The Hunt and Hidden Rivalries — War and Peace

After the old count goes home, Natásha and Pétya promise to return soon, but the hunt pushes on. At midday Nicholas stands in a fallow field and hears Voltórn give tongue in a ravine of young trees; a short-legged red fox breaks cover. His huntsman's borzois close in, then a strange white borzoi and a black one dash in and the dogs tangle in a star. Two huntsmen, one in a red cap and a stranger in green, linger over the fox. A horn sounds the signal for a fight. Nicholas's groom says it is Ilágin's man rowing with their Iván. Nicholas sends for Natásha and Pétya, then rides to the quarrel.

Iván comes out pale, breathless, one eye black, the fox on his crupper, swearing a likely thing that another pack should kill what his gray bitch had caught. The Rostóvs are already at law with Ilágin, who hunts their customary woods. Nicholas, who has never seen the man and hates him from reports of violence, rides out grasping his whip, ready for desperate steps. Instead a stout gentleman in a beaver cap on a raven-black horse apologizes, promises to punish the servant, praises Natásha as a Diana, and invites them to an upland a mile away that he usually keeps for himself because it swarms with hares. The doubled hunt moves on. Masters glance stealthily at one another's dogs. Nicholas is struck by Ilágin's small red-spotted Erzá, bought a year before for three families of house serfs, and fears she will outdo Mílka.

A whip cries a-tu from a knoll: a sitting hare. Uncle, sullen, says he cannot join against thousand-ruble borzois, then shouts for red Rugáy. The hare leaps; Erzá rolls past the scut; Mílka flies past; then Rugáy knocks the hare off the balk into the muddy rye and rolls over with it. Uncle dismounts, cuts a pad, throws it to Rugáy, and gloats that a cheap dog has beaten them all. Ilágin's groom sneers that any mongrel could take a tired hare. Natásha shrieks with joy so piercingly that ears tingle. Much later Uncle deigns to speak to Nicholas, and Nicholas feels flattered.