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Volume II, Part Two, Chapter XIII

On returning from leave this time, Rostov felt and understood for the first time how strong his bond was with Denisov and with the whole regiment.

As Rostov rode up to the regiment, he experienced a feeling similar to what he had felt approaching the Povarsky house. When he caught sight of the first hussar in the unbuttoned jacket of his regiment, when he recognized the red-haired Dementyev, saw the picket-lines of chestnut horses, when Lavrushka called out joyfully to his master, "The count has arrived!" and shaggy Denisov, who had been asleep on his bed, came running out of the dugout and embraced him, and the officers gathered round the newcomer — Rostov felt the same sensation as when his mother, father, and sisters had embraced him, and tears of joy, rising in his throat, prevented him from speaking. The regiment was also a home — an unfailingly dear and precious home, just like his parents' home.

Having reported to the regimental commander, received his assignment to his old squadron, gone on duty and on foraging expeditions, entered into all the small concerns of the regiment, and feeling himself deprived of freedom and locked into a single narrow, unchanging frame, Rostov experienced the same calm, the same support, and the same sense of being at home in his own place that he had felt under his parents' roof. There was none of that disorder of the free world in which he could not find his place and made wrong choices; no Sonya, with whom he had to or not had to settle things; no possibility of going somewhere or not going; none of those 24 hours of the day that could be spent in so many different ways; none of that countless multitude of people among whom no one was closer, no one more distant; none of those vague and undefined money matters with his father; no reminder of the terrible loss to Dolokhov! Here in the regiment everything was clear and simple. The whole world was divided into two unequal parts: one — our Pavlograd regiment, and the other — all the rest. And with all the rest one had no concern whatsoever. In the regiment everything was known: who was a lieutenant, who a captain, who a good man, who a bad — and above all, who was a comrade. The sutler gave credit, pay came in trimesters; there was nothing to invent or choose — just don't do anything counted as bad in the Pavlograd regiment, and when you are sent somewhere, do what is clearly and precisely laid down and ordered, and all would be well.

Entering again into these fixed conditions of regimental life, Rostov experienced a joy and calm like those felt by a tired man lying down to rest. The more welcome was this regimental life to Rostov in this campaign because, after his loss to Dolokhov (an act which, despite all his family's consolations, he could not forgive himself), he had resolved to serve not as before, but to atone for his fault — to serve well and to be a wholly excellent comrade and officer, that is, an admirable man, which seemed so difficult in the world yet so attainable in the regiment.

Since his loss, Rostov had resolved to pay off that debt to his parents within five years. He had been sent ten thousand rubles a year, but now he resolved to take only two thousand and leave the rest to his parents to repay the debt.

Our army, after repeated retreats, advances, and battles at Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrating around Bartenstein. They were awaiting the Tsar's arrival at the army and the beginning of a new campaign.

The Pavlograd regiment, which had been in that part of the army on campaign in 1805, had been brought up to strength in Russia and arrived too late for the opening actions of the campaign. It had not been at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau, and in the second half of the campaign, having joined the active army, was attached to Platov's detachment.

Platov's detachment operated independently of the main army. Several times the Pavlogradians had been in skirmishes with the enemy, taken prisoners, and on one occasion even captured Marshal Oudinot's baggage train. In April the Pavlogradians stood for several weeks near a devastated, utterly deserted German village without moving from their position.

There was a thaw, mud, cold; the rivers had broken up and the roads become impassable; for days at a time neither horses nor men received provisions. Since transport had become impossible, men scattered through abandoned, desolate villages searching for potatoes, yet even of those little was to be found.

Everything had been consumed and all the inhabitants had fled; those who remained were worse than beggars, and there was nothing left to take from them — and even the less compassionate soldiers would often, instead of taking from them, give away what little they had left.

The Pavlograd regiment had lost only two men wounded in combat, but from hunger and disease had lost nearly half its men. In the hospitals men died so reliably that soldiers suffering from fever and swelling caused by bad food preferred to drag themselves on duty, barely keeping their feet in the ranks, rather than be sent to hospital. With the onset of spring the soldiers began to find a plant emerging from the ground that resembled asparagus, which they called for some reason Mashkin sweet root, and they spread out across the meadows and fields in search of this Mashkin sweet root (which was in fact very bitter), dug it up with their sabres, and ate it despite orders not to eat this harmful plant.

In spring a new illness appeared among the soldiers — swelling of the hands, feet, and face — whose cause the regimental doctors attributed to the consumption of this root. But despite the prohibition, the Pavlograd soldiers of Denisov's squadron ate Mashkin sweet root above all else, because they had already been eking out their last rusks for a second week, issued only half a pound per man, and the potatoes from the last supply had arrived frozen and sprouted.

The horses had also spent a second week feeding on the straw thatch from the house roofs, were hideously thin, and still covered with their winter coats, matted into clumps.

Despite such misery, soldiers and officers lived exactly as they always had; now too, though with pale and swollen faces and in tattered uniforms, the hussars fell in for roll-call, went on stable duty, groomed their horses, cleaned their equipment, fetched straw from the rooftops instead of fodder, and went to dinner at the cook-pots, from which they rose hungry, joking about their vile food and their hunger. Just as always, in their free time soldiers lit fires, warmed themselves naked by the flames, smoked, sorted and baked sprouted, mouldy potatoes, and told or listened to stories of the Potemkin and Suvorov campaigns, or folk tales about Alyosha the rogue and Mikolka the priest's hired hand.

The officers, as usual, lived two or three to a room in open, half-ruined houses. The senior ones occupied themselves with procuring straw and potatoes and generally with finding means to feed the men; the junior ones, as always, some with cards (there was plenty of money, though no provisions), others with innocent games — skittles and gorodki. Of the general course of affairs they spoke little, partly because they knew nothing definite, partly because they felt dimly that the common business of the war was going badly.

Rostov lived as before with Denisov, and the bond of friendship between them had grown still closer since their leave. Denisov never spoke of the Rostovs, but from the tender friendship the commander showed his officer, Rostov felt that the old hussar's unhappy love for Natasha played a part in deepening that friendship. Denisov clearly tried to expose Rostov to danger as rarely as possible, looked out for him, and after an engagement was especially overjoyed to see him come through safe and sound. On one of his foraging expeditions, Rostov found in an abandoned, ruined village — where he had gone in search of provisions — a Polish old man's family with his daughter, who had an infant at the breast. They were without clothes, hungry, unable to walk away and with no means of leaving. Rostov brought them to his billet, installed them in his quarters, and for several weeks, until the old man recovered, provided for them. A comrade of Rostov's, falling into conversation about women, began to tease Rostov, saying he was the shrewdest of them all and that it would do no harm to introduce his comrades to the pretty little Polish girl he had rescued. Rostov took the joke as an insult, flared up, and said such unpleasant things to the officer that Denisov could barely restrain them both from a duel. When the officer had left and Denisov, himself unaware of the nature of Rostov's relationship with the Polish girl, began to reproach him for his quick temper, Rostov said to him:

"What do you expect... She is to me like a sister, and I cannot describe how offensive it was to me... because... well, for that reason..."

Denisov clapped him on the shoulder and began pacing quickly about the room without looking at Rostov, which was what he did in moments of inner agitation.

"What a foolish breed you Rostovs are," he said, and Rostov noticed tears in Denisov's eyes.