Rostopchín’s broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a potman, and a Moscow burgher called Karpúshka Chigírin, “ who—having been a militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub—heard that Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the French in very bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under the sign of the eagle, began to address the assembled people ,” were read and discussed, together with the latest of Vasíli Lvóvich Púshkin’s bouts rimés .
In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpúshka jeered at the French, saying: “ They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are all dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a hayfork. ” Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and vulgar. It was said that Rostopchín had expelled all Frenchmen and even all foreigners from Moscow, and that there had been some spies and agents of Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to introduce Rostopchín’s witty remark on that occasion. The foreigners were deported to Nízhni by boat, and Rostopchín had said to them in French: “ Rentrez en vous-mêmes; entrez dans la barque, et n’en faites pas une barque de Charon. ” There was talk of all the government offices having been already removed from Moscow, and to this Shinshín’s witticism was added—that for that alone Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamónov’s regiment would cost him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezúkhov had spent even more on his, but that the best thing about Bezúkhov’s action was that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the head of his regiment without charging anything for the show.