Pétya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still standing in the yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded officer was climbing into one of them helped by an orderly.
“Do you know what it’s about?” Pétya asked Natásha.
She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling about. She did not answer.
“It’s because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the wounded,” said Pétya. “Vasílich told me. I consider …”
“I consider,” Natásha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry face to Pétya, “I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so … I don’t know what. Are we despicable Germans?”
Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening and letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed headlong up the stairs.
Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was pacing up and down the room, when Natásha, her face distorted by anger, burst in like a tempest and approached her mother with rapid steps.
“It’s horrid! It’s abominable!” she screamed. “You can’t possibly have ordered it!”
Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The count stood still at the window and listened.
“Mamma, it’s impossible: see what is going on in the yard!” she cried. “They will be left! …”
“What’s the matter with you? Who are ‘they’? What do you want?”