Prince Andrey turned away from them in nervous haste, afraid of letting them notice that he had seen them. He was sorry to have frightened the pretty child. He was afraid to glance at her, but yet he felt an irresistible inclination to do so. A new soothing and consolatory feeling came upon him, as gazing at the little girls, he became aware of the existence of other human interests, utterly remote from him, and as legitimate as his own. Those little girls were evidently possessed by one passionate desire to carry off and devour those green plums without being caught, and Prince Andrey wished them success in their enterprise. He could not resist glancing at them once more. Fancying themselves already secure, they had darted out of their hiding-place, and piping something in their shrill, little voices, and holding up their skirts, they ran gaily and swiftly through the grass with their bare, sunburnt little feet.

Prince Andrey was somewhat refreshed by his ride outside the region of the dust of the high-road along which the troops were marching. But he rode back into the road not far from Bleak Hills, and overtook his regiment at the halting-place near the dike of a small pond. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon. The sun, a red ball through the dust, baked and scorched his back intolerably in his black coat. The dust stood as immovable as ever over the buzzing, halting troops. There was not a breath of wind. As he rode towards the dike, Prince Andrey smelled the fresh, muddy smell of the pond. He longed to be in the water, however muddy it might be. He looked round at the pond, from which he heard shrieks and laughter. The small pond, thickly covered with green slime, was visibly half a yard higher and overflowing the dam, because it was full of white, naked human bodies, with brick-red hands and heads and necks, all plunging about in it. All that bare white human flesh was splashing about with shrieks and laughter, in the muddy pool, like carp floundering in a net. There was a ring of merriment in that splashing, and that was what made it peculiarly sad.

One fair-haired young soldier—Prince Andrey knew him—of the third company, with a strap round the calf of his leg, stepped back, crossing himself, to get a good run, and plunge into the water. Another swarthy and very towzle-headed sergeant up to his waist in the water, bending his fine, muscular figure, was snorting with enjoyment, as he poured the water over his head with his blackened hands. There was a sound of them slapping each other, and shrieks and cries.

On the banks, on the dike, in the pond, everywhere there was white, healthy, muscular flesh. Timohin, the officer with the red nose, was rubbing himself with a towel on the dike, and was abashed at seeing Prince Andrey, but made up his mind to address him.

“It’s pleasant, really, your excellency; you should try it!” he said.

“It’s dirty,” said Prince Andrey, grimacing.

“We will clear it out for you in a minute.” And undressed as he was, Timohin ran to clear the men out. “The prince wants to come.”

“What prince? Our prince?” cried voices, and all of them were in such haste to make way for him that Prince Andrey hardly had time to check them. He thought it would be better for him to have a bath in a barn. “Flesh, meat, chair à canon,” he thought, looking too at his own naked body and shuddering, not so much from cold as from the repulsion and horror, mysterious to himself, that he had felt at the sight of that immense multitude of naked bodies floundering in the muddy water.

On the 7th of August, Prince Bagration, at his halting-place at Mihalovka on the Smolensk road, had written a letter to Araktcheev. Though the letter was addressed to Araktcheev, he knew it would be read to the Tsar, and therefore he weighed every word, so far as he was capable of doing so.

“DEAR COUNT ALEXEY ANDREIVITCH,—I presume that the minister has already reported the abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is sad, it is pitiable, and the whole army is in despair at the most important place having been wantonly abandoned. I for my part begged him personally in the most urgent manner, and finally wrote to him; but nothing would persuade him. I swear to you on my honour that Napoleon was in a greater fix than he has ever been, and he might have lost half his army, but could not have


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