Natásha protests leaving the wounded soldiers behind to carry away the Rostóv’s belongings. Her mother realizes Natásha is correct. The carts are unloaded to make room for as many soldiers as possible.
Natásha protests leaving the wounded soldiers behind to carry away the Rostóv’s belongings. Her mother realizes Natásha is correct. The carts are unloaded to make room for as many soldiers as possible.
Book 11, Chapter 16
Natásha protests leaving the wounded soldiers behind to carry away the Rostóv’s belongings. Her mother realizes Natásha is correct. The carts are unloaded to make room for as many soldiers as possible.
Summary:
Countess Rostóv has just insisted that their valuable belongings not be left behind in favor of transporting soldiers. Just then their son-in-law Berg arrives and, ironically, he wants to borrow a cart to move some furniture. The frustrated Count Rostóv tells Berg Ask the countess, I don’t give orders. Natásha bursts into the room, in shock, and tells her mother it would be monstrous to abandon the wounded soldiers in order to save their belongings. The Countess realizes that Natásha is correct, and relents. The Count orders that the carts be used to transport the wounded and their trunks put in the storerooms. When they understood that order the servants set to work at this new task with pleasure and zeal. The whole household, servants included, became bright and animated due to this change of plans, and they load as many soldiers as possible into the carts.
quote from the chapter:
When they understood that order the servants set to work at this new task with pleasure and zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should be left behind and the goods carted away but that had seemed the only thing to do.
The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner, set eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the carts. The wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood with pale but happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to be had spread to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men began to come into the Rostóvs’ yard. Many of the wounded asked them not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the top of the things. But the work of unloading, once started, could not be arrested. It seemed not to matter whether all or only half the things were left behind. Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures, and mirrors that had been so carefully packed the night before now lay about the yard, and still they went on searching for and finding possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded have another and yet another cart.
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