Natásha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging friendly greetings, she rode up to them. Ilágin lifted his beaver cap still higher to Natásha and said, with a pleasant smile, that the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much.
To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilágin pressed the Rostóvs to come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the hunt, now doubled, moved on.
The way to Ilágin's upland was across the fields. The hunt servants fell into line. The masters rode together. “Uncle,” Rostóv, and Ilágin kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for rivals to their own borzois.
Rostóv was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred, red-Spotted bitch on Ilágin's leash, slender but with muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of the swiftness of Ilágin's borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Mílka.
In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilágin about the year's harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.
“A fine little bitch, that!” said he in a careless tone. “Is she swift?”
“That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after,” answered Ilágin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erzá, for which, a year before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. “So in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?” he went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering it polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilágin looked at his borzois and picked out Mílka who attracted his attention by her breadth. “That blackspotted one of yours is fine—well shaped!” said he.
“Yes, she's fast enough,” replied Nicholas, and thought: “If only a full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort of borzoi she is,” and turning to his groom, he said he would give a ruble to anyone who found a hare.
“I don't understand,” continued Ilágin, “how some sportsmen can be so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I enjoy riding in company such as this . . . what could be better?” (he again raised his cap to Natásha) “but as for counting skins and what one takes, I don't care about that.”
“Of course not!”
“Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so, Count? For I consider that. . .”
“A-tu!” came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in, who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, “A-tu!” (This call and the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)
“Ah, he has found one, I think,” said Ilágin carelessly. “Well, let us course it, Count.”
“Yes, we must ride up. . . Shall we both course it?” answered Nicholas, seeing in Erzá and “Uncle's" red Rugáy two rivals he had never yet had a chance of pitting against his own borzois. “And suppose they out do my Mílka at once!” he thought as he rode with “Uncle” and Ilágin toward the hare.
“A full-grown one?” asked Ilágin as he approached the whip who had sighted the hare—and not without agitation he looked round and whistled to Erzá.
“And you, Michael Nikanórovich?” he said, addressing “Uncle.”
The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.
“How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours against one another, you two, and I'll look on!”
“Rugáy, hey, hey!” he shouted. “Rugáyushka!” he added, involuntarily by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on this red borzoi. Natásha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by it.
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.
“How is it pointing?” asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces toward the whip who had sighted the hare.
But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on
