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"Well then, take me and execute me!" he went on, speaking to himself and bowing his head with a sad but firm expression. While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to himself in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold appeared the figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but now quite transformed.
And now I wish you a good journey, my dear sir," he added, seeing that his servant had entered... "and success." The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons and Martinists, even in Novikov's time.
With a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman, raised his pistol, and took aim. "Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger. Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment Pierre threw himself on the drunkard.
One thing he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men, which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him.
To make quite sure of the firmness of the ground, he put his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in it, and involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog. Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg he had of late stood aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost entirely in Moscow.
Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward him he wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and angry look and hurried away. Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was issued at night on the first of September.
Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he wrote about "conjugal duties." 9th December I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and Joseph Alexeevich came in from the drawing room.
Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall. "Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go of him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine energetic gesture.
Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now silent corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front door could be heard. Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he would disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood at the half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as soon as the French entered.
On the stairs he met a Russian army doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian assistant. "I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there." The assistant asked some further questions. "Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed Rostov coming upstairs.
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