【有声英语文学名著】战争与和平 Book 10（30）

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On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrey, Pierre ordered his groom² to get the horses ready and to call him early in the morning, and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a corner Boris had given up to him.

Before he was thoroughly³ awake next morning everybody had already left the hut. The panes⁴ were rattling⁵ in the little windows and his groom was shaking him.

“Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!” he kept repeating pertinaciously⁶ while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without looking at him, having apparently⁷ lost hope of getting him to wake up.

“What? Has it begun? Is it time?” Pierre asked, waking up.

“Hear the firing,” said the groom, a discharged soldier. “All the gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene⁸ Highness himself rode past long ago.”

Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth⁹ from behind a cloud that had concealed¹⁰ it, was shining, with rays still half broken by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on the dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on the windows, the fence, and on Pierre’s horses standing¹¹ before the hut. The roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant accompanied by a Cossack passed by at a sharp trot¹².

“It’s time, Count; it’s time!” cried the adjutant.

Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down the street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of battle the day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there, members of the staff could be heard conversing¹³ in French, and Kutuzov’s gray head in a white cap with a red band was visible, his gray nape sunk between his shoulders. He was looking through a field glass down the highroad before him.

Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama¹⁴ he had admired from that spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of troops and covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting¹⁵ rays of the bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre, cast upon it through the clear morning air penetrating¹⁶ streaks¹⁷ of rosy¹⁸, golden tinted¹⁹ light and long dark shadows. The forest at the farthest extremity²⁰ of the panorama seemed carved in some precious stone of a yellowish-green color; its undulating outline was silhouetted²¹ against the horizon and was pierced beyond Valuevo by the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops. Nearer at hand glittered golden cornfields interspersed²² with copses. There were troops to be seen everywhere, in front and to the right and left. All this was vivid, majestic²³, and unexpected; but what impressed Pierre most of all was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino and the hollows on both sides of the Kolocha.

Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially to the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy²⁴ banks falls into the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve, and to become translucent²⁵ when the brilliant sun appeared and magically colored and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns mingled²⁶ with this mist, and over the whole expanse and through that mist the rays of the morning sun were reflected, flashing back like lightning from the water, from the dew, and from the bayonets of the troops crowded together by the riverbanks and in Borodino. A white church could be seen through the mist, and here and there the roofs of huts in Borodino as well as dense²⁷ masses of soldiers, or green ammunition²⁸ chests and ordnance²⁹. And all this moved, or seemed to move, as the smoke and mist spread out over the whole space. Just as in the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so along the entire line outside and above it and especially in the woods and fields to the left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high ground, clouds of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others dense, which, swelling³⁰, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the whole expanse.

These puffs³² of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.

“Puff³¹!”— suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging³³ from violet into gray and milky³⁴ white, and “boom!” came the report a second later.

“Puff! puff!”— and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending together; and “boom, boom!” came the sounds confirming what the eye had seen.

Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a round compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke floating to one side, and — “puff” (with a pause)— “puff, puff!” three and then four more appeared and then from each, with the same interval³⁵ — “boom — boom, boom!” came the fine, firm, precise sounds in reply. It seemed as if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and sometimes stood still while woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran past them. From the left, over fields and bushes, those large balls of smoke were continually appearing followed by their solemn reports, while nearer still, in the hollows and woods, there burst from the muskets³⁶ small cloudlets that had no time to become balls, but had their little echoes in just the same way. “Trakh-ta-ta-takh!” came the frequent crackle of musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in comparison with the reports of the cannon³⁷.

Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and his suite³⁸, to compare his impressions with those of others. They were all looking at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were now shining with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before and had fully³⁹ understood after his talk with Prince Andrey.

“Go, my dear fellow, go . . . and Christ be with you!” Kutuzov was saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from the battlefield.

Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way down the knoll.

“To the crossing!” said the general coldly and sternly in reply to one of the staff who asked where he was going.

“I’ll go there too, I too!” thought Pierre, and followed the general.

The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went to his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the quietest, clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out his toes pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his spectacles were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and reins⁴⁰, he galloped⁴¹ after the general, causing the staff officers to smile as they watched him from the knoll.

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