man which showed him what he ought to do.

The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any rate
to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his
after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious
gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when
he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka
(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was going
home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would
go away without having heard from the staff--and this interested him
extremely--whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the
Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think
that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the Polish
Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had betted
he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it
seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had given
one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would take place
without him--he knew he must go away from this good, bright world to
somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he
obtained his leave. His hussar comrades--not only those of his own
regiment, but the whole brigade--gave Rostov a dinner to which the
subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two
bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with Major
Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostov; the
soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted "hurrah!"
and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the first
post station.

During the first half of the journey--from Kremenchug to Kiev--all
Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with the
squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget his
three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously
how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would find there. Thoughts
of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it--far stronger, as
though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which the force of
attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. At
the last post station before Otradnoe he gave th