“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 spent the night on a bed made up for him there.