nd to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless
horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were
galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed after
him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared it, and
almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that he would
immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That Frenchman, by his
uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching on his gray horse
and urging it on with his saber. In another moment Rostov's horse dashed
its breast against the hindquarters of the officer's horse, almost
knocking it over, and at the same instant Rostov, without knowing why,
raised his saber and struck the Frenchman with it.

The instant he had done this, all Rostov's animation vanished. The
officer fell, not so much from the blow--which had but slightly cut his
arm above the elbow--as from the shock to his horse and from fright.
Rostov reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see whom he
had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with one foot on
the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His eyes, screwed
up with fear as if he every moment expected another blow, gazed up at
Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale and mud-stained face--fair and
young, with a dimple in the chin and light-blue eyes--was not an enemy's
face at all suited to a battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face.
Before Rostov had decided what to do with him, the officer cried, "I
surrender!" He hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the
stirrup and did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostov's face.
Some hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the
saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was
wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his
horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round him;
a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In front, the
French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars galloped hastily
back with their prisoners. Rostov galloped back with the rest, aware of
an unpleasant feeling of depression in his heart. Something vague and
confused, which he could not at all account for, had come over him with
the capture of that officer and the blow he had dealt him.

Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars, sent for Rostov,
thanked him, and said he would report his ga