Rostov looked at the drunken peasants, and smiled.
“Or possibly this entertains your excellency？” said Yakov Alpatitch, with a sober air, pointing with his other hand to the old peasants.
“No, there’s nothing very entertaining in that,” said Rostov, and he moved away. “What is the matter？” he inquired.
“I make bold to submit to your excellency that the rude peasants here will not let their lady leave the estate, and threaten to take the horses out of her carriage, so that everything has been packed since morning, yet her excellency cannot get away.”
“Impossible！” cried Rostov.
“I have the honour of submitting to you the simple truth,” said Alpatitch.
Rostov got off his horse, and giving it to the orderly, walked with Alpatitch to the house, questioning him further about the state of affairs.
The princess’s offer of corn, and her interview with Dron and with the peasants, had, in fact, made the position so much worse that Dron had finally given up the keys of office, joined the peasants and refused to appear when Alpatitch sent for him. In the morning when the princess ordered the horses to be put in for her to set off, the peasants had come out in a great crowd to the granary, and had sent to say that they would not let the princess go out of the village; that there was an edict that people were not to leave their houses, and that they would unharness the horses. Alpatitch went out to lecture them; in reply they told him （a certain Karp was the principal speaker, Dron kept in the background in the crowd） that the princess could not be allowed to go, that there was an edict forbidding it, but that only let her stay, and they would serve her and obey her in everything as before.
At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the village street, regardless of the efforts of Alpatitch, the old nurse, and the maid to dissuade her, Princess Marya had just ordered the horses to be put in, and was intending to start. But seeing the horsemen galloping up, the coachmen took them for the French, and ran away, and a great lamentation arose among the women of the household.
“Kind sir！ protector！ God has sent thee,” cried voices, with much feeling, as Rostov crossed the vestibule. Princess Marya was sitting helpless and distraught in the hall, when Rostov was shown in to see her. She did not know who he was, or what brought him there, or what was happening to her. Seeing his Russian face, and recognising him at his first words and gait for a man of her own rank, she looked at him, with her deep, luminous gaze, and began speaking in a voice, broken and trembling with emotion. Rostov at once conceived a romance in this meeting. “A defenceless girl, crushed by sorrow, alone, abandoned to the mercy of coarse, rebellious peasants！ And what strange destiny has brought me here！” thought Rostov, as he listened to her and looked at her. “And what mildness, what nobility in her features and expression！” he thought, as he listened to her timid story.
When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day after her father’s funeral, her voice trembled. She turned away, and as though afraid Rostov might ascribe her words to a desire to work on his feelings, she glanced at him with a look of apprehensive inquiry. There were tears in Rostov’s eyes. Princess Marya noticed it, and looked at him with the luminous eyes that made one forget the plainness of her face.
“I cannot express how glad I am, princess, that I happened to come this way, and am able to serve you in anything,” said Rostov, rising. “I trust you will start at once, and I answer for it on my honour, no person shall dare to cause you annoyance, if you will only permit me to escort you,” and making a deep bow, such as are made to ladies of the royal family, he turned to the door.
By the respectfulness of his tone, Rostov tried to show that though he would consider it a happiness to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to take advantage of her misfortune to force an acquaintanceship upon her.
Princess Marya felt and appreciated this tone.
“I am very, very grateful to you,” she said to him in French; “but I hope it was all only a misunderstanding, and that no one is to blame.” She began all at once to cry.
“Excuse me,” she said.
Rostov, knitting his brows, bowed low once more, and went out of the room.
