“The wounded! It’s impossible, mamma, it’s outrageous.… No, mamma, darling, it’s all wrong; forgive me, please, darling … Mamma, what is it to us what we take away; you only look out into the yard.… Mamma! … It can’t be done.…”

The count stood in the window, and listened to Natasha without turning his head. All at once he gave a sort of gulp, 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 emotion, felt why her husband would not look at her now, and looked about her with a distracted air.

“Oh, do as you please. Am I doing anything to hinder any one?” she said, not giving way all at once.

“Mamma, darling, forgive me.”

But the countess pushed away her daughter, and went up to the count.

“My dear, you order what is right.… I don’t understand about it, you know,” she said, dropping her eyes with a guilty air.

“The eggs, … the eggs teaching the hen, …” the count murmured through tears of gladness, and he embraced his wife, who was glad to hide her ashamed face on his breast.

“Papa, mamma! may I give the order? May I? …” asked Natasha. “We’ll take all that’s quite necessary all the same,” she added.

The count nodded; and Natasha, with the same swiftness with which she used to run at “catch-catch,” flew across the hall into the vestibule, and down the steps into the yard.

The servants gathered round Natasha, and could hardly believe the strange order she gave them, till the count himself in his wife’s name confirmed the order that all the waggons were to be placed at the disposal of the wounded, and the boxes were to be taken down to the store-rooms. When they understood, the servants gleefully and busily set to this new task. It no longer seemed strange to the servants, it seemed to them, indeed, that no other course was possible; just as a quarter of an hour before they had not thought it strange to leave the wounded behind and take the furniture; had accepted that too, in fact, as the only course possible.

All the household set to work getting the wounded men into the waggons with the greatest zeal, as though to make up for not having espoused their cause earlier. The wounded soldiers came creeping out of their rooms, and crowded round the waggons, with pale, delighted faces. The news spread to the neighbouring houses, and wounded men began to come into the yard from other houses too. Many of the wounded soldiers begged them not to take out the boxes, but only to let them sit on the top of them. But when once the work of unloading had begun there was no stopping it; it seemed of little consequence whether all were left or half. The cases of china, of bronzes, of pictures and looking-glasses, which had been so carefully packed during the previous night lay in the yard, and still they sought and found possibilities of taking out more and more, and leaving more and more, for the wounded.

“We can take four more,” said the steward. “I’ll leave my luggage, or else what is to become of them?”

“Oh, let them have our wardrobe cart,” said the countess; “Dunyasha will go with me in the carriage.”

The waggon packed with the ladies’ wardrobe was unloaded, and sent to fetch wounded men from two doors off. All the family and the servants too were eager and merry. Natasha was in a state of ecstatic happiness, such as she had not known for a very long while.

“Where are we to fasten this on?” said the servant, trying to lay a trunk on the narrow footboard behind in the carriage. “We must keep just one cart for it.”