Book Seven: 1810-11 - Chapter III

by Leo Tolstoy

　　The weather was already growing wintry and morning frostscongealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure hadthickened and its bright green stood out sharply against thebrownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, andagainst the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The woodedravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still beengreen islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden andbright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had alreadyhalf changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning toscatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the besttime of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent youngsportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, butwere so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to givethem a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to goon a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there wasan undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.

　　All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and theair was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it beganto thaw. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown,looked out of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning forhunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earthwithout any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping,microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in thegarden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the freshlyfallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and blackand glistened like poppy seed and at a short distance merged intothe dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas went out into the wet and muddyporch. There was a smell of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, ablack-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, gotup on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like ahare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose andmustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from thegarden path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porchwith lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.

　　"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's callwhich unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and roundthe corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray,wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainianfashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independenceand scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed hisCircassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. Thisscorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel,disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was allthe same his serf and huntsman.

　　"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of theweather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried awayby that irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget allhis previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of hismistress.

　　"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deepbass, deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing- and twoflashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, whowas silent. "Can you resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.

　　"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" askedNicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.

　　Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.

　　"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after aminute's pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure.They were howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whomthey both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a smallplace a mile and a half from the house.)

　　"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to mewith Uvarka."

　　"As you please."

　　"Then put off feeding them."

　　"Yes, sir."

　　Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas'big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room waslike seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture andsurroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usualstood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, forfear of breaking something in the master's apartment, and hehastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under thatceiling, out into the open under the sky once more.

　　Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinionthat the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting),Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel wasabout to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up herhair or finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrappedround her. Petya ran in at the same time.

　　"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said youwouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when youcouldn't help going."

　　"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, ashe intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha andPetya. "We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull foryou."

　　"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair;you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and saidnothing to us about it."

　　"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'- we'll go!" shouted Petya.

　　"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.

　　"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively."Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with mydogs," she added to the huntsman.

　　It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, butto have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible.He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of hisbusiness, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury onthe young lady.