The feeling, “It has begun! Here it is!” was seen even on Prince Bagratión’s hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes. Prince Andréy gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking and feeling at that moment. “Is there anything at all behind that impassive face?” Prince Andréy asked himself as he looked. Prince Bagratión bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andréy told him, and said, “Very good!” in a tone that seemed to imply that everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he had foreseen. Prince Andréy, out of breath with his rapid ride, spoke quickly. Prince Bagratión, uttering his words with an Oriental accent, spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that there was no need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the direction of Túshin’s battery. Prince Andréy followed with the suite. Behind Prince Bagratión rode an officer of the suite, the prince’s personal adjutant, Zherkóv, an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian—an accountant who had asked permission to be present at the battle out of curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around him with a naive smile of satisfaction and presented a strange appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy officer’s saddle.
“He wants to see a battle,” said Zherkóv to Bolkónski, pointing to the accountant, “but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach already.”
“Oh, leave off!” said the accountant with a beaming but rather cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of Zherkóv’s joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really was.
“It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince ,” said the staff officer. (He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a prince, but could not get it quite right.)