"Yes, your excellency," said Gerasim after thinking for a moment.

All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor's study,
and Gerasim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to another and
talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made up for him
there.

Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange things,
accepted Pierre's taking up his residence in the house without
surprise, and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same
evening--without even asking himself what they were wanted for--he
procured a coachman's coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him
the pistol next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening shuffling
along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and looked
ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward him he
wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and angry look
and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the coachman's coat which
Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected by steam) was on his
way with the old man to buy the pistol at the Sukharev market that he
met the Rostovs.

CHAPTER XIX

Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was issued
at night on the first of September.

The first troops started at once, and during the night they marched
slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those nearing
the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers
crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side
and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless masses of troops were
bearing down on them from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm
overcame them. They all rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and
to the fords and the boats. Kutuzov himself had driven round by side
streets to the other side of Moscow.

By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September, only the rear
guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample room. The
main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.

At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,
Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny Hill looking at
the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August
to the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the
entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,
memorable week, there had been the extraordin