BOOK TEN: 1812
36. CHAPTER XXXVI
(continued)
"Look out!" came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird
whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell
dropped with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and
close to the battalion commander's horse. The horse first,
regardless of whether it was right or wrong to show fear, snorted,
reared almost throwing the major, and galloped aside. The horse's
terror infected the men.
"Lie down!" cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.
Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between
him and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the
field and the meadow.
"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite
new, envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of
smoke that curled up from the rotating black ball. "I cannot, I do not
wish to die. I love life- I love this grass, this earth, this air...."
He thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were
looking at him.
"It's shameful, sir!" he said to the adjutant. "What..."
He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the
sound of an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking
window frame, a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started
to one side, raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several
officers ran up to him. From the right side of his abdomen, blood
was welling out making a large stain on the grass.
The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the
officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass,
breathing heavily and noisily.
"What are you waiting for? Come along!"
The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but
he moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.
"Pick him up, lift him, it's all the same!" cried someone.
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