pointing to the damaged plaster of the wall. 'Who is that man?' said he, looking sternly at Pierre.
'Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred,' said Pierre rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. 'He is an unfortunate madman who did not know what he was doing.'
The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar.
Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.
'Brigand! You shall pay for this,' said the Frenchman, letting go of him. 'We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon traitors,' he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine energetic gesture.
Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he held out his hand.
'You have saved my life. You are French,' said he.
For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman could perform a great deed, and to save his life--the life of M. Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Regiment--was undoubtedly a very great deed.
But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.
'I am Russian,' he said quickly.
'Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others,' said the officer, waving his finger before his nose and smiling. 'You shall tell me all about that presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what are we to do with this man?' he added, addressing himself to Pierre as to a brother.
Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that loftiest of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the officer's look and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again explained who Makar Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival that drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol which they had not had time to recover from him, and begged the officer to let the deed go unpunished.
The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with his arm.
'You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant it you. Lead that man away!' said he quickly and energetically, and taking the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for saving his life, he went with him into the room.
The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage asking what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish the culprits, but the officer sternly checked them.
'You will be called in when you are wanted,' he said.
The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile had time to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.
'Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen,' said he. 'Shall I serve them up?'
'Yes, and some wine,' answered the captain.
CHAPTER XXIX
When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter again thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and wished to go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so very polite, amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre for saving his life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat down with him in the parlor--the first room they entered. To Pierre's assurances that he was not a Frenchman, the captain, evidently not understanding how anyone could decline so flattering an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it be so, but for all that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude for saving his life.
Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving the feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's feelings were, the latter would probably have left him, but the man's animated obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed Pierre.
'A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito,' said the officer, looking at Pierre's fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his finger. 'I owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman never forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my friendship. That is all I can say.'
There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of the word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him.
'Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September,' he introduced himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his lips under his mustache. 'Will you now be so good as to tell me with whom I have the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in the ambulance with that maniac's bullet in my body?'
Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing, began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason for concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.
'Oh, please!' said he. 'I understand your reasons. You are an officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That's not my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am quite at your service. You belong to the gentry?' he concluded with a shade of inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. 'Your baptismal name, if you please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you say.... That's all I want to know.'
When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and vodka brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a Russian cellar and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share his dinner, and himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a healthy and hungry man, munching his food rapidly with his strong teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating--'Excellent! Delicious!' His face grew red and was covered with perspiration. Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known to the French and had been given a special name. They called it limonade de
