8

If history dealt with external phenomena, the establishment of this simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have finished our argument. But the law of history relates to man. A particle of matter cannot tell us that it does not feel the...

3

A Locomotive is moving. Someone asks: What moves it? A peasant says the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement lies in the smoke which the wind...

15

The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies, but turned on the subject Nikolai liked best—recollections of 1812. Denisov started these, and Pierre was particularly agreeable and amusing about them. The family separated on the most friendly terms. After supper Nikolai, having undressed...

7

In the winter of 1813 Nikolai married Princess Marya and moved to Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya. Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without selling any of his wife’s property, and having received a small inheritance...

5

Natasha’s wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Andreevich died that same year, and as always happens, after the father’s death the family group broke up. The events of the...

8

One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time—lacking warm boots and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the snow with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations (the...

7

When the troops reached their night’s halting-place on the 8th of November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already growing dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional lightly falling snow, and towards evening it began to clear....

2

Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha also experienced a particular feeling of estrangement from the members of her own family. All of them—her father, mother, and Sonya—were so near to her, so familiar, so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed...

14

‘ À vos places!’ suddenly cried a voice.1 A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left...

9

Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov rode to the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitred the French camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks accompanying...