cabman to be discharged, your honor?”
“Oh yes!” said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly.
“Look here,” he added, taking Gerásim by a button of his coat and looking down at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, “I say, do you know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?”
“We heard so,” replied the man.
“I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you.”
“Yes, your excellency,” replied Gerásim. “Will you have something to eat?”
“No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a pistol,” said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.
“Yes, your excellency,” said Gerásim after thinking for a moment.
All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor’s study, and Gerásim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to another and talking to himself. And he