signs of appreciation of his jest. Several persons laughed, but some were still gazing in dismay at the man who was undressing the second Frenchman and about to flog him.

Pierre choked, scowled, and turning quickly, went back to his chaise, still muttering something to himself as he went, and took his seat in it. During the rest of the way he several times started, and cried out so loudly that the coachman at last asked him what he desired.

“Where are you driving?” Pierre shouted to the coachman as he drove to Lubyanka.

“You told me to drive to the governor’s,” answered the coachman.

“Fool! dolt!” shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman, a thing he very rarely did. “I told you home; and make haste, blockhead! This very day I must set off,” Pierre said to himself.

At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd round the Lobnoye Place, Pierre had so unhesitatingly decided that he could stay no longer in Moscow, and must that very day set off to join the army, that it seemed to him either that he had told the coachman so, or that the coachman ought to know it of himself.

On reaching home Pierre told his omniscient and omnipotent head-coachman, Yevstafitch, who was known to all Moscow, that he was going to drive that night to Mozhaisk to the army, and gave orders for his saddle horses to be sent on there. All this could not be arranged in one day, and therefore by Yevstafitch’s representations Pierre was induced to defer his departure till next day to allow time for relays of horses to be sent on ahead.

The 24th was a bright day after a spell of bad weather, and after dinner on that day Pierre set out from Moscow. Changing horses in the night at Perhushkovo, Pierre learned that a great battle had been fought that evening. He was told that the earth had been vibrating there at Perhushkovo from the cannon. No one could answer Pierre’s question whether the battle was a victory or a defeat. This was the battle of the 24th at Shevardino. Towards dawn Pierre approached Mozhaisk.

Troops were quartered in all the houses in Mozhaisk, and at the inn, where Pierre was met by his coachman and postillion, there was not a room to spare; the whole place was full of officers.

From Mozhaisk onwards troops were halting or marching everywhere. Cossacks, foot soldiers, horse soldiers, waggons, gun-carriages, and cannons were everywhere.

Pierre pushed on as fast as possible, and the further he got and the more deeply he plunged into this ocean of soldiers, the stronger became the thrill of uneasiness and of a new pleasurable sensation. It was a feeling akin to what he had felt at the Slobodsky Palace on the Tsar’s visit, a sense of the urgent necessity of taking some step and making some sacrifice. He was conscious now of a glad sense that all that constitutes the happiness of life, comfort, wealth, even life itself, were all dust and ashes, which it was a joy to fling away in comparison with something else. … What that something else was Pierre could not have said, and indeed he did not seek to get a clear idea, for whose sake and for what object he found such peculiar joy in sacrificing all. He was not interested in knowing the object of the sacrifice, but the sacrifice itself afforded him a new joyful sensation.