great dead city of ancient Mars, and as
I skimmed out across the plain beyond I came full upon several thousand
green warriors engaged in a terrific battle.  Scarcely had I seen them
than a volley of shots was directed at me, and with the almost
unfailing accuracy of their aim my little craft was instantly a ruined
wreck, sinking erratically to the ground.

I fell almost directly in the center of the fierce combat, among
warriors who had not seen my approach so busily were they engaged in
life and death struggles.  The men were fighting on foot with
long-swords, while an occasional shot from a sharpshooter on the
outskirts of the conflict would bring down a warrior who might for an
instant separate himself from the entangled mass.

As my machine sank among them I realized that it was fight or die, with
good chances of dying in any event, and so I struck the ground with
drawn long-sword ready to defend myself as I could.

I fell beside a huge monster who was engaged with three antagonists,
and as I glanced at his fierce face, filled with the light of battle, I
recognized Tars Tarkas the Thark.  He did not see me, as I was a trifle
behind him, and just then the three warriors opposing him, and whom I
recognized as Warhoons, charged simultaneously.  The mighty fellow made
quick work of one of them, but in stepping back for another thrust he
fell over a dead body behind him and was down and at the mercy of his
foes in an instant.  Quick as lightning they were upon him, and Tars
Tarkas would have been gathered to his fathers in short order had I not
sprung before his prostrate form and engaged his adversaries.  I had
accounted for one of them when the mighty Thark regained his feet and
quickly settled the other.

He gave me one look, and a slight smile touched his grim lip as,
touching my shoulder, he said,

"I would scarcely recognize you, John Carter, but there is no other
mortal upon Barsoom who would have done what you have for me.  I think
I have learned that there is such a thing as friendship, my friend."

He said no more, nor was there opportunity, for the Warhoons were
closing in about us, and together we fought, shoulder to shoulder,
during all that long, hot afternoon, until the tide of battle turned
and the remnant of the fierce Warhoon horde fell back upon their
thoats, and fled into the gathering darkness.

Ten thousand men had been engaged in that titanic struggle, and upon
the field of battle lay three thousand dead.  Neither side asked or
gave quarter, nor did they attempt to take prisoners.

On our return to the city after the battle we had gone directly to Tars
Tarkas' quarters, where I was left alone while the chieftain attended
the customary council which immediately follows an engagement.

As I sat awaiting the return of the green warrior I heard something
move in an adjoining apartment, and as I glanced up there rushed
suddenly upon me a huge and hideous creature which bore me backward
upon the pile of silks and furs upon which I had been reclining.  It
was Woola--faithful, loving Woola.  He had found his way back to Thark
and, as Tars Tarkas later told me, had gone immediately to my former
quarters where he had taken up his pathetic and seemingly hopeless
watch for my return.

"Tal Hajus knows that you are here, John Carter," said Tars Tarkas, on
his return from the jeddak's quarters; "Sarkoja saw and recognized you
as we were returning.  Tal Hajus has ordered me to bring you before him
tonight.  I have ten thoats, John Carter; you may take your choice from
among them, and I will accompany you to the nearest waterway that leads
to Helium.  Tars Tarkas may be a cruel green warrior, but he can be a
friend as well.  Come, we must start."

"And when you return, Tars Tarkas?" I asked.

"The wild calots, possibly, or worse," he replied.  "Unless I should
chance to have the opportunity I have so long waited of battling with
Tal Hajus."

"We will stay, Tars Tarkas, and see Tal Hajus tonight.  You shall not
sacrifice yourself, and it may be that tonight you can have the chance
you wait."

He objected strenuously, saying that Tal Hajus often flew into wild
fits of passion at the mere thought of the blow I had dealt him, and
that if ever he laid his hands upon me I would be subjected to the most
horrible tortures.

While we were eating I repeated to Tars Tarkas the story which Sola had
told me that night upon the sea bottom during the march to Thark.

He said but little, but the great muscles of his face worked in passion
and in agony at recollection of the horrors which had been heaped upon
the only thing he had ever loved in all his cold, cruel, terrible
existence.

He no longer demurred when I suggested that we go before Tal Hajus,
only saying that he would like to speak to Sarkoja first.  At his
request I accompanied him to her quarters, and the look of venomous
hatred she cast upon me was almost adequate recompense for any future
misfortunes this accidental return to Thark might bring me.

"Sarkoja," said Tars Tarkas, "forty years ago you were instrumental in
bringing about the torture and death of a woman named Gozava.  I have
just discovered that the warrior who loved that woman has learned of
your part in the transaction.  He may not kill you, Sarkoja, it is not
our custom, but there is nothing to prevent him tying one end of a
strap about your neck and the other end to a wild thoat, merely to test
your fitness to survive and help perpetuate our race.  Having heard
that he would do this on the morrow, I thought it only right to warn
you, for I am a just man.  The river Iss is but a short pilgrimage,
Sarkoja.  Come, John Carter."

The next morning Sarkoja was gone, nor was she ever seen after.

In silence we hastened to the jeddak's palace, where we were
immediately admitted to his presence; in fact, he could scarcely wait
to see me and was standing erect upon his platform glowering at the
entrance as I came in.

"Strap him to that pillar," he shrieked.  "We shall see who it is dares
strike the mighty Tal Hajus.  Heat the irons; with my own hands I shall
burn the eyes from his head that he may not pollute my person with his
vile gaze."

"Chieftains of Thark," I cried, turning to the assembled council and
ignoring Tal Hajus, "I have been a chief among you, and today I have
fought for Thark shoulder to shoulder with her greatest warrior.  You
owe me, at least, a hearing.  I have won that much today.  You claim to
be just people--"

"Silence," roared Tal Hajus.  "Gag the creature and bind him as I
command."

"Justice, Tal Hajus," exclaimed Lorquas Ptomel.  "Who are you to set
aside the customs of ages among the Tharks."

"Yes, justice!" echoed a dozen voices, and so, while Tal Hajus fumed
and frothed, I continued.

"You are a brave people and you love bravery, but where was your mighty
jeddak during the fighting today?  I did not see him in the thick of
battle; he was not there.  He rends defenseless women and little
children in his lair, but how recently has one of you seen him fight
with men?  Why, even I, a midget beside him, felled him with a single
blow of my fist.  Is it of such that the Tharks fashion their jeddaks?
There stands beside me now a great Thark, a mighty warrior and a noble
man.  Chieftains, how sounds, Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark?"

A roar of deep-toned applause greeted this suggestion.

"It but remains for this council to command, and Tal Hajus must prove
his fitness to rule.  Were he a brave man he would invite Tars Tarkas
to combat, for he does not love him, but Tal Hajus is afraid; Tal
Hajus, your jeddak, is a coward.  With my bare hands I could kill him,
and he knows it."

After I ceased there was tense silence, as all eyes were riveted upon
Tal Hajus.  He did not speak or move, but the blotchy green of his
countenance turned livid, and the froth froze upon his lips.

"Tal Hajus," said Lorquas Ptomel in a cold, hard voice, "never in my
long life have I seen a jeddak of the Tharks so humiliated.  There
could be but one answer to this arraignment.  We wait it."  And still
Tal Hajus stood as though electrified.

"Chieftains," continued Lorquas Ptomel, "shall the jeddak, Tal Hajus,
prove his fitness to rule over Tars Tarkas?"

There were twenty chieftains about the rostrum, and twenty swords
flashed high in assent.

There was no alternative.  That decree was final, and so Tal Hajus drew
his long-sword and advanced to meet Tars Tarkas.

The combat was soon over, and, with his foot upon the neck of the dead
monster, Tars Tarkas became jeddak among the Tharks.

His first act was to make me a full-fledged chieftain with the rank I
had won by my combats the first few weeks of my captivity among them.

Seeing the favorable disposition of the warriors toward Tars Tarkas, as
well as toward me, I grasped the opportunity to enlist them in my cause
against Zodanga.  I told Tars Tarkas the story of my adventures, and in
a few words had explained to him the thought I had in mind.

"John Carter has made a proposal," he said, addressing the council,
"which meets with my sanction.  I shall put it to you briefly.  Dejah
Thoris, the Princess of Helium, who was our prisoner, is now held by
the jeddak of Zodanga, whose son she must wed to save her country from
devastation at the hands of the Zodangan forces.

"John Carter suggests that we rescue her and return her to Helium.  The
loot of Zodanga would be magnificent, and I have often thought that had
we an alliance with the people of Helium we could obtain sufficient
assurance of sustenance to permit us to increase the size and frequency
of our hatchings, and thus become unquestionably supreme among the
green men of all Barsoom.  What say you?"

It was a chance to fight, an opportunity to loot, and they rose to the
bait as a speckled trout to a fly.

For Tharks they were wildly enthusiastic, and before another half hour
had passed twenty mounted messengers were speeding across dead sea
bottoms to call the hordes together for the expedition.

In three days we were on the march toward Zodanga, one hundred thousand
strong, as Tars Tarkas had been able to enlist the services of three
smaller hordes on the promise of the great loot of Zodanga.

At the head of the column I rode beside the great Thark while at the
heels of my mount trotted my beloved Woola.

We traveled entirely by night, timing our marches so that we camped
during the day at deserted cities where, even to the beasts, we were
all kept indoors during the daylight hours.  On the march Tars Tarkas,
through his remarkable ability and statesmanship, enlisted fifty
thousand more warriors from various hordes, so that, ten days after we
set out we halted at midnight outside the great walled city of Zodanga,
one hundred and fifty thousand strong.

The fighting strength and efficiency of this horde of ferocious green
monsters was equivalent to ten times their number of red men.  Never in
the history of Barsoom, Tars Tarkas told me, had such a force of green
warriors marched to battle together.  It was a monstrous task to keep
even a semblance of harmony among them, and it was a marvel to me that
he got them to the city without a mighty battle among themselves.

But as we neared Zodanga their personal quarrels were submerged by
their greater hatred for the red men, and especially for the Zodangans,
who had for years waged a ruthless campaign of extermination against
the green men, directing special attention toward despoiling their
incubators.

Now that we were before Zodanga the task of obtaining entry to the city
devolved upon me, and directing Tars Tarkas to hold his forces in two
divisions out of earshot of the city, with each division opposite a
large gateway, I took twenty dismounted warriors and approached one of
the small gates that pierced the walls at short intervals.  These gates
have no regular guard, but are covered by sentries, who patrol the
avenue that encircles the city just within the walls as our
metropolitan police patrol their beats.

The walls of Zodanga are seventy-five feet in height and fifty feet
thick.  They are built of enormous blocks of carborundum, and the task
of entering the city seemed, to my escort of green warriors, an
impossibility.  The fellows who had been detailed to accompany me were
of one of the smaller hordes, and therefore did not know me.

Placing three of them with their faces to the wall and arms locked, I
commanded two more to mount to their shoulders, and a sixth I ordered
to climb upon the shoulders of the upper two.  The head of the topmost
warrior towered over forty feet from the ground.

In this way, with ten warriors, I built a series of three steps from
the ground to the shoulders of the topmost man.  Then starting from a
short distance behind them I ran swiftly up from one tier to the next,
and with a final bound from the broad shoulders of the highest I
clutched the top of the great wall and quietly drew myself to its broad
expanse.  After me I dragged six lengths of leather from an equal
number of my warriors.  These lengths we had previously fastened
together, and passing one end to the topmost warrior I lowered the
other end cautiously over the opposite side of the wall toward the
avenue below.  No one was in sight, so, lowering myself to the end of
my leather strap, I dropped the remaining thirty feet to the pavement
below.

I had learned from Kantos Kan the secret of opening these gates, and in
another moment my twenty great fighting men stood within the doomed
city of Zodanga.

I found to my delight that I had entered at the lower boundary of the
enormous palace grounds.  The building itself showed in the distance a
blaze of glorious light, and on the instant I determined to lead a
detachment of warriors directly within the palace itself, while the
balance of the great horde was attacking the barracks of the soldiery.

Dispatching one of my men to Tars Tarkas for a detail of fifty Tharks,
with word of my intentions, I ordered ten warriors to capture and open
one of the great gates while with the nine remaining I took the other.
We were to do our work quietly, no shots were to be fired and no
general advance made until I had reached the palace with my fifty
Tharks.  Our plans worked to perfection.  The two sentries we met were
dispatched to their fathers upon the banks of the lost sea of Korus,
and the guards at both gates followed them in silence.




CHAPTER XXV

THE LOOTING OF ZODANGA


As the great gate where I stood swung open my fifty Tharks, headed by
Tars Tarkas himself, rode in upon their mighty thoats.  I led them to
the palace walls, which I negotiated easily without assistance.  Once
inside, however, the gate gave me considerable trouble, but I finally
was rewarded by seeing it swing upon its huge hinges, and soon my
fierce escort was riding across the gardens of the jeddak of Zodanga.

As we approached the palace I could see through the great windows of
the first floor into the brilliantly illuminated audience chamber of
Than Kosis.  The immense hall was crowded with nobles and their women,
as though some important function was in progress.  There was not a
guard in sight without the palace, due, I presume, to the fact that the
city and palace walls were considered impregnable, and so I came close
and peered within.

At one end of the chamber, upon massive golden thrones encrusted with
diamonds, sat Than Kosis and his consort, surrounded by officers and
dignitaries of state.  Before them stretched a broad aisle lined on
either side with soldiery, and as I looked there entered this aisle at
the far end of the hall, the head of a procession which advanced to the
foot of the throne.

First there marched four officers of the jeddak's Guard bearing a huge
salver on which reposed, upon a cushion of scarlet silk, a great golden
chain with a collar and padlock at each end.  Directly behind these
officers came four others carrying a similar salver which supported the
magnificent ornaments of a prince and princess of the reigning house of
Zodanga.

At the foot of the throne these two parties separated and halted,
facing each other at opposite sides of the aisle.  Then came more
dignitaries, and the officers of the palace and of the army, and
finally two figures entirely muffled in scarlet silk, so that not a
feature of either was discernible.  These two stopped at the foot of
the throne, facing Than Kosis.  When the balance of the procession had
entered and assumed their stations Than Kosis addressed the couple
standing before him.  I could not hear his words, but presently two
officers advanced and removed the scarlet robe from one of the figures,
and I saw that Kantos Kan had failed in his mission, for it was Sab
Than, Prince of Zodanga, who stood revealed before me.

Than Kosis now took a set of the ornaments from one of the salvers and
placed one of the collars of gold about his son's neck, springing the
padlock fast.  After a few more words addressed to Sab Than he turned
to the other figure, from which the officers now removed the
enshrouding silks, disclosing to my now comprehending view Dejah
Thoris, Princess of Helium.

The object of the ceremony was clear to me; in another moment Dejah
Thoris would be joined forever to the Prince of Zodanga.  It was an
impressive and beautiful ceremony, I presume, but to me it seemed the
most fiendish sight I had ever witnessed, and as the ornaments were
adjusted upon her beautiful figure and her collar of gold swung open in
the hands of Than Kosis I raised my long-sword above my head, and, with
the heavy hilt, I shattered the glass of the great window and sprang
into the midst of the astonished assemblage.  With a bound I was on the
steps of the platform beside Than Kosis, and as he stood riveted with
surprise I brought my long-sword down upon the golden chain that would
have bound Dejah Thoris to another.

In an instant all was confusion; a thousand drawn swords menaced me
from every quarter, and Sab Than sprang upon me with a jeweled dagger
he had drawn from his nuptial ornaments.  I could have killed him as
easily as I might a fly, but the age-old custom of Barsoom stayed my
hand, and grasping his wrist as the dagger flew toward my heart I held
him as though in a vise and with my long-sword pointed to the far end
of the hall.

"Zodanga has fallen," I cried.  "Look!"

All eyes turned in the direction I had indicated, and there, forging
through the portals of the entranceway rode Tars Tarkas and his fifty
warriors on their great thoats.

A cry of alarm and amazement broke from the assemblage, but no word of
fear, and in a moment the soldiers and nobles of Zodanga were hurling
themselves upon the advancing Tharks.

Thrusting Sab Than headlong from the platform, I drew Dejah Thoris to
my side.  Behind the throne was a narrow doorway and in this Than Kosis
now stood facing me, with drawn long-sword.  In an instant we were
engaged, and I found no mean antagonist.

As we circled upon the broad platform I saw Sab Than rushing up the
steps to aid his father, but, as he raised his hand to strike, Dejah
Thoris sprang before him and then my sword found the spot that made Sab
Than jeddak of Zodanga.  As his father rolled dead upon the floor the
new jeddak tore himself free from Dejah Thoris' grasp, and again we
faced each other.  He was soon joined by a quartet of officers, and,
with my back against a golden throne, I fought once again for Dejah
Thoris.  I was hard pressed to defend myself and yet not strike down
Sab Than and, with him, my last chance to win the woman I loved.  My
blade was swinging with the rapidity of lightning as I sought to parry
the thrusts and cuts of my opponents.  Two I had disarmed, and one was
down, when several more rushed to the aid of their new ruler, and to
avenge the death of the old.

As they advanced there were cries of "The woman!  The woman!  Strike
her down; it is her plot.  Kill her!  Kill her!"

Calling to Dejah Thoris to get behind me I worked my way toward the
little doorway back of the throne, but the officers realized my
intentions, and three of them sprang in behind me and blocked my
chances for gaining a position where I could have defended Dejah Thoris
against any army of swordsmen.

The Tharks were having their hands full in the center of the room, and
I began to realize that nothing short of a miracle could save Dejah
Thoris and myself, when I saw Tars Tarkas surging through the crowd of
pygmies that swarmed about him.  With one swing of his mighty longsword
he laid a dozen corpses at his feet, and so he hewed a pathway before
him until in another moment he stood upon the platform beside me,
dealing death and destruction right and left.

The bravery of the Zodangans was awe-inspiring, not one attempted to
escape, and when the fighting ceased it was because only Tharks
remained alive in the great hall, other than Dejah Thoris and myself.

Sab Than lay dead beside his father, and the corpses of the flower of
Zodangan nobility and chivalry covered the floor of the bloody shambles.

My first thought when the battle was over was for Kantos Kan, and
leaving Dejah Thoris in charge of Tars Tarkas I took a dozen warriors
and hastened to the dungeons beneath the palace.  The jailers had all
left to join the fighters in the throne room, so we searched the
labyrinthine prison without opposition.

I called Kantos Kan's name aloud in each new corridor and compartment,
and finally I was rewarded by hearing a faint response.  Guided by the
sound, we soon found him helpless in a dark recess.

He was overjoyed at seeing me, and to know the meaning of the fight,
faint echoes of which had reached his prison cell.  He told me that the
air patrol had captured him before he reached the high tower of the
palace, so that he had not even seen Sab Than.

We discovered that it would be futile to attempt to cut away the bars
and chains which held him prisoner, so, at his suggestion I returned to
search the bodies on the floor above for keys to open the padlocks of
his cell and of his chains.

Fortunately among the first I examined I found his jailer, and soon we
had Kantos Kan with us in the throne room.

The sounds of heavy firing, mingled with shouts and cries, came to us
from the city's streets, and Tars Tarkas hastened away to direct the
fighting without.  Kantos Kan accompanied him to act as guide, the
green warriors commencing a thorough search of the palace for other
Zodangans and for loot, and Dejah Thoris and I were left alone.

She had sunk into one of the golden thrones, and as I turned to her she
greeted me with a wan smile.

"Was there ever such a man!" she exclaimed.  "I know that Barsoom has
never before seen your like.  Can it be that all Earth men are as you?
Alone, a stranger, hunted, threatened, persecuted, you have done in a
few short months what in all the past ages of Barsoom no man has ever
done: joined together the wild hordes of the sea bottoms and brought
them to fight as allies of a red Martian people."

"The answer is easy, Dejah Thoris," I replied smiling.  "It was not I
who did it, it was love, love for Dejah Thoris, a power that would work
greater miracles than this you have seen."

A pretty flush overspread her face and she answered,

"You may say that now, John Carter, and I may listen, for I am free."

"And more still I have to say, ere it is again too late," I returned.
"I have done many strange things in my life, many things that wiser men
would not have dared, but never in my wildest fancies have I dreamed of
winning a Dejah Thoris for myself--for never had I dreamed that in all
the universe dwelt such a woman as the Princess of Helium.  That you
are a princess does not abash me, but that you are you is enough to
make me doubt my sanity as I ask you, my princess, to be mine."

"He does not need to be abashed who so well knew the answer to his plea
before the plea were made," she replied, rising and placing her dear
hands upon my shoulders, and so I took her in my arms and kissed her.

And thus in the midst of a city of wild conflict, filled with the
alarms of war; with death and destruction reaping their terrible
harvest around her, did Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, true daughter
of Mars, the God of War, promise herself in marriage to John Carter,
Gentleman of Virginia.




CHAPTER XXVI

THROUGH CARNAGE TO JOY


Sometime later Tars Tarkas and Kantos Kan returned to report that
Zodanga had been completely reduced.  Her forces were entirely
destroyed or captured, and no further resistance was to be expected
from within.  Several battleships had escaped, but there were thousands
of war and merchant vessels under guard of Thark warriors.

The lesser hordes had commenced looting and quarreling among
themselves, so it was decided that we collect what warriors we could,
man as many vessels as possible with Zodangan prisoners and make for
Helium without further loss of time.

Five hours later we sailed from the roofs of the dock buildings with a
fleet of two hundred and fifty battleships, carrying nearly one hundred
thousand green warriors, followed by a fleet of transports with our
thoats.

Behind us we left the stricken city in the fierce and brutal clutches
of some forty thousand green warriors of the lesser hordes.  They were
looting, murdering, and fighting amongst themselves.  In a hundred
places they had applied the torch, and columns of dense smoke were
rising above the city as though to blot out from the eye of heaven the
horrid sights beneath.

In the middle of the afternoon we sighted the scarlet and yellow towers
of Helium, and a short time later a great fleet of Zodangan battleships
rose from the camps of the besiegers without the city, and advanced to
meet us.

The banners of Helium had been strung from stem to stern of each of our
mighty craft, but the Zodangans did not need this sign to realize that
we were enemies, for our green Martian warriors had opened fire upon
them almost as they left the ground.  With their uncanny marksmanship
they raked the on-coming fleet with volley after volley.

The twin cities of Helium, perceiving that we were friends, sent out
hundreds of vessels to aid us, and then began the first real air battle
I had ever witnessed.

The vessels carrying our green warriors were kept circling above the
contending fleets of Helium and Zodanga, since their batteries were
useless in the hands of the Tharks who, having no navy, have no skill
in naval gunnery.  Their small-arm fire, however, was most effective,
and the final outcome of the engagement was strongly influenced, if not
wholly determined, by their presence.

At first the two forces circled at the same altitude, pouring broadside
after broadside into each other.  Presently a great hole was torn in
the hull of one of the immense battle craft from the Zodangan camp;
with a lurch she turned completely over, the little figures of her crew
plunging, turning and twisting toward the ground a thousand feet below;
then with sickening velocity she tore after them, almost completely
burying herself in the soft loam of the ancient sea bottom.

A wild cry of exultation arose from the Heliumite squadron, and with
redoubled ferocity they fell upon the Zodangan fleet.  By a pretty
maneuver two of the vessels of Helium gained a position above their
adversaries, from which they poured upon them from their keel bomb
batteries a perfect torrent of exploding bombs.

Then, one by one, the battleships of Helium succeeded in rising above
the Zodangans, and in a short time a number of the beleaguering
battleships were drifting hopeless wrecks toward the high scarlet tower
of greater Helium.  Several others attempted to escape, but they were
soon surrounded by thousands of tiny individual fliers, and above each
hung a monster battleship of Helium ready to drop boarding parties upon
their decks.

Within but little more than an hour from the moment the victorious
Zodangan squadron had risen to meet us from the camp of the besiegers
the battle was over, and the remaining vessels of the conquered
Zodangans were headed toward the cities of Helium under prize crews.

There was an extremely pathetic side to the surrender of these mighty
fliers, the result of an age-old custom which demanded that surrender
should be signalized by the voluntary plunging to earth of the
commander of the vanquished vessel.  One after another the brave
fellows, holding their colors high above their heads, leaped from the
towering bows of their mighty craft to an awful death.

Not until the commander of the entire fleet took the fearful plunge,
thus indicating the surrender of the remaining vessels, did the
fighting cease, and the useless sacrifice of brave men come to an end.

We now signaled the flagship of Helium's navy to approach, and when she
was within hailing distance I called out that we had the Princess Dejah
Thoris on board, and that we wished to transfer her to the flagship
that she might be taken immediately to the city.

As the full import of my announcement bore in upon them a great cry
arose from the decks of the flagship, and a moment later the colors of
the Princess of Helium broke from a hundred points upon her upper
works.  When the other vessels of the squadron caught the meaning of
the signals flashed them they took up the wild acclaim and unfurled her
colors in the gleaming sunlight.

The flagship bore down upon us, and as she swung gracefully to and
touched our side a dozen officers sprang upon our decks.  As their
astonished gaze fell upon the hundreds of green warriors, who now came
forth from the fighting shelters, they stopped aghast, but at sight of
Kantos Kan, who advanced to meet them, they came forward, crowding
about him.

Dejah Thoris and I then advanced, and they had no eyes for other than
her.  She received them gracefully, calling each by name, for they were
men high in the esteem and service of her grandfather, and she knew
them well.

"Lay your hands upon the shoulder of John Carter," she said to them,
turning toward me, "the man to whom Helium owes her princess as well as
her victory today."

They were very courteous to me and said many kind and complimentary
things, but what seemed to impress them most was that I had won the aid
of the fierce Tharks in my campaign for the liberation of Dejah Thoris,
and the relief of Helium.

"You owe your thanks more to another man than to me," I said, "and here
he is; meet one of Barsoom's greatest soldiers and statesmen, Tars
Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark."

With the same polished courtesy that had marked their manner toward me
they extended their greetings to the great Thark, nor, to my surprise,
was he much behind them in ease of bearing or in courtly speech.
Though not a garrulous race, the Tharks are extremely formal, and their
ways lend themselves amazingly well to dignified and courtly manners.

Dejah Thoris went aboard the flagship, and was much put out that I
would not follow, but, as I explained to her, the battle was but partly
won; we still had the land forces of the besieging Zodangans to account
for, and I would not leave Tars Tarkas until that had been accomplished.

The commander of the naval forces of Helium promised to arrange to have
the armies of Helium attack from the city in conjunction with our land
attack, and so the vessels separated and Dejah Thoris was borne in
triumph back to the court of her grandfather, Tardos Mors, Jeddak of
Helium.

In the distance lay our fleet of transports, with the thoats of the
green warriors, where they had remained during the battle.  Without
landing stages it was to be a difficult matter to unload these beasts
upon the open plain, but there was nothing else for it, and so we put
out for a point about ten miles from the city and began the task.

It was necessary to lower the animals to the ground in slings and this
work occupied the remainder of the day and half the night.  Twice we
were attacked by parties of Zodangan cavalry, but with little loss,
however, and after darkness shut down they withdrew.

As soon as the last thoat was unloaded Tars Tarkas gave the command to
advance, and in three parties we crept upon the Zodangan camp from the
north, the south and the east.

About a mile from the main camp we encountered their outposts and, as
had been prearranged, accepted this as the signal to charge.  With
wild, ferocious cries and amidst the nasty squealing of battle-enraged
thoats we bore down upon the Zodangans.

We did not catch them napping, but found a well-entrenched battle line
confronting us.  Time after time we were repulsed until, toward noon, I
began to fear for the result of the battle.

The Zodangans numbered nearly a million fighting men, gathered from
pole to pole, wherever stretched their ribbon-like waterways, while
pitted against them were less than a hundred thousand green warriors.
The forces from Helium had not arrived, nor could we receive any word
from them.

Just at noon we heard heavy firing all along the line between the
Zodangans and the cities, and we knew then that our much-needed
reinforcements had come.

Again Tars Tarkas ordered the charge, and once more the mighty thoats
bore their terrible riders against the ramparts of the enemy.  At the
same moment the battle line of Helium surged over the opposite
breastworks of the Zodangans and in another moment they were being
crushed as between two millstones.  Nobly they fought, but in vain.

The plain before the city became a veritable shambles ere the last
Zodangan surrendered, but finally the carnage ceased, the prisoners
were marched back to Helium, and we entered the greater city's gates, a
huge triumphal procession of conquering heroes.

The broad avenues were lined with women and children, among which were
the few men whose duties necessitated that they remain within the city
during the battle.  We were greeted with an endless round of applause
and showered with ornaments of gold, platinum, silver, and precious
jewels.  The city had gone mad with joy.

My fierce Tharks caused the wildest excitement and enthusiasm.  Never
before had an armed body of green warriors entered the gates of Helium,
and that they came now as friends and allies filled the red men with
rejoicing.

That my poor services to Dejah Thoris had become known to the
Heliumites was evidenced by the loud crying of my name, and by the
loads of ornaments that were fastened upon me and my huge thoat as we
passed up the avenues to the palace, for even in the face of the
ferocious appearance of Woola the populace pressed close about me.

As we approached this magnificent pile we were met by a party of
officers who greeted us warmly and requested that Tars Tarkas and his
jeds with the jeddaks and jeds of his wild allies, together with
myself, dismount and accompany them to receive from Tardos Mors an
expression of his gratitude for our services.

At the top of the great steps leading up to the main portals of the
palace stood the royal party, and as we reached the lower steps one of
their number descended to meet us.

He was an almost perfect specimen of manhood; tall, straight as an
arrow, superbly muscled and with the carriage and bearing of a ruler of
men.  I did not need to be told that he was Tardos Mors, Jeddak of
Helium.

The first member of our party he met was Tars Tarkas and his first
words sealed forever the new friendship between the races.

"That Tardos Mors," he said, earnestly, "may meet the greatest living
warrior of Barsoom is a priceless honor, but that he may lay his hand
on the shoulder of a friend and ally is a far greater boon."

"Jeddak of Helium," returned Tars Tarkas, "it has remained for a man of
another world to teach the green warriors of Barsoom the meaning of
friendship; to him we owe the fact that the hordes of Thark can
understand you; that they can appreciate and reciprocate the sentiments
so graciously expressed."

Tardos Mors then greeted each of the green jeddaks and jeds, and to
each spoke words of friendship and appreciation.

As he approached me he laid both hands upon my shoulders.

"Welcome, my son," he said; "that you are granted, gladly, and without
one word of opposition, the most precious jewel in all Helium, yes, on
all Barsoom, is sufficient earnest of my esteem."

We were then presented to Mors Kajak, Jed of lesser Helium, and father
of Dejah Thoris.  He had followed close behind Tardos Mors and seemed
even more affected by the meeting than had his father.

He tried a dozen times to express his gratitude to me, but his voice
choked with emotion and he could not speak, and yet he had, as I was to
later learn, a reputation for ferocity and fearlessness as a fighter
that was remarkable even upon warlike Barsoom.  In common with all
Helium he worshiped his daughter, nor could he think of what she had
escaped without deep emotion.




CHAPTER XXVII

FROM JOY TO DEATH


For ten days the hordes of Thark and their wild allies were feasted and
entertained, and, then, loaded with costly presents and escorted by ten
thousand soldiers of Helium commanded by Mors Kajak, they started on
the return journey to their own lands.  The jed of lesser Helium with a
small party of nobles accompanied them all the way to Thark to cement
more closely the new bonds of peace and friendship.

Sola also accompanied Tars Tarkas, her father, who before all his
chieftains had acknowledged her as his daughter.

Three weeks later, Mors Kajak and his officers, accompanied by Tars
Tarkas and Sola, returned upon a battleship that had been dispatched to
Thark to fetch them in time for the ceremony which made Dejah Thoris
and John Carter one.

For nine years I served in the councils and fought in the armies of
Helium as a prince of the house of Tardos Mors.  The people seemed
never to tire of heaping honors upon me, and no day passed that did not
bring some new proof of their love for my princess, the incomparable
Dejah Thoris.

In a golden incubator upon the roof of our palace lay a snow-white egg.
For nearly five years ten soldiers of the jeddak's Guard had constantly
stood over it, and not a day passed when I was in the city that Dejah
Thoris and I did not stand hand in hand before our little shrine
planning for the future, when the delicate shell should break.

Vivid in my memory is the picture of the last night as we sat there
talking in low tones of the strange romance which had woven our lives
together and of this wonder which was coming to augment our happiness
and fulfill our hopes.

In the distance we saw the bright-white light of an approaching
airship, but we attached no special significance to so common a sight.
Like a bolt of lightning it raced toward Helium until its very speed
bespoke the unusual.

Flashing the signals which proclaimed it a dispatch bearer for the
jeddak, it circled impatiently awaiting the tardy patrol boat which
must convoy it to the palace docks.

Ten minutes after it touched at the palace a message called me to the
council chamber, which I found filling with the members of that body.

On the raised platform of the throne was Tardos Mors, pacing back and
forth with tense-drawn face.  When all were in their seats he turned
toward us.

"This morning," he said, "word reached the several governments of
Barsoom that the keeper of the atmosphere plant had made no wireless
report for two days, nor had almost ceaseless calls upon him from a
score of capitals elicited a sign of response.

"The ambassadors of the other nations asked us to take the matter in
hand and hasten the assistant keeper to the plant.  All day a thousand
cruisers have been searching for him until just now one of them returns
bearing his dead body, which was found in the pits beneath his house
horribly mutilated by some assassin.

"I do not need to tell you what this means to Barsoom.  It would take
months to penetrate those mighty walls, in fact the work has already
commenced, and there would be little to fear were the engine of the
pumping plant to run as it should and as they all have for hundreds of
years now; but the worst, we fear, has happened.  The instruments show
a rapidly decreasing air pressure on all parts of Barsoom--the engine
has stopped."

"My gentlemen," he concluded, "we have at best three days to live."

There was absolute silence for several minutes, and then a young noble
arose, and with his drawn sword held high above his head addressed
Tardos Mors.

"The men of Helium have prided themselves that they have ever shown
Barsoom how a nation of red men should live, now is our opportunity to
show them how they should die.  Let us go about our duties as though a
thousand useful years still lay before us."

The chamber rang with applause and as there was nothing better to do
than to allay the fears of the people by our example we went our ways
with smiles upon our faces and sorrow gnawing at our hearts.

When I returned to my palace I found that the rumor already had reached
Dejah Thoris, so I told her all that I had heard.

"We have been very happy, John Carter," she said, "and I thank whatever
fate overtakes us that it permits us to die together."

The next two days brought no noticeable change in the supply of air,
but on the morning of the third day breathing became difficult at the
higher altitudes of the rooftops.  The avenues and plazas of Helium
were filled with people.  All business had ceased.  For the most part
the people looked bravely into the face of their unalterable doom.
Here and there, however, men and women gave way to quiet grief.

Toward the middle of the day many of the weaker commenced to succumb
and within an hour the people of Barsoom were sinking by thousands into
the unconsciousness which precedes death by asphyxiation.

Dejah Thoris and I with the other members of the royal family had
collected in a sunken garden within an inner courtyard of the palace.
We conversed in low tones, when we conversed at all, as the awe of the
grim shadow of death crept over us.  Even Woola seemed to feel the
weight of the impending calamity, for he pressed close to Dejah Thoris
and to me, whining pitifully.

The little incubator had been brought from the roof of our palace at
request of Dejah Thoris and now she sat gazing longingly upon the
unknown little life that now she would never know.

As it was becoming perceptibly difficult to breathe Tardos Mors arose,
saying,

"Let us bid each other farewell.  The days of the greatness of Barsoom
are over.  Tomorrow's sun will look down upon a dead world which
through all eternity must go swinging through the heavens peopled not
even by memories.  It is the end."

He stooped and kissed the women of his family, and laid his strong hand
upon the shoulders of the men.

As I turned sadly from him my eyes fell upon Dejah Thoris.  Her head
was drooping upon her breast, to all appearances she was lifeless.
With a cry I sprang to her and raised her in my arms.

Her eyes opened and looked into mine.

"Kiss me, John Carter," she murmured.  "I love you!  I love you!  It is
cruel that we must be torn apart who were just starting upon a life of
love and happiness."

As I pressed her dear lips to mine the old feeling of unconquerable
power and authority rose in me.  The fighting blood of Virginia sprang
to life in my veins.

"It shall not be, my princess," I cried.  "There is, there must be some
way, and John Carter, who has fought his way through a strange world
for love of you, will find it."

And with my words there crept above the threshold of my conscious mind
a series of nine long forgotten sounds.  Like a flash of lightning in
the darkness their full purport dawned upon me--the key to the three
great doors of the atmosphere plant!

Turning suddenly toward Tardos Mors as I still clasped my dying love to
my breast I cried.

"A flier, Jeddak!  Quick!  Order your swiftest flier to the palace top.
I can save Barsoom yet."

He did not wait to question, but in an instant a guard was racing to
the nearest dock and though the air was thin and almost gone at the
rooftop they managed to launch the fastest one-man, air-scout machine
that the skill of Barsoom had ever produced.

Kissing Dejah Thoris a dozen times and commanding Woola, who would have
followed me, to remain and guard her, I bounded with my old agility and
strength to the high ramparts of the palace, and in another moment I
was headed toward the goal of the hopes of all Barsoom.

I had to fly low to get sufficient air to breathe, but I took a
straight course across an old sea bottom and so had to rise only a few
feet above the ground.

I traveled with awful velocity for my errand was a race against time
with death.  The face of Dejah Thoris hung always before me.  As I
turned for a last look as I left the palace garden I had seen her
stagger and sink upon the ground beside the little incubator.  That she
had dropped into the last coma which would end in death, if the air
supply remained unreplenished, I well knew, and so, throwing caution to
the winds, I flung overboard everything but the engine and compass,
even to my ornaments, and lying on my belly along the deck with one
hand on the steering wheel and the other pushing the speed lever to its
last notch I split the thin air of dying Mars with the speed of a
meteor.

An hour before dark the great walls of the atmosphere plant loomed
suddenly before me, and with a sickening thud I plunged to the ground
before the small door which was withholding the spark of life from the
inhabitants of an entire planet.

Beside the door a great crew of men had been laboring to pierce the
wall, but they had scarcely scratched the flint-like surface, and now
most of them lay in the last sleep from which not even air would awaken
them.

Conditions seemed much worse here than at Helium, and it was with
difficulty that I breathed at all.  There were a few men still
conscious, and to one of these I spoke.

"If I can open these doors is there a man who can start the engines?" I
asked.

"I can," he replied, "if you open quickly.  I can last but a few
moments more.  But it is useless, they are both dead and no one else
upon Barsoom knew the secret of these awful locks.  For three days men
crazed with fear have surged about this portal in vain attempts to
solve its mystery."

I had no time to talk, I was becoming very weak and it was with
difficulty that I controlled my mind at all.

But, with a final effort, as I sank weakly to my knees I hurled the
nine thought waves at that awful thing before me.  The Martian had
crawled to my side and with staring eyes fixed on the single panel
before us we waited in the silence of death.

Slowly the mighty door receded before us.  I attempted to rise and
follow it but I was too weak.

"After it," I cried to my companion, "and if you reach the pump room
turn loose all the pumps.  It is the only chance Barsoom has to exist
tomorrow!"

From where I lay I opened the second door, and then the third, and as I
saw the hope of Barsoom crawling weakly on hands and knees through the
last doorway I sank unconscious upon the ground.




CHAPTER XXVIII

AT THE ARIZONA CAVE


It was dark when I opened my eyes again.  Strange, stiff garments were
upon my body; garments that cracked and powdered away from me as I rose
to a sitting posture.

I felt myself over from head to foot and from head to foot I was
clothed, though when I fell unconscious at the little doorway I had
been naked.  Before me was a small patch of moonlit sky which showed
through a ragged aperture.

As my hands passed over my body they came in contact with pockets and
in one of these a small parcel of matches wrapped in oiled paper.  One
of these matches I struck, and its dim flame lighted up what appeared
to be a huge cave, toward the back of which I discovered a strange,
still figure huddled over a tiny bench.  As I approached it I saw that
it was the dead and mummified remains of a little old woman with long
black hair, and the thing it leaned over was a small charcoal burner
upon which rested a round copper vessel containing a small quantity of
greenish powder.

Behind her, depending from the roof upon rawhide thongs, and stretching
entirely across the cave, was a row of human skeletons.  From the thong
which held them stretched another to the dead hand of the little old
woman; as I touched the cord the skeletons swung to the motion with a
noise as of the rustling of dry leaves.

It was a most grotesque and horrid tableau and I hastened out into the
fresh air; glad to escape from so gruesome a place.

The sight that met my eyes as I stepped out upon a small ledge which
ran before the entrance of the cave filled me with consternation.

A new heaven and a new landscape met my gaze.  The silvered mountains
in the distance, the almost stationary moon hanging in the sky, the
cacti-studded valley below me were not of Mars.  I could scarcely
believe my eyes, but the truth slowly forced itself upon me--I was
looking upon Arizona from the same ledge from which ten years before I
had gazed with longing upon Mars.

Burying my head in my arms I turned, broken, and sorrowful, down the
trail from the cave.

Above me shone the red eye of Mars holding her awful secret,
forty-eight million miles away.

Did the Martian reach the pump room?  Did the vitalizing air reach the
people of that distant planet in time to save them?  Was my Dejah
Thoris alive, or did her beautiful body lie cold in death beside the
tiny golden incubator in the sunken garden of the inner courtyard of
the palace of Tardos Mors, the jeddak of Helium?

For ten years I have waited and prayed for an answer to my questions.
For ten years I have waited and prayed to be taken back to the world of
my lost love.  I would rather lie dead beside her there than live on
Earth all those millions of terrible miles from her.

The old mine, which I found untouched, has made me fabulously wealthy;
but what care I for wealth!

As I sit here tonight in my little study overlooking the Hudson, just
twenty years have elapsed since I first opened my eyes upon Mars.

I can see her shining in the sky through the little window by my desk,
and tonight she seems calling to me again as she has not called before
since that long dead night, and I think I can see, across that awful
abyss of space, a beautiful black-haired woman standing in the garden
of a palace, and at her side is a little boy who puts his arm around
her as she points into the sky toward the planet Earth, while at their
feet is a huge and hideous creature with a heart of gold.

I believe that they are waiting there for me, and something tells me
that I shall soon know.









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