After the Emperor has left Moscow, life flows on in its usual course, so usual that it is difficult to remember the days of patriotic elation, hard to believe that Russia is really in danger and that members of the English Club are also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice everything. The one thing that recalls the fervour is the call for contributions of men and money, which as soon as promised assumes a legal form and becomes unavoidable. With the enemy's approach the Moscovites' view does not grow more serious but more frivolous. At the approach of danger two voices speak: one tells a man to consider the danger and the means of escaping it; the other says it is too depressing to think of what is not in man's power to avert, and better to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first; in society to the second. So it is now. It is long since people have been as gay in Moscow as that year.
Rostopchin's broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a potman, and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin who, having had rather too much at the pub, heard Napoleon wished to come, abused the French, and addressed the people under the sign of the eagle, are read with the latest of Vasili Lvovich Pushkin's bouts rimes. Some like Karpushka's jeer that the French will swell with Russian cabbage and that one peasant woman will toss three of them with a hayfork. Others call it vulgar. Rostopchin has expelled foreigners, among them spies, chiefly so that his remark may be repeated: Rentrez en vous-memes; entrez dans la barque, et n'en faites pas une barque de Charon. Shinshin says that for the removal of government offices alone Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. Mamonov's regiment will cost eight hundred thousand rubles, Bezukhov has spent even more, and the best thing is that he will don a uniform and ride at the head without charging for the show.
Julie Drubetskaya, preparing to leave next day, gives a farewell soiree, collecting raveled lint. Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind. What pleasure is there to be so caustique? A young man in militia uniform whom she calls mon chevalier cries a forfeit. In her set they have agreed to speak nothing but Russian, and those who slip into French pay fines to the Committee of Voluntary Contributions. A Russian writer catches a Gallicism. Julie has neither the money nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a master to teach her Russian. She smiles amiably at Pierre: we were just talking of you; your regiment will be better than Mamonov's. Don't talk to me of my regiment, he says, kissing her hand. He should make too good a target, and he is afraid he should hardly climb onto a horse. Guests gossip that the Rostovs' affairs are in a bad way, that the count asks too much of the Razumovskis for house and estate, that it is madness to buy in Moscow now. Julie is leaving because everyone is going; she is not Joan of Arc. Natalie is quite well again, isn't she? They are waiting for Petya, transferred from Obolenski's Cossacks to Pierre's regiment. The countess will not leave till her son returns. Julie says Natalie has recovered her looks and sang; how easily some people get over everything. Pierre looks displeased. Knights such as you are only found in Madame de Souza's novels. C'est la fable de tout Moscou. Pierre rises angrily: he has not taken on the role of Natalie Rostova's knight, has not been to their house for nearly a month, and cannot understand the cruelty. Qui s'excuse s'accuse, Julie smiles, and changes the subject. Poor Mary Bolkonskaya arrived yesterday; she has lost her father. She is going to their estate near Moscow with her nephew. And do you know who rescued her? It is quite a romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded, they wanted to kill her. He rushed in and saved her. Another romance, says the militia officer: this general flight was arranged to get old maids married. Catiche is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another. Julie believes she is un petit peu amoureuse du jeune homme. Forfeit, forfeit. But how could one say that in Russian?
