Page 1338 - war-and-peace

Chapter VIII

Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as
Prince Andrew supposed.
After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old
prince suddenly seemed to awake as from a dream. He or-
dered the militiamen to be called up from the villages and
armed, and wrote a letter to the commander in chief in-
forming him that he had resolved to remain at Bald Hills
to the last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the com-
mander in chief’s discretion to take measures or not for the
defense of Bald Hills, where one of Russia’s oldest gener-
als would be captured or killed, and he announced to his
household that he would remain at Bald Hills.
But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for
the departure of the princess and Dessalles with the little
prince to Bogucharovo and thence to Moscow. Princess
Mary, alarmed by her father’s feverish and sleepless activ-
ity after his previous apathy, could not bring herself to leave
him alone and for the first time in her life ventured to dis-
obey him. She refused to go away and her father’s fury broke
over her in a terrible storm. He repeated every injustice he
had ever inflicted on her. Trying to convict her, he told her
she had worn him out, had caused his quarrel with his son,
had harbored nasty suspicions of him, making it the object
of her life to poison his existence, and he drove her from

1338 War and Peace