“How are we to pack up and go with our business？” said Ferapontov. “Seven roubles to pay for cartage to Dorogobuzh. What I say is： they have no conscience！” said he. “Selivanov, he did a good turn on Friday, sold flour to the army for nine roubles the sack. What do you say to some tea？” he added. While the horses were being harnessed, Alpatitch and Ferapontov drank tea and discussed the price of corn, the crops, and the favourable weather for the harvest.
“It’s getting quieter though,” said Ferapontov, getting up after drinking three cups of tea. “I suppose, our side has got the best of it. It’s been said they won’t let them in. So we’re in force it seems.…The other day they were saying Matvey Ivanitch Platov drove them into the river Marina： eighteen thousand of them he drowned in one day.”
Alpatitch gathered up his purchases, handed them to the coachman, and settled his accounts with Ferapontov. There was the sound of wheels and hoofs and the ringing of bells as the gig drove out of the gates.
It was by now long past midday, half the street lay in shadow, while half was in brilliant sunshine. Alpatitch glanced out of the window and went to the door. All of a sudden there came a strange sound of a faraway hiss and thump, followed by the boom of cannons, mingling into a dim roar that set the windows rattling.
Alpatitch went out into the street; two men were running along the street towards the bridge. From different sides came the hiss and thud of cannon balls and the bursting of grenades, as they fell in the town. But these sounds were almost unheard, and the inhabitants scarcely noticed them, in comparison with the boom of the cannons they heard beyond the town. It was the bombardment, which Napoleon had ordered to be opened upon the town at four o’clock from one hundred and thirty cannons. The people did not at first grasp the meaning of this bombardment.
The sounds of the dropping grenades and cannon balls at first only excited the curiosity of the people. Ferapontov’s wife, who had till then been wailing in the shed, ceased, and with the baby in her arms went out to the gate, staring in silence at the people, and listening to the sounds.
The cook and shopman came out to the gate. All of them were trying with eager curiosity to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they flew over their heads. Several persons came round the corner in eager conversation.
“What force！” one was saying; “roof and ceiling were smashed up to splinters.”
“Like a pig routing into the earth, it went！” said another.
“Isn’t it first-rate？ Wakes one up！” he said laughing.
“It’s as well you skipped away or it would have flattened you out.”
Others joined this group. They stopped and described how a cannon ball had dropped on a house close to them. Meanwhile other projectiles—now a cannon ball, with rapid, ominous hiss, and now a grenade with a pleasant whistle—flew incessantly over the people’s heads： but not one fell close, all of them flew over. Alpatitch got into his gig. Ferapontov was standing at the gate.
“Will you never have done gaping！” he shouted to the cook, who in her red petticoat, with her sleeves tucked up and her bare elbows swinging, had stepped to the corner to listen to what was being said.
“A wonder it is！” she was saying, but hearing her master’s voice, she came back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.
Again something hissed, but very close this time, like a bird swooping down; there was a flash of fire in the middle of the street, the sound of a shot, and the street was filled with smoke.
“Scoundrel, what are you about？” shouted Ferapontov, running up to the cook.
At the same instant there rose a piteous wailing from the women; the baby set up a terrified howling, and the people crowded with pale faces round the cook. Above them all rose out of the crowd the moans and cries of the cook.
“O-o-oy, good kind souls, blessed friends！ don’t let me die！ Good kind souls！…”
Five minutes later no one was left in the street. The cook, with her leg broken by the bursting grenade, had been carried into the kitchen. Alpatitch, his coachman, Ferapontov’s wife and children and the porter were sitting in the cellar listening. The thunder of the cannon, the hiss of the balls, and the piteous moaning of the cook, which rose above all the noise, never ceased for an instant. Ferapontov’s wife alternately dandled and soothed her baby, and asked in a frightened whisper of every one who came into the cellar where was her husband, who had remained in the street. The shopman told her the master had gone with the crowd to the cathedral, where they were raising on high the wonder-working, holy picture of Smolensk.
Towards dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatitch came out of the cellar and stood in the doorway.
The clear evening sky was all overcast with smoke. And a new crescent moon looked strange, shining high up in the sky, through that smoke. After the terrible thunder of the cannons had ceased, a hush seemed to hang over the town, broken only by the footsteps, which seemed all over the town, the sound of groans and distant shouts, and the crackle of fires. The cook’s moans had ceased now. On two sides black clouds of smoke from fires rose up and drifted away. Soldiers in different uniforms walked and ran about the streets in different directions, not in ranks, but like ants out of a disturbed ant heap. Several of them ran in Ferapontov’s yard before Alpatitch’s eyes. He went out to the gate. A regiment, crowded and hurrying, blocked up the street, going back.
“The town’s surrendered; get away, get away,” said an officer noticing his figure; and turning immediately to the soldiers, he shouted, “I’ll teach you to run through the yards！”