is your pleasure?"

"Where are you going?" shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to
Lubyanka Street.

"To the Governor's, as you ordered," answered the coachman.

"Fool! Idiot!" shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman--a thing he rarely
did. "Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!" "I must get away
this very day," he murmured to himself.

At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the
Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he could no
longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that very day that
it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman this or that the
man ought to have known it for himself.

On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey--his head coachman who
knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow--that
he would leave that night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that his saddle
horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day,
so on Evstafey's representation Pierre had to put off his departure till
next day to allow time for the relay horses to be sent on in advance.

On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain, and
after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night
in Perkhushkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that
evening. (This was the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there in
Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could answer
his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was approaching
Mozhaysk.

Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the hostel
where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no room to be
had. It was full of officers.

Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on the
march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and cannon
were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the
farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea
of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and a new and
joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling akin to
what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the Emperor's visit--a
sense of the necessity of undertaking something and sacrificing
something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that everything that
constitutes men's happiness--the comforts of life, wealth, even
life itself--is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away