Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (nice books to read .txt) 📖
- Author: graf Leo Tolstoy
Book online «War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (nice books to read .txt) 📖». Author graf Leo Tolstoy
“No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself,” said DenĂsov on reading these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite his heartfelt desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general, he had to forgo that pleasure because he was already under the command of the Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the same effect, informing him that he was already under the command of the German.
Having arranged matters thus, DenĂsov and DĂłlokhov intended, without reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from the village of MikĂşlino to that of Shámshevo. To the left of the road between MikĂşlino and Shámshevo there were large forests, extending in some places up to the road itself though in others a mile or more back from it. Through these forests DenĂsov and his party rode all day, sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to the very edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That morning, Cossacks of DenĂsov’s party had seized and carried off into the forest two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck in the mud not far from MikĂşlino where the forest ran close to the road. Since then, and until evening, the party had watched the movements of the French without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach Shámshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after joining DĂłlokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman’s hut in the forest less than a mile from Shámshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling like an avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow.
In their rear, more than a mile from MikĂşlino where the forest came right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any fresh columns of French should show themselves.
Beyond Shámshevo, DĂłlokhov was to observe the road in the same way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They reckoned that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. DenĂsov had two hundred, and DĂłlokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers did not deter DenĂsov. All that he now wanted to know was what troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a “tongue”—that is, a man from the enemy column. That morning’s attack on the wagons had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops in that column.
DenĂsov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent TĂkhon Shcherbáty, a peasant of his party, to Shámshevo to try and seize at least one of the French quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.
It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.
DenĂsov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before him. His thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry.
Beside DenĂsov rode an esaul, * DenĂsov’s fellow worker, also in felt cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.
* A captain of Cossacks.
Esaul Lováyski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow, pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first glance at the esaul and DenĂsov one saw that the latter was wet and uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold strength.
A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.
A little behind, on a poor, small, lean KirghĂz mount with an enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a blue French overcoat.
Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that morning.
Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cut up forest road came hussars in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes, looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles, reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking in under their seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front, rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the water that lay in the ruts.
DenĂsov’s horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and bumped his rider’s knee against a tree.
“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed DenĂsov angrily, and showing his teeth he struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his comrades with mud.
DenĂsov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more because he still had no news from DĂłlokhov and the man sent to capture a “tongue” had not returned.
“There’ll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as today. It’s too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will snatch the prey from under our noses,” thought DenĂsov, continually peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from DĂłlokhov.
On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to the right, DenĂsov stopped.
“There’s someone coming,” said he.
The esaul looked in the direction DenĂsov indicated.
“There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself,” said the esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not know.
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