The Eager Young Hero — War and Peace

Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow, joined his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general commanding a large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his commission, and especially since Vyazma, he had been in a constant state of blissful excitement at being grown-up, in a perpetual ecstatic hurry not to miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was delighted with what he saw, yet it always seemed that the really heroic exploits were being performed just where he did not happen to be. On the twenty-first of October his general wished to send somebody to Denisov's detachment. Petya begged so piteously that the general could not refuse. But dispatching him he recalled Petya's mad action at Vyazma, where instead of riding by the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had galloped to the advanced line under French fire and twice fired his pistol. So the general explicitly forbade his taking part in any action whatever of Denisov's. That was why Petya had blushed when Denisov asked whether he could stay. Before they reached the forest outskirts he had considered he must return at once. When he saw the French and Tikhon and learned there would certainly be an attack that night, he decided with the rapidity of the young that the general, till then greatly respected, was a rubbishy German, that Denisov, the esaul, and Tikhon were heroes, and that it would be shameful to leave them at a moment of difficulty.

Dusk was growing when they rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses, Cossacks and hussars kindling fires in a hollow where the French could not see the smoke. In the passage a Cossack chopped mutton; inside, three officers converted a door into a tabletop. Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and at once helped fix the dinner table. In ten minutes there were vodka, rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt. Tearing the fat savory mutton with his hands, grease trickling, he was in an ecstatic childish state of love for all men, and consequently of confidence that others loved him the same way. He asked Denisov if it was all right to stay, answered himself that he was finding out as ordered, clenched his teeth, and begged to be let into the very chief, not for a reward, but to command something so that he might really command. He handed his clasp knife to an officer cutting mutton and blushed, insisting the man keep it, he had several like it. Then he remembered raisins, seedless ones, ten pounds from a new sutler, ran out, and brought back about five pounds. He offered the esaul a coffeepot, then a hundred cheap flints, and suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, stopped and blushed.

Running over the day he remembered the drummer boy. It was capital for us here, but what of him? Had they fed him? Had they hurt his feelings? Having caught himself talking too much about flints, he was afraid they would say he was a boy himself and so pitied the boy. I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Blushing, looking anxiously for irony, he asked if he might call the prisoner and give him something to eat. Yes, he's a poor little fellow, said Denisov, seeing nothing shameful in the reminder. His name is Vincent Bosse. Petya slipped close, asked to kiss Denisov, cried how fine, how splendid, and ran out calling Bosse, Vincent. The Cossacks had already changed the name to Vesenny, vernal, and Vesonya, matching the impression of spring the lad made. A hussar said they had given him something to eat; he was awfully hungry. Bare feet splashed through the mud. Petya spoke shy French, touched the boy's hand, pressed it in the dark, and let him pass in first. Inside he sat at a distance, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention, fingering money in his pocket and wondering whether it would seem ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.