at his admirable domestic arrangements.) 'And it's such a beauty! It pulls out and has a secret English drawer, you know! And dear Vera has long wanted one. I wish to give her a surprise, you see. I saw so many of those peasant carts in your yard. Please let me have one, I will pay the man well, and...'
The count frowned and coughed.
'Ask the countess, I don't give orders.'
'If it's inconvenient, please don't,' said Berg. 'Only I so wanted it, for dear Vera's sake.'
'Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the devil...' cried the old count. 'My head's in a whirl!'
And he left the room. The countess began to cry.
'Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!' said Berg.
Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it difficult to reach some decision, first followed him and then ran downstairs.
Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still standing in the yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded officer was climbing into one of them helped by an orderly.
'Do you know what it's about?' Petya asked Natasha.
She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling about. She did not answer.
'It's because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the wounded,' said Petya. 'Vasilich told me. I consider...'
'I consider,' Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry face to Petya, 'I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I don't know what. Are we despicable Germans?'
Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening and letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed headlong up the stairs.
Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was pacing up and down the room, when Natasha, her face distorted by anger, burst in like a tempest and approached her mother with rapid steps.
'It's horrid! It's abominable!' she screamed. 'You can't possibly have ordered it!'
Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The count stood still at the window and listened.
'Mamma, it's impossible: see what is going on in the yard!' she cried. 'They will be left!...'
'What's the matter with you? Who are 'they'? What do you want?'
'Why, the wounded! It's impossible, Mamma. It's monstrous!... No, Mamma darling, it's not the thing. Please forgive me, darling.... Mamma, what does it matter what we take away? Only look what is going on in the yard... Mamma!... It's impossible!'
The count stood by the window and listened without turning round. Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer to the window.
The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for her mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did not turn to look at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.
'Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?' she said, not surrendering at once.
'Mamma, darling, forgive me!'
But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her husband.
'My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don't understand about it,' said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.
'The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen,' muttered the count through tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide her look of shame on his breast.
'Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?...' asked Natasha. 'We will still take all the most necessary things.'
The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at which she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to the anteroom and downstairs into the yard.
The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the strange order she brought them until the count himself, in his wife's name, confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the wounded and take the trunks to the storerooms. When they understood that order the servants set to work at this new task with pleasure and zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should be left behind and the goods carted away but that had seemed the only thing to do.
The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner, set eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the carts. The wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood with pale but happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to be had spread to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men began to come into the Rostovs' yard. Many of the wounded asked them not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the top of the things. But the work of unloading, once started, could not be arrested. It seemed not to matter whether all or only half the things were left behind. Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures, and mirrors that had been so carefully packed the night before now lay about the yard, and still they went on searching for and finding possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded have another and yet another cart.
'We can take four more men,' said the steward. 'They can have my trap, or else what is to become of them?'
'Let them have my wardrobe cart,' said the countess. 'Dunyasha can go with me in the carriage.'
