"To the bridge!" he answered in reply to a question from another officer.

"And I too," thought Pierre, following him. The general mounted his horse, which a Cossack was holding; and Pierre, going up to his servant, asked which of his two steeds was the quietest to ride. Then clutching the beast's mane, leaning over his neck and clinging on by his heels, off he started. He felt that his spectacles were gone; however, as he would not, and indeed could not, let go of the bridle or the mane, away he went after the general, past the rest of the officers, who gazed at his headlong career.

The general led the way down the hill, and turned off sharp to the left; Pierre lost sight of him, and found himself riding through the ranks of an infantry regiment; he tried in vain to get out of the midst of the men, who surrounded him on all sides, and looked with angry surprise at this fat man in a white hat, who was knocking them about so heedlessly and at such a critical moment.

"Why the devil do you ride through a battalion?" asked one; and another gave the horse a prod with the butt-end of his musket. Pierre, clutching the saddle-bow, and holding in his frightened steed as best he might, was carried on at a furious speed, and presently found himself in an open space. In front of him was a bridge guarded by infantry firing briskly; without knowing it he had come down to the bridge between Gorky and Borodino, which the French, after taking the village, had come down to attack. On both sides of the river, and in the hayfields he had seen from afar, soldiers were struggling frantically; still Pierre could not believe that he was witnessing the first act of a battle. He did not hear the bullets that were whistling about his ears, nor the balls that flew over his head; and it did not occur to him that the men on the other side of the river were the enemy, or that those who lay on the ground were wounded or killed.

"What on earth is he doing in front of the line?" shouted a voice. "Left! left! turn to the left!"

Pierre turned to the right, and ran up against an aide-decamp of General Raïevsky's; the officer looked furious, and was about to abuse him roundly, when he recognized him.

"What brings you here?" said he, and he rode away.

Pierre, with a vague suspicion that he was not wanted there, and fearing he might be in the way, galloped after him.

"Is it here? May I follow you?" he asked.

"In a minute-wait a minute," said his friend, tearing down into the meadow to meet a burly colonel to whom he was carrying orders. Then he came back to Pierre.

"Tell me what on earth you have come here for?-to look on, I suppose?"

"Just so," said Pierre; while the officer wheeled his horse round and was starting off again.

"Here it is not such warm work yet, thank God! but there, where Bagration is to the left, they are getting it hot!"

"Really!" said Pierre. "Where ? »

"Come up the hill with me: you will see very well from thence, and it is still bearable. Are you coming?"

"After you," said Pierre, looking round for his servant: then for the first time his eye fell on the wounded men who were dragging themselves to the rear, or being carried on litters; one poor little soldier, with his hat lying by his side, was stretched motionless on the field where the mown hay exhaled its stupefying scent.

"Why have they left that poor fellow?" Pierre was on the point of saying; but the aide-de-camp's look of pain as he turned away stopped the question on his lips. As he could nowhere see his servant, he rode on across the flat as far as Raïevsky's battery; but his horse could not keep up with the officer's, and shook him desperately.

"You are not used to riding, I see," said the aide-de-camp. "Oh, it is nothing," said Pierre: "his pace is bad."

"The poor beast has had his off leg wounded just above the knee; a bullet must have caught him there. Well, I congratulate you, count, it is your baptism of fire."

After passing the sixth corps they got, through dense smoke, to the rear of the artillery, which held an advanced position, and kept up an incessant and deafening fire. At last they found. themselves in a little copse where the mild autumn air was clear of smoke. They dismounted and climbed the little hill.

"Is the general here?" asked the aide-de-camp.

"Just gone," was the answer. The officer turned to Pierre: he did not know what to do with him.

"Do not trouble yourself about me," said Bésoukhow. "I will go on to the top."

"Yes, do— and stay there: you will see everything, and it is comparatively safe. I will come back for you."

15019

So they parted; and it was not till the end of the day that Pierre heard that his companion had one arm shot off. He went up to the battery that held the famous knoll which came to be known to the Russians as the "mamelon battery" or "Raïevsky's redoubt"; and to the French-who regarded it as the key of the position as the "great redoubt," or the "fatal redoubt," or the "centre redoubt." At its foot fell tens of thousands.

The works were thrown up on a mamelon surrounded with trenches on three sides. Ten heavy guns poured forth death through the embrasures of a breastwork, while other pieces, continuing the line, never paused in their fire. The infantry stood

somewhat further back.

ance.

Pierre had no suspicion of the paramount value of this point, but supposed it to be, on the contrary, of quite secondary importHe sat down on the edge of the earthwork that screened the battery, and looked about with a smile of innocent satisfaction; now and then he got up to see what was going on, trying to keep out of the way of the men who were reloading the guns and pushing them forward each time, and of those who went to and fro carrying the heavy cartridges. Quite unlike the infantry outside, whose duty it was to protect the redoubt, the gunners standing on this speck of earth that was inclosed by its semicircle of trenches, and apart from the rest of the battle, seemed bound together in a kind of fraternal responsibility; and the appearance in their midst of a civilian like Pierre was by no means pleasing to them. They looked at him askance, and seemed almost alarmed at his presence: a tall artillery officer came close up to him and looked at him inquisitively; and a quite young lieutenant, rosy and baby-faced, who was in charge of two guns, turned round and said very severely:

"You must have the goodness to go away, sir: you cannot remain here."

The gunners continued to shake their heads disapprovingly; but when they saw that the man in a white hat did not get in the way, that he was content to sit still, or walk up and down in the face of the enemy's fire, as coolly as if it were a boulevard; that he stood aside politely to make room for them, with a shy smile, their ill-humor gave place to sympathetic cordiality, such as soldiers are apt to feel for the dogs, cocks, or other animals that march with the regiment. They adopted him, as it were, and laughing at him among themselves, gave him the name of "Our Gentleman."

A ball fell within a couple of yards of Pierre, who only shook off the dust with which he was covered, and smiled as he looked round.

"And you are really not afraid, master?" said a stalwart, red

faced artilleryman, showing his white teeth in a grin.

"Ah, but you know they will have no respect for you. If one of them knocks you down it will kick your inside out! How can you help being afraid?" he added with a laugh.

Two or three more had stopped to look at Pierre; they had jolly, friendly faces, and seemed quite astonished to hear him talk like themselves.

"It is our business, master.

But as for you, it is not at all

the same thing, and it is wonderful."

"Now then serve the guns!" cried the young lieutenant, who was evidently on duty of this kind for the first or second time in his life, he was so extravagantly anxious to be blameless in his conduct to his chief and to his men.

The continual thunder of guns and musketry grew louder and louder, especially on the left, round Bagration's advanced work; but Pierre's attention was taken up with what was going on close to him, and the smoke prevented his seeing the progress of the action. His first impulse of gratified excitement had given way to a very different feeling, roused in the first instance by the sight of the little private lying in the hay-field. It was scarcely ten o'clock yet; twenty men had been carried away from the battery, and two guns were silenced. The enemy's missiles fell thicker and faster, and spent balls dropped about them with a buzz and a thud. The artillerymen did not seem to heed them: they were full of jests and high spirits.

"Look out, my beauty! Not this way,- try the infantry!" cried one man to a shell that spun across above their heads.

"Yes, go to the infantry," echoed a second; and he laughed as he saw the bomb explode among the foot soldiers.

"Hallo! Is that an acquaintance of yours?" cried a third, to a peasant who bowed low as a ball came past.

A knot of men had gathered close to the breastwork to look at something in the distance.

"Do you see? the advanced posts are retiring,- they are giv. ing way!" said one.

"Mind your own business," cried an old sergeant. "If they are retiring, it is because there is something for them to do

elsewhere;

15021

he took one of them by the shoulders and shoved

him forward with his knee. They all laughed.

"Forward No. 5!" was shouted from the other end.

"A long pull and a pull all together!" answered the men who were serving the gun.

"Hallo! That one nearly had our Gentleman's hat off!" said a wag, addressing Pierre. "Ah, you brute!" he added, as the ball hit the wheel of a gun-carriage and took off a man's leg.

"Here, you foxes!" cried another to the militiamen, who had been charged with the duty of removing the wounded, and who now crept forward, bent almost double. "This is not quite the sauce you fancy!"

"Look at those crows!" added a third to a party of the militia, who had stopped short in their horror at the sight of the man who had lost his leg.

Pierre observed that every ball that hit, and every man that fell, added to the general excitement. The soldiers' faces grew more fierce and more eager,, as lightnings play round a thundercloud; and as though in defiance of that other storm that was raging around them. Pierre felt that this glow was infectious.

At ten o'clock the infantry sharpshooters, placed among the scrub in front of the battery and along the Kamenka brook, began to give way: he could see them running and carrying the wounded on their gunstocks. A general came up the mamelon, exchanged a few words with the colonel in command, shot a wrathful scowl at Pierre, and went away again, after ordering the infantrymen to fire lying down, so as to expose a smaller front. There was a sharp rattle of drums in the regiment below, and the line rushed forward. Pierre's attention was caught by the pale face of a young officer who was marching with them. backwards, holding his sword point downwards, and looking behind him uneasily; in a minute they were lost to sight in the smoke, and Pierre only heard a confusion of cries, and the steady rattle of well-sustained firing. Then in a few minutes, the wounded were brought out of the mêlée on stretchers.

In the redoubt, projectiles were falling like hail, and several men were laid low; the soldiers were working with increased energy: no one heeded Pierre. Once or twice he was told to get out of the way; and the old commanding officer walked up and down from one gun to another, with his brows knit. The boy lieutenant, with flaming cheeks, was giving his orders more