Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Osip Alexéevich’s books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.

He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the Patriarch’s Ponds, where the widow Bazdéev’s house was.

Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that were making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing his bulky body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle, Pierre, experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school, began to talk to his driver.

The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the Krémlin and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the Three Hills gates and a great battle would be fought there.