“Oh, if any one knew how little anything matters to me now,” she said. “Of course, I would not on any account move away from him…Alpatitch said something about going away.…You talk to him … I can’t do anything, and I don’t want …”

“I have been talking to him. He hopes that we may manage to get away to-morrow; but I think it would be better now to remain here,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne. “Because you will agree, chère Marie, that to fall into the hands of the soldiers or of rioting peasants on the road would be awful.”

Mademoiselle Bourienne took out of her reticule a document, not on the usual Russian paper. It was the proclamation of General Rameau, announcing that protection would be given by the French commanders to all inhabitants who did not abandon their homes. She handed it to the princess.

“I imagine the best thing would be to appeal to this general,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne. “I am convinced that all proper respect would be shown you.”

Princess Marya read the document and her face worked with tearless sobs.

“Through whom did you get this?” she asked.

“They probably found out I was French from my name,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, flushing.

With the proclamation in her hand, Princess Marya got up from the window, and with a pale face walked out of the room into Prince Andrey’s former study.

“Dunyasha! send Alpatitch to me, Dronushka, or somebody!” said Princess Marya. “And tell Amalya Karlovna not to come to me,” she added, hearing Mademoiselle Bourienne’s voice. “To set off at once! as quick as possible!” said Princess Marya, appalled at the idea that she might be left in the power of the French.

“That Prince Andrey should know that she was in the power of the French! That she, the daughter of Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky, should stoop to ask General Rameau to grant her his protection, and should take advantage of his good offices.” The idea appalled her, made her shudder and turn crimson. She felt a rush of vindictive wrath and pride of which she had had no conception. All the bitterness, and still more the humiliation of her position rose vividly to her imagination. “They, the French, would take up their quarters in the house: M. le Général Rameau would occupy Prince Andrey’s study; would amuse himself by looking through and reading his letters and papers; Mademoiselle Bourienne would do the honours of Bogutcharovo; I should be given a room as a favour; the soldiers would break open my father’s newly dug grave to take his crosses and decorations; they would tell me of their victories over the Russians, would affect hypocritical sympathy with my grief, …” thought Princess Marya, thinking not the thoughts natural to her, but feeling it a duty to think as her father and brother would have done. To her personally it did not matter where she stayed and what happened to her, but, at the same time, she felt herself the representative of her dead father and Prince Andrey. Unconsciously she thought their thoughts and felt their feelings. What they would have said, what they would have done now, she felt it incumbent upon her to do. She went into Prince Andrey’s study, and trying to enter completely into his ideas, thought over her situation.

The exigencies of life, which she had regarded as of no consequence since her father’s death, all at once rose up about Princess Marya with a force she had known nothing of before, and swept her away with them.

Flushed and excited she walked about the room, sending first for Alpatitch, then for Mihail Ivanitch, then for Tihon, then for Dron. Dunyasha, the old nurse, and the maids could not tell her how far Mademoiselle Bourienne’s statements had been correct. Alpatitch was not in the house; he had gone to the police authorities. Mihail Ivanitch, the architect, came with sleepy eyes on being sent for, but could tell Princess Marya nothing. With the same smile of acquiescence with which he had been accustomed during the