“Well, perhaps,” said he with a sigh. “We don’t expect to get him home alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it’s a long way from here, and there’s nobody living in it.”
“Do us the honor to come in, there’s plenty of everything in the master’s house. Come in,” said Mávra Kuzmínichna. “Is he very ill?” she asked.
The attendant made a hopeless gesture.
“We don’t expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor.”
And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.
“All right!” said the doctor.
The old servant returned to the calèche, looked into it, shook his head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and stopped beside Mávra Kuzmínichna.
“O, Lord Jesus Christ!” she murmured.
She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.
“The masters won’t object …” she said.
But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took him into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame Schoss’.
This wounded man was Prince Andréy Bolkónski.
XV
Moscow’s last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a Sunday. The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just as usual on Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the city.