- After her dad dies, Marya pulls a teenager stunt and locks herself in her room. She’s having deep thoughts about how it’s both sad and not too sad that he’s dead.
- Mlle. Bourienne comes to comfort her, and Marya immediately feels terrible for all the bad blood between them recently. They make up, and Mlle. Bourienne fills her in on the deal with the peasants.
- Marya doesn’t get how pressing the danger from the French is, and then Mlle. Bourienne gives her a propaganda leaflet asking everyone to stay put and saying that the French will protect them.
- Marya loses it – after all this, she’s going to defect to the French? When her own brother is in the Russian army? She springs into action.
- She meets with Alpatych and then Dron. It’s kind of an amazing scene. To her, Dron is still the same guy who brought her presents from the fair when she was a kid. But to him, obviously, she’s his boss/owner.
- Again he says that there aren’t any horses, and that the peasants have no food.
- She makes a quick executive decision to distribute all the stored grain to them. She’s not really clued in on this process, but she has a general sense that this is sometimes done when the serfs are in trouble.
- Dron sighs and asks to be released from servitude.
- She doesn’t get what he wants and pledges her devotion to him and the rest of the serfs.