Rostov was a truthful young man and would on no account have told a deliberate lie.

He began his story meaning to tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, involuntarily, and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood.

If he had told the truth to his hearers--who like himself had often heard stories of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an attack was and were expecting to hear just such a story--they would either not have believed him or, still worse, would have thought that Rostov was himself to blame since what generally happens to the narrators of cavalry attacks had not happened to him.

He could not tell them simply that everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a Frenchman into the wood.