Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Pétya and Dólokhov rode to the clearing from which Denísov had reconnoitered the French camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dólokhov told the Cossacks accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot along the road to the bridge. Pétya, his heart in his mouth with excitement, rode by his side.
"If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol," whispered he.
"Don't talk Russian," said Dólokhov in a hurried whisper, and at that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui vive?" * and the click of a musket.
* "Who goes there?"
The blood rushed to Pétya's face and he grasped his pistol.
"Lanciers du 6-me," * replied Dólokhov, neither hastening nor slackening his horse's pace.
* "Lancers of the 6th Regiment."
The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.
"Mot d'ordre." *
* "Password."
Dólokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.
"Dites donc, le colonel Gérard est ici?" * he asked.
* "Tell me, is Colonel Gérard here?"
"Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not replying.
"Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas le mot d'ordre..." cried Dólokhov suddenly flaring up and riding straight at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici." *
* "When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask him for the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is here."
And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped aside, Dólokhov rode up the incline at a walk.
Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dólokhov stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up to Dólokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply and in a friendly way that the commander and the officers were higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he called the landowner's house.
Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk could be heard around the campfires, Dólokhov turned into the courtyard of the landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted and approached a big blazing campfire, around which sat several men talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.
"Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.
