A doctor comes out of the tent in a bloodstained apron, holding a cigar so as not to smear it, and looks about him above the level of the wounded, wanting a little respite. A dresser points out Prince Andrew. The doctor tells them to carry him in at once. Murmurs rise among the wounded who are waiting: even in the next world, one of them remarks, only the gentry are to have a chance. Prince Andrew is laid on a table that has only just been cleared. He cannot make out distinctly what is in the tent. Groans from all sides and the torturing pain in his thigh, stomach, and back distract him. Naked, bleeding bodies seem to fill the low tent, as they filled the dirty pond beside the Smolensk road a few weeks before. It is the same flesh, the same cannon fodder, the sight of which had even then filled him with horror, as by a presentiment.
There are three operating tables. On the nearest sits a Tartar, probably a Cossack, held by four soldiers while a spectacled doctor cuts into his muscular brown back. The Tartar wriggles, bares his teeth, and utters piercing, prolonged yells. On the other table a tall, well-fed man lies with his head thrown back. His curly hair, its colour, and the shape of his head seem strangely familiar. Dressers press on his chest. One large white leg twitches with feverish tremor. Two doctors, one pale and trembling, work silently on his other, gory leg. The spectacled doctor finishes with the Tartar, covers him with an overcoat, glances at Prince Andrew's face, quickly turns away, and angrily tells the dressers to undress him. The first, remotest recollections of childhood come back as the buttons are undone. The doctor feels the wound, sighs, and signs to someone. The pain in the abdomen makes Prince Andrew lose consciousness. When he comes to himself the splintered portions of his thighbone have been extracted, the torn flesh cut away, and the wound bandaged. The doctor bends over, kisses him silently on the lips, and hurries away.
After those sufferings Prince Andrew enjoys a blissful feeling he has not known for a long time. The happiest moments of his life, especially earliest childhood, when he was undressed and put to bed and his nurse sang him to sleep, return not as something past but as something present. Nearby the wounded man with the familiar head is shown his amputated leg, stained with clotted blood, the boot still on. He sobs like a woman. When the doctor moves aside, Prince Andrew recognises Anatole Kuragin. Men offer him a glass of water, but his trembling, swollen lips cannot grasp the rim. That man is somehow closely and painfully connected with him. Suddenly he remembers Natasha as he first saw her at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck and arms and her frightened, happy face ready for rapture. Love for her, stronger than ever, wakes in his soul, and with it the connection between himself and this dimly gazing enemy. Ecstatic pity overflows his heart. He weeps for his fellow men, for himself, and for their errors. Compassion, love of those who love us and of those who hate us, the love Princess Mary taught him and he did not understand: that is what made him sorry to part with life. But now it is too late. He knows it.
