The last of the line of cavalry, a pock-marked man of immense stature, scowled viciously on seeing Rostov just in front of him, where he must inevitably come into collision with him. This horse-guard would infallibly have overturned Rostov and his Bedouin （Rostov felt himself so little and feeble beside these gigantic men and horses） if he had not bethought himself of striking the horse-guard’s horse in the face with his riding-whip. The heavy, black, high horse twitched its ears and reared, but its pock-marked rider brought it down with a violent thrust of the spurs into its huge sides, and the horse, lashing its tail and dragging its neck, flew on faster than ever. The horse-guard had hardly passed Rostov when he heard their shout, “Hurrah！” and looking round saw their foremost ranks mixed up with some strange cavalry, in red epaulettes, probably French. He could see nothing more, for immediately after cannons were fired from somewhere, and everything was lost in the smoke.
At the moment when the horse-guards passing him vanished into the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go on where he had to go. This was the brilliant charge of the horse-guards of which the French themselves expressed their admiration. Rostov was appalled to hear afterwards that of all that mass of huge, fine men, of all those brilliant, rich young officers and ensigns who had galloped by him on horses worth thousands of roubles. only eighteen were left after the charge.
“I have no need to envy them, my share won’t be taken from me, and may be I shall see the Emperor in a minute！” thought Rostov, and he galloped on.
When he reached the infantry of the guards, he noticed that cannon balls were flying over and about them, not so much from the sound of the cannon balls, as from the uneasiness he saw in the faces of the soldiers and the unnatural, martial solemnity on the faces of the officers.
As he rode behind one of the lines of the regiments of footguards, he heard a voice calling him by name： “Rostov！”
“Eh？” he called back, not recognising Boris.
“I say, we’ve been in the front line！ Our regiment marched to the attack！” said Boris, smiling that happy smile that is seen in young men who have been for the first time under fire. Rostov stopped.
“Really！” he said. “Well, how was it？”
“We beat them！” said Boris, growing talkative in his eagerness. “You can fancy …” And Boris began describing how the guards having taken up their position, and seeing troops in front of them had taken them for Austrians, and all at once had found out from the cannon balls aimed at them from those troops that they were in the front line, and had quite unexpectedly to advance to battle. Rostov set his horse moving without waiting to hear Boris to the end.
“Where are you off to？” asked Boris.
“To his majesty with a commission.”
“Here he is！” said Boris, who had not caught what Rostov said, and thinking it was the grand duke he wanted, he pointed him out, standing a hundred paces from them, wearing a helmet and a horse-guard’s white elk tunic, with his high shoulders and scowling brows, shouting something to a pale, white-uniformed Austrian officer.
“Why, that’s the grand duke, and I must see the commander-in-chief or the Emperor,” said Rostov, and he was about to start again.
“Count, count！” shouted Berg, running up on the other side, as eager as Boris. “I was wounded in my right hand” （he pointed to his blood-stained hand, bound up with a pocket-handkerchief）, “and I kept my place in the front. Count, I held my sabre in my left hand. All my family, count, the Von Bergs, have been knights.” Berg would have said more, but Rostov rode on without listening.
After riding by the guards, and on through an empty space, Rostov rode along the line of the reserves for fear of getting in the way of the front line, as he had done in the charge of the horse-guards, and made a wide circuit round the place where he heard the hottest musket-fire and cannonade. All of a sudden, in front of him and behind our troops, in a place where he could never have expected the enemy to be, he heard the sound of musket-fire quite close
“What can it be？” thought Rostov. “The enemy in the rear of our troops？ It can’t be,” thought Rostov, but a panic of fear for himself and for the issue of the whole battle came over him all at once. “Whatever happens, though,” he reflected, “it’s useless to try and escape now. It’s my duty to seek the commander-in-chief here, and if everything’s lost, it’s my duty to perish with all the rest.”
The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come upon Rostov grew stronger and stronger the further he advanced into the region behind the village of Pratzen, which was full of crowds of troops of all sorts.
“What does it mean？ What is it？ Whom are they firing at？ Who is firing？” Rostov kept asking, as he met Austrian and Russian soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.
“Devil knows！ Killed them all！ Damn it all,” he was answered in Russian, in German, and in Czech, by the hurrying rabble, who knew no more than he what was being done.
“Kill the Germans！” shouted one.
“To hell with them—the traitors.”
“Zum Henker diese Russen,” muttered a German.
Several wounded were among the crowds on the road. Shouts, oaths, moans were mingled in the general hubbub. The firing began to subside, and, as Rostov found out later, the Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing at one another.
“My God！ how can this be？” thought Rostov. “And here, where any minute the Emperor may see them.… No, these can only be a few wretches. It will soon be over, it’s not the real thing, it can’t be,” he thought. “Only to make haste, make haste, and get by them.”
The idea of defeat and flight could not force its way into Rostov’s head. Though he saw the French cannons and troops precisely on Pratzen hill, the very spot where he had been told to look for the commander-in-chief, he could not and would not believe in it.